Hi people. Here again to talk about a build that I love so much to play. It’s very fun and have many fans around. I’ll make a guide focused on Damage Per Second.
1 - Pros and cons
Pros:
- Huge Area of Effect
- Leech makes it very tanky and gives lots of sustain
- Skills used doesnt require to aim precisely, wich helps a lot on farm speed
Cons:
- Very expensive considering return on farm speed
- Very vulnerable against monsters that can’t be leeched
- Not good for high players count
2 - Build items
Weapon - Windforce with a 15/40 jewel
Swap - Hustle on GMB
Helm - magic 30Dex with 3x 15/40 jewel
Amulet - Cat’s Eye
Armor - Fortitude
Gloves - Laying of Hands or Blood Gloves
Ring - Raven Frost
Ring - Blood Ring
Belt - Nosferatu’s Coil
Boots - War Traveler
Inventory: 14 Max Damage Grand Charms; 3/20/3FRW or 3/20/20 small charms; Annihilus and Torch
Mercenary
Act 2 with Might aura
Pride on Ethereal Giant Thresher or Thresher
Fortitude or Chains of Honor
Andariel’s Visage or Cure
3 - Status distribution
Strenght - Required
Dexterity - Remaining points
Vitality - None
Energy - None
4 - Skill distribution
20 Multiple Shot
20 Guided Arrow
20 Strafe
20 Critical Strike
20 Pierce
1 on each evade skill
5 - Comments and gameplay
I played a very long time with Faith build, that it’s very good too, but Windforce provides more damage, although being a more vulnerable build.
With Hustle, you can achieve the 8 frames attack speed, having a total of 151 IAS. The 7 frames, as far as I know, is not possible to achieve without Fanatiscism, because it requires 292 IAS.
For attack rating, it’s a full Dex build, that, along with AR bonus from gear and Penetrate, gives a very high attack rating. My Multishot AR is 6.387, having a 91% chance to hit a cow. and 74% chance to hit Diablo. My Strafe AR is 14.709, with a 95% chance to hit a cow and 87% chance to hit Diablo. My penetrate is at level 5 (1 hard point). And it can get better with bonus AR from Charms and from Raven Frost.
For your main skills, Multiple Shot provides a huge AOE damage, and the arrows travels a big distance, allowing you to kill monsters even before you see them. You just walk on dead bodies. Usefull information about this skill: “Aside from actual arrow damage, leeching and Deadly Strike/Critical Strike works with every arrow, but everything else (procs, crushing blow, knockback, et cetera) only triggers from the center two arrows.”
When monsters are scatered and kinda near you, Strafe becomes you best option. It’s does a overall higher damage then Guided Arrow, and can proc more times Crushing Blow if you’re using blood gloves.
Against dangerous monsters that can’t be leeched, like Diablo, Guided Arrow is your best option, because you can hit him by a very far and secure distance, without even seeing him on screen.
Besides having very low life, it can get very tanky with Strafe + Cannot be Frozen + Life Leech + Knockback. The problem is when monsters can’t be leeched, like Skeletons, Souls, Wraiths, Mephisto, Diablo and Physical Immune monsters. In situations like this, you become a lot vulnerable, and your best option is to kill them from a very far distance with Guided Arrow, and also let you merc tank for you.
It’s not much recommend to farm in all areas - you should avoid areas with lots of monsters that can’t be leeched. Cow Level, Chaos Sanctuary and Travincal are your best options to farm. You can farm areas like act2 tombs, but being aware of skeletons and wraiths.
For physical immunes, just use Magic Arrow. You’ll take a longer time to kill them, and need to be aware of being hit by them, by it’s totally killable. Another way of dealing with them would be to use 2-99 lightning damage small charms instead of 3/20/20. Your overall damage would be lower, specially because Critical Strike, that procs only for physical damage, but having like 7x of these charms on inventory would make you Multiple Shot deals a reasonable amount of damage. Besides that, it’s a insanely rare and expensive charm, but it’s a reasonable idea.
But be extremely aware of the Succubus and it’s variations. The physical immune variation is very dangerous, they’re missiles can kill you very fast, and you cant just stand there shooting magic arrow, even you and you merc will die very fast.
I also don’t recommend to play in on Players8. It’s a P1-P3 build, that can farm very well almost every area. For higher players count, I recommend to play with a friend the goes with a meelee tanky char, or even a Summon Necro. This way, you can spam Multiple Shot in a very safe condition.
If you’re playing like this build, with no Valkirye, you’ll find out it’s a challenger build to play, because you always have to be aware of no leech monsters. But, while you can leech, you’ll have no problems with survivability.
I also tested this same build with Act1 Merc with Faith, also using Razortail Belt, to achieve the 7 frames attack speed. But the Act2 Merc with Pride and Might, even on 8 frames attack speed, provides a higher DPS.
If you think you’re too vulnerable to monsters, you can opt to invest less points on Strafe to have Valkirye and focus on killing with Guided Arrow.
For Blood Gloves, the best would be +2 passive skills, 20% IAS, and Dexterity and Strenght, for damage purposes. For Blood Ring, the perfect one, for damage, would be +4 Max Dmg, +9 Min Dmg, 25 Strenght and 15 Dex or +11 to All Resists. Both will provide, at least, 3% life leech each, making you have 13% life leech with a perfect Nosferatu’s Coil, that is more than enough to be very tanky with your high physical damage.
But Laying of Hands is a very good gloves too with 350% damage against demons, specially because act bosses are considered demons.
The mana leech from Windforce is also all you need to have sustain.
Also, another nice way of playing is using Highlords Wrath amuler and Gore Riders boots, in order to have a nice Deadly Strike chance, that applys to every arrow from Multiple Shot, and keep the same IAS breakpoint. This way, P8 becomes much easier.
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For comparison, my lvl 94 amazon has the following stats:
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Damage: Multiple Shot = 817-9.822; Guided Arrow = 1.185-14k; Strafe = 1.193-14k; 8 frames attack speed
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Survivability: 552 life; 52 fire resist and 2 to other resists
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Other: 244 mana; 96% FRW
It has a very good gear, but still not perfect. Helm has only a total of 56% ED (of a maximum 120%); Concentration aura is lvl 19; Merc lvl 94 with might lvl 21, using Chains of Honor and Cure; 5 MinDmg ring; 13 attributes on Torch; 25 resists and 1,25 life per level on Fortitude. Also using 8x 14MaxDmg charms and 7x 3MaxDmg charms, being 6x with 3FRW and 1 with 10 life. Attack Rating was mentioned above. Strafe is currently with 19 hard points.All other non mentioned affixes are perfect.
So, i can get the damage even higher but upping level (Windforce), wich will provide more 25 Dexterity, by having more dexterity/strenght from a Blood Gloves and a Blood Ring, and specially by having perfect 15/40 jewels on helm.
So, that’s it, hope it helps. Any tips, recomendation and usefull information, or even doubts, please post here.
Have fun!
EDIT: Actually, the highest DPS possible would use 4 Max Damage small charms. SInce I’m using 7 SC, that would mean more 7 base Max Damage, and something like 180 total max damage if I had the perfect gear. But, at least here, I think it’s worth more to have wither 3% Faster Run Walk or (up to) 20 life. We already give up on lots of survivability affixes to have a high damage, and that extra damage won’t really be missed. But it’s up to you how you want to build it.
Edit2: better thinking about the affixes for the crafted items, i don’t think the +2 to passive skills would be one of the most desirables. Actually, on a build that have +4 to all skills, that would mean, for damage purposes, 1% more chance to pierce and to critical. That also would mean 10% more AR bonus from penetrate and 4-5% more chance for evade skills. So, would be relevant for survivability, but still low. If we think a bout +2 to bow skills, it would mean +10% damage for Strafe and +14% damage for Guided Arrow. It also would add +4% physical damage converted to magic on Magic Arrow. None of them are irrelevant, but I think +30 to a single resist would do much more, specially to lightning since we just surprisingly die for souls sometimes. So, the perfect Blood Gloves would be:
- 20% Increased Attack Speed
- 3% life stolen per hit
- 10% chance do Crushing Blow
- 15 to Strenght
- 15 to Dexterity
- 20 to life
- 30% to Lightning Resist
Similar thing can be said about the blood ring, since the +4 MaxDmg affix seems kinda weak. First, because we already have a high max damage, secondly because 4 is kinda low. I know that this is the perfect roll for damage on small charm, but I still think there are other better affix for the build, and the best one would be +11 to all resists or +30 to a single resist (lightning again). So, the perfect Blood Ring would be:
- +9 to Minimum Damage
- 3% life stolen per hit
- 25 to Strenght
- 15 to Dexterity
- 20 to life
- +11 to all resistances /or/ +30 to lightning resist
Just remember that these are the perfect rolls, and you can still get GG items without perfect rolls, since they’re extremely unlikely to get, and would worth tons of Jahs.