New to zon's in 1.10 need skills and item help/suggestions <

[pepperisadog]

New to zon's in 1.10 need skills and item help/suggestions

I am in Useast Ladder and I have no idea what im doing. I looked through the guides and none seemed to really suit me. I hope to make a multishot bowazon aimed mostly for pvm but won't be bad for occasionally pvp. I have a few basic questions.

1.) What gear will I need? I have pretty good string, tgods, some of mavinas set, 3hrs +some lower runes to spend, a crap gaze 8/7/16 ravens, angelic combos, some decent rare ring 7 ll, 23 mana, 7 resist all, 105 ar.

2.) What skills will I need? Multishot I guess, ga still good? I'd really like to have fast multishot and pierce. How many in the passives? Valkerie only needs one point?

3.) What are good stat distributions? Enough str for gear, no mana, the rest split between vita and dex? How much dex do I need

4.) Where will I get my resists? I know resists are a big problem for bowazons so where should I get mine, I can get 14 from a crap anni I have, but thats still -86 resist all lol.

If you have a successful Multishot zon it would be great if you could post some of the items you have and skill/stat distribution. Thanks *pepperisadog2

 

[Peregrine]

1.) What gear will I need? I have pretty good string, tgods, some of mavinas set, 3hrs +some lower runes to spend, a crap gaze 8/7/16 ravens, angelic combos, some decent rare ring 7 ll, 23 mana, 7 resist all, 105 ar.

Windforce is insanely cheap these days, and still an excellent bow. Windforce + fortitude armor + highlords + leech rings + laying of hands + war travelers + kiras + belt of your choice = 3hrs at most (mostly for fortitude), and will be good in hell.

2.) What skills will I need? Multishot I guess, ga still good? I'd really like to have fast multishot and pierce. How many in the passives? Valkerie only needs one point?

Strafe or multi, pick one. Passives are always good, put points until they reach diminishing returns. GA is worthless now without pierce, strafe beats it massively for single targets. Valkyrie is either 1 point or 20, depending on who you ask. I only use one point, but some people like giving it more life/damage.

3.) What are good stat distributions? Enough str for gear, no mana, the rest split between vita and dex? How much dex do I need

Enough str for gear, then about a 3/2 split between dex/vit is what I use. End result is 300 dex, 900 base life (1400 with CTA).

4.) Where will I get my resists? I know resists are a big problem for bowazons so where should I get mine, I can get 14 from a crap anni I have, but thats still -86 resist all lol.

Easiest way is high % kiras with um rune. That gives up to 85 resist all (and frees up your ravenfrost slot for another leech ring). With that, fortitude armor, and the quest reward, that's up to 60 resist all. Add in the various bits from your other gear and you should have max resists in hell.

 

[pepperisadog]

Wow excelent thanks a lot thats exactly what I was looking for in terms of gear. Now I need some help with what skills more specifically, I know if left to my own nature I'll end up with a crap character. Crititcal strike seems really good is it worth maxing? Or does it have really bad diminishing returns?

So additional questions arise.

1.) Is laying of the hands really that good, compared to all those nice rare gloves and other nice unique gloves out there. (Soul drainer)

2.) Will I have enough speed with highlords fort and wf?

3.) If Ga sucks and I am going multi-shot what do I use for single opponents or physical immune?

4.)What kind of charms should I look for? Are psn charms good for multi shot. Since I will be hitting a high number of creatures at once, wouldn't it be nice for all of them to be drained slowly by psn?

Thanks again.

P.S. Dunno how I double posted, sorry about that. Just let the other thread die please.

 

[Omikron8]

Wow excelent thanks a lot thats exactly what I was looking for in terms of gear. Now I need some help with what skills more specifically, I know if left to my own nature I'll end up with a crap character. Crititcal strike seems really good is it worth maxing? Or does it have really bad diminishing returns?

So additional questions arise.

1.) Is laying of the hands really that good, compared to all those nice rare gloves and other nice unique gloves out there. (Soul drainer)

2.) Will I have enough speed with highlords fort and wf?

3.) If Ga sucks and I am going multi-shot what do I use for single opponents or physical immune?

4.)What kind of charms should I look for? Are psn charms good for multi shot. Since I will be hitting a high number of creatures at once, wouldn't it be nice for all of them to be drained slowly by psn?

Thanks again.

P.S. Dunno how I double posted, sorry about that. Just let the other thread die please.

1) Yes unless you are in heavy animal class monster areas laying of hands is THE pvm bowazon glove

2) Check speed tables in amazon FAQ

3) Guided Arrow is a one point joke in 1.10 pvm, nothing more. Strafe in 1.10 increases in MINIMUM arrows every level, eg. 7 minimum arrows at level 20. This works even against just one target. Therefore strafe is the bowazon boss killer and i would rate it higher than multishot as well for multiple targets, unless you are shooting out 7 or 8 frame 3-4k+ multishot.

4) Ignore poison charms. Look for charms with a mix of life, attack rating, max damage, elemental damage. Skill charms are a joke as well on physical damage bowazons.

Go look at www.battle.net/diablo2exp at hell monster hitpoints and multiply them by 8 and you will see that poison charms just don't pack enough punch in 1.10 to mass them (not considering ridiculous 451 pdsc dupes).

 

[Superhal]

1. main thing is a good bow. wf is still passable. you should buy/make a fortitude armor, as it will be very useful/valuable no matter what.

2/4. put 20 points into valk, that's all the defense/resists you'll need in hell pvm. i run around with -60 to all and levelled from 83-90 in the pits. for pvp, chains is ok.

3. pvp and pvm are pretty much opposite. for pvp, as much vita as you can, bare mins on the rest. for pvm, dex helps damage, so extra there won't hurt.

my typical setup:
tgods or goldwrap (for the ias)
duress or wealth
shako or 15 ias'd andys
ravenfrost
dual leech ring
dual leech ammy or highlords
wf or buriza or titans/spirit
war travs or gore riders
chance guards or ias/skills/leech gloves or LoH
max damage or mf or elemental or resist charms

the build i still follow is flux's .09 hybridazon guide, with a couple of changes for .10, basically max valk.

[edit] there are some rather severe bugs associated with dodge/avoid/evade. some people put 0 in them, and thus can't get valk. imho, the survivability because of valk for a non-melee zon is worth the price of having 1/3 to 1/2 missed attacks.

 

[Peregrine]

Wow excelent thanks a lot thats exactly what I was looking for in terms of gear. Now I need some help with what skills more specifically, I know if left to my own nature I'll end up with a crap character. Crititcal strike seems really good is it worth maxing? Or does it have really bad diminishing returns?

Like all passives, huge diminishing returns. If you use highlords, getting it to about 50% (where the increase starts slowing down) will give you double damage on 75% of your attacks.

So additional questions arise.

1.) Is laying of the hands really that good, compared to all those nice rare gloves and other nice unique gloves out there. (Soul drainer)

Yes. 20% ias is mandatory on gloves, and the damage vs demons is HUGE. A high percentage of the monsters you'll be fighting will be demons, including all act bosses. The high fire resistance is just a nice bonus.

It's possible to get rare gloves that are better, but the price for them is pretty insane. LoH gives much better cost to benefit ratio, something critical for you right now.

2.) Will I have enough speed with highlords fort and wf?

Yes, especially if you shael the windforce. The 90ias breakpoint is easy to reach with wf, and your massive damage will more than make up for the slightly slower attack rate.

3.) If Ga sucks and I am going multi-shot what do I use for single opponents or physical immune?

Physical immunes are rare in 1.10, so there aren't going to be too many things you can't kill. You pretty much have these choices:

1) Amp damage bow on weapon switch. Shoot until they're cursed and lose physical immunity, then resume killing.

2) Max single elemental arrow, probably magic arrow. Every skill point in the low-level elemental arrows converts 1% of your damage with that skill into the appropriate element. With max magic arrow, 20+% of your damage is magic damage (almost nothing is immue) and it costs zero mana to cast.

3) Max elemental arrow + synergies, my choice. I use max freezing arrow + cold arrow synergy. Huge cold damage, freezes everything, strafe for leech/finishing them. As a nice side effect, that and a few mana potions will kill anything immune to physical damage.

4) Merc with appropriate curse/elemental weapon.

4.)What kind of charms should I look for? Are psn charms good for multi shot. Since I will be hitting a high number of creatures at once, wouldn't it be nice for all of them to be drained slowly by psn?

Poison can be ok, but not usually. Your damage is going to be high enough that poison would be mostly overkill, and you hit really fast so you're going to keep resetting the duration (and not getting the full damage).

Resistance charms are always good. Bow skill charms are pretty useless, but passive skills can really help if your passives are on the low side. 3/X/life charms are always nice for increasing damage, or even plain life charms can help. I use lots of cold damage charms to increase cold length on the freezing arrows.


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2/4. put 20 points into valk, that's all the defense/resists you'll need in hell pvm. i run around with -60 to all and levelled from 83-90 in the pits. for pvp, chains is ok.

I disagree here. Maybe for pit runs you can get away with it, since there aren't many elemental attackers. But for hell in general, -60 resists and low vitality is suicide. Expect to die very frequently if you use that strategy. You're a glass cannon, if anything slips past the valkyrie tank, you die.

 

[pepperisadog]

Ok, thanks for everyones input, So I've decided to put points into strafe and guided, strafe for single/ a few targets and multi for large groups. Then max Cold or freezing arrow for PI? A few more questions arise.

1.) Is laying of the hands better than these rare gloves I already own? 20 ias, 3 ml, fire resist 24%, 4 str, 13 psn res. Or these other gloves- 2 bow xbow, 20 ias, 24 lr.

2.) How many points should I put into multi/strafe for the above strategy?

3.) So shael wf, um kiras, zod the arrows so I never have to replace them :lol: anything else?

4.) If I have 765 psndmg in charms, 5x 100psn small, 175 large, 90 large w/33 life, Would they be put to better use on my amazon then my frenzy barb? Or would I be better off trading them for maxdmg/life/ar(dont all have to be on same charm) charms or for runes to get them?

5.)How affective is a point valkery? In .09 about as useful as a 1hit distraction. Anyone know what a level 5 or so valks hitpoints/resists are?

6.) Belts Tgods vs goldwrap vs 7/15 string vs razortail vs other Not sure what to use for a belt.

7.) Where do I get knockback from this setup. Is knockback important for pvm or only pvp? When I pvp what would be the best thing to switch to get knockback?

 

[Zeppelin]

3.) So shael wf, um kiras, zod the arrows so I never have to replace them :lol: anything else?


7.) Where do I get knockback from this setup. Is knockback important for pvm or only pvp? When I pvp what would be the best thing to switch to get knockback?

It depends, If your planning on using WF as the above statement implies then ou have no need to worry about knockback...since it's a mod in the wf. IMO Knockback isn't essential in PvM (though it does help), but for PvP I would highly recommend it to slow down those pesky melee chars. In PvM it shouldn't matter that much as long as you keep your distance.

 

[Superhal]

I disagree here. Maybe for pit runs you can get away with it, since there aren't many elemental attackers. But for hell in general, -60 resists and low vitality is suicide. Expect to die very frequently if you use that strategy. You're a glass cannon, if anything slips past the valkyrie tank, you die.

i only die to desynch. vit is high though thanks to spirit shield, i have around 230, 1.1k life.

 

[Omikron8]

Don't pump multi and strafe

Strafe isn't that effective if it is not maxed and with most equipment setups it beats multishot in crowd control except obvious places like cow level

Max multi and don't invest in strafe

or

Max strafe with one in multi

 

[Superbit]

My 2 cents...

If you max Multi, your mana is gonna get sapped real fast.
I run with about 10 points after skills into multi, and that seems to work out well.

 

[pepperisadog]

My 2 cents...

If you max Multi, your mana is gonna get sapped real fast.
I run with about 10 points after skills into multi, and that seems to work out well.

Yeah after having a level 10 multi without skills, Im seeing that too. I'll leave it at 10 for now and see what my manas like later in the game.