Weapons

While amazons are better off taking advantage of the faster bow, Normal is easy enough that a high-powered crossbow can be placed under consideration; after all, crossbows hit much harder than bows. For Normal difficulty, the goal is to use a long war bow or perhaps a low exceptional; for NM and beyond, the bow is a matter of personal preference, though the standard bow of choice is a gothic.

Basic Bows/Crossbows

We all need to start somewhere: at this point, basic bows are fairly balanced against their melee counterparts due to their lower damage. Unique and set bows lean favorably against their rare and magical counterparts, but not always: the player needs to learn superior skill over superior equipment, slowly getting used to the bowazon at this initial stage, so don't bother trying to get large amounts of enhanced damage: none of them have base damage ranges high enough to make a significant difference between 40-80% enhanced damage, which is about as high as you can expect with these. Instead, use jewels and runes with bonuses to minimum and maximum damage, as these raise damage faster. A more expedient solution would be to concentrate on elemental damage: a hunter's or long bow with chipped or flawed gems is a huge boon in your early game. A long bow with five jewels of envy can inflict 120 poison over 10 seconds, which is just enormous for Normal, so take advantage of that! The goal for the bowazon in Normal is to have the 35-55 strength and 60-65 dexterity needed to use a reflex or long war bow, repsectively.

All that's really needed for a magical bow are two good affixes and two sockets. A rare bow is different: a lot of factors go into what can be deemed perfect; a truly good rare will have at least five attributes, two of which will be dedicated to damage and speed, leaving one prefix and two suffixes open. IMHO, the most important things on a bow are (in order):

1. Enhanced Damage: When you're at this level, enhanced damage doesn't count for much because, well, it's all a matter of proportion: 500% of a low number is still a low number. At this point in time, it's better to go for straight +min/max bonuses. Still, keep an eye out for weapons between +85-150% ED; this is about as high as you can expect to get below level 30.
2. Elemental Damage: Because significant amounts of physical damage are relatively difficult to come by, elemental damage counts for a lot in Normal. No, you can't leech from it, but your bowazon's physical damage isn't great enough to make leech really count for anything...yet. My particular favorite is a long bow peppered with jewels of envy — these inflict 20 points of poison damage in 2 seconds, easily able to down most unique monsters in Act 1. Even one can mean the difference between looting the corpses of many, many monsters and a sudden urgent need for a town portal. Other than poison, it's easy to build up a reserve of elemental damage in Normal; particular favorites include the Arctic Furs and Vidala's Rig sets, as well as some unique bows. See Elemental Damage.
3. Bonuses to Attack Rating: In Normal, your chances to hit anything are actually pretty decent, but the more AR you have, the better: because leech is so low and so hard to come by, because your mana reserves are so low, and because your physical damage isn't outstanding, you need to make every single arrow count when using special bow skills. At this level, the best you can expect is +150-230 AR from a weapon. For this reason, a town guard with the Blessed Aim aura might be the best hireling you can have in Normal.
4. Increased Attack Speed: All bow/crossbow skills are based on weapon speed: the faster you shoot, the more damage you cause per second. Increased attack speed is available in 10% (readiness) and 20% (alacrity) on bows. See Increased Attack Speed for more information on sources of IAS and speed breakpoints.
5. Mana Per Kill: At this level, MPK isn't too bad. Your skills don't cost a lot of mana, and it's easy for a bowazon to kill stuff. Later on, this mod will suck, but for now, with your bowazon's low mana reserves, it's a good call.
6. Hit Causes Monster to Flee: Another mod that's good at the lower levels, HCMTF creates even more distances between you and your target. This is good because, with the exception of your hireling, there's nothing standing between you and whatever's going to rush you. Later on, this mod will suck because it'll interfere with more significant curses, but for now, with your bowazon's low life and low life leech, it's another good call.
7. Bonuses to Skills: Amazon-specific bows spawn with +0-3 bow/crossbow skills without using an affix, so keep an eye out for these. Bows don't spawn with bonuses to passive skills. At this point, the best +skills modifier you can expect will be +1 skills or +2 bow/crossbow skills.
8. Reduced Requirements: Reduced requirements range from 20~40%. Without reduced requirements, a bowazon won't be able use a gothic bow without +strength and +dexterity equipment before clvl-35-37. For those obsessed with dexterity or HC players, reduced requirements is a very desirable trait to have.
9. Other Assorted Crap: Light radius, resists. In Normal, there really aren't too many useless modifiers.

Basic Unique Bows/Crossbows

Basic unique bows are surprisingly well-balanced (against their rare and magical counterparts) with consistent themes, but what sets them back are their level requirements: they're good up to level 25, then lose out against rare exceptional weapons, but then again, they were made to be disposable. A bowazon player is free to use any bow he wants, but should be reminded that basic bowazon sets (discussed in Sets and Set Items) might be a better idea.

• Pluckeye Short Bow: 4-10 damage (7 avg), +100% enhanced damage, +28 attack rating, 3% mana stolen per hit, +10 life, +2 mana after each kill, +2 light radius, rlvl-7. The utility factor of this weapon is approximately less than that of a truckload of free Viagra at a lesbian block party. Next bow, please...
• Witherstring Hunter's Bow: 4-12 damage (8 avg), +40-50% enhanced damage, fires magic arrows [slvl-3], adds 1-3 damage, 30% increased attack speed, +50 attack rating, rlvl-13. Like Pluckeye, Witherstring has very low base damage, but it's really fast. Personally, I like using this toy with Bloodfist heavy gloves. Witherstring fires magic arrows, but only when using a normal attack; this is nice because at this level, your bowazon can't afford to use her bow skills whenever she pleases. All other bow skills will override the magic arrow property of this bow.
• Raven Claw Long Bow: 5-17 damage (11 avg), +60-70% enhanced damage, fires explosive arrows [slvl-3], 50% bonus to attack rating, +3 dexterity, +3 strength, rlvl-15. Raven Claw fires exploding arrows, but only when using a normal attack. When you find this weapon, abuse it for all it's worth: it gives you Exploding Arrow for free, and with that alone, this bow generally dominates most of the game from Act 1 to 3, allowing you to easily tackle the large groups the game will throw at you. All other bow skills will override the exploding arrow property of this bow.
• Rogue's Bow Composite Bow: 8-14 damage (12 avg), +40-60% enhanced damage, +100% damage to undead, 30% deadly strike, 50% increased attack speed, +60 attack rating, all resistances 10%, rlvl-20. A -10 speed class bow with 50% IAS, this is the fastest basic bow in the game. While socketing suggestions are still the same, you can start using perfect gems, elemental damage runes and jewels of carnage (+15 maximum damage) without raising level requirements.
• Stormstrike Short Battle Bow: 11-22 damage (17.1 avg), +70-90% enhanced damage, adds 1-30 lightning damage, 25% piercing attack, +28 attack rating, lightning resist 25%, +8 strength, rlvl-25. Here's where level requirements start to become a serious drag on basic uniques: you could probably find a decent rare exceptional weapon at this stage in the game and do better than you could with any basic unique that comes after this. The idea here is that Stormstrike's piercing compensates for the low damage: with the proper items (like high elemental damage) and skills (Ice Arrow and Multiple Shot), it can dominate the large crowds that're so common in Act 3 and 4. However, it totally, absolutely, without a doubt sucks against strong single enemies. With this in mind, concentrate on foot speed, drawing your enemies into large groups and mowing them down when you're ready for them. An Ort or perfect topaz would make a good socket here to supplement its comparatively good lightning damage.
• Wizendraw Long Battle Bow: 7.2-34.2 damage (20.7 avg), +70-80% enhanced damage, +50-100 attack rating, fires magic arrows [slvl-5], 20% increased attack speed, cold resist 26%, +15 energy, +30 mana, -(20-35)% to enemy cold resistance, rlvl-26. Because this bow lowers your target's cold resistance, you will back this bow up with some serious cold damage via charms, cold skills, whatever; the more cold damage you're using, the better. I would strongly suggest a perfect sapphire or Thul rune. Wizendraw fires magic arrows, but only when using a normal attack; all other bow skills will override the magic arrow property of this bow.
• Hellclap Short War Bow: 13-28 damage (17.1 avg), +70-90% enhanced damage, adds 15-(30-50) fire damage, 10% increased attack speed, +50-75 attack rating, +1 fire skills, fire resist 40%, +12 dexterity, rlvl-27. In addition to its high dexterity bonus, Hellclap has relatively high fire resistance and damage; a Ral or Sol rune, perfect ruby or fire-damage jewel is the recommended socket. Its average damage is lower than Wizendraw, but it's the fire damage that makes it so nice. Fire skills include all the sorceress fire tree, amazon's fire arrow skills, paladin's Holy Fire, assassin's fire traps, and druid's fire skills. These won't raise a skill point in the necromancer's fire golem.
• Blastbark Long War Bow: 9-55 damage (32.2 avg), +70-130% enhanced damage, +1 amazon skills, 3% mana stolen per hit, +5 strength, +2 exploding arrow (amazon only), rlvl-28. If this bow's level requirement didn't put it into direct opposition against Skystrike, this would be an exceptionally good weapon: both bows are rlvl-28, with Blastbark being the top-end basic bow and Skystrike being the bottom-end exceptional bow, but the damage of Skystrike is more than double that of Blastbark with better abilities.

Unique Basic Crossbows

Unique crossbows are a bit more problematic for the bowazon — they were designed to be used by other classes.

More information on all these bows can be found at the Horadrim Library.

• Leadcrow Light Crossbow: 10-15 damage (12.5 avg) +70% enhanced damage, 25% deadly strike, +40 attack rating, poison resist 30%, +10 life, +10 dexterity, rlvl-9.
• Ichorsting Crossbow: 13-24 damage (18.5 avg) +50% enhanced damage, adds 30 poison damage over 3 seconds, 20% increased attack speed, piercing attack (50), +50 attack rating, +20 dexterity, rlvl-18.
• Hellcast Heavy Crossbow: 25-46 damage, +70-80% enhanced damage, fires explosive bolts [slvl-5], adds 15-35 fire damage, 20% increased attack speed, +70 attack rating, +15% max fire resist, fire resist 15%, rlvl-27.
• Doomslinger Repeating Crossbow: 12-24 damage, +60-100% enhanced damage, piercing attack (35), 30% increased attack speed, +1 amazon skills, +15 life, rlvl-28.

Basic Rune Word Weapons

There's only one rune word for bows at this level, but fortunately, it's a good one. The quality of Zephyr is such that you can pretty much forget about any basic unique bows once you manage to create one.

More information on runes and rune words can be found at the Runes and Rune Word sections of the Arreat Summit.

• Zephyr 2-socket missile weapon (Ort + Eth): +33% enhanced damage, +66 attack rating, adds 1-50 lightning damage, -25% target defense, +25 defense, 25% faster run/walk, 25% increased attack speed, 7% chance to cast slvl-1 twister when hit, rlvl-21. Easy to make, fast as hell. At level 21, it's probably the best weapon you'll use for a while.

Alternative Solutions for the Bowazon on a Budget

Bowazon players who can't seem to turn up a good rare, find a unique, make a rune word, or complete a set, life might seem to be nothing but a succession of increasingly featureless and boring blue bows. Fortunately, there's an out with your Horadric cube. With a Cube, you can make a ton of weapons, but in Normal, you really won't need to dig too deep into your bag of tricks — we can save those for NM and Hell.

• 6 perfect skulls + rare = random low quality rare of the same type: I've never had to use this formula myself on anything but the most hopeless rares (like imbues and Anya quest rewards), but it gives you another chance at a Rare Item of the same type. I tend to reserve this formula for the absolute worst rares I can find in the hopes of turning up something usable. The level of the item and the character's level do matter, so don't expect to get anything spectacular.
• 3 perfect gems (of any type) + magic item = new random magic item of the same type: You can use this formula to get another chance at a magic item of the same type. The ilvl = ilvl; this means to use 100% of the ilvl of the input item. That means anything you find in Normal will only turn up attributes that are appropriate for the item's level, at the point it was found in the game. The further you advance in the game and the later you pick up items (for example, a grand charm found in hell, rather than a grand charm found in Normal), the greater the chance you'll cube up something incredibly useful. You can also use this on charms and jewels, so expect to use this formula a lot. Rare items can't be used with this formula to create new rare items.
• 3 normal gems + socketed weapon (any type) = socketed magic weapon (of same type): This takes a socketed weapon and makes it a magical socketed weapon. The original weapon properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created. It gets 1-2 sockets, and the item level never rises above 30, making this ideal for a young bowazon.
• 3 chipped gems + magic weapon = socketed magic weapon: This adds 1-2 sockets to a magic weapon: the original properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created and the item level will be 25.
• 3 flawless gems + magic weapon = socketed magic weapon: A superior version of the previous formula, this adds 1-2 sockets to a magic weapon: the original properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created and the item level will be 30.
• Ral rune + Amn rune + perfect amethyst + basic weapon = socketed weapon of same type: This is basically a free socket quest, giving a random number of sockets (one to maximum) to a normal quality weapon. Because there aren't a lot of rune words that are useful in Normal for the bowazon, you won't be using this on bows. Low-quality items and superior items won't work.