Well .. hmm.. First a few questions:

1) Ladder or Non ladder?

2) Hardcore or Softcore?

3) What is your budget? Like, unlimited fg and no limit trading here, or solo play on bnet and little to no trading?

1 - Ladder

2 - SC

3 - Shouldnt be high end like absolute gz rare circs or something like that but it can be decent i got a 100% perf Faith in Shadow Bow but im thinking about to switch to WF...

Use faith yourself
Fortitude rune word armor
Laying of hands set gloves
Atma's scarab amulet
Dual leech rare ring
Raven frost unique ring
War travelers boots
Magic diadem with 3 sockets, can use 2 sockets if that is easier to find, use damage jewels in them, best that you can find.
Razortail belt

Max strafe, use strafe
Max critical strike
Max valkyrie
About 6 points in pierce, enough to reach 100% in total, with 33% from razortail
Rest in prereqs, and to use as you want. You can try to place as many as you can in guided arrow, and use that on bosses to guarantee hits, and to avoid strafe lock. More on that under.

You really do not need to invest so much in defensive skills when playing single player, since you can afford to be a little bit more aggressive. But since the most amount of damage you will take will be ranged, placing a few points in avoid could help in decreasing that type of damage.

Charms: Max damage grand charms and small charms, with any affix you need and find useful; Run walk, resists, life, mana.


Regarding strafe lock: I use strafe 100% of the time, in hardcore, and has never died to it. You just have to take the safety measure into account. In hardcore, you do not run ahead of yourself; Casting decoy and valkyrie around corners, and if there is a big open patch, so that you decrease the risk of getting ambushed. Also, when you deal enough damage, you know 100% that you will hit, damage and kill 50-70% of the monsters rushing towards you IF they do. Very rarely do they get to melee range, if they do, it is very easy to step back a few paces, cast decoy or strafe again, and they will perish. But in hardcore, you rarely if ever let monsters get into melee range. The main danger is ranged and magic attacks. So with all this in mind, in softcore, you can afford to be even more aggressive with strafe, using it instead of pacing back.

... and allowing yourself to take a hit or two. You will have decent life leech, so you will leech life back to a great degree and may tank one or two monsters hacking away at you. You will figure out this flow when you have played for a few weeks or months. Only types of monsters it does not work on is undead monsters, which are unleechable unless one cast life tap; Which you can use to a great degree with dracul's grasp gloves, but then you will miss out on the 350% damage to demons, which does boost your damage to quite a great degree. This is a huge toss up and preferance thing. If you use dracul's, you can afford to be much more aggressive, but it is much more risky also, and whenever you die, it cost 1-2 minutes, wasting a lot of time.. also gold and experience. I've always found laying of hands to be the best choice.


Whether you would want to cast valkyrie (i would not use decoy in softcore) to draw enemies together, is your choice, but since (once again) it is softcore, i would be much more aggressive. Run up to the enemies and strafe. 80% of the arrows will hit, pierce and hit enemies behind, amplify damage from atma's scarab will trigger a lot of the time, and those enemies will die immediately. The rest will take 1-2-3 seconds.

Only thing you should be mindful of, and use valkyrie on, is packs of ranged monsters and magic casters. Then you can run up to them and strafe.


If you want to, you can test out multishot, maxing it. If you find it better, that is your choice. If you do, i recommend switching atma's scarab for highlord's wrath, or cat's eye.


Another point: Your resists will be lacking, unless you invest heavily in buying all resist charms. That is why even in softcore, i find using kira's guardian as a helmet, a better choice. It reduces magic ranged damage to such an extent, at least when i play (i do not buy fg to buy insane expensive gear), so that it increases the flow of gameplay to such a bigger degree. A magic helmet with a good suffix and artisan's prefix, is not easy to come by, nor are the damage jewels you need. There is one more thing. There is some kind of a bug with the damage jewels. I do not know what the deal is with it, but it deters me from spending fg on it. I find the bowa doing just find without this kind of helmet. But .. if one puts the time and research into it, i can imagine it boosting the damage at least 20-30% overall. It is a preference thing.


With all this in mind ... Unless you build your bowa with the insane-high-end-crazy-expensive-botfound gear to the utmost perfection, you will not be nowhere near as efficient as the cookie cutter builds. You will do decent progress, and have a lot of fun with it, but you will not be clearing cow levels and big packs of monsters nearly as fast as say, a javazon or such builds. Even still, bowa is my at least #2 build, maybe before frostmaiden. Goldfind barbarian is #3 :)


Just shoot questions if you have'em, i will answer as good as i can.

Of course i forgot the merc ... act 2 merc should be using pride runeword for weapon, a helmet that provides life leech, such as andarie's visage or vampire gaze, and then fortitude for armor, or treachery as budget option.


And xD one more point i forgot. Use demon limb (unique elite mace) to cast the level 23 enchant charges on yourself and your merc. It increases the attack rating a bit. Since your bow has ignore target's defense, you will almost always hit, but against champions and boss monsters, it does not work, so having that boost will help you and your merc out in any case. The tiny boost of fire damage is not a negative point either.

Ignore Taurean and use multishot not strafe

thanks so far!

i tried a little bit and i think im good now.

Since using Shadow Bow... you can use Razortail belt for Pierce:
... 1 Base point + Anni (1) + Torch (3) = Skill level 5 Pierce: So you will need another 4 Skill points (total 9) UNLESS you have other items with +All Skill or Passive. = 102% Pierce [100% being maximum]

Not 100% sure on this, if holding Faith Shadow bow, the IAS breakpoint to reach is like 63% ... so with a Helm that has 3 sockets and 3x 15% ias jewels (or M'Avinas Diadem with a 15% ias Jewel in it) + Laying of hands = 65% IAS. So like Taurean stated... you can use Atmas Scarab as well. Best that you check this out first.

Shadow Bow Speed is 0.
Google the IAS Calculator and factor in the weapon base speed, 15 Fana Aura and 65% IAS from other items.

As for Taureans 2 socket helm... may as well use Giant Skull since it has KB and strength and add the jewels there.
___________

Personally not a fan on maxing out critical strike, that should be attempted after all other skills you want are completed.

For phys Damage Zon basically

Gear

120/45ias circ
Atma ammy (for amp)
fort
Diamond/Shadow bow Faith
Razortail belt
LoH glove
War travs
Raven Ring
Dual leach ring or any mana leach ring

You can also use a GMB faith, but then you need an cats eye/ hi lord ammy and nosferatu belt to hit 7frames with GA/Multi

On switch either harmony Bow or go hybrid with 1pt jab/lifury, eth titans and SS
hybrid setup moves slower but safer and imo more fun

Torch, Anni, Max damage charms or res charms

Stash
In stash I made a 90li res/45circ and a 45@/45ias circ
Tgod
Whatever else may be useful to you

Skills

Crit to about 70%, 1 pt pierce

To skill you can either be more multi based or strafe based
If you more multi based still take a least 1 pt in strafe. NB for multi 24 arrows is max, don't put port point after that

I like to max GA

Magic Arrow works well for phys Immune, if you pure bow max it
If you go hybr, 1 pt li bolt works quite well for phys. If they phys and Li imm (on hybr) 1pt in magic arrow will still do the job

Valkyrie makes a decent tank that can be recast


merc

For merc you have 3 choices

For a dominant multi arrow
1) Act1 faith with Zon on Windforce bow Shael
2) act2 pride with Zon on Faith bow

For a strafe based
3) Act 2 pride with Zon on Windforce bow Shael

Play around and see what works best for you

THANK YOU!

But is there any chance to hit the ias breakpoint with a rare circ with 30 IAS / 80 ED ? or is 120/45 must have for this ?