if your not using the bow slot for dmg ( only rele to get rid of the last 1 life ), how good would a cta bow ( matriarchal bow )be? As then you dont need cube bo.

Assuming the eq on the front page - you still get 8 fpa on bow slot but it means you get bo all the way through a duel, whereas if your cube bo'ing you dont..

This post was edited by Jeebus666 on Jun 28 2011 05:21pm

Its not worth it
The damage on faith isn't particularly high, but its enough to make it a threat. Like when you're dueling against a l8z sorc, and you piddle her with arrows and shave off a chunk of her HP

It isn't that you're going to kill her with your bow- its that you're going to immediately show her that she can't win by l8zing, because you'll outshoot her and she'd die if she doesn't change tactics
So people invariably change their tactics, and you'd finish them with the plague/cs/fury. Which is why I rarely kill anyone with my bow

But if someone realized they could sit there all day long and soak up arrows from a CTA, then its not a legitimate threat against defensive chars. Against BvC's to disrupt them and 1 life chars, sure, but neither of those are very tough
Most 1 life chars get killed by lightning fury, not garrow (extremely rarely for a bow kill). Thats because people will generally be berserking you with their last throes to try to take you down first, or fury is just much safer for picking off low hp chars
Its far easier to hit someone with a fury at 1 hp than say multi or guided arrow- those have 75% chance not to kill them and furies explode on backdrops or stacked minions, so if you're just throwing in their general direction you'll probably kill them
Killing people at 1 hp isn't a challenge anyway, and I'd never sacrifice any gear to do that- any build that uses a dream helm or whatever is extremely bad for example

But an 8 FPA faith shadow bow setup does about 1216 average damage (before crit)
Meanwhile an 8 FPA cta mat bow setup does about 540 average damage (before crit)
You also suffer a huge cut to multi-shot on cta because of no +300% AR bonus. And of course, -15% resists hurts hard especially against fire sorcs, where its not uncommon to take a stray invisiball while shooting at 3 screen distance.


I mean it might be possible to use CTA bow, but to me its all about marginal utility. Your bow swap is less important than your javas, but its far from worthless. And the sacrifice you make by having 2 less GCS, or 1 less GC and 1 less sc (cube), is less than what you gain.
I'd take -2 java skills and -80 life in order to get 2.25x overall bow damage output. Its a balancing act, see.
But you can also opt for -1 java skills, -60 life and -5% all resists instead with a cube, its just more of a hassle (and gives you a notable chance to drop your CTA). I'd only bother with that in gm 1v1 duels




But I re-bo during duels with my -2 gc inventory setup quite easily, just swap it in and out of my javelin slot after teleporting a couple screens away, its not uncommon to get a lull in any duel that is going over 2.5 minutes
I have my hotkeys set so that my left click charged strike is right after the bos;
Battle Command -> Battle Orders -> Charged Strike
so that I can basically cast bos and reset my hotkeys with one movement, then swap the java/cta ultra fast. I've gotten used to doing it in under a couple seconds

With a cube thats much, much, much more difficult and I wouldn't recommend it. Even for Priv duels I don't bother. If its going to be a short duel thats all aggression, like vs a smiter, I'd just prebuff cta or cube if they care about it.
Vs a good windy or sin or necro or whatever where the duels can drag on, being able to recast but not get caught unawares while you do is important

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 28 2011 05:40pm

Hmm, how would the arrows help vs a l8z sorc tho?

Assuming the sorc is es, the arrows themselves would do virtually 0 effective damage to life. And if we assume all critical hit with a max damage roll - i think its 950 damage per second you do, and when you consider the regen of a sorc is like 500 mana/sec or so it aint gonna scare the sorc that much i think.

But ye the point about the reduced multi ar is a good 1, and if u do leave 6 spaces free in inven, re bo'ing aint a problem i guess.

But the thing is, if its so much easier to kill at one life with fury or so, i dont really see how bow slot is that useful, as i assumed the main appeal of bowslot is that ga ignores ar and auto tracks making it easy to get that final hit..

This post was edited by Jeebus666 on Jun 28 2011 05:48pm

The arrows can be surprisingly effective in terms of knocking someone down a peg.
In terms of raw damage output, with crit factored in you have about a 5865 damage/second from guided arrow, which is enough to shave off 500-1000 hp or 750 mana per second

Now I gotta stress, killing people at 1 hp isn't a problem. Hell, you can finish them off with a second plague cloud more often than not. Its way easier to finish someone with fury than garrow for sure
But what matters is being able to use garrow to fight long range battles.



For example, if you're dueling a fireball sorc, and she plays by going 3 screens away and shooting, and keeping her distance from you so as not to wander into plagues.
Going pure java, you're really short on options. You can chase her around and try to unsummon lock her to stomp her with CS, but thats extremely risky
Whether she suspects it and turns around, or is just blindly firing at you, if you get stuck in a fireball stomp and dodgelocked she'll take 0 damage and you'll take a ton and probably die

But with guided arrow, you can fight on the offensive against Fireball sorcs, Blizz sorcs, Lightning sorcs, Bone or Poison necros, Trappers, other Bowazons
Without a garrow that can damage them, you have a much tougher time going on the offensive- you're pretty much stuck playing defensively, throwing javelins and waiting for them to come to you

Heck, often in ZvS, I'll find myself using chainlocked garrow against people who are playing defensively. I'll actually be switching between chainlocked teleports and guided arrows on top of them, because the KB stops them from turning around and slamming me
(and when you land on top with garrow and KB them at melee range it interrupts their teleports, too).

With CTA? I wouldn't be able to do any of that.




Its all a balancing act after all. Do you get more utility from the extra charm space, or from having 2.25x the bow damage? I believe bow damage.
If there was a 2x3 charm that said "+600% enhanced damage and 300% ar to bow only and +15% all resists", I'd use that with CTA instead of faith bow
But thats the difference- the equivalent of 600% or so enhanced damage (and 15% resists, and 300% ar)


I wouldn't sacrifice big amounts of gear to boost my bow damage, but I'd keep it all in balance. Having a bow swap is 10000000000000x better than say a wizspike swap, despite that getting better FCR and resists. Its all about weighing the options




I do like the comparison though, always good input

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 28 2011 06:09pm

best in this thread:

Goomshill @ annoying ppl ^^

a few dozen pages back with Mewi was a good read

already read

24/7 teleport with amazon, yeah right..

With 13/9 animations, yeah.
Its only 1 frame slower than a druid for example

I get accused of TMC in just about every game

~damach Zon Guide~ > Holy Shi Damach Zon Sex

What the fuck is Damach?

What the fuck does Sex have to do with this guide?

Stupid titles, but the contents are brilliant.

Nice, well-written guide, just dont use stupid titles