Strafe strafe everywhere

[chubbypuppy]

Strafe strafe everywhere

Thinking about playing a bowazon with faith, so Im doing zon reading. It seems like it's all about strafe. How about multishot? It just looks so cool with its waves of arrows compared to strafe's plink plink. Is multi bad?

Also I know that fanat on faith adds a lot on the speed, but how about botd? It has 60% ias on the bow itself and it seems to hit harder, but now it seems to be all about faith. Is it a fad or is faith that much superior?

Im a Noob zon, thanks for answers

 

[SlainByPain]

MS zons are good if you can get a 15 fana GMB faith. Even then, you would need all the ias you can get to reach the preffered firing rate. You can also use a WF and put the faith on a rogue merc. Even on NL, a MS zon with an 8 frame WF can kill pretty well.

Don't bother with BOTD bows. IAS from fanactism works differently from regular IAS. It's basically a WF with 200 less dmg and 20% more ias.

 

[chubbypuppy]

So...

MS zons are good if you can get a 15 fana GMB faith. Even then, you would need all the ias you can get to reach the preffered firing rate.

So basically it's because MS is much slower than strafe that everyone prefers strafe? Hmm... If Im going LFury/Multi then perhaps a WF (without faith support) is close enough not to warrant the cost of a Faith?

BTW if I go LF/Multi which should my final backup skill be? Guided arrow?

 

[Classics]

Well, they're both very usable skills. They require the same basic mods in the equipment, save a few. There was a huge argument the other day about how someone thought 'strafe sucked'. Silly him. Read threw the whole argument (it starts about 3/4th down the first page), it might give you some light on the subject.

Argument Here

A Windforce will do you fine! Nine frame/per attack with that will fair you very well! Make a main investment in Dexterity (~300+) and you'll tear apart monsters like there's no tommorow, regardless of Fortitude!

Sorry I can't help you more, my knowledge is quite limited when it comes to Xpac.

 

[chubbypuppy]

Argument link, A Windforce will do you fine! Nine frame/per attack with that will fair you very well!

Thanks for the info! The thread was informative and not *too* poisonous, each side actually presented their cases with evidence, wow I will try MS with this zon cuz I tried strafe and I think MS looks cooler and more fun to me.

It seems like Guided Arrow is the preferred backup skill to MS, versus Magic Arrow? I will be maxing Lightning Fury and 15 into MS (+8 skills probably for the max 24 arrows) so I can choose to max 1 more skill. Should it be GA or MA?

 

[SlainByPain]

Don't use fortitude with WF. 9 frame MS just wont do. Try and get a good ed/60ias armor. Otherwise, get a 30 ias 80 ed armor and you should be able to reach 8 frames.

 

[Classics]

Don't use fortitude with WF. 9 frame MS just wont do. Try and get a good ed/60ias armor. Otherwise, get a 30 ias 80 ed armor and you should be able to reach 8 frames.

It will do more then fine. Dishing (350 dexish) 1500 damage/arrow (excluding Critical) at a 9 frame attack speed (Like 2.9 attacks/sec) will dish around 3000 damage a second average. Add 65% critical strike in and BOOM- 5k damage/second on average. I don't see why "it just won't do". Besides, you'd have more equipment for defence, which is always a huge plus.

Still, 8 frame is better offensively.

 

[Firechaosmage]

Okay guys, STRAFE RULES. Strafe doesnt take away your damage like multiple shot. Also, even with multiple you are shooting like 500 arrows, each target can only get hit once, and more than 50% of the arrows you shoot will probably just dissapear not doing any damage (unless you heard tons of cows and are killing them all). With strafe all 10 arrows are guarenteed to hit, and targets can even be hit more than once.

The only problem with strafe is that you are locked in position, but that is not a problem with a high level valkerye/decoy taking the heat of the battle with you strafing.

 

[SlainByPain]

Okay guys, STRAFE RULES. Strafe doesnt take away your damage like multiple shot. Also, even with multiple you are shooting like 500 arrows, each target can only get hit once, and more than 50% of the arrows you shoot will probably just dissapear not doing any damage (unless you heard tons of cows and are killing them all). With strafe all 10 arrows are guarenteed to hit, and targets can even be hit more than once.

The only problem with strafe is that you are locked in position, but that is not a problem with a high level valkerye/decoy taking the heat of the battle with you strafing.

I'm pretty sure MS would hit more against multiple targets. While a strafer takes time to hit every target on the screen, a MS zon can hit all of them multiple times in rapid succession.

 

[chubbypuppy]

still...

should i choose GA or MA for singular targets that my fury/MS cant handle? Plz tell me...

 

[SlainByPain]

should i choose GA or MA for singular targets that my fury/MS cant handle? Plz tell me...

GA

10chars

 

[XZON]

I can't believe what I am reading. Strafe, Strafe, Strafe? With a faith?

Faith GMB 8 frame multi > WF strafe 9/2 > Faith GMB strafe 8/2

If you want to make a great straffer, just use a good old WF and you can hit 9/2 (which is only 1 frame slower in a 10 arrow strafe cycle ) with fortitude and do way more damage than any faith straffer. Think about it. The biggest advantage a faith is the ability to hit sick attack speeds. Strafe in itself IS an insane attack speed.

Now if you want to see some real damage, Fire off 16+ arrows every 7 frames with multi and I you can do ridiculously safe and fast pit runs in 8 player games. 8/2 strafe = 10 arrows every 26 frames (just over 1 second), 7 frame multi = 16 arrows * 3.5/ sec = 56 arrows per second. That's almost 6 times the number of arrows.

Heck, even an 8 frame GMB faith multi build is way more powerfull than any strafe build. Try it and you will know.

 

[chubbypuppy]

Faith GMB 8 frame multi > WF strafe 9/2 > Faith GMB strafe 8/2

Not sure if the above statement is true but my faith multi is incredible. I traded for a faith today and man it just RAINS arrows. What are faith multi breakpoints? I got a 13 fanat and 60 ias off weapon...

 

[chubbypuppy]

Ok my progress...

Hmm, Im starting to think I may have to restart this zon. The MS with Faith is great. So fun to have WAVES of arrows fly through the air and they hit targets I dont even see. Each arrow doesnt seem to do much though, average about 1K without might. My setup is:

Stealskull (10 ias, mana steal)
Fanat 13 GMB
Highlords
COH
IK glove/IK boots (for the ias)
Razortail
2 ravenfrost

Maxed fury (such a overpowered skill), ~14 MS with skills, rest of skills pseudo-intelligently sprinkled

My str is pretty high (dont have the eq for stats like the original poster), but my dex is 350+ so far (sacrificing vit, ~450 hp right now).

Anyways, for single target Guided Arrows seem to work fine, but I have a real problem with physical immunes. My merc, valk and myself basically bore a physical immune monster to death with my level 8 magic or gold arrow. It's so pathetic for the 3 of us to fight a weak phys immune ghost. The ghost is thinking "god just kill me already, even though Im already dead. You guys are pathetic!" I'm thinking of remaking her so I can have charged strike.

Anyways, comments are welcome. Im a total zon noob.

 

[Leohappy]

With Faith gmb 13 you can reach 7fpa and you need 95% ias for that. Also Imo just 450 life in Hell is quite low... I must assume you get killed a lot.

Physical imm. are problematic for pure bowzon because theres no really damaging eleskill available. The most common are Magic arrow and Frozen arrow. However FA needs to be synergized to be effective, and even maxed Magic arrow doesn't do enough damage in 8player Hell games. Another way to solve this issue is to not play a lot in areas where PI's appear all the time.

 

[XZON]

With Faith gmb 13 you can reach 7fpa and you need 95% ias for that. Also Imo just 450 life in Hell is quite low... I must assume you get killed a lot.

Physical imm. are problematic for pure bowzon because theres no really damaging eleskill available. The most common are Magic arrow and Frozen arrow. However FA needs to be synergized to be effective, and even maxed Magic arrow doesn't do enough damage in 8player Hell games. Another way to solve this issue is to not play a lot in areas where PI's appear all the time.

Agreed. Even maxed magic arrow does not do enough damage in 8 player game. Beautifull thing about that is that it does more than enough damage to PI's in single player games and in 8 player games, you just let the other characters take care of the PI's for you.

 

[chubbypuppy]

Oh man loving it

I'm loving my faith MS zon! Now that Ive gotten her to 82 and the merc finally hit 75 and now he can wield Reaper's Toll. This should take care of a lot of my PI problems. Btw it's MUCH FASTER to level the merc doing act 1 pit runs than baal runs for some reason. He was getting exp in baal runs, but slowly).

Im going thru the Pits and Im mowing them down like nobody's business. This kills faster than my meteorb did. I guess it's because I dont really have to worry about all the different immunes, and I can just pour out the arrows.

No matter if strafe or MS is better, I'm loving MS just cuz it's so cool to look it. I guess in the end it's what's fun that's important

That's all for your help.

 

[Leohappy]

Btw it's MUCH FASTER to level the merc doing act 1 pit runs than baal runs for some reason. He was getting exp in baal runs, but slowly).

Merc only gets exp for things YOU kill. You're probably doing Pit runs alone that's why merc gets a lot more exp. Baalruns aren't a good way to level your merc anyway (unless your merc is level 94+ ).

 

[chubbypuppy]

Oh ok, duh!

Merc only gets exp for things YOU kill.

What, he can't learn from watching a hammerdin or blizz sorc kill like my character can? ^^

Thanks