Magezon tips please

Hello!
Been gathering up runes to make a magezon.
What I have planned-

Freezing Arrow and syn,

Immolation Arrow and it's

Exploding Arrow syn.
First question- what's better now?

Exploding Arrow(with

Fire Arrow syn) or

Immolation Arrow?

I thought gear wise- Ice bow(+3 mat bow), Flickering Flame, and a 4os armor with 3 perfect fire facets and 15 ias+res jewel. Highlord's as ammy.

Silkweave as

Boots, I think i'll have really bad mana issues. Infinity merc.
Rest of the gear is standart-

Razortail, 2/20 bowa gloves,

Raven Frost, duel leech ring/soj(if I'll have the runes to trade for).

The goal here is to make both skills decent, I hate not killing immunes and like to farm in different places.

So second question- would you change up the gear? I thought I can also go andy's with a fire facet instead of Flickering Flame, and put 4 fire facets in the armor cause andy has 20% ias. This will also make FA stronger cause the +2 skills. Fire damage will be sameish I think. Problem is fire res- instead of

Resist Fire aura I'll get -30 fires res from andy- and I won't have aldur's/laying on hands to help.
Other gear suggestions are very welcome!!!
Suggestions about expected mana issues also very welcome.

Thanks!!!

If you're going hybrid, I'd skip

Immolation Arrow and just stick to

Exploding Arrow and

Fire Arrow. With good gear, you won't want to wait around for the fire ticks of immolation to take effect.

Gear looks fine, though Hand of Justice and Phoenix are with looking at as well, if you want to focus on fire. Just take your IAS tables into account. You should decide whether you're an Frostzon or Firezon primarily though, IMO. And then gear in that direction. Spreading between both might gimp you in the long run. You'll want Harmony on the swap for quick walking.

Speaking of mana... with

Pierce, a decent base and the ML from your rings, and mana on kill from your

Boots, you might be okay. I think what's going to be the real test is bosses, where there's only one target, nothing dies and mana leech is reduced by 75%. If you can sustain in that situation, you'll be fine everywhere.

Hi. Thanks for the reply. What you said got me thinking... maybe go with the 4 sock armor and nightwing's(cold faceted), to give cold more of a boost on the expense of fire, but still retain +2 skills that helps fire a bit.
And, maybe there's a use for

Ormus robes? Cause it can boost both cold and fire by 15%. But I believe -enemy res is much better than +%skill dmg right?
I wouldn't floor most monster's(or any?) res with Infinity so clean increase in damage.

If you do not like skipping immunes, you should go

Freezing Arrow /

Magic Arrow. This lets you put more points into important passive skills like

Penetrate because there are fewer synergies. And you can focus entirely on raising cold skill damage. I'd also recommend Chains of Honor and

War Traveler for the flat damage and resistances.

As a second damage source,

Magic Arrow is superior to

Exploding Arrow. There are a lot more monsters with fire immunity than magic immunity.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Hi. Thanks for the reply. What you said got me thinking... maybe go with the 4 sock armor and nightwing's(cold faceted), to give cold more of a boost on the expense of fire, but still retain +2 skills that helps fire a bit.
And, maybe there's a use for

Ormus robes? Cause it can boost both cold and fire by 15%. But I believe -enemy res is much better than +%skill dmg right?
I wouldn't floor most monster's(or any?) res with Infinity so clean increase in damage.

There's a bit of a difference for a zon as compared to a sorc.

The main reason -res is so much better than +dmg for a light or fire sorc is because they already have a crapton of +dmg via light/

Fire Mastery. As a result, adding another 10% on top of 300+ really isn't much of a relative increase. -res on the other hand multiplies with all of that, so long as your target isn't already at -100 res, making it much, much more viable.

If you didn't have that massive +dmg though and say you only have facets (which even out) or nothing, it changes a bit.

+dmg is easy in that case as +15% dmg when starting at 0 is simply 15% more damage. Done.

-res is a bit more situational. Say your target has no resistances and you only have -15 res. In that case, you go from 100% dmg to 115 which is a 15% increase and basically equivalent to the +dmg alternative. If your target starts with 50 res however, you're moving from 50% dmg to 65% dmg which is a 30% relative increase, making -res twice as good as +dmg. At the same time however, if you already have Infinity that same 50 res mob starts at -35. So now you go from 135% to 150% dmg done, resulting in a relative increase of only ~11%.
Realistically, if you have Infinity on your merc, you'll have a hard time making -res better or even equivalent to +dmg, simply because Infinity already adds so much of it whereas you have little to no +dmg. The one (significant) exception to that is immunes that you break with Infinity. Those typically end up at 98-99% res left after being broken so taking them from 99 to 84 is a massive 16-fold increase. But since you can't break all that many cold immunities, you likely won't see that all too often.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Hi. Thanks for the reply. What you said got me thinking... maybe go with the 4 sock armor and nightwing's(cold faceted), to give cold more of a boost on the expense of fire, but still retain +2 skills that helps fire a bit.
And, maybe there's a use for

Ormus robes? Cause it can boost both cold and fire by 15%. But I believe -enemy res is much better than +%skill dmg right?
I wouldn't floor most monster's(or any?) res with Infinity so clean increase in damage.

There's a bit of a difference for a zon as compared to a sorc.

The main reason -res is so much better than +dmg for a light or fire sorc is because they already have a crapton of +dmg via light/

Fire Mastery. As a result, adding another 10% on top of 300+ really isn't much of a relative increase. -res on the other hand multiplies with all of that, so long as your target isn't already at -100 res, making it much, much more viable.

If you didn't have that massive +dmg though and say you only have facets (which even out) or nothing, it changes a bit.

+dmg is easy in that case as +15% dmg when starting at 0 is simply 15% more damage. Done.

-res is a bit more situational. Say your target has no resistances and you only have -15 res. In that case, you go from 100% dmg to 115 which is a 15% increase and basically equivalent to the +dmg alternative. If your target starts with 50 res however, you're moving from 50% dmg to 65% dmg which is a 30% relative increase, making -res twice as good as +dmg. At the same time however, if you already have Infinity that same 50 res mob starts at -35. So now you go from 135% to 150% dmg done, resulting in a relative increase of only ~11%.
Realistically, if you have Infinity on your merc, you'll have a hard time making -res better or even equivalent to +dmg, simply because Infinity already adds so much of it whereas you have little to no +dmg. The one (significant) exception to that is immunes that you break with Infinity. Those typically end up at 98-99% res left after being broken so taking them from 99 to 84 is a massive 16-fold increase. But since you can't break all that many cold immunities, you likely won't see that all too often.

So urmos is better when Infinity takes res down to the negatives, but not when it takes it to the positives, that's when -res is better.
Tough coockie cause now I'll have to look at monsters res to see what's most probable, in all areas i'd like to farm. That's too much. But in the same time,

Ormus with nightwing's is ~ 15 fire 30 cold + a facet(other socket must be ias jewel), 4os fire armor + nightwing's is ~ 15 fire, -15 fire res, 15 cold + facet. Having max -5 fire res (

Ormus option) is bothering me in case of a high cold and fire res monster, which I believe are Venom lords and ghoul lords? Didn't check. So no on

Ormus. I think nightwing's + fire 4os armor is the way to go.
Will make Flickering Flame for testing too. But the 4os fire armor seems like the winner anyway. The

Helm is the issue.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Hi. Thanks for the reply. What you said got me thinking... maybe go with the 4 sock armor and nightwing's(cold faceted), to give cold more of a boost on the expense of fire, but still retain +2 skills that helps fire a bit.
And, maybe there's a use for

Ormus robes? Cause it can boost both cold and fire by 15%. But I believe -enemy res is much better than +%skill dmg right?
I wouldn't floor most monster's(or any?) res with Infinity so clean increase in damage.

There's a bit of a difference for a zon as compared to a sorc.

The main reason -res is so much better than +dmg for a light or fire sorc is because they already have a crapton of +dmg via light/

Fire Mastery. As a result, adding another 10% on top of 300+ really isn't much of a relative increase. -res on the other hand multiplies with all of that, so long as your target isn't already at -100 res, making it much, much more viable.

If you didn't have that massive +dmg though and say you only have facets (which even out) or nothing, it changes a bit.

+dmg is easy in that case as +15% dmg when starting at 0 is simply 15% more damage. Done.

-res is a bit more situational. Say your target has no resistances and you only have -15 res. In that case, you go from 100% dmg to 115 which is a 15% increase and basically equivalent to the +dmg alternative. If your target starts with 50 res however, you're moving from 50% dmg to 65% dmg which is a 30% relative increase, making -res twice as good as +dmg. At the same time however, if you already have Infinity that same 50 res mob starts at -35. So now you go from 135% to 150% dmg done, resulting in a relative increase of only ~11%.
Realistically, if you have Infinity on your merc, you'll have a hard time making -res better or even equivalent to +dmg, simply because Infinity already adds so much of it whereas you have little to no +dmg. The one (significant) exception to that is immunes that you break with Infinity. Those typically end up at 98-99% res left after being broken so taking them from 99 to 84 is a massive 16-fold increase. But since you can't break all that many cold immunities, you likely won't see that all too often.

So urmos is better when Infinity takes res down to the negatives, but not when it takes it to the positives, that's when -res is better.
Tough coockie cause now I'll have to look at monsters res to see what's most probable, in all areas i'd like to farm. That's too much. But in the same time,

Ormus with nightwing's is ~ 15 fire 30 cold + a facet(other socket must be ias jewel), 4os fire armor + nightwing's is ~ 15 fire, -15 fire res, 15 cold + facet. Having max -5 fire res (

Ormus option) is bothering me in case of a high cold and fire res monster, which I believe are Venom lords and ghoul lords? Didn't check. So no on

Ormus. I think nightwing's + fire 4os armor is the way to go.
Will make Flickering Flame for testing too. But the 4os fire armor seems like the winner anyway. The

Helm is the issue.

Well, yes and no. (Man, I say that a lot )

If your target is at 0 res and you have 0 +dmg, then -res and +dmg are equivalent. When res drops below 0, -res gets worse and vice versa.
Personally though, I wouldn't even think about

Ormus. You don't benefit from the sorc only skills as a zon so the best you get out of it (minus the FCR which won't matter due to no Enigma at the same time) is 20 dmg and -5 res once you facet it. If you take literally any 4 socket armor however and facet that..you get the same 20 damage but -20 res. Easy choice there I dare say.

As for looking at resistances, most mobs are between 0 and 50. Champions and the like go to 75 most commonly (depending on enchantments). For your immediate consideration however, the only range you really care about is 85-99 because that's where you stay in the 0 or higher res after Infinity. That range..just hardly ever happens. So don't build around that.
But even if it did, the above still stands..4 facets >>>>

Ormus.

Given, the 4-facet will only be one element but as someone else already mentioned,

Magic Arrow makes for a hell of a secondary. Fire...mweh.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Well, yes and no. (Man, I say that a lot )

If your target is at 0 res and you have 0 +dmg, then -res and +dmg are equivalent. When res drops below 0, -res gets worse and vice versa.
Personally though, I wouldn't even think about

Ormus. You don't benefit from the sorc only skills as a zon so the best you get out of it (minus the FCR which won't matter due to no Enigma at the same time) is 20 dmg and -5 res once you facet it. If you take literally any 4 socket armor however and facet that..you get the same 20 damage but -20 res. Easy choice there I dare say.

As for looking at resistances, most mobs are between 0 and 50. Champions and the like go to 75 most commonly (depending on enchantments). For your immediate consideration however, the only range you really care about is 85-99 because that's where you stay in the 0 or higher res after Infinity. That range..just hardly ever happens. So don't build around that.
But even if it did, the above still stands..4 facets >>>>

Ormus.

Given, the 4-facet will only be one element but as someone else already mentioned,

Magic Arrow makes for a hell of a secondary. Fire...mweh.

Yeah? But isn't

Magic Arrow based on phys damage? I'll have practically none, i'll use Ice in a mat bow, true my merc will hqve might but still.... + it's no aoe skill, so again less damage.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Hi. Thanks for the reply. What you said got me thinking... maybe go with the 4 sock armor and nightwing's(cold faceted), to give cold more of a boost on the expense of fire, but still retain +2 skills that helps fire a bit.
And, maybe there's a use for

Ormus robes? Cause it can boost both cold and fire by 15%. But I believe -enemy res is much better than +%skill dmg right?
I wouldn't floor most monster's(or any?) res with Infinity so clean increase in damage.

There's a bit of a difference for a zon as compared to a sorc.

The main reason -res is so much better than +dmg for a light or fire sorc is because they already have a crapton of +dmg via light/

Fire Mastery. As a result, adding another 10% on top of 300+ really isn't much of a relative increase. -res on the other hand multiplies with all of that, so long as your target isn't already at -100 res, making it much, much more viable.

If you didn't have that massive +dmg though and say you only have facets (which even out) or nothing, it changes a bit.

+dmg is easy in that case as +15% dmg when starting at 0 is simply 15% more damage. Done.

-res is a bit more situational. Say your target has no resistances and you only have -15 res. In that case, you go from 100% dmg to 115 which is a 15% increase and basically equivalent to the +dmg alternative. If your target starts with 50 res however, you're moving from 50% dmg to 65% dmg which is a 30% relative increase, making -res twice as good as +dmg. At the same time however, if you already have Infinity that same 50 res mob starts at -35. So now you go from 135% to 150% dmg done, resulting in a relative increase of only ~11%.
Realistically, if you have Infinity on your merc, you'll have a hard time making -res better or even equivalent to +dmg, simply because Infinity already adds so much of it whereas you have little to no +dmg. The one (significant) exception to that is immunes that you break with Infinity. Those typically end up at 98-99% res left after being broken so taking them from 99 to 84 is a massive 16-fold increase. But since you can't break all that many cold immunities, you likely won't see that all too often.

So urmos is better when Infinity takes res down to the negatives, but not when it takes it to the positives, that's when -res is better.
Tough coockie cause now I'll have to look at monsters res to see what's most probable, in all areas i'd like to farm. That's too much. But in the same time,

Ormus with nightwing's is ~ 15 fire 30 cold + a facet(other socket must be ias jewel), 4os fire armor + nightwing's is ~ 15 fire, -15 fire res, 15 cold + facet. Having max -5 fire res (

Ormus option) is bothering me in case of a high cold and fire res monster, which I believe are Venom lords and ghoul lords? Didn't check. So no on

Ormus. I think nightwing's + fire 4os armor is the way to go.
Will make Flickering Flame for testing too. But the 4os fire armor seems like the winner anyway. The

Helm is the issue.

I'd say Nightwing's is a better play than Flickering Flame for what you're going for. Flickering gives +3 fire skills only, where Nightwing's gives +2 to all. That 'all' will include CTA when/if you use it, and your passives like

Pierce, the

Dodge line and Valk if you're using them. Plus, Nightwing's gives that nice dex, which frees up stat points for more Vitality. That will make a bigger difference to offense, versatility, and defense. Not to say its the best, I don't know about that, but I think it's better than Flickering. If you're non-ladder, I have a junky Nightwing's I can give you for free too.

Thanks! i'm ladder. It's my first ever(only did sp), Really don't see how I can play anything else anymore, the fact that items have meaning for 2-4 weeks is great fun. Trading sites is an addiction as well.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Yeah? But isn't

Magic Arrow based on phys damage? I'll have practically none, i'll use Ice in a mat bow, true my merc will hqve might but still.... + it's no aoe skill, so again less damage.

Admittedly haven't tried it with Ice, fair point, but I'd guesstimate that it'd still be perfectly sufficient to handle frost immunes you come across.

My question is this: How much damage does

Magic Arrow actually do? I used to use it a ton as a kid because I thought it looked cool and not needing to pick up

Arrows gave me an extra GC slot, but I remember the damage being trash at high levels. I know they buffed it recently, but haven't tried it. It's bonus to damage is fairly trivial, as I recall, so if OP is using a low base damage bow but lots of +skills, I'd think the fire would scale better.

Needs an actual test but I would still guesstimate it'll do a fair bit of damage.

I'm mainly basing that on my personal experience and (very) rough napkin math.

My zon is admittedly geared and built for full throttle physical dmg. As a result, her damage output is...let's say respectable. She uses

Magic Arrow to take down phys immunes. Now naturally, you'd say "full phys dmg = massive

Magic Arrow damage, obviously". And you'd be right. Except that she has very few actual points in

Magic Arrow and her full dmg gear results in very little +skill. So her actual

Magic Arrow damage (against phys immunes) is a very small fraction of her normal massive damage.
And with that small fraction of otherwise quite significant damage, phys immunes still just melt.

Now, translating that over to a magezon, you start out with a fair bit less physical damage. That's obvious. However, you also end up with a ton more skills so not only do you get more +magic base but you also convert more of the phys dmg to magic which tends to do more dmg than phys alone. Plus here, you're using it to deal with cold immunes not phys immunes so both, magic and phys will apply.

I might get bored enough to actually do the math and get a real comparison done but just guesstimating, I would expect that a magezon's

Magic Arrow vs. cold immunes will end up doing comparable overall damage to my phys zon's low lvl

Magic Arrow against phys immunes.

Magic Arrow can convert 85-90 percent physical damage to magic damage with the right gear. Keep a

Windforce on switch and you don't need to worry about cold immunes.

Not to derail.... but is

Magic Arrow a good alt weapon for your standard lighting-hurling javazon?

I've always seen

Freezing Arrow recommended as an off-hand to deal with immunes. But this thread had made a compelling case for

Magic Arrow's usefulness.

SpaghettiTornado wrote: 1 year ago

Not to derail.... but is

Magic Arrow a good alt weapon for your standard lighting-hurling javazon?

I've always seen

Freezing Arrow recommended as an off-hand to deal with immunes. But this thread had made a compelling case for

Magic Arrow's usefulness.

Just keep your double-titan's and

Jab them. At least that's how I always handled light immunes on a java. Tends to make quick work of them.

Back to the actual topic:
Turns out my guess was apparently fairly accurate (assuming maxroll isn't completely off again). Did a quick comparison there of my phys zon's

Magic Arrow vs. a magezon with it capped. Going with a full dex approach in phys and full vita for the magezon, the magezon's MA against cold immunes does a bit more damage than the phys zon's MA against phys immunes, despite the crap bow dmg. So based on that, it'd be more than sufficient and should melt immunes no slower than it does for me (which is plenty fast). That is of course based on how I would gear a FA zon which may differ from others.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

SpaghettiTornado wrote: 1 year ago

Not to derail.... but is

Magic Arrow a good alt weapon for your standard lighting-hurling javazon?

I've always seen

Freezing Arrow recommended as an off-hand to deal with immunes. But this thread had made a compelling case for

Magic Arrow's usefulness.

Just keep your double-titan's and

Jab them. At least that's how I always handled light immunes on a java. Tends to make quick work of them.

Back to the actual topic:
Turns out my guess was apparently fairly accurate (assuming maxroll isn't completely off again). Did a quick comparison there of my phys zon's

Magic Arrow vs. a magezon with it capped. Going with a full dex approach in phys and full vita for the magezon, the magezon's MA against cold immunes does a bit more damage than the phys zon's MA against phys immunes, despite the crap bow dmg. So based on that, it'd be more than sufficient and should melt immunes no slower than it does for me (which is plenty fast). That is of course based on how I would gear a FA zon which may differ from others.

Builds for me is not about efficacy(I have only one spearzon at the moment which is my ladder starter) , but about style and fun...

Magic Arrow might be a skill point saver but I think it's ugly and slow(not aoe like fire spells). I'd like to remain on the fire cold path for my purposes.
That said, thanks for the in depth responses!!!

Right now i'm pretty much decided on nightwing's, and considering switching the fire armor to cold armor... but then fire maybe overwhelmingly weak. Also I already have 3 perf fire facets...

If you're asking yourself why doesn't he build that shit already, it's because i'm waiting until I get Infinity, which is mandatory.

It sounds like you are really committed to

Exploding Arrow. Just keep a Flickering Flame and a four socket armor with fire facets in your stash for cold immunes. For cold damage, you’ll want to run Nightwing’s Veil and Chains of Honor.

The only monsters you need to run from are dual cold and fire immunes.

ExplodeSheep wrote: 1 year ago

It sounds like you are really committed to

Exploding Arrow. Just keep a Flickering Flame and a four socket armor with fire facets in your stash for cold immunes. For cold damage, you’ll want to run Nightwing’s Veil and Chains of Honor.

The only monsters you need to run from are dual cold and fire immunes.

Chains is weaker damage wise than cold faceted armor and does not have room for an ias jewel. The res and dr are for wussies, I'll

Dodge

Decoy and have good charms.
But doing the gear switch from stash approach is a good idea. It basically depends on what I feel like farming in the game streak i'm on. So it's decided, doing all of the above items, but going mainly cold. Will change for fire gear when I want to farm... say the pits.

Now I have to get a 15 nightwing's and 4 perf cold facets, sheesh... In addition to Infinity. It will take some time, but hey that's beauty of the game!

Thanks all!!

I don't have much input on gear, but I can speak a little to the playing experience of the build.

As a former mageazon player in D2C before elemental immunities and back when

Immolation Arrow had zero casting delay (both prior to 1.08), I have to say it got much harder to play in LoD to the point where the build was almost nonviable in a full 8-player Hell game. The appeal of the build was freezing monsters in place and then stacking immolation pyres as quickly as your attack speed would allow and letting them burn. LoD completely changed that and turned the mageazon into a utility build where your contribution to a party was limited to freezing, because you certainly weren't doing any killing.

It's a little more viable now in D2R with the minor tweaks they made in 2.4 benefiting fire, but still far more tedious than it was in D2C and only marginally better than it was in LoD.

I wish the following wiki page or its info had been readily available when I was still playing LoD, because I would have figured out much sooner that Infinity doesn't break cold immunity when the monster's cold resistance is above 117% and that there are many with much higher cold resistances.

https://diablo-archive.fandom.com/wiki/ ... Diablo_II)

I took another shot at a mageazon at the start of the D2R ladder and honestly, I thought the build still felt underwhelming. I quickly gave up on it and opted to rebuild based primarily around physical which I'm enjoying much more. The last time I considered a mageazon fun was in D2C. Since then, it has felt like being a significantly weaker bowazon with mana issues especially if your physical damage is low. The mechanics of the build feel clunky compared to what they were originally.

Give it a shot but don't expect too much from the build. A lightning spearazon is far more fun to play.