The Fury - Amazon Guide D2 LoD 1.11
The Fury - Guide to a pure Lightning Javazon, D2 LoD 1.11
Disclaimer
To overcome any wrong assumptions, know that I am (not the Overmind but) two Bers and a certain mod away from 'Infinity'. Looking at the results of massive LK-running where many players showed unbelievable endurance, the Moron's stick of Imbalance suddenly seems to be more than a distant dream. With majority of players using RWM nowadays, many of them aiming past mid-nineties, it should not be overlooked. However, this guide is not concerned with one particular item and is about to present one of the most powerful builds available.
Introduction
Based on various threads and questions concerning javazons I eventually decided to write a guide summarizing the most important aspects into a single and, hopefully, consistent whole. Javazon was my very first character after starting again in 1.10 and remains my favorite build ever since. There is the old Jek's guide on lightning javazons in the stickies which contains description of skills and gear, but lacks a more complex strategy section.
We will focus on a specific javazon build that will hereafter be referred to as the Fury. The whole text is divided in two major parts: the first one contains build description and progress (stats, skills, gear), while the second one deals with future tasks (after finishing the game).
Description
Background
First of all, why a pure lightning zon? While being generally accepted, they are not as popular as the hybrid variants, namely LF/FA and LF/PJ. The reason seems obvious - the lightning immunes (LIs). Is it really so? Are they a problem worth 40+ points in backup skills? Note that none of them matches well with her primary skills - they are either from different chart or require different tactics which sort of reduces their efficiency. A good number of LIs are breakable, while the rest can be dealt with using physical attacks with minimal skill-point investment, keeping the lightning skills at full power.
Definition
Fury is an amazon build with maxed Charged Strike (CS), Lightning Fury (LF), Lightning Strike (LS), Power Strike or Lightning Bolt, and with one point in Evade, Pierce, and all prerequisites. She is devoted to lightning damage and uses the Lower Resistance charges or physical attacks against the LIs. The core build is finished at clvl79 with 90 skill-points spent. The magic skills (left branch of Passive&Magic tree) are optional as well as any bow skills. The customizations depend on our goals and will be discussed later.
Fury should be considered a melee build, despite the fact she possesses one of the most devastating ranged attacks available. She is typically fighting on the front line, and her attributes must respect that. It is a notable difference compared to hybrids which rely a lot more on LF, attacking from safer distance.
Advantages
The build combines a potent boss-killer (CS) with the ultimate weapon of mass destruction (LF). Both of them work instantly, don't have any cooldown, and the lightning component hits automatically. Their power is so vast that once the enemy immunity is broken, even a small fraction of the original damage is still a considerable amount. Using only a small number of skills, Fury is easy to play even for less experienced players.
To complement the offensive part, she possesses several defensive means as well. The range of 3, common for all javelins, gives her a small but important distance from most of the melee attackers during her first strike. High dexterity necessary to wield her innate weapons combined with fast block rate result in very nice block. In addition, she has the passive skills giving her a fair chance to dodge any type of attack. Finally, three points of life per one point in vita provide her with enough life to sustain some heavy blows that pass through.
Disadvantages
Let's start with the infamous D/A/E bug (derived from the first letters of Dodge, Avoid, and Evade) which affects more or less every amazon attack-skill. Whenever one of the three life-savers gets triggered during her attack, the amazon misses as well. This extends to the whole cycles rendering Fend useless in combination with D/A/E. Jab is more feasible thanks to shorter cycle, but gets crippled on lightning enchanted (LE) bosses. Their 75% bonus to lightning resistance (LR) often helps them attain immunity in the first place.
A large number of attackers can actually prevent the amazon from doing ANY damage due to this bug, esp. if she is already slowed (e.g. decrepified). Skipping the D/A/E skills is a dangerous route - I remind you this is a melee build with not exactly much life. These skills significantly reduce the damage received, and there are ways to minimize their drawback. Increased attack speed (IAS) helps a lot, as do any tanks.
The well known misery of the amazon is her slow casting rate. You should better remember this when running for your life in Hardcore (HC) trying to cast a Town Portal. The casting animation is skipped when using TP scrolls from belt, but it's considered cheesy by many, and most of the HC tourneys forbid that. Slow casting also degrades the magic skills, esp. Slow Missiles (SM) and Inner Sight (IS). There is another moment where Faster Cast Rate (FCR) plays its role - when cursing the enemies with Lower Resistance.
Last but not least is the running speed. The amazon doesn't have any skill to speed up her movement. She can only use Teleport charges to a limited extent (poor casting, remember). Fortunately, several useful amazon items come with Faster Run/Walk (FRW) mod which also frequently appears on charms. Fury can never be fast enough as she spreads havoc at the speed of lightning.
Statpoints
Energy is better left at base as usual because of the severe imbalance in life/mana ratio. The rest gets more complicated.
Let's start with vitality. While there is hardly any sufficient amount of life in HC, we can consider 220+ points in vita acceptable depending on our play-style. Honestly, Fury is not optimized for HC. She is way too powerful on melee, and that power is just tempting. As long as there are bugs in the game capable of instant-killing a character with ~1k life (i.e. forever), she will be either careful (and thus no longer a Fury) or dead. With 250+ points in vita and adequate gear she's "reasonably safe".
There are many interesting items for twinked chars which require huge amounts of strength (156 or even more). Those are neither necessary to finish the game, nor likely to be found while questing. Still, all elite weapons have high str demands (87 for Matriarchal Bow, 107 for Matriarchal Javelin), and we'll probably need one if we don't want to park every other LI or waste too much time killing them.
If untwinked, we should try to keep max or close to max block and thus will favor dexterity instead or put more points into the evasion skills. The Matriarchal Javelins have the dexterity requirement of 151 which ensures a very nice block.
About skills
CS - Fury enjoys the full power of this skill which allows her to rip through the toughest of foes. Nothing but the LIs is sufficiently resistant. A small drawback is that the enormous power is hard to control. Things used to be a lot worse back in 1.10 with lethal fire enchanted (FE) bosses. CS is also used against the breakable LIs.
Starting with slvl5, CS receives one more bolt every five levels in addition to "regular" damage increase. These levels (..20,25,30,..) are therefore interesting breakpoints to aim for when optimizing our gear. Word has it that the damage is rolled for each individual bolt which makes CS more reliable compared to other lightning skills (chances for the average damage are much higher than for the extreme values).
LF and Pierce - as far as speed and physical damage are concerned, LF works like a regular javelin throw. Upon hitting the target or a wall, slvl+1 bolts are released which automatically hit the nearest foes. When Pierce is available, the original javelin has a chance to pass through (monsters, not walls) and hit subsequent targets, causing multiple (up to five) bursts. That makes LF extremely devastating against large packs of monsters once a decent chance to pierce is achieved. High-level Pierce has diminishing returns, offering 75% chance at slvl12 and 85% chance at slvl20. Unique belt Razortail adds 33% to this chance, resulting in total 100% chance to pierce at slvl9+ or 98% chance at slvl8. In twinked play such values are achievable with just one hard-point in Pierce.
When playing untwinked and without further plans after finishing the game, we should add more points into Pierce since they cause a big increase in damage output. The chance to pierce at least N-times (N<5) is the base chance to the power of N. Subtracting the values for N and N+1, we get the chances for the exact number (1..5) of bursts. Now we can compute the average damage multiplier in the case of "sufficiently dense" pack. See the results in the table below - quite a difference compared to weak synergy bonuses!
Valkyrie - arguably the most powerful of the summons and the ultimate tank. She provides enormous help in untwinked play as well as a lot of comfort when Baal-running. Since the definition of Fury already includes the D/A/E skills, Valkyrie represents a 4pt investment on top of the core build by adding the remaining magic skills. She spawns with random gear and thus may be able to inflict other types of damage than physical. A single hard point in Valkyrie also prevents the CtC valkyrie from 'Peace' armor from desertion (yet another bug). When building high-level Valkyrie, players usually aim for slvl17 (including +skills) where she receives a War Pike. Since we mostly need her to tank, we can get along with smaller investment. If she dies too much, we simply add another point.
We can, of course, skip Valkyrie completely if we prefer to sacrifice comfort rather than damage. For dedicated Pindle/Cow runner a valkyrie is redundant, and those points are better spent in the last synergy. That can potentially be maxed at clvl98 if we are into maximizing lightning damage.
Magic skills - they are limited by slow casting. Moreover, Fury embodies a raw power which has little use for tricks and finesse. IS reduces enemy defense improving the chance to hit, but takes the time of approximately three jabs. SM requires precise timing to be more helpful than dangerous. It works better in combination with Decoy, it's just that the decoy usually lasts long enough for the valkyrie to move in and take care of the job. SM still helps against tough LE bosses by softening the D/A/E bug. Decoy is the king - a great scouting and crowd control skill castable at long distance.
Breakpoints (from Facts&Formulae Archive and Weapon Speed Calculator)
FHR
%FHR Frames
0 11
6 10
13 9
20 8
32 7
52 6
86 5
174 4
600 3
FBR
%FBR Frames
0 5
13 4
32 3
86 2
600 1
According to the F&F archive, the amazon has awfully slow blocking when wielding swinging weapons - which includes the wands. That makes daggers/throwing daggers much better choice for the LR-switch!
FCR
%FCR Frames
0 19
7 18
14 17
22 16
32 15
46 14
68 13
99 12
152 11
LF (amazon javelins)
%IAS Frames
0 14
6 13
16 12
30 11
52 10
89 9
CS (amazon javelins)
%IAS Frames
0 11
10 10
26 9
50 8
95 7
Jab (amazon javelins)
0 8
2 7.5
7 7
15 6.5
24 6
40 5.5
63 5
99 4.5
168 4
395 3.5
Pierce (damage multipliers)
slvl damage*
0 100%
1 130%
2 151%
3 170%
4 191%
5 211%
6 226%
7 243%
8 253%
9 272%
10 283%
11 294%
12 305%
13 317%
14 330%
15 336%
16 350%
17 350%
18 357%
19 364%
20 371%
100%p. 500%
Progress
Normal
Javelins are decent weapons in the early stages of the game, even the cracked ones, and throwing saves any useless running (out of stamina namely). That's why we put all stat-points into vitality for now. We take Critical Strike first, then Jab and ev. IS. We collect the chippies to equip our rogue with a gemmed bow. At clvl6 we acquire Dodge, Poison Javelin and Power Strike, raise strength so we might use studded leather armors (str 27) and continue with dexterity to improve our attack rating (AR). There is no need to raise vitality atm., but we may put some more points into strength in case we found some useful set/unique.
Unless we plan to max Lightning Bolt (PvP), we put more points into Power Strike to make things easier before eventually getting CS. We also take the prerequisites for Strafe/Valk if we opt for those skills. Saving skill-points for smooth CS&LF progress in the early 30's is an overkill which would only slow us down now. From clvl18 on our job is pretty straightforward: boost CS, kill mobs, and pour stat-points into vitality. Act2 merc can be hired instead of a rogue to tank the Scarabs. We'll try to cube some sapphires for more mana and combine them with any Tirs and other mana/kill (m/k) stuff we happen to find. During the battles we stay away from LE bosses and use Poison/Plague Javelin or gemmed bow on switch. The act bosses are weak on melee, esp. Diablo with his otherwise deadly lightning hose.
As we approach the end of normal, we raise dexterity to meet the requirements for ceremonial javelins (dext 109). There is a chance of finding a decent rare, and it would be a shame to waste such an opportunity. Because of the 12-lvl difference between our main skills, CS has already grown strong enough so we could focus on LF, using the Tyrael's reward to get the first points in Pierce and Valkyrie. With LF in our arsenal the world becomes a messy yet quiet place. Read the "LF and Pierce" section before investing additional points into Pierce.
Nightmare
I don't remember any trouble throughout the Nightmare after finding a nice javelin with replenishing property. Well, there is one thing. My latest javazon died the first time upon the FE Smith in the Barracks. Those blasts were not nerfed on NM, take care! After maxing LF we resume CS and then proceed with LS. In addition to enjoying our trip we should start looking for some gear that will take us through Hell.
The essential mod is Cannot be Frozen (CBF). 'Rhyme' shield is the most likely source when going untwinked though not even a Shael is guaranteed to drop for us. We should always be able to cube an Eth from lower runes if it doesn't drop directly. Next, we'll take some time and buy the dagger/wand of Lower Resistance and Life Tap. Our gloves should have 20%IAS, boots at least 20%FRW plus some resists. 'Lore' helm or imbued circlets make for a nice headgear, and gambling is a good source of jewelry if we are not content with our finds. Act5 rewards can be used to socket the armor with some of the resist runes. The last item we need is a weapon with high physical damage for the unbreakable LIs. If nothing decent drops, and Anya doesn't help us either, we will gamble, shop, twink, or suffer. As Hrus once said, a healthy amount of FRW solves the problem as well.
About the LIs
The majority of monsters on Hell difficulty spawn with one innate immunity, i.e. 100% or higher resistance to a given element, about one fourth of them being LIs. Their LR falls in 100-120% range (sorted by 5% steps). Lower Resistance curse works with 1/5 effectiveness against immunes which yields -37%/5=-7% at slvl2. While this suffices to break monsters with 105%LR, it's hardly worth it (2% damage dealt) until we find some gear with %penalty to enemy LR (-eLR). This mod alone cannot overcome the immunity, but greatly increases damage done to broken enemies. Monsters with 110+%LR are unbreakable by low-level charges.
Though the -eLR mod only comes on few items which are unlikely to be found while questing, the largest group of LIs are the 100%LR ones. That makes cursing (using the LR-switch) a valuable strategy in vanilla SP. Against the remaining foes we must rely on physical attacks. These, however, depend on AR and can be blocked or resisted (Stone Skin). Let's take a look at the available skills:
Attack - the cheapest choice for a bow. Nothing special but sometimes better than Jab, esp. if we have a crappy javelin or don't wish to risk a melee encounter.
Magic Arrow - a nice improvement for mere one point. MA is a great secondary skill for any amazon (except for the MA-zon where it's the primary skill).
Multiple Shot - on higher levels MS outperforms Strafe against large packs, provided there are any left after sorting out the non-LIs. We need some +skills and mana leech to make a good use of MS.
Guided Arrow - sort of waste unless we already go for Strafe. Why the hell it requires Cold Arrow has always been a mystery to me, same as the necessity of MS for Exploding Arrow. I guess Blizzard found the chart with three independent columns boring. With additional levels GA's damage grows up. Besides, it has auto-hit.
Strafe - a popular skill perfect against smaller groups and decent against single targets.
Jab - incredibly powerful skill for a mere prerequisite which is further boosted by +java-skills. Unfortunately, it suffers from the D/A/E bug (see above), and javelins have generally lower damage than bows or crossbows.
Crushing Blow (CB) is always a nice complement to physical attacks, namely to fast hitting Jab and Strafe. Crafted Blood gloves are easily affordable receipt.
More important thing is to overcome monsters' regeneration, esp. of any Stone Skin bosses. I am somehow skeptical about the wide-spread belief that added poison damage solves the problem. There are notable jumps in monsters' health the moment the poison wears off. As if those bastards knew how much health they should have regenerated in the meantime. I'm not saying poison doesn't work at all (except for poison immunes), but it certainly has its limits. We have two poison skills as prerequisites, out of which Plague Javelin surprisingly works better despite its shorter duration. I have no experience with Open Wounds or Prevents Monster Heal mods, just heard PMH doesn't work on a merc.
I have tried different means to combat the LIs while questing, and their efficiency depends on monsters' type, location, merc, available gear, etc. Why not to change strategy when appropriate?
Hell
Aside from weak Skeletons and slow Hungry Dead act1 hosts packs of nasty LI archers. Decoy and SM are useful here. In HC we should better restrain from using Strafe unless we really trust our tanks. Archers on Hell gain a strong elemental component added to their damage, and the missing shield typically carries (away in this case) a crucial portion of our resistances! Packs of Tainted are also not to be trifled with.
Maggot's Lair cries for a bow due to its topology and presence of Scarabs, namely their FE bosses hiding past the corners. Strafe is the king here as long as we can keep the moron ahead of us. Hollow Ones are the only LI version of Greater Mummies. I don't remember them ever commanding an army of LI skeletons, but who knows. The good old luring away is always an option, and some source of cold damage can help as well. If we insist on clearing the Cellars, we will likely face some Horror archers, while the Tombs can host hordes of skelLIes.
Act3 jungles are rather annoying than dangerous and one of the few places where MS shines. Zealots in Travincal are less sturdy than their namesakes from Starcraft, and once we take down their support (Hierophant healers), they won't last long. The Council has several LI members dealing some serious damage - they should not be underestimated. LF is a bane of Stygian Dolls, just make sure they are NOT swarming under your feet before "pulling the trigger". Some remaining LI Councils reside in Durance lvl3. We employ the LR-switch on Mephisto to cut through his 75%LR, and the first one of the Three bites the dust.
The Burning Souls in Plains of Despair are unbreakable and extremely annoying since the entire area is one large shooting-range. If anyone ever experienced the full-LI City of the Damned after finally getting rid of those Souls, I would not blame you for rushing towards the exit. Storm Casters in the Chaos Sanctuary are breakable, and big D has developed a paranoia towards the build capable of undoing him in less than a second.
Throughout the last act we may encounter various LI guest monsters as well as powerful Night Lords (LI Frenzytaurs). Luckily, many notorious adversaries are now breakable including the Souls, thus we should reach the Summit without much trouble.
The fastest way to beat the Ancients is to curse them with Life Tap and rush them head-on with CS, then break Madawc (LI thrower) and finish him off. Seriously, what else would you expect from our ferocious lady? Alternatively, we run in circles throwing LF to eliminate the non-LIs before charging the rest. Another pack of javelins is always handy. According to the Arreat Summit (the webpage), Madawc's LR is only 100% which means he's breakable unless he spawns with some additional resist-mod. Physical attacks are inefficient against his Shout-boosted defense. Multiple LIs can be either re-rolled or separated.
WSK1 can host a mixture of LIs with healing on top of that. We must employ LF to eliminate the priests before dealing with the rest. A detailed section on Baal-runs will follow, covering the last stage of the game.
Twinked Progress (by Hrus)
I am sure the players used to twinked play have already adopted their own style and have their favorite weapons and armors. I will just list a few items together with their level requirements which are in my opinion really good..
lvl 1 - stamina potions - yeah, you don't want to walk especially without FRW
lvl 1 - Khalim's Will - fast and strong weapon. Some people consider using this one cheesy and prefer special mauls or axes socketed with jewels for low levels
lvl 3 - Hsaru's Boots - 20%FRW - it's the earliest FRW in the game you can use.
lvl 6 - Death set - gloves + belt combo gives you CBF, 50%PR+ 75%Poison length reduction (handy against Andariel), 30%IAS and 15%resist all
lvl 14 - Vidala's Fetlock - 30%FRW, +150 Stamina
lvl 15 - 1.09 Ravenclaw - ultimate twinking weapon - shoots slvl30 explosive arrows on normal attack. If you don't want to use this weapon (some find it cheesy again), you will probably switch to javelin skills - Power Strike first, and CS a moment later. Equip +mana gear if you don't want to drink mana potions too often: socketed breast plate with sapphires, socketed helm with sapphires, snake charms
lvl 16 - Twitchthroe - another +20%IAS and 20%block on top of it
lvl 27 - 'Lore' helm - +1 skills and 30%LR
lvl 29 - Skin of the Vipermagi - +1 skills and up to +35%resist all
lvl 29 - The Stone of Jordan - ultimate ring with +1 skills and +25%mana
lvl 31 - Moser's Blessed Circle - one of the best shields - probably end-game worthy
lvl 32 - Razortail - piercing is ultimate with LF
lvl 42 - Titan's Revenge - one of the end-game weapons
lvl 42 - Javelin skillers - after you equip ~6 of these and Titan's Revenge, you will become the ultimate killing machine
lvl 45 - Ravenfrost - ring with CBF, Dext, AR bonus, and cold absorb
lvl 45 - Lancer's Gloves of Alacrity - the best gloves for this build
lvl 47 - Thundergod's Vigor - +10% maximum LR, +3 LF and nice Str and Vita bonus
lvl 62 - Harlequin's Crest - most likely your end-game helm, huge mana and life bonus, +2 skills, 10%DR and 50%MF. Esp. the mana/lvl is really nice mod.
lvl 67 - Mara's Kaleidoscope - +2 skills and up to +30%resist all
lvl 69 - Thunderstroke - your 2nd option, -15% eLR and +15%IAS are great, but this javelin lacks replenish
lvl 76 - Griffon's Eye - -15-20% eLR, +10-15% lightning damage, +1 skills
Hint: You don't need to twink super-offensive gear, this build is very strong on its own from the beginning. It's better to twink +mana items and enjoy the lightning skills with higher comfort provided by larger mana pool.
The Fury - Guide to a pure Lightning Javazon, D2 LoD 1.11
Disclaimer
To overcome any wrong assumptions, know that I am (not the Overmind but) two Bers and a certain mod away from 'Infinity'. Looking at the results of massive LK-running where many players showed unbelievable endurance, the Moron's stick of Imbalance suddenly seems to be more than a distant dream. With majority of players using RWM nowadays, many of them aiming past mid-nineties, it should not be overlooked. However, this guide is not concerned with one particular item and is about to present one of the most powerful builds available.
Introduction
Based on various threads and questions concerning javazons I eventually decided to write a guide summarizing the most important aspects into a single and, hopefully, consistent whole. Javazon was my very first character after starting again in 1.10 and remains my favorite build ever since. There is the old Jek's guide on lightning javazons in the stickies which contains description of skills and gear, but lacks a more complex strategy section.
We will focus on a specific javazon build that will hereafter be referred to as the Fury. The whole text is divided in two major parts: the first one contains build description and progress (stats, skills, gear), while the second one deals with future tasks (after finishing the game).
Description
Background
First of all, why a pure lightning zon? While being generally accepted, they are not as popular as the hybrid variants, namely LF/FA and LF/PJ. The reason seems obvious - the lightning immunes (LIs). Is it really so? Are they a problem worth 40+ points in backup skills? Note that none of them matches well with her primary skills - they are either from different chart or require different tactics which sort of reduces their efficiency. A good number of LIs are breakable, while the rest can be dealt with using physical attacks with minimal skill-point investment, keeping the lightning skills at full power.
Definition
Fury is an amazon build with maxed Charged Strike (CS), Lightning Fury (LF), Lightning Strike (LS), Power Strike or Lightning Bolt, and with one point in Evade, Pierce, and all prerequisites. She is devoted to lightning damage and uses the Lower Resistance charges or physical attacks against the LIs. The core build is finished at clvl79 with 90 skill-points spent. The magic skills (left branch of Passive&Magic tree) are optional as well as any bow skills. The customizations depend on our goals and will be discussed later.
Fury should be considered a melee build, despite the fact she possesses one of the most devastating ranged attacks available. She is typically fighting on the front line, and her attributes must respect that. It is a notable difference compared to hybrids which rely a lot more on LF, attacking from safer distance.
Advantages
The build combines a potent boss-killer (CS) with the ultimate weapon of mass destruction (LF). Both of them work instantly, don't have any cooldown, and the lightning component hits automatically. Their power is so vast that once the enemy immunity is broken, even a small fraction of the original damage is still a considerable amount. Using only a small number of skills, Fury is easy to play even for less experienced players.
To complement the offensive part, she possesses several defensive means as well. The range of 3, common for all javelins, gives her a small but important distance from most of the melee attackers during her first strike. High dexterity necessary to wield her innate weapons combined with fast block rate result in very nice block. In addition, she has the passive skills giving her a fair chance to dodge any type of attack. Finally, three points of life per one point in vita provide her with enough life to sustain some heavy blows that pass through.
Disadvantages
Let's start with the infamous D/A/E bug (derived from the first letters of Dodge, Avoid, and Evade) which affects more or less every amazon attack-skill. Whenever one of the three life-savers gets triggered during her attack, the amazon misses as well. This extends to the whole cycles rendering Fend useless in combination with D/A/E. Jab is more feasible thanks to shorter cycle, but gets crippled on lightning enchanted (LE) bosses. Their 75% bonus to lightning resistance (LR) often helps them attain immunity in the first place.
A large number of attackers can actually prevent the amazon from doing ANY damage due to this bug, esp. if she is already slowed (e.g. decrepified). Skipping the D/A/E skills is a dangerous route - I remind you this is a melee build with not exactly much life. These skills significantly reduce the damage received, and there are ways to minimize their drawback. Increased attack speed (IAS) helps a lot, as do any tanks.
The well known misery of the amazon is her slow casting rate. You should better remember this when running for your life in Hardcore (HC) trying to cast a Town Portal. The casting animation is skipped when using TP scrolls from belt, but it's considered cheesy by many, and most of the HC tourneys forbid that. Slow casting also degrades the magic skills, esp. Slow Missiles (SM) and Inner Sight (IS). There is another moment where Faster Cast Rate (FCR) plays its role - when cursing the enemies with Lower Resistance.
Last but not least is the running speed. The amazon doesn't have any skill to speed up her movement. She can only use Teleport charges to a limited extent (poor casting, remember). Fortunately, several useful amazon items come with Faster Run/Walk (FRW) mod which also frequently appears on charms. Fury can never be fast enough as she spreads havoc at the speed of lightning.
Statpoints
Energy is better left at base as usual because of the severe imbalance in life/mana ratio. The rest gets more complicated.
Let's start with vitality. While there is hardly any sufficient amount of life in HC, we can consider 220+ points in vita acceptable depending on our play-style. Honestly, Fury is not optimized for HC. She is way too powerful on melee, and that power is just tempting. As long as there are bugs in the game capable of instant-killing a character with ~1k life (i.e. forever), she will be either careful (and thus no longer a Fury) or dead. With 250+ points in vita and adequate gear she's "reasonably safe".
There are many interesting items for twinked chars which require huge amounts of strength (156 or even more). Those are neither necessary to finish the game, nor likely to be found while questing. Still, all elite weapons have high str demands (87 for Matriarchal Bow, 107 for Matriarchal Javelin), and we'll probably need one if we don't want to park every other LI or waste too much time killing them.
If untwinked, we should try to keep max or close to max block and thus will favor dexterity instead or put more points into the evasion skills. The Matriarchal Javelins have the dexterity requirement of 151 which ensures a very nice block.
About skills
CS - Fury enjoys the full power of this skill which allows her to rip through the toughest of foes. Nothing but the LIs is sufficiently resistant. A small drawback is that the enormous power is hard to control. Things used to be a lot worse back in 1.10 with lethal fire enchanted (FE) bosses. CS is also used against the breakable LIs.
Starting with slvl5, CS receives one more bolt every five levels in addition to "regular" damage increase. These levels (..20,25,30,..) are therefore interesting breakpoints to aim for when optimizing our gear. Word has it that the damage is rolled for each individual bolt which makes CS more reliable compared to other lightning skills (chances for the average damage are much higher than for the extreme values).
LF and Pierce - as far as speed and physical damage are concerned, LF works like a regular javelin throw. Upon hitting the target or a wall, slvl+1 bolts are released which automatically hit the nearest foes. When Pierce is available, the original javelin has a chance to pass through (monsters, not walls) and hit subsequent targets, causing multiple (up to five) bursts. That makes LF extremely devastating against large packs of monsters once a decent chance to pierce is achieved. High-level Pierce has diminishing returns, offering 75% chance at slvl12 and 85% chance at slvl20. Unique belt Razortail adds 33% to this chance, resulting in total 100% chance to pierce at slvl9+ or 98% chance at slvl8. In twinked play such values are achievable with just one hard-point in Pierce.
When playing untwinked and without further plans after finishing the game, we should add more points into Pierce since they cause a big increase in damage output. The chance to pierce at least N-times (N<5) is the base chance to the power of N. Subtracting the values for N and N+1, we get the chances for the exact number (1..5) of bursts. Now we can compute the average damage multiplier in the case of "sufficiently dense" pack. See the results in the table below - quite a difference compared to weak synergy bonuses!
Valkyrie - arguably the most powerful of the summons and the ultimate tank. She provides enormous help in untwinked play as well as a lot of comfort when Baal-running. Since the definition of Fury already includes the D/A/E skills, Valkyrie represents a 4pt investment on top of the core build by adding the remaining magic skills. She spawns with random gear and thus may be able to inflict other types of damage than physical. A single hard point in Valkyrie also prevents the CtC valkyrie from 'Peace' armor from desertion (yet another bug). When building high-level Valkyrie, players usually aim for slvl17 (including +skills) where she receives a War Pike. Since we mostly need her to tank, we can get along with smaller investment. If she dies too much, we simply add another point.
We can, of course, skip Valkyrie completely if we prefer to sacrifice comfort rather than damage. For dedicated Pindle/Cow runner a valkyrie is redundant, and those points are better spent in the last synergy. That can potentially be maxed at clvl98 if we are into maximizing lightning damage.
Magic skills - they are limited by slow casting. Moreover, Fury embodies a raw power which has little use for tricks and finesse. IS reduces enemy defense improving the chance to hit, but takes the time of approximately three jabs. SM requires precise timing to be more helpful than dangerous. It works better in combination with Decoy, it's just that the decoy usually lasts long enough for the valkyrie to move in and take care of the job. SM still helps against tough LE bosses by softening the D/A/E bug. Decoy is the king - a great scouting and crowd control skill castable at long distance.
Breakpoints (from Facts&Formulae Archive and Weapon Speed Calculator)
FHR
%FHR Frames
0 11
6 10
13 9
20 8
32 7
52 6
86 5
174 4
600 3
FBR
%FBR Frames
0 5
13 4
32 3
86 2
600 1
According to the F&F archive, the amazon has awfully slow blocking when wielding swinging weapons - which includes the wands. That makes daggers/throwing daggers much better choice for the LR-switch!
FCR
%FCR Frames
0 19
7 18
14 17
22 16
32 15
46 14
68 13
99 12
152 11
LF (amazon javelins)
%IAS Frames
0 14
6 13
16 12
30 11
52 10
89 9
CS (amazon javelins)
%IAS Frames
0 11
10 10
26 9
50 8
95 7
Jab (amazon javelins)
0 8
2 7.5
7 7
15 6.5
24 6
40 5.5
63 5
99 4.5
168 4
395 3.5
Pierce (damage multipliers)
slvl damage*
0 100%
1 130%
2 151%
3 170%
4 191%
5 211%
6 226%
7 243%
8 253%
9 272%
10 283%
11 294%
12 305%
13 317%
14 330%
15 336%
16 350%
17 350%
18 357%
19 364%
20 371%
100%p. 500%
Progress
Normal
Javelins are decent weapons in the early stages of the game, even the cracked ones, and throwing saves any useless running (out of stamina namely). That's why we put all stat-points into vitality for now. We take Critical Strike first, then Jab and ev. IS. We collect the chippies to equip our rogue with a gemmed bow. At clvl6 we acquire Dodge, Poison Javelin and Power Strike, raise strength so we might use studded leather armors (str 27) and continue with dexterity to improve our attack rating (AR). There is no need to raise vitality atm., but we may put some more points into strength in case we found some useful set/unique.
Unless we plan to max Lightning Bolt (PvP), we put more points into Power Strike to make things easier before eventually getting CS. We also take the prerequisites for Strafe/Valk if we opt for those skills. Saving skill-points for smooth CS&LF progress in the early 30's is an overkill which would only slow us down now. From clvl18 on our job is pretty straightforward: boost CS, kill mobs, and pour stat-points into vitality. Act2 merc can be hired instead of a rogue to tank the Scarabs. We'll try to cube some sapphires for more mana and combine them with any Tirs and other mana/kill (m/k) stuff we happen to find. During the battles we stay away from LE bosses and use Poison/Plague Javelin or gemmed bow on switch. The act bosses are weak on melee, esp. Diablo with his otherwise deadly lightning hose.
As we approach the end of normal, we raise dexterity to meet the requirements for ceremonial javelins (dext 109). There is a chance of finding a decent rare, and it would be a shame to waste such an opportunity. Because of the 12-lvl difference between our main skills, CS has already grown strong enough so we could focus on LF, using the Tyrael's reward to get the first points in Pierce and Valkyrie. With LF in our arsenal the world becomes a messy yet quiet place. Read the "LF and Pierce" section before investing additional points into Pierce.
Nightmare
I don't remember any trouble throughout the Nightmare after finding a nice javelin with replenishing property. Well, there is one thing. My latest javazon died the first time upon the FE Smith in the Barracks. Those blasts were not nerfed on NM, take care! After maxing LF we resume CS and then proceed with LS. In addition to enjoying our trip we should start looking for some gear that will take us through Hell.
The essential mod is Cannot be Frozen (CBF). 'Rhyme' shield is the most likely source when going untwinked though not even a Shael is guaranteed to drop for us. We should always be able to cube an Eth from lower runes if it doesn't drop directly. Next, we'll take some time and buy the dagger/wand of Lower Resistance and Life Tap. Our gloves should have 20%IAS, boots at least 20%FRW plus some resists. 'Lore' helm or imbued circlets make for a nice headgear, and gambling is a good source of jewelry if we are not content with our finds. Act5 rewards can be used to socket the armor with some of the resist runes. The last item we need is a weapon with high physical damage for the unbreakable LIs. If nothing decent drops, and Anya doesn't help us either, we will gamble, shop, twink, or suffer. As Hrus once said, a healthy amount of FRW solves the problem as well.
About the LIs
The majority of monsters on Hell difficulty spawn with one innate immunity, i.e. 100% or higher resistance to a given element, about one fourth of them being LIs. Their LR falls in 100-120% range (sorted by 5% steps). Lower Resistance curse works with 1/5 effectiveness against immunes which yields -37%/5=-7% at slvl2. While this suffices to break monsters with 105%LR, it's hardly worth it (2% damage dealt) until we find some gear with %penalty to enemy LR (-eLR). This mod alone cannot overcome the immunity, but greatly increases damage done to broken enemies. Monsters with 110+%LR are unbreakable by low-level charges.
Though the -eLR mod only comes on few items which are unlikely to be found while questing, the largest group of LIs are the 100%LR ones. That makes cursing (using the LR-switch) a valuable strategy in vanilla SP. Against the remaining foes we must rely on physical attacks. These, however, depend on AR and can be blocked or resisted (Stone Skin). Let's take a look at the available skills:
Attack - the cheapest choice for a bow. Nothing special but sometimes better than Jab, esp. if we have a crappy javelin or don't wish to risk a melee encounter.
Magic Arrow - a nice improvement for mere one point. MA is a great secondary skill for any amazon (except for the MA-zon where it's the primary skill).
Multiple Shot - on higher levels MS outperforms Strafe against large packs, provided there are any left after sorting out the non-LIs. We need some +skills and mana leech to make a good use of MS.
Guided Arrow - sort of waste unless we already go for Strafe. Why the hell it requires Cold Arrow has always been a mystery to me, same as the necessity of MS for Exploding Arrow. I guess Blizzard found the chart with three independent columns boring. With additional levels GA's damage grows up. Besides, it has auto-hit.
Strafe - a popular skill perfect against smaller groups and decent against single targets.
Jab - incredibly powerful skill for a mere prerequisite which is further boosted by +java-skills. Unfortunately, it suffers from the D/A/E bug (see above), and javelins have generally lower damage than bows or crossbows.
Crushing Blow (CB) is always a nice complement to physical attacks, namely to fast hitting Jab and Strafe. Crafted Blood gloves are easily affordable receipt.
More important thing is to overcome monsters' regeneration, esp. of any Stone Skin bosses. I am somehow skeptical about the wide-spread belief that added poison damage solves the problem. There are notable jumps in monsters' health the moment the poison wears off. As if those bastards knew how much health they should have regenerated in the meantime. I'm not saying poison doesn't work at all (except for poison immunes), but it certainly has its limits. We have two poison skills as prerequisites, out of which Plague Javelin surprisingly works better despite its shorter duration. I have no experience with Open Wounds or Prevents Monster Heal mods, just heard PMH doesn't work on a merc.
I have tried different means to combat the LIs while questing, and their efficiency depends on monsters' type, location, merc, available gear, etc. Why not to change strategy when appropriate?
Hell
Aside from weak Skeletons and slow Hungry Dead act1 hosts packs of nasty LI archers. Decoy and SM are useful here. In HC we should better restrain from using Strafe unless we really trust our tanks. Archers on Hell gain a strong elemental component added to their damage, and the missing shield typically carries (away in this case) a crucial portion of our resistances! Packs of Tainted are also not to be trifled with.
Maggot's Lair cries for a bow due to its topology and presence of Scarabs, namely their FE bosses hiding past the corners. Strafe is the king here as long as we can keep the moron ahead of us. Hollow Ones are the only LI version of Greater Mummies. I don't remember them ever commanding an army of LI skeletons, but who knows. The good old luring away is always an option, and some source of cold damage can help as well. If we insist on clearing the Cellars, we will likely face some Horror archers, while the Tombs can host hordes of skelLIes.
Act3 jungles are rather annoying than dangerous and one of the few places where MS shines. Zealots in Travincal are less sturdy than their namesakes from Starcraft, and once we take down their support (Hierophant healers), they won't last long. The Council has several LI members dealing some serious damage - they should not be underestimated. LF is a bane of Stygian Dolls, just make sure they are NOT swarming under your feet before "pulling the trigger". Some remaining LI Councils reside in Durance lvl3. We employ the LR-switch on Mephisto to cut through his 75%LR, and the first one of the Three bites the dust.
The Burning Souls in Plains of Despair are unbreakable and extremely annoying since the entire area is one large shooting-range. If anyone ever experienced the full-LI City of the Damned after finally getting rid of those Souls, I would not blame you for rushing towards the exit. Storm Casters in the Chaos Sanctuary are breakable, and big D has developed a paranoia towards the build capable of undoing him in less than a second.
Throughout the last act we may encounter various LI guest monsters as well as powerful Night Lords (LI Frenzytaurs). Luckily, many notorious adversaries are now breakable including the Souls, thus we should reach the Summit without much trouble.
The fastest way to beat the Ancients is to curse them with Life Tap and rush them head-on with CS, then break Madawc (LI thrower) and finish him off. Seriously, what else would you expect from our ferocious lady? Alternatively, we run in circles throwing LF to eliminate the non-LIs before charging the rest. Another pack of javelins is always handy. According to the Arreat Summit (the webpage), Madawc's LR is only 100% which means he's breakable unless he spawns with some additional resist-mod. Physical attacks are inefficient against his Shout-boosted defense. Multiple LIs can be either re-rolled or separated.
WSK1 can host a mixture of LIs with healing on top of that. We must employ LF to eliminate the priests before dealing with the rest. A detailed section on Baal-runs will follow, covering the last stage of the game.
Twinked Progress (by Hrus)
I am sure the players used to twinked play have already adopted their own style and have their favorite weapons and armors. I will just list a few items together with their level requirements which are in my opinion really good..
lvl 1 - stamina potions - yeah, you don't want to walk especially without FRW
lvl 1 - Khalim's Will - fast and strong weapon. Some people consider using this one cheesy and prefer special mauls or axes socketed with jewels for low levels
lvl 3 - Hsaru's Boots - 20%FRW - it's the earliest FRW in the game you can use.
lvl 6 - Death set - gloves + belt combo gives you CBF, 50%PR+ 75%Poison length reduction (handy against Andariel), 30%IAS and 15%resist all
lvl 14 - Vidala's Fetlock - 30%FRW, +150 Stamina
lvl 15 - 1.09 Ravenclaw - ultimate twinking weapon - shoots slvl30 explosive arrows on normal attack. If you don't want to use this weapon (some find it cheesy again), you will probably switch to javelin skills - Power Strike first, and CS a moment later. Equip +mana gear if you don't want to drink mana potions too often: socketed breast plate with sapphires, socketed helm with sapphires, snake charms
lvl 16 - Twitchthroe - another +20%IAS and 20%block on top of it
lvl 27 - 'Lore' helm - +1 skills and 30%LR
lvl 29 - Skin of the Vipermagi - +1 skills and up to +35%resist all
lvl 29 - The Stone of Jordan - ultimate ring with +1 skills and +25%mana
lvl 31 - Moser's Blessed Circle - one of the best shields - probably end-game worthy
lvl 32 - Razortail - piercing is ultimate with LF
lvl 42 - Titan's Revenge - one of the end-game weapons
lvl 42 - Javelin skillers - after you equip ~6 of these and Titan's Revenge, you will become the ultimate killing machine
lvl 45 - Ravenfrost - ring with CBF, Dext, AR bonus, and cold absorb
lvl 45 - Lancer's Gloves of Alacrity - the best gloves for this build
lvl 47 - Thundergod's Vigor - +10% maximum LR, +3 LF and nice Str and Vita bonus
lvl 62 - Harlequin's Crest - most likely your end-game helm, huge mana and life bonus, +2 skills, 10%DR and 50%MF. Esp. the mana/lvl is really nice mod.
lvl 67 - Mara's Kaleidoscope - +2 skills and up to +30%resist all
lvl 69 - Thunderstroke - your 2nd option, -15% eLR and +15%IAS are great, but this javelin lacks replenish
lvl 76 - Griffon's Eye - -15-20% eLR, +10-15% lightning damage, +1 skills
Hint: You don't need to twink super-offensive gear, this build is very strong on its own from the beginning. It's better to twink +mana items and enjoy the lightning skills with higher comfort provided by larger mana pool.
