Bowazon: Horazon VS Laying Of Hands + Gore Rider + Ravenfrost

We need to talk about the pink elephant in the room, and I'm surprised that I'm the first one to bring it up. At least, I couldn't find any threads on the subject.

The new warlock set opens up new combination possibilities. We will compare

Laying of Hands +

Gore Rider +

Raven Frost with Horazon's and the freed-up ring slot. I would like to list the facts here and then want to hear your opinions and experiences.

Laying of Hands

Gore Rider

Raven Frost

Horazon's Hold

Horazon's Legacy

Here are the totals

-132-146 def
-10% Chance Of Open Wounds
-5% Chance Of Crushing Blow
-15% Deadly Strike
-55-100 To Attack Rating
-40 Mana
-350% Damage To Demons
-15-45 Cold Damage
-Fire Resist 50%
-20% Cold Absorb


+10% Increased Attack Speed
+10% Faster Run/Walk
+10-15 Strength
+25-30 Dexterity
+30-40 Life
+140-270 Fire Damage
+20-30% Magic Resist

+1 Ring Slot

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A perfect rolled Crafted

Blood Ring can be looked like this
+ 9 Minimum Damage
+3% Life stolen per hit
+20 Life
+25 Strength
+15 to Dexterity
+ All Resistances +11

Opalvein rings should also be considered.

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Summary and personal opinion

Def can be ignored and

Horazon's Hold can be easily upgraded using Recipe: Elite Version of Unique Armor
-55-100 Attack Rating is more than offset by the +25-30 Dexterity Bonus.
+10-15 Strength hard points can be saved here to further increase dex.
The loss of Fire Res is significant.
350% Damage To Demons only applies to demons. Dex increases damage against everything.
40 Life is much better then 40 mana

I have tested both configurations and would say that Horazons is slightly better, especially with perfectly rolled blood rings

What are your thoughts and opinions?

Some builds use

War Traveler (which gives 15-25 dmg) instead of

Gore Rider

But, anyway, I was thinking the same thing...

if some attack build will switch

Gore Rider /

War Traveler +

Laying of Hands / rare or crafted 20 ias gloves +

Raven Frost
for

Horazon's Hold +

Horazon's Legacy + any ring

fredkid wrote: 5 hours ago

Some builds use

War Traveler (which gives 15-25 dmg) instead of

Gore Rider

But, anyway, I was thinking the same thing...

if some attack build will switch

Gore Rider /

War Traveler +

Laying of Hands / rare or crafted 20 ias gloves +

Raven Frost
for

Horazon's Hold +

Horazon's Legacy + any ring

i would say

War Traveler are for MF builds, and a bowazon is certainly not one. 15-25 flat dmg and the other stats are´nt enough to compensate

Gore Rider.
But thats another Topic..

physical Bowzon already have high

Critical Strike and Crushing Blow for ranged weapons is way less efficient... so "raw damage" ended up being better
But yeah... another topic

IIFOXII wrote: 4 hours ago

fredkid wrote: 5 hours ago

Some builds use

War Traveler (which gives 15-25 dmg) instead of

Gore Rider

But, anyway, I was thinking the same thing...

if some attack build will switch

Gore Rider /

War Traveler +

Laying of Hands / rare or crafted 20 ias gloves +

Raven Frost
for

Horazon's Hold +

Horazon's Legacy + any ring

i would say

War Traveler are for MF builds. 15-25 flat dmg and the other stats is´nt enough to compensate

Gore Rider.
But tahts another Topic..

Bowazon here, I think

Laying of Hands +

Gore Rider is better. Crushing Blow, even if not as powerful using ranged attacks, is still subtracting the monster's life by a percentage. If they have a lot of life, that's always going to beat raw damage.

But it depends on the area you're at. If you're not fighting too many demons and your enemies have a lot of physical resistance, there might be cases where

Laying of Hands +

Gore Rider won't be very effective.

Slightly off-topic, I think the Amulet here plays and important part. If your attack speed and attack rating are good enough, using

Atma's Scarab can help you melt any enemy in the game regardless of the gloves/

Boots your use.

War Trav's are kind of a generic and/or magic find option when you don't need something else specific.
Putting CBF on

Boots and removing

Raven Frost means that a horker without

Cham doesn't freeze and smash bodies anymore. Although losing 30-50 MF is harder to offset.

Ist in a

Helm instead of

Cham won't make that back up. But then again, 6

Ist in a sword provides 180 MF and a horker easily gets past the point of diminishing returns.
+350 damage to demons doesn't work with

Smite, so

Smite pally is running

Blood Gloves or

Dracul's Grasp. My FOH/

Smite hybrid uses

Chance Guards everywhere except Dclone and Ubers and I have no problems clearing the screen in P5 or less. A Zealer is using

Fanaticism and gets plenty of IAS, losing that 350 damage to demons and MF is worse than what you gain.
A good portion of Amazon builds use 2/20 rares or 3/20 magic gloves for BiS.

Horazon's looks good at first glance, but I think that a lot of builds will still keep their current meta. Somebody way smarter than me will crunch the numbers somewhere and find out exactly what combination is best, but I think that Horazon's Boot + Glove combo is not going to replace most BiS builds. Especially considering the number of

Raven Frost and

War Traveler that are already floating around the market.

Edit: and to prove that everyone else is smarter than me, I just re-read the OP title and saw that this was for Bowazon. I'm just going to keep this up on my Posts of Shame.