Is it realistic for Bowazon to tackle Uber Tristram or Ancients

I have a near fully kitted Bowazon for clearing Mobs with the only item I'm missing being Fortitude armor.

Is it possible for Bowazon to tackle the Ubers without it being a miserable experience, and I should satisfied melting mobs.

I'm happy to experiment unless it a well documented lost cause.

I've been collecting what I think is uber specific gear such as Guillaume's Face and Gore Riders.

A few questions.

I have a lifetap Wand. Do I need Dracul's Grasp for the additional Open Wounds or would Laying of Hands suffice with the Wand?
I'm using a Act 1 Faith Merc. Will she just get melted where her Fanaticism Aura is useless? Do I need to change to an Act 2 Merc?
Should I respec to commit more points into Decoy or Valkyrie to help tank?
Are there any other gear considerations I'm not thinking of?

My physical bowazon wrecks mobs but she is not good at killing bosses. Baal takes her maybe 20-30 seconds to kill on P1 lol.

I've never done it, but yes it's possible. There is an ubers bow runeword, Wrath, but some people seem to just do it with Faith, so I think your gear is fine, it's more about strategy. There are many videos on youtube:

A (phys) bowazon is certainly not the best suited for ubers since you're looking at (a) a bit of effort to re-gear into properly overstacked res for meph (with noticeably lower dmg as a result) and (b) a ranged penalty on crushing blow.

But it is absolutely doable.

And Diablo Clone is possible, but take a long time (in general I switch to another character...)
(even physical bowazon being my main/favorite)

justinman114 wrote: 4 months ago

My physical bowazon wrecks mobs but she is not good at killing bosses. Baal takes her maybe 20-30 seconds to kill on P1 lol.

you will want to consider Atmas Amulet for amp damage and anything with prevent monster heal. Blackhorns Mask might be an option there

fredkid wrote: 4 months ago

And Diablo Clone is possible, but take a long time (in general I switch to another character...)
(even physical bowazon being my main/favorite)

justinman114 wrote: 4 months ago

My physical bowazon wrecks mobs but she is not good at killing bosses. Baal takes her maybe 20-30 seconds to kill on P1 lol.

DC you can actually wreck pretty quickly with a proper (geared) phys bowzon, seeing how he isn't much of an offensive threat and you can hence just steamroll him.

Between meph's conv, ancient's anti-res and Lilith hitting like a truck, the same cannot be said for proper ubers though.

Wrath seems awfully designed, no? It procs 2 curses that override each other. Both are useful, but only really when you can rely on them. Or am I misunderstanding how they work / interact?

marl71 wrote: 4 months ago

I've never done it, but yes it's possible. There is an ubers bow runeword, Wrath, but some people seem to just do it with Faith, so I think your gear is fine, it's more about strategy. There are many videos on youtube:

Did it several times last season or the one before. As already said, not the best character but its doable. Stack res, stack LL / Life Tap, crushing blow, ias. Kill ubers one by one and get the Torch i used Strafe i prefered it over Guided Arrow with Faith and Duress majority of Time. I prefered Enigma to reposition when to many minions. Be carreful to not be surrounding. Also a strong merc helped me with Baal and diablo.

It feel like use summon nec play uber, play once maybe, but more than that is definitely no.

Thanks everyone. This has been great to read through. I think maybe my best course of action is getting the gear for a Smite Paladin and respecing my Hammerdin for Ubers. Once I've gotten some Ubers under my Belt I can see if I can get my Bowazon across the finish line as a goal for the end of the season.

Myrana wrote: 4 months ago

Wrath seems awfully designed, no? It procs 2 curses that override each other. Both are useful, but only really when you can rely on them. Or am I misunderstanding how they work / interact?

marl71 wrote: 4 months ago

I've never done it, but yes it's possible. There is an ubers bow runeword, Wrath, but some people seem to just do it with Faith, so I think your gear is fine, it's more about strategy. There are many videos on youtube:

Yes and no. The curse part actually isn't bad. The rest kind of is though. ^^

Curses off the same proc/same item are cast in descending order with Life Tap then overwriting Decrepify.
And while that sounds like it'd be a waste of decrep, it actually plays quite nicely, thanks to the significantly higher proc odds for decrep:
- Every ~5% of your shots will give you Life Tap, regardless of whether or not decrep also procced on that shot.
- Subsequent shots have a rather solid chance of giving you decrep again very quickly which will then remain up until your next Life Tap proc.

What that means is that so long as you only need a tap heal every ~5% of your shots, you're covered on that front and while you don't need the healing, you're maximizing damage done and minimizing damage received via decrep. It actually does work out quite well in the right build.

That said, Wrath still makes for a pretty terrible bow for self-use, simply because it has no innate ED. The damage to demons/undead merely gets summed with your other ED (skills, fort, dex, ...) whereas actual base ED on the bow would get multiplied in the chain instead, yielding far higher damage.

Crushing is nice in theory but gets a ranged penalty so it isn't anywhere as good as it'd be on say a smiter.

And the PMH doesn't work on ubers, meaning you still need open wounds somewhere regardless.