Improve damage on M'Avinas set?

Hi guys!
I got my first M'Avinas set yesterday and I'm loving it, with a frost build I was able to complete Hell with no problems (Players 1 of course).
I know that this is a budget set and the damage output will be limited, so I don' expect to have the build I'm playing right now to be on top tiers of killing speed, nor do massive damage on a P8 room.

But, I'd like to upgrade the damage output as much as possible, to at least play with more people, like random P3 or P5 rooms and still be effective, improving my chances to farm stuff.

What improvements would you suggest to do? Keep in mind that i recently returned to the game so I don't and won't have Infinity on a Merc for some time, and I know that it would be a very nice upgrade right there.

My gear is:
M'Avinas set, War travelers, Highlords ammy, Ravenfrost ring and another dual leech rare one. I have

Cold Rupture, a terrible roll but works just fine for now. Also have a shitty Anni, and no torch yet. No skillers either.
Merc has

Vampire Gaze

Helm, Treachary armor and Obedience on a

Thresher.

I'd appreciate your feedback, like what should I pay attention to in order of "what's easiest to get up to what's hardest" in order to improve the damage output of the build?

And also one question, the

Critical Strike skill which doubles damage, applies on Freezing

Arrows? is it worth maxing this out?

Thanks!!

Amazons are quite easy-mode class to play with. Its chill and only "hard" early game.

I honestly don't think there's too much to improve, since the set takes up most of your gear slots. That said, here's what I've done with my M'avina's frost amazon:

• Act II merc with Infinity. I want to try an Act I merc with Faith next, as I find that the act II merc just tends to lag behind and provides the
  Conviction aura only when I slow down. Though that's usually when I need him, I want to test if I end up getting more out of a couple fewer attack frames. I'm at 9 frames right now, with a
  Shael in the bow, but I could go down to 8 or even 7 with
  Fanaticism. I find the
  Valkyrie is all the tank you need, anyway.
• You could go with Insight if you find that guzzling mana potions is too annoying, though.
• Facets. I have a cold facet in the armor and another one in the
  Helm.
• Skillers! You care more about +skills than any physical damage-related modifiers, since you're more of a caster than a physical attacker. That sort of answers your question about
  Critical Strike: it's not irrelevant, but you deal a lot more cold damage than physical. You can check your physical damage from
  Freezing Arrow vs. its cold damage in the character sheet. Top damage is physical. With enough +to skills, you'll get it pretty high, anyway.
• For that reason, I'm wearing a
  Mara's Kaleidoscope over a
  Highlord's Wrath. Note that, without
  Fanaticism, you are pretty far from the last IAS breakpoint (147%), even with a Highlord's, so anything past 90% IAS (technically, 89%) is wasted.
• That's also a reason why it might be worth trying
  The Stone of Jordan and/or
  Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band as rings. Note that you don't need attack rating to hit with cold damage, but it will affect the physical hit+ability to
  Pierce.
• I use
  Strafe and
  Guided Arrow as alternate skills and find that they're good enough to deal with immunes at players 1. So I don't even bother with the
  Cold Rupture and instead have another skiller. I was lucky to have found exactly 6 skillers, even one witih +39 life. This could be wrong, but I find that I have more fun with the variety.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but to be honest, I don't think you need to min/max too much in players 1. The build deals fine enough damage for that without any effort, so maybe try a few of these combinations and see what feels best.

human_being wrote: 3 months ago

I honestly don't think there's too much to improve, since the set takes up most of your gear slots. That said, here's what I've done with my M'avina's frost amazon:

• Act II merc with Infinity. I want to try an Act I merc with Faith next, as I find that the act II merc just tends to lag behind and provides the
  Conviction aura only when I slow down. Though that's usually when I need him, I want to test if I end up getting more out of a couple fewer attack frames. I'm at 9 frames right now, with a
  Shael in the bow, but I could go down to 8 or even 7 with
  Fanaticism. I find the
  Valkyrie is all the tank you need, anyway.
• You could go with Insight if you find that guzzling mana potions is too annoying, though.
• Facets. I have a cold facet in the armor and another one in the
  Helm.
• Skillers! You care more about +skills than any physical damage-related modifiers, since you're more of a caster than a physical attacker. That sort of answers your question about
  Critical Strike: it's not irrelevant, but you deal a lot more cold damage than physical. You can check your physical damage from
  Freezing Arrow vs. its cold damage in the character sheet. Top damage is physical. With enough +to skills, you'll get it pretty high, anyway.
• For that reason, I'm wearing a
  Mara's Kaleidoscope over a
  Highlord's Wrath. Note that, without
  Fanaticism, you are pretty far from the last IAS breakpoint (147%), even with a Highlord's, so anything past 90% IAS (technically, 89%) is wasted.
• That's also a reason why it might be worth trying
  The Stone of Jordan and/or
  Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band as rings. Note that you don't need attack rating to hit with cold damage, but it will affect the physical hit+ability to
  Pierce.
• I use
  Strafe and
  Guided Arrow as alternate skills and find that they're good enough to deal with immunes at players 1. So I don't even bother with the
  Cold Rupture and instead have another skiller. I was lucky to have found exactly 6 skillers, even one witih +39 life. This could be wrong, but I find that I have more fun with the variety.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but to be honest, I don't think you need to min/max too much in players 1. The build deals fine enough damage for that without any effort, so maybe try a few of these combinations and see what feels best.

What about replacing mara’s with an amulet with

Teleport charges? You might be able to buy one with all res and bow and

Crossbow skills. Then you’d have 25 tele charges to wrangle up your merc with. Not ideal, but better than nothing. Still dreaming of the day that we get something like a new unqiue grand charm with 100+ tele charges on it (and reasonable recharge cost). But we probsbly just have to accept that there won’t be any more balance fixes and that d2r will forever have a SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS tier GPU melting build.

human_being wrote: 3 months ago

I honestly don't think there's too much to improve, since the set takes up most of your gear slots. That said, here's what I've done with my M'avina's frost amazon:

• Act II merc with Infinity. I want to try an Act I merc with Faith next, as I find that the act II merc just tends to lag behind and provides the
  Conviction aura only when I slow down. Though that's usually when I need him, I want to test if I end up getting more out of a couple fewer attack frames. I'm at 9 frames right now, with a
  Shael in the bow, but I could go down to 8 or even 7 with
  Fanaticism. I find the
  Valkyrie is all the tank you need, anyway.
• You could go with Insight if you find that guzzling mana potions is too annoying, though.
• Facets. I have a cold facet in the armor and another one in the
  Helm.
• Skillers! You care more about +skills than any physical damage-related modifiers, since you're more of a caster than a physical attacker. That sort of answers your question about
  Critical Strike: it's not irrelevant, but you deal a lot more cold damage than physical. You can check your physical damage from
  Freezing Arrow vs. its cold damage in the character sheet. Top damage is physical. With enough +to skills, you'll get it pretty high, anyway.
• For that reason, I'm wearing a
  Mara's Kaleidoscope over a
  Highlord's Wrath. Note that, without
  Fanaticism, you are pretty far from the last IAS breakpoint (147%), even with a Highlord's, so anything past 90% IAS (technically, 89%) is wasted.
• That's also a reason why it might be worth trying
  The Stone of Jordan and/or
  Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band as rings. Note that you don't need attack rating to hit with cold damage, but it will affect the physical hit+ability to
  Pierce.
• I use
  Strafe and
  Guided Arrow as alternate skills and find that they're good enough to deal with immunes at players 1. So I don't even bother with the
  Cold Rupture and instead have another skiller. I was lucky to have found exactly 6 skillers, even one witih +39 life. This could be wrong, but I find that I have more fun with the variety.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but to be honest, I don't think you need to min/max too much in players 1. The build deals fine enough damage for that without any effort, so maybe try a few of these combinations and see what feels best.

Thanks for your detailed answer! Super helpful and I super agree with you, the fun factor is super important, that's why I thought of trying to squeeze the most I can of this build, since I'm really enjoying it.

How does your character perform in, let's say, a P3 or P5 game?
With all those skillers, what's your

Freezing Arrow dmg? Just to have a point of comparison (I have around 2.3k with my current setup)

marcelomusza wrote: 3 months ago

I'd appreciate your feedback, like what should I pay attention to in order of "what's easiest to get up to what's hardest" in order to improve the damage output of the build?

Try to get a perfect

Wizendraw, it is better than

M'avina's Caster. You can not improve the set, because you have no option to reduce cold resistance.

I've socketed the socketable set items with cold rainbow jewels. Two out of three are 5/5, and the third is 4/4 - to be replaced in the future. The 72%

Cold Rupture grand charm helps a lot. I don't play much this character, but it's one of those for me I must have.

I'm playing mostly solo self-found (I do trade for runes, just not for items) online, so I'm always on P1 and have not tried this build in higher difficulties, unfortunately.

As for my

Freezing Arrow damage, display damage (not sure if this includes facets) is 2937-3173. I have a total of +15 to Bow and arrow skills. Note that I don't have a torch.

marcelomusza wrote: 3 months ago

human_being wrote: 3 months ago

I honestly don't think there's too much to improve, since the set takes up most of your gear slots. That said, here's what I've done with my M'avina's frost amazon:

• Act II merc with Infinity. I want to try an Act I merc with Faith next, as I find that the act II merc just tends to lag behind and provides the
  Conviction aura only when I slow down. Though that's usually when I need him, I want to test if I end up getting more out of a couple fewer attack frames. I'm at 9 frames right now, with a
  Shael in the bow, but I could go down to 8 or even 7 with
  Fanaticism. I find the
  Valkyrie is all the tank you need, anyway.
• You could go with Insight if you find that guzzling mana potions is too annoying, though.
• Facets. I have a cold facet in the armor and another one in the
  Helm.
• Skillers! You care more about +skills than any physical damage-related modifiers, since you're more of a caster than a physical attacker. That sort of answers your question about
  Critical Strike: it's not irrelevant, but you deal a lot more cold damage than physical. You can check your physical damage from
  Freezing Arrow vs. its cold damage in the character sheet. Top damage is physical. With enough +to skills, you'll get it pretty high, anyway.
• For that reason, I'm wearing a
  Mara's Kaleidoscope over a
  Highlord's Wrath. Note that, without
  Fanaticism, you are pretty far from the last IAS breakpoint (147%), even with a Highlord's, so anything past 90% IAS (technically, 89%) is wasted.
• That's also a reason why it might be worth trying
  The Stone of Jordan and/or
  Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band as rings. Note that you don't need attack rating to hit with cold damage, but it will affect the physical hit+ability to
  Pierce.
• I use
  Strafe and
  Guided Arrow as alternate skills and find that they're good enough to deal with immunes at players 1. So I don't even bother with the
  Cold Rupture and instead have another skiller. I was lucky to have found exactly 6 skillers, even one witih +39 life. This could be wrong, but I find that I have more fun with the variety.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but to be honest, I don't think you need to min/max too much in players 1. The build deals fine enough damage for that without any effort, so maybe try a few of these combinations and see what feels best.

Thanks for your detailed answer! Super helpful and I super agree with you, the fun factor is super important, that's why I thought of trying to squeeze the most I can of this build, since I'm really enjoying it.

How does your character perform in, let's say, a P3 or P5 game?
With all those skillers, what's your

Freezing Arrow dmg? Just to have a point of comparison (I have around 2.3k with my current setup)

Hustle armor on your merc, his coviction aura will be in range a lot more often...

krathkor wrote: 3 months ago

Hustle armor on your merc, his coviction aura will be in range a lot more often...

Maybe when I play ladder. : )