Bowazon Bis armours?

Hey everyone, my next ssf character build is going to be a bowazon. I haven’t decided on physical or elemental yet, I’ve got at least a week before she’ll be past level 80 for her final re-spec. I’m still on the hunt for another

Lo so I can make Fortitude, and I do have an Enigma and a couple Treachery’s, but are there any other armours that could be best in slot I’m forgetting, or you would recommend?

The only other runes I have lying around are a

Sur, 2

Vex, a

Gul, and a bunch of low ones, so I can’t make high end rune words armours...yet

Oh I also have a Stone I was thinking I’d put on her so she could have a

Clay Golem during play through. Otherwise should I be on the lookout for a jewellers armour of something? (Are they shop-able?)

For weapon options I have a Faith and fairly well rolled

Wizendraw, but no

Windforce yet.

Thanks for your feedback.

For physical bowazon:

I think Fortitude , nothing beats +300% enhanced damage. You don't really need

Clay Golem, because you have

Valkyrie and

Decoy . Enigma doesn't work very well, because she has terrible FCR breakpoints and you will lose a lot of damage vs Fortitude (and you will

Teleport around arguably slower than running with some +FRW charms).

Faith on you + Pride on Act 2 merc gives you most damage (because you have

Fanaticism + Might +

Concentration which gives you another + damage), next best option is

Windforce on you + Faith on Act 1 merc.

I think you don't need Treachery, because you can get max IAS without it and in general there is no point in using defensive armors like Treachery or Chains of Honor, because she always keeps distance from monsters and you should just invest in damage and use Merc,

Decoy and

Valkyrie as meat shields. She does not benefit a lot from plus skills either.

You can also check my bowazon topic forums/general-thoughts-and-tips-on-phy ... 11426.html

In general physical is much easier and satisfying to play (at least for me) because you just come in, place a

Decoy, use

Slow Missiles (if needed) and then clean everything with

Strafe (or

Multiple Shot - I don't like

Multiple Shot though, because it burns through

Arrows quickly,

Strafe uses a single arrow for 10 shots). Magezon does more single target damage, but you will be starved for mana all the time and you just need to put more effort into targeting when playing the game, so I just like physical bowazons more For magezon you can use Ice and Phoenix on swap (which not many people do, but it's still an option, you can make Phoenix in a bow to deal more fire damage - "-28% To Enemy Fire Resistance").

Also if you are interested, this is my build: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/640106mr

Hey Nate, I am no expert.

According to MrLammaSC
physical bowa:
https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/multiple-s ... azon-build

frost/fire
https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/frost-fire ... azon-build

frost
https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/freezing-a ... azon-build

If you already have Faith then get Fortitude and go for physical.

For elemental bowa you need Ice (

Jah) - or your cold bow and ofc Infinity for merc (2x

Ber) and also to have some survivability merc really needs Fortitude or other super strong armor.

I dunno how many characters you play. I always try to do RW which benefit other classes. For example Fortitude which I use on multiple characters.

If you go for Ice RW, then you use

Jah rune - and u cant use that item elsewhere + you might find bowa not fun and u "wasted"

Jah.

If I were you I would go Faith + Fortitude (physical dmg build) so if you decided to go any other physical dmg character you have best armor for it. and if u go mages, then your merc would love that Fortitude even if it wont be in

Eth armor. And if u decides to go summoner, well you have that Faith for merc - dunno if thats better than normal might aura on act2 merc.

There is also option to go full Maavina (thats also not expensive). Its playable. But dmg is a bit low for my taste. For maavina I would prefer to go elemental.

Regarding

Clay Golem. You have valk. She never let me down - I did solo with my bowa without any trading or sharing items through entire game to lvl 84 with red numbers on resists and some fights

Valkyrie was the one who cleared it while I was shooting

Guided Arrow behind corner. So

Clay Golem would be nice to have, but there is no need for it - you can go Peace armor and u can save skill points on

Valkyrie.

louner wrote: 1 year ago

Magezon does more single target damage, but you will be starved for mana all the time and you just need to put more effort into targeting when playing the game, so I just like physical bowazons more

Frost bowa is imho really great vs mass units and regarding mana you need mana leech and if those wont be skeletons you dont be drinkin much. And if that still be bother you you can go 1skill point to multishot, so you will have spell which would give you enough mana even with +3mana leech

Regarding everything else you wroteI pretty much agree.

louner wrote: 1 year ago

Faith on you + Pride on Act 2 merc gives you most damage (because you have

Fanaticism + Might +

Conviction which gives you another + damage), next best option is

Windforce on you + Faith on Act 1 merc.

I believe you wanted to write

Concentration not

Conviction

The Flash wrote: 1 year ago

I believe you wanted to write

Concentration not

Conviction

Yeah, I edited my post. I was thinking about

Concentration

louner wrote: 1 year ago

For physical bowazon:

I think Fortitude , nothing beats +300% enhanced damage. You don't really need

Clay Golem, because you have

Valkyrie and

Decoy . Enigma doesn't work very well, because she has terrible FCR breakpoints and you will lose a lot of damage vs Fortitude (and you will

Teleport around arguably slower than running with some +FRW charms).

Faith on you + Pride on Act 2 merc gives you most damage (because you have

Fanaticism + Might +

Concentration which gives you another + damage), next best option is

Windforce on you + Faith on Act 1 merc.

I think you don't need Treachery, because you can get max IAS without it and in general there is no point in using defensive armors like Treachery or Chains of Honor, because she always keeps distance from monsters and you should just invest in damage and use Merc,

Decoy and

Valkyrie as meat shields. She does not benefit a lot from plus skills either.

You can also check my bowazon topic forums/general-thoughts-and-tips-on-phy ... 11426.html

In general physical is much easier and satisfying to play (at least for me) because you just come in, place a

Decoy, use

Slow Missiles (if needed) and then clean everything with

Strafe (or

Multiple Shot - I don't like

Multiple Shot though, because it burns through

Arrows quickly,

Strafe uses a single arrow for 10 shots). Magezon does more single target damage, but you will be starved for mana all the time and you just need to put more effort into targeting when playing the game, so I just like physical bowazons more For magezon you can use Ice and Phoenix on swap (which not many people do, but it's still an option, you can make Phoenix in a bow to deal more fire damage - "-28% To Enemy Fire Resistance").

Also if you are interested, this is my build: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/640106mr

Question about your build: do you find Delirium to be the best

Helm option or just the most fun? I'm not rich so investing an

Ist is quite a big deal, especially when what I really need is a

Lo for Fortitude (and I'll get there eventually by cubing up

Ist,

Gul,

Vex, etc. if one doesn't drop) but I like the look of Delirium as a bit of fun. I'm also quite unclear what the best

Helm option even is for strafezons, it's not as if I have any 15/40 jewels knocking about to put in a 3 socket

Tiara or

Giant Skull.

Janet the Java wrote: 1 year ago

Question about your build: do you find Delirium to be the best

Helm option or just the most fun? I'm not rich so investing an

Ist is quite a big deal, especially when what I really need is a

Lo for Fortitude (and I'll get there eventually by cubing up

Ist,

Gul,

Vex, etc. if one doesn't drop) but I like the look of Delirium as a bit of fun. I'm also quite unclear what the best

Helm option even is for strafezons, it's not as if I have any 15/40 jewels knocking about to put in a 3 socket

Tiara or

Giant Skull.

It is good in a sense that you don't need knockback that much when using Delirium (because it disables monsters by casting Confusion) - so it opens up build options that were interesting to me, but it's not the most DPS build. I like to play what I think is crowd control bowazon. It is more fun to me than the DPS option.

The BiS for damage would be that

Tiara you mentioned (or at least

Giant Skull) + Faith on you + Pride on merc.

As a budget option I'd go with

1. DPS option

Witchwild String with

Nef and

Eth (so it has knockback and -25% target defense, so it's easier to hit monsters with

Strafe) and

Guillaume's Face or

M'avina's True Sight (more DPS, because it has 30 IAS on it, so if you socket 15 IAS jewel you will get 45 AS - the same as with 3 OS

Tiara, but without enhanced damage)

OR

2. Crowd control option Edge and Delirium (not that much damage).

Thanks for the response! I'm on bnet but don't play public games, so it's mostly p1 or p2 for me, and I've found dps to be just fine with

Windforce,

Atma's, Treachery, LoH. Should be even better once I do get that Fortitude, although I'll probably have to think about IAS at that point (which I'm usually too lazy to do).

I have more of an issue with surviving, so Delirium does appeal, especially since I'm just using Valk Wing at the moment. With Delirium, I suppose I would probably need to switch out the

Atma's for Highlord's or Cat's Eye maybe, since the amp damage proc would keep getting overridden.

And I'm so far away from ever having Faith or Pride that I haven't even considered them.

Some cheaper options for armor for a phys bowazon before you can get a Fortitude is Duress and Lionheart. I've run Lionheart for a long time until I finally made my Fortitude. WF + Dur or Lion will get you thru Hell on players 1 at least. If running an elemental zon, Peace is a nice cheap option.

halflife wrote: 1 year ago

Some cheaper options for armor for a phys bowazon before you can get a Fortitude is Duress and Lionheart. I've run Lionheart for a long time until I finally made my Fortitude. WF + Dur or Lion will get you thru Hell on players 1 at least. If running an elemental zon, Peace is a nice cheap option.

Any idea what IAS I should be aiming for if rocking Duress or Lionheart? I default to Treachery because I'm lazy and assume the 45 IAS is more important than anything else, but it might be completely redundant.

I never know if I'm reading these things right but looks like with

Strafe and a

Windforce, you need 120 for max and 70 for one below max? I think I would struggle to hit 70 without Treachery.

https://warren1001.github.io/IAS_Calculator/

It's doable but not with a runeword helm.

Windforce 20%
IAS jewel in helm 15%
Gloves 20%
Highlord's/Cat's Eye 20%

Bowazon is always my starting character.

A high level

Valkyrie is a complete tank, with a decent mercenary its kind of not fair for solo play. Nothing really gets close to you.

Probably the bow that surprised me the most and I used it for way longer than I should have was

Goldstrike Arch It absolutely crushes demons and undead.

I play a lot of cold damage because it slows the enemies down, with just a little bit of fire damage. Completely sucks down mana, while you can manage that with mana leech, fire and cold attacks really use it up.

Getting the correct Increased Attack Speed totally changes the character.

So I don't know who this topic is for anymore lol. Nate or Janet the Java. I'm going to make this advice as broad as I can to be applicable to most. I'm using the slowest bow speed and no Faith. If you have a faster bow speed (base speed, not IAS) your numbers will get better.

I would stick with Treachery for armor until you can get a Fortitude. The IAS you get from Treachery brings you halfway to your max breakpoint.

If using multishot or any other skill:
Your attack speed with Treachery is 2.27 attacks per second (with a usable max of 3.12). Your breakpoint without Treachery is 1.66 attacks per second.

Assuming you have some life steal and mana steal this will provide you with more active survivability than higher defense from Duress. Now I hear you asking, "what about the 10-20% enhanced damage from Duress?" That extra damage is immediately removed with the slower attack speed.

Duress has 20% extra damage, at 1.66 attacks per second. Treachery has 0 extra damage at 2.27 attacks per second. Over 10 seconds of shooting (the average length of time an encounter will take), you shoot 16.6 times with Duress and 22.7 with Treachery. An extra 6 shots, which is 600% more damage, unless I am embarrassingly missing something. Life and mana steal will come along with that, increasing your survivability. And then of course, assuming you do get hit, you have a chance to proc

Fade for 60% elemental and 15% physical resistance.

Now, if you are using

Strafe:

Your attack speed with Treachery is 6.57 attacks per second (with a usable max of 6.94). Your breakpoint without Treachery is 4.9 attacks per second. With

Strafe the numbers are even more in favor of Treachery. 69.4 shots with Treachery verses 49 shots without. 20 more shots.

As previously stated by Dimefox, attack speed changes the character. Not just for killing speed, but survivability with life steal, and the ability to keep fighting with mana steal.

Now, on a personal note, I prefer to use multishot. In the same 10 second encounter with a max multishot I get 544 shots (24

Arrows a shot at 22.7 attacks), instead of the 69 with

Strafe. Also, I'm not suck in

Strafe lock as they call it. Yes

Strafe does a lot more damage per shot, because multi has the 75%

Cap. But it still works out in the end. I usually only shoot 3 times.

If you want to check your IAS number I use this website here. I just prefer the UI.
https://d2.lc/IAS/

I did hijack the thread a bit, sorry about that.

My conclusion from above is that Delirium is a decent choice if running Treachery because you can easily hit the breakpoint but once you switch to Fortitude, you're better off socketing some IAS and ED jewels in a low requirement

Helm, like a

Bone Visage or

Tiara.

As an aside, I much prefer

Strafe to Multishot.

These are all good discussions! I’m learning lots, I’m going to try andy’s Visage and Treachery

davme_mcreg wrote: 1 year ago

...

Duress has 20% extra damage, at 1.66 attacks per second. Treachery has 0 extra damage at 2.27 attacks per second. Over 10 seconds of shooting (the average length of time an encounter will take), you shoot 16.6 times with Duress and 22.7 with Treachery. An extra 6 shots, which is 600% more damage, unless I am embarrassingly missing something.

...

Now, on a personal note, I prefer to use multishot. In the same 10 second encounter with a max multishot I get 544 shots (24

Arrows a shot at 22.7 attacks), instead of the 69 with

Strafe. Also, I'm not suck in

Strafe lock as they call it. Yes

Strafe does a lot more damage per shot, because multi has the 75%

Cap. But it still works out in the end. I usually only shoot 3 times.

...

You are indeed missing something.

Your underlying point is generally absolutely correct: If you're still short of your desired IAS breakpoint, getting to that more often than not yields a lot more extra damage than you would get from focusing on ED with those same 1-2 item slots (exceptions apply but are rare).

The math though..not so much.
If you get 2.27 attacks a sec vs. 1.66, that's ~37% more damage, not 600%. 6 shots also wouldn't be equivalent to 600% enhanced dmg. You can't just do a direct comparison of that against the 20% of Duress though because those 20% aren't actually 20%. They get added to existing off-weapon ED (skills, other gear, stat points based, ...) and increase that total multiplier. So 20% from Duress is generally a lot closer to (at that level of gear) probably right around 5% actual damage increase. The better the gear, the lower that relative number gets.
So in that comparison, the IAS vs. Duress ED is something like 7-8x the dmg buff (i.e. significantly better).

Though that same math gets more complex and less clear, depending on the rest of your gear and your target. If you don't have OW elsewhere on your gear, Duress would add quite a bit of "indirect dmg" on high-regen targets via that. Equally, the bigger your target, the more of a difference the crushing blow will make.

But be that as it may, generalizing I'd agree with your point: If you're still gearing up and wouldn't hit your IAS goal without Treachery..Treachery wins more often than not.



As for

Strafe vs. multi, that depends entirely on your gear (

Pierce) and the alignment of mobs. If they're nice and spread out, fanning your multi accordingly clears an entire screen (or more) in 1 shot (or probably 4-6 at the gear lvl in question here). If they're in a line in front of you (happens quite a bit in the narrower side corridors of the beginning of CS for example),

Strafe with a bit of

Pierce can oftentimes clear that quite a bit faster than multishot does. Equally,

Strafe simply annihilates single targets.
When in doubt, just max both. Not like a bowzon is short on skill points anyways.

davme_mcreg wrote: 1 year ago

Duress has 20% extra damage, at 1.66 attacks per second. Treachery has 0 extra damage at 2.27 attacks per second. Over 10 seconds of shooting (the average length of time an encounter will take), you shoot 16.6 times with Duress and 22.7 with Treachery. An extra 6 shots, which is 600% more damage, unless I am embarrassingly missing something.

...

Now, if you are using

Strafe:

Your attack speed with Treachery is 6.57 attacks per second (with a usable max of 6.94). Your breakpoint without Treachery is 4.9 attacks per second. With

Strafe the numbers are even more in favor of Treachery. 69.4 shots with Treachery verses 49 shots without. 20 more shots.

Sorry to disturb, I don't know at all Bowazons, but yes there is something embarrassing in the maths. 6 more shoots is not 600% more damage.

The good maths for 10s Multishot should have been:
For Duress 120% * 16.6 shots =1992% of your base damage
For Treachery 100% * 22.7 = 2270% of your base damage
Treachery still wins but only by about 15% - still good.

For

Strafe
49*120%=5880%
65.7*100%=6570%
Diff ratio is about 12%

Conclusion is same: Treachery is better for dps.

Janet the Java wrote: 1 year ago

halflife wrote: 1 year ago

Some cheaper options for armor for a phys bowazon before you can get a Fortitude is Duress and Lionheart. I've run Lionheart for a long time until I finally made my Fortitude. WF + Dur or Lion will get you thru Hell on players 1 at least. If running an elemental zon, Peace is a nice cheap option.

Any idea what IAS I should be aiming for if rocking Duress or Lionheart? I default to Treachery because I'm lazy and assume the 45 IAS is more important than anything else, but it might be completely redundant.

I never know if I'm reading these things right but looks like with

Strafe and a

Windforce, you need 120 for max and 70 for one below max? I think I would struggle to hit 70 without Treachery.

https://warren1001.github.io/IAS_Calculator/

Is this also taking into account socketing the WF with a

Shael or IAS jewel? With a

Shael, you get 20% IAS, with a jewel you can get 15% IAS max, but potentially nice prefixes such as ED%, etc especially with a nice rare jewel with multiple stats + IAS. On my bowzon, I currently have either 40% or 60% IAS running

Shael'd WF and 20% crafted IAS gloves and switching out armor pieces, I run at minimum 40% IAS and it runs just fine for me, I main

Strafe/multi and I prefer higher hitpower with min/max dmg, ED%, and elemental/poison dmg effects. YMMV, but for me, I think as long as you have a decent damage contributing armor such as Fortitude, Duress, or Lionheart, which all of these armors add ED%, elemental or added dmg effects, you don't need to worry TOO much about reaching an IAS breakpoint. 40 to 60% seems to work just fine. I also like to add damage charms in my inventory, including anthrax SCs.

Dimefox wrote: 1 year ago

Bowazon is always my starting character.

A high level

Valkyrie is a complete tank, with a decent mercenary its kind of not fair for solo play. Nothing really gets close to you.

Probably the bow that surprised me the most and I used it for way longer than I should have was

Goldstrike Arch It absolutely crushes demons and undead.

I play a lot of cold damage because it slows the enemies down, with just a little bit of fire damage. Completely sucks down mana, while you can manage that with mana leech, fire and cold attacks really use it up.

Getting the correct Increased Attack Speed totally changes the character.

Goldstrike is definitely an underrated bow, and super affordable. I have one too, and it is rolled nearly perfect ED%, so I up'd it to the elite version. Out of all the exceptional unique bows, I'd have to say it's a toss-up for me personally between Goldstrike and Witchwild to up to elite (if it has high rolled stats). I'm not a fan of

Lycander's Aim, I have a near perfect statted one up'd to elite and it does palsy damage. A high rolled GS can still be rocked in Hell. Super easy to reach nice IAS with that 50% inherent IAS from the bow.

halflife wrote: 1 year ago

Janet the Java wrote: 1 year ago

halflife wrote: 1 year ago

Some cheaper options for armor for a phys bowazon before you can get a Fortitude is Duress and Lionheart. I've run Lionheart for a long time until I finally made my Fortitude. WF + Dur or Lion will get you thru Hell on players 1 at least. If running an elemental zon, Peace is a nice cheap option.

Any idea what IAS I should be aiming for if rocking Duress or Lionheart? I default to Treachery because I'm lazy and assume the 45 IAS is more important than anything else, but it might be completely redundant.

I never know if I'm reading these things right but looks like with

Strafe and a

Windforce, you need 120 for max and 70 for one below max? I think I would struggle to hit 70 without Treachery.

https://warren1001.github.io/IAS_Calculator/

Is this also taking into account socketing the WF with a

Shael or IAS jewel? With a

Shael, you get 20% IAS, with a jewel you can get 15% IAS max, but potentially nice prefixes such as ED%, etc especially with a nice rare jewel with multiple stats + IAS. On my bowzon, I currently have either 40% or 60% IAS running

Shael'd WF and 20% crafted IAS gloves and switching out armor pieces, I run at minimum 40% IAS and it runs just fine for me, I main

Strafe/multi and I prefer higher hitpower with min/max dmg, ED%, and elemental/poison dmg effects. YMMV, but for me, I think as long as you have a decent damage contributing armor such as Fortitude, Duress, or Lionheart, which all of these armors add ED%, elemental or added dmg effects, you don't need to worry TOO much about reaching an IAS breakpoint. 40 to 60% seems to work just fine. I also like to add damage charms in my inventory, including anthrax SCs.

I forgot the

Shael in the

Windforce, good point, though I still feel inclined to go for that 70. I'll have to test things out with Duress / Lionheart though, whilst a wait for that

Lo...

As for Goldstrike, I must admit I found it disappointing vs

Eaglehorn, though I did not up it which perhaps makes a big difference.