I mean, for example, I'm building a strafezon at the moment. I just pick up a Windforce, dress her with my Fortitude Dusk Shroud, watch our her resists, hire a might merc with a TRT and she will do fine anyway. But I still think that I'm not making the most of my high-end equipment. Heck, I had to give up my werewolf.
I need a bit of help there. I don't want just a list of skill placements and equipment choices. I want to know the general numbers I need to aim and the "whys" behind each decision. I want to learn a bit. So:
1.- My main purpose to play this build is to be able to run The Pit in a decent time with about ~200 MF. So I chose Strafe as my main attack skill and put 20 points there. But my attack rating seem kinda low: ~4,3k at clvl 77. I've read Nightfish recommend 10k or so in Hell. I have slvl 6(7) Penetrate. Should I have maxed this skill first? My inventory is almost full but should I add a couple of Steel GC to help Penetrate?
2.- I don't want to invest points in dodging skills. Mainly because it's annoying to get interrupted in the strafe cycle by a bunch of fetish blowdart. So I won't have Valk: my only tank will be my merc. Knowing that, ~100 points in vitality is fine(631 life at clvl77, 942 before BO)? Should I use Decoy?
3.- PI are handled with a shaeled eth TRT on merc, helped with a Treachery and a 15% IAS jewel on helm to jab at 5.5 FPA. The idea was to spam Decrepify. But I had a lot of points to spare, and I though if Freezing Arrow (20) sinergized with Cold Arrow (9 atm) could be a decent back up plan against them. It is not. Sure, the crowd control is fine, but I lack +skills so the damage is low and it's an incredible mana hog. In the end, I just wait to the merc's drecep, so the whole purpose is defeated. What should I do with all those skill points? I didn't want to use LF/CS as a backup at first because I have a pure lit infinizon but...
Anyway, for reference, my build looks like this at clvl 77: 20 Strafe, 20 Freezing Arrow, 10 Multishot (hardly ever used); 10 Pierce, 6 Penetrate, 8 Critical Strike. I'm thinking about respecing. How it should look like?
My Strafe damage (with Might) is 323-3806 with 4295 AR. My Freezing arrow damage is 389-4479 base plus 849-930 with 9737 AR. Are those values right?
My resists are 74/63/80/63 before Hell Anya. 942 life (low? suffer a random death in hell act 1 due to a cursed pack), 326 mana after BO. 115 Str, 240 Dex, 100 Vita before gear.
90 IAS (I know the 2 frame strafe thing, but I though it would help freezing arrow), 25 FHR, 30 FRW.
Equipment: Kira's (my resists suck!), Forti dusk, WF (shael), highlord's, nosferatu's coil, 2 raven frost 20 Dex, +3bow/20 ias gloves, gore rider. Any major mistake there? I have access to most of the usual equipment for bowazons, including HR runewords like CoH. My inventory is almost full of charms. Most of them are for resists, but I got a couple of +131 attack and max dmg sc/gc. No skillers for physical builds, right?
Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance!|||For starters, most of your points should be in passives. Penetrate should be maxed, and put points into CS and Pierce until diminishing returns get painful. Decoy is awesome (and this is where my spare points went eventually). Valk is not necessary, but you have some points to throw around if you feel like using her. Also, +bow skills are pretty much worthless. You'll be much better off with +passives from your gloves and +AR from your charms. If you have them, some +2 Passive, +stats, +MF, 20% IAS gloves would be perfect. All you really need is 20% IAS, though. If you still really need AR, you could use Demon Limb on switch? I personally gave up and used a harmony for travel purposes. Stealskull is also an absolutely perfect helm. Honestly, you don't need resists at all (unless you're playing HC, in which case you might want to be more careful than I am). I typically run the pit with all negative resists and I only die when I watch TV and wander into a cold nova. You frequently won't even be able to see enemies (stick your decoy on the edge of the screen and strafe away) when you're in the groove.
But yeah, tl;dr: resists don't matter in the pit, +bow skills don't do anything.|||Strafeazon will suck in WSK (at least my did
) , but she does Pit quite well.I would recommend you to go pure phsysical, so no FA. IMO best merc would be Faith Act 1 Rogue or Might Act 2 with TRT as you already mentioned.
As for Valk, maybe she is a good idea afterall since you won't be hit that much in Pit but decoy can do the job pretty well also.
AR - definately max penetrate and put as much points in dex as you can (I put all in dex after putting in str for equipment), dex also boosts damage for bows.
For PIs you can use Atma's Scarab amulet, best gloves would be LoH, belt Razortail (btw your pierce skill should give you at least 65 chance to pierce), boots Wartravs, helm Kiras (if you die often due to elemental damage) or Giant Skull for KB and 2os, rings RF and Carrion Wind for twister proc, and fortitude armor.|||The way you build your bowie doesn't make too much sense to me
You should aim for only 3 things. Dmg, FRW and MF. Your setup doesn't do much for either of those. You should aim for ~200 MF like you said, 100 FRW at least and rest into dmg. I'm not expert on strafe, but iirc 80 IAS is needed for 9/3 with WF?
Anyway. There are couple things that you should never swap out. Amulet will be Cat's eye for 30FRW 20IAS and 25 dex. HLW does better dmg, but Cat's eye does increase your dmg with 25dex and 30 FRW is awesome for walking zon. War Travelers will be boots. 15-25dmg is really a lot after all ed bonuses. They give more dmg then Gores overall and you get nice MF on top of it. Since you will have a lot spare points (ditch FA) you will have high crit strike so no extra DS will be much beneficial. Gloves will be LoH. 350 ed to demons is too strong to ignore.
Now you need to beef up FRW and MF. 30FRw circlet (with useful prefix?) and 2os with ptopazes seems quite good. One RF for CBF and use some leech/MF ring as second ring.
Cat's eye + 30 frw helm + WT = 85 FRW. You could add 1.07 Mavina's belt for 40 FRW and added mana leech (not that you really need it anyway). You can do without circlet and use something like Shako or whatever. As long as you are ~200 MF and ~100 FRW you can mix and match to get most out of your character.
Toss Gheed in inventory, some 7MF scs to hit desired number and fill rest with maxdmg charms of all sorts.
If you are concerned with resists - don't be you will attack from far, and strategic use of decoy is must. You could as well max decoy if you have extra skills. Decoy will be better tank then merc that will be only walking aura and PI solution.|||If you are willing to re-spec, I'd suggest ditching Freezing Arrow (it's a 1 point wonder for the freezing effect, though) and spending the points in Critical Strike, Valkyrie and Penetrate instead.
Suggested physical build:
Passives:
20 Critical Strike, 20 Penetrate
1 D/A/E
1 IS, 1 SM, 1 Decoy (good to scout - cast ahead in dark areas, such as Pit, inside rooms before going in, etc), ~10+ Valkyrie (depends on your style and how often you are willing to recast her).
Bow:
20 Strafe
5-10 Multiple Shot (can be better than Strafe in several situations, good for 'scouting' offscreen too)
1 Freezing Arrow and all other pre-reqs
Physical immunities taken care of with an elemental bow on switch, or immunity-breaking curse (Decrep - Reaper's Toll, Amp - Atma's Scarab).
Learning to play with a Valkyrie, Decoy and merc will make you want less life and resists because you will take far fewer hits. You could get by with 20-70 Vitality and spend more in Dexterity for more damage (you have Fortitude, it offers enough of a Life bonus).|||After a lot of playing with bowazons, I can tell you what I think the best strafezon is, damage wise:
Weapon: WF ('Ohm'/40ED jewel)
Switch: CtA/Spirit
Cube: Demon's Limb (you need the enchant to get over 10k, even with maxed Penetrate on a Dexazon, when using WF)
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Helm: 3os circlet (3x Ruby Jewels of [max damage] are best), preferably with FRW or other suffix
Armor: 'Fortitude'
Boots: War Trav (as frozzzen says, the 20avg damage beats DS from Gore's)
Belt: tricky, but if you go for LL belt (SoE for me), you have 2 ring slots free for RF
Gloves: nothing beats Laying of Hands
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Amulet: Highlord's beats Cat's Eye for damage (but FRW can be great)
Rings: 2x Ravenfrost
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Charms: 1.07 Maxxers
Moron: Might, and 'Pride' or Reaper's
Now I know, I know, Reaper's must be better, right? Well, with KB the moron is not that great at triggering Decrep. Stuff gets pushed away constantly. It's great at breaking the immunes though.
Stats: Str enough to wear WF, rest in Dex
Skills: Max Penetrate, Strafe. 65% Crit, 79% Pierce. You can consider spending points in Dodge (and Dodge alone). That way you won't get penalized for Avoiding a missle, but you will have easier chance surviving if for some reason there are suddenly monsters in melee range, hitting you. Rest in Decoy.
I'm playing a very similar character at the moment, though with 'Cham' in the WF. (Which is so not worth it, but I'll biatch about that in my future write-up.) It's the best Strafezon I can come up with and she's a lot of fun.
Now, I don't have great FRW gear, so mine has only what the boots gave, but she's very fun for questing. She only has 50MF. Thing is: as much as I love bowazons, and I really really do, they are just not that great MF characters. If you give up 'Fortitude', you lose about 25% damage. You can get 140-ish MF from the armor, and if you go for 'Enigma' you get FRW and 90MF and Strength (which gets back 70ED) which is sort of OK, but you will be hard pressed to go over 200MF, something other characters do easily.
I think going for 80 at Strafe is just unnecessary. You'll do just fine with losing 1-frame per 10 arrows. Not worth the sacrifice in damage between 10/3 and 9/3, imo.
If you give up HLW you'll lose some further damage, gain some FRW but also lose 35 LR. And I'm all for negative resists, but a character with 500 life needs about 0 LR in my view, otherwise you need to be way too defensive in playstyle.
The main reason why I don't think Strafezon is a great MF-er:
- It's impossible to target only bosses, you will be killing almost all the monsters.
- At /p3 (which is the only way killing all the monsters works), she's slower than necessary to be in competition with Necro/Barb.
I just don't think it's possible to get over 200MF while killing at /p3 with great speed with her. I don't see it.
Hope some of that was helpful,
--Greebo|||Thanks a lot, guys. All your responses were very helpful.
I think I'm a bit biased regarding resistances. I used to play HC and there better safe than sorry. That's the reason why I tried to get at least 50+ all resists in hell and was so worried about life.
@frozzen: I'm struggling a bit to get that 100% FRW without 1.07 m'avinas tenet and a good FRW circlet. I've think about a PT Valkyrie's Wing/1.13 M'avinas to get to 95% instead.
@Greebo: very informative, as always! She's not going to be my main Pitrunner, though. My hammerdin should do it better. But I though it could be a nice change of pace. Strafe is fun!
Thanks again to everyone!|||If you can't find a Windforce or Faith, you may use an upped WWS, this way you can choose another weapon for your merc( maybe pride). Besides, you can put anything you want in WWS (jewels,ohm,shaels etc.)|||Don't worry. I already have a Windforce and could make a Faith if I really needed it. But thanks for the input
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