Goodbye to the D2 Amazon community

Amazon
143

I wouldn’t be so sure. You get the +14% DPS from having 8fpa but the loss of 140% Ed probably more than offsets this. In bed now so will have to check in the morning.

I did Ubers solo 2 days ago with my bowazon. If it’s an attack rating issue, then my zon won’t care since I gunned them down with guided arrow.

144

I’ll do a maxroll comparison.

In PTR 2.4?

Edit:

PTR 2.4 version

rg0106ls
That’s without fortitude. What isn’t shown there, against act bosses and demons you do MUCH more than listed dmg thanks to laying of hand.

7y0106ux
Fortitude version (exchanged 60/160 for forty)

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Not sure what you encountered there, but I ran UBERs with my Bowa several times to sell torches for the initial portion of D2r release. If you didn’t see the video already, here it is: D2r Elite Bowa End-Game Setup - 8 Player & UBER Demo.mp4 - Twitch She wasn’t even baller strong yet when I was doing this runs. UBER kills begin about midway through the video, Baal is the last one. No special setup is even used. It’s just base lv 1 Jab, T-God swap, Dwarf swap, Dracul swap, and Treach & Demonlimb prebuffs. Baal actually goes down easier than Duriel tbh. Duriel is the hardest one for Bowa due to the freeze aura.

As far as WF transcending Faith GMB pvm clear speeds, it just ends up not panning out that way. We’ve gone over this in this thread already: Faith Merc sucks on Physical Bowazon :scream: - Amazon - Diablo 2 Resurrected Forums (blizzard.com) Check the calculations for yourself. Not only does Faith GMB end up being more raw damage than WF not even counting IAS, but Faith GMB also just fires faster and doesn’t miss hits. GMB Faith surprisingly ends up being significantly more DPS output than any WF setup. Also with the idea of Amp damage, realistically Atma’s is simply not needed in the strong end-game. With a good Faith GMB setup, monsters get mowed down so quickly in 8 player even, that the 5% Amp proc doesn’t really have time to proc, and when the Zon approaches that level of raw kill speed without Amp, the 30%frw on Cat’s Eye becomes more important than anything for clear times to be able to actually move through areas quickly. Also keep in mind that although WF raw damage is amplified a bit more by LOH, the Faith Bow also has +% damage to Undead.

However, there is one method in which you could make a WF better than a Faith GMB, but it would be ultra ballsy to do and an expensive blunder if things went wrong. If you were to use Metalgrid and make an Iron Golem out of Beast + a2 merc with Might/Conc, you could make a WF setup that definitely easily transcended Faith GMB damage output. But I would not suggest doing this unless you had a 2nd joining games with you and prebuffing that IG before each run with straight high level Barb BO, otherwise he’s gonna run into the wrong mob and die eventually.

Btw Juni, you were right about the +15max jewel if it was applied to a DEX based build and when the merc auras are on. Scroll back up and start reading at post #137. Remember, this is in conjunction with pvm, not pvp. In pvp, the 45/120 is still going to be necessary on a Vita build.

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I’ve got no problem in live with Ubers. I was testing in PTR 2.4 only with my kicksin. Hitting Baal is super hard.

Faith setup at max roll PTR:
2v0106qb

147

oh lol
The bosses are seriously OP bugged in PTR. At least something was definitely wrong there in first few days of release when I played.
Hopefully whatever that was, they don’t add that patch into the live game.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I could agree with buffing bosses a bit, but w/e they did there in the PTR, feels like a tad too much in the sustain department. I’d rather see boss damage get buffed.

Btw:

Thanks for clearing this up.
I guess that puts an end to Jeweler’s possibility.
The JMOD however, I think there may be some options to toy with.

148

rg0106ls
7y0106ux
2v0106qb

At maxroll, choose PTR D2 Planer, then copy/paste those three ending into your browsers. WF 45/120 + 60/160 setup wins. You can tinker there to see whether you could change something.

149

Yes Thank you for confirming this!
Currently using dex build with might merc and pride concen 20 on him.
The massive ed I’m already getting from fort and faith couldnt exceed the dmg from stacking more ed from helm if I’m dex orientated.
But yes when I go full vita build the math becomes rly close btw ed and max jewel.

150

Those 40ed 15 ias jewels are rly expensive compare to the 15 max 15 ias jewel.
This also shows you could certainly get away using the max jewel instead and still be at par lvl against someone stacking those ed jewels.

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Well the thing that’s important to understand about 45/120 in pvp is that when you swap to Javside you don’t have a Faith aura. If you use 45/45 in pvp on vita, your Javside damage drops significantly and this is not a good thing because in most duels you are Javside 50% of the time or greater, some duels you are nearly 100% Javside like vs. Barb or Charge/Smiter or Ghost or even ect ect.

152

OO yea certainly b.c u lose out the fanat from faith.
Which class would you say is the most dominant in pvp rite now?

153

Well, as a person who has not only ran the math on GMB Faith vs. WF several different times pertaining to several different kinds of setups, but also as a person who has played Amazon avidly for the past 20 years, I can tell you right now that something is wrong with the calculations being done through that planner.

So let’s take a look at it and do the standard damage calculations ourselves. These calculations are correct. You can fact check this on any Diablo 2 wiki:

  1. “3rd link you posted” Windforce with 40%ed +15max jewel, 39-567 with an average output of 303 - 45ias/120ed - Fort 300ed - Razortail 10max - LoH 350demon - War Trav 15-25 - Cat’s Eye - 2x Ravens - Torch/Anni. This build is going to provide only +100 resistance in hell difficulty including Anya quests. So you’ll need +75 or +80 more resistance from charms to break even at max res on light with Fortitude, which is going to important because you are running a build with no vitality at all. You’ll need 16x +5 all res small charms to break even with max res in hell dif. This in conjunction with Torch/Anni 3 slots used = 19x slots used. If you are PvM you will want 8x slots left open for realistic convenience of picking up & selling items, which leaves you with 13x slots for +max charms. This lets you use 4x +14max GCs and 1x +3max SC = 59max damage from charm inventory. This with your other non-weapon integer flat damage will be 15-94 integer flat damage. This damage is added directly to your weapon’s adjusted damage for the total integer damage that will be effected by global ed%. The total with the WF will be 54-661 with an average output of 357. Now we look at the global ed% that is on this build. It has about 550%ed from DEX, 120%ed Tiara, 300%ed Fort, lv 18 Might 210%ed, lv 20 Conc 345%ed = 1525ed% global. This brings the WF standard strike damage to 823-10080, with an average standard strike damage of 5451. This build is also only firing at 105%ias 9fpa.
  2. “Using the same setup but altered for 15% Superior GMB Faith” Superior 15% GMB Faith will be 62-320 damage with an average output of 382. We will be using all the same except that I will Razortail to Nosferatu for 10%ias to make for 7fpa, and then due to +15 all res on the Faith, I can free up 3x more slots in the inventory by removing 3x 5all res and putting in another +14max GC, making for +73max from the inventory. The total actual integer flat damage to be adjusted by global will be 77-418, with an average output of 247. Now due to the Fanat Aura, we are getting a bonus +288%ed into the global that was already 1525%ed, for a total of 1813%ed. This makes for 1396-7578 standard attack damage with an average DPS output of 4487. The GMB Faith however is firing at 7fpa, and that’s not to mention the +120 fire damage, the +% to undead, the fact that it does +300% to attack rating and also has ignore target defense, as well as +5 skills to your bow skills = more Multi spray, higher ed% for Strafe ect ect, and even does +2 skills to all passives, which all directly equites to faster clear times, like Valkyrie being able to tank harder before recast, ect ect, and then of course it summons Skeles to also tank mobs so you can stand keep firing rather than kite backwards to safety on a pure glass build, which is a loss in DPS and backpeddling through the map. But let’s focus first on 9fpa vs. 7fpa.
  3. 9fpa is 2.77 attacks per second. 7fpa is 3.57 attacks per second. The difference in % attack speed gained from 9fpa to 7fpa is 22% increase in speed. This is directly equivalent to a 22% increase in the GMB Faith’s character screen damage vs. the WF’s character screen damage at 9fpa, because the GMB Faith is firing 22% faster. This would put the GMB Faith’s character screen damage at 1703-9245 with an average of 5474 vs. the character screen damage of WF at an average of 5451 with 9fpa. The GMB Faith is already dealing slightly more damage even when comparing these two setups that have ditched all other stats in favor of maximizing DEX for a build that would optimally benefit WF.
  4. Now we’re looking at damage loss from attack rating. This where it is kind of important to point out some things about your planned build structure. I see that you maxed Penetrate to get the AR needed so your WF would stay above 90% hit vs. normal mobs, which looks good on paper, but it won’t be in application. You are also running a completely dedicated glass cannon max DEX based gun build with only 620 life, a listed 50% fire res and 0% all other res, and only base 1 into Dodge/Avoid/Evade, and not enough STR to wear a Stormshield on swap. This is simply unrealistic to run. You’re going to be getting accident 1shotted all over the place man. It won’t matter how careful you are, any little surprise that scathes you when you misposition just a little bit or if you lag, is going to kill you. You also do not have base 1 into Light Bolt to deal with physical immunes, which is largely more damage than Magic Arrow. You can’t rely on Magic Arrow alone vs. a map full of PIs when you are extreme glass cannon. It’s just not realistic, it doesn’t kill fast enough because you are either dying all of the time, or needing to be way too careful to the point that it is greatly impeding your kill speed. Magic Arrow is a last resort to dealing with PIs when they are both physical immune and lightning immune. Simply put, if you want to run extreme glass cannon like that, you absolutely need to add to Dodge/Avoid/Evade, have max res, and enough STR to swap and wear Stormshield for when survival matters. Realistically what ends up happening is that when you really look at what’s important to keep and what can lose points so you can gain dodge %, it ends up being Penetrate. Everything else is more important when it comes to contributing to clear speed and practicality. Trying to go full DEX and max Penetrate to make WF work, may look good on paper like you are making the WF keep up with GMB Faith numbers wise, but you are completely sacrificing other aspects of the Bowazon which contribute to practical, clean & fast clear speeds. One example would be the loss of the Fanat Aura in general, which makes your merc hit harder, hit faster, and leech more life so he is a stronger tank. Not only does this contribute largely to his DPS “which is no joke we all know” but when he has that Fanat Aura, you don’t need to be kiting backwards to pull him out to save him all of the time. Kiting backwards and back-peddling through the map you are progressing through, is lost clear speed. Also, each time he dies and you have to revive him, this is a lot of lost clear speed. In other words, what I’m saying is that the build templates you tossed to us to check out on this planner are just unrealistic. You would need to be tip toeing sooooo carefully through an area like Chaos or walking Worldstone that had Burning Souls in it, that your clear times would be nothing even close to a build that had 75% res in hell dif and around 1000 base health. When you really play and test this stuff first hand, it is extremely noticeable, regardless of the setup used, that the use of GMB Faith over WF is not just about the damage you see on the character screen. It is about everything else on your build that GMB Faith allows you to free up resources for, to be able to bolster, so that playing in hell dif is actually practical instead of a suicide mission. ← And not only that, but the numbers show that GMB Faith is just better even sheer raw physical damage wise, aside from all of the other boons its grants that contribute to clear speed that I’ve already mentioned. ------- So with the build template you have listed that has 11,000 attack rating with WF, yeah you’re gonna have between 90%-95% to hit all normal mobs, and roughy around 78% to 85% to hit vs. various act bosses and UBERs. However that build is completely unrealistic to use, so I can’t give credit to the AR here. That build would seriously die to Hell Diablo fire ring when he used it. Realistically with a WF build, while maintaining the defenses you need to not die to every elemental based attack that hits you, you’ll be looking at more around 7k attack rating, which will be a 75% chance to hit Hell Diablo, and like an 85% chance to hit a Pit Fiend as example. The GMB Faith however, will always have that 300% to AR and ignore target defense. It will always have 95% or nearly 95% chance to hit every enemy in the game “outside of act bosses & UBERs” with a base lv 1 Penetrate, which allows the Zon to stat for other important skills that contribute to clean kill speed & map complete times. It even grants you +15 all res and skele summons to tank. Again, in other words, if you run a realistic WF setup that has the res it needs and the skills invested for a glass cannon so it isn’t getting 1shot all over the place, any Bowazon player begins to notice that the WF damage in no way keeps up with the GMB Faith damage during practical application actual play. The GMB Faith was already slightly better the WF in terms of average DPS output even when comparing a build designed to compliment WF, when considering the loss in DPS from strikes missed, the WF begins to really fall out compared to GMB Faith. Again the build you proposed with 11k AR on the WF is not gonna fly in hell dif. If you could play it without dying, you’d have to be so careful while doing it, that you’d be wasting a ton of time not DPSing in favor of kiting and taking cover. It wouldn’t even begin to compare to GMB Faith clear times.

I hope you don’t take this the wrong way. I’m just trying to shed light on the discussion with these comparisons. The further you begin to ditch DEX or Penetrate, the more GMB Faith begins to shine in an exponential way on any Bowa build. The only thing that was allowing WF to even be comparable to GMB Faith in these subsample tests was the complete abandonment of realistic stats to be able to run hell diff. If you begin to stat for realistic hell dif gear & setups, GMB Faith will begin to greatly outshine WF setups, especially in pvp with vita builds and no merc.

Hey, you don’t have to believe me. Go in game for yourself and play for an hour with WF at 9fpa, then play for an hour with GMB Faith at 7fpa. Without even paying to what’s going on, you feel the difference in efficiency.

154

Nothing against you but you write too much about simple terms. You just have to say one has to consider resistances in PVM. I know automatically what you mean, 30@ from fortitude and 15@ from faith are missing.
That setup isn’t realistic in the first place. How can one be with so many 40ed/15ias jewels inside? :smiley:
I just wanted to show you what is possible dmg wise with a windforce. If we go that route further and say capped resistances are a must for a bowazon (I just cap fire and light) then that would be the setup:

990106it

Still super damaging with knockback and manaleech built in.

For pratical reasons, I’d always go with Faith GMB (I am using one right now in my hybrid).

One last thing, all these calculations disregard the effect of Laying of Hands on Windforce. Against demons (40% of the monsters) and all act bosses, a 8fpa windforce always does more dmg than a faith. When in a party with a hammerdin Windforce mows down everything.

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My 2 cents on these:

  • You can find DPS numbers in the “Calculation” tab which accounts for attack rating, IAS and even other things like crushing blow. I suggest scrolling down and setting the monster to “Venom Lord” in Chaos Sanctuary.
  • There, you will find that the WF setup is hitting 90% of the time at level 92 (and cows 95%). If characters adjusted to level 99, then the chance to hit goes up to 93%
  • At level 99, the DPS numbers on normal attack look like: 16,072 | 15,332 | 13,853
  • The WF based setups is short on +skills, which in patch 2.4 onwards, are more important than previously
  • The stats and skill placements should be adjusted to optimise each individual build. For example, the faith based builds do not need points into penetrate and can divert more points away from strength into dexterity

Having said that, the builds are not a fair comparison at the moment, some of which have been pointed out.

  • There are no max damage charms in any of the builds. Adding these would favour the faith build more but will also ensure that the WF setup reaches 95% chance to hit
  • Resistances are in favour of the faith build more which would allow the faith based build to have more max damage charms. To offset this benefit, one of the rings should be a rare leech ring with resists on it
  • As long as we’re comparing a WF with 160/60, a faith build that’s using either a 160/36dex armour or a 120 max damage armour or a +72 damage armour should be shown
  • The faith based build should also be using 15max/15ias jewels in the circlet if we’re talking optimal builds

I’ll put together some builds that are more complete so that these can be compared.

156

The thing you pointed out about the chance to hit is also interesting from another point of view. ITD doesn’t work on bosses but -% target’s defense does at half of its efficiency. WF can be socketed with an ETH rune for -25% target def and -12.5% def vs bosses.

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I don’t think that’s necessary; with the addition of max damage charms, that should solve that problem. For bosses, you’re either going to use strafe or guided arrow, both of which have either additional AR or “always hits”.

158

That’s because you are posting questionable statements like this in a Bowazon guide thread that is meant to provide highly accurate information:

I have to be thorough when explaining the truth behind these kinds of statements for the sake of anyone following this thread because I am the OP of the thread, and people when following a guide like this are expecting to see hard factual data in its entirety rather than loose opinionated statements and/or incomplete equations.

159

Try these 3 builds guys.

Faith MB with +72: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner-ptr/gc0106np#2
Faith MB with +120max: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner-ptr/gc0106np#3
WF Pride with 160/60: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner-ptr/gc0106np#7

I’ve tried to make the builds have roughly the same level of survivability - 456 life with ~60 res for fire and lightning. All builds use atma’s.

You can see that with any skill, faith matriarchal out performs WF in damage and chance to hit. Though the ridiculously low probabilities of getting all those +18 damage jewels makes this purely hypothetical, so I’ve also added a +120max armour variation.

Faith MB once again also has the convenience of using a gface vs bosses without losing attack speed.

By the way, I don’t think strafe’s attack rating bonus is getting applied in the chance to hit calculation in the links above.

160

What would be nice, is if maxroll incorporated an actual DPS “damage per second” calculation in the weapon stats.

The mat bow stats are surprisingly good but I think it needs more vita and max res, even if it’s using CTA.

Also, if we are talking maxroll GG items, I’d change the Jeweler jewels into rare jewels that had +18min and +18max. Apparently these are actually possible to roll. You could get a +72min +72max Jeweler armor out of that.

After this new patch drops with the Strafe buff, you could probably straight out-DPS a Hammerdin vs. single target with armor like that, amp, and Strafe.

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For the purposes of comparing Faith vs Windforce, I think this is a good comparison. Individual players can adjust their risk appetites accordingly by switching a few charms/stat points around. 450 life is definitely not for all players.

That’s in the first of 3 build links above.

162

Totally overlooked it. I thought it was just max damage.
I also overlooked in the calculations section that actually does have DPS calculations.
I have such strong attention to detail today.

I took some time to actually play around on that site, it’s a great tool come to find out. Here is my ideal perfect ZvA Bowa if I could actually get a hold of this gear. It starts with everything for a standard setup and has all swaps it would need in the listings. This includes ZvZ swaps with Vamp, 60/160, GMB, Cube BO, and of course all other ZvA swaps. If you’re wondering why I don’t aim at +STR and +DEX on Diadems, Gloves, Rings, it’s because realistically in ZvA, you swap rings too often to be able to rely on +STR/DEX for wearing gear and max block. And then with the Gloves/Diadem, there are honestly better mods to take than +STR/DEX. Life Rep and Life Leech are actually better in higher tiers of play, IF you can get the Life Leech to a number in conjunction with your DPS output, that digs itself out of the penalty that Life Leech gets in pvp. ← When you can do this, being able to mitigate your life loss in general through Life Leech and Life Rep becomes much stronger than pushing for some slight health bonuses. A good Zon with 3000 life after BO, 20% life leech and about +40 life replenish, will outplay a Zon with 4000 life after BO that has half the life leach and life replenish. And you can’t have both stats and life leach/rep. You have to choose which affixes to go for. Life Steal/Rep always ends up being better in the end.

I’d throw the equation at you but we’ve done it too much today already. In a nutshell, Life Leech is actually good in pvp if you can tag upwards towards 20% or higher. The reason why life leech SEEMS bad is because it incurs the .17 pvp pentalty twice. That’s how they nerfed it.

https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner-ptr/620106ws