Goodbye to the D2 Amazon community

Amazon
62

oh ill look into that then… what a bummer.
EDIT#1
ill try that IK set bonus (Gloves and boots Combo) with a nosferatu’s belt. Should hit the 100% IAS with all of that. Ill be able to wear my Fortitude too.
I think that would be the better option.

EDIT#2
I figured IK is better than sigon’s, and honestly what I am losing seems minimal. +2 bow skills on gloves, other stats too, and war travs damage output. I guess it ain’t that bad? Please make me feel better for the holidays. lol.

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It sucks and such an expensive runewords shouldn’t have 25% chance of fail like that. Before you try and sell the bow and yourself as a conman, you can try a build without Fortitude. The bow is a fine immolation arrow bow, with it’s skill plusses. Max immo and synergies. Shoot explosive arrows and add immo arrow when it’s of cool down. You’ll want skill+ and an armor with 15 ias jewel in, to reach your breakpoint. Multi thus also works against squishies and to leech mana.

I like Spirit forge armor for Medium armor (better than Nats armor), good life added for lower base vit. 15 strength for equip, fire damage added to your explo/immo, and 2 open sockets where one should give you the ias you need.

Works great on cows, not so great in Chaos Sanctuary.

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64

IK is better 40 FRW is hard to pass on, also stats. Sigon is only better if you severely lacking CR, or LL. Considering that you just made Faith, kinda surprising you didnt use LoH for gloves. Also for future - +2 passive is better, than +2 bow. Sadly WT loss is a lot of DPS, unfortunately I dont think there is any other way of reaching 7 FPA with GMB at 12 Fana , while keeping Forti. Admittedly I am not sure if Treachery isn’t better option, it probably is actually. Would suggest checking it with someone like TSBoyer. I do understand though that you may not wanna ditch Forti.

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65

No you’re right, he can use a standard optimal setup with Fortitude, just needs to swap in IK gloves/boots for 25%ias to hit 7fpa with 12 Fanat.

Only reason I told him to getting moving on the sell & trade to make a new one, is because ladder season is about to arrive and his 12 fanat bow is gonna drop through the floor in value and he’s pretty much gonna lose all value in it if he doesn’t trade it now. Also, the damage loss isn’t just from Travs, which is a lot on it’s own, usually like 150-250 damage easily even with low ED% mods. But he is also losing Laying Of Hands, which is a very large damage mod vs. bosses and probably about half the creature types in the game.

But if he wants to go budget way and take it slow, IK glove/boot is way to go. IK boots even have MF% to sort of compensate for loss of Travs, also good leech.

Treachery is never a good option over Fortitude btw. No reason to use Treach if you possess a Fort on your Bowa.

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66

Thanks guys.

Ya LoH wasn’t in the cards due to the fact that I’m gonna need Ik gloves and boots.

Gonna see if I can get something for my faith in the meantime.

67

Wow, this is very interesting guide from veteran played bowzone for so long time. I normally run bowzon as fun built (along with bladesin)… Learned a lot, thank you.
So, I think it safe to assume (besides pushing IAS) critical elements are - Wind Force bow, Fort Armor and breaking 8FPS for attack speed?
P.S. semi stupid question - why strafe considered (by literally everyone) ineffective skill when compare to multi? Correct me if I wrong here - it shot number of arrows and scales damage depending on number of targets - say using (theoretically, I could be very very wrong here) strafe vs. bosses “should” be more effective compare to guided arrow? or in cases then you need eliminate number of moving targets w/o targeting them (I got an impression strafe have built-in auto-target)

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  1. Windforce builds are only for budget bowas, which works fine if you aren’t aiming at an expensive bowa. You want Faith GMB setup as listed in this guide under the elite end game bowa setup. It’s more expensive but better.
  2. Strafe is deceiving. Strafe also does only 3/4ths weapon damage just like Multi does, so that ED% mod that it gets for levels gained, is not adding nearly as much DPS as people think it does. Strafe is also deceiving because the arrows it fires come out in a line and that line must be pivoted around, which requires time in the animation, to be able to hit skewed mobs. This is actually a big loss in DPS. Multi on the other hand, is just straight up spraying like 20 arrows per 7fpa cast that pierce through everything, with no animation time required to pivot & fire. There isn’t any loss in DPS here. Multi also goes like 2 screens away and hits everything in the cone. Multi is just better. All you need to do to see for yourself, is level a zon to about 80, with decent gear, and test Multi vs. Strafe for yourself. Everything about Multi is just faster clear times vs. mobs for several several reasons that I’m not going to go into here because I"m kind of pressed on time at the moment. Go test it for yourself. But your Multi should be dropping about 15-20 arrows per cast at 7fpa before you can see what I mean. Don’t test Strafe on a 60% ias zon vs. a base lv 1 Multi, that isn’t an adequate test. What I’m talking about is that with end-game peak level gear, Multi will certainly end up being better for mob killing.
  3. Strafe vs. bosses isn’t what you should be doing at all. Strafe has odd bugs that makes it start missing attacks for no reason. What you want to do is use base lv 1 Jab with your shield up vs. bosses. If you watch the 2nd video “UBER demonstration” you can see why. Jab also allows Crushing Blow to do it’s full damage vs. bosses because Jab is melee. Strafe is ranged and it greatly diminishes the damage on Crushing Blow. Even against normal act bosses like Diablo at the end of Chaos, you just want to use Jab. The Jab doesn’t miss frames like Strafe, it deals similar damage to firing Guided Arrow uninterrupted, and also allows you to block/dodge pretty much 90% of incoming attacks, ← That’s important when you’re running a DEX based glass cannon Bowa. That shield side let’s you tank UBERs man. Watch the elite bowa video.
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What’s the difference between strafe and guided arrow for bosses. Does that same bug make it so GA is better for bosses?

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Thank you! This certainly make sense (animation time for launching 10 arrow vs. just bursting 10+ arrows at once)

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Strafe is decent against bosses, but truthfully it’s not going to tag much more damage if any, than just using Guided Arrow. This is where a lot of people get confused. You’d think that Strafe would land more damage but it doesn’t because 1) Strafe still requires attack rating to hit which means it does miss at times, and 2) It’s still buggy just like Zeal or Fury or Fend or anything else in the game that roots you in place and lands a series of consecutive attacks. Sometimes it just bugs up and shows animations hitting but nothing actually hits. Between these two problems, Guided Arrow spam ends up dealing just as much damage as a maxed out Strafe vs. a single target.

In the case of vs. powerful bosses like UBERs, you do not want to use ranged because ranged doesn’t make good use of Crushing Blow. You want to use base lv 1 Jab vs. powerful bosses. Even against normal act bosses, base lv 1 Jab is your bread & butter. It’s just a better boss killer vs. single target than any ranged spam.

But they are about to drop that patch which could change many things.
We’ll see.

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Thanks. I have been running a blade fury sin and even though CB and other mods are lowered the shear number of Blades that hit just shred the bosses I’ve taken on so far. It started me thinking that strafe should have a similar effect.

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73

Lol same reasons here furysin my favorite sin built… almost like using machine gun in D2 and yes there are a good reason why Grief is ultimate weapon for furysin (and no death not even close to it)

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Great guide brother!
I love your enthousiasam making D2r Bowa PVP serious.
2 questions.

  1. The upcoming patch is scaring the sh** out of me d2 jsp wise. Would you sell your gear pre changes announcement?

  2. Would you rate my setup and tell me what could be improved please?

Setup:

120/45/30 Perfect Defense 50 Tiara
Perfect 30@ 1.5lpl AP Fort - Regular AP
Cats Eye
Perfect Base Superior 15ed 3ar 3 Skill GMB Faith - Perfect Roll 15-2
1st pair 20 P&M - 20ias - KB - 3mana leech - +extra adds
2nd pair 20ias - KB - 15agi - 30psn res - + extra adds
Matching Big Blue 250/20 Ravens
P def and P Life Leech Nos
Perfect defense and mf - 190ed 50mf 5atd War Travs
Switch : 199/5 Eth Upd Titans
Switch : Perfect SS w/ -15 req jewel

Inventory:

20/20/5 Anni
20/20 Ztorch
451 Psn SC

frw/max/ar

5x 3/3/20
2x 3/3/19
2x 3/3/18
3x 3/3/17
2x 3/3/16
8x 3/3/15
1x 3/3/13
4x 3/3/12
1x 3/3/11
2x 3/3/10

4x 5fhr/3max/20ar

3max/14ar/2dex (temp)
3max/19ar/1dex (temp)

Stash:

Dual leech Ring 4ml / 3ll / 40ar - 22str -17life
Tgods
Lidless
6/6/x CTA
20light sorb Wisp
Swordback Hold
30frw 3os tiara w/ 3x 15ias 30lr

Best to sell now in case Blizz messes up current state of GA/Multi bowa?

75

If you want to keep it for pvp, don’t sell any of that. This is an excellent setup.
There are a handful of things though, that I want to point out to you:

  1. With the changes they had proposed to Amazon, I don’t think it’s going to change much if anything at all, from what is already considered Bowa meta. However, I am afraid that changes to other classes may set Bowa out and make it one of the more useless builds in pvp. If there were a reason to sell any of that, it would be this. D2r has already buffed many things even before this patch, like Assassin’s having unblockable finishers and Smite now also ignoring dodge/evade/claw block rather than just normal block. Then we also had the removal of WSG and desynch. These things seriously hurt Bowa in D2r. If they don’t grant Amazon a REAL BIG buff in some area to keep up with the buffs other classes are receiving, Bowa may become somewhat comparable in uselessness as what like a Fire Druid used to be. Unfortunately this is what we are looking at. I’d say it’s up to your own judgement whether you keep or sell for your pvp purposes.
  2. Get a Highlord’s to go with the Cat’s Eye as a swap in pvp. It isn’t about the Deadly Strike, it’s about the Light res stack.
  3. Get yourself a Diamond Faith to be used in certain match ups so you can wear Cleg’s for 25% slow. From my experience so far, the 25% slow is important now vs. Sins & Paladins specifically. Some matches are better to use GMB, others Diamond. You could use Diamond or Shadow or even Ward Bow, but truth be told, Diamond is the better 65%ias bow because it has the lowest DEX req, which allows you to stack the most vita with it.
  4. Get yourself a nice rare damage ring to replace the 2nd Raven. Usually people sell really good damage rings for a lot cheaper than they are actually worth because most people don’t realize the damage ring is what Bowas want. You can find rings with relatively high +min +max +life rep"which is baller in pvp" and +stats or +life and +all res. These rings have the same effect as War Traveler 15-25 damage. it just adds a lot more in the actual character damage than you’d think.
  5. TRY to get your hands on a set of powerful Rare Ethereal Cruel Fool Self-Rep Matriarchal Javelins. This is the hardest item for a Bowa to get its hands on, but it is the most meaningful piece in your setup. Even an average set of decent Eth Rare Mats that has about 450 max throw, is a very significant upgrade in damage from Eth Titans. If you get real lucky, you can find sets with near 500 throw or I’ve eve seen sets as high as about 505 on mat with 20% to 40% ias on them as well. ← These are true godlies and if you can get your hands on a set of powerful Eth Rare Mats like that, it sets your Zon apart from other Zons and even most other characters as it will be able to bully other characters with sheer damage output. These Rare Eth Mat javas like this, are mandatory to have if you were so serious enough to want to compete in say d2jsp tournaments/ladders for top positions. They matter that much.
  6. Take that jewel out of your stormshield and add a bit more strength on the Zon if you have to. What you want to find is a really good rare jewel for the Stormshield. You can get a hold of rare jewels with +life rep, even +min +max damage, ED%, +all res in addition to singular res affixes = makes a lot of res on stormshield. These rare jewels are definitely worth getting a hold of. Usually on d2jsp, I find the best deals on these when you actually take the time to scroll through some dudes full “For Trade” list of 200 items, and hidden in there in somewhere is some godly rare jewel that everyone is overlooking, that the trader doesn’t realize is worth a lot more than 50fg.
  7. About the 451 psn SC. The 451 SC is not countering life rep or Eshield in any special way beyond what any other DPS “damage per second” is doing. Gonna shoot the math over so you can get an idea of what is actually going on here with 451 SCs as in the end, I had decided to stop using them. So what you’re looking at is how much DPS is the 451 SC vs. simply another +3 max SC. Let’s do the math. 451 poison over 12 seconds. Over the course of 60s, the 451 will deal 2255 poison damage. But damage in pvp is reduce to .17 of its original value. So the 2255 turns into 383 poison damage in pvp. Then any decent pvper out there will have at least 75% poison resistance. So 383 cut by 75% = 96 poison damage over 12 seconds, and this isn’t to mention if someone has MORE than 75% res and/or poison length reduced on gear. That 96 poison over 12 seconds can be abysmal. Even a solid 96 per 12 seconds is only actually 8 damage per second. A simple +3 max on the other hand, is modified by DEX and all sources of ED%. So let’s say we are looking at a Vitazon with 225 DEX after stacked mods, lv15 fanat (288%ed), Fort (300%ed), 45/120%ed. This is 933%ed to the +3max SC = 28 actual damage in the character screen. A Bowa with 7fpa attacks 3.57 times per second. To make this easier let’s look at it as 7x per 2 seconds. In 12 seconds the Bowa can land that 28 damage from the +3max SC 42x. This 2842=1176 damage in 12 seconds. However, the Bowa also crits virtually 3/4th strikes that it makes. So 11762=2352. Then we realistically take out a fourth of that damage to count for non crits = 1764. Then we apply the pvp modifier that reduces all damage to .17 = 300 damage over 12 seconds. At worst you are against 50% DR and max block, which will cut the damage per 12 seconds to an estimate of 37 damage per 12 seconds. At best against no DR% and no block, it’s a solid 300 damage over 12 seconds. Also keep in mind that solid +3max is also adding to like Light Bolt damage for when you need to surpass block rate to make sure you always hit for Open Wounds. And the +3max is also granting +AR and either FRW or life value. In the end, what you’re looking at is that the 451 can be a bit better vs. 50% DR and max block unless the person is wearing more defense vs. poison, but the +3max is is always stable damage output and ends up easily outperforming the 451 vs. lesser DR% and lesser block rates, and also comes with the extra mods of FRW or Life. I’m not saying ditch your 451, but I figured I’d present to you a good look at the actual attributes of what is going on there, as it is a rarely discussed topic.
  8. Get yourself a cube bo setup with the CTA + 2x BKs + Arach + Seraph.
  9. Other gear swaps you should look into - Lacerator, Phoenix Shield, Dungo, Hotspur, Dwarf Star, Dracs & Goblin if you like to do UBERs, Treach & Demonlimb for prebuffs, and then 60/160-Vamp Gaze if you’re into the ZvZ scene.

Best advice I can give you right now before this patch hits. It’s up to you to sell or keep though. They just haven’t given us enough information on exactly what is going to happen for me to be able to give you a good answer on whether or not you should sell or keep.

Sorry man ^^

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76

You are a Beast man!
I love how precise you are.

Thanks so much for the calculation related to the 451. The idea was in fact to negate the rep life. Tested a few hits (without Open wounds) and the Psn dmg would still be pretty decent vs non stacked individuals. I am thinking of getting rid of it while it’s still 3.5k ish fg. Given the math I think I will get rid of it!

P.s. I have 205frw with Titans and people tell me I desynch. I also heard desynch didn’t work in D2R so I was surprised!

Will keep looking out for your guides, I love them. Forget about the noobs trash talking you. You are doing an amazing job man! Happy New Year brother!

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Also let’s duel whenever life permits. I would love to basic ZvZ
Cheers man

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Guys … yet another semistupid question - what exactly do OW? (in case PvM and PvP)? - For PvM I always been looked onto is as simple replacement of prevent monster heal - anything else I am missing here (and if so by how much? :slight_smile: )

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https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Open_Wounds
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80

I just wanna say I finished getting the gear for my bowazon. I finally got a 13 Fana +3 GMB.
Got a Fortitude in a 15% ED Great Hauberk. Got 247/20 raven. Dual leech / AR / Res Ring. A 15 IAS 30% ED in Mav’s helm.

She is currently lvl 65, just equipped my Faith. She is cray cray. I was using different harmony bows to level, they we’re great. But my oh my… Faith is something else.

Don’t even have my Pride equipabble on merc yet (67) and don’t even have my torch.
She is destroying everything. This is really fun.

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This is an amazing guide! My zon completely smokes mobs with multishot, but when I use the one point jab it definitely doesn’t hit too hard on bosses.

Wondering if it’s worth putting maxing points into jab over guided arrow? Seems that guided arrow dps when maxed out at least for my character isn’t much different than magic arrow with one skill point.

Does it also make sense to max out magic arrow over guided arrow? Why not look into maxing out freezing arrow or exploding arrow? Could those potentially be good boss killers?

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