225ed from lvl 12 concentration
around 180ed from might merc
350ed from dex (very conservative, 400dex+ is easily achievable with better gear)
Then 150ed from strafe with no -25% ed penalty anymore
We’re looking at 150 +180+225+350 = 905ed . The biggest issue of other bows vs faith is lack of attack rating but strafe is changed to give ar now so with penetrate:
lvl27 penetrate (+295%ar)+lvl 30 strafe (+291%) = +586%ar
no problem reaching +10k ar regions
Max on weapon ed possible is 390ed:
avdmg = (68 - 352)/2 = 210 without any max dmg charms
You’re looking at:
avgdmg total = 210* 10.05 = 2110 dmg
avgdps total = 2110 * 6.94 = 14643 smg/s
All this without fortitude
Easily achievable 95ias BP for max strafe and 9fpa multi (45ias helm + 20 from mist + 20 gloves + 20 amu).
So why should you use this over faith?
You can keep your reaper merc for very consistent decrepify proc. He isn’t wearing a cuckscker weapon called pride, you aren’t dependant on him at all. You can use enigma for FRW and merc positioning so decrepify is cast immediatly in p8 games thanks to +40 to all resistance from Mist.
If you decide to wear forty anyways:
avgdmg total = 210 * 13.05 = 2740 dmg
avgdps total = 2740 * 6.94 = 19015
38030 dps with crit with 71% chance
76060 dps on mobs with decrepify
Conclusion: Mist is going to be the best PVM bow in 2.4. People calling it a bad or underwhelming runeword are clueless. Maxed strafe mixed with multi is going to be the new meta for bowazons in 2.4.
I left that part free as a choice for whoever whatever prefers. The aim is to get 90ias in total, 20ias from mist included.
@TSBoyer
Your analysis has got problems:
You base your analysis on current 2.3 patch without calculating the changes from patch 2.4. Strafe offers massive damage increase with 150ed and no -25% malus with procs on EVERY arrow, the ar bonus will finally make windforce hit reliably in 10k+ attack rating regions. Both windforce and mist are going to become stronger because of this. Guided arrow is going to do less dmg than strafe for the first time even at 7fpa vs single targets.
Pride merc + Faith is going to have higher damage on paper but lower survivability for both, faith (resistances not capped) and a weak merc to help deal with act bosses or breakable physical immune super uniques ( decrepify undoes them, merc itself helps killing those super uniques) which frequently show up in chaos sanctuary for example.
Mist setup has got more ED than windforce one. With max damage charm and 15ias-15max dmg jewels + wartraveler which I didn’t include in my calculation, mist outdamages windforce. With windforce or faith, you’re forced to wear razortail. With mist, your belt slot is free, you spend 0 points in pierce. Best bow for hybrids by the way.
You contradict yourself. Ohm + Jah + Cham + Sur + Lo are ok for the Faith+Pride setup which isn’t going to offer huge improvment over just Cham + Gul. What you can’t kill in higher player count with mist setup, you won’t be able with faith+pride setup either.
So what you get:
Ideally, you’ll have a merc with:
eth shaeled reaper’s toll + 15ias guilli + duresss
On yourself,
helment: +2ama, 20fcr, 30frw, 20@ res, 30str, 2 sockets rare diadem with 2x 15ias/40ed jewels
amu: highlords or cat’s eye
armor: mp enigma, to make use of your merc’s decrepify
gloves: Laying of Hands
weapon: Mist in +3 GMB
rings: raven + dual leech
belt: any crafted caster belt which offer 5-10% fcr
boots: wartraveler
Switch: upped eth titans + spirit monarch (even that one is going to have max block with bowas dex investment) so you get 68fcr bp on switch for teleport
That’s a highly mobile bowazon which can mf in any area of the game without problems.
Without enigma with maximum survivability for WSK1-3 and Chaos Santuary on p3+:
On yourself,
helment: +2ama, 20fcr, 30frw, 20@ res, 30str, 2 sockets rare diadem with 2x 15ias/40ed jewels
amu: highlords or cat’s eye
armor: fortitude in an armor of your choice
gloves: Laying of Hands
weapon: Mist in +3 GMB
rings: raven + dual leech
belt: thundergods vigor
boots: wartraveler
Switch: upped eth titans + stormshield socketed with -15% req/ 40ed jewel.
diablo+baal are going to melt with a proper merc having might+pride+reaper+ decrepify helping to jab them on switch.
Having 9fpa via 95%ias is a 28% damage loss right there if you’re using multishot, magic arrow or guided arrow. Strafe will see much more use in 2.4 so this DPS loss may be less impactful, but you’re going to be restricted to farming low density areas.
Attack rating will still be an issue for non-faith setups, and more so if you’re not using faith on your merc. At least with a traditional WF + faith setup, you get AR from the fanaticism that works on all of your bow skills. Whatever AR bonus you get from strafe in 2.4 will be partly negated by the fact that you’re not using faith in any fashion and once again, the AR bonus only applies on strafe
Because you’re not using faith anywhere and you’re using mist, you are needing your amulet slot to get IAS, which prevents you from using Atma’s. I also see that you’re using reapers to get decrep, but you’ve basically traded away 120% ed from a lower level conviction and a further 288% ed from no fanaticism. You don’t need your merc dealing large amounts of damage… even if his polearm had a 20 yard swinging radius, you’d still be dealing much more damage than him if you’re built correctly
Mist has more ed than WF… but WF gets half of its damage from +max damage per level, which on its own is the equivalent of almost 400% ed. WF out damages mist by a long shot, and faith out damages WF by a margin as well
You absolutely can kill stuff in high players count with faith + pride. Mist on the other hand, and especially your setup, I have my doubts
Let’s compare 3 setups:
Your stated Mist GMB + reapers
WF + faith merc
Faith MB + pride merc
1) Your stated Mist GMB + reapers
(note for pure damage comparison’s sake and benefit of doubt, we’ll assume fortitude instead of enigma)
Base weapon damage (bow, other gear, charms… min+max added together)
430 + (40 + 9ring) + 100 = 579
once 2.4 becomes active ,the easiest way to compare is just to plug in your theorycrafting into maxroll d2planner. you can even prepare it now and just wait for the patch to activate the new skill % dmg.
Let’s get started my friend. You use multishot dmg in your calculation and have got strength as ed to bows which doesn’t work. Multishot also has got a -25%dmg malus. On the question whether a beefed up merc is needed. Yes, you need him to get rid and pacify act bosses like diablo, baal or extra strong, extra fast super uniques. A pride merc is useless in that regard. Faith merc with windforce is the optimal combination in theory, in reality she is often out of range so you’re left without half of the ed from fanatism (you get just half of it if faith isn’t worn by yourself, lvl 15 fana grants 288ed, half of that is 144ed) so you shoot with 9fpa multishot instead of 7fpa unless you teleport her with you in which cas she is often going to die.
There is no question faith + pride setup is the most damaging combination but is it also the best pvm combo to farm wherever in the game or best choice for hybrid builds?
With +6, ample resistances, full pierce which frees even more points from pierce which makes the belt slot completly free (string of ears, nosferatu, verdungo, thundergods or arachnid or caster crafted), you can make a nearly unkillable bowazon with stacked resistances, dmg and life, NOT A GLASS CANNON which runs away from WSK as soon as gloams appear. I tried PTR 2.4, strafe is very strong. You don’t attack with 9fpa strafe. 90 ias is all you need. With that much you attack 6.94 times per second without any fana so both Windforce and Mist are going to be very strong in that setup. No setup is going to beat Faith plus Pride in clear speed in pits and chaos sanctuary. The layout leans more to multishot. And, again, after I tried PTR 2.4 lvl 21 magic arrow converts 46%! physical dmg into magical. That’s huge! Killing physical immunes shouldn’t be a problem anymore. in corridor like places like most of the lvl 85 area locations, strafe is going to be much stronger. You can clear even faster if you’re able to teleport. With mist, you could do that even without a godly tiara. A spirit 35 on switch with arachnid and 10fcr, dual leech ring would grant you that. The other thing I noticed. Strafe is much more reliable with atma. You need a setup where you can use atma with laying of hands together. In that regard, WF and Mist are pretty much equal except for teleport and that Mist wearer cannot be one shot if any cold enchanted whatever moster farts nearby.
A couple of things before going into my specific responses:
You haven’t addressed the lack of damage with the mist setup. Even if we remove the IAS considerations from my benchmarks, mist still does the least amount of damage by a clear margin. And you’re looking to use enigma as well, which further dents your damage
A bowazon’s ideal farming style is to target high density mobs rather than bosses, which drops runes, jewels, charms and item bases at high frequency. Bowazons just don’t do well at mfing bosses due to lack of kill speed and lack of mf available in item slots
I’ll also point out that the rare circlet you’ve stated will be absurdly rare and you’d be lucky to get one of these. I would compromise on the resists, +skills or +strength bonus to increase the odds on getting a suitable circlet
Damage comparisons without considering IAS or any curses (once again assuming fort):
I assume you’re talking about reaper’s decrep? I think it’s debateable, though I would lean towards yes on that one specifically for the mist setup since the damage output is rather low. For the other builds, a strong valkyrie helps a lot and is enough.
Skill points are not a huge issue with bowazons.
While mist might free up a small handful of points away from pierce, you will need to max out penetrate unless you never plan on using multishot, in which case your performance in high density areas is sharply dropped compared to a multishot based build.
WF needs a few points into penetrate, for faith it’s always a 1 point wonder. For the 3 builds, I would split out the skill points as follows assuming torch+anni:
Mist: 20 penetrate (before the +skills, unless no plan to use multishot)
WF: 10 penetrate, 5 pierce
Faith: 1 penetrate, 20 pierce (though you can get away with less)
Resists can be made up for in charms where as the same can’t be said for mist since it needs all the damage it can get.
Gloams are not really that scary when you have maxed resists and either tgods or wisp projector. There’s also the slow missiles skill.
For enigma based setups, a wiz spike + spirit grants you 85% FCR, you can use a FCR circlet to reach the 99% break point if you are so inclined. You also have maxed resists, max block and good FHR with these 2 items, plus hitting the same cast break point without FCR from belt slot in all setups.
All setups can use teleport and resists can be made up for with charms as explained above.
Granted, I find the WF + fanat issue annoying in my limited testing (I normally use faith + pride) but as you said, merc position can be reset with teleport.
I don’t know why you think WF/faith based setups are going to die with teleport though? Excluding the bow, an enigma based setup is pretty much the same across all 3.
It does since those are points that you can then divert to dexterity using your stat points.
Strafe is not “efficient” and there is no reason to use strafe with Guided arrow for single target damage. MS>>> strafe- so says the guide( must be true)
Windforce > Faith with the maths
Why would anyone use strafe or Faith - mind boggling
Sorry, it took me so long to answer. I was on my phone, the forum software here is really unintuitive with quoting so I didn’t bother at that time. So, let’s get started:
There is no such a thing as lack of killspeed vs mobs or bosses. When I am back from work, I’m going to show you how a windforce ama (don’t have a mist base in PTR 2.4 yet) is going to clear chaos + Diablo and Baal with ease in PTR 2.4. Without atma and a suitable Mist base it is going to be harder but possible. For now: Diablo II Resurrected 2022 01 30 22 23 47 - YouTube
That’s pure bowa with a reaper merc. Have a look at the end of the video then you’d know why I never carry a wizzy + spirit on switch. That slot is reserved for eth titans to poke bosses to death. Amplify dmg or decrep are always on without exception.
If you ask me, there isn’t much difference except Mist setup can tank more and leaves the belt slot free.
I strongly disagree. Advise, try guili + treachery/forty + reaper with jab like in my video, makes a huge difference. Then there are breakable physical immunes. You can kill them with magic or or let them be decreped/amped to kill them with guided arrow. Second approach is always faster, for guided arrow hits 100% for approximately more dmg. In PTR 2.4 46% of the physical dmg is converted by Magic Arrow. I think magic arrow is indeed faster now.
Your Mist with WF comparison doesn’t make sense here. Why do you give the Windforce setup just 10 point penetrate and 20 for the Mist one? For both of them, penetrate is going to be maxed. They need any attack rating they can get.
Let me do that for you:
WF: 20 penetrate and 5 pierce
You’d max penetrate one way or another so the real skill saving comes from pierce. Pierce setup gets 5 extra skill points saved with Mist. Penetrate is going to be 3lvl higher, critical strike is going to be 3lvl higher. Then, strafe is going to be maxed. You save 6 skill points there to reach 13-15 multi arrow. Magic arrow is 3lvls higher. I think I’ll stop here.
If anyone ever wanted to make a really strong hybrid with Mist he could max charged strike with one of its synergies and be really beefed up bow side. You wouldn’t have enough points for that setup with Windforce.
Now imagine, you exchange all of those resistance charms with max dmg/ar/life gcs, lcs or scs because you don’t need them.
You lose 100% pierce without Mist if you wear tgs. Gloams hurt even with maxed resistance if your life pool is low and no absorb is present. I mf with my bowie in Cow lvl, CS, WSK etc. I don’t change my setup, a waste of time. 100% pierce is a huge dps increase in those areas.
Upped eth titans + spirit on swtich > wizzy + spirit. Why? You lose huge amounts of melee dps.
Act 1 merc isn’t as tanky as act2 reaper merc. She’s got better AI to stay away but when she’s got nowehere to run or runs into monsters like in CS she is toast. She doesn’t help with super uniques. You have to babysit her even when you teleport.
I’m glad you actually tested my issue with the Windforce + Faith Act1 Merc setup. Some other people just prefer to throw numbers. And again, replace all of those resistance charms with max dmg charms = profit.
Well, that’s not a pure bowazon if you’re using jab then.
I was the one that commented on the video btw.
You can carry the titan’s in cube for bosses. Both diablo and baal have spawn times so there’s no time loss in switching your gear around for them provided you have your cube in your inventory.
It’s a 5% gap below WF and 9% below faith. This is also before considering attack speed (28% attack speed gain for WF and faith setups) and curses (decrep 50%, amp damage 100%), mist doesn’t have max attack speed and amp damage has a larger damage penalty. I’d consider the ability to apply the curses fairly equal.
Overall DPS calculated in earlier posts show a significant difference between mist setup vs the rest.
Points about tankiness already covered in previous comments, will respond to specific points below.
Valkyrie helps out with tanking too, but I highly doubt that situation depicted would even eventuate unless you have really poor damage or a bad play style.
Your video actually shows amp damage, which I think is pretty good. I took your phrasing of “pacify” as you specifically recommending decrep for its slowing effect.
For stoneskin monsters, it’s probably too close to call, and would depend on how much physical resistance the monster has after the immunity is broken (they will have no less than 80% physical resistances). Magic arrow is good since it doesn’t consume arrows, assuming you can keep them in place with your tank, and as you mentioned will be the ideal choice in 2.4.
For packs with natural physical immunity, magic arrow definitely does more damage than guided arrow because it can hit multiple targets, and consumes less mana/arrows.
Because the WF setup gets an attack rating bonus from faith. I however neglected the full benefits of +skills here for mist, which with the native 20% BAR from mist, I’ll concede that WF needs 15 points in penetrate to be comparable to mist (keeping in mind that mist only gets most of that additional AR bonus if using strafe).
If we’re talking about hybrid builds though, I question the value of maxing strafe since the main benefit of maxing strafe is vs act bosses to bump up the minimum arrow count. A pure bow WF setup could get away with the following skill distribution:
17 crit
20 penetrate (demon limb prebuff I suppose is doable as well before level 99)
5 pierce
5 valkyrie (+6 prereqs, valkyrie can be cast while on switch and with the cast delay removal in 2.4 is not as important to get a high level for)
1 cold arrow
15 magic arrow
11 multishot
10 guided arrow
20 strafe
I don’t play hybrid builds so won’t comment about this for now beyond my comment above.
40% all res from mist can be made up with just 8 small charms for WF, 5 small charms for faith (and I would argue needs less resists because of skeleton tanks), and that’s only if you need it. It’s not enough additional max damage charms for mist to make up for the damage deficit from mist. If we redo the damage calculations again, you can see this:
Once again, this is before considering attack speed (which favours WF and faith setups by 28%) and curses (which amp damage has a larger resistance reduction).
Tgods is only needed in the entire game vs gloams, and takes up just 2 spaces in the cube. If that’s a sticking point, room can be made in the inventory as well just for this.
100% pierce is really not as necessary as a lot of people claim. The odds of fighting gloams in a narrow corridor (where 100% pierce has its benefits) is very, very slim. Gloams are one of the few monsters in the game that disperse and spread out, and they do this very consistently.
For the faith MB setup, it’s slightly problematic since she loses an IAS breakpoint, but in this situation she’s likely going to be using strafe anyway.
As implied, you can maintain 100% pierce in all other areas where gloams are not located at.
As for using mist in cows and chaos though, where multishot does its best work, you’re using a much slower 9fpa multishot with your mist setup. Even in the faith MB setup that uses a 91% pierce setup, that lack of 9% pierce is nothing compared to the 28% slower attack speed and 9% lower damage with mist.
Just in case it’s not understood… if you have +strength gear, it allows you to put more points into dexterity. In that respect, +strength gear and +dexterity gear is pretty much identical in benefit.
I tried a budget setup (something affordable for early ladder) with MIST.
So this is not include things like Faith, Fortitude, 40/15 jewel or other super expensive stuff that are proibitive in the starting days of ladder reset.
It’s only a test for a early-mid point.
Mist GMB (mid roll, 10 concentration)
Treachery AP
LoH gloves
Nosferatu belt
Atma’s Amulet
RavenFrost
Rare ring or Manald
Gore Rider or low %mf War Trav
Giant skull (KB) with 2 +%ed jewel
Harmony for Vigor Aura or Naj Staff in Weapon Swap
Various max/ar charms with no life (cheap)
Varius single res charm with frw
Random torch
You can also use Mavina Helm + 2 ias jewel and choose another body armor (Duress it’s a good cheap alternative). The important part is the 90ias bp at the end.
Max GA, Max Strafe, MS until 24 arrows, Max Penetrate, some Critical Strike, some valk, some Magic Arrow.
For the merc the choice are:
A2 Might
A5 Frenzy with double Lawbringer
I choose the first because without teleport you can’t rely on merc’s procs. So the Might Aura is at least more consistent.
Not crazy but viable, when AMP DAMAGE procs, the mob dies quite fast even on P3/P5. Without Amp is still very good for P1, not so good for highter Players setting.
Strafe it’s the main skill here because procs amp quite a lot. You can also use MS in certain situation, but Strafe provides more AR bonus so you always hit the targets (and procs a lot).
So I think starting with a Physical Bowa is not the best choice obviously, but is way better than before.
Your build isn’t budget enough for my taste
I’d go with treachery, 20ias gloves and any helmet which grants 10ias+ like stealskull or a single 15ias jewel in tal’s mask. You can farm everything with this setup. Also, mist grants +6 to bow, I’d go hybrid in early days and give my might merc an insight.
Your minimal aim should be reaching act 4 hell and being able to clear CS fast enough.
To get the most out of Mist, you need 150ias in total. An armor with 4x 15ias jewels is going to increase your damage dramatically. No need to max multishot, the mana cost becomes too steep. I’d invest into the cold tree or charged strike with one of the synergies in early mid ladder.
. Basically - normal routine.