For all his great abilities, the barbarian never becomes the best at anything. It doesn't ruin the game; other classes can choose versatility over concentrated power as well. Then they realize they dont need the freeze off Freezing Arrow and that the 20 points can be better spent elsewhere. Even the javazon has to be fairly close to reliably hit with her lightning spells. Welcome to Sebastian's Diablo 2 guide for a single player hardcore Frostmaiden (Freezing Arrow-based Amazon), for Diablo 2 version 1.14. This didnt make the necromancer unplayable; he is and has been a fun and powerful character. Barbarians can rely on one skill for killing, but they need movement, crowd control and buffing skills as well. At the highest levels, the powerful unique items available to all casters neutralize this advantage. Keep shooting Freezing Arrow while your mana is being replenished by the potion. Indeed, Fanaticism is one of the few skills in the game that gives significant attack speed bonuses without compromising defense (as Frenzy incidentally does), or locking out other skills (as shapeshifting skills do). This is somewhat like the assassin, who has to refresh her defensive buffs and control crowds with her Shadow Disciplines skills, but in this case its primarily an offensive concern. Thus, Teleport is much better at getting the sorceress out of battle than into it. Good morning, r/diablo2 ! Build strength:Medium range, two benefits from core stat, massive splash damage, Build weakness: Almost all damage comes from one elemental type, Synergies: The lightning skills are all part of a big linear synergy that makes several of them very powerful, Overview:The javazon has serious limitations, but these limitations are appropriate to the Diablo 2 context.
The central tenet of barbarian design is that he has to use multiple active skills to survive and kill his enemies. At first glance, this looks like a bit of bad game design. So really, his lack of obvious flaws is checked by a lack of powerful strengths. I wasted some time trying to kill him with Guided Arrow, when Freezing Arrow proved more effective. To accomplish this, most serious players will also perform thousands of repetitious runs, lasting literally hundreds of hours. But what happens is that once you actually enter the end-game and want to tweak for more damage, you realize there is no way to tweak Frost Maiden damage because the only way to tweak Frost Maiden damage is to begin stating as a power based Bowazon. ith a Bowazon, players need to accept the idea that it is a requirement to slow down and actually kill & get XP area to area before progressing. I like it! The former applies knockback and is useful for keeping approaching crowds away. Ranged weapons face a penalty for the safety they provide by firing at long range. (Lower Resist does not affect pure magic resistance for some reason, although the bone spells are still useful as supplemental damage.) The Windforce is not Starter Gear it is for when you hit the end-game and need to build a budget setup rather than aiming directly at Faith & Fortitude. One of the curious things about the shapeshifting skills tree is that although many of its skills are actually active skills which require continual refreshing, they operate like passive skills. The big three skills a late-game bowazon might use, Freezing Arrow, Immolation Arrow and Strafe simply dont do that much damage. 3) Gear provided for Bowazon IAS/ED% is just so much stronger and better designed than anything to support a Frost Maiden. As weve seen, both amazon bows and amazon abilities fall short of their peers. Once you get a hold of like Torch, Anni, Faith bow with +2all skills, +1highlords, possibly +2diadem if you are running diamond/shadow faith over gmb, the Valk will tank really really hard. Fire Claws is naturally weak (topping out around 400 damage per strike at level 20) and seems, at first glance, like it would only be useful during the mid-game. It is true thou a great bow makes it so much easier like with and physical class a weapon is your top need. The dmg in the skill window is also missleading. There are only a couple matches where GMB is better, and that is vs. Necros & Trappers where the Nosferatu 10% slow is beneficial vs. the Clay Golem strikes so he cant hit you and slow you as easily and vs. Trappers because 10% slow effects their trap speed which is for some reason based on IAS not FCR, otherwise Diamond setup are always better in pvp. That said, paladins rarely choose this last option as it is mutually exclusive with better attacks. Minor skills in the Poison & Bone tree also work as great crowd control effects with minimal investment. Thanks for the info. Best to aim at that mass mob kill speed for finding runes, jewels, good base drops for creating runewords. With a synergy from Battle Orders, Concentrate can gain magic damage equal to its physical damage while still providing significant bonuses to defense. It appears to be yet another case of over-balancing the bowazon, forcing her to rely on the elite items that every class wants, but not every class needs. A Frost Maiden, even with a high powered Immolation, would never be as good of a mass mob mulching machine as a high powered Multiple Shot Bowa that can hit everything within 2 screens off with a very wide cone. He can use the Taunt ability to draw enemies to himself, especially in conjunction with Howl. Some magical staves, wands and Necromancer off-hand items have categorical bonuses, but it's a lot more common on claws to see +1 to a skill tree or all assassin skills on blue items. Bosses, however, present a problem. Made a demo of the budget bowazon setup, to display its efficiency. This is clearly a purposeful listing because these are the two ultimate end-game gear setups for a Bowazon. Otherwise I'm using crafted Blood belt, Blood Rings, Hit Power Glove, Infernostride, and Saracen's Chance. You cannot compare Bowazon mass mob damage output to some of the other classes that are notoriously overpowered for single target boss kills, like Hammerdins or Blizzard Sorcs, or Smiters. Freeze them in place a Strafe them down. So GMB Faith with 13, 14, 15 Fanat can achieve 7fpa with 95% ias which is the fastest possible in original D2. Kill Baal (took 37 minutes), almost dying twice. When you look at Arreat Summit and the reality occurs to you that Freezing Arrow at lv 20 only has a base 310-320 cold damage, and only benefits 1 synergy for damage from Ice Arrow, and how many things in hell diff have cold immunity or at least high cold res, and that Amazon does not get a Cold Mastery like Sorc, you might want to consider whats going on here with sheer DPS output potential. That setup will cost you much much less than even getting a basic MF Sorc started. The assassin who specializes in the Traps skill tree is like the necromancer or sorceress, who can easily hit enemies who aren't even on screen. This is simply not difficult to do. I ask because in your Windforce & Act 1 Rogue Merc setup you mention the Valkyrie, but not anywhere else. If youre a player who just wants to play a Frost Maiden because you like it and it is fun, thats great. The latter mind-controls a group of common enemies and makes them fight their allies. There are plenty of gear combinations in Diablo 2 that can turn any character class into a nearly-invincible killing machine.
Press J to jump to the feed. Builds: 3 Fire, Ice and Lightning. The Necromancers class-specific item is normal in that it has class-specific +skill affixes. bowazon has unfortunately the end game paradox, You need the most expensive game to be very mediocre
Yup, already noted. In essence, the Druid has to spend more skill points than the sorceress to achieve the same damage. Magic damage, the barbarians one alternative to physical damage, exists on both ends of the spectrum. Futhermore, if you wanted to look into strange Matriarchal Faith setups which can obtain 7fpa at 45% ias, they can now obtain 6fpa at I believe it was 105% the testers said. They can attack independently of the assassin's primary target, which is a blessing and a cursesometimes theyll fire on a target other than the one which is the most dangerous. Its that sheer raw power damage as an option on Amazon is just better than the skill based bow skills for literally every reason mentionable. Eaglehorn or buri it really does negative dmg basically. Penetrate keeps up with the other skills, but it doesnt outpace them by an amount that would balance its big flaw. But Fire Claws also has one of the largest synergies in the game. You can keep arguing with me, but there is a reason why every single other person who has ever written a guide for Amazon, has said the same exact thing that I am telling you now, about physical based Bowas vs. Unlike Armageddon, this skill doesn't consume much mana, and relies on attack speed rather than casting speed. There are still passive skills to consider, however. Werebear and Werewolf, for example, only provide passive bonuses to stats, but they cannot be toggled. Thus, he has several options for getting closer to enemies. I own most of the endgame gear and the amazon is still mega slow in clear speed. In late Nightmare, the "cruel" prefix starts appearing, boosting damage by up to 300%. One would expect, based on the setup of his physical skills, that the paladin's magical options would be divided between single-target and multi-target spells, but it isn't so. This might actually be strong now, and would be worth testing.
There could be some interesting setups within Matriarchal now, but I dont think it would outweigh the optimized DPS values achievable though Diamond/Shadow. For gloves a Rare/Crafted 20% IAS with Mana/Life steal are perfect, at later gameplay you would like to get some Bow skills on them as well. But in D2r people were seriously overpricing Mav Diadem in first week or two, and I found it much cheaper to just get a hold of any 3os helm and a few budget IAS jewels. The other skills visualized are spells. This doesnt work for the bowazon, however. Buriza is actually a lot of damage my dude. Bowazon is one of the most fun classes in the game. These diminishing returns are in place to force the average player (who is not willing to do hundreds of hours of Lower Kurast runs, for example) to build around what he or she lacks. But, for all their dexterity stacking, amazons dont hit significantly more often than other classes. But for the most part, other builds avoided these kinds of systemic pitfalls. I have little to no gear yet, I cant wait to see this really shine when I have the full kit! Oh yeah I missed out on the witchwild string as well. Is the player supposed to save points in bow skills and reallocate into passive skills? I've already got Bloodfist (farmed normal Andariel) and made a Zephyr composite bow but I'd like to upgrade sooner than later for weapons. The real drawback for the javazon is that she deals almost all of her damage as lightning, and therefore simply cannot kill enemies who are lightning immune without having rare, resistance-removing gear, or companions who can do that for her. Of course the two elite methods listed are packed with Godly Gear recommendations. Overview: The bowazon is built on classical RPG checks and balances. we may have a different idea about what is slow and fast. So adding to dodge/avoid/evade makes your Valk & Decoy tank a lot harder. The only thing where I could be wrong here, is if Immolation Arrow now in D2r, is also strangely bugged like Firewall in Cooleys build. As much as I would love that they buff amazon back to 1.09, as it currently stands you need omega gear or you do jack compared to classes that can play naked and have a better clear speed ;/. Pure phys is garbage till you get god like gear and then is still not mega awesome, THe good thing is that amazon skills are all pretty trash and you have plenty of skillpoints to max the phys and frost side (frost just requires 41 skillspoints anyways), the sheer amount of 3/20/20 charms you need is just crazy. Pure frost is garbage You must log in or register to reply here. With multi shot you can farm more effective in the pits and tunnels. Rabies and Feral Rage both operate like passive skills as well, but must be cast. The bowazon skills come out lower. If the player commits to one type of weapon, do they have to throw away all the other weapon types they get on their journey through the game? I agree that, if you were trying to build the perfect killing machine, you should have the maximum possible attack speed all the time. This turned all other snakes on their friends, and I was able to rush the altar around the left-hand side, grab the Viper Amulet, and then Save&Exit. It isnt that they cant use Engima, its that using Enigma is not optimal for what a Bowazon is good at. Necromancer itemization is a little unusual as well. see it trading for gul-vex, but whatever. Bowazons are Amazons that use physical based damage setups in conjunction with Guided Arrow & Multiple Shot and sometimes Strafe situationally but only at a base lv 1. This build also has relatively fine control over its balance of tankiness or deadliness, Build weakness: Although this build has a variety of passive abilities and attacks, druids who change into the bear or wolf form can only use one spell, Elemental availability: High for a melee class; they can output significant physical and fire damage, and have a passable poison option, Synergies: Two moderate synergies, discussed below. I either missed it, or you didnt mention Mav diadem - this is the Item for bowas imo - Larzuk it, put any 15 IAS jewel in it and you keep up with all your breakpoints while getting GG circlet. The druid sacrifices damage to do this; most of his skills are only half to three-quarters as strong as their analogues in the sorceress skill trees. The truth is that during the end-game, Frost Maidens begin looking for ways to increase their damage output. More specifically, my game version was 1.14D when my Amazon defeated Baal on Hell difficulty. Usually the first thing that happens is they realize putting on a Faith Bow is yielding more damage than Ice Bo. Consumes more skill points than the poison/bone build, reducing the necromancers utility. In no way are Frost Maiden setups anywhere nearly as effective as a standard Bowa that is built correctly. The attack also benefits from some minor synergy bonuses, although the player has to divide skill points between various skills to give each element a synergy boost. Indeed, even a low-level use of Holy Shield can max out the block rate of an otherwise mediocre shield. Blessed Hammers normal synergies are from Blessed Aim and Vigor. Edit: There is also bunch of Treachery setups not sure though how they are fare against lack of damage from armour. Although extraneous or unusable character builds are a fixture of otherwise great titles in RPG history, Diablo 2 doesn't really contain any totally useless skill trees. Ive visualized the damage of several high-level ranged skills, adding in the main synergies for them. What eventually happens is that all Frost Maidens realize that to increase their damage output and general kill speed, they need to begin tweaking more and more for physical damage. This is a guide about Bowazon walkthroughs and Bowazon end-game setups, both budget starter into the end-game and elite end-game setups. Almost all of the power of the hammerdin comes down to this one equation and its deviation from the normal mechanics of Diablo 2. What the elemental druid does have is a set of powerful linear synergies. Similarly, there are spells which help to control crowds, like Psychic Hammer and Mind Blast. The Windforce is to be obtained at the end of the Hell Diff walkthrough, which is easy to trade for with your cumulative drops + w/e came from your Hell Diff forge quest. 