so I went with the ice path and I’m wondering whether it’s better to take the physical skills (i.e. guided arrow / multi shot or strafe) or go exploding arrow instead.
Exploding Arrow good for normal difficulty, later you probably need some good gear to be viable with any bow build.
the main reason I asked is i currently have been investing in the physical skills and they aren’t really impressing me. I do have pretty decent items for the ice tree and it’s “good enough” (im in the 80s on hc) but while its super safe its not exactly fast.
You could go for a hybrid build.
Either
Cold+fire (Ice bow and Phoenix on swap). Skills: Cold Arrow, Freezing Arrow, Fire Arrow, Exploding Arrow, Immolation Arrow. Merc: Act 2 Infinity or Act 5 Plague.
or
Cold+physical (Ice bow and Faith/Mist/Windforce on swap). Skills: Cold Arrow, Freezing Arrow, Strafe, Guided Arrow, Critical Strike. Merc: Act 2 Reapers/Pride/Infinity or Act 5 Last Wish/Lawbringer/Plague.
I would prefer the latter, because on hardcore you want some effective leech to quickly refill your life and mana globe.
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I don’t see a reason to go hybrid if it isn’t fresh character on Hell and you already mention some endgame items.
I have a Strafe Amazon and she’s doing fine as pure physical ofc with gear I farmed with MF Cold Sorc. Atma’s Scarab applies Amplify Damage which removes physical immunity.
Going hybrid as you suggest would just mean limiting your damage. Elemental and physical builds benefit from different armors, gloves etc. Ele likes +skills -res while physical needs pure +damage, crushing blow, attack rating.
For players 1 the damage of a hybrid build is more than enough.
If he wants to go players 6-8, a pure build is the better choice.
Yeah well I mean Cold+Fire should probably be fine but since Sunder Charms I don’t see much reason too but Cold/Physical need totally different type of gear.
there are two types of playstyles here
-
the basic C/F (this basically) or F/C or even F/Ph, C/Ph etc (caster) style, where you are maximizing either cold and fire. You get your strong primary and secondary skills, everything fine, you can even kill most immunes, typically. You shoot/cast and move according to your strategy
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the physical bowazon, where you maximize strafe (as the obvious best primary skill imho) and the strongest passives. This is imho both the most ejoyable and eazy bowazon path. Think about it for a minute… the caster / elementalist bowazon suffers from misses, strafe on the other hand rarely does… what’s more it multiplies your hits… this build also has the strongest Valk and Decoy and thus you are a good group of four… you take up space, if anything… moreover, if your bow supports knockback, you strategically place your zon and n o t h i n g can reach you… I call her the lazyzon… just make a harmony and you will c r u i s e to hell, where things will start to get a bit interesting… she melts everything p1, she is extremely fun, and is the easiest playstyle imho, the build that makes the boawzon such a unique and identifiable char completely different from anything else in this masterpiece of a game… even so, she is expensive and difficult to optimize… suffers from low hp, low dmg (p8 always) and low res (no shield)… her peak depends on at least two elite bows and at least a top tier runeword… has an answer for every problem in the game except maybe Lilith…
: )
This is ladder so I don’t get to choose sadly 
id do phys because bowzon already has a hard time being safe on resists.
cold looks fun but im not trying to find 70 more cold resist (coldsunder) on a resist starved build.
maybe if i already had all the charms to address that issue… then i’d go cold
which is why i take a second damage type, when its easily attainable and semi-maxable.
Freezing arrow and immolation arrow are good. No reason not to go hybrid since freezing arrow gets 1 synergy only. It performs way better on lesser gear.
Physical bowazon is a character you aspire to make. Theres lots of fun theory crating for this one… I made one with a grand matron bow faith but theres a strong argument to use a matriarchal bow. As was said before, atmas scarab is really good with phys bowazon. And the skill to use is STRAFE. No guided arrow, no multishot. Just strafe everything.
well you still need the points for the synergy. But i’ve seen some cases made for multi over strafe, mostly because you can hit more targets with it. The big problem is the arrow cap is easy to reach and further points do nothing beyond giving synergy.
you dont have the charms to go physical. get those first. physical bowa is similar to a baba. but if you’re mega rich you go all psc of anthrax.
for ladder that is, p1, you are good to go until Hell. Then you need to figure out what to do with ph immunes
All ele bow are sh1t
Demon Machine EnchBowSorc is actually viable, but still bad compared to normal ones.
GA MA is semi viable with GG eq.
depends on what your standard is. i love doing xbow sorc, and if you bend over enough for enchant it can get pretty strong.
Compared to a Javazon even the Strafezon is bad.
But hey, I have fun with my Frostzon. You don’t need a meta build to enjoy the game!
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the Javazon is straight up OP !
the Frostzon is very very enjoyable ! How do you deal with Cimmunes ?
True, Sorc is the best Bowazon.