The amazon's passive/magic skills are the most powerful and useful skills that the amazon possess because all of the skills in this tree are used simultaneously without penalty or problem; they're not flashy, but they work. A strong set of passives are the foundation of an effective bowazon: each skill in this tree has a unique effect or statistical enhancement that works with anything the amazon is trying to do. This means that a fully-developed bowazon can have almost every single passive/magic skill active while using her attack skills. I strongly suggest at least one point in all of them, saving your skill points for your bow/crossbow skills or particular passives (like Pierce or Valkyrie). This means exactly what it reads: you'll be undercutting your passives, and here's why:
Every character except the sorceress has at least one tree with a minimum of synergies. These are either the character's passive tree or the character's "support" tree: for the most part, builds that concentrate on optimum offense don't concentrate on these trees, even though they may live or die by them. These include the barbarian's masteries, the amazon's passive/magic tree, the assassin's shadow disciplines, the paladin's defensive auras (only two auras benefit from synergies, while all others give their synergies to other skill treess), the druid's summoning tree (all but one synergy was present before v1.1), and the necromancer's curses. For the bowazon, this means one thing — if they have access to them, then their passive/magic skills can be pumped up with +skill items without too much concern for worrying about synergies, leaving you free to develop the other two trees to your heart's content.
Because they beef up her offensive and defensive capabilities simultaneously, a bowazon should strive to find as many +passive/magic items as she possibly can, as these skills usually have no or low mana cost, have no penalties, and don't synergize to anything by Valkyrie. However, they need not be maxed — most passives either suffer from diminishing returns or being outperformed by equipment.
With the introduction of synergies in v1.10, passives bear another look because while everything that was true about passives before is still true, there's one big change to this tree that every amazon player should pay attention to: the valkyrie is the major recipient of synergies from passive skills, making her one of the strongest minions in the game.
This section is divided into three parts:
The "magic" part of the passive/magic tree, these are the skills I term "active passives," skills that you need to cast to use. For the most part, all you need to do is keep track of the duration and, in the case of Decoy and Valkyrie, making sure they're where you want them to be — if they're there at all.
The only other class that has a fully-developed defensive passive tree is the barbarian. While the barbarian has skills like Natural Resist, Iron Skin and Increased Stamina, the amazon is given evasive skills. These are the best defensive skills in the game because they're independent of the equipment and abilities of the defender and attacker: give a naked amazon 12 points in Dodge and, no matter what her level is, no monster will have more than a 50% chance to hit her while she is standing still. No other class can possibly get their Defense Rating high enough to avoid monsters who are of a higher level than they are 50% of the time, but the amazon can do it with no problems whatsoever.
"Offensive passive" skills form the backbone of the bowazon's arsenal — these are the skills on the right side of the passive/magic tree that supplement damage-dealing capabilities. While adding points to a bowazon's bow/crossbow skills will improve the damage of that particular skill, adding points to these passive skills will improve the efficiency of almost every ranged attack she possesses.
For more information on the amazon's passive/magic skills, please refer to the amazon's passive/magic skills section of the Arreat Summit, D2.de Skill-Calc (English), and Chippydip's Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Skill Information.
last updated: Wednesday, September 26, 2007
© 2000-2007 AK404. All rights reserved.