Alternative Bowazon Build Concept

Amazon
1

Hello…

Quite a while ago i came up with the idea of utilizing a Strafe build that would emphasize on the maximum collisions allowed by the game’s engine of aprox ~200 clollisions
( on a side note te same reason why shenk’s death crashes the game on High or Ultra as there you get around 500 simultaneous collisions, so 300 more than max 200 allowed by the engine)

but what am i tlking about?

think that if you manage to get proper IAS and strafe slvl in order to launch 10 arrows per volley, and you’d have 100% pierce chance, so that each of those 10 arows pierces up to 10 times ( agin max allowed by the engine) you’d get 100 collisions out of the box…

it got me thinking… what if i equip an item that grants me a guaranteed chance to proc a skill per strike.?! well? I’m already doing 100 strikes right so this would only increase the number of collisions…

Now what if i tell you I found such an item, and the procced skill mechanics has been tweaked in D2R when comapred to D2LoD…
not only the procced skill now 100% pierces ( which guarantees even more collisions) but instead of only attacking undead it also damages demons now (and as a cherry on top each collision of each of the passing projectiles with an undead enemy also heals the player? now that’d be insane just a bunch of undead and you’re topped off on life…

You’d say dude what is this item you speak of?!?!?!?!

Easy this item won’t get you anywhere without proper build:

Skills:
Magic arrow:1 (perequisite)
Cold Arrow:1 ( prerequisite)
Multishot:20 (synergy)
Guided Arrow: 20 ( synergy)
Strafe:20 (main skill)

Critical strike:1 ( prerequisite)
Penetrate: 20 ( mandatory to have decent cth)
Pierce:0 ( we’ll be utilizing MIST runeword we’ll have 100% chance to pierce so no need)
Inner Sight:1 (prerequisite)
Slow Missles:1 ( bit usefull & prerequisite)
Decoy:1( with skillboost is utilised)

Dodge, Avoid, Evade : the rest distributed so that with skillboosts you get even % in all of them

Gear:
Head:
magic circlet: +2 ama skills 30FRW ( larzuk and pray for 2x sockets) 2x 40%ED-15%IAS jools

Weapon:
MIST runeword in +3 Bow skills GMB

Chest:
Patch 1.11 added Palladin armor runeword ( it was probably named Principle)
it’s main benefit is 100% chance on strike to cast lvl 5 Holy Bolt ( belive me theese do add up quite nicely when casted ‘en masse’ )

gloves:
Laying of Hands

Belt:
String of Ears

Boots:
Nat Boots 40FRW lightning res% what more can you want

Amu& 2x Rings: Angelics with dual angelic ring for decent AR, some minor life and some small dex bonus.

Charms: Grand 7x 10max dm/76AR/7%FRW 1x Bone Break, Large: Ama Torch Small: anni +6x 3Max dm/20AR/3FRW

this build grants 50% off weapon IAS in order to reach the nessecary breakpoint of 10 arrows we need the exact amount of +skills as we have on gear right now
Mist+GMB_bonus+circlet+Torch+anni
for correct IAS breakpoint we need Faith a1 merc anything better than lvl 12 fana will do…

I plan a merc with +3Bow GMB with Faith in it for the merc, so helm is jewlerer’s diadem of speedwith 3x 40/15, and eth forti chest or hustle, since merc needs to keep up with the player somehow, as we don’t use tele, the holybolt cast runeword is relatiely cheap ral-gul-eld… the hardest pat is getting 3os archon plate… i can’t for the life of me find a cracked one in order for cube repair it and larzuk 3os…

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While I commend the use of Mist, why would you willingly push the limits of the game? It’s bad enough with Mosaic but now this? Also if you need FRW on the Merc, Enigma is a strong option due to the 45% FRW on it. Also the damage on level 5 Holy Bolt is ~44 Magic Damage and heals ~15 life when passing through an Ally(just not you since I’m unaware of procs healing your own character).

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huh… i forgot to mention it didn’t I… anyways it was personally testd by me that holybolt casts from procs heal the player’s char on every collision… and despite this being like 5hp per collision it does stack nicely as pelthora of holybolts pours forth it’s like every arrow from the 10 arrow volley can create up to 10 holybolts… that’s up to 100 holybolts per strafe cast and the colisions for the holybolts are also insane the first one hits everything behind the monster it spawned on the secon one hits everything behind the second monster and so on creating sort of cascade effect… i haven’t really calculated how much damage and healing you’d get exactly but the numbers are easily increased by a factor of ~100x, not to mention holy bolt does magic damage and most mobs have 0 magic resistance, and even undead that are immune to magic damage take 50% damage since holybolts do 150% of amp magic damage to undead, so a 100% resistant monster still takes 50% of the damage, so besides demon and undead there are only insects to worry about, as there’s no thing as Beasts and Animals other than insects in D2R, where only beatles in some areas are immune to magic, at the same time being prone to physical damage. so it’s a win- win scenario… Sure it’s not as efficient as player faith + obedience a2 merc, yet after testing on single player i find it good enaugh… and yeah i put out thisbuild on purpose… if ppl start utilizing it then it’ll be time for blizz to buy better servers, or at least stop sharing the server between D4 and D2R, so that D2R finally get’s it’s own server…

after all this build was not viable in D2LoD it’s due to Blizz’s incompetence of handling holybolt mechanics in D2R that made this happen…

4

Holy Bolt ignores Magic Resistance(much like Sanctuary permits you to ignore Physical Resistance of Undead) while dealing amplified damage to Undead(and I think Demon since 2.4’s change but I may be wrong on that one). If Holy Bolt didn’t ignore Resistance, taking increased Damage wouldn’t matter since any multiplier of 0(value for Immune targets) is still 0.

Due to the Magic Resistance perk, Holy Bolt can destroy Magic Immune Zombies in Act 2 Lost City and the various Tombs that Hammerdins or Bone Necro’s(w/o Corpse Explosion) cannot touch without another damage source. Also is quite useful in future Acts where you may run into more Magic Immune Demons(although they’re quite rare and appear in optional Dungeons or Ubers). If the Holy Bolt procs can heal your character, then that’s news to me but I’m usually the one casting it as a FoHdin so could never benefit.

5

the bonus damage to undead works sort of like you said like snanctuary aura it does not multiply damage, but rather bolsters damage by piercing magic resistance of the undead (and only undead) by 50% ( and no the magic resistance pierce does not work for demon enemies, holybolts only damage demons on collision… magic immune demon is still immune to holybolt damage).

as for FoH din it does not work that way… unfortuneatly… holybolts from FoH don’t count as either holybolts or holybolt procs, they are a part of FoH skill and they don’t heal no one. Neither by passing through an ally nor by damaging enemies…

SO FoH does not get you anywhere… nieither does holybolt itself with a single cast… you need massive spam of holybolts that trigger healing effect to feel the difference… the build i coupled above is probably the only example of abusing this mechanic.