Please note that this report was originally posted within the first month and a half after the game's release. As the mechanics of the game become better understood and the game itself is updated by patches, the strategies detailed in this report may change in their effectiveness. This writeup is intended as a "character class report" to introduce the class and give one possible way of completing Hell solo with the class. It is NOT to be confused with "class evaluations", "playing guides", or "hey I beat the game like this and now I'm on the ladder so you should do everything exactly the same way I did".

In my sorceress writeup, I stated that a sorceress is defined by her skills, and started with a discussion on my sorc's spell choices. Along the same vein, I believe that a bowazon is defined by her bow, plain and simple. IMO, no other class is as dependent on equipped weapon, as her offense and defense is centered around doing damage as rapidly as possible to as many targets as possible. Enemies closing the distance is not a good thing, since bowazons don't fare too well in melee combat. Having said that, the hopes for every bowazon who wants to survive in Hell can be summed up in two words: gothic bow. It has the highest base damage for a bow (10-50); accept no substitutes. :)

Thus, my Amazon put acquiring a big gothic bow at the top of her priority list. Essentially, she has 3 chances to make or break her chances in Hell with the 3 imbues at each difficulty. Her first nonmagical gothic bow was dropped in Act III/Nightmare, and she giddily went back to Normal to use her imbue. Success! 20-91 base damage on the bow, and then... Bnet disconnected her and erased the game. When she came back, the imbue didn't save, and the new imbue only raised the damage to 14-63. Her Nightmare imbue was even worse, at a pathetic 12-56 damage. Okay, all was not lost--she was wielding a decent rare cedar bow that was doing fine for Nightmare, and she took that into Hell. It did fine on the easy monsters of Act I, and she was just bracing herself for tougher fights as the monsters got meaner when... another plain gothic bow dropped. Right as she was about to get the Horadric Malus in Hell. She finished the quest in double-time to receive her imbue, and... success again! Taking no chances, I got her out of the game immediately to save the bow, and was rewarded by hours of being unable to rejoin or create a new game. :)

Click to Enlarge

Why is having a good weapon that important? The screenshot explains.

As you can see, having a bow with a nice base damage along with high dex is the only way for her to get the numbers necessary to do Hell solo. Having a gothic bow gives the bowazon the best chances for having high base damage, which is absolutely crucial since her two other damage multipliers are based on this.

Dex is one multiplier; the other one is strafe. Notice the substantial difference between the normal attack damage and strafe damage. Once again, this gives the bowazon some much, much needed damage for Hell. In addition to giving the bowazon rapid-fire and auto-aim, strafe also increases the damage per arrow, and that can be huge--for Acacia, strafe increases her damage by over 37% per arrow, and that goes a long way to killing monsters faster. Granted, a bowazon's dex + strafe + crit strike (which has diminishing returns--very important!) will never match a barbarian's str + whirlwind + weapon mastery or a paladin's str + skill + aura in terms of raw damage--but since this is all she has to work with, it's absolutely crucial for her to make the most of both of these multipliers.

To achieve this kind of damage, my bowazon invested her points as follows:

essentials: slvl 20(+2) strafe; slvl 20(+2) valkyrie; slvl 1(+2) ice arrow and freezing arrow
passives: slvl 6(+2) crit strike; slvl 1(+2) dodge, avoid, evade, penetrate, and pierce
wasted points: slvl 1(+2) fire arrow, exploding arrow, and immolation arrow
prereqs: slvl 1(+2)

Her progression through the game: she started slowly. Slooooowly. Going solo meant lots of retreating, beginning at the later parts of Act I. In groups, her damage was so insignificant compared to the rest of her groupmates that she was better off focusing on using inner sight and slow missiles to curse monsters instead of doing any real killing, though she certainly tried as much as she could. Of course, running around Act II with a sharp long bow doing something like 3-18 damage isn't exactly impressive. :) An early point into jab for future bowazons would really be well-spent in this early stage before the strafe machine has kick-started, as it can be recycled later on for use against Duriel (the bane of the bowazon). Acacia had her eyes on Hell, so she specialized and completely ignored the spear tree. Too bad she squandered some much-needed skill points later on...

3 important milestones for our intrepid heroine: strafe at clvl 24, valkyrie at clvl 30, and 95 strength at clvl 37. The first two make up the combo that would carry her through Hell, of course, while the third milestone marks not only the point at which she was able to wield a gothic bow, but also where she can start pumping dex in earnest for damage. For each clvl after this, her damage increased significantly, especially while strafe was also gaining in slvls. Except for the first milestone, these changes took place in Nightmare, which is also where she starting finding exceptional bows which can really do some damage. Regular bows from Normal, which include unique and set bows, all inflict pitiful amounts of damage compared to the monsters' hp for Hell. Because of these changes, Nightmare was actually considerably easier than Normal, although Duriel and Diablo on Nightmare were both tedious fights for Acacia.

Once she reached Hell, however, the strafe machine kicked in with a vengeance, now that the big final component has finally been imbued and safely saved. :) The idea behind the solo/Hell bowazon: infinite mana. With just 6% mana steal, strafe replenished mana at an incredible rate. By the time she reached clvl 52, strafe was stealing over 14 points of mana per arrow (!), for only 11 points of mana to jump start the machine. Add crit hit and pierce into the picture, and each arrow can steal even more mana. And those of you who have seen strafe in action know the huge number of arrows a bowazon can pump out with a single strafe attack. End result: Acacia had the ability to pay 109 mana at will to summon a mean slvl 20(+2) valkyrie (almost 2k hp!) to tank for her, whenever and wherever she needed one. Now having that kind of protection makes a bowazon complete, and she absolutely breezed through Hell. Strafe + pierce made a joke out of maggot lair and arcane sanctuary in Act II, Act III jungles were cleared without a single death, and the hordes of monsters in Act IV fell neatly in piles around the valkyrie(s). In fact, she probably had an easier time with the oblivion knights than any of the solo/Hell characters I've made, except for my CE-specialized necro (oblivion knights are no problem when you can kill them before you even see them :) ).

So for those of you planning bowazons: it's hard getting started, but it gets much, much easier as you go. Strafe + mana steal is absolutely invaluable. And honestly, I've never had more fun in Hell than mowing down mobs and mobs of enemies machine-gun style with this bowazon--it's worth the work. :) This is even more fun than clearing the screen with a few CE's, since you get to watch them eat your arrows one by one. :)

A few comments about bowazons:

-Ice arrow and freezing arrow work great for earlier difficulties. Freezing arrow works well as essentially a copy of glacial spike in Normal (if you have it that early) and Nightmare, although it's pretty useless in Hell due to its low freeze duration. The freeze duration can't be increased, so freezing arrow isn't really not worth multiple points. Ice arrow's duration, however, does increase, and in fact it will freeze multiple opponents when used with pierce, so it's not a bad skill to invest into for Hell. It also binds nicely to the left button as a primary attack.

-The fire arrows (fire arrow, exploding arrow, immolation arrow), however, are worthless. Why is that? It's simple--you lose the arrow for fire attacks. Ice arrow and freezing arrow does damage on top of the normal arrow's damage. What this means is that, not only does each of these spells inflict more damage since they have an additional physical damage component, but since the arrow is intact, the bowazon can steal *mana* with the ice attacks, and with a strong enough base arrow attack and/or high enough mana steal, the bowazon can cast these ice spells for free. The fire spells only eat up mana for very little damage returned, and bowazons have no warmth. True, it's possible to use immolation to attack and strafe to replenish mana afterwards, but the point investment needed to make immolation viable in Hell is huge--plus those skill points need to be taken from somewhere, most likely from passives. If not from passives, then probably from strafe, and that's a Very Bad Thing (tm). Strafe needs to be as high as possible.

-Isn't strafe-lock dangerous? In a word: no. Strafe is different from zeal in that each zeal attack commits you to a set number of attacks--it's good against a target, but bad when you need to retreat. However, since strafe only shoots once per target, you can control how long you're lagged by controlling the number of targets you fire at. The key to this is maintaining proper distance from your targets (strafe will aim for targets just off the screen). If you're farther away from the crowd of monsters, you'll only fire at the front few, whereas if you fire when you're close then you give them the chance to catch up and surround you while you fire at each of them. This is why it's crucial that a bowazon clears areas thoroughly--monsters behind you can slow your retreat, which can be fatal. With some practice and experience, strafe-lock is avoidable, and the bowazon needs the extra damage from high slvls in strafe for Hell. Note that pierce allows you to extend the distance and shorten the lag somewhat, since firing at the first few in the crowd with pierce will likely damage most or all of the crowd. If you allow them to close the distance so you can fire at all of them, pierce will also increase the effectiveness of each arrow in that situation, thus effectively multiplying your damage. The bottom line: without strafe-lock, you can get strafe high for maximum effectiveness (read as: damage), and add pierce to the mix to multiply each arrow's effectiveness.

-Isn't pierce bad for a bowazon? Once again, no. Consider the AoE arrow spells for a bowazon: explosive arrow, immolation arrow, and freezing arrow. Explosive arrow and immolation arrow are worthless, as I've mentioned above (low damage returns per skill point and mana point, no sorceress masteries/warmth and mana reserves to complement spellcasting, etc). Freezing arrow is useful for Nightmare, so perhaps holding pierce off until Hell is a good idea, but the duration (and damage) of freezing arrow is so low in Hell that there's no reason not to use pierce as a bowazon. Pierce and strafe are complementary in many ways that aren't obvious on paper, such as in the extending strafe range example above. How many points are invested into pierce is a matter of preference, but remember there are diminishing returns.

-Point investment into valkyrie is also up to personal preference. Without a valkyrie, it'll take a lot of retreating to clear most areas in Hell and then only if there is room available, so it's almost a given that a bowazon will be summoning valkyries. The valkyrie's hp-per-mana ratio stays roughly constant even with additional slvls, and since its primary use is as a tank, it's not vital that it reaches 10+. Acacia has done so to avoid recasting too many times, but YMMV. The points you save from valkyrie can be put to other things as your playing style dictates.

-Passives. The problem with most bowazons is that they have squandered too many points into these passives, especially considering that they have diminishing returns. Wear bigger armor if you're having problems staying alive, but you need those skill points to up the bow damage with strafe or else it becomes really hard to thin crowds of monsters on Hell. With reasonably skillful use of the valkyrie, defensive passives become even less necessary. Crit strike is important to multiply damage, but only up to a certain point before returns become minimal. A more insidious offender is penetrate--it does not need to be pumped. The reason is, AR itself has diminishing returns when applied to the to-hit formula (i.e. raising AR does not increase to-hit% proportionally), so while you're getting great returns on AR, you're not necessarily getting great returns overall. The actually returns depend on factors such as level difference and monster DR, but IMO you're better off raising damage, which does increase linearly when applied to strafe (and dex). Also, since bowazons are already pumping dex for damage, chances are they won't need a whole lot of extra AR. Passives are most useful for spearazons since all they basically need is jab. Bowazons need points into the bow skills (especially strafe) for damage.

I've touched on a lot of the major issues here, but I'm sure I've left many out (it's getting too long anyways and I'm tired of writing :) ), so please feel free to remind me by asking. Overall, bowazons face some serious growing pains early on, but they really blossom in Nightmare/Hell with the right planning. Out of all the characters I've played so far, this one is the one I'd most like to spend more time on, because she's just fun. :)  It's a real shame that everyone is flocking over to the jabazon camp because of the ridiculous pike damage and the broken jab skill (which most definitely should not negate swing speed as a clvl 1 skill). If/when that ever gets fixed (probably won't happen), more people would take notice of how great bowazons can be. She's been here all along, waiting for us.

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