I need to upgrade my bow, I am in Hell Act I, I am using a Lycander’s Aim 181% ED. I am doing overall 75% of the damage I would be doing with a Harmony Shadow Bow, which requires my Ko rune, and for an extra 30% damage I do not think it is worth it.
I could upgrade my Lyc’s Aim to Elite, that would be a Pul+Lum, the damage would be almost the same as with a Harmony bow, therefore not worth spending a Pul+Lum runes for a mere 30% increase in overall damage.
A Faith would be the best right now, and a Windforce second best. A Faith would be doing double the damage of Harmony, but requires a Jah+Ohm, this is seriously hard to get (only got an Ohm).
So it seems the Harmony is cheaper to make than upgrading the Lycander’s - one Ko vs Pul+Lum. But I will only get +30% damage, unless I sacrifice an extra Ohm, to get +48% damage.
Considering the Mausoleum zombies are bullet sponges, I do not think the +30% or +48% is going to cut it.
I think at this stage the only reasonable bow is a Faith bow, for example so I can kill the Mausoleum zombies with a couple of hits?
Made the wrong character class for PVM(Genuinely one of the worst PVM characters) - could be okay if you used strafe.
Use a faith bow in a +3 skill Grand Matron bow. That’s generally BIS. Your biggest issue is that you’re a bowzon… trying to mf… to eventually afford a jah. Going to be difficult.
Real advice is to just use the ohm to fund a sorc. You’ll mf the game far more efficiently than a fully BIS bowzon. Bowzon is basically a joke spec for PVM and primarily a PVP character in softcore. Bowzon in hardcore is basically non-existent and for people who won’t accept that until they almost assuredly die.
You need Faith GMB, Fortitude armor, Giant skull 2 os or artisan’s tiara with speed mod filled with 40/15s, knockback gloves with 20 ias and a whole bunch of other incredibly expensive gear. Raven frost, highlords, gore riders. And you have no mf gear when u use any of that. May as well use enigma too, so throw in another jah ber.
Could use a teleport ammulet or teleport circlet however or naj staff on swap.
as people already mentioned if you really want to be most efficient with your time invest into another character that is more efficient to fund your zon. If you insist on letting your zon finding her own gear as a Bowzon you really won’t get anywhere unless you get extremely lucky.
Up a witch wild string, use laying of hands then any crushing blow like gore’s, goblin toes or Gface. Starts to slow down around act 4, but it can clear, but yeah, bowazons pretty weak for hell.
Buriza - cheap solid, long time since I play a bowzon but I think buriza can get you through. Not been playing multiplayer but I bet they trade off for cheap still.
Seriously, take it from me, Fund an mf sorc or at least go java. I did what you’re proposing to do in 09-1.10 patch change - where i just really wanted to make my zealer… wasted vex zod for an ebotd instead of getting jah ber for a hammerdin. You can fund the bowzon’s gear much faster just mfing efficiently than trying to do it on the bowzon.
Yes I see that now, and I just remembered now, sometime ago I ran some HeroEdited Bowazons in Hell Act 5 (Eldritch) with a Windforce, and was not impressed at all… But somehow I forgot all that and then levelled a Bowazon to 75!
I typically play solo, do not leach XP in multiplayer games and do not trade with others (except last few days I got given 3 x Lycander’s Aims by some Discord folk!!!)
So I should go back to my sorcy then? She is perpetually out of mana that is why I gave her up at 40… And the lack of respecs is also so bloody annoying, can’t experiment at all… You have to make HeroEditor characters and go try it out on SP see what works, so much hassle. Whoever does not want to see free and easy respecs is mad!
If you don’t mind reading up guides there are lot of sorc guides out there.
I don’t know how many respecs you have already gone through, but you 100% can dump some points into Energy in early game to alleviate some mana issue, and crafting Insight on your merc will greatly alleviate it (with a sufficiently big mana pool, since your mana regen is % based). Once you find enough items with +mana/energy you can respec and allocate zero points into energy.
Alternatively, just deal with it and drink a lot of mana pots/go back to town a lot. You really decide yourself how you want to tackle this issue.
Make an insight. Give to act 2 mercenary which you should be using. Mana issues solved. Do not waste a single point in energy unless energy shield sorc. Insight + 1 point to warmth is all you need.
When you have items that give you mana, i agree that you should not put any points into energy. However, during the leveling process, when you are not being rushed by someone else, it is 100% fine to increase your mana pool via energy (which will also increase Insight effectiveness), as long as you are aware that it is only a temporary solution, and are willing to respec out of it eventually.
Insight’s effectiveness is extremely different for someone with a 100 mana pool versus a 500 mana pool.
I agree with you that you should not burn respecs on attributes only.
But if you are already planning on doing so eventually because of skill allocation, i think it’s an option that can be considered. And yes Spirit should be made because it is just one of the best items in the game for starters.
It is up to you if you play sorc or bowa - just play what you enjoy more.
Your best option right now is either Buriza or Harmony (Windforce but I am guessing you don’t have that one and not sure if you can afford it) - I am not sure what gear/skills you have though. One thing I would advise is to make Harmony anyway - you will want it on swap later. Another thing is why farm Mausoleum? Pit is much better for Bowa - also you can get there stupidly fast with Harmony. Fun fact - last ladder I found both Jah and Windforce in Pit. Also for Faith I would advice Diamond rather than GMB.
Edit: There is great guide on Amazon forum by TSBoyer - it should answer all your questions.
both bowazons & javazons can be very adequate MFers in particular with cows so while i love sorcs, all this talk about sorc being the only option to get some good farm is silly.
bowazons in PvM have always been a little underwhelming while they are amazing at PvP. but hell is still pretty easy for a bowazon to solo when you have faith + fort + maybe a decent inventory of +10 max damage gcs & +3 max damage scs.
Idk, I can tell you I used a Gold strike Arch and a Harmony in the exceptional tier of Amazon bow for Nightmare and Baal runs. Once I could, I went with Windforce and a GMB Harmony, and have no complaints, seems to work really well
Windforce is cheap to trade because physical bowazons are weak and hardly anyone plays them after blizz destroyed the build in 1.10. Probably costs 1/10th what a faith costs and does comparable damage. Get an eaglehorn if you’re really poor, I don’t even pick those up anymore because they dont trade for anything, but they’re still good. Goldstrike arch also works well if you’re fighting undead/demons and you can up it. Buriza is still good as well, and both are dirt cheap. You can prob get a 200ed buriza for very little. Edge is also very strong if you’re fighting undead/demons and have a good base.
If you’re playing elemental arrow then lycander, melody in a +3 base, or withwild (upped) are what you want until you can get ice runeword. Lycander isnt as good for physical bowazon.
