[v6d] The Bowazon (WIP)

Hey! Welcome to my guide on how to use bowzons and build them effectively. Before you continue reading if you are playing a character for the first time please read "Challenges: a begginers guide by FazerMint" and "Guide to all uberquests by MarcoNecrox". Anyways the bowazon is a great farmer and relatively easy to play while not being comletely gear dependant. I'm going to go over some builds previously undiscussed and hopefully get you out there and going ready to farm like a boss. I'm going to do my best to not make this guide overwhelming and 3 pages of endless text walls so you can easily alt tab and refer yourself back to whatever you need while trying to make this easy to remember at the same time so you don't need to come back to it Enjoy!





Pros:
-Easy to play.
-Little to no skillswitching required.
-Ridiculous killing speed.
-Can shoot through walls.
-Relatively easy to build and can farm with cheap su's and tu6 gear fine.

Cons:
-Relies on positioning and kiting.
-Glass cannon. She will get raped doing some charms, specifically very crowded and very small places.
-Playstyle can become boring to some players eventually.
-Common build.
-She will trick you into thinking you can survive a lot of things you really can't.



Go out to bloodmoor, it can be players 1 and level up to 5. Don't spend your gold signets until you're level 5 then go back to town and buy a better bow. Any bow with "Very fast attack speed" will be better. I used a hunters bow. Then goto Akara and fill up on mana pots. You should have 2 points in ghost arrow and 2 points in wild and free. Now summon Volrath. I easily completey this on my first attempt. Just use mana pots when you run OOM.

Rebel body armor early game (use until trist)

Spoiler:

Honorific gloves/boots (for resistances)
Rare bow with 1 to amazon skills enhanced damage or flat elemental damage all good. MANA STEAL=huge early game!

Spoiler:

Use smith quest to imbue reflex or stag bow if needed orb with mana steal, also has good chance to drop unique
Orb character orb with apples (farm them with lc0) Other things you can orb would be damage or dexterity or strength is highly recommended to wear this heavy gear. Remember to farm Andariel, Duriel, and Mephisto for tiered uniques to makes arcane crystals. If you need gold early game you can sell rares, pick it up off the ground, farm volrath for apples or put a run into a throwing weapon such as a balanced knife or javelin and sell it to the venders.


Farm andariel to get crystals for webspinner most important part of early game bowzon for ME anyways I love the debuff on this bow...Miasma provides amazing protection. You can also use TU stag bow. This is Marcos choice it adds flat damage and pretty epic procs. Other great early game unique bows include magebane and soul raider. Don't let the life drain on soulraider fool you though it's still good just press W and switch while you're not firing it. Gregs advise! He's a good player. Early game barrage is obviously main skill ghost arrow isn't worth it yet and phalanx drains mana dry.

Once you get webspinner socket it with ith runes and orb mana steal so you can continue putting points into dex for more damage and strength for gear. Get lifesteal from cubing your character orb with apples. It makes a big difference in hatred. If you're a try hard and farmed alot of crystals than use koths lesson tu mace on switch for bloodlust buff which will give 50% bonus to damage instead of the innate 15%

Mercenary:
Act 2 Exemplar
He basically just needs a little bit of lifesteal to survive so orb his weapon. give him some decent armor and make sure his resists are max and he should mostly never die. Fangspear Tu spetum is epic with our build for MOAR miasma. shield cracker is another great option. Don't forget to feed him pots when you see his life get low (shift+1234)....You can also use act 5 merc later once you do quest in act 5. Read docs for info on differences between the two. (Docs are OP)




Lc1: Tran athula
By now if you've been lucky and found a good amount of uniques to make crystals or if you farmed crystals before hand and had them saved all your unique gear should be tier 4. (Don't up-tier your honorifics.) You should be re-orbing your bow with mana steal every time you up-tier it as well. You probably had to re-spec a few times to work your gear out but all points should have been going into dexterity and strength.

You need to be really careful here and to not get within screen range of basically anything that isn't debuffed by miasma. Even then, if one hits you it will hurt really bad. The boss's themselves can easily ONE shot you. They hit harder than a tryndamere with 5 bloodthirsters and an infinity edge. You really just need to poke and run in here, which by now you should be used to doing because after all the bowazon is a delicate character especially this early in the game. In all honestly you are gonna be a "pro"zon if you managed to kill all 3 your first attempt. Than again if you're on the server you could always ask for help or post in the forums and get help over hamachi...lol. It's better to go show those zon sluts what a real warrior looks like!

Post Lc1:

At level 60 I rolled a hanabigami and continued up-tiering my gear. This is pretty important from an untwinked POV because you might still use these TU's to begin farming Tran athula and Duncraig. Later you can orb this how you please. I personally think 15 dexterity and magic find is really nice especially if you can get it lotteried... ALOT later. (Lottery on quivers gives huge magic find). Around this point I would HIGHLY recommend that you ditch your honorific gloves and make boots if you didn't make honorific boots already for resists. Either way it doesn't matter because you want to prepare for a couple runewords. The first being Kali gloves.

At level 65 you can get rid of that ugly snakehair cause who wants to look like medusa the entire time? It's time to bust out the Siegfried (not that guy with the lion fetish). This helm is badass. So just up-tier your snakehair to 6 if you hadn't already and disenchant it. (other amazon helms will be hard to wear at this point because of the way your stats are distributed having so much into strength this is easier). Cube it with a couple of oils of enhancement, maybe a few oils of renewal, if you didn't get a roll with four slots and it's ready to go. Rather you're lucky it or not is not a big deal you won't be using it for THAT long and you're playing a ranged character so stats like defense aren't really important because sooner or later, you'll be playing with none. If you have any extra Zakarum stoning rock jewels lying around they are pretty sexy in this helm, otherwise some rares will do with stats that at least aren't for casters. Pretty broad spectrum of rare jewel affixes and in the end isn't going to make a huge difference you just want the helm in general at this point, plus it has Vanquish a 3 second buff that increases damage by 191% every 10 seconds. You don't have much skill switching to do so why not. Through out this whole time you should be putting points into Ghost Arrow, Barrage, Dragonlore, Wild and free, and Defensive harmoney. I don't think anybody should use ecstatic friendzy early game so points aren't needed there until you get some good sustaine like life on striking or alot of life after kill.


Ennead Challenge:
Through out this whole time you should be putting points into Ghost Arrow, Barrage, Dragonlore, Wild and free, and Defensive harmony. I don't think anybody should use ecstatic frenzy early game so points aren't needed there until you get some good sustain like life on striking or alot of life after kill.

After this grind a few levels up in terror you should have finished hatred by now than once you are level 80ish you can go back to hatred and get your class charm from Kurast 300.

Luckily, NO you do not have to use the strategy of just killing the bottom right hand corner necromancer here. You still want to rush to him though then work your way around the bottom and back of the map using ghost arrow to take out the totems and wyrmshot to apply miasma (their shields don't protect them from the haunt) which will really help you survive. You just need to kite them away from the totems abit spamming wymshot and the fhr from wild and free will take care of you when you DO get hit as long as you don't stand still and let them fhr lock you.

Lc2:

This is actually REALLY hard for a bowzon. summon ice elementals to tank the initial shitstorm that happens when you summon then run for your dear life. Keep as much distance as you can because these guys truly give no fucks about miasma. Once you kill all the horadric mages Tal Rasha is pretty easy but he can still one shot you basically. They cast alot of spells that can be avoided by running behind the trees. Plan on dying multiple times in the process, but don't worry it doesn't mean you're a bad player or anything. Just keep town portals up as always and keep retrieving your body bringing a couple fire elementals to tank and distract the mages while you recover your body. Your honorifics will pay off here as well.




-Crushing blow is not only easy to achieve 100% but bowzons love it.
-Life on striking is ESSENTIAL!
-Lightning arena is ALSO essential. It's worth it imo to to use a elemental band or even a crappy rare ammy that has no other use but lightning arena.
-Any form of life after kill of lifesteal is going to increase your survivability tenfold because you have NO Defense and a fairly low amount of life
-Bowzons also benefit from damage reduced very much i suggest having at least 25% but ANY is better than none.
-Don't be embarrassed to use a set on this character, her set is actually awesome and you can farm with it in most ubers and is not hard to acquire.
-Try to NEVER hold still. Sometimes you can get away with standing in the same spot for maybe 4 seconds max without getting hit but if you do get hit it's imperative that you move.
-Become good at kiting, kiting is running away while attacking giving yourself and advantage over whatever is chasing you and is a key strategy for this character.
-Take advantage over any walls and clear and room that is separated from you by a wall safely before going into that room.
-Whichever elemental proc you get aim to get -100 of that res this will also boost dragonlore damage. A fully charmed bowzon with the set, dementia and hanabigami can reach at least -175 enemy tri elemental resistances.
-Bowzons obviously benefit very highly from tri-elemental pierce.
-An upgraded sunstone is all you need to activate dragonlore so regardless of gear you will always have the effect.
-Bowzons generally never benefit from currare.
-If you ever find a bow called "until you realize it sucks" Don't let the name fool you it's most powerful bow in the game.
-to aim phalanx properly remember it will always cast horizontal to which direction you are facing. The wall will always face you when you cast it so holding still and clicking to move the direction you're facing will greatly increase the chance of the wall being the direction you want it to be in.






Pantheon Set
Okay now I'm going to go over with some of the possibilities for gear, what this gear does, and how to use it EFFECTIVELY!


Let's start out with the amazon bow set naturally. This set is actually pretty good considering that it IS a set. It gives you a little bit of everything that is needed for entry level farming, alot of resists, alot of pierce, huge dex bonus..Okay so you can read the set bonus's for yourself. Let me explain the procs on the set for you a bit. First you have 5% ctc lvl 29 trinity nova when you kill an enemy. Aside from hanabigami (if you chose to use that quiver) this is going to be the only spell damage proc that you're going to have and at 5% ctc ON KILL it's not something you're going to see happen a lot so don't count on this proc as a reliable source of damage. This brings me to my next point while wearing this set. Typically you should use Paragon while using this set. Why? Because at the point of the game you're in paragon is simply more effective. There is two reasons you should ever take spirit of vengeance on a bowzon. The first being a high elemental proc bowzon to boost your proc damage and the second reason being what small protection spirit of vengeance provides. For one she is an immortal tank and two she grants reanimates. You're probably safer like i said with paragon, not to mention the main proc of this set is the 11% ctc timestrike on striking and 10% ctc arrow on striking. Timestrike is an awesome weapon damage proc that deals 3/2 weapon damage which is effected by dragonlore.
I suggest using deadfall with this set or dementia. (set is viable even in fauztinville late game). Fill all your sockets with perfect amethysts or any resistances you need with gems. As for your bow give it oil of luck and hope to get bonus on enhanced damage (I personally believe lottery recipe useless on dex based weapons because of high innate AR from items and stats). Your choices for gems in your weapon are rubies or rainbows. Only use rubies if you are having trouble surviving as they grant life after kill otherwise rainbows for MOAR crushing blow. Skilling while wearing this set is your own personal preference because it works well with barrage/phalanx but also works just fine with wyrmshot/ghost arrows. I suggest using wyrmshot at this point in the game as you are probably still mastering this characer and it's the safer option especially with wolfstance it's just epic.

Spoiler:

Arrow Farterzon

Very special thanks to Stoya for providing these videos and this build. http://www.medianxl.com/t871-arrow-farterzon-by-stoya

"Char design applies the main rule of all median WDM chars; if you have enough crushing blow you don't even need weapon damage!

1) Using procs (arrow farting) to spread dmg and CB to whole map as fast as possible -> we have free %100 CB from war spirit if needed - 10/10
2) We have dragonlore + estatic frenzy -> 5 type of dmg at the same in efficiency - 10/10
3) We have good mobility from WaF + also sssu spangenhelm has beacon charge + rapture from ring mobility - 10/10
4) Using phalanx to for support skill and helps to start arrow proc chain , idea - 7/10
5) Important note: even war spirit can activate your proc chain and most important part is the ARROW proc itself too, endless proc chain if its started.. design 5/10, efficiency 10/10

Note
ssu spangen helm= %10 ctc lvl 1 arrow on strike + tu chain mail %10 ctc lvl 1 arrow on strike + locust hive %5 ctc lvl 1 arrow on strike stacks -> %25
dear esther bow has -> %50 arrow on strike (harp of vengeance can be alternative 40% ctc arrow)
sssu greaves -< %3 ctc arrow on strike

That's why I called this char ARROW FARTERZON!!" - Stoya

If you have made if far enough in the game that you have these items you probably don't need anything more explained to you then Stoya already did. He built it around arrows on strike so if you don't have Dear Esther or you found it but the roll is completely unusable then there is alot of good alternatives...Any other bow with high ctc arrow.

Spoiler:

Hellraiser
This build is based around fire spell procs hence "hellraiser". This build is played a lot differently than "arrowfarterzon" But you still get awesome stats. The bowzon could probably make do without the elemental procs since she does such high damage already from having 100% crushing blow and huge weapon damage from dragonlore. So why use procs if this character is efficient without them? Because KABOOOOOOOM that's why! In all seriousness thanks to bloodlust amazons can get EPIC spell damage for free and by "epic" I mean 500%+ on a fully charmed/geared bowzon. If you have ever seen what the Gehenna proc does on the average weapon damage character just imagine the same proc but with three times the chance to cast and over twice the spell level with a massive boost to fire damage and over -100% enemy fire resistances. Basically with this build you insta-gib EVERYTHING that isn't fire immune and fire immunes get insta-gibbed themselves between your other ridiculously flat elemental weapon damage from dragonlore and 100%+ crushing blow.

I would still give this build a 10/10 on a scale of efficiency. 8-9/10 on eye candy (these procs look epic and don't cause bad lag) Originality-7/10 (doesn't completely break the meta) and 10/10 on killing speed. Difficulty to acquire the gear 6/10 (this build is actually cheap for your class, mostly common drops except vision of the furies and ylfe, which are pretty rare and she strives in sewers uber which means you will have ALOT of elemental runes with this character and the ultra armor is easy to get) as always fill your on switch gear, firequeen/vision of the furies with NIH runes. These two items combined with bloodlust and spirit of vengeance gives massive spell damage for procs. Also this build has a magic find advantage since you don't use paragon you have space for lum runes to farm.
Note: if you do choose this build a cheap and effective armor to use until you can make Natasha's Legacy is Erawan runeword. ..Just sayin If you manage to finish it all you can use 2 ballentines rings or 2 der nebels with dyers eve and knights grace boots that will give you you can get max damage reduced which is pretty nice. So make sure you reroll your ultimative armor over and over until it's a good roll. at least 15% DR on it, then you get 15% more from rings/ammy, 10% from demonic touch, 5% from knights grace boots. Get tran athula trophy for 5% more (easiest trophy to get).

Spoiler:

EPIC KABRAXIS run ; its funny people make 'how to kill kabraxis guides&videos' just LOL ...



ARROW FARTER in DUNC



ARROW FARTER in FAUZT



Thanks to Stoya for these awesome video contributions ^

Arrow farterzon doing cathedral of vanity

Hellraiser bowzon doing Chrysoar






If anybody else has videos of bow amazons or things they have accomplished feel free to link them into the comment section and I will post them as long as it's viable and you aren't using lame things like cotws or bugged items/charms etc and you will be given full credit. This guide is a referential place of learning for the class and a place to seek help and advice on the character.

Expect a finished product very soon. Editing this into forum code is so very time consuming and tedious.

Most likely tomorrow or the next day I will have it finished completely. In the mean time I am open to suggestions of things to add.

Looking solid Preston. Don't forget to add that you can make a double mo bow runeword in even early/midgame using the "I need a life because" mystic orb on any bow to get even moar ll,ed,laek,ias or anything you might be lacking.

Prestoned wrote:They hit harder than a tryndamere with 5 bloodthirsters and an infinity edge.

Lol'd at this. Pretty decent guide, even if unfininshed it should help most new starters

Pro / cons = summary of the build.
Best if you put that at the top.

iwansquall wrote:Pro / cons = summary of the build.
Best if you put that at the top.

You know it's funny you mention it, i originally had it at the top and decided to change. Thanks for the advice. I put alot of time and effort into writing this and i've learned alot in the process about this class i didn't understand before.

Also if anybody else has more pro's and cons to add i'm open to them i had a hard time coming up with some but due to the lack of maryjane in my life these last few days my creativity isn't up to par with normal.

Another con might be that most ultimative ubers + brother laz aren't doable unless you switch builds. Plus heroic shield bosses take FOREVER to take down with pure WDM characters.

Altho I'd be interested in seeing if you can pull off something like Brachy on a bowzon.

Some things you might wana add:
-How to get gold early game
-How to get crystals early game
-Shift + 1234 will let your merc eat that potion. No need for clicking and dropping
-Consider the act 5 barb merc - that thing is a complete monster and can solo bosses like azmodan, island of sunless sea and rathma square.

Overall, layouts looking extremely slick, I think it might be the best I've seen so far of the ultimative guides. Cookie from me

BassToMouth wrote:Another con might be that most ultimative ubers + brother laz aren't doable unless you switch builds. Plus heroic shield bosses take FOREVER to take down with pure WDM characters.

Altho I'd be interested in seeing if you can pull off something like Brachy on a bowzon.

Some things you might wana add:
-How to get gold early game
-How to get crystals early game
-Shift + 1234 will let your merc eat that potion. No need for clicking and dropping
-Consider the act 5 barb merc - that thing is a complete monster and can solo bosses like azmodan, island of sunless sea and rathma square.

Overall, layouts looking extremely slick, I think it might be the best I've seen so far of the ultimative guides. Cookie from me

Thank you. I'll be sure and add this information later. I need to sleep soon and go pick up job applications

Also I would like to thank the community for all the recommendations lately and I'd like to give special thanks to Marco for doing my section banners and telling me how to code some of this even though it is very tedious and it has given me an entire new out look on the tanya guides format.

well i can record OP barragezon in dunc video for it just she is so lovely...