Bowazon by Numbers

First of all, let's start with a quick reading of the amazon section of Arreat Summit. That'll save me a little bit of trouble.

The most important part of enjoying your character is knowing your character. Knowing your character — its strengths, weakness, limitations, and potential. Every character model (or "build" for short) has two parts, structure and definition. Apart from this is the player.

Structure involves everything internal and constant about the character: attributes and skills. Generally, these things never change; there will always be differences between various builds, and the skills themselves may change slightly over time (and patches), but the purpose of these things will always be the same: dexterity always does what dexterity is supposed to do, penetrate always does what penetrate is supposed to do, defense rating always does what defense rating is supposed to do, and so on. Again, the purpose of these things don't change: if you intend to sacrifice development in, say, dexterity, in favor of something else, you had best know what you're sacrificing and why. Is the cost-benefit ratio going to be worth it?

Most people find themselves on their ninth or tenth bowazon build simply because a skill point has been wasted here or there, or perhaps they've found themselves planning around a piece of gear that didn't turn out the way they expected. I've personally built around eleven bowazons in softcore trying to find just the right blend of attributes and skill points to fit my style, and I was still working on it when I retired from the game.

Definition involves everything external about the character; mostly, this involves the equipment that makes the character what she is, like the bow — a bowazon can't be a bowazon without a bow. However, definition is built entirely on the structure of the character: any amazon can hold a bow, but it takes a specific setup of attributes and skills to make her a bowazon; as you keep playing and developing preferences for certain kinds of gear and builds, your character builds will become more specialized, as will your equipment choices.

For example, if you intend on crafting your bowazon into a frostmaiden (a bowazon focused on cold damage), then your equipment won't only focus on damage, but cold damage as well. Then your character's gear starts steering her development in attributes and skill points. You'll probably start with generalized cold damage gear, but as you start acquiring better and more specialized gear, you'll start redesigning your frostmaiden builds around your better gear. If you're interested in creating specialized bowazon variants, this guide will attempt to accommodate you, though it's focused mostly on the general bowazon.

The following section will feature attributes and skills. You'll notice that the recommendations for attributes are quite vague: that's because there is no one best answer for everything. The preferences between a bowazon in softcore and hardcore, for example, will be very different, and even among, say, softcore bowazon players, there will be a wide range of opinions around where attribute and skill points should go. A majority of bowazon players are into maximizing dexterity, but that's only after they've met the strength requirements for their gear. If you find yourself getting hit a lot, then go ahead and invest in vitality and life bonuses until you start getting your "bowie legs" and gear that can help you out, then start readjusting your vitality from what you think you need into what you know you need. Even if a thousand players say one thing and you think another, that doesn't mean they're right or wrong, it just means you've found the right answer to a different question. So be it — play the way you want to play, but keep the guidelines in mind until you get your groove going. As a player, you'll probably spend more time figuring out what your personal preferences for these are long after you've obtained what you believe is the "best gear possible."

On the whole, the section on attributes will focus on my preferences and priorities, as well as my rationale for these opinions. Your opinions may differ: that's good. However, if you have no opinion on the subject, I consider my suggestions to be a good, workable framework for the basic softcore bowazon. (I don't play hardcore, but I've done my best to keep HC bowazons in mind.)

We'll start with attributes and the bowazon's unusual attribute distribution.