a guide to bowazons: introduction

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it's spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it's found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

This guide is written for Diablo II, v1.11. In previous editions, this bowazon guide was written with the assumption that the reader already knew what it was bowazons did, and simply used the guide as way of refining what should have been (fundamentally) a very simple way of playing the game. After all, it's been almost eight years, so everyone must have played a bowzon by now, right? This was an extremely bad assumption to make because not everyone has played bowazons before, but if you found this guide, it's safe to presume that you want to know more about bowazons and have many questions about them.

The first question on the mind of many would-be bowazon players would probably be, "Why do I want to play a bowazon again?" Maybe you found a new bow. Maybe you're getting bored or frustrated with your melee character running into extra strong, extra fast, cursed unique monsters with Fanaticism auras. Maybe you just want a change. But you sure as hell aren't going to 'pwn' anything. Comparatively speaking, bowazons don't do that much damage anymore. You want massive cold damage? Get a sorc or druid. You want massive fire damage? Get a sorc. You want killer minions? Necromancer. You want massive physical damage? Get a paladin or barbarian.

First of all, they're fun. What's really cool playing most of the game with a ranged weapon is never having to worry about breakage, never having to worry about things like defense rating, mana burn unique monsters, or MSLEBs, and just concentrating on the simple joy of shooting things knowing you're going to hit at least 5-10 targets at once, and staying certain that someone else is going to take all the punishment that no other character could possibly survive (and because that someone else is a minion, they're never going to complain and they're always going to be where you want them).

Second of all, despite her lack of v1.10 improvements and bugged attacks, the bowazon remains a tactical presence on the battlefield. The bowazon's not the dominating damage dealer she once was, but she can pelt many things at once with her many multiple-target attacks, and if she's fast enough with Strafe, she can pelt many things without pause for a very long time. In addition, she can abuse Freezing Arrow, one of the best stopping skills in the game. She's the only physical damage dealer who considers the dreaded Iron Maiden curse a total joke. Her advantage is range: she might not own the battlefield, but she sure as hell can control it.

They're one of the few subjobs over the years that have remained relatively untouched over the course of seven years. The bowazon's role in a group is support and cover fire; she eliminates weaker enemies (like fallen, skeletons, flayers, flesh beasts, blood maggot young, and so forth) en masse and ranged attackers (like spear cats, archers, oblivion knights) while freezing and softening up tougher targets for melee fighters whose role it is to take out targets with higher priority (like fallen shaman, horadric mummies, flayer shaman, flesh spawners, blood maggots, uniques, champions, bosses) and other melee fighters (crushers, urdar, doom knights). If her skill points are well-spent, then the bowazon can have a strong melee fighter on tap, making her supremely equipped to deal with almost any area in the game at any difficulty.

The bowazon also has the tightest defensive perimeter of any physical damage dealer in the game, bar none, using her valkyrie, mercenary, decoy, and freezing arrows. While she might not have as many minions as a druid or necromancer, she is more than capable of making what minions she does have count.

And lastly, it's a challenge, but an enjoyable one. Instead of depending on overwhelming damage or defense, you're depending on your understanding of spacing within the game, your attentiveness to attacks, and a mind you should hope is quick enough to assess threats before they become problems.

Every character does something better than the bowazon: they do more damage, they've got more minions, they have access to better elements, whatever. The bowazon's one specialty doesn't make itself apparent on the character screen: she's a ranged attacker with a buttload of defenses. A character with ranged attacks is at a distinct advantage because she can hit her targets from far away while being immune to counterattack, and with minions blocking off those targets away from the very thing that's killing them, she can keep hitting them. She can attack everything within range (re: everything she sees) very quickly with the least-resisted form of damage in the game, and this one thing makes up for everything else.

Sound like fun? Trust me, it is. I wouldn't have tweaked this guide over the course of six years if I didn't think bowazons were one of the most fun subclasses in the game.

This guide will attempt to cover all aspects of playing bowazons, but will mostly focus on style and strategy from the beginning all the way into Hell. I am not going to offer a detailed walkthrough for the game: Diablo II isn't rocket science. There are very few situations where you should genuinely be at a loss, but if a specific problem or monster is worth talking about, I'll focus on that but for the most part, you're on your own.

Though they're in the guide, I'll admit that screwing around with equations and formulas about how damage, speed and the like are made isn't my thing: I am more concerned about improving my game and if a little math can help you out with that, then so much the better, but all the math in the world won't help if you can't play. The difference between a bad bowazon player and a good bowazon player really has nothing to do with equipment, stats or skill point allocation, but knowing how to play the game, how to exploit the unique advantage of being a ranged attacker (and having the right tools to exploit), how to deal with the unexpected and how to keep a party alive. I am going to try to stay as non-biased as possible, presenting as many builds as I possibly can, but this guide is primarily for standard softcore bowazons in multiplayer.

I've made every effort to keep the guide free of critical errors, outdated information and typographical errors, but they'll inevitably sneak in. If you, the reader, notice any mistakes, write to me at my e-mail address <ak404@hotmail.com>, I can turn immediately to the file in question and make a correction or clarification. I invite you to do so.

Introduction