Hey guys having played nothing but Zon since D2R launch, as it was the only class I hadn't really delved into back in the day, I'm so pumped now for the various viable endgame bowazon variants that will be available in 2.4.
Magezon -- Freezing Arrow and Exploding Arrow, plus their synergies. The rest is up to you, but I'm planning to do 1 point in every passive skill, and the rest in Strafe (12 in Strafe at char lvl 95). Gear with +skills and +phys damage, e.g. CoH, SoJ (or double ravens, each Raven is +seconds of freeze duration (4 in normal, 1 in hell, equiv to four cold dmg small charms) in addition to massive stats), Highlord's, War Travs, 3/20 bow gloves, bow skillers, so even with some room in the inventory, comes out to at least +24 to bow skills, so new Strafe at lvl 36, Might aura, and Decrepify from merc will be quite strong enough for the occasional dual-immune unique (cold+fire), or just for picking off annoying carvers and stuff with its auto-aim.
Pure Dex Physical Bowazon -- let's face it, if you're only doing physical (and now some magic) damage, the skills don't add much ED so you have to go max dex or at least close to it. Guided Arrow is garbage now compared to the buffed Strafe. Going from 75% to 100% base damage is much more than +25% bonus damage for new Strafe. It's 1.00 / 0.75 = +33.33% bonus damage. And the new bonus AR is amazing, to the point where Guided Arrow seems terrible now for PvM -- now similar damage per hit as Strafe, but slow (less crit procs per second), and no Pierce. If your dex is high enough, your AR will be high enough that Guided's auto-hit should be a moot point.
Bow/ Fend/ Impale Hybrids -- Strafe main attack, Impale and Fend for tough packs, maybe max new buffed Magic Arrow for phys immunes (could easily hit 75%+ damage Conversion to magic). Could be quite fun and probably a more effective pure-phys build than a bow-only pure phys build. Fixed Dodge/avoid/ Evade mean you can stay alive during melee even though pumping dex. Wreck flayers with Strafe, wreck Death Lords with Fend, wreck bosses with Impale. Magic Arrow for anything else.
Thoughts?
p.s. why do my Arrows always go through Baal now when using Freezing Arrow? Is the Freezing Arrow attack rating bonus finally fixed? I should not be piercing so many shots against Baal -- also didnt he used to block 50% of them, even if hit check passed?
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Hey guys having played nothing but Zon since D2R launch, as it was the only class I hadn't really delved into back in the day, I'm so pumped now for the various viable endgame bowazon variants that will be available in 2.4.
Magezon -- Freezing Arrow and Exploding Arrow, plus their synergies. The rest is up to you, but I'm planning to do 1 point in every passive skill, and the rest in Strafe (12 in Strafe at char lvl 95). Gear with +skills and +phys damage, e.g. CoH, SoJ (or double ravens, each Raven is +seconds of freeze duration (4 in normal, 1 in hell, equiv to four cold dmg small charms) in addition to massive stats), Highlord's, War Travs, 3/20 bow gloves, bow skillers, so even with some room in the inventory, comes out to at least +24 to bow skills, so new Strafe at lvl 36, Might aura, and Decrepify from merc will be quite strong enough for the occasional dual-immune unique (cold+fire), or just for picking off annoying carvers and stuff with its auto-aim.
Pure Dex Physical Bowazon -- let's face it, if you're only doing physical (and now some magic) damage, the skills don't add much ED so you have to go max dex or at least close to it. Guided Arrow is garbage now compared to the buffed Strafe. Going from 75% to 100% base damage is much more than +25% bonus damage for new Strafe. It's 1.00 / 0.75 = +33.33% bonus damage. And the new bonus AR is amazing, to the point where Guided Arrow seems terrible now for PvM -- now similar damage per hit as Strafe, but slow (less crit procs per second), and no Pierce. If your dex is high enough, your AR will be high enough that Guided's auto-hit should be a moot point.
Bow/ Fend/ Impale Hybrids -- Strafe main attack, Impale and Fend for tough packs, maybe max new buffed Magic Arrow for phys immunes (could easily hit 75%+ damage Conversion to magic). Could be quite fun and probably a more effective pure-phys build than a bow-only pure phys build. Fixed Dodge/avoid/ Evade mean you can stay alive during melee even though pumping dex. Wreck flayers with Strafe, wreck Death Lords with Fend, wreck bosses with Impale. Magic Arrow for anything else.
Thoughts?
p.s. why do my Arrows always go through Baal now when using Freezing Arrow? Is the Freezing Arrow attack rating bonus finally fixed? I should not be piercing so many shots against Baal -- also didnt he used to block 50% of them, even if hit check passed?
Magezon -- Freezing Arrow and Exploding Arrow, plus their synergies. The rest is up to you, but I'm planning to do 1 point in every passive skill, and the rest in Strafe (12 in Strafe at char lvl 95). Gear with +skills and +phys damage, e.g. CoH, SoJ (or double ravens, each Raven is +seconds of freeze duration (4 in normal, 1 in hell, equiv to four cold dmg small charms) in addition to massive stats), Highlord's, War Travs, 3/20 bow gloves, bow skillers, so even with some room in the inventory, comes out to at least +24 to bow skills, so new Strafe at lvl 36, Might aura, and Decrepify from merc will be quite strong enough for the occasional dual-immune unique (cold+fire), or just for picking off annoying carvers and stuff with its auto-aim.
Pure Dex Physical Bowazon -- let's face it, if you're only doing physical (and now some magic) damage, the skills don't add much ED so you have to go max dex or at least close to it. Guided Arrow is garbage now compared to the buffed Strafe. Going from 75% to 100% base damage is much more than +25% bonus damage for new Strafe. It's 1.00 / 0.75 = +33.33% bonus damage. And the new bonus AR is amazing, to the point where Guided Arrow seems terrible now for PvM -- now similar damage per hit as Strafe, but slow (less crit procs per second), and no Pierce. If your dex is high enough, your AR will be high enough that Guided's auto-hit should be a moot point.
Bow/ Fend/ Impale Hybrids -- Strafe main attack, Impale and Fend for tough packs, maybe max new buffed Magic Arrow for phys immunes (could easily hit 75%+ damage Conversion to magic). Could be quite fun and probably a more effective pure-phys build than a bow-only pure phys build. Fixed Dodge/avoid/ Evade mean you can stay alive during melee even though pumping dex. Wreck flayers with Strafe, wreck Death Lords with Fend, wreck bosses with Impale. Magic Arrow for anything else.
Thoughts?
p.s. why do my Arrows always go through Baal now when using Freezing Arrow? Is the Freezing Arrow attack rating bonus finally fixed? I should not be piercing so many shots against Baal -- also didnt he used to block 50% of them, even if hit check passed?
Can be used to make Runewords:
Also, you left out for physical bowazons, with synergies from Guided Arrow and multishot (15% combined per level) at lvl 20 you're now getting 300% physical damage increase, so basically a free Fortitude. They just buffed the living crap out of physical bowazon.
Phys bowazons are already solid and perfectly viable (as dex). Sure, they're no java or light sorc but they can easily handle their own in p8. And the tiny life pool makes it at least a little bit of a challenge for a change (not even 500 life on mine atm). 
Though I will sincerely feel the massive loss of skill points this would result in. No more countless spare skill points to max Magic Arrow for phys immunes. No more maxed valk without having to Sacrifice your own dmg throughput/AR for it. It does come at a bit of a cost.
That having been said, synergy skill damage can be implemented in one of two ways actually. Very curious to see how this works out. If it just adds ed (similar to most attack skills) and that ed is what synergy is adding to then yeah, this basically becomes an extra Fortitude worth of damage.
However, if this is implemented in a flat damage kind of way (similar to the current penalty on Strafe just in reverse), then the bowzons would just go nuts as their damage would pretty much quadruple. For a vita zon, the first would leave it mweh and the latter would take it from mweh to quite good. For a pure dex zon, the first would take it from solid to good whereas the latter should take it from solid to insane. Very curious.
Though I will sincerely feel the massive loss of skill points this would result in. No more countless spare skill points to max Magic Arrow for phys immunes. No more maxed valk without having to Sacrifice your own dmg throughput/AR for it. It does come at a bit of a cost.
That having been said, synergy skill damage can be implemented in one of two ways actually. Very curious to see how this works out. If it just adds ed (similar to most attack skills) and that ed is what synergy is adding to then yeah, this basically becomes an extra Fortitude worth of damage.
However, if this is implemented in a flat damage kind of way (similar to the current penalty on Strafe just in reverse), then the bowzons would just go nuts as their damage would pretty much quadruple. For a vita zon, the first would leave it mweh and the latter would take it from mweh to quite good. For a pure dex zon, the first would take it from solid to good whereas the latter should take it from solid to insane. Very curious.
I have 17 base points in Valkyrie right now, and will probably keep at/around that after the 2.4 respect. Reason is that she doesn't die. Even Diablo can't nuke her. What this does is cluster everyone around her (and not me) allowing me to DPS. It also gives me not only time for the Amp Damage from Atma's to hit, but also hits more at once when they are clustered around the valk. Works quite well for the relatively few physical immunes out there.
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