Why this can be challenging:
- Choosing to play a pure bowazon is pretty much a self imposed challenge by default, losing on powerful javelin skills such as Charged Strike and Lightning Fury; both of which are less stat dependant, gear dependant, and allow use of a shield.
- Bow users obviously can't use a shield, which means no chance block, and one less slot worth of mods such as resists; possibly very lethal to a character with base Vita who can take very few hits before death.
- Physical bowazons need good gear (%ED, IAS, leech), so depending on player's luck with the game's drop gods, late Nightmare and Hell modes can go very slow, specially with a low damage bow (slow kills = monsters alive for longer, higher risk).
Why this is certainly possible:
- Fast physical ranged damage is extremely powerful due to its ability to carry special effect such as Cold damage, Slow Target, Life/Mana leech, Knockback, etc. Keeping monsters disabled, slowed, stunned, 'block locked' shuts down their damage extremely well, while healing back any stray damage that hits you.
- Needless to say, ranged damage means not taking melee risks. Skills such Strafe and Multiple Shot hit so far away that many monsters can be taken down before they are even seen onscreen.
- Build that uses Valkyrie, most durable tank in the game (provided I live til 30 to get her), along with a mercenary and Decoy. Those 3 targets should be enough distraction to keep fire away from the amazon.
- 1 point Freezing Arrow as ultimate spammable panic button and utility (freeze to keep merc/Valk alive, shatter corpses).
Enough theorycrafting, on to the planned build:
Planned Stats
Stats: enough Strength to wield bow, rest on Dexterity.
Planned Skills
Bow: 20 Strafe, 10 Multiple Shot, 1 Freezing Arrow, 1 on pre-reqs.
Passive: 15-20 Critical, 20 Penetrate, 9 Pierce (will hope to find a Razortail), 10-15 Valk, 1 on pre-reqs.
Act 1 Normal
First off, /players 8. The starting javelins deal good throwing damage and cost only 1 gold to repair everytime. As with most of my baby bowazons, Alys cleared part of the Blood Moor with javelins until she had ~600 gold, enough to purchase a Long Bow from Gheed (Arrows from Charsi because it's cheaper than Gheed). It was worth entering and leaving town until Gheed offered a 3 socket Long Bow - the best for a quite long time.
The best socketing options are Sapphires (cold damage) and Emeralds (poison). Rubies are better off reserved for +Life on armor for boss fights (Duriel), Topazes for MF (act clearing armor). Skulls are kind of useless for now (low physical damage = bad leech), and Amethysts can be just sold (attack rating on weapon is not needed on a pure Dex build).
Clearing the Den of Evil was simple enough - keep distance of Gargantuan Beasts and Zombies, kill Shamans. At the Cold Plains, Blood Raven was annoying due to the constant running but eventually she went down - not a big threat. The best part was the reward, a Rogue merc - she does great damage with a Long Bow.
Stony Field was a good XP farming area due to Rakanishu's pack, although risky in melee range - Alys just kept distance. Leveling up to 12 paid off for a safer Underground Passage run, then save Cain at Tristram, which was also relatively safe. Got lucky with no nasty archer packs, kept good distance (notice a pattern?) of Griswold. Cold Arrow did a good job slowing him even more.
Rest of Act 1 is a bit risky due to many enclosed areas; I've skipped the Countess and Tower. Opening doors is dangerous and there's not much room to shoot and run. Just run past Black Marsh, Tamoe, got past the levels of Jail and Catacombs as fast as I could.
Upgraded bow: Long Bow with 2 Flawed Sapphires and 1 Chipped Sapphire.
For the Andariel fight, cleared all monsters, then lured her to the pond room. Simply running around the pond and shooting Cold Arrows was enough to take down Andy. Any time I'd get poisoned due to bad dodging of her spells, I'd go back to town and heal up. Losing all health then stepping on Fire on the ground is surely a sucky way to die. Alys' stats after Andy fight:
Act 2 Normal
Time to say goodbye to the Rogue merc and hire a Combat soldier. This merc is not only a great tank and damage dealer, but also a great source of health with his Prayer Aura. Considering this act has way more enemy damage than Act 1, which is also harder to avoid (poison traps, Lightning from beetles, ranged Spear Cats, Lightning at Arcane Sanctuary, etc), having a constant Prayer Aura is a great way to counter damage, degen, and stop annoying pot drinking constantly.
Sewers required some careful moving, letting merc go first, to avoid Burning Archers' volleys of arrows. Radament was simple enough by using Cold Arrows.
The desert is a very nice area for bowazons because it is so open and well illuminated. Easy to avoid most damage. Got a little lucky and found Cleglaw's Pincers off a monster pack; such a nice tool for slowing bosses to a crawl.
Farmed Beetleburst for a few runs, until Alys hit Level 20 and decided to gamble a little. The results proved awesome. Got my merc a Pike (which isn't available at stores yet), and Alys finally got herself some headgear, a really wonderful rare circlet packed with damage! Yes, all of my Amazons use no headgear other than circlets. Style over anything.
Getting the Horadric Staff was not difficult. Maggot Lair is safe, linear, just allowed merc always go in first. Claw Viper Temple was okay, just had a close call due to the snakes' charges. Killed Fangskin from very afar.
Ran past all Palace levels, oh I never liked this area. Grabbed WP, entered Arcane Sanctuary. Tried looking for the summoner on the upper right, then lower right branches, but only found him on the lower left one. Of course, the Summoner can one hit kill characters with low elemental resists, so I didn't take any risks: spammed Multiple Shot from really far until the Quest Log updated. Safe & easy. Distance is key, again.
Bow upgrade: Composite Bow socketed with Ral Rune, Ith Rune, Flawed Sapphire.
Proceeded to the Canyon to look for Duriel's tomb. Lucky! It was the first to the upper left corner, the direction I took. Went in. The undead were certainly annoying with the constant resurrecting but they eventually thinned out to manageable amounts - Ice Arrow shattering is great. Located the orifice to put in Horadric Staff, and started strategizing on how to kill Duriel. Not feeling too safe with just over 100 Life.
So well, although it seemingly goes against all logic, I planned to go melee against Duriel, and not use the bow. Equipment swaps: +Life armor (socketed with rubies), +Cold resist rings, Cleglaw's Pincers, Rare Javelins and a Bone Shield of Deflecting bought from Alkor. The idea was to tank Duriel at melee range, with 75% block, Level 1 Dodge, and 152 HP, throwing spears at his face for damage and slowing him with Clegs. I did drink a thawing potion too for big Cold Resist help. Just let Duriel focus on the zon, and not on the merc, which allowed merc to live and deal a lot of damage (using a bow would mean dead merc several times over, and risk of being charged by Duriel). Worked quite well and I didn't even need a town trip.
Act 3 Normal
So Alys arrived at Kurast, one of her least favorite places. The high umidity in the air and rain is not good for her hairdo... The enemies aren't the most pleasant to fight either, so all Alys tried to do was rush to the end of this act as fast as she could.
The first quest offered a very welcome reward, as +20 Life from the Jade Figurine represented quite a boost on her small Life pool (about +10-15%). Getting the Khalim's Will was, as usual, a long task, but Alys didn't wander around any optional area - just quest objectives hardly killing unnecessary targets. In the Spider Cavern, special measures to not be hit by the cursed extra strong spider boss. In the forest areas, never get in range of the shamans' Inferno spell, and inside Flayer Dungeon, liberal use of Decoy to scout ahead dark corridors. All in all, all Khalim's parts recovered without much hassle. Travincal bosses were under control with Ice Arrow.
Durance of Hate was pretty intense due to the exploding Dolls, I can safely say it was the first area I was really afraid of dying. Had one close call (kind of Strafe locked) then started using Decoy and Ice Arrow more. The mercenary died for the first time to Bremm Sparkfist, which was LE/Holy Shock. Of course I returned to town immediately and ressed him. Cleared Durance 3, met Mephisto, then lured him to the moat and used a TP. Went back via Waypoint, used moat trick to take him down without taking a single hit. Nothing usable dropped, though (@75% MF). Alys had gained only 2 Levels this whole Act.
Act 4 Normal
Ah, much better than Act 3. Both my damage and merc's started suffering though, as it has been a while since I last gambled and our weapons started feeling outdated. All in all, Act 4 is a good act for bowazons - open areas (Plains/Steppes), or very linear areas (River/Chaos), both of which are good to crowd control at.
Izual did not pose a threat. Merc tanked him just fine. The numerous Black Souls in the area forced me to wear Lightning resist gear, but I don't recall Life going under 50%. Overall pretty safe.
Luckily the City of the Damned WP was close to the entrance, making for a quick River of Flame trip. Many Abyss Knights and Urdars around, Fazel died a couple more times to boss packs. Hephasto had Conviction, but was taken down without problems. Hellforge results:
Proceeded to the upper River area, onto Chaos Sanctuary. All seals popped and none posed much of a problem. De Seis' minions are dumb enough to be picked off and run out of the Fanat Aura. The only riskier seal was the bottom one: it was the map which could trap me in the corner and I still didn't have Freezing Arrow (Level 28). Still, all went well and Diablo was out. Swapped in Fire resist gear to up resist to 70%, considering Fire Nova is almost unavoidable, whereas the Lightning attack can be dodged, so I settled with 50% Light resist for the Diablo fight. Merc was left dead to save $$$, and many town trips were made to buy Mana pots for the Guided Arrow spam.
Gave the Wormskull to my merc for the Life steal.
Act 5 Normal
Bow Upgrade: magic Long War Bow from Larzuk (4-36 damage, 6% Mana steal)
Time to throw away the elemental based bow and switch to focused physical damage, after all. The Mana steal starts to become more and more necessary to fuel Multi and Strafe usage. Alys hit Level 30 at the Bloody Foothills and got Pierce, Valk, Freezing Arrow. Put in some magic find gear (~100%) and started running Shenk and Eldritch. No much success so far, yet, but some very good experience to be had will make running Act 5 smoother:
The Act 5 run was pretty fast, thanks to the early level up runs. Besides, not all quests were completed, either - skipped the Barbarian rescue (as usual) and Nihlatak. Saved Anya for the resists boost, proceeded to fight the Ancients. With the Valkyrie and merc tanking like champs, they didn't pose a big challenge and went down eventually (I missed the screenshot).
Worldstone is always dangerous with the exploding slaved, but use of Decoy was enough to draw their fire. All of Baal's minion waves were handled with Freezing Arrow and Strafe. One of the waves dropped a Hellcast (unique heavy xbow), which for fun I used in the fight against Baal. The exploding arrows did well taking out Baal's appendages, and Baal himself was only real trouble when he duplicated himself.
Once Baal was down to very low HP, went to town and put all MF gear on...
Baal defeated, our lady leaves Normal mode with a 31% MF Chance Guards.
Act 1 Nightmare
To be continued!|||WOW! Nice work
Reminds me of superdaves plights!
keep up the good reports!
|||Nice going! Certainly possible, but challenging. I recommend some hefty +life gear eventually. A 'Passion' bow in an elite type (and possible also one in an exceptional bow along the way) is probably quite good. Around 200% ED, nice IAS and crowd control (blinding, monster flee).
I would take away some of the points you plan on Critical Strike and Penetrate so I�d have more points to pump Decoy with. Not only will that make your Decoy much sturdier, it will also make her much cheaper to cast, plus your Valkyrie will be considerably harder to kill.|||Great writeup! How do you embed images in posts? I've never been able to figure that out.|||Nice writeup, keep it up!
EM: Upload the image somewhere (e.g. imageshack), then link to it using the "Insert Image" button (it's in the same row as the button for inserting links).|||EM: Also, you have to make sure that the link is a direct link to the image afaik|||Thanks for the input, guys. Updated up to Act 5 normal.
@jiansonz: Indeed, going to need some good +Life gear. I'm think mostly of charms, and perhaphs Lionheart armor for a decent amount. I think Cow King's or Aldur's Boots (both?) offer good +Life too. I'll look for them. I think I'll be safe at 500 Life in Hell.
@EmperorMoo: I post the link to the images like this:
[*IMG]http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/8484/screenshot017cp.jpg[/IMG]
Without the asterisk.
|||Nice writeup man, keep it up, i am looking forward to reading the whole story |||Amazing progress presentation, I'm looking forward to the next episodes 
|||Awesome writeup and 
Grats on Destroyer!
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