Hey everyone,
Any point in starting as a strafe/guided son with the changes + hustle?
Has anyone tested it?
If so how was leveling and where did you mf? Assuming zon’s are still limited on mf and farming zons early on… although I’d like to play it if it’s worth trying now.
Thanks
You can start bowazon. Insight + hustle prebuff might be a good combo.
But a sorc would still be a better starter character. Also a javazon might be a better starter than bowazon. But bowbuild might be able to help you with solo act3 as amazon.
You wouldn’t run hustle now for Fanat?
And act 3 merc for enchant or night merc for dps?
I’m going to be running a strafe bowazon now that strafe has been fixed.
Pewpewpewpewpewpew!! 
Planning on running a Sorc and Bowazon concurrently to start out, then probably a horking throwbarb once I find things to build him with.
Sorc first?
Really don’t want to roll another sorc to start lol
Just not sure how easily chaos will be to clear as starting a strafe zon
The sorceress is undeniably the best starter due to her not being as item bound as the other classes when it comes to her skills… And… You know… Teleport.
No shame in having a Sorc on the ready for some quick telefarming. 
As far as a strafezon, your go-to early on is going to be the Harmony runeword.
Strafezon is actually easily able to solo all areas, so you wont have an issues with clearing game and opening TZ and her gear requirements are nowhere close to MS. You will be easily able to clear CS just dont expect speeds of typical farmers. (that is also info from before 2.4 so it should be even easier now) I am not talking about situations when you are playing Cupid - naked and with white shortbow .
What’s budget for cs look like as a strafe zon? If you don’t mind me asking
It depends what you mean as reasonable farming. I would say it starts around Buriza, and only gets better till WF, after which it is Faith and MS (unless you want to stay strafer, it is still Faith though). This being rather hard to answer like : get x,y go CS, I would suggest to clear the game, stay in Pits/TZs and occasional journey to CS to check if killing speed is to your liking. Now without TZs I would suggest to farm Pits and then once you are somewhat farmed move on to CS, however with TZs I believe it is the best to open them.
Keep an eye on Atma - on strafer this ammy can make a difference between area being farmable or a chore.
For lvling keep anything +x-y fire damage, if you happen upon Kuko early then you basically twinked.
While I am not a fan of mixing Bowa with Jav, there is however DClone situation. You have maxed CS anyway also some D/A/E 1 point in Jab + Obedience is your Anni.
Peace - makes short work of NM, however you need hard points into Valk or Harmony.
I wouldnt also go full Dex on Strafer imo some Vita is needed.
Ty for this info! Early on I’m sure squeezing mf into the build is chore? I just don’t wanna get stuck not finding anything early - as I’d just make a sorc to mf with I guess ?
No the hustle runeword itself is still garbage and worse than harmony or insight.
Was a better prebuff item now still a prebuff item but worse.
It wasnt even a viable prebuff item because BOS even at level 9 changed almost no logical gear compsitions break points. If u were stacking CB ur gear had so low ias it made no difference and if u were stacking ias u already hit the mid range breakpoint with 2 simple mid game items. BoS contributed almost nothing other than run speed, which vigor does even better, so theres no real reason for it. Its significantly lower damage output and slower move speed than harmony. If youre playing in a party and using it to benefit overall party dps as a mathematical whole, then it kinda makes sense, but thats really about it.
Plus, the main focus is around strafe now since strafe is finally ACTUALLY receiving its rightful buff it was supposed to, and strafes max breakpoint requires a lot less ias than other abilities do.
Uhh what? BoS 9 allowed every weapon in the game to hit their final breakpoint
Every bow of hell quality minus crossbows already could with strafe. When discussing bows, it changes nothing. And again, just because it pushes breakpoint doesnt mean its an actual dps improvement. Opting for a bow with a faster base doesnt automatically mean dps increase if the raw damage decrease from the base + damage calculations ends up putting out less damage per second on its realized frames, which is the case for almost all faster bow bases anyways. In this particular case, the biggest buff is given to the highest average dps base that can achieve the fastest strafe breakpoint. Since GMB is the highest average and is fully capable of hitting the fastest possible frames, it receives the largest bonus in raw damage output since its % based.
People who build with faster bases are going to be sorely disappointed because the speed of strafe wont change as a result since it has way lower ias requirements to hit the fastest break points anyways, and the %damage effects are worth LESS when base damage is lower.
25% of 100 is 25 bonus damage
25% of 200 is 50 bomus damage
The 2 are not equal.
If youre firing the same speeds, the base with the higher damage will prevail.
This means the higher your base damage, the more the 25% damage buff will actually be valued at, and in strafes case, since the speeds will be no different once u have very basic mid game gear, youre only gimping yourself by using any low damage high attack speed bases now even moreso than before.
A lot of you seem to be forgetting that the max ias breakpoint calculations for bowzons were never based on strafe. Strafe has its own measurements, thats basically capped wearing almost nothing more than a treachery. I forget the exact value, but its significantly lower. And so nothings really changed for anything BUT strafe. Damage values will remain the same for all other abilities.
The fanat and bos will not effect strafe, because you will already have what u need to get strafe capped frames without it. The damage increase from fanat on hustle will be so mild you will barely notice it in the mid game and BOS wont actually increase your dps in the mid game where the bow is actually intended to be used.
Every single piece of evidence points to hustle having no realistic or logical use other than a cheap teamplay fana aura, which if you are running with a group of 8, would clearly add enough damage to a party as a while to make it THEN AND ONLY THEN worth using, but would otherwise drop YOUR acerage damage potential vs harmony.
But your comment saying it allows everything to hit final breakpoints with end game gear was completely useless, because you’d never use this in parallel with end game stuff. Its way too weak. Low ED, low benefits, outdamaged by harmony, same highest rune to make it, and lvl 1 fana value BARELY touches damage totals.
As a matter of fact, the lower ED value alone of the runeword vs a harmony runeword in even a greatbow will almost COMPLETELY offset the entire damage difference of fanaticism all by itself.
Now show me a build where youve farmed nightmare to pieces and havent moved to hell yet, where the damage from this is actually INCREASED by gear versus a harmony, because i assure you ive done the math on almost every viable NM bow and it doesnt happen at any point, with any gear configuration. Give me an example of any gear set and ill literally gear it out in a video and show you why it doesnt benefit.
Wind druid with Crescent Moon [b + Lawbringer pb frenzy merc. Grief instead of of Crescent Moon once you get that Lo rune. That sanctuary aura and decrep gets the job done and makes clearing easy. It is kind of slow but a very fun and sturdy build if played right. No attack rating required either.
Character:
Amazon
Wereform:
None
Skill:
Strafe
Table:
IAS
P Weapon:
Grand Matron Bow [10]
Fanaticism:
0
Burst of Speed:
0
Mark of the Bear
Holy Freeze:
0
Slowed By:
0
Decrepify
Chilled
IAS FPA
0 7+(4)+12
3 7+(4)+11
11 6+(3)+10
26 6+(3)+9
42 5+(3)+9
46 5+(3)+8
80 5+(3)+7
120 4+(2)+7
157 4+(2)+6
You are basically just wrong in your whole rant.
BoS1:
Character:
Amazon
Wereform:
None
Skill:
Strafe
Table:
IAS
P Weapon:
Grand Matron Bow [10]
Fanaticism:
0
Burst of Speed:
1
Mark of the Bear
Holy Freeze:
0
Slowed By:
0
Decrepify
Chilled
IAS FPA
0 6+(3)+9
11 5+(3)+9
14 5+(3)+8
35 5+(3)+7
58 4+(2)+7
78 4+(2)+6
BoS opens up different gear setups and allows you to use different jewels in your open slots.
Lvl1 Fana + Lvl1 BoS
Character:
Amazon
Wereform:
None
Skill:
Strafe
Table:
IAS
P Weapon:
Grand Matron Bow [10]
Fanaticism:
1
Burst of Speed:
1
Mark of the Bear
Holy Freeze:
0
Slowed By:
0
Decrepify
Chilled
IAS FPA
0 5+(3)+8
15 5+(3)+7
32 4+(2)+7
46 4+(2)+6
Even endgame gear like faith GMB would have a reduced IAS requirement from 50 to 16 with lvl 1 BoS. So you can reach max frames with 20 ias gloves only, which allows you atmas + razor + ED allres jewels.
So yes, BoS helps with different weapon and build choices, but I still don’t like the prebuff ctc function…
You’re not addressing so many changes this makes that it’s painful.
Your entire argument is moot, because you’re not considering DPS as the ultimate goal, which doesn’t only come from attack speed. Sure you can use it in parallel with certain gear sets to get certain things to work differently. Sure it can enable you to use different jewels. The problem is the overall dps loss you will experience just for USING this runeword makes it completely unviable. The ED on this runeword is so horribly low, and ANYTHING end game smokes it, and again, when you use it in combination with anything that basically already isn’t the mid game meta, there’s no benefit, because you can get to 8 frames strafe with just 46% ias. That’s literally a treachery, and ANY other ias item.
You have to figure in next hit delay, which having lower frames actually causes to be worse, and since NHD for strafe is based around 4-25 frames, it will cause an extra arrow to miss in any single target encounters if you moved to 7 frames.
If you’re fighting a single target mob / boss of any sort, 7 frames would actually cause 1 more arrow to miss almost every single strafe, so instead of missing 5 arrows by default, you’re now almost guaranteed to miss 6, because they’re too consecutive in the 25 frame reset. Trying to go faster is actually going to cause LESS damage single target, because being on an 8 frame cast on a 4 frame NHD sychronizes better with the 4 frame Next Hit Delay, almost no matter what frame you shoot at.
So if you’re shooting at 4k damage x 5 arrows you’re at 20k. If you lose 1 of those arrows, you’re at 16k.
Strafe is a 0.16 second 4 frame NHD
Strafe at 8 frames fires 2-3 times per second depending on the frame u start at.
Assuming 3;
10 arrows are fired in 0.8 seconds
that’s 0.08 seconds per arrow.
thats a dead 1/2 sync, causing 5 arrow misses.
if you do it at 0.07 seconds per arrow, it causes an extra missed arrow per shot.
frame ranges;
0.00 - 0.16
0.17 - 0.32
0.33 - 0.48
0.49 - 0.64
0.65 - 0.80
(First set NHD) (0.00 - 0.16 seconds)
arrow 1 hits at (0.00)
arrow 2 misses (0.07) (inside 0.16 NHD)
(Second set NHD) (0.17 - 0.32 seconds)
arrow 3 misses at (0.14) (still inside 0.16 NHD where a hit already occured arrow 1)
arrow 4 hits at (0.21) (first hit on second NHD set)
(Third set NHD) (0.33 - 0.48 seconds)
arrow 5 misses at (0.28) (hit already happened inside of 0.17-0.32 second mark)
arrow 6 hits at (0.35) (first hit on third NHD set)
(Fourth set NHD) (0.49 - 0.64 seconds)
arrow 7 misses at (0.42) (hit already happened inside of 0.33-0.48 second mark)
arrow 8 hits at (0.49) (first hit of fourth set NHD)
(Fifth set NHD) (0.65 - 0.70 seconds) (Ends at 0.7 because cast is complete here)
arrow 9 misses at (0.56) (hit already happened inside of 0.49-0.64 second mark)
arrow 10 misses at (0.63) (hit already happened inside of 0.49-0.64 second mark)
6 arrows missed
At 0.08, it moves the 10th arrow into a different set of NHD because of the additional 0.1 seconds in the cast, and lets it hit the target, but all the other ones continue to alternate as they were.
Thus, dropping to 7 frames is actually a negative thing for strafe (for single target). It’s more wasted arrows per cast. And if you do the math, 6 frames actually creates the same problem. You’d need to get to 5 frames for single target to yield more damage, which likely isn’t even possible and if it is possible, the combination of gear you’d need in order to make it work would be so sub par, that that would probably actually be a damage reduction as well even though your attack speed would be so significantly higher.
So that being said, since 8 frames is the ideal since we can’t get to 5, we go back to my original point, where if you are actually USING the bow for damage, it’s outperformed by harmony because you can already hit max OPTIMAL strafe frames with just 46%ias.
Refer to maxroll - resources - next-hit-delay
This is why you need to think more about how damage occurs before you just sling numbers on a screen. Diablo 2 is one of the only games where you can say “more attack speed doesn’t necessarily mean more damage done”. It can and OFTEN DOES actually result in LESS realized DPS output because of other mechanics and or bugs.
And my point was still correct. Mid game, if you have a treachery OR hustle armor, combined with ANY other ias item, you’re already slinging 8 frames strafes. Even if you could go faster, it’s actually bad to do so, and since there’s very few items you end up getting before that with IAS, it doesn’t change the earlier game dynamic at all. Your frames basically are going to go from slowest 12, to fastest 8, with just 2 items. The in between basically almost doesn’t even exist.
ALSO, yet ANOTHER point…
Your figures are on a GMB, which you would need access to end game hell quality stuff to get, in which case, this bow is already outclassed by like 3 unique bows, since the strafe frames are achieved with so little effort.
Realistically, you’re building this on a razor or blade bow, since it’s a mid game item anyways. And yes, a faster bow base would mean even LESS ias required to hit those breakpoints, but the point remains that you barely need any ias in the first place for strafe to be at max potential output, so this is a non issue.
Can it unlock more frames? Sure I guess, in some super screwed up scenarios you’d never be in…
But in almost every scenario, that actually means LESS damage because “blizzard things”.
The ONLY 1 prebuff scenario I can see it making sense for is if you want to try using it as a prebuff stick, and building out a heavy hitting crossbow. THEN we could actually be talking about something bigger. But I haven’t done any of the math on crossbows prebuffed with BoS vs NHD.
THAT might be interesting. I wonder if you could hit the 8 frames with a colossus crossbow now? I’m going to check now because it interests me.
The changes were dumb. A lvl 1 fanat is awful and the bow is still a prebuff weapon but an even worse one.
A harmony bow will always be better because weapon ED is infinitely better than skill ED from fanat (that stacks with %damage to demons and what not).
No melee is going to make a hustle either. That ko is better spent on a lawbringer because law bringer:
A) gives a source of decrep
B) removes physical resistances of undead, even ones that are immune
C) gives you 660% damage to undead (which was fixed in 2.4)
A lawbringer in the offhand for a barb essentially renders one of the most difficult enemies to melee a non issue.
What if you got both???
My idea for early ladder for fun and not min/maxing:
Bowazon with Harmony with A5 Merc wearing Lawbringer + Hustle?
Does A5 Merc with Lawbringer outdo the A2 Merc with Might?
Your reanimates are also benefiting from Lawbringer + Fanatacism.
As a follow up, digging further into it, this MIGHT make sense as a crossbow.
65% ias hits 8 frames strafe with this thing, and even more scarily, 29% ias hits 8 frames with a 15 fana 1bos.
The average damage of a gmb is 43. a CCB is 61. That’s a HUGE difference.
Now you’re looking at a 50% damage increase on just the base, THEN a 25% damage increase on top of THAT increased number for the strafe buff. That’s going to be borderline absurd.
So considering everything, it may actually open up an entirely new crossbow meta…
AND if you were using a faith colossus crossbow with just a 12 fana, you’d only need 32%ias to hit the 8 frames strafe with BoS, so you’d be looking at an insanely easy ubers build here minus the faith, but the 15 fana would open up just 29%ias to maintain 8 frames with a CCB faith, while at the same time, using only nosferatu’s and your ias gloves to hit IDEAL strafe frames for single target. That means you’ll be able to offset like ALL your other gear with a permanent atmas, fort if u wanted, or just a ton of CB gear…WHILE maintaining a machine gun strafer…or you could alternate atmas for cat’s eye, switch the gloves out for dracs, and have a permanently unkillable machine…
Crossbows are going to be the new meta, and I’m calling it now.
Faith Colossus Crossbow here I come.