physi bowa help

Hi, never played a physical bowa, and now I'm after the first few games with my end game (is it?) gear, and after watching bowa vids and others. Current gear- Faith gmb level 13 fana +5 skills,

Diadem with 45% ias and 90% ed total, highlord's, forti, gores, nosferatu, duel leech, ravenfrost, LoH. Charms are average +max damage(mostly +9 with life grands, mostly +3 small) and some resist charms, 1

Gheed's, 1 shimmering gc.
merc- andy with 15 ias jewel, CoH in a

Great Hauberk, Pride in

Eth superior cv (saw that the only thing better speedwise was

Mancatcher so I went for slightly slower but more base damage because Pride has no inherent ed).
skills- 20 to multi, guided and

Strafe, 1 valk, enough to

Pierce to get 91%, rest into critical (sits at 70% +)

p8 Chaos was a struggle, was ok but slow, mostly couldn't even finish runs before "ng". Used a lot of

Strafe because it packed more pain. Diablo was always hard, merc always dies in diablo... is it supposed to be like this? what am I missing? is more/better + dmg charms mandatory? war travs better than gores? the 90% ed in the

Diadem is too low? (I dont have 30

Jah to buy 3 perfect jewels...)
Also, being with Enigma is so much nicer becuase of frw and

Teleport, but forti packs a notable punch. Doing Chaos with Enigma is much more slow.
p3 Chaos was very fast, moving to p5-6 starts to show the issues. Merc always dies at diablo no matter what.

Other areas that might be better for her?

Thanks!

Since you play P8,Chaos is the worst place to physical bowa, due to Undead has higher physical resist.

Atma's Scarab is the only choice for phy bowa in P8.

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Since you play P8,Chaos is the worst place to physical bowa, due to Undead has higher physical resist.

Atma's Scarab is the only choice for phy bowa in P8.

So where would you go that is more optimal? Anywhere with phys immune is bad cause ok

Magic Arrow but it is even slower than the other skills.

Act5 Worldstone keep and beyond. Get a Sunder Charm -

Bone Break, it helps.
Using MS or

Strafe to trigger

Amplify Damage, much faster than

Magic Arrow.

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Act5 Worldstone keep and beyond. Get a Sunder Charm -

Bone Break, it helps.
Using MS or

Strafe to trigger

Amplify Damage, much faster than

Magic Arrow.

So you say- go down a breakpoint and use

Atma's with bb sunder. I have those, I will try.
What about war travs vs

Gore Rider?

Depends on what you are after, for leveling, good Terrorized Zone would be better than WK, otherwise go for WK.
For damage,

Gore Rider is the one to wear.

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Depends on what you are after, for leveling, good Terrorized Zone would be better than WK, otherwise go for WK.
For damage,

Gore Rider is the one to wear.

Im level 90. Looking to farm smoothly in p8(I'm sure it's possible, I just did it with a fire bowa). I'm online ladder. NN for mf, Runes and bases are more than enough to get Wealth.

Where do you usually go with her?

You can check the area where monsters have low physical resistance.
https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/ind ... ary_(Hell)

Since you have Act2 Merc, you can just try

Atma's Scarab on you,

The Reaper's Toll on Merc. Same Chaos runs, see if there are differences.

Strafe to triger AD.

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Atma's Scarab is the only choice for phy bowa in P8.

Sorry but that is just not true.

A well built (and played) phys bowa can still full-clear (read: include at least all champ packs and larger packs along the way) in the time of an average

Baal run. Speed-clearing is perfectly doable in the time of a faster skip-baalrun. That holds true for mine on P8 which uses neither

Atma's nor reaper's (nor Faith but that's a separate, ever-lasting debate).
Though a bowzon (

Atma's or not) and especially a running bowzon (i.e. fort over Enigma) is inherently slower than something like a java or a hammerdin or the like so typically, you're looking at clearing CS and then moving into the new game shortly thereafter, rather than clearing CS and then being back up in WSK to join the party in time for wave 3/4 as a hammer/java would.

Reaper's would (most) likely be a better choice if you do focus on P8 over anything else. Lower player counts it makes 0 sense as everything just dies before a merc ever even gets close to it anyways, making Pride the only real choice there.

Based on the OP, it sounds like your gear - while not perfected - is at a solid enough level to where it shouldn't hold you back that much so it may be more a matter of smaller changes and/or playstyle.
- What's your AR at? With Faith, it does tend to be quite high but you seem to not have more than 1 pt in

Penetrate. Keep in mind that ITD on Faith doesn't work on champs, uniques, super uniques or bosses so you still need solid AR to keep your hit rate up across the board.

- Are you full vita? Full dex? Half and half? Phys bowzons scale very well with more dex so if you want to speed things up, you want as much dex as possible to boost both, your dmg and again your AR (see above). Naturally, you want to survive which depending on your playstyle/experience with it may require a bit of an investment into vita (equally it allows you to be more lazy/suicidal) but full vita should never be necessary on a zon and needlessly cuts down your damage (significantly).

-

Strafe is awesome..but situational. More often than not, especially in CS, you're looking at fanned out packs of mobs coming at you. You don't normally want to

Strafe those, despite the higher base dmg. You get significantly more

Arrows/time out of multishot, more than making up for the lower base dmg, so long as you control the spread (near/far aim raises/lowers the spread) and cover the entire fan of mobs.

Strafe is more for single targets and/or packs in a line. So ideally, you want to use both. Sometimes one more than the other, sometimes the other way around, depending on how mobs are lined up. Focusing entirely (or mostly) on

Strafe across the board is bound to slow you down overall.

- What's your offhand/switch? CtA really shouldn't be necessary for a bowzon (neither for you nor to keep your merc alive) as you still kill stuff quickly enough on P8 to take care of that. Bosses are a bit of a different story as phys bowzons simply are worse at bosses than many, many other builds so those take a while and your merc, thanks to using Pride, will have shit leech. The easiest way (imo) to solve that is to use a

Javelin in your switch set and get 1 point in

Impale. Not only can you often jav down diablo faster than you'd kill him with

Arrows, even with only 2 pts in that skill tree (depending on overall gear) but hitting him with a 1pt

Impale with normal amounts of +skill for a bowzon (with titan's on switch) is enough to basically fully shut him down, rendering both you and your merc unkillable to him.

I'm sure there's more things that could be tweaked but that's just some more obvious initial ideas.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Atma's Scarab is the only choice for phy bowa in P8.

Sorry but that is just not true.

Just curious, what's your amulet choice for physical bowa in P8?

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Atma's Scarab is the only choice for phy bowa in P8.

Sorry but that is just not true.

A well built (and played) phys bowa can still full-clear (read: include at least all champ packs and larger packs along the way) in the time of an average

Baal run. Speed-clearing is perfectly doable in the time of a faster skip-baalrun. That holds true for mine on P8 which uses neither

Atma's nor reaper's (nor Faith but that's a separate, ever-lasting debate).
Though a bowzon (

Atma's or not) and especially a running bowzon (i.e. fort over Enigma) is inherently slower than something like a java or a hammerdin or the like so typically, you're looking at clearing CS and then moving into the new game shortly thereafter, rather than clearing CS and then being back up in WSK to join the party in time for wave 3/4 as a hammer/java would.

Reaper's would (most) likely be a better choice if you do focus on P8 over anything else. Lower player counts it makes 0 sense as everything just dies before a merc ever even gets close to it anyways, making Pride the only real choice there.

Based on the OP, it sounds like your gear - while not perfected - is at a solid enough level to where it shouldn't hold you back that much so it may be more a matter of smaller changes and/or playstyle.
- What's your AR at? With Faith, it does tend to be quite high but you seem to not have more than 1 pt in

Penetrate. Keep in mind that ITD on Faith doesn't work on champs, uniques, super uniques or bosses so you still need solid AR to keep your hit rate up across the board.

- Are you full vita? Full dex? Half and half? Phys bowzons scale very well with more dex so if you want to speed things up, you want as much dex as possible to boost both, your dmg and again your AR (see above). Naturally, you want to survive which depending on your playstyle/experience with it may require a bit of an investment into vita (equally it allows you to be more lazy/suicidal) but full vita should never be necessary on a zon and needlessly cuts down your damage (significantly).

-

Strafe is awesome..but situational. More often than not, especially in CS, you're looking at fanned out packs of mobs coming at you. You don't normally want to

Strafe those, despite the higher base dmg. You get significantly more

Arrows/time out of multishot, more than making up for the lower base dmg, so long as you control the spread (near/far aim raises/lowers the spread) and cover the entire fan of mobs.

Strafe is more for single targets and/or packs in a line. So ideally, you want to use both. Sometimes one more than the other, sometimes the other way around, depending on how mobs are lined up. Focusing entirely (or mostly) on

Strafe across the board is bound to slow you down overall.

- What's your offhand/switch? CtA really shouldn't be necessary for a bowzon (neither for you nor to keep your merc alive) as you still kill stuff quickly enough on P8 to take care of that. Bosses are a bit of a different story as phys bowzons simply are worse at bosses than many, many other builds so those take a while and your merc, thanks to using Pride, will have shit leech. The easiest way (imo) to solve that is to use a

Javelin in your switch set and get 1 point in

Impale. Not only can you often jav down diablo faster than you'd kill him with

Arrows, even with only 2 pts in that skill tree (depending on overall gear) but hitting him with a 1pt

Impale with normal amounts of +skill for a bowzon (with titan's on switch) is enough to basically fully shut him down, rendering both you and your merc unkillable to him.

I'm sure there's more things that could be tweaked but that's just some more obvious initial ideas.

I have heaps of ar, like 25k +, because I'm mostly dex, I have like 20 points in vita so my baseline hp is 600(before forti, if I use it). I indeed have only 1

Penetrate. I'll look at my chance to hit dia next time I play.
My switch is indeed cta and lidless, I think using Obedience and

Impale on switch might be fun, but yeah I could get a titan's. I Dream of using Harmony on switch so I can support my slow running when uaing forti. Still didn't decide which is better. Last time I played I used Enigma to tele to the cs, then switch to forti in town.
With Enigma surely I can do

Impale.
Using reaper's sounds like a giant degrade to my damage, but I'll test.
I really wanna try strafing once or twice with

Atma, then multi.

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Atma's Scarab is the only choice for phy bowa in P8.

Sorry but that is just not true.

Just curious, what's your amulet choice for physical bowa in P8?

I don't switch stuff out based on player count (or in general for that matter - too lazy ^^). Hence the no reaper's for P8 as well.
The amulet stays as highlord's.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

I have heaps of ar, like 25k +, because I'm mostly dex, I have like 20 points in vita so my baseline hp is 600(before forti, if I use it). I indeed have only 1

Penetrate. I'll look at my chance to hit dia next time I play.

Yeah, that's plenty then.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Using reaper's sounds like a giant degrade to my damage, but I'll test.

It is a definite loss in base damage which is why it is so bad on lower player counts. But on P8, even if you fully max your dmg in all areas, your merc will still often enough get to packs in time, simply because they don't fall over immediately anymore. And since reaper's actually has a fairly high proc chance, he will (on average - educated assumption) still get enough procs off to where the added dmg from decrep should outweigh the loss of conc by a good margin.

That's especially true if you're a telezon and can just position him straight onto the packs though I still prefer dmg over Enigma on my zon myself.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

I have heaps of ar, like 25k +, because I'm mostly dex, I have like 20 points in vita so my baseline hp is 600(before forti, if I use it). I indeed have only 1

Penetrate. I'll look at my chance to hit dia next time I play.

Yeah, that's plenty then.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Using reaper's sounds like a giant degrade to my damage, but I'll test.

It is a definite loss in base damage which is why it is so bad on lower player counts. But on P8, even if you fully max your dmg in all areas, your merc will still often enough get to packs in time, simply because they don't fall over immediately anymore. And since reaper's actually has a fairly high proc chance, he will (on average - educated assumption) still get enough procs off to where the added dmg from decrep should outweigh the loss of conc by a good margin.

That's especially true if you're a telezon and can just position him straight onto the packs though I still prefer dmg over Enigma on my zon myself.

It does make me a little sad cause my Pride is so shiny and it's the first time I made that rune word, and it rolled 19

Concentration, but I'll try yes, sounds very reasonable.

Well, do you exclusively play p8?

Personally, I fully realize that reaper's should be better on P8 but I still prefer my Pride because she very rarely gets to solo on P8 and for anything that's say P5-6 or lower which will be most of the time, I much prefer to stick with Pride.

(Subject to change if /players 8 ever becomes available online..which I sadly still doubt)

Just 2 cents on the war travs vs gores and atmas vs highlords. My gear is very similar to yours. 13 fana Faith in regular GMB, fort, LOH,

Raven, min damage/life leach ring, and a 45/+101% ED

Circlet. My merc has an 18

Concentration Pride. I left out

Boots and amulet to be compared later.

war travs

Strafe: 1991-9170
mulit: 1365-6246
guided: 1983-9133
magic: 1632-7355

gores

Strafe: 1665-8626
mulit: 1143-5877
guided: 1659-8592
magic: 1372-6923

Difference (war trans over gores)

Strafe: 326-544
mulit: 222-369
guided: 324-541
magic: 260-432

The damage gained from war travs is very small considering what you gain from gores. Open wounds is okay but needed for PMH. Crushing blow is massive when attack speed is factored in and the added bump to deadly strike chance, which I will talk about when talking about amulets, is also very nice.

When it comes to amulets it kind of depends how you play. If you almost exclusively use

Strafe, then atmas is okay. You only need 19 extra attack speed to reach max attack break point, so you don't need the speed boost from highlords, and the amp damage proc can be triggered on every arrow. However if you use multishot the proc is only triggered from the middle 2

Arrows. A big letdown from multi is crushing blow is also only triggered on the middle 2

Arrows. Lastly, if you do go for the tele proc of

Decrepify then you don't want to use atmas anyways because then you are just removing the decrep curse removing the benefit in the first place.

If you look at highlords you get 20% attack speed (helps reach max break point for all other attacks) and 0-37% chance deadly strike. Deadly strike is your amp damage (not including the chance to break phys immune). And when you combine the deadly strike chance, with your crit strike chance (they don't stack, see below for formula), you get a very high chance to do double damage with all attacks.

Lets look at a level 90 amazon. 20 points into crit strike gives 68% chance. Highlords gives (0.375*90) 33.75% chance. Plug into the formula and we get 78.8% chance to do double damage, on every arrow, every time. (68+(33.75/100)*(100-68). If you add in the 15% deadly strike from gores you get 83.6% (someone double check my maths)

I prefer to use multi because as Schnorki pointed out, you have 21

Arrows hitting mobs in a controllable arc instead of trickling in single

Arrows with

Strafe. If you have max breakpoint with GMB you attack 3.57 times a second, so you end up with almost 75

Arrows a second.

Strafe has a chance for crushing blow on every arrow, an increase in damage, and if you use atmas a chance to proc amp damage. However I find it too slow when you see how many

Arrows fill the screen with max break point multishot.

One thing I do want to mention is I do not run players 8 so my opinion could be lacking if this doesn't apply to the massive challenge difference of players 1-3 vs 8. However, I believe Highlords to be the better amulet for the amazon for the attack rating and more reliable double damage proc.

"Deadly Strike will not stack with the Assassin's, Barbarian's or Amazon's

Critical Strike bonuses, although there are advantages to having both. When you have both Deadly Strike and

Critical Strike, the game will roll for one of the bonuses first and if that fails, the game will then roll for the other bonus. If the first bonus succeeds, however, there is no roll for the second bonus as the game only allows for 2X damage, never 4X damage. That means that the chance to hit will be CS + (DS/100)*(100-CS); so if you had 25%

Critical Strike and 25% Deadly Strike, the chance of dealing double damage would be: 25 + (25/100)*(100-25) = 43.75%."
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Deadly_Strike

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Well, do you exclusively play p8?

Personally, I fully realize that reaper's should be better on P8 but I still prefer my Pride because she very rarely gets to solo on P8 and for anything that's say P5-6 or lower which will be most of the time, I much prefer to stick with Pride.

(Subject to change if /players 8 ever becomes available online..which I sadly still doubt)

Ok tried

Atma's and

Strafe procing it- just too unrealible, really procs way too less times. So

Atma I love radamant quest, but your scarab is bad, keep it to yourself.
Reaper's toll though... HELLO beauty! What a change. Drasticlly upgrades run times, and merc survivability skyrockes(also shortens run times by a lot- no babysitting/running needed), only dies when fightining high damage unleechables- which is not an issue almost at all. With Enigma... "sheds tear", this is fantastic. Click to curse, just like a necro. So even without Pride and forti, the prescence of reaper's makes runs much faster in places with any physical resistance, which is a lot of places, espicially Chaos. And thing is, mobs that don't have physical res die very quickly anyway even in p8.
I dont know who recommended Pride all over the web for phys bowa, but he wasn't playing p8, like ever. Cheers to bowa also telling me going reaper's for p8.
This is just a magical change, turns the entire build upside down.


Why p8- I like to play ladder, which means online, and I like odd builds which usually dont have a lot or any mf becuase the gear is demanding(though the phys bowa is maybe an exception to that)- so farming runes and bases is best for me. Also calling for finds and seeing others finds in chat adds a lot to the game for me(playing mf splits mainly). Because there are almost no mf games with players number being different than 8 (or 1, but that's no good)- p8 is the game here.

Thanks all for the info, problem solved.

Pride is for full dmg bowas (read: no tele) on low to mid player counts. In those, you will reliably kill everything before it ever gets close to you and more importantly before your merc ever gets close to the mobs. As a result, reaper's is utterly useless as he would never be in range to proc it plus Pride leech is perfectly sufficient (overkill in fact) as your merc will also never take damage as he never gets close to anything before it dies. In that scenario (i.e. on those player counts), Pride is the best thing out there as the aura actually does something for you and offers more than an a1 fana merc (especially if you do take the few seconds to actively allow your merc to get might up), shaving a shot or two off your "shots to kill" average.

But yeah, on p8 and to a lower extent 7 and maybe even 6 (depending on just how far off perfect your gear still is), your merc starts becoming active, making reaper's inherently superior as no aura support merc will beat a flat decrep proc.

or.houster wrote: 1 year ago

Flyhorse wrote: 1 year ago

Depends on what you are after, for leveling, good Terrorized Zone would be better than WK, otherwise go for WK.
For damage,

Gore Rider is the one to wear.

Im level 90. Looking to farm smoothly in p8(I'm sure it's possible, I just did it with a fire bowa). I'm online ladder. NN for mf, Runes and bases are more than enough to get Wealth.

Where do you usually go with her?

Sorry for off topic but what was your fire bowa setup? Don't see many so just curious to see if there is much variation