Lack of decoy use is like the lack of people who dont use taunt, battle cry, or howl on barbs.
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Seems like you might have an attack speed problem as well as a crushing blow problem.
Now that hustle has Fanaticism you could put it in act 2 might Merc for better IAS and AR. You might even consider this as your switch for buffing Burst of speed too. Windforce is great but itās really slow.
You should be wearing Guillames Face with a 15 IAS jewel in it. Check out the online IAS calculator and make sure youāre hitting the max speed breakpoint.
Also I would use Laying of Hands instead of Lava Gout. 350% damage to demons is better than the enchant bonus in my opinion.
You can hit 7fpa with windforce now with just hustle to swap buff BoS. Itās a meta weapon now
SO much bad info from SC players like i canāt even believe this is what diablo has become.
Come try that build in HC
Meanwhile my chant sorc is doing 12k - 15k dmg with 99% pierce and costs 0 mana. Drops player 8 cows quickly!
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Physical damage Bowazon is probably the worst spec to start with 
With selffound items you can barely pass normal mode. I remember that I had to farm Ith Runes in act 1 to socket them into a bow just to get act4/5 done.
You could try 15 max damage jewels in helmet and armor (7 in total = 105 max damage) along with tons of max damage charms and much Dex at cost of Vita. Just found a 12 max/AR GC yesterday.
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play freezing arrow or java zon till you can afford a bow zonā¦
bow zon is not a starter character, itās something you invest into when you are rich for end game, faith act 1 merc, breath of the dying hydra bow, 15/40ād 2 soc giant skull, etc etc etc itās expensive character
youāre going to have problems if you donāt have the required gear.
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I think wisdom with razor would be kinda overkill and faster no?
That is not correct. Insight in Bows and buffs to Strafe, MS, GA made Bowa actually pleasant ladder starter (mind she is not a scorc). On top of that TZ in first halfs of Act 1 and Act 3 are godlike for bowa and help immensely in closing the gap between Pit farming and CS/cows. As for expensive - yes endgame Bowa build is expensive, however for farming P1 Hell Windforce is already overkill and even in beginning of the ladder it costs max Vex (thank god for few bowa starters ).
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Strafe is amazing if you can line up boss packs, itās obviously going to be better in those situations than MS. If there are even 1-2 monsters somewhere on the screen which arenāt lined up with the boss pack, strafe is worse than MS in this case because your ama will shoot at those monsters as well.
And how is act 1/5 merc better? You wear faith yourself, so act 1 is bad. Act 5 is okay since you give him last wish (which is insanely expensive btw), but act 2 can get two auras through self might and pride, so why is act 2 merc bad?
Itemization is highly circumstantial, but Iād have both an enigma and a fortitude for example and use enigma in very low density terror zones (think jail from act 1, mostly only boss packs) and fortitude in other zones.
Atmaās scarab proccing only on the two middle arrows is news to me. That combined with the very low proc chance and no other useful stats makes it pretty bad, easily worse than highlordās I suppose. Catās eye is amazing for high density, low health mobs like flayer jungle terror zone and the amulet is pretty good overall, so it may be better than highlord in most cases.
Razor > wisdom, definitely. There are a ton of great helm options, not so much for belts.
Also, someone recommended hustle for act 2 merc, which is great if you donāt have faith and much cheaper / better than faith act 1 merc.
Am I missing something? Iām planning on playing a bowzon once I have 99 on my sin.
Razor and Atma excel for strafer and if you go for Faith GMB you cant use them anyway unless you go with Hustle (I believe you only need 45 from helmet in that case). They are great at the begining of farm where it is nice cheap damage boost and then again at p8.
Atma despite working only with 2 middle arrows and low proc is by no means bad - it synergises with pierce to great effect. Issue is more with AoE - you have best effect if mobs are clustered together, which points to strafe again. For MS it works best with boss packs in like cows and such. Not sure if it is worth hassle with Hustle prebuff.
Issue with Hustle is that it doesnt really change your endgame gear options much.
Id rather gores ā¦
And you can cast valk with a 1 sec delay, nothing wrong with putting points in them for PvE.
The elemental damage on harmony is very valuable through hell.
Why does no one consider brand ? I know its expensive, but that amp dmg , explosive arrows, pmh , kb , and ITD.
It is not that no one considers it ( and strafer with Brand is one of the most amazing looking things in the game), it just that Faith is better.
gores on a ranged character?
question mark
amp on struck?
question mark
if someone is going to spend a jah at that point, youāre going to spend it in Faith. thatās why.
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Oh I wasnt saying that Insight is better (because it is not). I meant that Insight is available at the right point in time. Before Insight in bows you had kind of a block at the beginning of NM, Insight solve the issue very nicely.
Issue with Gores is that CB effect is halved on ranged damage and is based on ācurrentā health, so whatever you gain on first half of hp bar you loose on second. If I recall correctly someone (may have been TSBoyer, not sure) tested it few years ago and Gores came minimally ahead vs Act bosses and worse against everything else (and that was before synergies were added, so now I thik they are just worse, but someone else would have to test it). With bowa you generally do clear and kill boss (well 90% of the time Diablo) kind of because you are there already so may as well. So basically with Gores you nerfing yourself against 99.9% of the content you farm.
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I literaly melt everything alone up to p5-6 and Iām probably the top dps when I run pub in p8 games. Here what I use:
Windforce ohmāed
115ed/45ias 30frw (was using ias andy before)
Atmaās scarab (a must unless you go brand)
raven frost
fcr 8lifeleech res ring
razortail
war traveler
Laying of hands
Enigma (fort is an insignificant dps increase over enigma and you loose mobility)
act 2 might merc
pride mancatcher(was using reaper toll before)
eth treachery
andariel visage
using hustle on swap which allow me to reach 8fpa guided which I donāt use because strafe is way more powerfull. Only place I use guided is on diablo since I prefer to offscreen him. Beside that, everything just melts with strafe.
And this is pretty easy to obtain.
The only struggle was to get some descent max/ar/life charms with the -10 bonebreak early on.
stats:
enough to reach 77str for ds enigma
everything else into dex. and trust me, 7+life leech on a ring will allow you to even blindly telestomp across walls and if your quick enough and have some balls, just hold atrafe until everything is dead (not hc viable though hahaha).
20multi
20guided
20strafe
enough to reach lvl 8-9 with pierce
enough to reach 20k strafe ar with penetrate and dump the remaning points into crit. Iām lvl 90 and I have now 22k ar and 71 crit.
That about it !
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If you have crafted gloves with 10 cb , it all adds up with the amount of arrows a zon can shoot.
Yes but merc can also use a bow , if you want .