a guide to bowazons: bow/crossbow skills

A bowazon can't survive without passive/magic skills, but she will be using the bow/crossbow skills more than anything else. Until you have a better grasp of your skills and preferences, invest at least one point into every bow skill (except for Immolation, and I'll explain why later): even if you don't find a skill useful, it'll invariably lead to another that should be.

There are three trees to follow on the bow/crossbow skills: the magic, fire, and cold arrow trees. The trees are separate, making the bowazon an extremely versatile character for the least amount of skill point usage. What is important to note is that the amazon already has three types of AoE damage on a single tree: to be truly successful in Diablo II, a character needs two types of AoE attack, and the bowazon already has three. If the amazon decides upon the hybrid route, employing spears and javelins, she can have up to five types of AoE attacks. Again, there are few characters who can demonstrate the overall versatility and effectiveness of the bowazon. There are very few things in the game that the bowazon can't kill: when your work is slaughter, you work in wholesale, not retail.

However, the more and more you play with bowazons, the more you'll probably find yourself specializing in two kinds of damage, and if you can afford it, dabbling in a third. The reason for this is something introduced in v1.10 called synergies. According to the Arreat Summit:

Synergy bonuses are designed to boost the effectiveness of the higher-level skills based upon the number of points allocated to the lower-level (synergizing) skills. Players are rewarded for using skill points earlier rather than hoarding them all for later 'cookie-cutter' distribution to high-level skills. A skill that has a synergy lists other skills that will help improve the skill you're looking at.

Every class gained massive synergy bonuses to things like damage, so skills that used to be weak (like the druid's Fire Claws) would synergize with other underpowered skills (like Firestorm) for noticeable bonuses (for example, every level of Firestorm gave +22% fire damage to Fire Claws, among other things) and turn into massive damage dealers (as slvl-20 Firestorm would grant a +440% fire damage bonus to Fire Claws) which would be used to kick some major ass. Every class, that is, except the bowazon.

Oh sure, she gained synergies to her elemental attacks (everybody did), but unlike other classes, she didn't gain any bonuses whatsoever to her physical attacks...any of her physical attacks. In addition, her bow/crossbow synergies weren't very good when compared to similar attacks from other classes. It was safe to assume that her passive/magic skills would make up for this, and they would have, if it wasn't for one little thing.

The bowazon's best physical attacks were bugged (and they still are). Guided Arrow, which was bugged too well in v1.09 with piercing and an exceptionally good search AI had its wings clipped when Blizzard decided that Guided Arrows could only hit targets that were within the amazon's line-of-sight so she couldn't do things like fire around corners, thus completely missing the point of a guided attack and buggering it up in the other direction. Here's another one: no matter how many points you drop into it, you'll never be able to coax more than 23 missiles out of Multiple Shot. And finally, back in v1.09, Strafe's missiles were stacked in the same category as Multiple Shot's missiles, which meant that Strafe (like Multiple Shot) was bogged down with a 25% penalty to all damage — Blizzard never fixed that either. Considering that every other warrior class has a significant damage bonus to their physical attacks (like somewhere in the area of oh, +50~400% enhanced damage), the crippling of the bowazon's physical attacks put a significant dent to her damage dealing capabilities. No damage bonuses meant she'd have to get her buffs from elsewhere, and if you need to get them "from elsewhere," then you'd better be damned sure everyone else had access to those buffs. Sure, she could make up for it with a Might aura packing hireling and CTC Amp Damage equipment, but so could everyone else. She could join a party, but if everyone was able to kill faster than she could, her usefulness to the team was limited. Thus, the bowazon lost her standing as a serious contender of physical damage dealer, which is a shame, because those are her meat-and-potato skills.

(Just a note to myself so I can rant about it later: apparently, the AR bonuses applied to elemental arrows don't work. Wonderful.)

For an old-school bowazon player like me, this can either be a grave insult (Blizzard completely ignored bowazons or just don't think much of the people who play them) or the highest compliment (Blizzard doesn't think bowazons particularly need huge amounts of damage to be successful because if they could work back in v1.03 {when bows didn't implement enhanced damage at all}, they can work now). I prefer to think Blizzard was leaning towards the latter, though a couple of bug fixes would have been nice.

Does this mean the bowazon sucks? Well, if all you wanted was damage and quick leveling, then yeah, she sucks. However, if you want to have fun your way and you're intent on playing one of the safest and most versatile characters in the game, here you go.

Bow/Crossbow Skills