My bowchantress build (with gameplay vids)

Hey guys, I've come up with a funny build that I'm using on my fire sorceress on hell. I've called it Bowchantress because it relies on Enchant and uses a bow (well, xbow to be precise).

Casual Videos

Going Tristram+Cows
Trip to Andariel
Chaos Sanctuary (merc died cause didn't pay attention he was cursed and was a bit late with tp to save him)
Travincal (was hit a bit in melee+curse+poison but the hydras don't do dmg)

Pros and cons:
+ unique build
+ huge fire dmg
+ huge fire resistance - council hydras in Travincal heal you (checked on p3), dclone is a joke
+ doesn't use mana to kill (only for firewall for tough enemies and Teleport / Blaze for movement)
+ fast runner thanks to Blaze
+ can Teleport because it's a sorceress, lol
+ can use Telekinesis on stashes, urns, wp, portals etc, because it's a sorceress, lol
+ not very expensive, higher runes used are Ohm and Vex
+ can play through normal and nightmare in budget equipment
- without cta and resistance charms is very fragile (or needs great dodgy movement skills)
- mastering the use of firewall can take time
- not much defence, Teleport blindly is risky (and needs to be done on swap, not on main weapon)

Skills:
Warmth 20
Fire Bolt 1
Fire Ball 1
Inferno 1+ (rest points for Fire Wall synergy)
Blaze 20
Enchant 20
Fire Wall 20
Fire Mastery 20
Frozen Armor 1
Telekinesis 1
Static Field 1 (can be skipped ofc)
Teleport 1

Equipment:

Base weapon: Demon Machine (mine's upgraded) with a fire Rainbow Facet

Weapon swap: Call To Arms and 35fcr Spirit (in Monarch, minimum 33fcr for the 63 breakpoint)
Weapon swap for buffing once in almost 20 mins: a 5+ Enchant orb with a +5% fire damage rainbow facet (-resist doesn't matter)

Helmet: Flickering Flame
Armor: +3 Enchant Ormus' Robes with a fire Rainbow Facet
Gloves: Laying of Hands (ias and fire res)
Boots: Natalya's Soul, Infernostride, trires/dualres frw Boots (pick your best, I'm using Natalya's for lightning resist)
Belt: Razortail
Rings: Raven Frost or Dwarven Star and a 10fcr + resists ring
Amulet: The Rising Sun (cheaper option) or Mara's Kaleidoscope
Charms: Annihilus, Hellfire Torch, Flame Rift, resist charms and +fire dmg charms

Act 5 Mercenary:
Weapons: ( Eth) Lawbringer and ( Eth upped) Headstriker (socket whatever)
Armor: Treachery
Helmet: Andariel's Visage (doesn't need socketing Ral, you can put in whatever you wish) or Vampire's Gaze

Info
Fire Mastery adds a lot of dmg to Enchant even if it says it only applies one-third. The dmg from the weapon exploding Bolts is just great and with the Belt there's 99% chance to Pierce the target. The Bolts explode in contact and when they Pierce, they explode again, which means that if there are 3 cows together and the bolt pierces through them all, they get all 3 explosions on their face.
The helmet and fire facets are required to lower enemy resistances but not necessary on normal and nightmare.
The gloves can be switched to something else, but then you lose a lot of fire resistance and with the sunder in your inventory you might want to balance it out.
Raven Frost has dexterity, cold absorb and cannot be frozen attribute. That last bonus isn't really that important since you can Dodge all cold attacks, and Flickering Flame halves freeze plus you can Teleport instead of running but your attack is slower which kinda hurts here. Also the dexterity is needed for the weapon, with this ring + Belt + anni and torch you don't really need to put any points into dexterity at all or only a few of them if you dont have much dex in anni+torch. Dwarven Star can be a good option because of the fire absorb. With this you can just tank hydras in act3 or 5.
The charms that add fire damage work really great because Fire Mastery kicks in and changes the values by a lot. If I remove 16-32 fire damage large charm from my inventory, I lose 57-118 damage (at least the character screen says so). And that's just one charm. Considering you can have 15 minimum and 42 maximum fire damage on a small charm, with a few of them, it's gonna be a blast.
The amulet could be replaced with a mara but then you lose some fire absorb and fire dmg (but you can get this in charms, and mara has resists).
Mercenary's Lawbringer can even be made in a Dimensional Blade. I had it for a long time. The dmg doesn't differ much. He'll still get enchanted for tons of dmg. His armor is there for ias and Fade, yeah. You can try other armors but with this one he dies very rarely even without Fade proccing. He can tank cows easily, unless cursed+fanatism. The Lawbringer also pushes back stygian dolls, which is nice, and pushes undeads back onto your firewall too.
His helmet doesn't require a Ral because your helmet gives a fire resistance aura.

How to play? Pre-buff with CTA, switch to orb and buff Enchant, take CTA back into your hand, swap back to the main weapon and go shoot exploding Bolts onto enemies. You can use firewall and Teleport on one of it's end so that enemies walk straight on top of it towards you. Your mercenary can tank all regular situations, including dclone, Uber Duriel and Uber Izual. He can die to travi hydras and uber Andariel aka Lilith. When he's tanking, just set the enemy on fire using Fire Wall. Even resistant enemies will start to melt. I killed dclone using 180 Bolts but after the battle I realised my Enchant wasn't applied (the fight lasted maybe 3 minutes and the buff duration is almost 20 minutes).

Here are some screenies from the character screen

SPOILER

Considered a Brand in demon x-bow later as a main gun?

I did, but 1) it's quite expensive and 2) it doesn't have piercing attack, which means it can stop on the first enemy.
So decided not to try, but maybe it's worth a shot.

The Pierce + Explosive Arrows combo is the real damage amplifier. You need both, which restricts your options to Demon Machine and Kuko Shakaku, with the former being the superior choice.

This was a fantastic read. Thank you.
I'd love to see some action, though. Any chance you could make a short YouTube clip?

Nosgothy wrote: 3 years ago

This was a fantastic read. Thank you.
I'd love to see some action, though. Any chance you could make a short YouTube clip?

Sure. Will do that soon.

Probably a mistake, but u mentioned Spirit in kiteshield as an option? If so, that wouldnt be possible. Overall, looks to be very fun build. I have tried this build before with kuko, maybe i will revisit it again with Demon Machine.

d2rppa69 wrote: 3 years ago

Probably a mistake, but u mentioned Spirit in kiteshield as an option? If so, that wouldnt be possible. Overall, looks to be very fun build. I have tried this build before with kuko, maybe i will revisit it again with Demon Machine.

right, it has to be a Monarch. thx for catching that.

Nosgothy wrote: 3 years ago

This was a fantastic read. Thank you.
I'd love to see some action, though. Any chance you could make a short YouTube clip?

Added casual videos

Thanks for adding the clips, was a lot of fun to watch. Kind of surreal seeing that much fire on screen!

The thing I noticed the most is how squishy she is, though. The few times you did get hit your health took a nose dive!

Taking the term "glass cannon" to another level.

Nosgothy wrote: 3 years ago

Thanks for adding the clips, was a lot of fun to watch. Kind of surreal seeing that much fire on screen!

The thing I noticed the most is how squishy she is, though. The few times you did get hit your health took a nose dive!

Taking the term "glass cannon" to another level.

Yeah, very fragile because not using a shield and because of the curse and bowmen always hit much with those Arrows of theirs. But with Blaze it's easy to run around like a looney. Was too lazy to do so. Need to work on lightning resists also because it's only 26 and lightning hurts.

-

Using act5 merc, I love using Plague.
Cleansing Aura reduce the length of being poisoned or cursed. That lets me run with low poison resist.
Also the Lower Resist proc help you and your merc deal more elemental damage.
But I am not sure your merc can survive.

If tanking becomes an issue that Fortitude or Chains of Honor dont solve i would suggest since you max out Warmth to try dropping lvl 20 Blaze for lvl 20 Telekinesis and 1 point into mana shield.

this should net you 70% of damage taken to mana that has a really high regen. you will start to notice that large chunks hurt a lot less.

GooberGirl wrote: 3 years ago

miniatureluck wrote: 3 years ago

Nosgothy wrote: 3 years ago

Thanks for adding the clips, was a lot of fun to watch. Kind of surreal seeing that much fire on screen!

The thing I noticed the most is how squishy she is, though. The few times you did get hit your health took a nose dive!

Taking the term "glass cannon" to another level.

Yeah, very fragile because not using a shield and because of the curse and bowmen always hit much with those Arrows of theirs. But with Blaze it's easy to run around like a looney. Was too lazy to do so. Need to work on lightning resists also because it's only 26 and lightning hurts.

Looks great, quite refreshing!

I bet it can get to be a bit fatiguing to play. I find most builds that have to hit and run especially name-locking enemies instead of AoE to take a toll on me ol' slap and pointers.

(Also, I had the same merc with my sorc but the little bugger just would not leech. Felt like he was missing his attacks, kept getting popped. I've been trying to transition as many toons off of A2 mercs as possible just to keep things interesting, back to the board I guess.)

Thanks for the share and the video additions.

Good hunting!

thats a high possibility. Enchant lvl 20 gives 2000% more attack rating. so his chance to hit would be 95%. if your merc is missing i would say maybe give him a better weapon that has ignore defence but if you go runewords some of them are very expensive.

-

StarTempler wrote: 3 years ago

thats a high possibility. Enchant lvl 20 gives 2000% more attack rating

191% actually. 2000 would be...pretty baller.
191 isn't quite that much either though since it is merely summed with existing +%ar from gear, stats, ...

Either way, Frenzy merc hit chance is just crazy bad, sadly.

Schnorki wrote: 3 years ago

StarTempler wrote: 3 years ago

thats a high possibility. Enchant lvl 20 gives 2000% more attack rating

191% actually. 2000 would be...pretty baller.
191 isn't quite that much either though since it is merely summed with existing +%ar from gear, stats, ...

Either way, Frenzy merc hit chance is just crazy bad, sadly.

well with the + skills the sorc is using its actually probably close to a lvl 30 Enchant still yeah hit chance is bad i would say the cheapest ignore defence options are Crescent Moon (probably the nicest one) or Grief (insane merc damage but a little more expensive)

Cheapest decent would be Lightsabre probably.

StarTempler wrote: 3 years ago

If tanking becomes an issue that Fortitude or Chains of Honor dont solve i would suggest since you max out Warmth to try dropping lvl 20 Blaze for lvl 20 Telekinesis and 1 point into mana shield.

this should net you 70% of damage taken to mana that has a really high regen. you will start to notice that large chunks hurt a lot less.

That's actually a nice idea. I'll try it soon : )