Version 2.12.2

This guide is for Diablo 2 v1.05 and is under constant revision. Its authors are AK404 and LineNoise; the materials contained within may be found in guides by Vehementi, LineNoise, Icemage, Bolshoi Too, the strategy forums at diabloii.net, Lurker Lounge, Amazon Basin Forums, and Chaos Sanctuary. This guide is not canon. It is a set of guidelines, a primer for bowazon play. Please note that this is not a suggested guide for Hardcore, as Hardcore is no place for the bowazon purist. Any errors are purely the fault of the author. The most current version of this document may be found here; critiques, suggestions, and comments may be sent to AK404.

My deepest thanks go out to LineNoise, who has graciously contributed the entirety of his work.

Strength. Beauty. I am without equal in God's kingdom.

The bowazon is a subclass of amazon who primarily uses the bow/crossbow skill tree, and plans her skills accordingly. There are different sorts of bowazons, according to skill and equipment emphasis. These include the speedazon, strafazon, multizon, pyrozon, frostmaiden, and all variations in-between. This guide will focus mostly on skills for the well-balanced bowazon.

Before v1.04, there was a bug with bows that prevented any enhanced damage attributes from working; as a result, the bowazon wasn't a power class, but an art form: an understanding of tactics, strategy, positioning, space, teamwork, discretion, intelligence...these were the hallmarks of an experienced bowazon who had learned the ability to control the flow of battle - when it started, who moved (and when), how to take advantage of positioning, how to get to the most important targets, and so forth. It was easy enough to kill monsters; it was harder to kill monsters without some form of plan. The bowazon was a primary reactive, secondary active character. This bears some explaining: in Diablo 2, characters sit on a scale from reactive to active in that they either react to the actions of monsters or initiate action against them. Most lie somewhere in-between, but the barbarian, for example, is on the active end of the scale because he's excellent at initiating attacks against monsters, but if these attacks fail, the barbarian is vulnerable to counter attack. The reactive zookeeper-type necromancer is the exact opposite: he can't inflict serious amounts of damage on monsters unless they have made a move first. The bowazon was primarily reactive in that she didn't have the sheer power to take on a lot of monsters at once, but had enough versatility to handle the right amount. The secondary active role came in when she was allied with other character types, usually reactive ones; then her active nature would come out and she initiate action against the monsters, who would in turn play into the hands of the reactive characters.

Diablo 2 v1.04 changed all that. With the fixing of the bow bug, the bowazon shows her true strength...and then some, becoming a supra-active character with no reactive strategies (aka, a universally-hated "nerf" subclass, àla barbarian). According to most players, the bowazon is the strongest character in the game, second only to the barbarian (and if the weapon mastery bug is lifted, perhaps the strongest, period). She also has no inherent weaknesses; any arguments against this are based on skill, equipment, and stat choices. The general consensus on the Lurker Lounge is that she is too powerful as well. In addition to reviewing the finer details of the bowazon, this guide will also provide some facts to back these opinions up.

• %FMI: Percentage to Find Magical Items
• 3DT: Three Diamond Tower
• A1-A4: Act 1 through Act 4; A1NM means Act 1, Nightmare, and A1H means Act 1 Hell.
• AR: Attack Rating
• AoE: Area of Effect
• CKN: Chu-ko-nu, the exceptional version of the repeating crossbow
• CS: Critical Strike/Chaos Sanctuary
• D/A/E: Dodge/Avoid/Evade
• D2: Diablo 2
• DR: Defense Rating/Damage Reduced by...
• FA: Freezing Arrow
• Fhr: Fast(est) Hit Recovery
• GA: Guided Arrow
• LEB: Lightning-Enchanted Boss/Bastard
• MDR: Magic Damage Reduced by...
• MSN: Multi-Shot Newbie
• NM: Nightmare
• PvM: Player versus Monster
• PvP: Player versus Player
• RoF: Rate of Fire
• SIAS, IAS, GIAS: Slightly Increased Attack Speed, Increased Attack Speed, and Greatly Increased Attack Speed, respectively.
• SoJ: Stone of Jordan, the last in a series of three unique rings.
• VFAS: Very Fast Attack Speed
• YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary
• alvl: attacker's level
• clvl: character level
• dlvl: defender's level
• fps: frames per second
• slvl: skill level

• Items with "attacker takes damage of 1-9" will not work against ranged weapons.
• "Crushing blow", "hit blinds target", and "hit causes monster to flee" will not work with ranged weapons.
• Deadly Strike is a chance of doing double damage. This is applied after Critical Strike, so if you have both, you stand the chance of doing quadruple damage.
• The maximum light radius you can have is 18.
• Vileness does not prevent the healing of monsters that Teleport.
• The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.

Bowazons overpowered?

The bowazon is overpowered and unbalancing, but she is not unbeatable.

I reached this conclusion after noticing a post-v1.04 upsurge in the number of players with mid-60 clvl bowazons that had absolutely no idea where they needed to invest skill points, because they thought they had everything they needed and wanted already.

Many players will argue against this ("Bowazons are not invincible/unbeatable! I've beaten many bowazon players with so-and-so. I've been beaten by so-and-so when I was using a bowazon. Bowazons can level faster than anything. Bowazons have problems against Duriel, Hephasto, and LEBs. Bowazon PKs are so cheap."), but no one's saying that she's unbeatable or that bowazon players don't need skill. This counter-argument is spurious because it over-exaggerates the original point, which is that bowazons have an extraordinary amount of unfair advantages and little disadvantages, relative to most other characters in the game. That people can cite individual cases of player so-and-so successfully defeating bowazon players or bowazon players having problems against certain type of monsters doesn't change the general fact that, on average, bowazon characters are just flat-out better than any other character in the game, save the barbarian.

No game is going to have characters that are perfectly matched. But what should happen is that the variation in players' skills should mask the inherent variation in the characters' qualities. But in the case of the bowazon, that masking effect does not occur. The inherent superiority of a bowazon gives players using her a direct advantage.

In PvP (which is separate from PvM and monster-killing rate, the focus of this guide), she has an advantage and a bowazon will win more often on average. This isn't the same thing as "A bowazon will always win!" or "How good the player is doesn't matter!" Again, counter-arguments that over-exaggerate the original argument aren't worth anything. The key is to look at the abstract, not the personal. The problem with the original counter-argument (aside from the fact it exaggerates) is that it is from a personal perspective, not an abstract one. Personal experiences vary from place to place, but as long as you're playing D2, the abstract qualities always stay the same. This means looking at the abstract qualities of a bowazon (statistics, skill trees, damage-dealing ability, vulnerability, versatility), not citing personal anecdotes.

Stats

The bowazon is a privileged member of D2's physical combat class ("warriors"). This differs from the magical combat class ("mages") in many ways. (Don't worry if examples aren't cited, you'll know which is which soon enough.) Both classes are equipment-dependent, with warrior characters being more dependent than mage characters. Warriors are stat point-dependent: for every level a warrior gains, he not only gains a skill point, but stat points used to make all of his active direct damage skills even stronger. For example, at the mid-to-higher levels, a bowazon gains 5 points, which automatically go into Dexterity and enhance all her bow/crossbow skills, not to mention the skill point she gains per level. (However, these points have little effect on her passive/magic or javelin/spear skills.) In the long run, warriors don't need extra skill points to cause more damage because sooner or later, stats either enhance the effect of a strong skill (15+), balance out a non-maxxed skill (10-15), or hide the shortcomings of a skill with weak development (1-10).

Mages, on the other hand, are extremely skill point-dependent. They need skill points because there is no other way for them to make any of their skills stronger, and even then, they don't have the dual stat/skill benefit that warriors do. A clvl-30 sorceress's slvl-1 Frozen Orb is just as strong (or weak) as a clvl-70 sorceress's slvl-1 Frozen Orb because Energy doesn't lend bonuses to damage. By contrast, the difference in maximum damage between a clvl-30 bowazon's and a clvl-70 bowazon's slvl-1 Ice Arrow is 500 points due to Dexterity modifiers alone. When warriors boost their prime statistics (Strength, Dexterity), they use less action to destroy things; when mages boost their prime statistic (Energy), they need more action to destroy things because sooner or later, the effect of spellcasting skills hits a dead stop at the 25-30 range and remains the same, while warrior skills keep on getting better and better and better and better...even when no more than a single skill point was invested, which results in much more freedom in skill point allocation. This is one of the things that serves to make physical combat classes much stronger than magical combat classes, and the bowazon is unbalanced because she gets the best benefits of all, using a mage's stat point priority (focusing on one stat) with a warrior's stat point benefit (more Attack Power, more Attack Rating).

Primary Statistics

Strength (suggested maximum score: 73 to 110)

Strength (STR) affects damage with melee weapons, and the ability to equip exceptional items. For a bowazon, STR exists only as a prerequisite to stronger bows: 95 is required to use a gothic bow. Amazons start with 20 STR. Suggested maximum STR scores are:

• 58-76: With planning, it is possible to have STR this low to maximize Dexterity, as many dedicated speedazons do. Besides Greyform, your best armor would be rare mage plate (55 STR), and your bow of choice would be a double, rune, or gothic bow with reduced requirements. However, minimizing on STR also means having some godly +STR and +DEX items.
• 95-100: Gothic Bow, Ancient Armor. If you can find normal gear with the attributes you want, this is all the strength you'll need. Reducing STR to 95 will allow your amazon to equip everything but ancient armor.
• 103: Grand Crown, Sharktooth Armor
• 110: Ballista, Lance, War Belt, War Gauntlets. With this score, a bowazon can use all bow/crossbow-class weapons. She can wear all armor but embossed, chaos, and ornate plate; these aren't an option, as their STR requirements are obscenely high.

The most important statistic to a bowazon is Dexterity (DEX); it raises her damage with bows, Attack Rating, and Defense Rating, so it isn't unusual for high-level bowazons to have unadjusted DEX scores in the 300s. Amazons start with 25 DEX.

The formula for Dexterity bonus damage is: bow's base physical damage × (dexterity/100)

What this means in practical terms is that you get a bonus to your total damage score equal to 1% of your bow's damage for each and every point of Dexterity your character has. So if you have a bow that does 25-100 physical damage, and you have 200 Dexterity, you get 50 points added to minimum damage (25 × 200/100) and 200 points added to your maximum damage (100 × 200/100). Assuming no other damage modifiers, the damage in your character screen would show 75-300 damage. In addition to increasing damage, each point of Dexterity adds 4 points to Attack Rating (AR), and every 4 points of Dexterity adds 1 point to Defense Rating (DR).

- Icemage

What should be apparent here is that the bowazon doesn't require STR to inflict damage like other warriors, Vitality to stay alive, or Energy to use skills. With the blanket nature of a bowazon's prime requisite, all she really needs is DEX, and compared to even a maul barbarian with his high STR and Vitality, she comes out on top because she isn't sacrificing anything or compromising her playing style. By contrast, mages don't need anything but Energy (all other stats are optional); a bowazon can make the same sacrifices they do (with DEX) for higher benefits, proving her inherent superiority in stat choices above all other classes.

Amazons start with 20 Vitality (VIT) and gain 3 Life and 1 Stamina point per level. Some don't invest in VIT much (if at all) because a bowazon should never have to get into melee combat and it's a relatively simple matter to regain life through leeching. However, with lag spikes, increased bow damage, and smarter enemies, this "paper tiger" play style becomes dangerous, so adding to VIT or using +life items isn't unrecommended. A rising minority of high-level bowazons advocate adding points to VIT at later levels, to insure the longevity of their character. The point is that after a while, damage begins to take a back seat. If a monster has 8,000 life and your amazon does 700 damage per arrow, it will take around 6-11 arrows to kill it (counting critical strikes), same amazon could do just as well with 600 damage per arrow (7-13 arrows). Another plan would be to find more +life items and start putting some points into D/A/E. In Hardcore, find as many +life items as possible.

No class geared towards physical damage should invest in Energy (NRG); amazons start with 15 NRG and gain 1.5 mana per level, but mana will not be a problem for the bowazon due to the rules of mana leech. Eventually, Valkyrie (depending on how many points you put into it) will be a huge mana hog, which is when an NRG score of 15-20 may be desirable, but no more, as amazons receive only 1½ mana per point of NRG.

Secondary Stats

Damage

Damage is your most important secondary stat. Go for the capability to cause more damage, either direct or indirect, above all else. Not much needs to be said about damage, other than this: damage is your most important secondary stat. Damage is your most important secondary stat. Damage is your most important secondary stat.

total damage = physical damage + elemental damage

Average physical damage is defined as: (average bow damage) × (1 + dexterity/100 + bonus) × (1 + CS%/100)
For normal arrows and Multiple Shot, bonus = 0; for Strafe and Guided Arrow, bonus = the +damage%, represented as a fraction ( i.e. 35% bonus is .35), or 35/100; if you're under the effects of a Might and/or Concentration Aura, increase the value of bonus by adding +damage%/100 for each aura.

Elemental damage is: fire damage × (1 - monster resistance%) + cold damage × (1 - monster resistance%), etc.

- Icemage

Good marksmanship is vital; Attack Rating is your second most important secondary statistic, and since you'll be using DEX to raise it, Attack Rating goes hand-in-hand with damage. Make sure you always have at least an 89% chance to hit your enemy. Penetrate is a nice skill to have for this (refer to "Passive Skills"). The To-Hit formula - the equation used to determine the chances of an attacker hitting a defender - is, in percentage form: (100 × AR/{AR + DR} × 2 × alvl/{alvl + dlvl}). This applies to monsters as well as players. Note that monsters have four times their listed AR; this applies to all difficulty levels, not just Hell.

Defense Rating isn't a concern: a bowazon relies mostly on a running/retreating style, Decoy, Valkyrie, and in a worst-case scenario, D/A/E. No matter how high, DR can't provide you with 100% protection (not including blocking or D/A/E), and a monster always has some chance to hit you, as they always have four times their listed AR. Even with +1,500DR, monsters in Hell difficulty level have more than an 80% chance of hitting you, assuming you're fighting monsters your own level. (You won't, and they'll have an even better chance of getting through your "defense.") When your bowazon is running (which will be a lot), monsters will have 100% chance of hitting her (barring Evade). Grab whatever's available and avoid wearing heavy armor because they slow the wearer down as well as leech stamina faster, which is not desirable; use light or medium armor instead.

By the time you get to Hell difficulty, if Valkyrie and Decoy don't work, no amount of armor is going to help. This is when the role of the bowazon as the tactician must be developed fully; without an overwhelming offense (like the sorceress or barbarian) or overwhelming defense (like a necromancer with his many minions), the amazon must resort to guile in order to survive and conquer her foes. Hypothetically speaking, if you know where and when to retreat and where and when to attack, you don't need DR at all.

Because the bowazon enjoys a healthy amount of distance from those things that can hurt her, resistances aren't a high priority with Slow Missiles and Avoid: if she can move out of the way, then what's the use of having to resist it? Common sense is to keep your resists maintained above 0, but remedial attributes like Thawing and Reduce Poison Time by 25~75% are invaluable to the bowazon, as are items with MDR 1 to 4.

Fire: This is the most used elemental attack in the game. Protect against it. You absolutely must have fire resist maxxed in A4, as almost every monster worthy of respect will use fire. When in an area with a lot of fire walls, it also helps to have equipment that reduces magic damage. A javazon with maxxed fire and lightning resists and MDR-8 can literally bathe in Diablo's fire and lightning attacks with nary a scratch.

Lightning: This is the second most common elemental attack in the game, as well as the outright deadliest. Protect against it. The worst monsters in the game (besides Duriel) all have lightning attacks. These include Diablo, Mephisto, Bremm Sparkfist, and every LEB, the most feared bosses in the game. Again, MDR goes well with lightning resist, as lightning hits a character multiple times per bolt.

Cold: Cold is a minor annoyance to protect against; there few attacks in the game that do cold damage, such as Mephisto's ice attack and the death throes of cold-enchanted uniques, but chill duration can be dangerous to the movement-dependent bowazon - which is when cold resistance comes in handy. but this can also be remedied by items of Thawing (half freeze duration), or adjusting to the situation, so again, cold resist in PvM is usually not a priority. It is, however, crucial in PvP: any player that can't kill you in one hit will use cold damage to slow you.

Poison: Poison isn't a concern: you will get poisoned, no matter what. Poison doesn't stack and can't kill you (though it can drop you to a single point of life), so the best solution is to find items that reduce poison length (of Remedy, Amelioration, or Defiance) or MDR items and shoot everything in sight in an effort to regain life.

Skills

D2 v1.04 redefined bowazon skills to the point that any choice is viable; beyond the prerequisites and staple survival skills, the bowazon has no catch-all "must maximize" skills like Whirlwind, minions, or Static Field. Like the paladin, she's a complex character with a multitude of choices, each one just as effective as the next, provided that the right course of action is used. This isn't to say that one-trick ponies don't work: strafazons, multizons, pyrozons, and frostmaidens are fine and well, but they're only layers of a complete bowazon, incomplete in themselves. I advise better-developed passive skills with lower active skills, resulting in more effective active skills for less skill point investment. This conclusion was reached after an examination of the amazon's skill trees.

A quick look at the skill trees of all the classes will show that the second benefit the bowazon has is her skills - not only their uses, but also the structure of her trees. Compared to mages, the amazon (and barbarian, which is beyond the discussion of this guide) benefits most from the ability to simultaneously use abilities from fundamentally different trees. In fact, she benefits from just having fundamentally different trees. The amazon, due to the construction of her skill tree, can only use two of her trees simultaneously, as javelin/spear and bow/crossbow are mutually exclusive. (Of course, this is why this is a bowazon guide and not an amazon guide.)

Choosing the best skills is a matter of personal preference, but the general rule of D2 is that all skills are based on the principle that the "higher" counterpart is more effective than the last. However, this does not apply to the bowazon because every [bow/crossbow and passive/magic] skill is geared towards different goals, making only four (or six, if the fire tree is used) out of twenty skills (Magic Arrow, Cold Arrow, Inner Sight, Evade) debatably useless! How many classes can boast this ratio of useless-to-useful skills? How many classes can "waste" only four to six skill points to get every useful skill they'll ever need?

The bowazon's superiority and dominance are based on the inherent imbalances of the structure and uses of everybody's skill tree: only the barbarian can get more mileage out of his skill trees than the bowazon, and even then by using multiple war cries. Blizzard's obsessiveness in having each character's 30 skills divided to 10 in each tree and its poor design decisions such as giving the paladin two aura trees applied a virtual nerf to the classes before the game came out.

For a better description of amazon skills, their results per level, level requirements, and prerequisites, please refer to the Chaos Sanctuary.

The bowazon isn't prodigiously strong like the barbarian, but her passive/magic skills helps to end any vulnerability problems she could possibly have. This is the most powerful and useful skill set that the amazon possess because all of the skills in this tree may be used simultaneously without penalty or problem! Each skill in this tree has a unique effect or statistical enhancement that work with anything the amazon may be trying to do. This means that a bowazon can have as many as seven to eight skills (Inner Sight/Slow Missiles, Decoy, Valkyrie, D/A/E) activated simultaneously in addition to her active attack skills. Only the barbarian can be under the effects of that many skills, which is why I'd strongly suggest at least one point in all of them.

Many thanks to Bolshoi Too's Javazon Compendium v1.0 for more in-depth information on these skills.

Magic Skills

Inner Sight & Slow Missiles (suggested skill point allocation: one point)

Get in the habit of using these skills early. What makes them valuable is their ability to illuminate monsters but only one point should go into these skills, as extra points will merely lengthen their duration (four and six seconds, respectively). The extra DR reduction from Inner Sight isn't worth further investment (if the DR reduction was a percentage rather than a straight value, it would be different). Multiple castings of Inner Sight aren't stackable, they simply restart the clock. However, if two or more characters use Inner Sight on the same monster(s), it seems to reduce the monster's defense with each casting - the total reduction is the sum of the two reductions. Inner Sight's usefulness is superceded by Slow Missiles, which has many uses like shortening the speed and effective range of Inferno, charged bolts (such as those from LEBs), and the spells cast by dreaded Oblivion Knights. Slow Missiles is the amazon's best multi-player skill. It only helps, however, if you actually get out of the way of the missile. This skill isn't stackable; multiple castings merely reset the skill's duration. Note that Slow Missiles changes the speed of the missiles, but not the attacker's rate of fire.

Both skills have a fixed mana cost of 5 and have an effective radius of 13.3 yards; in addition, Slow Missiles slows missile attacks by 33%. If either skill is chosen, having an assigned hotkey is highly recommended.

The amazon uses Decoy the same way a modern-day sniper does: present the target with an easy target and pop its head off the second it shows itself. It is the oldest trick in the book, but I don't think enough amazon players appreciate the value of Decoy after they gain Valkyrie. There are many uses to this skill, one of which is an extra arrow to Strafe: you should be experimenting with sniper/decoy tactics long after you gain valkyrie. Decoy is particularly handy in conjunction with Valkyrie and Slow Missiles; enemies and tracking spells (like Guided Arrow and Bone Spirit) will target the first available target, which should be the decoy or valkyrie. This benefit is universal among all amazons. Despite its importance, only one point should go into Decoy, as more points merely lengthen its duration, and lower its mana cost. A decoy has the same number of hit points as its caster, but has no defenses, no shields, no resistances.

The decoy is also useful as crowd control. For example, suppose there are 30 enemies rushing my valkyrie and me. Fortunately, the 30 enemies are broken into two manageable groups of 15 apiece, with group a coming in from the 2 o'clock position, and group B coming in from the 6 o'clock position. (Look at a watch, and you'll have a decent idea where this is going.) I'm obviously going to run to either the 9-12 position to Strafe, Freeze, and Immo my enemies, but I can't rely on my valkyrie to hold the attention of 30 enemies at once (eventually, some of them will start looking for other targets...like me), so I pop a decoy at 3-5 o'clock, diverting some monsters from my valkyrie. So we've now prevented one large group from being a hazard to my valkyrie, and we want this to happen, whether my valkyrie has 300 or 2,000 life; though only 8 enemies can surround her at once, a lot of enemies in hell have attack ranges of 2 or greater, meaning that my valkyrie will be attacked by more than 8 enemies, perhaps 10 or even 15 at once. However, by using repeated castings of decoy, I not only prolong the life span of my valkyrie, but control the spacing of battle by luring monsters as far or close to my valkyrie as I please.

A quirk I've noticed with Decoy is that your valkyrie sometimes follows the decoy as if it were a monster (if nothing else has its attention), so if you want valkyrie to go to a certain point, throw decoy in its general direction: with luck, you'll also attract enemies, which rates higher on the valkyrie's short attention span. Valkyries can be stupid, so you might be taking advantage of this quirk a lot. Giving Decoy an assigned hotkey is highly recommended.

The Valkyrie (which will hereafter be referred to as "Valk") ends most vulnerability problems a bowazon might have by granting her a basic warrior/rogue setup; it is your remote shield (aka "tank"). As a distraction, diversion, tank, and all-around monster magnet, the valk is a bowazon's most useful skill, but it isn't an über-skill: I've learned - the hard way - to not rely on it to protect my bowazon all the time, but use her in conjunction with Slow Missiles and Decoy. Most players advise a low-level Valk (around slvl-4~5, though some have kept it at slvl-1) then recasting as needed because the more players, mercenaries, and minions there are, the longer a valk seems to last, which suggests a life ramp similar to that of monsters in the game (total life = base life × # of players). I recommend basing this decision on recasting rationale: if the main reason is because she has died in combat, then consider adding another point to increase her life. If it's because she isn't where you need her to be, then don't add points to keep her mana cost low. If you choose a stronger valk, moderation is encouraged: don't invest so many points that you can't summon your valk naked.

When a valk is summoned, she receives a magical spear and armor (it is unclear whether she gets just body armor, or if she gets a full outfit, including gloves, belt, hat, shoes, and jewelry). These items receive attributes of a level equal to (25 + {3 × valkyrie slvl}), so a slvl-5 Valk will be using a clvl-40 spear-class weapon. The base damage and defense (which are unknown, since Blizzard has not disclosed any information on this) are then modified by the percentages listed in the skill description. In v1.04, the valk's pathing is completely illogical, so count on stupid mistakes. Like all minions, a valkyrie takes quadruple damage from Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, and Diablo.

A hotkey for Valkyrie is highly recommended. For your information, I named my valk "Lenneth."

Evasive Skills

The only other class that has a defensive passive tree is the barbarian. While the barbarian has skills like Natural Resist, Iron Skin, and Increased Stamina, the amazon is given evasive skills. Unlike the "blunt object" passives of the barbarian, evasive skills (and blocking percentages) are independent of the abilities of the defender and attacker: if a moving clvl-20 amazon with a 50% Evade and a 69% blocking shield is tested against the 2,000AR attack of a clvl-40 barbarian, then the amazon makes her Evade check. If the amazon's skill check fails, she checks to see if the shield blocked, and if that fails, then DR is applied. Both attacks are made against a flat 50 and 69 percent, respectively. This means that an amazon in Twitchtroe with a high evasive skill set and blocking percentage can hold a crowd longer than a barbarian in ornate plate with a 3,000DR: this is the basis of the javazon/tankazon.

In short, Blizzard gave the barbarian the maces and axes, then handed the amazon a rapier. The latter is harder to use well, but potentially more effective. However, as wonderful as evasive skills are, they're of little use to a bowazon; this is discussed below.

Dodge and Avoid give an amazon a chance to avoid a melee or missile attack, respectively, while standing still or attacking; Evade works against melee or missile attacks while moving. D/A/E is indispensable for a melee-based amazon because a single point in any of them is worth literally hundreds of defense points, but its importance to the bowazon is diminished by Valk and Decoy: when they're taking almost all the hits for you, then what's the use in being able to dodge them? I tend to invest one point in these skills and use +skill items to raise D/A/E skill levels; with the constant danger of lag spikes, others feel more points are necessary because a bowazon doesn't need to allocate 20 points to any skills (except Guided Arrow if she chooses to duel) and a +30% chance to dodge all attacks is a decent safety net. D/A/E is indispensable during corpse retrieval as you have a substantial defense without any equipment.

As a general rule of thumb, if an attack can be effected by Slow Missiles (skeleton mage attacks, all physical missile attacks including potions, Bone Spirit, Charged Bolts from LEBs, Lightning Bolts, oblivion knight elemental attacks, poison spit, red mana burning lightning from ghosts, regurgitator corpse puke), it can probably be avoided. AoE attacks and others are generally not missile-based, and aren't effected by Avoid. This includes auras, Blizzard, Charged Bolt, curses, Fire Wall, Inferno, Meteor, Diablo's red lightning, any nova-type attack, and Bone Spirit. Skill point allocation to Avoid is a matter of personal preference: no bowazon should stand still for ranged counter fire, and with Slow Missiles, Decoy, and Valk, it's child's play to manually avoid most missiles.

Evade works against any melee or missile attack and gives a chance to evade AoE attacks, making it possible to run relatively unscathed through a Fire Wall or Blizzard. Evade is a skill that looks great on paper, but can be quite harmful at the worst times. The reasons are two-fold. First, if you're running away from a monster, the last thing you want is be stopped in your tracks while the Evade animation runs. Second, this skill will sometimes attempt to dodge every single frame of certain attacks like Diablo's firewalls and Multi AoE attacks from certain uniques, making you unable to do anything until the effect ends. Despite this, Evade has more than enough benefits to make up for its drawbacks for certain playing styles. Frostmaidens tend to herd monsters, which involves running circles around them. This could justify four or more points in Evade.

Passive Skills

Critical Strike (6 to 13 points)

Take this skill up to a minimum of slvl-6 unmodified by the time you reach clvl-20 for a 46% chance - almost half - of inflicting double damage for any physical attack, then advance as you see fit for a 2~3% increase per level, up to slvl-13 (61%); any points afterwards give a 1% increase per level. I usually raise Critical Strike to slvl-10 (56%). Critical Strike doesn't work with Ice Arrow or Freezing Arrow.

Penetrate boosts AR by 35% for the first point and by 10% for every point invested thereafter; it is bugged in that it gives double its listed amount for bows. Penetrate is something of a maintenance skill: use it when your chances to hit are below 90%. The significance of Penetrate becomes apparent as your AR develops into the thousands and you come closer to A3H and A4H: with an slvl-20 Penetrate and frighteningly high DEX of 476, Lady Merana has 12,155AR with a 95% chance to hit a monster of her level (83).

Every bowazon should have one point in Penetrate, if for no other reason, because it is the prerequisite to Pierce. However, Penetrate experiences a severe drop in effectiveness due to the way AR relates to To-Hit percentages, as reported by Chuck of the Amazon Basin (edited):

The To-Hit formula, in percentage form, is: 100 × AR/(AR + DR) × 2 × alvl/(alvl + dlvl)

The misunderstanding here is that your level affects things. In reality, the only time it affects things is if the overall To-Hit is bumping against the 5% or 95% caps. At any other time, the level part of the equation can be discarded.

The whole point of making a comparison of which is better and such is to try to generate the highest overall damage. Because we are trying to make the different variables independent, it should become clear that the best way to work with the numbers is to take percentage changes. For example, if [we] try exact number changes, then how much another point into Strafe affects things depend on what your bow average is, etc. Thus, the all-important quantity is the percentage change (usually increase).

For any given level, when you're changing the AR & DR part of the equation, the level part is constant. You can ignore it. In short: your level doesn't matter. Having a high Penetrate to counter a level disadvantage doesn't work. For the skeptics, let's try a concrete example. Say your base AR was 1,000, the monster's DR is 500, and you're level 25, and the monster's level 50. Then To-Hit is:

100 × 1,000/(1,000 + 500) × 2 × 25/(25 + 50) = 44.444%

Now let's bump up your AR to 2,000. Then we have:

100 × 2,000/(2,000 + 500) × 2 × 25/(25 + 50) = 53.333%

This results in a percentage increase of (53.333 - 44.444)/44.444 = 20%.

Now let's do the same with you at level 50. We thus have:

100 × 1,000/(1,000 + 500) × 2 × 50/(50 + 50) = 66.667%
100 × 2,000/(2,000 + 500) × 2 × 50/(50 + 50) = 80%

Again we find a percentage increase of (80 - 66.667)/66.667 = 20%. Your level shouldn't be a consideration when thinking about Penetrate, unless the To-Hit is bumping against the 5% or 95% caps.

Now, putting one point into Penetrate is a very good idea. All these numbers are for a base AR of 1,500 and a monster DR of 500, assuming the double-Penetrate bug for bows. The first point into Penetrate gives you an 11.475% increase in damage. The second gives 1.756% increase. The third gives 1.442% increase. The fourth 1.206%. The fifth gives 1.023%. Beyond that, each increase for these numbers is less than 1%. You can find things that give you more than 1%. By way of contrast, Critical Strike doesn't give you less than 1% returns until slvl-12. Pierce (depending on your calculating scheme, this is the direct scheme) doesn't until slvl-15. Strafe never does, well at least until the 102nd point anyway, with the bug in place. So what this means is that, given these numbers, you should only put your 6th point into Penetrate after the 11th Critical Strike point, the 14th Pierce point, etc. Essentially, maxing out Penetrate is never a good thing, especially since at the higher levels you're reaching returns of about 0.25%.

White Penetrate increases AR rather linearly, the formula the number is plugged into has severe decreasing returns (I say decreasing instead of diminishing because of the set diminishing returns formula that Blizzard uses to calculate stuff like Critical Strike per level, etc). When you're at the higher reaches, whether you're doing 89% or 89.5% To-Hit doesn't matter too much. On the other hand, putting points into other stuff means that, while you're be hitting a bit less, the overall average damage that you do increases by a lot more. Thus you should put points elsewhere instead of Penetrate.

- Chuck

If you're playing Hardcore, you will find yourself allocating a few odd points to VIT, so Penetrate is highly recommended. Note that elemental arrows don't take AR into account: they always hit what they're aimed at. Thus, Penetrate has no bearing on the success of elemental attacks.

Pierce gives a chance that an arrow will pass through its target and hit another target in a straight line behind it. This has a profound impact on all bow/crossbow skills: for every enemy an arrow pierces though, its magical effect is released, magnifying the effect of a single arrow. So an Ice Arrow can freeze more than one target, and Freezing Arrow will release a 3.3 yard cold-damage explosion for every target it pierces. Skills like Immolation and Freezing Arrow will also release when an arrow hits a wall or other solid object. How many points in Pierce you'll want depends on playing style and skill preferences: overall, you'll want to invest at least three points for a 42% chance, but if you rely on elemental attacks, a minimum level of 6-10 (59-71%) would be a excellent idea. To maximize your damage potential for the least amount of points, a slvl-15 (80%) is recommended; any points after this give a 1% increase per level.

Pierce is a little funky. If you left- or right- click and hold to target, as long as a monster doesn't move, you will pierce it every time if you make your skill roll (i.e. You left-click and hold with Ice Arrow, and freeze a sand leaper in its tracks and pierce past it to hit the spear cat behind it...if you continue to hold down left-click, you would continue to pierce and freeze both until you run out of mana, arrows, or one or both monsters die).

- Icemage

The always/never pierce effect appears to depend on where you click when you fire. This is most obvious when you hold the mouse down for a frozen enemy, as neither of you are moving. However, this means that if you're unable to pierce an enemy by clicking directly on them, by clicking in other places, you may find a spot where you do pierce monsters.

- Targetam

Pierce is somewhat dependant on AR; for ordinary attacks, including Multiple Shot and Strafe, an arrow can pierce its target only if it hits in the first place. Pierce will not work with Guided Arrow. Elemental arrows have a 100% chance of hitting their target as long as they are aimed properly; AR has no bearing on the effectiveness of a piercing elemental attack. There can be multiple piercings in a crowd; combined with a high-damage skill like Immolation or Freezing Arrow, multiple piercings can be devastating: this is one of the reasons frostmaidens love large crowds. The only practical limitation to this skill is getting targets to line up. Once you get monsters to behave (i.e., herding), there's no limit to the amount of damage you can do to a crowd.

Bow/Crossbow Skills

A bowazon can't survive without passive/magic skills, but she'll be using the bow/crossbow skills more than anything else. While her skills are more versatile and less vulnerable than other characters' skills, this tree has four landmark skills: Multiple Shot, Ice Arrow, Strafe, and Freezing Arrow. While Guided Arrow and Immolation Arrow are also important, I ignore them as I have little (if any) use and experience with either skill. Until you have a better grasp of your skills and preferences, you should invest at least one point into every bow skill: even if you don't find a skill useful, it will invariably lead to another that is.

There are three paths to follow on the bow/crossbow skill set: the Magic Tree, Fire Tree, and Cold Tree. What is important to note is that, except for Cold Arrow-Guided Arrow connection, all of the trees are completely separate, making the bowazon the most versatile character for the least amount of skill point usage. Again, there are few - if any characters - who can demonstrate the overall versatility and effectiveness of the bowazon. Her main strength is her ranged attack power: she's the master of ranged combat, and no one, save a sorceress-necromancer team, even comes close. Her second strength is versatility: all of her skills have many uses in themselves. Her third strength is her crowd control abilities. When these strengths are combined, there are few situations that a bowazon can't handle.

Magic Arrows

Magic arrows are all bow/crossbow skills that are in the center of the skill tree. This tree deserves some attention because it houses the bowazon's two strongest physical attack skills: Multiple Shot and Strafe. These skills are nice, but unimaginative. Now none of us like to screw our characters up, but through screwing up we learn our mistakes and become better players. A player who relies on Multiple Shot or Strafe and nothing else - or even attempts to try anything else - reveals an obvious lack of skill. (My personal favorites are the MSNs - Multi-Shot Newbies - who use Multiple Shot to the exclusion of all other skills.) Skilled players would rather find out how other skills interconnect than waste it on one or two stupid skills. Knowing how to play the game, then appreciating the design of the game is something that must be learned.

Magic Arrow, Multiple Shot, and Strafe are treated as normal attacks. All other skills will always hit, regardless of defender's level, DR, or AR.

One point, and just one point because you need this skill access other skills. Do not invest points in this skill to get free arrows because you must have arrows to use any bow/crossbow skill but this one. Magic Arrow does have its uses against certain uniques: instead of wasting arrows strafing a single Stoneskin unique, plink away at it with Magic Arrows while the Valk or Decoy keep it busy (if you're not using Immolation Arrow). While the damage is less, the mana cost is nil with no danger of running out of arrows.

Hail to the queen, baby. Multiple Shot (which will hereafter be referred to as "Multi") gives your amazon a nifty twelve-gauge that can be controlled with practice. For example, targeting an enemy with Multi sends your arrows in a nice tight formation that spreads out as if goes further (though only one arrow will hit an enemy), but targeting any point between you and the enemy will fan out the pattern, and Multi aimed directly in front of your character will have an exceptionally wide spread (and if you're using a lot of arrows, it shows).

Multi has two big advantages over Strafe: first, there is no lock with Multi, making it invaluable in areas where you have to attack a lot of enemies at once yet need full mobility (i.e., cow level). With Strafe's searching fire (firing at sequential targets in a clockwise direction), you stand a chance of "Strafe Lock" as you fire at an accelerated (but sequential) rate; these arrows will attack more than one enemy. Multi has a quick initiation and recovery time, and she can't be hit out of it! It is among the best physical attack skills in the game because Multi also has a hidden To-Hit bonus, which is its second advantage over Strafe: Though only one arrow can hit a monster for each volley, any number of arrows can make checks until one hits. If you fire 10 arrows at 10 monsters, each monster gets a To-Hit check against it, but with 25 arrows at 10 monsters, you get 2.5 To-Hit checks per monster. Multi's targeting method breaks the skill because it makes Multi capable of breaking the 95% To-Hit cap; had Blizzard thought to restrict Multi to one To-Hit check per monster, it would be a more balanced skill.

Suppose a bowazon gets to Hell/Hell at clvl-41... Her AR will likely be around 1,500... Urdar have a DR of about 500, and are mlvl-82. That works out to a To-Hit of precisely 50%...but if [Multi] is firing six arrows through the urdar (quite possible with the large physical size of urdar and the fairly lenient check for arrows being close enough to monsters to hit them), each of them can make a To-Hit check, resulting in a 1 - (50%)^6 = 98.4% chance that the Urdar gets hit.

- Erik Mooney

Note that there is no damage bonus for Multi; its sole legitimate benefit per slvl is more arrows (with its hidden AR bonus being its higher benefit), so you can expect diminishing returns to hit around slvl-10 or so, as the spread isn't a huge improvement at even slvl-20. At slvl-10, Multi can cover most corridors, and snipe oblivion knights from afar. Because of this, I use Multi much in the same way that sorceress players use Static Field: I use it to lure unseen enemies closer to me so I can use more damaging attacks like Strafe and Freezing Arrow.

If Multi is chosen, having a hotkey for it is highly recommended. Arguments for the use of Multi over Strafe may be found in ChunLi's Bowazon Guide at the Lurker Lounge and an article in diabloii.net entitled "Why Multiple Shot is Better than Strafe." For more information on Multi and Strafe, please refer to "Question: Multiple Shot versus Strafe?" Multi may be used as a primary attack, but is better used as a secondary attack.

A sniper-esque Player-vs-Player skill, Guided Arrow is horrible for leveling. I don't use this one much (if at all), so I haven't much to say about it, except that you need it to get Strafe. With the bugs in Guided Arrow ironed out and its decreasing mana cost per slvl, it is powerful enough to use as a primary attack, especially when you need to take out enemies at unusual angles.

It may be important to note that Guided Arrow travels to wherever you click, then begins its search for an enemy from that point. It will ignore and not affect anything that it passes through on its way to the place where you clicked. This has interesting repercussions when you have acquired a lock on a fleeing character, as the arrow will travel much farther than its normal range and still be able to hit the enemy once it arrives.

And now you have a machine-gun: this is the MAC-10 of Diablo. Strafe's increase per level is steady: two enemies and a 5% damage increase per level, a flat cost of 11 mana, you can hit a monster with more than one arrow; and finally, it is auto-targeting. In fact, when the mana/life gains you make from attacking so many enemies at once begin to equate to nothing (i.e., you're actually making more mana than you're wasting), Strafe should become a primary attack. Conventional wisdom declared that Strafe had to be maxxed, and in v1.03, this was true because Strafe damage was calculated differently than other skills. Now that Strafe damage is calculated normally, any level of Strafe is good, though a range of 5 to 10 is recommended, with maximum Strafe for those who want high damage. For those who ask, Strafe's range is godly: 1.5 screens horizontal (that's the edge of the player's screen, plus a full second screen), 1.1 screens vertical, and about 1 screen diagonal. In short, what makes this skill so superior is its high benefit/cost ratio, relative almost any other clvl-24 skill in the game.

Fortuna did some work on this, the links are below.

From what I gather, basically Strafe sets the base frames to 5 for crossbows, and 3 for regular bows. Then you apply the speed formula normally. As a recap, the speed formula is:

# frames = {256 × (base + 1) / [(100 + SI)/100 × 256]} - 1

base = base speed of the weapon type (i.e. bow = 13, crossbow = 19); SI = speed increase = amount of any speed increases you have, including the innate speed increase of the weapon (i.e. gothic = -10, CKN = +60, etc.); {} = round up whatever's inside; [] = round down whatever's inside.

By the way, there's 25 frames per second. This is for every arrow after the first one. The first arrow fires at the regular rate, i.e. Strafe has the regular wind-up time, and then every arrow after that is at this rate. So a gothic bow, no speed increases (except the innate increase of -10), will fire the first bow at the regular 15fps, then every one after will be 4fps.

-Trucidation

For information on bow speeds and Strafe mechanics, please refer to Double Trouble's Speedazon Guide and Trucidation's and Crystalion's Weapon Speed Mechanics at the Lurker Lounge. The singular drawback of Strafe is Strafe Lock. For more information on this, please refer to "Question: Multiple Shot versus Strafe?" (With all of the bowazon's strengths, it's kind of weird to see what is labeled as a "weaknesses." Of course, a bowazon might get hit during Strafe-lock, but that's the type of cost/benefit ratio that all characters in the game have. The fact that skills that cause her pain if they miss are thought of as "weaknesses" just shows how abnormal she is.)

Contrary to popular belief, Strafe can be a decent PvP skill. True, there is a danger of Strafe-Lock. Unfortunately, in the context of all the bowazon's other abilities it becomes another plus on the her side. As a contrast, consider the barbarian's Leap Attack, which also causes massive damage, has quick initiation, and is a long-ranged attack. Besides Whirlwind, the barbarian doesn't really have any other viable dueling attacks, especially fast attacks like Multi or Strafe, so opponents are always watching out for Leap Attack or Whirlwind. But for the bowazon, you also have to worry about Multi, Guided Arrow, Decoys, Slow Missiles, her foot speed, etc. Smart bowazon players wait until their opponent is harassed and distracted enough, then surprise them with a sudden Strafe to the face. And it usually works. Again, looking at Strafe itself isn't so bad, but you have to look at the bowazon as a whole. One of her main strengths is versatility and the fact she's better than other characters in many qualities, which makes Strafe merely another notch on her bedpost. Besides, if you use Strafe mainly to hit shield-less opponents (like I used to), then that negates the weakness of this skill.

If Strafe is chosen, having a hotkey for it is highly recommended. It can and should be used as a primary attack around slvl-5 or so.

One of the most debated topics when discussing bowazons is the choice between Strafe and Multi. The reason these two skills are debated so much is that it is rather unclear which is superior. In fact, neither skill is better overall than any other. Rather, each is better for certain applications, while being inferior for others.

Multi gives you a spread of arrows, firing in a fan pattern. It is possible to control the spread of arrows, by targeting a point on the map a certain distance from your character. The further away you target, the tighter the spread of arrows. This skill is most useful against large numbers of enemies grouped together at medium or long range, as melee-range monsters will force a wide Multi arc in order to hit multiple monsters. At higher levels, this skill can put out as many as 2-3 times as many arrows per unit time as Strafe. Because each volley is fired as a single attack, there is no danger of being Strafe-locked and unable to move. Also, this skill can be used to efficiently attack enemies such as Abyss or Oblivion Knights that attack from beyond the edge of the screen. However, this skill isn't as effective against enemies that are scattered around the screen, since the odds of hitting all of them with a single attack get rather slim. One weakness of Multi is that no monster can ever be hit twice, even if two arrow graphics overlay a monster.

Strafe gives a series of faster-than-normal attacks that are automatically targeted at a number of enemies on the screen. It also gives you a percentage bonus to your damage, which goes up with increasing levels. In narrow corridors, this is particularly effective as a single target can be hit multiple times, as each arrow will pierce and hit the next target behind. (Assuming 60% pierce and a true 95% to hit, every monster will be hit many times on each pass of Strafe.) the key benefit to this skill is the auto-targeting of enemies, which is exceptionally helpful if you're badly lagged, since the monsters aren't always where you see them. Strafe isn't fooled by lag since it is aimed by the same server that controls the monsters. Strafe's drawback is Strafe-lock: because every arrow from Strafe is sequential, the amazon is locked into place while firing her arrows - which range between the minimum of targets around you and the maximum expenditure of Strafe (3 + 2 × Strafe slvl). Strafe fires one arrow for each target in range: when counting "targets" it counts everything - including your party members and their minions (like your Valk, Decoy, and mercenary), then fires those arrows at "valid" targets only - your enemies. While the amazon is under Strafe-lock, she's vulnerable to any targets that are coming her way or targets she missed, or otherwise could not lock onto because she can't move. This is especially dangerous against fast-moving enemies, or while chilled/slowed. There are two ways to avoid Strafe-lock. One is to have a monster hit your amazon, as being hit will take a bowazon out of her attack animation (and quite possibly kill her, which will also stop her attack animation). Another way is to practice some discipline and click your mouse button once for every pass of Strafe. Most of the time however, you can avoid this simply by using Strafe wisely. Strafe is superior with a small number of monsters as many arrows will hit that target. It is also superior if you're close to the mob, as the dispersal pattern will adjust.

Both of these skills are highly useful; it is quite possible to put a few points in each and switch between them as the situation warrants. Many MSNs tend to use Multi in situations where that skill isn't optimal. Some examples:

• When killing maggot young, Freezing Arrow is much more effective.
• Multi in situations where they may not know it, but only two or three monsters are being hit.
• Multi in situations where there are a small number of monsters. Each Multi scores one hit when Strafe would score three or four.

There are points of character development where Multi is generally better than Strafe. When you have weak equipment (low resists, life, and damage) you generally have less capability to withstand punishment and less ability to kill quickly in a toe-toe position. In these cases, Multi is safer.

Fire Arrows

Fire arrows are all bow/crossbow skills that are at the right of the skill tree. All elemental arrows are based on the principle that its "higher" counterpart is more effective. With this in mind, the apex of the fire tree is Immolation Arrow; if you don't plan on investing lots of points (slvl-10-20) in that skill, you may safely ignore the fire tree.

This introductory skill will help you take out some of the beefier monsters in A1 (especially Andariel with her -50 resist to fire), but don't invest more than a point. If you don't intend on using Immolation, don't invest a single point into this skill.

Warning: Point away from face when discharging. This skill is useful when you want to take out tightly-packed groups of enemies, but don't plan on investing more than one point in it because of Immolation Arrow. The chained explosions are pleasing to watch when this skill is backed up by Pierce, however.

Immolation Arrow (which will hereafter be referred to as "Immo") covers the bowazon's weak spot: strong, single enemies. Regardless of the power of your bow, Immo hurts things bad, but enemies have an annoying habit of moving out of small patches of fire, so it is best to slap a Valk or Decoy in tight cramped areas where monsters don't have space to move. As the difficulty levels climb, so will the enemy's fire resistance, but if you seriously intend on using Immo as a secondary attack, max this skill as soon as possible, as it is totally worthless at any slvl lower than 10.

I admit not giving this skill any credit: compared to Freezing Arrow in conjunction with Strafe, I just don't think Immo can be useful for anything but the occasional stoneskin (or tough-as-nails) boss. However, I recognize that Immo is capable of more concentrated damage per arrow than any other bowazon skill; it's a promising skill, but unlike Freezing Arrow, not a proven one on which you can reliably base an entire character. If Immo is chosen, having a hotkey for it is highly recommended. A high-level valk is also recommended, as you'll need her to survive a massive beating for Immo to take full effect. As always, I welcome all opposing viewpoints.

Cold Arrows

Cold arrows are all bow/crossbow skills that are at the left of the skill tree. Do not ignore the cold tree. Cold chills/slows monsters, as well as freezing them, and this is indispensable in NM and Hell. In addition, since cold is useful to every character class (with the possible exception of necromancers and Redemption-using paladins), the cold tree is the most multi-player friendly set of skills you'll have in the long run.

A solid skill to have because it'll help you take out big uniques and bosses, mostly by slowing them down. Slowing an enemy is vital because it takes longer for them to close the gap between you and them; if they're ranged attackers, their attacks slow as well, which is when D/A/E skills kick in. For the first eighteen levels, count on using cold a lot to widen the gap between you and your enemies. Hot key this skill, but don't use it as a primary attack: the damage from Cold Arrow is noticeably lower than your standard attack damage. Don't invest more than one point because you'll eventually use Ice Arrow. Cold Arrow is a prerequisite to Guided Arrow, which is needed for Strafe.

Cold only slows down a monster; freezing stops it solid. Ice Arrow freezes enemies; it is one of the many viable primary attacks a bowazon has: combined with the right ingredients, it is cruelly effective. Pierce in particular makes this skill ungodly: with a near-80% chance to pierce through enemies, an Eye of Etlich to extend freeze time, and an exceptionally fast attack speed, any enemy vulnerable to being frozen is as good as dead the second a single Ice Arrow hits because they're being refrozen so fast that they can never break free.

Like Freezing Arrow, Ice Arrow's freeze duration may be extended with cold damage items; unlike Freezing Arrow, Ice Arrow's duration may be extended with additional skill levels. If Ice Arrow is chosen, either using it as your primary attack or having a hotkey for it is highly recommended. If you choose to take the frostmaiden route, Ice Arrow should be used as a primary attack.

Freezing Arrow is similar to the sorceress's Glacial Spike: it will damage and freeze any enemy within a 3.3 yard (10 feet) radius, quite a significant AoE. What isn't clear from the skill description is that it deals full damage to every monster in that radius, so it can kill 10 enemies in the same number of shots it takes to kill one, so long as they're all within range. This is devastating when combined with Pierce: when Freezing Arrow pierces an enemy, it will explode, continue on, then hit another enemy, producing another explosion, providing huge amounts of damage where the explosions overlap. Despite this, Freezing Arrow shouldn't get more than a single point in most cases, since the two most important attributes - the radius and freeze duration - don't increase with additional levels, but if you're playing a frostmaiden, Freezing Arrow is going to be your big finishing move, so pump as many levels as you can into it.

An important principle to an effective Freezing Arrow is stacked chill-freeze duration, explained in The Path of Karcheus: The Frostmaiden.

If Freezing Arrow is chosen, having a hotkey for it is highly recommended. Freezing Arrow is an instant damage skill; if you choose to level up FA as your secondary attack skill, the durability of valk is hardly an issue, since you can volley some freezing arrows at the stragglers coming your way, killing some and freezing the rest, then summon a valk to repeat the process. All bowazons can benefit from this skill, even the ones who use Immo as their main damaging skill, as it can be used to set up Immo.

Many thanks to Chuck of the Amazon Basin for this [edited] analysis. For those who don't know, the Freezing Arrow "bug" that was in v1.03 remains in v1.04, making this skill obscenely powerful; it is unknown if the extra damage was intentional, overlooked, or kept for the sake of balance.

I'm going to first describe how the skills work, then I'll go through the mathematical analysis. Lastly, I'll go over some tactics involved with the conclusions. I don't proclaim to be all-knowing in the last area, so anyone is free to suggest their own.

First, let's go through both of them:

Freezing Arrow is an area skill. When it hits a monster, it will explode, and do cold damage to all monsters within a radius of 3.3 yards (including the monster it hit). It will also freeze them for 2 seconds (normal difficulty), though this can be lengthened with equipment. The main selling point is the physical damage of your bow will be added to the cold damage as cold damage. Thus if your FA does 100 damage by itself, and your bow normally does 200 damage, you will actually be doing 300 damage to every single monster within that blast radius. Because the two most important things about the skill, the radius of effect and the cold duration, stay constant as you put more points into it, the general consensus is that you only need 1 point in it. However, there is also a large faction that suggest maxing it out and using it as your primary damage spell, because the damage increase is also substantial. That's a whole other debate in itself, something that I don't want to get into right now, as it is beyond the scope of this post.

Immolation Arrow has two parts to it. The most known effect is that when it hits a monster, it will leave a patch of fire on the ground that continually hits the monster. A lesser known effect is that it also does explosion damage within an AoE; it is unknown as yet just what that area is, so I'll assume for simplicity that it's the same area as Freezing Arrow, a radius of 3.3 yards. As of now we don't know about the fire, specifically if it hits only one monster at a time. For the moment, though, I'll assume it does. The general consensus is to either ignore the fire sub-tree altogether, or be prepared to put 10-20 points into Immo, because low-level Immo sucks.

Now, in comparing the damage of the two, the most important quantity that I will try to derive is the damage per second rate. For simplicity I assume that you fire twice a second, though this is patently impossible as D2 runs at the rate of 25 frames per second. Also, because both skills have AoE components, the problem of how many monsters are in a specified area (namely the monster density) crops up. Throughout this post I assume that the MD (monster density) is 4, for simplicity of calculation, and because it seems to fit well with observation. Feel free to use your own MD if you think that's too high or too low, but that's the number I'll be using when making substitutions into the equations. I'll also be making a foray into your bow damage, so I'll assume that it's 150, which seems about right for a 50ish bowazon (bow average 30 and DEX of 200 is 90 damage right there, the skills would make up the rest).

...

The equivalent time actually means that you should switch to FA when there's about that many seconds of battle left. If the equivalent is 10 seconds, that means that when you have about 10 seconds of battle left, you should switch to FA. The reason is when there's less than that amount of time left, Immo's fire will not be able to reach their full effect and overcome the damage rate of FA because the monsters will already be dead. There will not be enough time left for new fires to do their damage; it would be better to simply go for a high but constant damage skill like FA.

This may seem kind of strange, but a similar duality exists between Static Field and Blizzard/Glacial Spike (though it applies to those that use a Static Field/Blizzard Combo as well). It's a well-known sorc strategy to use Static Field when the monster life is near full, then switch to a direct damage spell like Glacial Spike when the monster life is lower. This same concept applies to Immo versus FA, though the analogy is a bit different because Immo and Static Field work differently.

For example, suppose you know that a battle will last about 15 seconds, and that the equivalent time for your slvl is 10 seconds (corresponding to slvl-19). What this means is that for the first 5 seconds you should use Immo. However, during the last 10 seconds, you should use FA, and let the fires that were already there continue to do damage.

Now the above omits an important factor here. Most people will not pump both of them evenly - they are trying to figure out is which is better to pump. So the more important factor here is that, given a certain number of skill points, what should the distribution of skills be? Immo is at a slight disadvantage because it has two prereq skills whereas FA only has one (I assume you got Cold Arrow to get Strafe, so that doesn't count as a prereq). Thus a slvl-10 FA should be compared to a slvl-9 Immo, and both correspond to needing 11 skill points. Doing this type of comparison, you shouldn't worry about Immo at all until you have more than 13 points to spend (Immo finally surpasses FA when Immo is slvl-11 and FA is slvl-12, for max damage). Again, that number rests on the assumption of a monster density of 4, bow damage of 150, etc., so it's not an innate number in the game but a number based on various assumptions; if your assumptions are different, that number will change. Now having 13 or more points to spend actually isn't too hard once you get into the 50s or 60s. Also, the matter comes up that if you have, say, 15 points to spend, it wouldn't necessarily be spent putting 10 points into FA (for a slvl-9 FA) and the last 5 points into Immo (for a slvl-3 Immo). In fact, one of the restrictions on your point spending is that Immo's max damage should be greater than the FA damage. Not only that, but that damage per second should be greater than if you had put all of the points into FA, or all of the points into Immo. This naturally rules out a lot of stuff. For example, a slvl-6 FA and a slvl-6 Immo combo will not compare very favorably to a slvl-14 FA (same number of points, but all spent on FA). Also, because Immo is very weak when few points are put into it, it should be clear that the choice is to dump all the points into FA and ignore Immo, dump a lot of points into Immo and put relatively few points into FA (because a low-slvl FA will do more damage than a high-slvl Immo in the last seconds of battle), or to ignore FA and go all-out Immo. The comparison being made is the damage rate of pumping all the points into FA, compared to the damage rate if you put most of your points into Immo and only a few into FA, compared to if you solely went for Immo. For the middle choice, you would have to do some weighing of the two, so that's a second layer of analysis that needs to be done. Now in doing this analysis I'll assume that the total life of the monsters is 40,000. The only way this can happen is if you're up against 4 maw fiends in 8-player Hell difficulty, but the reason I assume such a high number is to offset the fact that in actual combat, new monsters are frequently taking the place of old monsters within your area of damage, but the Immo fires from old monsters still stay. So this seems like a fairly reasonable compromise.

With much difficulty and all these assumptions, it turns that purely relying on Immo will never do more damage than purely relying on FA, until somewhere after FA is maxxed out (i.e. Over 21 points to spend). We can safely remove that as a viable option (with the assumption of monster density of 4, 40,000 total life, and all the rest, that is). So now is left the task of modeling what happens with a "mixed" point distribution.

I went through some error checks, and found that I forgot to take the constant part of Immo into account with comparing the two by skill point distribution. So that part is wrong; to repeat, the conclusion that a pure FA is always stronger than a pure Immo for the same number of skill points is wrong. The jury is still out on that one.

- Chuck

Javelin/Spear Skills

Sooner or later, you'll be stuck fighting a big boss by yourself, and your bow might not cut it. One option would be to find a game where you don't need to do that, or you can use a Spear, and invest one, measly, stinking point into Jab. The single most compelling reason to use a spear can be summed up in one word: Duriel. This boss is the bane of all bowazons, especially when you don't have access to Decoy or Valk. However, Jab makes this battle a walk in the park, because you simultaneously negate his two most deadly powers. First, the charge: that oh-so-wonderful one-hit-kill. If you can avoid getting killed by this in the first few seconds, it is no longer a threat, since he can't charge from melee range. Secondly, his Holy Freeze: Jab disregards weapon speed; while your movement is slowed by the aura, your attack speed isn't, and you can continue to poke Duriel just as quickly as without the aura. Jab can also be used against Diablo in Normal difficulty. You won't be using Jab often, but for the cost of a single skill point, you can basically skip some of the hardest battles you will face.

An alternative to one point in Jab and using a spear is to keep a high-blocking shield and a one-handed weapon handy. Whenever you would take out the pike, take out the shield and sword. It is slower, but meleeing with a shield is what gives javazons their incredible staying power. This could be an option for big uniques like Diablo, Mephisto and Duriel.

- Xelne