a guide to bowazons: secondary attributes: offensive

Attack Rating

Good marksmanship is vital; Attack Rating is your second most important secondary attribute, just behind damage by a hair: after all, if you can't hit something, you can't hurt it. Since you'll be using dexterity to raise it, Attack Rating often goes hand-in-hand with damage. A more complete explanation of Attack Rating can be found at Tommi Gustafsson's To Hit Calculations, but I'm going to attempt to make this subject as simple as possible for those who aren't math-inclined (like myself).

According to the Arreat Summit, the To-Hit formula used to determine the chances of an attacker hitting a defender is [in percentage form]: (100 × AR/[AR + DR] × 2 × alvl/[alvl + dlvl]). This applies to monsters as well as players.

Your amazon's base AR will be ({dexterity × 5} - 23); after your first level of Penetrate, it's quite unlikely that you'll ever need to refer to your base AR score again. It's more likely that you'll be more concerned with your total AR, which will be (Base AR + Flat AR bonuses) × (100 + [Attack Rating Bonus]/100). Here's how this works out: let's say we have a clvl-69 amazon with 300 dexterity, slvl-10 Penetrate, a Witchwild String short siege bow, and 500 AR from equipment. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that the bow has no AR bonuses and she has no skill bonuses. Her base AR would be::

{300 × 5} - 23 = 1,477 Base AR

At slvl-10, Penetrate gives a +125% bonus to AR.

(1,477 base AR + 500) × (100 + 125/100) = 1,977 × 2.25 = 4,448.25 Total AR..

Thus, your bowazon would have a total of ~4,448 AR. Okay, that's wonderful, but so what?

Now, let's say our bowazon wants to kill Diablo in Hell difficulty. How's this going to work out? Well, according to the Arreat Summit, at Hell difficulty, Diablo is a level 94 mob with 2,534 defense. The To-Hit formula is, again, (100 × AR/[AR + DR] × 2 × alvl/[alvl + dlvl]), so our bowazon's chances to hit Diablo are:

100 × 4,448/[4,448 + 2,534] × 2 × 69/[69 + 94] ≈ 54.246%

Ouch. I wonder what'll happen if we raise the bowazon's level to 94, but don't mess with anything else...

100 × 4,448/[4,448 + 2,534] × 2 × 94/[94 + 94] ≈ 254.827%

Woah! Okay, what the hell just happened? This is going to be explained in the article about Penetrate, but the short explanation is that while Attack Rating is important, your level is even more so. Note that in the previous example, the 291% chance to hit is lowered to 95%, as you can have no less than a 5% chance to hit a monster, nor more than a 95% chance to hit. Of course, Guided Arrow gets around this with a 100% hit rate.

There are two types of AR bonuses: flat bonuses and percentage-based bonuses. Both work well in conjunction with each other, though flat AR bonuses are slightly better than percentage-based bonuses; the reasoning behind this is pretty simple: a +100% bonus of 100 AR equals 200 AR, but that same +100% bonus applied to 500 AR gives 1,000 AR. The more you put in, the more you get out of it.

In the beginning, you'll want to get your hands on a lot of flat AR bonuses because your base AR is going to be low, but as your base AR grows and item options open up, you'll want to find a couple of sources of percentage-based AR bonuses like Hawkeye helms or bows like the Goldstrike Arch. The best items to find are those with scaling flat AR bonuses like Eaglehorn or rare weapons with the Grinding prefix. However, one doesn't replace the other; they must work together.

Where can I get equipment with AR bonuses?

Equipment:: Rare weapons: +121-150 AR.; Magical weapons: +151-450 AR.; Rare circlets, rings: +101-120 AR.; Rare amulets and gloves: +10-20 AR.; Magical weapons: Hawkeye prefix (+{1.5/clvl} AR).; Rare weapons: Fool's prefix (+{16.5/clvl} AR) and (+{0.5/clvl} Maximum Damage).; Various unique, set, and rune word items give varying amounts of AR.
Sockets:: Amethysts of varying degrees in weapons: +40-150 AR.; Diamonds of varying degrees in helms and armor: +20-100 AR.; Rare silver jewels: +41-60 AR.; Magical argent jewels, +61-100 AR.; El rune: +50 AR, +1 light radius when inserted into a weapon.
Charms:: Small charms: +1-36 AR.; Large charms: +4-64 AR.; Grand charms: +6-132 AR.

Where can I get equipment with percentile-based AR bonuses?

Equipment:: Rare helms, circlets, bows, crossbows: Visionary prefix (+{1/clvl}% AR).; Various unique, set, and rune word items give varying amounts of AR.
Sockets:: Gul rune: +20% bonus to AR when inserted into a weapon.

To me, the most important part of the bowazon is Attack Rating, just a hair ahead of damage. I've got a lot of reasons for this. The first is that AR affects every attack the bowazon makes (except for Guided Arrow), and because the game is bugged so that the AR bonuses of elemental arrows don't apply, you not only want your AR to be as high as possible, but you want to pace yourself through the game in such a way that you'll always want a 75~95% chance to hit any monster in a given stage. The second is that most of my builds focus on both physical and non-physical damage, so no matter how much physical damage my bowazon inflicts, the non-physical damage is always there to add a decent chunk of pain. The third reason is the use of Amplify Damage: because it doubles all the physical damage my bowazon pumps out, I always try to have an item that casts this particular curse upon striking. There are other reasons, but the long and short of it is that I can always find numerous ways to stack damage on my bowazon, but not so many for ensuring that my bowazon hits her target, despite her level disadvantages.

This section covered how to increase your chances to hit by increasing your AR. The following sections will cover how to increase your chances to hit by lowering the target's DR — or disregarding it altogether.