This manual is an attempt to act in conjunction with the delineation of the variant originally established by Jondefool at Realms Beyond Diablo, and then later pioneered by Ice who has posted a nice guide at the Amazon Basin. Both Jondefool and Ice deserve credit for this variant, and my aim here is not to rehash what they have contributed, but instead delve more deeply into the tactics and decisions facing mageazons in play. I highly recommend you reading their works on this exciting variant.
Now there are variants and there are variants. In D1 people came up with self-imposed rules to make the game more challenging. This was the original idea of a variant - doing things like only wearing cursed gear to make things more difficult. In D2 with the skill trees and possible combinations, people began referring to well known skill combinations as variants. However there was a distinct difference - now you could have something like a WW barb or a static/FO sorc who was extremely powerful, and the game indeed was not made more difficult by playing the variant. So of which kind is the mageazon? Is it the difficult, high challenge, self-imposed handicap D1 - variety, or is it a viable mainstream power package of the D2 variety? I will assert that the mageazon falls into the latter category, easily able to hold her own in solo, 8p games.
The whole idea behind the mageazon is to use elemental arrows with the unique, 100% piercing bows and crossbows. Yes, you can use high damage bows with the piercing skill and due to the fact that piercing is bugged and you get a 100% multi-hit pierce for a given vector, you can do the classic blow mana with skill then leech back mana routine most other bowazon builds use. However, I maintain that if you are pumping dex, str to high levels to use exceptional bows and you are reliant upon leech for mana recovery, you are a physical zon and not a mageazon. Mageazons go through a fundamentally different build - they pump energy to a super high level such that they naturally recover mana at a rapid rate. The character that is a mageazon plays vastly differently than a character that undergoes heavy physical development. We call it mage-azon because she pumps her mana like a mage or sorceress.
So why would anyone ever want to pump mana instead of dex, when bow damage and attack rates track dexterity? Well the answer lies in a couple of bow skills. First, consider the elemental arrows (cold, fire, exploding, immo, ice, and freezing). If you exclusively use elemental arrows, you are going to hit and you never need to pump things like penetrate or your dexterity. The next important fact to note is that there is a bow skill whose vast damage is largely independent of physical arrow damage, and that is immolation arrow. It is not the exploding damage, which kills (around 120 at level 20), but instead it is the lingering fire, which does kill (120 dmg/sec at 24 seconds worth of burn duration). Your physical arrow damage pales in comparison to immolation over time. What makes this ability even more destructive is if you have 100% pierce granted by a few unique crossbows and bows (e.g. Doomslinger). Imagine this, a level 22 immolation arrow piercing 20 wraiths in the arcane sanctuary, stacking for thousands of damage per second, lasting for nearly 25 seconds, all for the cost of a single bolt and 25 mana. It is awe-inspiring. The only real way to top it is to stack it even further by a few more bolt shots, which again pierce everything in the stack.
The basic problem is the unique bows with piercing have inherently low damage compared to the kind of gothic bow high level strafe/multizons employ, and mana steal is out of the question. So now we finally arrive at the mageazon solution - pump your energy to really high levels, and use mana regeneration items to replenish it at a high rate. By developing your energy like a mage (or a sorceress), you can make 100% piercing immo shots, which always hit work as a way of life. This is the mageazon.
Your goal as a Mageazon is to hold get monsters to remain stationary while your immolation burns them. This is most often accomplished by the use of valk, but can also be accomplished by using freeze to hold them still, or leading them into a terrain bottleneck or impasse where they can not advance, or in the lower difficulties by using self tanking (where you go toe to toe with the creature, and you stand still) or decoy. Mageazons for this reason will max out valk so that she can hold off the maximum number of attackers for the longest possible duration. Since the number of players in a game multiplies the valk's life, she becomes even more effective in high-count games, and immolation can be truly devastating. For instance in nightmare hell, Hephasto was killing my lvl 11 valk in 2 hits, but in a 6 player game he couldn't drop her before my immolation killed him. The main problems arise when monsters do not stay on the valk or remain stationary. To overcome these problems the mageazon has a large bag of tactical tricks-
A. Freezer burn - the idea here is to freeze the monster with either FA (freezing arrow) or IA (ice arrow), then fire off an immolation arrow, then quickly returns to continuous fire of FA or IA. Here your freeze duration holds them stationary in your immolation. To make this work, you need a duration long enough on freeze to fire at least one immo and switch back before it unfreezes. Typically you want more than that minimum duration to allow for high cold resistance and blocking.
B. Immo sniping - some ranged attackers will remain stationary firing at a target (e.g. your valk) as long as nothing is getting too close to it, or moving off screen where it can no longer target. Careful approach will let you put it in your range while keeping its attention focused on your valk or decoy (assumes your valk is tied down by melee monsters). You can then fire off immolation, and they will stand there and burn to death while shooting. Without valk or decoy you can accomplish this same tactic by running circles around the monster while it stands in immo firing at you.
C. Decoy scouting - the exceptionally high mana of mageazons permits them to frequently use decoy, even in areas where there are no monsters. The idea here is to cast decoy in front into a new unexplored area and see if anything attacks. If it does attack, you can hose the area down with immo and by the time the decoy dies, your valk is engaging it. If nothing attacks the decoy, you advance to its position (or just short of its position) and recast another decoy into a new direction. This tactic puts you at very little personal risk, and compensates for the AI of the valk where it follows rather than leads you.
D. Chase breaking - monsters target the closest foe to them when they first encounter anything, and they tend to chase that foe until they are either hit by another foe, or they are frozen, when they will reacquire a new, closer target. The typical way to chase break is to fire FA or IA into those that follow you, then run to a new monster free position further away from the monsters than your valk. When they unfreeze, they go onto the valk like anything else.
The following monsters pose problems for the mageazon
A. Creatures, which flee when things are close - examples, include obsidian knights. This can be a huge problem since your valk can go running off screen after the fleeing monster and leave you with no tank, or the monster can flee towards you. Good tactics here are freezer burn (for the ones which go towards you) and immo sniping.
B. Leapers - leapers leap when hit - the best solution is freezer burn and decoy scouting. Keep your distance once a pack is sighted.
C. Fallen - fallen scatter when something dies within their awareness radius. The threat is not from their outbound journey, but really from when they return, as they can come from behind and reacquire you as a target. Shake them with chase break.
D. Creatures, which flee when hurt - examples include spiders and ghoul lords. The main difficulty here is either they draw off your valk, or they go heal up. Use freezer burn to hose them.
E. Creatures which over run their target - example, seal boss minion balrog in the chaos sanctuary - what happens here is they run well past the valk, then return. In the over run process, sometimes they acquire you as a target. Your best bet here is to use decoy scouting and keep your distance, and shake them with chase break.
F. Reanimated - examples include fallen and skeletons - here you manage to kill them off, but a shaman or hollow one revives them in your flames and you are stalemated. The best way to deal with this is to establish your immo pyre, and then pump in FA's to keep everything frozen. When they die from the flames, they shatter. Also with a 100% piercing bow, you can simply fire immo at the normally stationary shaman or hollow one, and it will pierce all intervening creatures and hit the reanimator.
G. Corpse spitters - these creatures move towards a corpse pile, eat, wander off, and spit a very damaging corpse at a target. Often if you time it right you can immolate them while they are dining on the corpses, but otherwise freezer burn is in order. It is always a good idea to slow missiles when you encounter these creatures, since if you miss one, you can dodge. It's easy to spot corpse spit coming your way when missiles are slowed.
H. Teleporters - if your porter is not a champion or a boss, you may employ freezer burn on them. If the boss or champ is a ranged attacker which essentially remains stationary, right click and hold fire immolation at your target - eventually it will fail to teleport and remain too long in stacked immo - remember your fire rate is pretty fast with Doomslinger, and it is possible to get several immo hits on a target before it ports. Against bosses that chase, the most efficient way to drop them is with maxed IA, since it does the greatest damage per mana (they don't stand still long enough in immo for that to work well). Using immo against melee, bosses/champs does not work as well, since they are always moving and it is hard to achieve a stack. A good safety precaution is to erect a decoy near you in case the porting creature comes too close for comfort.
I recommend the following SC stat build - str, dex to target levels first, then pump energy to 200, then take vit to 100, and after that, well, you are on your own. You can make this build work for HC, just be sure to seek out all possible life adders early on to compensate for lack of vitality, and plan on going to town more often to permit conservative play with a decoy. Once you get valk and FA, you are home free, and you will wish you had decent mana then rather than a huge pile of HP, since your survival depends upon valk + your cold arrows. 200 with energy is a nice breakpoint for critical mana heal, and you can achieve satisfactory mana recovery with this level.
Until you get your piercing bow, consider sapphire bows, or bows with listed cold damage - they increase your cold arrow/ice arrow durations. You can begin the game as a normal bowazon, relying upon mana steal if you find it, gemmed bows otherwise. Your very first objective is to acquire a piercing bow - this is going to be hard, and for this reason many will elect not to begin a mageazon until they find such on another character. Vidala's set works great through normal difficulty, giving you high damage for a 100% pierce bow and allowing you to actually break even on a level 1 ice arrow if you have solid mana steal (14%). As discussed by Jondefool and Ice, you want no more than 60 str, 50 dex, - pump your physical attributes early and use them with regular bows.
From your earliest levels, you begin to use inner sight and slow missiles. Use them before you open the door, to see if anything is on the other side (you will see an increase in lighting where there are creatures). This permits you to avoid ambushes and line up your approach to the door. Low-level fire arrow or cold arrow is your boss killer. In time other things replace inner sight, but slow missiles remains a prime hot key, of use against all ranged attackers and lightning enchanted bosses (slows their emission, and reduces the range of the bolts).
By the time you hit act 2, you will come to rely upon IA. Here you will develop precision targeting, unlike strafe and multizons. You quickly learn to line up IA if you have a piercing weapon to maximize its mana steal and help you with crowd control. Exploding arrow, even at level 1, offers nice damage for 1p normal difficulty, and is a great thing to use. Exploding arrow can help you clear out a large beetle population or a huge swarm of locusts quickly.
When you get decoy and immo, you are going to want to ditch the mana leech stuff, put on all the mana adders you can find, and start playing as a true mageazon. Decoy is going to be used frequently as a tank/distraction, and immo will be reserved for bosses until you get your mana established.
Once you hit level 30, the full power of mageazon becomes apparent. You get FA + valk then, which makes everything considerably easier.
As far as skill priorities go, I like to put 1 point into each passive as it becomes available. The exception to this is evade, which I will not acquire until either (1) I have killed Diablo, or (2) I have hit lvl 30 and need valk. The point here is you don't want to have evade for your normal difficulty Diablo encounter, since evade lock is a real problem. For the bow side, I like getting the prereqs for immo and FA, one point in each. I put the rest into immo, saving enough points for valk and FA at lvl 30. I do not like pumping IA early since its increase mana cost is unsupportable in the early game (barring fantastic gear). Your efforts past 30 should be to max immo and valk, in that priority order. After both of those are maxed consider either developing dodge/avoid/evade, or perhaps maxing IA. I found 1 pt in crit hit, penetrate, and jab worth it in the early game - crit helps you with your normal arrows in your early career, penetrate makes normal arrows hit better (you won't need this later), and jab lets you deal with normal difficulty Duriel. If you can avoid making these allocations, do so and apply the points to areas of long-term use. Another thing to possibly consider is decoy - if you are having trouble getting your mana regeneration established, a few points in decoy can drop its casting cost down to a more affordable level.
A. Immo - 20 pts - this is your workhorse skill, your main damage dealer, and your raison d'etre. The denser the crowd, the better this works. The more things are confined or forced to walk down narrow hallways, the better this works. The bulk of your damage is not from the exploding damage, but rather instead from the burning over time of your lingering flames. Note that immolation only will produce a lingering fire patch for creatures it directly hits, and that fire patch is pretty small. This is the main driver for trying to hold things stationary - even the slight wandering a fallen shaman does is enough to get out of a tight immolation patch.
B. FA - 1 pt - here I deviate from Ice and Jondefool. My first ground for not pumping it is rooted in how this skill deals damage. The way freezing arrow works is the game takes your physical arrow damage, converts it to cold damage, and then adds the elemental damage bonus you get from items and your skill level. If you are using a crappy physical damage bow like Doomslinger, almost all of your damage is coming from the skill level elemental damage and your item elemental damage. If you pump this to 20, you will get around 120 damage from FA, comparable to the damage you get on the explosion hit from immo. Chaos Sanctuary lists the radius on FA at 3.3 yds, but it does not list the radius for immo's explosion, or that of exploding arrow. My personal experience is the radius for FA is larger than immo. In any case, the 120ish elemental damage of FA is 1/24th that of the potential lingering flame damage from lvl 20 immolation - it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. What makes FA work for the frost maiden is the fact that the frost maid has HUGE physical arrow damage (mine is around 300ish now with a 96max bow), and this damage far exceeds the 120ish additional elemental damage you get from skill rating. However even in the case of the frost maiden, I think it is counter productive to pump FA - I would rather fire off 3 FA's at 75% damage than 1 at 100% damage. So for the mageazon who uses a piercing unique bow, you are better off trying to get immo to work than you are to kill things with FA.
My next grounds for objection are with the mana cost. At level 1, FA costs 9 mana, and at level 20 it costs 28mana, over 3x more than its level 1 cost. Getting your mana regeneration up to a 9mana per second rate is much easier than it is to achieve 28mana per second. So by keeping the mana cost low on FA you can use it more frequently. The use for FA for the mageazon is obvious - you want it to freeze and hold a large group still, either to hold them stationary in immolation, or to break a chase AI. When you are breaking a chase, all you are trying to do is hit one - the explosion will do the rest.
C. IA - 1 or 20 pts - Ice arrow does the most elemental damage per mana point expended, and for this reason maximizing its skill level can help you bring down teleporting, non-stationary bosses. So if dealing with these creatures is important to you, max out IA. The mana cost per arrow at 20 is modest 8.7ma for ~84 elemental damage and 5.8s duration. However a strong case can be made that no arrow is really effective on this kind of threat, and you might as well stick it out with immo and put all of those points into passives such as dodge, avoid, evade, and even duplicate. Certainly for hardcore I would pump passives instead. If you are going to pump IA do this after you have established a mana regeneration rate, which can support it. Pumping it in the early game will only cause you mana leech problems, and slow down your acquisition of the higher priority skills such as immo and valk.
Here is what I think would be an ideal rig for a mageazon. See also Ice's guide for other items.
Perfect skull helm - this conveys a significant mana regeneration in addition to replenish. You do not really need the skills and find of a Tarnhelm, nor is vulpine that hot since you are not getting hit much.
Doomslinger - there is no better bow for a mageazon - the speed, pierce and skills make it ideal
Eye of Etlich - although you will not use the life leech, the skills and cold duration make it useful. A really close second is the 40% mana regeneration set piece amulet.
Frostburn - the cold duration and the huge mana boost are best - you want a huge mana ball. Magefist will grant fire skills and regen, but believe me you want that huge mana ball and natural recovery, as a big mana ball defines your elemental quiver size.
Rare belt - want cold duration + resistance, hit recovery, life and mana, 4 rows if possible. Lenymo's is too dangerous with 2 rows. Nightsmoke does not shine so well since you are not being hit much.
Rare armor - with recovery, life, mana, and resistances. Greyform is pretty hard to beat with its nice resistances and magic damage reduction, but you can beat it. Heavenly Garb is nice, but very hard to get. You want light armor, so as not to receive any speed penalty.
Rare boots - with fastest run, reduced stamina drain, + life, mana, resistance stuff. You can find these (I have, but not with this character). Treads of Cthon come in a close second, requiring little strength to wear and granting the fastest run + reduced stamina drain.
Rare rings - if you got Jordan's, load 'em up, but frankly in all of the characters I have, I have yet to get a single Jordan before I retired the character. On your rare ring go for life, mana, resistance.
Between 600-700 mana gives you a reasonable regeneration rate, which is functional.
You can find my adventures with Arrowitch, my mageazon, at Realms Beyond Diablo. There you will find how I dealt with various threats over my career.
King of Pain and Charis of RBD were supportive in hosting my mageazon posts. Thanks also Jondefool who originated the mageazon, and provided stimulating discussion. The same may be said for Ice who passed along some hard earned wisdom and wrote a guide presently hosted at the Amazon basin. The LL crew has shown continued sustained interest in my experiences with the mageazon, and to them goes the inspiration for actually writing this up.
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