Windforceless Bowazon
 

Perhaps the best advice I've ever received was from an old English teacher that once told me when revising poetry you find your favorite line in the poem and then scrap it. Then you will be ready to make the poem truly great.

There are actual psychological and pratical reasons as to why that advice, while seemingly counter intuitive at first, works in many different fields. So here I am looking at the Bowazon I'm to make (once my V/t is close to done) and am really examining Windforce, the gold standard.

The problems with WF are two fold 1) Slooww.... 2) Inconsistent damage which while not necessarily an issue when spraying a bunch of arrows, if you only get a couple shots could be an issue. I'd rather not rely on luck personally if I don't have to.

So I looked at some alternatives...Lycander's is going to face the same speed issues as WF and on top of that, the +skills it gives just won't make up for its relatively low damage. BotD....I'm not going to go there. To me a waste of a zod when it could be so much better served in a melee weapon or for a nice ethereal unique/rare I want to save and much of BotD seems better suited to a melee weapon anyways.

So then I came across the old WWS builds but I had issues with a few because the ones I saw were pretty much outdated for 1.10

So I'm going to go back and I'm going to attempt to revise this build a little and I'd appreciate help as I'm not working with a character editor to test it in single player and Im waffling between damage/IAS/resists and such.

WWS DB

Level 85 with quests:
Total Attribute Points: 435
Total Skill Points: 96


Str: 20+69=89
Dex: 25+286=311
Vit: 20+80=100
Energy: 15 (Base)

Magic Arrow: 1
Multi Shot: 1
Cold Arrow: 20
Ice Arrow: 1
Freezing Arrow: 20
Guided Arrow: 20
Inner Sight: 1
Slow Missile: 1
Decoy: 1
Valkyrie: 1
Dodge: 2
Avoid: 2
Evade: 3
Critical Strike: 1
Penetrate: 1
Pierce: 20

Helm: Shako (fervor jewel)
Armor: CoH (Duress before that)
Amulet: Crescent Moon (or crafted Blood Amulet)
Weapon: Upped WWS (shael/shael)
Belt: Verdungo
Gloves: Bloodfist (or crafted Blood gloves)
Ring: Ravenfrost
Ring: Dual leech/resists
Boots: Treks

Attack Speed: 9 frame breakpoint
Resists: about 35 in hell without the second ring and charms

Any fervor jewels would be replaced by an ed/ias one if I came across it. Obviously you could also hit faster breakpoints at the expense of life/resists/skills if you used a Cats Eye and a Mavs Helm/CoA with 2 fervor jewels and used a socketed armor with the same. Highlord’s isn’t recommended as you’re already batting with a good deadly strike from the bow.

One thing I would have to decide on is whether to go with the skill stats I posted above or kill the freezing arrow/cold arrow and suck it up against physical immunes to then up the avoid/dodge/evade instead. Valkyrie is under the same consideration as well.

sorry but i cant quite remember what WWA is..

Anyways, I was dueling with this zon once, and she used a shael WF, 160/60 armor and Cats eye ammy. Along with some other gear that i cant quite remember, but she rocked people. She shot them at least 5-6 times before they even realized they were geting shot at. But your build sounds pretty damn tight. are you on WEST SCL or EAST SCL? id like to duel you once :)

Yah call me a noob but, wtf is a WWA?

Unless I missed a typo in my own post I think "Mydogisyourdog" meant WWS which would be the witchwild string bow, and for the purposes of this build upped to an elite diamond bow.

I'm on USEast SC Ladder.

As far as the cats eye/WF goes yeah that sounds like leaning to the more standard WF pvp builds.

As far as dueling goes, I built it more towards a pvp end I suspect but you'll notice I didn't put it in the pvp forum. If I were making this strictly pvp I'd probably switch the gear around a little and I would have already answered my questions regarding skills. :D

I'm actually leaning this towards a varient I call a "boss killer build" which is similar to a pvp build but with an emphasis on pvm capabilities not normally wasted in a true pvp build (as alluded to in my final paragraph of the initial post...if it was a true pvp build I wouldn't care about a PI because I wouldnt fight one ever). Essentially its made to take down single, powerful creatures...which many times can translate to pvp but usually isnt tough or twinked enough to take on really serious duelers. (but about 90% of those in games its good enough to be at least competitive with).

A final note if you're looking at this as a strictly pvp build. You'll notice the WWS casts amp damage which tends to piss off many duelers. Many of my "pvm" builds are meant to be "boss killer" types to actually defend against jerks who like to pk people in a pvm build. I end up getting looks when its not the most effective pvm builds but its nice when it surprises a hammerdin who decides to go rogue. In such cases I really could care less if he cries because something cast something on him.

yeah, i meant WWS. But nice build id say. Too bad you are on east, id like to see it in action.

Bloodfists? Why not Gale Grasps? ^^

08 wf is still better imo. At lvl 83 on Mogambow (My zon), its got about a 500 max dmg cap. Since you are on ladder you can't get this, but on NL if you get a .08 wf, you have the extra dext. This adds up to 30 more edmg. The knockback is also helpful too. Iunno how common fhr gc's are on ladder, but if they don't have enough of it, the wf's knockback might just pin them in perpetual knockback.

If you want knockback, I'd say Nef and Shael a Witchwild String.

Ideally I'd take some crafted gloves with skills, knockback, fhr and IAS.

Gale grasps? I'm on ladder dude. No duped rares for me.

.08 WF..yes possibly but as you said I can't get one Sov :p Knockback is a consideration and something this doesn't have right now. I could nef-shael the WWS (though KB doesnt work with multishot but would work in PvP and with GA/FA) though I believe to hit that 9 frame break point I'll need to shuffle the gear around to hit the 9 frame break point. Possibly use a cats eye instead of a crescent if the ring has enough leech.

On ladder I've found most aren't aware of the FHR breakpoints like they are for FC and attacking but they still dont neglect it usually especially if they are melee. However I hear you about the knockback lock as my V/t abuses that plenty....nef rune might be useful...

You've given some thought in this build looks interesting.

EDIT: wonder how this will fair against pvm. Dmg could be low once upgraded.

Originally it was a pvm build, I just changed a few things to make it a little more suited for pvp, though if I wanted to make it a true pvp build I'd probably change a few more things. The Freezing arrow and valkyrie meat shield are both there for pvm essentially (if I was doing it straight pvp I might not bother with the valk and probably toss some more into passives rather than the freezing arrow in addition to considering the pros and cons of Enigma and changing the gear around). After plus skills and charms your multishot shouldn't be awful and with the Amp damage triggering and constant deadly strike from the bow your avg damage might be higher than using a WF even or so the people who've done out the math claim.

In brief, I suspect its not the best bowazon build for pvm nor is it the best for pvp...you could tweak it to be awesome at one or the other but the way I have it set up it should be average at both which is what I was aiming for. I'll let you know though ;)


EDIT: Remember with the upped WWS its not just the fact its a diamond bow but also has an insane DS and an amp damage trigger to boost its damage much more than you might initially expect. Your damage on the screen might be unimpressive until you realize you're doubling it at least a lot of times. With a healthy rate of fire in a pvm situation the amplify damage will trigger for a while boosting it even further.

I'd like it to be for pvm it be awesome if it does great. Test it out for meh =) and tell me the outcome for pvm stylez?

Its actually great for pvm in its original incarnation both in HC and SC. My proposed build is an experiment of sorts. If you want straight up pvm I'd probably choose multishot or strafe and up that (i prefer multi just because I hate strafe lock) instead of guided arrow and/or also take some points and pump them either into valkyrie or your defensive passives depending on your style of how well you use meatshields. I've never found GA to be useful in anything other than PvP and boss monsters and if I'm using a single arrow I'm probably using freezing arrow rather than GA anyways.