I tried out Plague Javelin / Bowazon hybrid build

Hello,

I wanted to try out something new and I figured that

Plague Javelin takes about 40 points to max out and multishot also takes about 40 points to max out, so why not try to make a hybrid. I also tried out 40 Poison / Cold and I think I like the Poison / Cold variant much better.

I tested out the idea with some budget gear and it's not awesome, but it's not terrible either. I think there might be something to it though, because poison takes time to process and multishot has knockback, so you can throw a few Plague javelins and then knock monsters back (optionally also freeze them) and wait for them to die. Also as a plus, you have two sources of damage (poison and physical). I want to put rest of the points into passive and magic tree, so it can also have a

Valkyrie tank (because why not) and more attack rating,

Pierce etc.

Freezing Arrow makes the entire build a lot faster and more dynamic.

I want to end up with something like this and see if it's much better:

Freezing Arrow: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/b80106wb
multishot: https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/0e0106ad

This is not something I think is going to land somewhere between B and C tier, but I really like it anyway. I don't quite like Fury javazons and I don't quite like pure bowazons - this is the first Amazon build I really enjoy.

If you have some ideas for me to try and improve this you can let me know.

This is how it plays with a really basic gear with Poison / Frozen Arrow (I really think it's a good clear speed for cows and you don't run into issues with Lightning Immunes - freeze also helps merc survivability a lot):



This is how it plays with a really basic gear with Poison / Multishot:



It's an online character. If you want to do a few runs of something together with this, you can let me know. I would love to check how it fares on p2, p3 etc.

Chains of Honor is not "some budget gear"
(Bramble might actually be better for the build, too - and slightly cheaper)

I do like the idea of "something new". Been playing around with a few new things myself but so far they've all kind of just been depressingly mediocre as compared to what I already have/do.

Plague could be fun. But honestly, looking at your video, I would be inclined to say that multishot, especially with knockback, isn't a good companion. The reason being two-fold:
1) Once you gear that build up, multi will shred stuff so fast that your

Javelin becomes entirely pointless and not worth still casting.
2) Looking specifically at a few scenes in your video, it actually looks like the knockback not only kept the cows away from you but kept the ones in the back even further back, stopping them from ever even hitting the Plague cloud. So it actually kind of prevents you doing damage to them as it keeps them in the safe zone.

If you do keep the multi-knockback, this might be one of the very few builds where you actually want to drop yourself to 0

Pierce so you only knock back the front row and the ones behind them still walk into the cloud.
Just my initial thinking.

On second thought, this build raises an interesting question that I for once don't quite know the answer to:
When is -res applied for

Plague Javelin? On throw, on infection of the target or on damage ticks?

If it is anything other than 'on throw', you could drop the bow off-hand entirely and get a Plague (or Grief) and 4-facet psn shield on switch instead. That'd be a quick ~45 -enemy res which would make a massive difference for that build, seeing how as a Zon you don't typically get any beyond a facet or two.
Though you could of course also go for a more classic LR

Wand + facet shield but then you're dealing with

Wand charges and whatnot..that's just annoying.
Or in a less budget friendly world, go with dweb instead (actually kinda budget because you'll be fine with +1 skill in that case) and you're up to -75 res on switch.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Chains of Honor is not "some budget gear"

Yeah, I just threw something together from the stuff I had on other chars just to test it out, I didn't make new runewords just for this build. I'ts there just for some more res and plus skills, because I don't have that many all res small charms

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

If you do keep the multi-knockback, this might be one of the very few builds where you actually want to drop yourself to 0

Pierce so you only knock back the front row and the ones behind them still walk into the cloud.
Just my initial thinking.

That is actually a good idea, I will try it out later, thanks.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

On second thought, this build raises an interesting question that I for once don't quite know the answer to:
When is -res applied for

Plague Javelin? On throw, on infection of the target or on damage ticks?

If it is anything other than 'on throw', you could drop the bow off-hand entirely and get a Plague (or Grief) and 4-facet psn shield on switch instead. That'd be a quick ~45 -enemy res which would make a massive difference for that build, seeing how as a Zon you don't typically get any beyond a facet or two.
Though you could of course also go for a more classic LR

Wand + facet shield but then you're dealing with

Wand charges and whatnot..that's just annoying.

I don't know that either, but I Just wanted to balance out bowazon and javazon to see if it's possible. I can test out the Grief variant for the sake of curiosity, but I am also looking for a way to combine this with a bow. Maybe something with a

Freezing Arrow instead.

I actually think I like

Freezing Arrow /

Plague Javelin even better than multishot. It's easier to pick out enemies that are poison immune and everything freezes in place instead.

Poison / Cold is not a common build. I think it might be interesting. I will dig deeper and try to come up with something.

Looks a lot more aggressive (and fun) than the multi shot approach, seeing how it takes you from "build a poison wall and wait for them to crawl through" to "poison straight ahead and freeze stuff in your face".

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Looks a lot more aggressive (and fun) than the multi shot approach, seeing how it takes you from "build a poison wall and wait for them to crawl through" to "poison straight ahead and freeze stuff in your face".

Yeah, you can actually poison everything and then pick out poison immunes with

Cold Arrow in the meantime. It works much better. Thanks for the

Pierce tip.

I did

Baal. It was slow compared to some other builds, but it wouldn't be possible with pure Poison Amazon or pure

Cold Arrow Amazon, so I am happy in the end.

Looks like fun, at least

That was interesting to watch.
Did you try

Travincal? I wonder how well poison + cold damage would work against the Council.

Zelym wrote: 2 years ago

That was interesting to watch.
Did you try

Travincal? I wonder how well poison + cold damage would work against the Council.

Yes, it's doable. It is similar to running Trav with poison necro. Although she is too squishy for that I think.

Overall

Conviction from Infinity helps a lot. First you poison everything, then with

Conviction you can kill the stronger targets with

Freezing Arrow, then in the meantime weaker monsters die from poison.