The authors of this guide are AK404 and LineNoise; the materials contained within have been taken from guides by Vehementi, LineNoise, Icemage, the strategy forums at diabloii.net, the Lurker Lounge, the Amazon Basin Forums, and the Chaos Sanctuary, as well as advice from other Bowazon players and personal experience. Critiques, suggestions, and comments may be sent to angelkiller404@mindspring.com.
This was pieced together during Diablo 2 v1.04b. This is not canon, nor is it a guide to make the most powerful bowazon on battle.net. It is simply a set of guidlines to consider what is best for your character. By the time you have finished Nightmare with your second or third bowazon, you should have a very good idea what your priority skills and attributes are. They may be very different from what this guide says. Please note that this is not a suggested guide for Hardcore play, as Hardcore is no place for the Bowazon purist. Any errors in this document are purely the fault of the author.
My deepest thanks go out to LineNoise, who has graciously contributed the entirety of his work.
Strength. Beauty. I am without equal in God's kingdom.
I am a Bowazon.
To the different classes of D2, that comment alone will elicit various reactions. A friend of mine prefers Barbarians with their Whirlwinds and thinks we're weak defensively and don't cause enough damage to a strong enemy.
I will not dispute his opinion.
A Necromancer player I know thinks Valkyries are no substitute for a good golem, much less many minions: what can cause more widespread damage than ten revives, skeletal magi, a blood golem, and curses?
I will not deny that the Necromancer is right.
Some Sorceress-playing friends are fair-minded, but can be a bit condescending: elemental arrows tend to fall to the wayside when compared to the flash-bang of high-level spells; even an slvl 24 Strafe with 5,000AR and cold damage can't match the destructive power of a Frozen Orb.
I honestly cannot say that a Sorceress player would be wrong.
And spear-using amazons, well, Spearazons think we've taken the road more traveled. Sisters, to be sure, but sisters who've taken the easy way out.
I will not disagree with this statement. (Then again, I've always seen Spearazons as charmingly suicidal.)
Nevertheless, I am a Bowazon, and this is what being a Bowazon means to me: the Bowazon is not a power class, but an art form: an understanding of tactics, strategy, positioning, space, teamwork, discretion, intelligence...these are the hallmarks of an experienced Bowazon. While a Necromancer can boast an army, he can't boast an army he can control; a well-coordinated team of bowazons, however, can wreak havoc in Hell. We use techniques that SWAT teams, Marine scout-snipers, and SEALs have been using for years: Valkyries draw enemy fire, while we create a blanket of cover fire in the 12-gauge, full-auto, or napalm variety in the blink of an eye, all to take control of the space around us. While other classes can employ some primitive form of strategy, none can do it with the cold, deadly, elegant grace of a Bowazon. More so than the ability to inflict direct damage, I value the Bowazon's ability to control the flow of battle - when it starts, who moves (and when), how to take advantage of positioning, how to get to the most important targets, and so forth. It is easy enough to kill the enemy; it is harder to kill the enemy without some form of plan. Because slowing down the enemy (or stopping them entirely) is as close as one can get in Diablo 2 to true strategy, I recommend the use of cold whenever possible.
Now that my little rant is finished with, let's go on to the meat of the document: what's best for your potential machine-gunning, shotgun-toting, Wonderbra-wearing Rambo on estrogen.
For a long time, amazons as a whole (and bowazons in particular) have the reputation of being the most mature, courteous, sensible, honorable, fair, and business-minded of the classes, but with the new influx of players coming in with v1.04b and the newfound independence of bowazons, this reputation may change. As a member of the "old" bowazons, I would prefer that it not. In amazon chat rooms and forums, there are certain rules to be observed:
Before we even go into the Bowazon, let's review the precepts of good sportsmanship and coherence in the team. Being a good teammate is more important than being a good player; I tend to believe that this is the most important part of the multi-player aspect of D2 only because there's so little of it to be found. In an eight-player run through A4 (or any act, for that matter), regardless of difficulty level, good teamwork is a must: every player must define themselves as part of a greater whole and adopt the role that they were made for. Eight-player is not a trade-fest or a chance to show others how badass you are, but the time to put aside one's ego and either get some questing done or gain some serious experience. Too often, I've seen large games fall apart because the Barbarian, instead of participating in melee, scavenges treasures that are left in the wake of destruction that could only be the result of a Necromancer. (I've a great deal of respect for Barbarians, only because I'm no good at melee combat tactics myself, so scavengers are truly irritating. They're the ones most likely to take everything after a major drop.) Paladins lie in the back with useless auras (like Thorns...who wants to get hit in A4H?), not thinking of the demands of every class. Sorceresses with their lag-inducing Frozen Orbs and Fire Walls. Necromancers forgetting to unsummon minions that get in the way of others (Necromancers are wonderful in large fields, but horrendous in cramped areas), or using town portal at the worst possible time.
If a team is incoherent, it may be a good idea to make suggestions according to level and ability, and use everyone involved. A good carpenter never throws away wood, and a good general never throws away warriors. If they're stuck in situations where they can't fight, have Barbarians use war cries and hold up the front with the Valkyries. (For God's sake, use your Grim Ward!!! Few have any idea how useful this skill really is, especially when you're about to be surrounded.) Use the auras of Paladins either defensively (Salvation or any other resist aura) or offensively (Concentration or Fanaticism: any Paladin in his right mind would use Concentration as the de facto aura for a Bowazon partner). While they can often be the team, Necromancers are best suited for the role of indirect damage, using curses to the advantage of their partners (Iron Maiden and Amplify Damage are two favorites, and Lower Resist is gold around Sorceresses. Another curse that is not too bad is Confuse, which is best used on unique monsters. The unique will not be affected at all, but his minions will be.) Sorceresses cause tons of damage, but in an 8-player game, Frozen Orb should be reserved as a finisher, while Static Field becomes the main attack: better results, less mana wasted, and less lag. In an 8-player game, a level 20 Static Field will shorten a monster's life bar much faster than a level 20 Frozen Orb, even with Cold Mastery. Paladins are a mishmash of everything, from spellcaster to straight fighter, but they tend to know their roles well because it takes a brain to play a Paladin correctly. If a player is in a different Act, or on a level-gaining trip, simply ask them to leave or don't invite them to the party.
"You shot me, I understand, that's business. You shot the sorc bitch, that's okay, I've wanted to do that for some time now. You shot the barb; Hell, everybody shoots the barb. But you shot my fucking bow, and that's against the rules!"
The Bowazon's role in a large group (or any group) is support and cover fire; she eliminates weaker enemies (like Fallen, skeletons, Flayers, Flesh Beasts, Blood Maggot Young, and so forth) and ranged attackers (like Spear Cats, archers, Oblivion Knights) and softens up tougher targets while the melee fighters take out the 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) while her Valkyrie adds another tank to the team. Compared to the killing power of the Barbarian, a Frozen Orb, or a Necromancer's minions, the damage a bow inflicts may seem small, but it can pelt many things at once, and if the archer is fast enough with Strafe, she can pelt many things without pause for a very long time. In addition, she can use Freezing Arrow to give the front-line fighters a short breather while they concentrate on other tasks (like taking out one enemy at a time), Decoys to get monsters off weaker party members, and Multiple Shot or Strafe to tenderize enemies in the rear ranks, so by the time the front line fighters get to them, they're sufficiently weakened enough for them to handle.
A good team understands that treasure and loot are the spoils of war: loot is there to distract, to break up the flow of battle. For this reason, scavenging should be done after battles are finished for the sole reason that scavenging is not fighting, and in opposition to the ideal of teamwork. In a complete turnaround of attitude, an incoherent team should not be offered jack, but then again, why are you gaming with people like that?
I tend to break the "don't scavenge" rule when it comes to rares, only because I love to see what a rare item holds. After that, the joy of getting a rare I can't use fades, and I tend to give it away. Curiosity is an insatiable thing.
It is truly regrettable that a person will treat a man who is valuable to him well, and a man who is worthless to him poorly. I find it best to be proper in response to all reasonable requests (Note the word "reasonable"), but to constantly push for self-reliance: there are few cases (like being in danger of losing an irreplaceable everything) when another player really needs the help of another. (The usual solution is to gain a few levels, save up some gold, go hunting for equipment, or whatnot.) While multi-player is encouraged, a character should be able to finish an Act (but not necessarily the boss) by herself before moving on to the next. Otherwise, she's just not ready for that Act. Hence, a character who is being thrashed in A3 should move back to A2 to gain levels (preferably while moving through the entire Act) and prepare themselves for A3, not ask for the help of another (unless it is Hell difficulty, where everything is hard).
This being said, one should exercise proper conduct at all times, even on b.net. Especially on b.net, since words - and the way a person presents those words - mean everything: there is no body language, no effective ways to communicate sarcasm, and no facial expressions to follow. People tend to respond positively towards a polite person, and the attitude one displays under the cover of anonymity is, more often than not, what that person is truly like. Metal is tested by fire; man is tested by his words.
Don't be a weakass. Don't beg for gear, ever. Trade, or be receptive to the occasional high-level who likes to give away stuff (but don't make it a habit. Those high-level players do it to be nice, not because they're obligated to help.) Don't ask anyone to help you kill a boss for you, ever. If you're so weak that you can't get past a boss, then gain some levels, get some gear: the bosses are what cull the weak, impatient, and stupid from the smart, persistent, and strong. Note that it is smart (obligatory, really) to join a party of seven to whomp Duriel's bloated butt; it is not smart to wait upstairs while someone else does all the work.
Koreans are not lagging up the servers, so just STFU about it. They can't speak English, you can't speak Korean, so just start up another game.
CAPITAL LETTERS ARE ANNOYING AND HARD TO READ. Unless you're Hunter S. Thompson, use them sparingly; type was designed to be set in both upper- and lowercase with ascenders and descenders so they'd be easier to read. it is been that way for hundreds of years; don't expect to break this rule anytime soon. Those who use capital letters are either too stupid to type properly or too stupid to find the CAPS LOCK key, and they're the ones who forget that CAPITAL LETTERS EQUATE TO SHOUTING on the Internet.
I'm getting sick and tired of people making stupid offers, here's the important realities of trading, Learn them well:
AK404's additions are in italics.
If you see items significantly higher than these numbers, they're fake.
Muchas gracias to Trucidation and Lemekim.
(All prefixes and suffixes have their maximum values listed; your results may vary, please consult the Chaos Sanctuary for more information.)
More to come later...
Not low-level characters, but players who really don't know what to do with their characters. Even a player with a level 50 Necromancer may not have the slightest clue with what to do with their level 6 Amazon (and vice-versa). Newbies are more likely to place more importance on the words and advice of a player who treats them well. Treat newbies with sympathy and help them with the more difficult aspects of that character (but not to the point of extreme twinking): it is a regrettable thing to watch an up-and-coming player give up because he doesn't know what to do. (And newbies: don't expect anything spectacular from higher-level characters. You're expected to find those things on your own.)
Though I can see to the ends of the earth
Still I ramble this treacherous path.
Over my shoulder I glimpse the corpses gathering.
This day I walk the Way of the Beast.
Hiroaki Samura, trans.
PvP is not my favorite activity; I point towards PvME's Bowazon Dueling Guide and ChunLi's Bowazon Guide as the primary references on dueling as a Bowazon. The only advice I can give to prospective duelists is; one, don't go hostile on anyone for no reason at all. B.net was intended to be fun for everyone, and in Hell difficulty, a single death equals the loss of 5 million experience points (at least). Regaining those points is not fun at all. Keep things honest: be a duelist, not a player-killer. Two, potions (of any kind) are not allowed in duels; I've seen this rule broken far too many times. Three, don't duel in Hardcore; by the time you get a character to fighting form, it just is not worth it. Fourth, try to keep the levels fair and note that clvl 1-29 is its own special area, then 30 on up; it is clearly not fair for a clvl 31 character to duel a clvl 28 character, much less a clvl 45 to take on a clvl 20 (yes, this has happened). And finally, there's no such thing as a "fair loot duel."
Strength affects your damage with melee weapons, and your ability to equip exceptional items. For a Bowazon, Strength is needed to use the stronger bows: 95 is required to use a gothic bow without reduced requirements. On the way to using a gothic bow, I'd suggest a steady 2/3 distribution between Strength and Dexterity until the desired Strength score is reached. This is not the fastest way of gaining Strength, but don't feel rushed to raise it as it has no importance in how much damage a Bowazon can cause. Suggested maximum Strength scores for the Bowazon are:
It is strongly suggested that you be able to equip everything you have without having to equip other items first. If you must, make sure that the equipment that adds to your Strength or Dexterity can be worn without the aid of additional items. Because of the horrendous and gaping flaws in the D2 engine, starting with the character's attempt to pick up everything on its corpse at once. If the character can't equip the item (because she didn't have the base Strength or Dexterity to wear it), it can't go to the inventory because it is already full of potions, and will be left on your corpse. If you should happen to die immediately after (it happens), then the gear will fall to the ground, free for others to take, or even worse, free for b.net to lose if your connection should be interrupted. (I've had one such close call, and would have lost months of valuable equipment had Merana not stepped in.) Lessons of the day? Don't use equipment you can't equip, and don't carry an excessive amount of potions if you want to keep your gear.
The Bowazon is the ultimate killing machine, but one based on speed and accuracy, not brute force. The most important statistic to a Bowazon is Dexterity; it is the one stat that defines a Bowazon. Any excesses in other stats - Strength, Vitality, Energy - are considered "lost dexterity" by experienced bowazons. Because it raises her damage with bows, Attack Rating, and Defense Rating, it is not unusual for high-level bowazons to have unadjusted Dexterity scores in the 300s.
The formula for Dexterity bonus damage is:
bow's base physical damage × (dexterity/100)
What this means in practical terms is that you get a bonus to your total damage score equal to 1% of your bow's damage for each and every point of Dexterity your character has. So if you have a bow that does 25-100 physical damage, and you have 200 Dexterity, you get 50 points added to minimum damage (25×200/100) and 200 points added to your maximum damage (100×200/100). Assuming no other damage modifiers, the damage in your character screen would show 75-300 damage.
- Icemage
In addition to increasing damage, each point of Dexterity adds 4 points to Attack Rating (AR), and every 4 points of Dexterity adds 1 point to Defense Rating (DR).
While a Bowazon is not a magic-user, a rule of thumb is to not invest in Vitality much (if at all); while this may seem foolhardy, there's a method behind the madness: a Bowazon, if she's fortunate, should never have to get into melee combat. Ever. The beginning levels are going to be difficult without the right items, so expect to run a lot. If you can, find a tank (i.e., a Barbarian) until you get a Decoy and/or Valkyrie. In Hardcore, find as many life bonus items as possible. As you start into A4NM and beyond, you may find your glass cannon shattering before even the lightest hits; either change your strategy or bring your Vitality up to 30-40 (as Amazons receive 3 life for each point of Vitality, this is not a bad investment).
In v1.04, missile attacks tend to bypass your Valkyrie and cause much more damage than they used to. Because of this, the old "paper tiger" bowazon is becoming less and less viable. Items that add to life or more Vitality are not unrecommended, as missile attacks are among the greater threats to a bowazon.
The number one rule of Diablo is no class that is geared towards physical damage should invest in Energy. This applies to the Bowazon as well: with a decent amount of mana leech and a good bow, mana will not be a problem because of the leech that results from attacking 10-20 enemies at once. At the higher levels, there will be few attacks that will not refill your mana orb after one or two passes. Eventually, the Valkyrie (depending on how many points you put into it) will be a huge mana hog, which is when an Energy score of 15-20 may be desirable, but no more, as Amazons receive only 1½ mana per point of Energy.
Damage is your most important secondary stat. Go for the capability to cause more damage, either direct or indirect, above all else. Not much needs to be said about Damage, other than this: Damage is your most important stat. Damage is your most important stat. Damage is your most important stat.
total damage = physical damage + elemental damage
Physical damage is defined as:
bow damage × (1 + dexterity bonus)
For Strafe, multiply this value by (1 + strafe damage bonus/100)
For Guided Arrow, multiply this value by 0.95
After these calculations, multiply by 2 if the Critical Strike check is made. In terms of average damage, multiply by (1 + critical strike percentage/100) to get the increase in total average damage.
- Icemage
Good markmanship is vital; Attack Rating is your second most important statistic. Make sure you always have at least an 89% chance to hit your enemy. Penetrate is a nice skill to have for this (refer to "Passive Skills"). The To-Hit formula - the equation used to determine the chances of an attacker hitting a defender - is, in percentage form:
100 × AR/(AR + DR) × 2 × alvl/(alvl + dlvl)
This applies to monsters as well as players.
While a high Defense Rating is nice, it is not a priority because of distance, D/A/E, Decoy, Valkyrie, and the eventuality that all monster Attack Ratings in hell difficulty are multiplied by four, makig a Defense Rating worthless. What is important is the Amazon's defensive bonuses against missiles, physical and magical, even after Valkyrie becomes available. My advice with armor in regards to defense is to simply grab what is available without having to wear any gear that adds to Strength; I advise against wearing heavy armor like full plate and plate mail because they slow the wearer down as well as leech her stamina faster, which is not desirable; use light plate or gothic plate instead.
To understand Defense Rating (DR) fully and how useful it really is (for a Bowazon in this case), you have to take the following into account:
- Concillian
By the time you get into Hell difficulty, if Valkyrie and Decoy don't work, no amount of armor is going to help, so run. (Invest heavily in boots with Fastest Run/Walk!) The Hell difficulty is when the role of the Bowazon as the tactician must be developed fully; without an overwhelming offense (like the Sorceress or Barbarian) or overwhelming defense (like a Necromancer with his many minions), the Amazon must resort to guile in order to survive and conquer her foes.
Because the Bowazon enjoys a healthy amount of distance from those things that can hurt her, resist to magic and elements are not a high priority because of Slow Missiles: if she can move out of the way, then what's the use of having to resist it? Common sense is to keep your resists maintained above 0 in Nightmare and Hell, but remedial attributes like Half Freeze Duration and Reduce Poison Time by 25~75% are invaluable to the bowazon, as are items that reduce Magic Damage by 1 to 4.
Fire: This is the most used elemental attack in the game. Protect against it. You absolutely must have fire resist maxxed in A4, as almost every monster worthy of respect will use fire, even Diablo (especially Diablo). When in an area with a lot of fire walls, it also helps to have equipment that reduces magic damage. A Javazon with maxxed fire and lightning resists and enough equipment to reduce magic damage by 8 can literally bathe in Diablo's fire and lightning attacks with nary a scratch.
Lightning: This is the second most common elemental attack in the game, as well as the outright deadliest. While fire or cold-enchanted uniques are only deadly when they hit or die, the aura of a lightning-enchanted boss can kill a character before it is even seen. You absolutely must have lightning resist maxxed when fighting Diablo, as his lightning breath will kill an unprotected character with a touch. Again, equipment of Negation goes well with lightning resist, as lightning hits a character multiple times per bolt.
Cold: Cold is a minor annoyance to protect against; there few attacks in the game that do cold damage, such as Mephisto's ice attack and the death throes of cold-enchanted uniques, but there are a lot of ways to slow a character down. This is remedied by items of Thawing (which cuts your cold duration by half), more cold resist, or adjusting to the situation, so again, Cold resist in PvM is not a priority. It is, however, crucial in PvP: any player that can't kill you in one hit will use Cold damage to slow you.
Poison: Poison is not a concern, as you will get poisoned, no matter what. Because poison can't kill you (it can only drop you to a single point of life), the best solution is to find items that reduce the time you're going to be under the effects of poison and shoot everything in sight in an effort to regain life.
One of the trends I'm attempting to push is that of the bowazon as a multi-tasker, one who is ready for almost any situation and can deal with it effectively. Strafe-a-zons, Multi-zon, Immozons, and Frostmaidens are fine and well, but they're either one-dimensional or only useful in certain situations. For example, hammerdins excel in large open spaces, but overdevelopment of Concentration and Blessed Hammer can lead to death in tight, cramped areas. Because of this, I like to pull bowazons away from the "one skill, one way" sort of thinking. They have to be able to use and comprehend the major skills. In order to do this, I push for better-developed background skills with lower active skills, as these make all of their active skills more powerful for less skill point investments. Diablo 2 v1.04b redefined many Bowazon skills to the point where she seems nerfed. The truth is, the Bowazon is just as strong as ever, but she no longer has any easy choices in choosing her skills; beyond the prerequisites and staple survival skills, the bowazon no longer has any catch-all "must maximize" skills like the Barbarian's Whirlwind, Necromancer's golems, or Sorceress's Static Field. Instead, like the Paladin, she has become a more complex character with a multitude of choices open to her, each one just as effective as the next, provided that the right course of action is used. More than ever, the Bowazon is a thinker's class, having to juggle four to seven evenly effective skills, each one suited to any particular situation. There is no "right" way to choose an amazon's skills, as these are all a matter of personal preference; the one rule that must be observed is that all bow/crossbow skills are based on the principle that the "higher" counterpart is more effective than the last. The catch here is that while the "higher" counter part is more effective than the last, this does not mean that it is more efficient. For example, Ice Arrow is an excellent main attack skill to use because it leeches back mana to the point where it costs nothing to use with a strong bow. Its higher counterpart, Freezing Arrow, causes much more damage but does not leech back mana, making it less efficient as a main attack; it is best held in reserve as a secondary attack. Consider the pros and cons of each skill carefully before you decide on its role.
For a better description of Amazon skills, their results per level, level requirements, and prerequisites, go to the Chaos Sanctuary, if you haven't already. If you feel that you can add any further insights into the usefulness (or uselessness) of any of these skills, please don't hesitate to request that they be added to the list.
The Bowazon is not prodigiously strong like the Barbarian, but her staggering speed makes this fact irrelevant. The Passive/Magic tree is the most powerful and useful skillset that the Amazon possess: it is the Amazon's second line of defense against those who would haze her (the primary line of defense being speed and brains) with her evasive skills, skills that allow her to pace the battle to her liking (Slow Missiles), and distracting skills like Decoy and Valkyrie. Of course, her Passive skills are also her second line of attack, as they take advantage of her speed and accuracy with the bow, augmenting them with skills like Critical Strike and Penetrate. I'd strongly suggest at least one point in all of them.
One point, and only one point should go into these skills, as extra skill points will merely lengthen their duration. The AC reduction from Inner Sight just is not worth the extra points (Now if that AC reduction was a percentage rather than a straight value, that would be a different story), and its usefulness is superceded by Slow Missiles. What makes this skill particularly valuable in dicey situations is its ability to light up the enemy, but this can also be accomplished by Slow Missiles.
I'd also like to make a quick comment on the Slow Missiles skill. Even modest server lag will make this skill almost worthless for slowing missiles, since you still will not be able to dodge the attack before you get hit. However, the skill also works on Inferno attacks like those fired by the Fetish Shaman characters, reducing the radius to essentially one. This can be a great help in protecting your Valkyrie from damage while she takes on the shamans, since her pike has a slightly longer radius than the slowed Inferno.
- Joel Harrison
The use of Slow Missiles around an LEB is a bad idea, as this only multiplies the damage a Charged Bolt can do to you.
Shoot the boss from above or below them - the lightning travels out in a starburst pattern, but never directly up or down.
- Icemage
Both skills cost 5 mana to use and have an effective radius of 13.3 yards; in addition, Slow Missiles slows missile attacks by 33%. If either skill is chosen, having a hot key for them is highly recommended.
The Amazon uses Decoy the same way a modern-day sniper does: present the target with an easy target and pop its head off the second it shows itself. it is the oldest trick in the book, but I don't think enough Amazon players appreciate the value of Decoy after they gain Valkyrie. Decoy serves the same purpose, but with some differences: it doesn't move, the mana cost is less, and enemies place a higher priority on attacking the Decoy than they do on the Valkyrie. The first part may not seem important, but Valkyrie can't protect you from everything or be exactly where you want her to be: eventually, she's going to miss some of the missiles coming your way, and while Slow Missiles comes in handy for dodging them, sometimes you don't want to move. The solution is simple: kick a Decoy in front of you and use it as a meat shield. I had things my way, I'd be able to cast more than one Decoy at a time: that would represent a major shift for the Amazon, making her a smarter, deadlier fighter than a Barbarian, IMHO.
Popping a Decoy on a island is a wonderful way of drawing enemies out (like in the Flayers in A3 or the River of Flame in A4) so you can Strafe them to death. Decoy is particularly handy in conjunction with Valkyrie and Slow Missiles, as the Decoy will last a little bit longer when under fire from ranged attack enemies because the shots take forever to reach her. This benefit is universal among all amazons.
Learn to use Decoy well: you should be experimenting with sniper/Decoy tactics long after you gain Valkyrie. Decoy is a multi-purpose skill, usable for everything from a human shield, a distraction to draw fire, and a warning beacon. Lastly, enemies and tracking spells (like Guided Arrow and Bone Spirit) will target the first available target, which should be the Decoy or Valkyrie. Despite its importance, only one point should go into Decoy, as more points merely lengthen its duration (if it doesn't die first, as it has the same amount of life as the caster), and lower its mana cost.
Decoy...can be very useful for casting about 2/3 into a room when you first open a door, or for casting a few inches away from the Valkyrie to detract a few of the monsters. If you set up a nice isosceles triangle with Valkyrie and Decoy, you end up with a very nice line of Strafe-able targets, and the Valkyrie doesn't suffer from having every single monster attacking her. Decoy can also absorb some "seeker" missile damage if she's between you and the caster. This is most useful against the [finger magi] in Act IV and occasionally the Oblivion Knights and their bone spirits. The seeker missiles will detonate on the first target they find, and anything that lessens the damage you or your Valkyrie takes will make the entire battle more successful in the long run.
- Joel Harrison
For example, suppose there are 30 enemies rushing me and my Valkyrie. Fortunately, the 30 enemies are broken into two manageable groups of 15 apiece, with group A coming in from the 2 o'clock position, and group B coming in from the 6 o'clock position. (Look at your watch, and you'll have a decent idea where this is going.)
I'm obviously going to run to either the 9-12 position in order to Strafe, Freeze, and immo my enemies, but I can't rely on my Valkyrie to hold the attention of 30 enemies at once (Eventually, some of them will start looking for other targets...like me.), so what I do is pop a Decoy at 3-5 o'clock, diverting either a group, or parts of the group from my Valkyrie into smaller chunks. So we've now prevented one large group from being a hazard to my Valkyrie, and we want this to happen, whether my Valkyrie has 300 HP or 2,000Hp; though only 8 enemies can surround her at once, a lot of the enemies in Hell have attack ranges of 2 or greater, meaning that my Valkyrie will be attacked by more than 8 enemies, perhaps 10 or even 15 at once. When my Valkyrie goes down, the enemies start heading my way; if this happens, I'm dead, regardless of my resists and defense because of my low HP and substandard D/A/E. However, by using repeated castings of Decoy, I not only prolong the life span of my Valkyrie, but control the spacing of battle by luring the enemy as far or close to my Valkyrie as I please. In addition, because the enemies are broken into smaller groups, I can divide my attention among smaller concentrated (entire) groups, instead of freezing perhaps 1/3 of a large group with a single shot. (Granted, I'll be using a lot of arrows, but I want those arrows to be spread thin, so I can cold snap as many enemies as possible.) The objective of this strategy is not to kill the enemy in as little time as possible (killing the enemy is still a priority, but I leave quick kills to Barbarians), but to lay out the field and make the enemy do what I want them to do by keeping them divided and confused while I take them out, one bite at a time.
A quirk I've noticed with the Decoy is that your Valkyrie sometimes follows the Decoy as if the Valkyrie were a monster (if nothing else has its attention), so if you want it to go to a certain point, throw a Decoy in its general direction: with luck, you'll also attract enemies, which rates higher on the Valkyrie's short attention span. Valkyries can be stupid, so you might be taking advantage of this quirk a lot. If Decoy is chosen, having a hot key for it is highly recommended.
Valkyrie grants you a basic warrior/rogue setup that was prevalent in Diablo, so you can sit in for the long haul while she buys you invaluable time (as well as the ability to start using freezing and Immolation arrows more efficiently, as two skills have a fairly limited radius of effect, so it is important to get the enemies clustered as tightly as possible. The best way to do this is to get them all to attack your Valkyrie. This allows you to continue to attack them all from a safe distance. Immolation especially, requires the enemies to stand still for maximum effect.) Strafe and Penetrate aside, Valkyrie is your most powerful skill, and only one word can describe her: priceless. However, be reminded that Valkyrie is not your über-skill: I've learned - the hard way - to not rely on my Valkyrie to protect me all the time, but use her in conjunction with Slow Missiles and Decoy.
When a Valkyrie is summoned, she receives a magical spear, and a set of magical armor. These items receive attributes just like any items you would find lying around, and improve with increased levels in the skill. The base damage and defense that she receives from these items are then modified by the percentages listed in the skill description. However, a Valkyrie's offensive power (or lack thereof) can't compare to a golem: she's a defensive unit that augments the Amazon's attacking power. (In contrast, the relationship between the Necromancer and his minions is reversed: he augments the attacking power of his minions. The Valkyrie tends to attract groups of enemies to converge into tightly packed groups, which is perfect for low-radius, high-power freezing and Immolation arrows. A Necromancer's minions go for the scorched-earth sort of destruction, with the Necromancer using high-radius, indirect damage curses to make his minions more effective at killing things.) In fact, a Valkyrie has no attacking power against monsters in the Hell difficulty level.
While most Amazon players would advise a low-level (around slvl 4-5, though some have kept it at slvl 1) Valkyrie then recasting as needed, and investing those points elsewhere, I'd advise adding a point to Valkyrie every third level or so; this is one of a Bowazon's most useful skills, and should be given some priority. A minimum level of 5 is recommended, topping out at slvl 10-15 or you feel fit. Rushing the development of Valkyrie is not recommended, as the more players, mercs, and minions there are in a game, the longer Valkyrie seems to last, which would suggest an HP boost not unlike that of the monsters in the game (Total HP = Base HP × # of players); this is an excellent argument to not level a Valkyrie, but higher levels also mean higher HP, defense, attack, and Attack Rating modifiers, which means it lasts longer. However, in v1.04, the Valkyrie's pathing is completely illogical, so count on her making stupid mistakes. If you choose to make a stronger Valkyrie, moderation is encouraged: you don't want to invest so many points that you can't cast Valkyrie without items that add to mana; you want to be able to summon your Valkyrie completely naked and have at least 20 mana left (for two volleys of Strafe). (Regardless of her level, a Valkyrie will crumple before Diablo like a heap of rags.)
A hot key for Valkyrie is highly recommended. For your information, I named my Valkyrie "Lenneth."
The only other class that has a passive tree with defense is the Barbarian. (The Necromancer doesn't count, since his passives are applied to his minions only.) While the Barbarian has skills like Natural Resist, Iron Skin, and Increased Stamina, the Amazon is given Evasive Skills. Because of a misunderstanding about Evasive Skills and how they stack up against Defense and Attack Ratings, many see them as inferior to the "blunt object" passives of the Barbarian. A point that is often missed is that Evasive Skills are completely independent of the attacker's Attack Rating, just like Blocking Percentages. When an Amazon is attacked, a skill check is made. The result is independent of the Amazon's Defense Rating and level and the attacker's Attack Rating and level: if the skill check of a level 10 Amazon succeeds against the 2,000AR attack of a level 40 Barbarian, then the Amazon dodges, period. If the Amazon's skill check fails, then Defense Ratings are applied. When an Amazon with a 50% Evade and a 69% blocking shield is attacked while moving, she checks to see if the shield blocked, and if that fails, she then makes her Evade check. Both attacks are made against a flat 69 and 50 percent, respectively. This means that an Amazon in Twitchtroe with a high Evasive skillset and blocking percentage can hold a crowd longer than a Barbarian in Ornate Plate with a 3,000 Defense Rating: this is the basis of the Javazon/tankazon.
In short, Blizzard gave the Barbarian the maces and axes, then handed the Amazon a rapier. The latter is harder to use well, but potentially more effective. However, as wonderful as Evasive skills are, they're of little use to a Bowazon; this is discussed below.
While the D/A/E combo holds its appeal for a melee-based Amazon, their importance to the Bowazon is diminished by the Valkyrie and Decoy (or a Barbarian and Necromancer's minions): when they're taking almost all of the hits for you, then what's the use in being able to dodge them? For this reason, it is best to invest but one point in these skills. Though a 45-50% chance to dodge all attacks would not be unadvisable, it is just that you it is best to spend those points elsewhere and use +skill items to raise your D/A/E skill levels.
Because the bowazon no longer needs to allocate 20 points into any one skill (except Guided arrow if she chooses to duel), some points may be given to D/A/E. Missile attacks are now a major threat to a bowazon, as they do more damage, hit more often, and are usually targeted at the bowazon instead of her Valkyrie. For this reason, an extra point or two into Avoid wouldn't be considered a waste of points.
Evade is a skill that looks great on paper, but in reality is quite harmful to your character at the worst times. The reason for it is two-fold. First, if you're running away from a monster, the last thing you want is be stopped in your tracks while the Evade animation runs. Second, this skill will times attempt to dodge every single frame of certain attacks like Diablo's firewalls, making you unable to do anything until the effect ends. But as this skill is required for Valkyrie, you still should put a single point into it.
Take this skill up to a minimum of slvl 6 unmodified by the time you reach level 20, then advance it as you see fit. By time you have six points invested, you will have a 46% chance - almost half - of inflicting double damage (and when you're strafing 15-35 enemies in a row over and over again, those chances can climb pretty damned fast). Any more points invested only add a 3% increase per level, which is not worth the extra points, as these can be added with +skill items. However, with the weakening of Strafe, a higher level of Critical Strike is recommended, as having only 50% of you hits do double damage just isn't enough. Because of this, I'd recommend raising Critical Strike to slvl 10 (for a 56% chance), and if you're feeling a bit daring, up to 13 (for a 61% chance); any points after slvl 13 give a 1% increase per level.
With the recent discovery of how Strafe really calculates damage, Critical Strike is more important than ever, especially if they fix the bow bug and don't change the way Strafe works.
You're essentially multiplying by another number, so you get [base × dexterity bonus × strafe bonus × critical strike], essentially multiplying base damage by 8 for an Amazon with 300 dexterity.
Even with the bow bug this adds about 5 to max damage (3 average) per extra 1% Critical Strike, that balloons to more like 9 damage (6 average) per 1% extra Critical Strike if you play with a Concentration Paladin (slvl 20). 20% extra then would be 100 and 180 more max damage, respectively. This is worth it, in my opinion: where else are you going to get more damage?
Keep in mind that if the bow bug gets fixed these numbers will be at least double for most bows out there...200 extra max damage?!? Sign me up!
This is why Critical Strike is the most underrated skill out there...people can't (or don't) do math, even the venerable Vehementi (who can do math) overlooked this skill and only recommends 6 points.
- Concillian
Each level of this skill boosts your Attack Rating by a percentage rather than a straight numerical value - at slvl 8, Penetrate gives a 105% bonus to your Attack Rating. (In v1.03 Penetrate is bugged in that it gives double its listed amount for bows.) At first, Penetrate seems to be a maintenance skill: you put a point into it when your chances to hit a monster of equal level are below 90% and while this seems to be a waste with its initial increase of 10-100 points, the significance of Penetrate becomes apparent as your Attack Rating develops into the thousands and you come closer to A3H and A4H: with an slvl 20 Penetrate and frighteningly high Dexterity of 476, Lady Merana has an Attack Rating of 12,155 with a 95% chance to hit a monster of her level (83).
However, for the Bowazon who maximizes Dexterity at the cost of all else, a high level of Penetrate may not be necessary, since a high AR is already supplied by a high Dexterity score.
The To-Hit formula, in percentage form, is:
100 × AR/(AR + DR) × 2 × alvl/(alvl + dlvl)
The misunderstanding here is that your level affects things. In reality, the only time your level affects things is if the overall To-Hit is bumping against the 5% or 95% hitting caps. At any other time, the level part of the equation can be discarded, for our purposes.
The whole point of making a comparison of which is better and such is to try to generate the higher overall damage. Because we are trying to make the different variables independent, it should become clear that the best way to work with the numbers then is to take percentage changes. For example, if we try to do exact number changes, then how much another point into Strafe affects things depend on what your bow average is, etc. Thus the all-important quantity is the percentage change (usually increase).
For any given level, when you are changing the AR & DR part of the equation, the level part is constant. Thus you can ignore it. So in short: Your level doesn't matter. Having a high Penetrate to counter a level disadvantage doesn't work.
For the skeptics, let's try a concrete example. Say your base AR was 1,000, the monster's DR is 500, and you're level 25, and the monster's level 50. Then To-Hit is:
100×1,000/(1,000 + 500) × 2 × 25/(25 + 50) = 44.444%
Now let's bump up your AR to 2,000. Then we have:
100×2,000/(2,000 + 500) × 2 × 25/(25 + 50) = 53.333%
This results in a percentage increase of (53.333 - 44.444)/44.444 = 20%.
Now let's do the same with you at level 50. We thus have:
100×1,000/(1,000 + 500) × 2 × 50/(50 + 50) = 66.667%
100×2,000/(2,000 + 500) × 2 × 50/(50 + 50) = 80%
Again we find a percentage increase of (80 - 66.667)/66.667 = 20%. So your level should not be a consideration when thinking about Penetrate, unless the To-Hit is bumping against the 5% or 95% caps.
Now, putting one point into Penetrate is a very good idea. All these numbers are for a base AR of 1,500 and a monster DR of 500, and assuming the double-Penetrate bug for bows. The first point into Penetrate gives you an 11.475% increase in damage. The second gives 1.756% increase. The third gives 1.442% increase. The fourth 1.206%. The fifth gives 1.023%. Beyond that, each increase for these numbers is less than 1%. Surely you can find things that give you more than 1%. By way of contrast, Critical Strike doesn't give you less than 1% returns until level 12. Pierce (depending on your calculating scheme, this is the direct scheme) doesn't until level 15. Strafe never does, well at least until the 102nd point anyway, with the bug in place. So what this means is that, given these numbers, you should only put your 6th point into Penetrate after the 11th Critical Strike point, the 14th pierce point, etc. Essentially, maxing out Penetrate is never a good thing, especially since at the higher levels you're reaching returns of about 0.25%.
The reason is because while Penetrate increases AR rather linearly, the formula the number is plugged into has severe decreasing returns (I say decreasing instead of diminishing because of the set diminishing returns formula that Blizzard uses to calculate stuff like Critical Strike per level, etc.). When you're at the higher reaches, whether you're doing 89% To-Hit or 89.5% To-Hit doesn't matter too much. On the other hand, putting points into other stuff means that, while you're be hitting a bit less, the overall average damage that you do increases by a lot more. Thus you should put points elsewhere instead of into Penetrate.
As a final example, let's say you have 40 points to spend between Critical Strike, Pierce, and Penetrate. Your base AR is 1,500, and the sample monster DR is 500, as before, and we assume the double Penetrate for bows, as before. Then we find that the best distribution is 16 Critical Strike, 16 Pierce, 8 Penetrate for an overall increase in damage of 261.53%. In fact, the table can be given below:
| pts | CS | PI | PEN | Increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 138.446% |
| 20 | 9 | 9 | 2 | 195.220% |
| 30 | 11 | 14 | 5 | 232.729% |
| 40 | 16 | 16 | 8 | 261.526% |
Which shows the best way to allocate points for the given number of spare points. This uses the formula:
(1 + CS/100) × (1 + PI/100) × AR/(AR + DR)
CS = Critical Strike, PI = Pierce
The AR is calculated assuming the double Penetrate bug (i.e. when using a bow, you get double bonus, so a 35% increase is actually a 70% increase).
Anyhow, so basically, Penetrate doesn't need any more than a few points or so in it.
- Chuck
If you are playing Hardcore, you may find yourself allocating a few odd points to Vitality, so Penetrate is highly recommended.
This is the skill that transforms your bowazon from an effective ranged fighter into something of a spellcaster. Pierce has a profound impact on all bow skills: for every enemy an arrow pierces though, it detonates, magnifying the effect of a single arrow. You'll want to invest at least one point for a 23% chance, but this chance leaps at slvls 2 and 3 (33% and 42%, respectively), so it is advisable to invest at least three points. If you rely on elemental attacks like Immolation and Freeze (as you should), a base level of 6-10 would be a excellent idea; a slvl 1 Freezing Arrow combined with a slvl 10 Pierce can literally destroy entire rooms of enemies (at Hell difficulty level during an 8-player game) in less than ten shots. To maximize your damage potential, a slvl of 15 (an 80% chance to pierce) is recommended; any points after this only give a 1% increase per level.
Pierce is a little funky. If you left- or right- click and hold to target, as long as a monster doesn't move, you will pierce it every time if you make your skill roll (i.e. you left-click and hold with Ice Arrow, and freeze a Sand Leaper in its tracks and pierce past it to hit the Spear Cat behind it...if you continue to hold down left-click, you would continue to pierce and freeze both until you run out of mana, arrows, or one or both monsters die).
- Icemage
Pierce will not work with Guided Arrow.
Now for the fun skills: a Bowazon can't survive without Passive/Magic Skills, but she'll be using bow skills more than anything else. While all bow/crossbow skills have their uses, this tree has always been about four landmarks: Multiple Shot, Ice Arrow, Strafe, and Freezing Arrow. While Guided Arrow and Immolation Arrow are the subject of some debate, I ignore them as I have little (if any) use for either skill. Until you have a better grasp of your skills and preferences, you should invest at least one point into every bow skill: even if you don't find the skill useful, it will invariably lead to another skill that is. There are three main paths to follow...
One point, and just one point because you have to take it to access other skills in this tree. I've heard of some people investing points in this skill just to get free arrows. That is incredibly stupid: sure, the magic arrow never misses, and there's a slight increase in damage as the levels go up, but if you've been working on your dexterity and Penetrate skill, you're not going to miss much, and a level 8 Strafe with a mana-leech ring costs nothing to use (assuming at least 2 arrows hit) with a damage bonus that's much better than a Magic Arrow. In addition, you must have arrows in your inventory to use any Bow/Crossbow Skills but this one, so any benefits Magic Arrow confers in terms of saving a measly three blocks of space is more than offset by the loss of better, stronger, and more useful skills. All of the skills on the "Magic Arrow" tree are based on the principle that the "higher" counterpart is more effective than the last, so save those points for other skills.
Despite its many drawbacks, Magic Arrow does have its uses against certain uniques. Instead of wasting arrows strafing a single Stoneskin unique, plink away at it with Magic Arrows while the Valkyrie or Decoy keep it busy; the minor mana loss is easily compensated by mana leech. While the damage being caused is less than Strafe, the arrow is causing full magical damage (since it is pure mana), the mana cost is less and there's no danger of running out of arrows.
Magic Arrow, Multiple Shot, and Strafe are treated as normal attacks. All other skills will always hit, regardless of defender's level, Defense, or Attack Rating.
Hail to the queen, baby. Multiple Shot gives your Amazon a nifty twelve-gauge that can be controlled with practice. For example, targeting an enemy with Multiple Shot sends your arrows in a nice tight formation that spreads out as if goes further (though only one arrow will hit an enemy), but targeting any point between you and the enemy will fan out the pattern, and a Multiple Shot aimed directly in front of your character will have an exceptionally wide spread (and if you're using a lot of arrows, it shows). I used to invest two to three points in this skill, but after Strafe was weakened in v1.04, I experimented with Multiple Shot some more, and now advocate at least 10 points.
Multiple Shot has one big advantage over Strafe: all the arrows come out at once. With Strafe's searching fire (firing at sequential targets in a clockwise direction), you stand a chance of "Strafe Lock" as you fire your arrows at an accelerated (but sequential) rate; these arrows will attack more than one enemy, meaning that the strafing pattern can be unpredictable. Multiple Shot launches all its arrows at once with the same rate of fire that you attack with normally: this is important to remember when attacking a wall of enemies, since only one arrow can strike an enemy with Multiple Shot and your wall of death is still effective against all enemies in range even if there are enemies directly in front you (provided you have enough arrows, or some pierce). With a high rate of fire and decent amount of damage (or Critical Strike), you can keep a very large group of enemies under permanent stun lock. There is no lock with Multiple Shot, making it invaluable in areas where you have to attack a lot of enemies at once yet need full mobility (i.e., Cow Level). With an item(s) that gives your attack special properties (like cold), Multiple Shot can be incredibly powerful.
Unless I'm mistaken, piercing Multiple Shot no longer exists in 1.03. Multiple Shot has diminishing returns because the mana cost gets huge. If you [use] Multiple Shot slvl 20+ at 1 target, you'll only hit with one arrow, and waste a whack arrows (and mana). The "spread" is not appreciably better at level 20 compared to 10.
At slvl 10, Multiple Shot can cover most corridors, and snipe oblivion knights from afar - although this is not nearly as efficient as walking up and decoy/strafing them if you have the life/resists to take a couple of shots.
Also, in PvP (a subject which I am admittedly not an expert), I think slvl 10 multi is better simply because it is cheaper. Slvl 20 Multiple Shot takes way too much mana to spam, and you have nothing from which to leech.
- Talys
If Multiple Shot is chosen, having a hot key for it is highly recommended. Arguments for the use of Multiple Shot over Strafe may be found in ChunLi's Bowazon Guide and an article in diabloii.net entitled "Why Multiple Shot is Better than Strafe." Multiple Shot may be used as a main attack, but this is not recommended.
A Player-vs-Player skill, Guided Arrow is horrible for leveling. I don't use this one much (if at all), so I haven't much to say about it, except that you need it to get to Strafe. With the bugs in Guided Arrow ironed out, it is powerful enough to use as a main attack.
Guided arrow works well with the stupid AI - you can get enemies who will not enter a room you're in, simply by using guided.
- Tortolia
I've been making experiments with the Speedazon and Guided Arrow these days. Guided Arrow is really wonderful against Lightning-Enchanted Bosses: with a Speedazon, you can fire a few Guided Arrows very quickly, and run faster than the bolts, take cover, and fire more Guided Arrows. Unless cornered, I don't die to LEBs anymore. Sole problem is that I find Guided Arrow really mana-intensive compared to the Ice Arrow I use as my left attack.
- Corwin Brute
And now you have a machine-gun: this is the MAC-10 of Diablo; almost every Bowazon player swears by this skill. Like all skills, Strafe is not impressive in the beginning, but becomes more useful as additional points are invested. I'd strongly suggest the use of Strafe because of its utility - its increase per level is steady: two extra enemies per level, a 5% damage increase per level, a flat mana cost of 11 points, you can hit a monster with more than one arrow; and finally, it is auto-targeting. In fact, when the mana/life gains you make from attacking so many enemies at once begin to equate to nothing (i.e., you're actually making more mana than you're wasting), Strafe should become your primary attack. Note that Strafe will fire as many shots as enemy units, or friendly units, whichever is greater. So if you have Decoy and Valkyrie, you'll fire 3 arrows, even if there's only one monster on the screen (he'll take all 3 arrows).
The singular weakness of Strafe (if it can even be called that) is "Strafe Lock." Because every arrow fired from Strafe is sequential, the Amazon is literally "locked into place" while firing all of her arrows - which range between the minimum of targets around you (plus any allies and minions) and the maximum expenditure of Strafe (plus any allies and minions) - which ranges from 5 (at level 1) to 43 (at level 20, unmodified). While the Amazon is under Strafe Lock, she's vulnerable to any targets that are coming her way or targets she missed, or otherwise could not lock onto because she can't move. However, some feel that the damage bonuses of Strafe more than make up for Strafe Lock (and if you really need to aim at 43 enemies by yourself, you're screwed regardless), while others feel that a moderate level of Strafe (7-10) is all that's needed for survival in Hell.
There are two ways to avoid Strafe Lock. One is to have a monster hit your Amazon, as being hit will take a Bowazon out of her attack animation (and quite possibly kill her, which will also stop her attack animation). Another way is to practice some discipline and click your mouse button once for every pass of Strafe.
Conventional wisdom declared that Strafe had to be maxxed, and in v1.03, this was true because Stafe damage was calculated differently than other skills. However, now that Strafe damage is calculated normally, a skill point investment ranging from 5 to 10 is recommended. For example. slvl 10 Strafe targets a comfortable 23 enemies with a modest +50% damage increase. A slvl 20 Strafe targets 43 enemies with +100% damage. There is a ten point difference, obviously.
However, 43 targets is not a situation where I want to be Strafe locked. Twenty-three targets, perhaps, since the lock will be shorter and I can move more often, but you can save yourself three skill points by going with a slvl 10 Strafe with a modest +50% damage and a slvl 7 Critical Strike for a 49% chance of causing double damage, which is equal to a slvl 20 Strafe. While is it true that you'll only be causing 100% damage 50% of the time, consider that Critical Strike also adds that double damage chance to all other bow/crossbow and spear skills, yeilding a greater benefit to all other skills..
As of v1.04b, there are other problems with Strafe as well: for example, it would seem that the range of Strafe has been drastically decreased. Also, its damage has been broken down to the point that a Strafe of 5 to 10 is just as effective as a Strafe of slvl 24. While the loss of attack power hurts the bowazon's offensive strength, what really stings is the loss of range. Strafe was made as the bowazon's AoE attack, a way for her to attack many enemies at once while keeping a safe distance from them; this was seen in pre-v1.04 when the bowazon was able to attack enemies from a screen away. Now the bowazon is forced to come hazardously close to her foes in order to use Strafe properly, and without the Strafe damage formula of v1.03, she takes a tremendous risk of taking damage, especially in large multi-player games. (On the Realm servers, the range of Strafe seems to have been fixed on the server's side; when used, you will correctly target all enemies within a range that exceeds the screen. However, the animation will not show it this way - apparently, there are some invisible arrows in Strafe. One theory is that the client (your computer) is only targeting enemies within a circle on-sceen while the server is targetting much more. It's confusing, but at least it works again. On the Realms, at least.)
If Strafe is chosen, having a hot key for it is highly recommended. It can and should be used as a main attack around slvl 10 or so.
One of the most debated topics when discussing Bowazons is the choice between Strafe and Multiple Shot. The reason these two skills are debated so much is that it is rather unclear which is superior. In fact, neither skill is better overall than any other. Rather, each is better for certain applications, while being inferior for others.
Multiple Shot gives you a spread of arrows, firing in a fan pattern. It is possible to control the spread of arrows, by targeting a point on the map a certain distance from your character. The further away you target, the tighter the spread of arrows. This skill is most useful against large numbers of enemies grouped together. At higher levels, this skill can put out as many as 2-3 times as many arrows per unit time as Strafe. Because each volley is fired as a single attack, there is no danger of being Strafe-locked and unable to move. Also, this skill can be used to efficiently attack enemies such as Abyss or Oblivion Knights that attack from beyond the edge of the screen. However, this skill is not as effective against enemies that are scattered around the screen, since the odds of hitting all of them with a single attack get rather slim.
Strafe gives a series of faster-than-normal attacks that are automatically targeted at a number of enemies on the screen. It also gives you a percentage bonus to your damage, which goes up with increasing levels. The key benefit to this skill is the auto-targeting of enemies. This can be especially devastating if you are badly lagged, since the monsters are not always where you see them. Strafe is not fooled by lag however, since it is aimed by the same server that controls the monsters. The biggest problem with Strafe is the possibility of getting Strafe-locked because Strafe performs a series of attacks. If there are a large number of monsters on the screen, you might get locked into a long animation, and be unable to move away from the monsters. This is especially dangerous against fast-moving enemies, or while chilled or slowed. Most of the time however, you can avoid this simply by slowing your pace, and not getting too many monsters onscreen at one time.
Both of these skills are highly useful; it is quite possible to put a few points in each and switch between them as the situation warrants.
All elemental arrows are based on the principle that its "higher" counterpart is more effective. With this in mind, the apex of the Fire tree is Immolation Arrow; if you don't plan on investing lots of points (slvl 10-20) in that skill, you may safely ignore the fire tree as the other two skills simply are not worth it.
This decent introductory skill will help you take out some of the beefier monsters in A1 (especially Andariel with her -50 resist to fire), but don't invest more than one point, if any at all. If you don't intend on using Immolation, don't invest a single point into this skill.
Welcome to the wonderful world of grenade launchers, because that's exactly what Exploding Arrow is. I love using this skill against the undead, and on those few occasions that I feel like screwing around, I use this in conjunction with Doomslinger so it can pierce and explode some more, and since it uses an area effect, the damage on a tightly packed group of enemies (like the tombs in A2) can climb relatively fast. This skill is unbelievably useful when you have a weak bow, but don't plan on investing more than one point in it, because of...
Immolation Arrow effectively covers the Bowazon's weak spot: strong, single enemies. Immolation Arrow hurts things bad, but enemies have an annoying habit of moving out of small patches of fire, so it is best to slap a Valkyrie or Decoy in tight cramped areas where the enemy doesn't have space to move while you launch a few choice Immolation Arrows. As the difficulty levels climb, so will the enemy's resist to fire, but if you seriously intend on using Immolation as a secondary attack, max this skill as soon as possible, as it is totally worthless at any slvl lower than 10.
This arrow is also known as the "lag arrow" because that's exactly what it does. If you launch, say...five or six of these and find your game slowing, don't fire more. Your partners - if you have any - will appreciate it.
Immolation is wonderful when you don't have a great bow, and it is also very useful when soloing multi-player games without a Paladin around. And, of course, it helps fry tough bosses that stand still.
Now, the downside, as epod said to me in a game a few days ago, "you're going to immo into thin air". This is because at the high levels with a Concentration Paladin around, even in a 6-player game, Strafe kills stuff well...pretty quick. If you're leveling, you avoid many of the tough bosses like Hephasto, Diablo, and Lord de Seis anyhow.
Also, I have been doing some lag testing. About 5 stacks of Immolation that are 3 high (total of 15 immos) makes the game more or less unplayable, at least on Realm with 4 or so other people. I have a 733PIII with 128Mb and an ADSL connection, so I figure that this covers it for most people. So, it must be used much more judiciously than Freezing Arrow.
Freezing Arrow, in my opinion, is a superior skill because it remains useful even in the late game, as it gives you some "retreat time" for those cases when you find yourself in trouble. I believe saddguy has freeze time figured out to 7.49 seconds in Hell as a maximum, if you happen to get all the goodies.
Both Immolation and Freeze don't get 'A' ratings because they can't leech back your mana. No matter how much you like these skills, you can't use them exclusively.
- Talys
I admit not giving this skill any credit: compared to Freezing Arrow in conjunction with Strafe, I just don't think Immolation can be useful for anything but the occasional stone skin boss past Nightmare. As always, I welcome all opposing viewpoints. If Immolation Arrow is chosen, having a hot key for it is highly recommended. A high-level Valkyrie is also recommended, as you'll need her to survive a massive beating long enough for Immolation to take its full effect.
Even with the power of the Magic Arrow tree, do not ignore the Cold Tree for the sole reason that Cold Arrow is a prerequisite to Guided Arrow, which is needed for Strafe. Cold slows the enemy, as well as freezing them, and while it may seem like a charming side-effect, it becomes almost indispensable in Nightmare and Hell. Putting "cold snap" (using cold for the sole purpose of slowing them ) on enemies becomes a necessity in Nightmare and Hell when monsters start getting really fast and strong in comparison to a Bowazon's frail framework. In addition, since cold snap is useful to every character class (with the possible exception of Necromancers), the Cold Tree is the most multi-player friendly set of skills you'll have in the long run.
A solid skill to have because it'll help you take out big uniques and bosses, mostly by slowing them down. Slowing an enemy is vital for a Bowazon because that means it takes longer for them to close the gap between you and them; if they're ranged attackers, their attacks slow as well, which is when those nifty D/A/E skills kick in. For the first 23 levels, count on freezing your enemies a lot to widen the gap between you and them. Hot key this skill, but don't invest more than one point because you'll eventually be leaving it to use Ice Arrow.
A step up from Cold Arrow, this is an excellent defensive skill that should serve you well, as it not only slows the enemy as per Cold Arrow, but freezes them for a limited amount of time as well (depending on the skill level). Until you get Strafe or Decoy, this is the skill you'll be using to get the enemy off your back. If you're using a Valkyrie to tank and haven't picked up Freezing Arrow yet, this is a good arrow to use to buy your Valkyrie some time while you pelt the rest of the enemies with Immolation Arrows. Along with Guided, Strafe, and Multiple Arrow, Ice Arrow is one of the many attack skills a bowazon can use as a viable main attack: combined with the right ingredients, it is cruelly effective; Pierce in particular has breathed new life into this once-dead skill: with a near-80% chance to pierce through enemies, an Eye of Etlich to extend my freeze time, and an exceptionally fast attack speed, any enemy vulnerable to being frozen is as good as dead the second a single Ice Arrow hits because I can fire my shots so fast that they can never break free.
I personally find Ice useful as a left-click at higher levels, and I know other people who do too. Agree with the one-point allocation here, but IMO it is a good replacement for your normal attack, and with an adequate bow (I'm talking 60-70 max damage here) and mana steal you can actually make some mana back from it because of its low cost. Freezing Arrow costs too much to be a practical replacement for Ice; I think the two skills complement each other well.
- DSYee
Like Freezing Arrow, Ice Arrow's cold duration may be extended with cold damage items. If Ice Arrow is chosen, either using it as your main attack or having a hot key for it is highly recommended. If you choose to take the Frostmaiden route, Ice Arrow can and should be used as a main attack.
Freezing Arrow is the only clvl 30 skill in the Bow/Crossbow skillset. It is similar to the Sorceress's Glacial Spike: when used, this skill will damage and freeze any enemy within a 3.3 yard (10 feet) radius, quite a significant area of effect. What is not clear from the skill description is that it deals full damage to every monster in that radius, so it can kill 10 enemies in the same number of shots it takes to kill one, so long as they're all within range. This is devastating when combined with Valkyrie: when all of the monsters are clustered around your Valkyrie, a volley of Freezing Arrows will kill them all, and they can't move or attack while you're doing it. This skill also combines well with Pierce: when a Freezing Arrow pierces an enemy, it will explode, continue on, then hit another enemy, producing another explosion. This allows the effects to stack, providing huge amounts of damage where they overlap. Despite this, Freezing Arrow should not get more than a single point in most cases, since the two most important attributes - the radius and freeze duration - don't increase with additional levels. Freezing Arrow is an excellent opening attack and finisher: a basic pattern for freezing would be freeze, freeze, Strafe, Strafe, freeze, freeze, ad nauseam. With this pattern, it is literally impossible for all but the strongest enemies (champions and uniques) to move.
Okay. Freezing Arrow deserves a good drudge-up, hard-nosed eye-to-glass look. I honestly think Freezing Arrow is fantastic, and a far better max than Immolation Arrow, or even Strafe. The obvious benefit to Immolation is that it does insane amounts of damage through the whole game. The obvious benefit to Strafe is that it can do twice the damage at high levels and can hit a lot of guys with yummy, pure physical damage. The obvious benefit to Freezing Arrow is that it locks the enemies into cryo-freeze. Nice.
Here's my think along about Freezing Arrow:
What happens, I think, with Freezing Arrow is that you do damage to all the enemies in the freeze area (3.3 yards, I think) that is both actual arrow damage and also ice damage. Chaos seems to indicate that that's so and it does look like it. That said, if you have a good bow and maxxed Freezing Arrow, you'll be doing the total bow damage plus the total ice additional damage to each enemy in the area of effect. This is the key to why it is better than Strafe IMO. Because if you have it maxxed, it adds about, what, 120 damage or so to each hit to each monster. Most of the time you can get upwards of 5-10 or more monsters in that area of effect, especially on Hell with the fleshies or with maggots or stacking enemies like the mana leechers. Let's say you're shooting three flesh spitters and each has 2-3 brood. We'll call it 10 monsters all in a nice pack around your Valkyrie. You shoot Freezing Arrow and get them in cryo-lock. Each one takes 120 damage per arrow from the ice alone, plus (at level 50 or so) 50-300 arrow damage (if we're to believe Chaos Sanctuary). Let's keep it simple vis-à-vis the bow bug and say you'll be doing only 70 damage per arrow per enemy. With a fast bow you'll be shooting nearly 2 arrows per second (13fps/25fps) and doing (70 + 120) damage × 10 enemies × 2 seconds = 3,800 damage per second. Yeah, 3,800 damage per second. That's a pretty serious number.
Okay, I'm almost positive that Critical Strike is right and that Freezing Arrow adds the physical arrow damage to each enemy as well, but let's look at if that's not the case. Even then, you're putting 10 enemies in freeze lock and doing 2,400 damage per second with no repercussions. That's the real nude-chick-in-the-cake here. When guys are frozen, you can stand toe-to-toe with them and dish it out in grand style. Literally, your only problems are enemies coming from another direction and running out of mana. I have Strafe level five currently and can fill my mana ball of 300 mana in one to two strafes. So as long as you can get about 1-2 seconds of freeze time on whatever difficulty level you're on, you have time to shoot, say, five Freezing Arrows, then Strafe, then five more Freezing Arrows, etc. Immolation Arrow is great in that you can do lots of damage to guys at high levels, but to basically 1-2 guys per splat. That's nice, but they can run around, and with groups, you're really looking at a lot of Immolation arrows to get the whole party toasty. And with Strafe, you're again not freezing guys and in fact may freeze yourself in Strafe Lock. it is by no means a sure-fire way to stay alive, which Freezing Arrow can be if you use it right.
Don't even get me started on how good Freezing Arrow gets with Pierce. If you figure you're causing another freeze round 60 percent of the time with one arrow, you can figure on including more damage and or enemies in that new area of effect, averaging out about a 60% chance of causing damage again if there's an aligned enemy and starting the whole process over again to a slightly different enemy set. Hot dang, that's nasty. Anyway, I have Freezing Arrow level 12 right now in Hell and it is so delicious. I just run around and pop guys all day and leave no bodies. The sign of a good killer. Not only that but I charge around in front of barbs and Paladins and can often wipe out whole legions of guys before the other guy even arrives and begins his WW or hammer spin or whatever. Also, I have Immolation level 14 and don't even use it anymore except on obstinate bosses.
- Ignatz
I'm beginning to have newfound respect for stacked freeze times. The best weapon for a Frostmaiden (a Freeze-based Amazon) is either a CKN or rune bow with increased attack speed, cold damage, or sockets: a socketed CKN with two perfect sapphires, a perfect skull, Frostburn, a 10-12 second Eye of Etlich, and a cold damage belt can cool off an enemy for up to 22-28 seconds, and with a high rate of fire, you can inflict a serious amount of cold snap on a large group of enemies in a relatively short amount of time. In addition, the freezing/cold duration can stack on top of a Freezing Arrow (and its 2 second freeze time) for up to 24-30 seconds of freeze time, divided by ½ in Nightmare (12-15 seconds), and ¼ in Hell (6-7.5 seconds). I can shoot a lot of bolts in 7.5 seconds.
While the Gatlingazon and the Frostmaiden have a lot in common, the Frostmaiden may find herself sacrificing the SIAS gear in order to lengthen her cold duration, so she needs to get all of her speed from her bow. This sort of Bowazon is an excellent addition to any multi-player game: a Frostmaiden can play havoc with everything that can be shot at, so how much damage she inflicts will be secondary to her ability to stop things dead in her tracks.
It works great (level 20 Freeze and level 20 Strafe now) and I made Freezing Arrow even more effective by giving my Zon a 10-12 second Eye [of Etlich] and a 4 second cold belt. Combining with the 2 seconds from Freezing Arrow, that's around 3-4 second freeze time in Hell. If anyone argues that the freeze duration for Freezing Arrow is constant, this will be my answer:
You use Freezing Arrow because you want to freeze monsters, so why not deal an additional 120-360 more damage while you freeze them? Sometimes the monsters will just shatter right away, saving me 11 mana.
I've played with many people and they were simply amazed by the scene. Have you seen all minions of Grand Vizier of Chaos frozen right when they appeared and none of them get to attack? Same thing apply for other monsters. In addition, my base damage with Freezing Arrow is 350+ and I think that's alot.
Comments from other people:
Epod: "omg, I've never seen anything freeze this long before"
Talys: "love your freezing"
If you combine Freezing Arrow with Immolation Arrow (which Talys is pumping points into right now), it'll be even more effective. I personally feel safer when nothing else is moving except me.
- saddguy
If Freezing Arrow is chosen, having a hot key for it is highly recommended. Freezing Arrow is an instant damage skill; if you choose to level up Freezing Arrow as your secondary attack skill, the durability of Valkyrie is hardly an issue, since you can volley some Freezing Arrows at the stragglers coming your way, killing some and freezing the rest, then summon a Valkyrie to repeat the process. All Bowazons can benefit from this skill, even the ones who use Immolation Arrow as their main damaging skill, as it can be used to set up Immolation Arrow.
Many thanks to Chuck of the Amazon Basin for this analysis. For those who don't know the Freezing Arrow "bug" that was in v1.03 remains in v1.04, making this skill obscenely powerful; it is unknown if the extra damage was intentional, simply overlooked, or kept for the sake of balance.
Since it's an area where there's still a lot of lively debate, I'm going to try to compare those two mathematically, so there's going to be a lot of math involved in this post. Be warned.
I'm going to first describe how the skills work, then I'll go through the mathematical analysis. Lastly, I'll go over some tactics involved with the conclusions. I don't proclaim to be all-knowing in the last area, so anyone is free to suggest their own.
First, let's go through both of them:
Freezing Arrow is an area skill. When it hits a monster, it will explode, and do cold damage to all monsters within a radius of 3.3 yards (including the monster it hit). It will also freeze them for 2 seconds (normal difficulty), though this can be lengthened with equipment. The main selling point is that in v1.03, it's bugged so that the physical damage of your bow will also be added (as cold damage) to the cold damage. Thus if your Freezing Arrow does 100 damage by itself, and your bow normally does 200 damage, you will actually be doing 300 damage to every single monster within that blast radius. This has been the big selling point of Freezing Arrow, but remember that it's a bug: for all we know, it may be fixed in v1.04. Nevertheless this analysis is for v1.03, so I'll neglect that for now, but keep it in mind. Because the two most important things about the skill, the radius of effect and the cold duration, stay constant as you put more points into it, the general consensus is that you only need 1 point in it. However, there is also a large faction that suggest maxing it out and using it as your primary damage spell, because the damage increase is also substantial. That's a whole other debate in itself, something that I don't want to get into right now, as it is beyond the scope of this post.
Immolation Arrow has two parts to it. The most known effect is that when it hits a monster, it will leave a patch of fire on the ground which continually hits the monster. A lesser known effect is that it also does explosion damage within an area of effect; it is unknown as yet just what that area is, so I'll assume for simplicity that it's the same area as that of Freezing Arrow, namely a radius of 3.3 yards. As of now we also don't know about the fire, specifically if it hits only one monster at a time. For the moment, though, I'll assume it does. The general consensus is to either ignore the fire sub-tree altogether, or be prepared to put 10-20 points into Immolation Arrow, because low-level Immolation Arrow sucks.
Now, in comparing the damage of the two, the most important quantity that I will try to derive is the damage per second rate. For reasons of simplicity I will assume that you fire twice a second, though this is patently impossible as Diablo 2 runs at the rate of 25 frames per second. Also, because both skills have area of effect components, the problem crops up of how do you model how many monsters are in a specified area, namely the monster density. So throughout this post I will assume that the MD (monster density) is equal to 4, for simplicity of calculation, and because it seems to fit in well with observation. Feel free to use your own MD if you think that's too high or too low, but that's the number I'll be using when actually making substitutions into the equations. I'll also be making a foray into your bow damage, so I'll assume that it's 150, which seems about right for a 50ish bowazon (bow average 30 and dex of 200 is 90 damage right there, the skills would make up the rest). By way of comparison my level 75 bowazon does just over 200 average damage with a regular arrow, though she did put 50 (!) points into Vitality when I didn't know better. She would be doing about 225 damage if she had put that 50 points into dexterity instead.
So to recap, the assumptions that I'll be making, in terms of the variables, is that you fire twice per second, that the area of effect will hit four monsters, and that your average bow damage is 150.
The other assumptions are many: since this is meant to compare Freezing Arrow and Immolation Arrow, many extraneous things are omitted. For example, I won't consider how pierce would affect either of them, because in either case a pierce would double the damage. For Freezing Arrow, it would create another explosion. For Immolation Arrow, it would create another explosion and leave a second fire on the ground. So either way it serves as just a constant multiplier to both of them, so it is thus omitted. I've tried to make the right assumptions here, but feel free to bring up any assumptions I may have made that were erroneous. Also of course I'm assuming that the information provided by Blizzard, or more specifically, the Chaos Sanctuary, is correct. I assume that the fire damage listed there is per second.
Freezing Arrow is pretty simple to model. It is simply the monster density times the quantity (Freezing Arrow damage + arrow damage). Put in equation form, it is:
Freezing Arrow damage per shot = MD × (FA + dam)
MD = Monster Density, FA = damage from the Freezing Arrow skill, dam = your arrow's normal average damage
Plugging some numbers, we get:
FA damage = 4 × (2 + 6 × slvl + 150) = 608 + 24 × slvl
Note that I am writing the Freezing Arrow damage in the constant + slvl form of (2 + 6 × slvl). Thus for level 1 you plug "1" in as "slvl", yielding 8; for level 20 you plug in "20" in as "slvl", yielding 122 as the Freezing Arrow damage component.
Keeping in mind that you fire twice a second, we thus multiply this by 2 to get the damage per second. We get this chart:
| slvl | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FA dam/sec | 1,264 | 1,312 | 1,360 | 1,408 | 1,456 | 1,504 | 1,552 | 1,600 | 1,648 | 1,696 |
| slvl | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| FA dam/sec | 1,744 | 1,792 | 1,840 | 1,888 | 1,936 | 1,984 | 2,032 | 2,080 | 2,128 | 2,176 |
Again, this chart assumes that you hit four monsters per shot, and that your normal average bow damage is 150. For reasons of brevity (yeah right, this is gonna be a long post anyway) I cut it off at 20, though it can be extended to 30. Note that this damage rate is constant; it does not change over time (unless you add points into it).
Immolation Arrow is a bit harder to model, because there [are] really two parts. There is the explosion, which is simply an area effect that damage all monsters in the vicinity. For this part we apply the same technique used to model Freezing Arrow, except with different numbers. The equation is thus:
constant Immolation damage per shot = monster density (MD) × explosion damage (exp)
constant Immolation damage per shot = 4 × (1 + 6 × slvl) = 4 + 24 × slvl
Multiplying this by 2 to get the damage per second, we thus have:
| slvl | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IA cons dam/sec | 56 | 104 | 152 | 200 | 248 | 296 | 344 | 392 | 440 | 488 | 536 | 584 | 632 | 680 | 728 | 776 | 824 | 872 | 920 | 968 |
The second part is a bit tricky. Here we to an interesting difference between Freezing Arrow and Immolation Arrow. Freezing Arrow does all of its damage at once: it hits, does damage, then disappears. The fire part of Immolation Arrow, however, stays on the ground, and does damage over time. However, during this time, you are (we assume) continually pumping more Immolation Arrows into the fray. Thus, we see that the damage/second ratio of Immolation actually increases over time, up until the point when the fires start dying off (and then it stays constant). This is something that's important; I'll return to it later. Furthermore, the fire (we assume) will strike only one monster at a time, rather than a group of them. Thus this second part only affects a single monster, not a group. For the purposes of calculating the damage done by Immolation, however, I'll lump with the other part. Thus we have that for this part of Immolation, the damage done can be given by the equation:
fire part of Immolation = fire × 2 × sec
fire = the fire damage per second, sec = the number of seconds you keep firing the thing
Oh and of course, the 2 is there because you fire twice per second.
Note that there are a few things fishy about the above. The first is that I didn't quantify fire; the reason is because I don't know what the formula is explicitly. As an approximation, however, I'll use the formula (19/6 + (35/6) × slvl). This yields the value 9 at slvl 1 and the value 119.8333 at slvl 20, which is pretty close. The other thing is that I didn't take the duration [into account]. Unfortunately those geniuses at Blizzard decided to make them last in 2/3 of a second plus an integer (depending on your slvl). Ah well. It basically makes the graph peak out in that number of seconds. So for example, for a slvl 1 Immolation, the graph increases until 4.6667 seconds, whereby it reaches its max damage per second of:
max dam/sec for Immolation = explosion + max of fire
max dam/sec for Immolation = 2 × MD × cons + 2 × fire × dur
max dam/sec for Immolation = 2 × 4 × (1 + 6 × slvl) + 2 × (19/6 + 35 × slvl/6) × ([11/3] × slvl)
max dam/sec for Immolation = 8 + 48 × slvl + 19/3 + (385/9) × slvl^2
max dam/sec for Immolation = 43/3 + 48 × slvl + (385/9) × slvl^2
max dam/sec for Immolation = 14.333 + 48 × slvl + 42.778 × slvl^2
So as you can see, the max damage per second of Immolation increases parabolically with increasing slvl.
Anyhow, so time to compare the two.
The most important quantity now, in terms of determining the damage per second, is how long the fires are effective. But first, we can dispense with some initial levels. The damage of Freezing Arrow, with those assumption numbers, will always be greater than Immolation Arrow if the level is 9 or less. Level 10 is when Immolation Arrow's max damage is finally greater than that of Freezing Arrow. However, it would have to make up for lost time. Thus from level 10 on we can define an "equivalent time", whereby if the battle lasts less than this time, then it's better to go Freezing Arrow; but if the battle lasts longer than this time, then it's better to go Immolation Arrow. This is hard to compute. At first, Immolation will rely on the max damage per second to make up for lost damage, which requires one set of equations for Excel (I'm doing all the calculations on Excel, by the way), whereas when it doesn't have to any more, it requires a different set of equations (actually, just that some terms equal 0). Anyhow, with the numbers given (monster density = 4, bow damage = 150), this table is thus generated:
| slvl | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sec | 23.0 | 18.0 | 16.0 | 15.0 | 13.5 | 13.0 | 12.0 | 11.5 | 10.5 | 10.0 | 9.5 |
| tot_dam(fa) | 39,008 | 31,392 | 28,672 | 27,600 | 25,488 | 25,168 | 23,808 | 23,368 | 21,840 | 21,280 | 20,672 |
| slvl | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
| sec | 9.0 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.0 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.0 | 6.5 | 6.5 | 6.5 | |
| tot_dam(fa) | 20,016 | 19,312 | 19,720 | 18,944 | 18,120 | 18,480 | 17,584 | 16,640 | 16,952 | 17,264 |
The seconds are given to the closest half-second. The tot_dam(fa) is how much damage Freezing Arrow does in that amount of time, if you continually shot it. The reason why I give it is so that you can see how much life is taken off during that time span; if a pack of monsters has far less than this (for example, a bunch of bugs) then it's probably better to stick with Freezing Arrow. If a pack has substantially more than this (combined), however, then it's probably better to stick with Immolation Arrow if you're going to be there for longer than that number of seconds (you will, anyway, since that's how much damage you do in that time).
Oh yeah, here's some monster life for comparison. A blood maggot young, those bugs I keep talking about, has (hell single player) 102-316 life. A venom lord has (hell single player) 603-955 life. A maw fiend has (hell single player) 1,106-1,497 life. If you usually play 8-player games, multiply these numbers by 8.
Anyhow, so what do all these numbers mean. The first revelation is that Freezing Arrow is a high but constant damage skill, while (at the higher levels) Immolation Arrow starts out with medium damage but its damage quickly increases over time to more than what Freezing Arrow can accomplish. This suggests several things. The first is that if you're up against monsters with a low total life, it'll be better to take them down with Freezing Arrow, not Immolation. This naturally implies the second thing, if you got a few powerful monsters, Immolation is probably the way to go (which shouldn't be a surprise anyhow). But I wanted to stress that fact - that any analysis of the two is incomplete (and likely inaccurate) if the effect over time is not taken into account. Immolation itself is very weak initially, but gets a lot stronger as you keep piling it on.
Anyhow, there's a bit more of the analysis that I want to carry on, as well as the implications for the tactics, but I'm about to fall asleep here so I'll continue it later.
Here's some more analysis on the subject.
Well the above mostly covered the math. Here I'll cover the implications and tactics coming from that.
To recap, the basic message seems to be that Freezing Arrow does a high but constant amount of damage, whereas Immolation Arrow starts out weak but over time will do more damage than Freezing Arrow can. This has vast implications for strategy and tactics when leveling.
The first, as mentioned before, is that if you're going for quick kills of weak monsters, then Freezing Arrow is probably the better choice. If you have to kill a few powerful monsters, however, then Immolation is probably better. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, since it's already generally known.
Here's a second one that I realized after some thought. The equivalent time actually means that you should switch to Freezing Arrow when there's about that many seconds of battle left. So if the equivalent is 10 seconds, that means that when you have about 10 seconds of battle left, you should switch to Freezing Arrow. The reason is because when there's less than that amount of time left, if you continue to fire Immolation Arrow, the fires will not be able to reach their full effect and overcome the damage rate of Freezing Arrow because the monsters will already be dead. Basically there will not be enough time left for the new fires to do their damage. Thus it would be better to simply go for a high but constant damage skill like Freezing Arrow.
This may seem kind of strange, but a similar duality exists between Static Field and Blizzard/Glacial Spike (for the sake of simplicity I'll only say Glacial Spike, though it applies to those that use a SF/Blizzard Combo as well). It's well known that a sorc strategy is to use static field when the monster life is near full, then switch to a direct damage spell like Glacial Spike when the monster life is lower. This same concept applies to Immolation Arrow versus Freezing Arrow, though the analogy is a bit different because Immolation and static field work differently.
So as an example, suppose for example that you know that a battle will last about 15 seconds, and that the equivalent time for your level is 10 seconds (corresponding to a level of 19). What this means is that for the first 5 seconds you should use Immolation Arrow. However, during the last 10 seconds of the battle you should use Freezing Arrow, and let the fires that were already there stay to continue to do damage.
Now the above omits an important factor here. Most people will not pump both of them evenly-the thing they are trying to figure out is which is better to pump. So the more important factor here is that, given a certain number of skill points, what should the distribution of skills be. Immolation is thus at a slight disadvantage because it has two prereq skills whereas Freezing Arrow only has one (I assume you got cold arrow to get strafe, so that doesn't count as a prereq). Thus a level 10 Freezing Arrow should be compared to a level 9 Immolation Arrow, and both correspond to needing 11 skill points. Doing this type of comparison, you shouldn't worry about Immolation Arrow at all until you have more than 13 points to spend (Immolation finally surpasses Freezing Arrow when Immolation is level 11 and Freezing Arrow is level 12, for max damage). Again that number rests on the assumption of a monster density of 4, bow damage of 150, etc., so it's not an innate number in the game but a number based on various assumptions; if your assumptions are different, that number will change. Now having 13 points or more to spend actually isn't quite too hard once you get into the 50s or 60s. So it is something to think about. Also, the matter comes up that if you have say 15 points to spend, it wouldn't necessarily be spent putting 10 points into Freezing Arrow (for a level 9 Freezing Arrow) and the last 5 points into Immolation Arrow (for a level 3 Immolation). In fact, one of the restrictions on your point spending is that Immolation's max damage should be greater than the Freezing Arrow damage. Not only that, but that damage per second should be greater than if you had put all of the points into Freezing Arrow, or all of the points into Immolation. This naturally rules out a lot of stuff. For example, a level 6 Freezing Arrow and a level 6 Immolation combo will not compare very favorably to a level 14 Freezing Arrow (same number of points, but all spent on Freezing Arrow). Also, because Immolation is very weak when few points are put into it, it should be clear that the choice is actually to either dump all the points into Freezing Arrow and totally ignore Immolation, or to dump a lot of points into Immolation and put a relative few number of points into Freezing Arrow (because a low-level Freezing Arrow will do more damage than a high-level Immolation in the last seconds of battle), or to ignore Freezing Arrow totally and go all out Immolation. So the comparison that should be made is the damage rate of pumping all the points into Freezing Arrow, compared to the damage rate if you put most of your points into Immolation and then only a few into Freezing Arrow, compared to if you solely went for Immolation. For the middle choice, you would have to do some weighing of the two, so that's a second layer of analysis that needs to be done. Now in doing this analysis I'll assume that the total life of the monsters is 40,000 life. About the only way this can actually happen is if you're up against 4 maw fiends in 8-player Hell difficulty, but the reason I assume such a high number is to offset the fact that in actual combat, new monsters are frequently taking the place of old monsters within your area of damage, but the Immolation fires from old monsters will still stay. So this seems like a fairly reasonable compromise.
Anyhow, with much, much difficulty, with all these assumptions, it turns that purely relying on Immolation will never do more damage than purely relying on Freezing Arrow, until somewhere after Freezing Arrow is maxed out (i.e. over 21 points to spend). Thus we can safely remove that as a viable option (with the assumption of monster density of 4, 40,000 total life, and all the rest, that is). So now is left the task of modelling what happens with a "mixed" points distribution. This I'll do in the next installment of my thus-far very long post, because my eyes are starting to hurt (you know a post is long when it has to be split up into multiple posts because of physical limits of the poster).
Well, I'm going to be going home for Christmas break, so I probably won't get to do a complete analysis until after I return.
At any rate, I went through some error checks, and found out that I forgot to take the constant part of Immolation into account with comparing the two by skill point distribution. So that part of the thing is wrong; I'll come back with a full analysis of the relationship when I get a chance. So to repeat, the conclusion that a pure Freezing Arrow is always stronger than a pure Immolation for the same number of skill points is wrong. The jury is still out on that one.
- Chuck
Sooner or later, you're going to have to pick up a spear for those times where you'll be stuck fighting a big boss (Duriel) by yourself, and your bow just will not cut it. One option would be to find a game where you don't need to do that, or you can use a Spear, and invest one, measly, stinking point point into Jab. This skill completely negates weapon speed, allowing you to use the heaviest pike as quickly as the weaker spears. The single most compelling reason to use a spear can be summed up in one word: Duriel. This boss is the bane of all bowazons, especially in Normal when you don't have access to Decoy or Valkyrie. However, switching to Jab and a spear makes this battle a walk in the park, because you simultaneously negate his two most deadly powers. First, the Charge: that oh-so-wonderful one-hit-kill. If you can avoid getting killed by this in the first few seconds, it is no longer a threat, since he can't charge from melee range. Secondly, his Holy Freeze Aura: Jab disregards weapon speed, while your movement is slowed by the aura, your attack speed is not, and you can continue to poke Duriel just as quickly as without the aura.
Jab can also be used against Diablo in Normal difficulty, if you can find a Pike with life steal. You will not be using Jab often, but for the cost of a single skill point, you can basically skip some of the hardest battles you will face.
An alternative to one point in Jab and using a spear is to keep a high-blocking shield and a one-handed weapon handy. Whenever you would take out the pike, take out the shield and sword. it is slower, but meleeing with a shield is what gives Javazons their incredible staying power. This could be an option for big uniques like Diablo, Mephisto and Duriel.
- Xelne
The best toys in the game don't automatically make one's character the best character in the game - that's up to the player. Not even the ultimate equipment can save a character from an incompetent player. All gear does is augment an already powerful character. However, if you lose all your gear, you're screwed, so never mind.
Ah, now for the really fun part: the toys. I so do love trying to find bigger and better equipment for my Amazon. Unfortunately, so does everyone else. Despite the demand for Stone of Jordan, Silks of the Victor, Frostburn, and all that crap, the equipment demands of the Amazon are relatively simple: high offense, disregard defense, and faster attack speed. Higher resists, bonuses to find stuff, and skills are the icing on the cake. Start simple, and get the fancy stuff to suit your needs.
Generally, crossbows are not recommended for Amazons: they're for other classes, as can be seen the slight increase in attack speed they enjoy. Amazons are better suited to take advantage of the faster firing speed of a bow. That being said, it is one of the most important things an Amazon will ever use, and more time will be wasted on looking for a new bow than any other piece of equipment. For the Normal difficulty level, you want a bow that does around 36-50+ points of damage, which would be a long war bow.
Necromancers and Sorceress players often make the mistake of believing that a bow with skills is automatically good. However, a bow is a weapon, and will be used like one. For example, a +2 skills bow (with a level 30 requirement) that does only 12-37 damage is not worth anything because skills don't make up for the measly damage. Amazons are not as skills-needy as magic-users; as Bowazons rise in level, +skill steadily becomes less of a priority because at her core, the basic Bowazon depends on three or four mainstay skills, two of which are Strafe and Valkyrie. Strafe can be mastered as soon as clvl 41, and Valkyrie is limited because of its demands on mana. By the time a Bowazon reaches her 50-70s, she will have a reasonable amount of points placed into her preferred skills, and any bonuses to those skills are more a luxury than a necessity.
In the same vein, Barbarian players often think that a simple 19-144 gothic is worth about five SoJ, if not more. This is the other extreme: sacrificing everything for damage. A lot of factors go into the perfect bow, and while damage is the most important thing about a weapon, damage is not the only thing; a truly good weapon will have at least five attributes, two of which will be dedicated to damage (optimally, King's and Merciless), leaving one prefix and three suffixes open. IMHO, the most important things on a bow are (in order):
The more properties that a gothic can satisfy on the top five of this list, the more that it will be worth in the long run. Again, the most important stat on any bow is the resulting damage.
However, the game uses one-handed bow damage instead of two-handed. What you see on your inventory screen is the bow's two-handed damage. [The] Gothic has 10 to 50 two-handed damage but only 10 to 48 one-handed damage. So your real bow damage is 10 + 1 to 48 + 1 + 17, which is 11 to 66.
- Trucidation
On a personal note, if you ever find yourself becoming sentimentally attached to a bow, keep it unless it is just that bad. My personal dream bow, by the way, would be a rare gothic or rune with the King's, Merciless, Archer's, Frost, Alacrity, and Perfection (or Performance) properties.
By the time you get to A3, you'll probably end up trading for an exceptional bow (these "best bows and crossbows" are the rune, gothic, ballista, and chu-ku-no) from a titled Amazon (or if you're polite and aware of netiquette, you'll simply get one for nothing). If you're looking for one, remember the requirements before accepting a free bow (as somebody out there could probably use that bow now as opposed to you using it later):
If you can get reduced requirements on any exceptional bow, then so be it, as the damage on even a non-magical exceptional bow is better than most normal bows, and more often than not, the bow will be a rare with enhanced damage. By the time you outgrow the bow (if ever), you should be strong enough to handle its type with default requirements.
An acceptable gothic bow has 20-110+ damage; once you've obtained a bow of this caliber, you are set for Nightmare and may go on with the game or chase after a new bow at your leisure. For Hell difficulty, a bow of 30-120+ is desirable, but not required, as these are harder to obtain. (Assuming that the bow has no other modifications.) If rune bows are more your style, a max damage range of 80-100+ is desired; since these are in less demand than gothic bows, they will cost less, but will be harder to find as well. Once you get your hands on a good bow, you will probably not be letting it go for a long time. If you decide to be a Bowazon, don't sell any rare bows you find if you think they can be useful to someone. For some reason, bows that do a meager 100 damage are being hoarded by barbs and Necromancers for SoJ, and well...that just ain't right. Rare bows are just that - rare - and a lot of bowazons spend the entirety of the Nightmare difficulty without ever laying eyes on a normal gothic, so at least give them a bow (or trade it for a pittance) before they get cheated out of a lot of good equipment for a crappy double bow. Hell, rare bows are not worth that much to an NPC, so it is best to give to those who need: consider it good karma.
For those who seek a gothic to imbue, you'll start finding them in A3NM. Socketed pavises can be found here as well, if you need the trade bait.
While these bows are nice for a beginning character, they certainly will not keep an Amazon alive in A4, much less Nightmare, so don't place too much stock in them, as they will most certainly be dropped for bows that do more damage. As with rare bows, save unique bows for up-and-coming amazons as well: because uniques have no level requirements, they're perfect for new characters, assuming they can use them.)
Unique bows of note are:
There are two sets made specifically for Bowazons, and one set that is useful to everybody. All other sets are useless to the bowazon. The sets that are usable by the bowazon are:
Though it in't a Bowazon set, Iratha's Finery does deserve some attention. The result of the Iratha's Finery set is (with all equipment): +15 to dexterity, +5 to minimum damage, 10% to all maximum resists, all resists 50%, half freeze duration, poison length reduced by 75%. The clvl requirement of this set is 15. This set may serve you well into Nightmare, or even Hell, as it grants some of the most insane bonuses to your overall resist scores (theoretically, Iratha's is wonderful when combined with Goldskin and Tearhaunch, as well as leech rings with resist) which can work well in your favor if you can find a bow with cold damage and a very fast attack speed.
Here are some numbers I ran a while back. Keep in mind that all Amazon attacks, including Strafe, are affected by weapon speed.
Take the best 4 bows/crossbows (the number of frames is the precise length of the animation, based on Stan from the LL's research: if you don't know there are 25 frames per second in D2):
Now assume we get a King's version of each; the damage averages become (roughly):
If you take time of constant firing in combat, you get something like the following:
30 Seconds/750 Frames
So, the [CKN] is not dishing out more damage over time. It is firing more arrows though, for sure. So, if your plan involves freezing arrow/cold damage, the more frequent shots might be preferable.
- Malphigian
Really not a fair comparison when you consider the high minimum damage of the rune bow and ballista, or Critical Strike, but I'm no mathematician, so I really can't comment too much on this.
It is imperative that you obtain a set of life and mana leech rings as soon as possible: rare leech rings are quite literally the lifeblood of a high-level Amazon because leech rings free you from the constraints of having to look for weapons with leech. When all is said and done, the leech percentages should lie between 5-7% a ring (not counting other leech sources from armor, helmets, weapons, amulets, and the like) with at least three of these things: a high Attack Rating bonus, Dexterity, two or even three good resists (prismatic is nice), Mana or Life (in that order) bonuses, and a remedial attribute like Half Freeze Duration or Poison Damage Reduction. Attributes like +1-3 to maximum damage, or percentages to find magical items and so forth are luxuries, icing on the cake. You will want a total 7-10% leech in both life and mana, at least. This percentage will change, depending on your needs. Because leech rings are so important to the Bowazon, you should always strive to find better and better rings as you go on.
Dual leech rings, while nice, are limited because people are so enchanted by the dual leech that the other important properties are completely neglected. Do not ignore the importance of boosts to Attack Rating, resist, and other things. In my personal experience, a character with two excellent single-leech rings is much better off than a character with two mediocre dual leech rings, even if the latter person can leech for more. Of course, one can find two excellent dual-leech rings, but it is far easier to find (as well as trade for) two excellent single-type leech rings.
That being said, the SoJ is useless to an aspiring Bowazon for anything but trading stock.
As mentioned before, armor stops being a matter of urgency after you find a suit of chain mail because you get used to the ability to attack from a distance and using tanks. By the time you get Strafe (or a good level of Multiple Shot), armor is not chosen for defense because nothing should be able to approach you in melee combat; armor is chosen on the basis of their attributes. Desired attributes to armor and helms are bonuses to Dexterity, reduced requirements for heavier armor, resists, bonuses to life and mana, [magic] damage reduced by 1 or 2, and fastest hit recovery. While enhanced defense is nice, it is not a priority.
For gloves, you want bonuses to Dexterity, slightly increased attack speed, resists, bonuses to life and mana, and percentages to find magical items or more gold.
Desired qualities for boots are fastest run/walk, bonuses to Dexterity, resists, stamina helpers (heal stamina 50%), fastest hit recovery. One attribute that must always be on a pair of Bowazon boots is increased run speed. As a Bowazon, you want to keep a safe distance between you and your opponents, and the best way to do that is to run faster.
Unique Armors and Jewelries of note are:
There's actually a significant difference between Vidala's and Treads. Vidala's adds a straight +150 stamina, while Treads essentially doubles your stamina. (50% leech = +50% stamina.) For a newbie with low stamina, Vidala's is better. By mid-to-high levels, Treads will be better. You don't regenerate faster with Treads, but you regenerate more stamina per tick because of having a larger stamina pool. (This is similar to how +% mana items work.)
- Jonathan Fine
While these items are cool as hell, never underestimate the ability of rare items. I've used all of these items personally, and would not suggest combining them.
My second Bowazon, Daikyu, is a "Speedazon," an Amazon whose ability to kill rests entirely on her blinding speed: Goldwrap, gloves with SIAS and Dexterity, and a bow with Alacrity (IAS) are desired; this will take a bow up four notches in attack speed from the already blinding "Fast Attack Speed." In this case, a bow with heavier damage should be passed up for a slightly faster bow with a bit less damage, since the principle is that it is far better to cause a medium amount of damage with an insane rate of fire (RoF) than it is to cause a lot of damage with a standard RoF. Sound familiar? This is the principle of the bow versus the crossbow.
Not surprisingly, the Speedazon's bread-and-butter attacks are Strafe and perhaps Multiple Shot, as the straight damage she can deal with these attacks will pile up much faster than the slow but heavy-hitting power of Freezing Arrows, or the slow-leeching Immolation Arrows. However, she can cause a ton of havoc with many Freezing and Immolation Arrows fired out in quick succession. Her disadvantage is that she needs to be picky: her bows can't be anything less than IAS.
Since I more or less thought of the term "Speedazon" because I didn't prefer "Gatlingazon" I'll put in my two cents. My thoughts were that the Amazon has two things going for her over the other characters in the game (since she doesn't deal as much damage per hit that other characters might):
Therefore, my thoughts were to utilize any and all weapons, armor, jewelry which would increase speed and use cold constantly without using skill points in the cold arena. Is he daft, you say? Well, nope. A good socketed bow with sapphires and skulls do the trick, thus giving you room to add increased speed gloves instead of the Frostburn that are usually used. If you're all laughing at the socketed bow part, keep in mind my Open B.Net character is clvl 42 with nothing but the socketed bow. Speed is what got her there and I'm continuing with my Realms character who's clvl 22 and climbing.
Lots who are into the math of the game or with other strategies will scoff at the socketed bow and so be it. I've gambled for better bows and haven't had the fortune to have a good one drop that would make me drop the socketed one I use now. If I find a bow with increased speed but without cold damage, I'd not use it. The slower I make my enemy and the faster I can move and shoot is what makes the Speedazon what she is. There are many ways to play our Amazon and that's what makes it fun. I for one like the fact that Golden Bow the Speedazon rarely gets touched.
Have fun and good hunting all...
- Golden Bow
Kabbalah [the Second] is my fourth bowazon; after v1.04b came out, I rejected Strafe as a main attack and went on to experiment with Ice Arrows. The results were surprising, to say the least. Like Daikyu, Kabbalah uses Goldwrap, gloves with SIAS and Dexterity, and an IAS gothic. She also uses a 12 second, 3% Eye of Etlich to extend her freeze durations. While I would have loved to have found an IAS gothic with cold damage, I found that an Eye with a long duration is a "must-have" for a Frostmaiden; without it, her freeze duration falls apart at the higher difficulty levels, no matter how many cold damage items she has. With a high level of Pierce, Freezing Arrows to destroy large groups, and a rapid output of Ice Arrows to leech back mana and to keep isolated enemies under control, a Frostmaiden is a coldly effective (excuse the pun) killing machine in narrow areas like the Halls of the Dead and Tombs in Act 2, the Temples and Sewers of Act 3, and the Chaos Sanctuary.
I can easily solo 8-player games without using Decoy and Valkyrie, there just isn't any point.
The reasons are Ice Arrow and Freezing Arrow, combined with a nice level pierce, my 109 gothic, cold belt, Eye of Etlich and the many corridors in the Sanctuary.
Once I spot a mob of monsters I fire Ice Arrows until I see a pierce, I then switch to Freezing Arrow and use Ice to fill my mana ball.
I truly believe that the game uses the XY-coordinates of the monster to generate random numbers, thus once you get a pierce, you'll pierce every time, as long as the monster is stationary (which it will be when frozen solid), thus you can quickly decimate large crowd with ease.
- CHHAS
Because of the Pierce bug, I use Ice Arrow as my "spotter" arrow. I fire it into a crowd and see how many things were frozen by Ice. If I like the results, I pop a couple of Freezing Arrows into the crowd. (Remember, the Pierce bug determines Pierce by the Random Number Generator first, then keeps that result based on the XY-coordinates of the monster's location. In other words, once it pierces, it will always pierce until it is destroyed, or until a monster steps in front of the victim and fails to be pierced.) I then leech back the mana with more Ice Arrows, keeping the enemy locked into place, testing for more Pierce, then striking back with more Freezing Arrows. Ice is used to spot, leech back mana, and supplement the stronger Freeze Arrow. These skills work wonderfully together. What makes a Frostmaiden isn't Ice or Freezing Arrow, but Pierce: a Frostmaiden must have at least a slvl 8-15 Pierce in order to maximize her killing power.
Many thanks to LineNoise and Icemage.
For more information about pounding on bosses, please refer to Saddguy's Boss Guide for Bowazons.
Your Amazon starts out with some javelins and a shield. You should use these for awhile, perhaps even switching out to a light one-handed melee weapon, as they're stronger than most of the bows you might find. With her low scores and lack of skills, as well as good bows and a relatively low AR, using the javelin and shield will actually help you get out of A1 faster than using a bow. At those first few levels, you can't afford to be picky, so make do with what you can and sell everything you find and don't need. (Hence, the advice on gear that increases your chances to find more gold and magic. Don't even buy anything until you hit level 5 or so because you'll keep on running into better and better stuff as the Act progresses. (If you need to blow your cash on anything, gamble for a Tarnhelm and Hand of Broc. You'll be using those for quite a while.) Just upgrade, sell, and go on: A1 is the "scav phase" for your character, so don't even try to avoid it. All of the big level 50-90 characters had to scrape up their gold pieces to pick up a suit of superior studded leather armor at some point in their careers, and so do you. (Consider it to be your growing pains because once you start hitting the high 40s and 50s, you'll once again be hunting for your own equipment as opposed to trading and asking for it.) Because of the relative ease of the enemies in A1, items that add to your chances of finding more gold and magical items are recommended. As soon as you can access Multiple Shot and Cold Arrow, you're going to want to obtain a Long Bow, preferably with cold damage. You needn't bother with Short or Hunter's bows, since they don't do nearly enough damage, and a Long Bow is cheap enough to be readily purchased. Your stat points during this stage will mostly go to Strength and Dexterity, to allow you to equip the better items that you'll be finding. After clvl 2 (pump all 5 points into Strength to even out Strength and Dexterity), I'd suggest a steady 2/3 distribution between Strength and Dexterity until the desired Strength score is reached. Your skills during this early stage will largely be going to prerequisites for other skills and passives. If you choose to use Multiple Shot, you can start practicing and investing early in A1.
Most of A1 should be fairly easy, except for the occasional boss or champion. Keep looking for better equipment, but your choices are rather severely limited this early on. The Smith will be a challenge, make sure you have lots of running room. A nearby well can make this battle much easier. Alternatively, you can rush the Smith with a high-blocking shield (like Civerb's Ward), a fast one-handed weapon, and a lot of healing potions. For Andariel, stock up on antidote potions, and maybe stamina potions as well. Be sure to take out her lackeys first, as they are there to take divert your attention. Rushing Andariel in melee combat is not recommended until you're absolutely sure you can take her.
In the case of jewelry, get a life-leeching ring first, then a mana-leeching ring. These are easy to find so strive for a leech of 6-7% of each, but if a rare with leech gets tossed your way, use it. leech rings are not the most useful things at this moment (because your damage is so low), so try to find rings that add to strength, dexterity, and most importantly, life, mana, and chances to find more gold. (Once you get to A2, the situation will most definitely change as your enemies become harder and more numerous, but by this time, Multiple Shot and Ice Arrow will be available, which is when the leech rings really begin to shine. In the long run, don't wear a ring that doesn't add any sort of leech unless you are absolutely sure that another piece of equipment has that leech type adequately covered!
Not surprisingly, any unique bow at this time would be appreciated. If someone is giving one away, by all means, take it.
In A2, you'll start to find some better equipment. Buy yourself a nice short battle bow, the increased damage will make things a lot easier; if someone offers a free Stormstrike or has one for trade, take it: it is going to serve you well in this act. If you've reached clvl 18, Ice Arrow works great against the undead, as does Exploding Arrow. Where you place your stats depends a lot on the items you're finding. If you find a great piece of armor, go ahead and bump up strength; otherwise, focus more on dexterity. Your skill points can continue to go into passives, but you should start saving some of them for Penetrate, Pierce, Strafe, and Valkyrie. (Yes, you're planning this far ahead!)
The universally despised Duriel awaits at the end, and he can be maddening for a straight Bowazon. However, his melee attacks are nowhere near as damaging as his Charge, so a point into Jab will be well-used at this point, but so can a good sword and a high-blocking shield. If you are playing with a group, it is not as important, since you can get one to engage Duriel while pelt him with arrows.
A3 can be frustrating, since the Fetishes are small fast-moving targets. Multiple Shot or Strafe is helpful here, since you don't have to target accurately with them. Continue to upgrade your equipment, placing your stat points as necessary to equip the stuff you find. By now you should be close to activating Strafe, if you haven't already, so place some points in there. Make sure you save a couple for level 30, because there are three nice skills you want to get. The Council Members can be tricky, but Decoy can help to take some of the load off. The mercenaries you can hire in this act are actually useful, so make sure you always have one.
Your mark, Mephisto, is not a problem; the Council Members - particularly the infamous extra fast, lightning-enchanted Bremm Sparkfist - and annoying Blood Lords are the problem. Against Mephisto, you can either use Ice Arrow and try to dodge a lot, or simply spray his general direction with Multiple Shot or Guided Arrow. With life or mana steal, you can tell when you've found him by the swirly effect. By this point you definitely should have at least some mana steal; if not, you should consider gambling for rings or the Hand of Broc.
By A4, you should have Strafe, but at this point, it is still inferior to Multiple Arrow for coverage. You want to use Strafe in situations where you might get swarmed, like the Plains of Despair with those annoying Burning and Black Souls. If you find a nice rare long war bow, you should be doing enough damage to keep your mana full. Izual will take a long time to kill, just keep casting Decoys in his lap, he'll die eventually; this is one of the few cases you'll want to use Magic Arrow - because of Izual's high HP, the chances you'll use up 250-750 arrows are good, especially if you're in a multi-player game. Hephasto is a dangerous opponent, use Ice Arrows and Decoys to slow him down. If you have it, Immolation Arrow is useful against these monsters.
Diablo is not that tough...if you know what you're doing. Take down a lot of arrows, run to a corner of the Chaos Sanctuary which looks like a "+" (the walls extend from the corners slightly) and get Diablo on the other side of one of the "short" walls from you. Make sure you have some mana steal, then happily plink away with Guided Arrow (fire at an angle - the arrow will "bounce" back and hit him), settle down, drink a cup of coffee, and wait for the Quest dialog box to appear. You may need to shift positions once in a while, as Diablo sometimes has a tendency to poke his head around the corner. Do not use Decoy, do not use Valkyrie if you don't know how to use them as tools to reposition Diablo back to his proper spot. If you think it takes too long to waste him with a bow, you can max your Lightning resists, and take out Jab again with a nice pike, or a 3DT and a good one-handed melee weapon.
Somewhere in NM, you'll get Valkyrie, and somewhere in the second half you'll find your first Gothic: save this until clvl 35-38 to get the most out of your imbue. Try to get something with close to 100 max damage. If it is not great, then you still have two more tries. Once you get your Strength up to 100+, any remaining points should go into Dexterity.
Nightmare should not be too much harder than Normal, since you'll be getting much better equipment in the form of exceptional items. You should have all prerequisites and passives filled out now, and should be pumping either Valkyrie or your primary attack skill (Multiple Shot or Strafe).
Leveling is tricky business, so here's a summary. Your mileage may vary, so don't treat this as canon, just keep it in mind. You'll want to stay within 5 levels of whatever it is you're killing, but there are some cases when this is unavoidable. The best place to level in Normal is either the Bazaar to Upper Kurast in A3, as the wide-open spaces and a cold-casting mage can take you a long way. In addition, you should just be getting into Strafe and Decoy at this stage in the game, so now's a good time to try them out. A warning, however: the temples, with their enclosed spaces, can be dangerous, though profitable places, so tread carefully. After that, you're off to A4 and those idiot Venom Lords, Leapers, Finger Magi, Urdar, and Izual, which can net you enough experience to go to level 30-31. Your worst enemy in A4 is the Oblivion Knight (Hell, Oblivion Knights are everyone's worst enemy!).
In Nightmare, the prime place to level is not obvious, but any Lady will tell you that the prime leveling spot is the Sewers of Lut Gholein in A2NM: the enemies are high-level, not too fast, not too smart, bunched up like sardines in a cramped up area which means that your Strafe will not be flying wild, and best of all, they're meat for a Bowazon with Strafe, Valkyrie, and Freezing Arrow. You can shoot from level 31 to 45 in this spot alone (with repeated visits, of course)! In addition, the sewers are somewhat bow-friendly, so if you haven't found a rare exceptional bow yet, one may drop here. It would be prudent to join in the middle of game that has 5 players or more to capitalize on the HP bonuses that your Valkyrie enjoys with more players. The point of this stage is to boost Strafe and start using Freezing Arrows in conjunction with Valkyrie and Decoy. (Might as well, you're going to be there for quite a while.) Skate past A3NM (a.k.a., the annoying little midget stage that went on for far too long) as quickly as possible: while it is true A3NM is loot-friendly with gothic bows, the object is to get to A4NM as soon as possible to drop Izual for the points and experience, then run back to the second half of A3NM and A4NM for more experience.
Killing Diablo in Nightmare can be a trying experience for a Bowazon, as evade-lock is inevitable. Spraying him from off-screen with Multiple Shot has proven effective for a number of Bowazons. Expect this battle to take a long time, preferably right after a level up to avoid the experience penalty.
Past this point, you should now have a well-crafted killing machine (or a draft of one); the only real advancement you'll see is in levels and equipment. Your basic skills and strategies will not change for Hell, your damage will continue to improve as you pump points into Dexterity and Strafe if you're using it. And as soon as you skate past A3H, welcome to A4H where you can join in the 'zon fests for exp and prizes. Bowazons can take time to mature, but they are powerful once they get all of the different aspects working together.
The assistance, advice, suggestions, and insights these players have given me has been invaluable to making this guide, and while there's no way I can possibly list off everything, the least I can do is list them off in the credits.
It should come as no surprise that most of these guides are stored in the archives of the Amazon Basin. As a member of this all-amazon guild, I can say without a doubt that we have some of the best reference material for amazons to be found anywhere on the net.
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Coming up...Increased Attack Speeds: Effects on Damage over Time and Strafe Mechanics, Limits on Speed Increases, and How to Figure Out How Much Damage You Do on Everything
last updated: Sunday, January 07, 2001 - version 1.04b.9