Asylums Guide To The Lvl 30 Bowa - Topic

Member

Posts: 109,637

Joined: Jul 3 2007

Gold: 40.00

Jul 3 2009 10:23am

Don't worry, I'm typing this slowly because I know you can't read very fast.

If you see any abbreviations or discussions that you haven't heard about before please view the last part of my guide, I'll explain where I come up with some things there.
Any Resources I use will be listed in the last part of my guide as well.

Glossary:

I: Introduction
II: Goals
III: Charms
IV: Equipment
...1. Bows
...2. Gloves & Belt
...3. Boots
...4. Helms
...5. Armors
...6. Jewelry
...7. Javelin Switch
...8. Shields
...9. Alternative Weapon Switches
...10. How to get Resistances
...11. Jewels
V: Skills
VI: Stats
VIII: Bugs & Explanations
...1. MDR Bug
...2. ED/ Damage Jewels in non weapon items
...3. Poisons Affect on critical strike
...4. Critical strike and Deadly strike
...5. FRW Penalty
...6. FRW and Diminishing Returns
...7. ED VS Max Damage in Shields
...8. 1 zon vs 2 passive skills
...9. Ceremonial Javelins VS Harpoons
IX: Links

I: Introduction

A LLD bow zon is a balancing act (like most other lld characters), there is no absolutely right way to build one, there are just many opinions on the matter. What I'm going to try and do in this guide is present to you several options of how to build a lld bow zon and my opinions on each available option.

Several stats to remember when building your bow zon (all are equally important) are as follows:

1. faster run walk
2. life
3. damage
4. mana
5. rep life
6. resistances
7. increased attack speed

If you focus too much one on aspect you may end up lacking in other aspects which could make your character good at dueling one type of opponent, but it will hurt you when you face the other types of opponents. That said, enjoy my guide and feel free to yell, gripe, and discuss with me in the following posts.

II: Goals

Here are some basic goals that your bowa should achieve (having this section first makes explaining things easier for me later on).

1. faster run walk: 100-150 depending on your play style and realm
2. life: 600-1,000 depending on build and playstyle
3. damage: 1k+ light fury 700+ 8 fpa bow 850+ 9 fpa bow
4. mana: 200+
5. rep life: 0-30
6. resistances: 75 all res n norm without anyas (more cold/light stack would be nice)
7. increased attack speed: 8 fpa or 9 fpa depending on your play style

III: Charms

This section is actually kind of difficult to explain since there are so many options available and what you use for charms depends on your budget and other gear choices.

Basic Information:

1. Dex on charms is worse then life on charms, amazons get 3 life per stat point and can only get 2 stats per charm slot, making a 2 dex charm equal to 6 life. Max life on a small charm at lvl 30 is 15, you can do the math from there.

2. You want to be able to reach your frw goals so plan your inventory with your gear accordingly.

3. Keep your resistances in mind, one way to get nice resistances is through your charms.

4. Hopefully you won't need mana from charms, but if you do it is possible to get mana from there.

Charm types:

Here are the different charm options for lvl 30 (listed as perfect charms, obviously you don't need to get perfect charms):

15 life 5 all resistances
15 life 9% to a single resistance
15 life 12 mana
3 max damage 20 attack rating 15 life
3 max damage 3 frw 20 attack rating
3 max damage 5 frw 20 attack rating (if you play non ladder realms)

Budget:

8-10 max damage any attack rating 20-25 life grand charms make nice temps and can be acquired at around 10-50 fg a piece

What I use:

My zons inventory cosists of:
12x 3/xx/5 frw sc's
28x 3/xx/15 life sc's

However I've had a long time to acquire these very rare frw charms and the semi elusive 15 life sc's, not everyone can be as lucky, just remember the basics and you will be fine.

IV: Equipment

1. Bows:

You have a couple options here:

Rare bows
Jeweled Ashwood Bows
Rogues Bow once upgraded

rare bows can be costly and difficult to find so I do not advise it (that and most of the good ones are dupes and dupes are lame mmkay?)

jeweled ashwood bows are by far the most versatile since you controll the stats you can get on them
2 shaels for 9 fpa
4 shaels for 8 fpa
nef for knockback
different jewel variations for more min or max or resistances
if you get an ashwood look for +3 bow skills at a minimum, and any % enhanced damage you can find on one is a bonus

Upgraded Rogues bow is a nice budget bow, it only requires one jewel or a nef rune if you want knockback instead and it hits 8 fpa and decent damage
remember that after you upgrade the bow you can only use jewels that are lvl 25 required or lower
visit arreat summit to view the stats of this bow

2. Gloves and Belt

deaths
deaths
deaths

no other options here, 30 ias cannot be frozen and 15 all res
some people like to use string of ears and bloodfists but to me that doesn't make much sense, then you have no cbf and you lose alot of mobility

3. Boots

sanders

I used to believe in cowkings so you could switch for res boots when needed, but I believe there are better ways to get resistances then boots. Plus the 25-35 fire damage on cow kings incurs the mdr bug and is not worth the 5 dex you pick up over sanders. Another reason to use sanders is that 10 frw = 30 life from charms or even 45 life if you use 3 frw sc's.

4. Helm

There are a few options here:

peasant crown
magical circlet
rare circlet

peasant crown is the winner versus most circlets you see that are put up for trade, it has 12 rep life 20 energy 20 vitality 15 frw and 1 all skills

some magic circlets that are worth using would be:
1 zon 30 frw 2 sockets
2 passive 30 frw 2 sockets
30% enhanced damage 30 frw 2 sockets
15 all res 30 frw 2 sockets

rare circlets become hard to say what is worth using because of the many different options available, just remember this:
if peasant crown is better then use peasant crown
it doesn't have to have skills to be a good circlet

having more then one circlet would not be a bad idea, my amazon has two circlets currently for different scenarios

5. Armor

Two options:

Twitchroe
artisans mage/light/breast plate of the squid (3 sockets 61-80 life)

fill either with jewels of your choice, twitch means you need one less shael in your bow to hit a decent ias frame

avoid medium and heavy weight armor because they have frw penalties

6. Jewelry

There are alot of ring and amulet choices for budget or the expensive character

rare rings/amulets (usually more expensive)
magic amulets/unique rings (budget)

Rare Rings and Amulets follow the same basic concepts:

1. life/mana/rep/stats/resistances are important
2. the ability to switch rings and amulets is good to have (so you could have a ring for each resistance)
3. amulets don't have to have skills to be worth using

for magic amulets some worth using are:

1 zon 15 rep life
2 passive 15 rep life
1 zon 80 life
2 passive 80 life
or basically anything that combines stats you need

Some budget rings are:

sojs: 1 skill mana and increased mana, the mdr bug hurts you but it is a nice budget ring
manald heals: life, rep life, regen mana

7. Javelin Switch

This is simple

Harpoons are your best option, look for high damage with other mods like:
eth/rep
knockback
ias
ctc amp

non eth harpoons are worth having for continuos dueling, but eth are also nice for the insanse damage they can do

8. Shields

Budget

whitsans
pelta

Higher up

artisans kite shield of deflecting (30/20 3 sockets)
artisans kite shield of regeneration ( 5 rep 3 sockets)

socket whatever you get with any of the following:

shaels for a better blocking frame
sols for damage reduced
20% ed/ stat jewels for more light fury damage

9. Alternate Weapon Switches

Sometimes you do not need to keep javelins on your weapon switch, for times like that consider having rep life and open wounds on switch for switching from bow to shield to get open wounds to proc.

some items you might want to consider are:
15 rep life war scepter
honor weapon
swordback shield
black weapon (or whatever the 100% open wounds rune word is called)

10. How to Get Resistances

I'm just going to lay out your options here, you can toy with each and decide what works best for you yourself

1. resistances from armor (for example an 80 life 3 socket light plate with 3x 15 max 15 all res jewels)
2. resistances from helm (for example 1 zon 30 frw 2 socket helm with 2x 15 max 15 all res jewels)
3. resistances from rings and ammies
4. resistances from charms
5. resistances from boots

11. Jewels

Weapons:
Magical- 20% ed 15 max jewels
Rare- ed/min/max/-15 requirements/dex

All Around:
Magical- 15 to 24 max damage jewels, 15 max 30% single res jewels, 15 max 15 all res jewels, adds 8-15 damage jewels
Rare- look for a combo of min, max, dex, resistances, and strength

V: Skill Placement

Like everything else on this character there are many ways to skill it, here is the basics of what I suggest:

Bow Skills: (16)
+1 to Magic Arrow
+1 to Multiple Shot
+1 to Cold Arrow
+13 to Guided Arrow

Javelin skills: (5)
+1 to Jab
+1 to Poison Javelin
+1 to Lightning Bolt
+1 to Plague Javelin
+1 to Light Fury

Passive and Magic Skills: (20)
Here is where you make all the choices, I suggest get Valkyrie and at least 49% crit and putting the rest into dodge avoid and evade so you have near equal percentages in them.

VI: Stat Placement

Enough Strength for gear
No points into energy

vita and dex is your choice depending on how much life/damage you want

VII: Bugs and Explanations

Diablo 2 isn't perfect so this section is pretty much required lol

1. MDR Bug

Your opponent has say 13 magic damaged reduce
you have elemental damage of a single type, let's say 12 pvp damage
when your attack hits the elemental damage you do is reduced by the amount of mdr that your opponent has, if you have less elemental damage then your opponent has mdr then it reduces your physical damage

so if you have multiple types of elemental damage it affects each one sperately, this can add up to alot of physical damage dissapearing from your attacks

2. ED/ Damage Jewels in non weapon items

In non weapon items a jewel that has both ed and a damage (let's say max for the sake of explaining) the ed on the jewel will only apply to your min damage, so you "lose" that enhanced damage from your jewel when talking about your max.

ie. 20 ed 15 max jewel, the 20% ed is only applied to min

this works when you mix jewels in an armor as well, for exmaple a plain 20 ed jewel and a plain 15 max jewel will work the same as one 20% ed 15 max jewel

Base Ed is unaffected, so you can use 15 max jewels in a 30% ed circlet and the ed will apply to your max and min.

3. Poisons Affect on critical strike

Simple put, poison does not cancel crit, it simply hides the animation.

4. Critical strike and Deadly strike

it's worthwhile to note that these do not stack exactly

for example you have 50% ds and 50% cs

you would do 75% chance to double damage (50% + 50% of the remaning 50%= 75%)

see damage calculator link for an easy way to calculate this

5. FRW Penalty

Medium armors have a 5% frw penalty
Heavy Armors have a 10% frw penalty

see frw calculator for exact speed reductions

6. FRW and Diminishing Returns

The more frw you have the less affect additional frw has, see frw calc for exact speed.

7. ED VS Max Damage in Shields

Since lightning fury has no base enhanced damage having enhanced damage in your shield when using this skill will benefit you more then having + max damage

8. 1 zon vs 2 passive skills

1 zon skills means lower mana cost for guided arrow, more damage, and more multi shot
2 passive means more passive skills

I prefer 1 zon

9. Ceremonial Javelins VS Harpoons

Harpoons receive .75% ed per strength and .75% ed per dexterity point
Ceremonial Javelins receive .80% ed per strength and .50% ed per dexterity point

Since your Amazon will have much higher dexterity then strength harpoons naturally have higher % ed so they do more damage on your character screen.

VIII: Useful Links

Faster Run Walk Calculator:
http://baronsbazaar.invisionzone.com/ppr/frw_calc.html

General Breakpoints:
http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=551#Area%20Levels

Skill Planner:
http://d2skills.com/

Damage Calculator:
http://diablo3.ingame.de/tips/calcs/dmgcalc/dmgcalc.php?patch=110&lang=eng

IAS Calculator:
http://diablo3.ingame.de/tips/calcs/weaponspeed.php?lang=english

Arreat Summit:
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/