Fire bowa skill distribution

Tl;dr version: where should I invest skill points on a fire bowa once I've maxed the fire skills and Valkyrie?

Long version:

I'm slowly building a fire bowa on ladder, just because it's cool. I'm a long way from optimal gear but she's already doing pretty well and I'm loving it: level 85 with Melody in a +3 Matriarchal Bow (Hand of Justice is the goal), a bad Flickering Flame (-11 to enemy resistance and a level 4 Resist Fire aura), 4 low fire facets in a basic Archon Plate (-12, +16). Merc is just a Rogue with Harmony for the Vigor aura.

I've watched a lot of Bowa's videos which have been great but one area where I'm still unsure is skill distribution, so I thought I'd check in with the smart folks of d2io. I have currently maxed Fire Arrow, Exploding Arrow, Immolation Arrow, and Magic Arrow. I then have 1 in all the passive skills with the exception of Valkyrie, which I am adding to as I level up.

However, Magic Arrow is essentially useless with this bow, the physical damage is way too low and I can't see how that will change with Hand of Justice. Even with sub-optimal gear and no Infinity, the fire skills simply out perform Magic Arrow because of the Flame Rift and because AR does not affect the fire damage.

I therefore want to redistribute the points but I can't decide where to put them. Critical Strike seems useless for the same reason as Magic Arrow (but maybe ok if I invest in both?), the Cold Arrow spells require too many points to be effective. If I understand well, Valkyrie only needs to be level 17 to be a complete tank, Slow Missiles and Decoy feel like one hit wonders, and Pierce is already 100% with just one point.

As I see it, my only other options are Evade, because I'm not one to stand still for long so Evade > Dodge / avoid, and Penetrate because (if I've understood correctly), I need the physical arrow to hit in order for the chance to Pierce % to be calculated and I'm not putting any more points into dex than my gear requires.

Any thoughts? What would you do?

Magic Arrow - I run physical bowa, and this skill is how I kill immunes (very high dmg, but u have different bows so yeah your dmg wont be near 1k-9k)
crit strike - your damage comes from elemental type of dmg, so you have 0value for physical dmg
bows for elemental - think about Mist. Mist is like swiss knife, its in top 3 bows for any build (sadly in every scenario there are better bows, but u cant go wrong with it)
Hand of Justice - that actually never crossed my mind to put it into bow - but yeah it can work

You can run Enigma with this build, if u go wizard spike + Spirit on off hand, you get high FCR.

Regarding skills:

to max fire build you need 62skill points. Get decent Pierce (not sure if u use Razortail or not).
and that leaves you with +/- 40points (if u go Mist, you can just save skill points and just put 3 into Dodge/avoid/ Evade and that can be all from passive and magic skills - based on your AR you might need 1penetrate - its nice bonus imho worthy 2skill points anyway)

you can even max cold Arrows

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

to get Valkyrie on lvl 8 or 17 is always great defensive way to build up ur amazon

but I am not much familiar with fire bowazon. I would max both elements cold and fire, if u put Faith on ur act1 merc and u use Matriarchal Bow you can get fastest shooting for few IAS.

I would build it like this:
https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/amazon-ski ... -20*20--&1

regarding IAS: Hand of Justice has +33IAS and with Faith with fana on 11+ you need 48IAS, so if u put 1x 15IAS jewel into body armor, you can focus ur gear on +skills and -enemy fire res

also Dragon armor can be interesting too. but then you might need Infinity on merc

Thanks Flash

I'm a long way from Hand of Justice / Dragon / Faith / Mist so I'd rather not build around these just yet. I do have Razortail and with +skills can get 100% Pierce with just one point.

I may be wrong but suspect Hand of Justice is BiS weapon and a jeweler's armour with facets is BiS armour.

I tried cold + fire when levelling but found the cold skills underwhelming without any -res. Maybe I can try again now that I have better gear and more +skills but I am really focusing the gear around fire so I suspect cold will always underperform.

I think Penetrate is probably the way to go. Get chance to hit as high as possible so that 90% of Arrows Pierce and Immolation Arrow is then much more effective.

I'll bring up a voice for the cold archer.

Cold archer needs 41 skills spent into bow tree total. Rest can go into passives.
You'll be using the Freezing Arrow only which deals around 4k cold damage in an AoE on top of whatever little physical you have and most importantly, has no cooldown.

Fire archer needs to spend 63 skill points in bow tree and will be using Exploding Arrow for around 2k damage in an AoE and Immolation Arrow with damage on par with Freezing Arrow but 0.6s cooldown tacked on.

The BiS bow would be Ice and Phoenix, resp. If nothing else, Phoenix has -28% fire res compared to HoJ's -20% and extra 14%ML and Redemption aura for comfortable farming. HoJ will reach a better breakpoint (by 1 frame) but that won't help with Immolation Arrow.

Penetrate at 100% is needed for both archers since the AoE damage is multiplied by number of targets pierced. Cold archer can reach 8 FPA with 75 IAS with Ice in Matriarchal Bow, fire archer 11-10 FPA with Phoenix/HoJ in Grand Matron Bow. Matriarchal is a no-no here.

Yeh I know an Ice/cold bowa is objectively better but I'm building a fire bowa because that's what I want. :p

As for Phoenix vs HoJ, you're probably right, but it's all academic really. Based on my current pace, I estimate it will take me about 2-3 years to get the spare runes needed for either...

Out of interest, why would a Matriarchal be a no no?

Didn't want to sway you on the cold archer side, just a follow-up to the "found the cold skills underwhelming without any -res" and you'd be right, but it gets better.

1) Because Fire archer, as opposed to cold, deals a respectable amount of physical damage and both HoJ and Phoenix add a lot of ED, namely Phoenix at 350-400.

2) Because Phoenix has no IAS on the bow itself and you will surely be wearing Flickering Flame meaning you'll have at most 40 IAS from gear (gloves+amulet). You'd need more than that to make MB better than GMB with Phoenix.

3) Regarding Hand of Justice, yes you can reach 9FPA with MB as opposed to 11 FPA with Phoenix GMB which helps only one of your two shooting skills. If you are hellbent on HoJ, both bases are ok. However, you will be leeching less with MB at 9 FPA than with GMB at 10 FPA.