Witchy Zon Build

[arrunique]

witchwild zon plans:

I had a buriza strafer in softcore and want to try a witchwild strafer in hardcore. Witchwild seems to be a perfect solution to the usual zon problems. It has 40 resist all, it has the high percent of deadly strike and it has chance to cast amp for PIs.

Stats:
str: 89 - enough to use upgraded witchwild
energy: base
dex and vit: rest

Skills:
20 strafe
20 valk
20 decoy
~5-10 pierce
~10 avoid
~5 dodge
~5 penetrate

The rest split among pierce, dodge and avoid. I'm counting on the deadly strike from the bow so only 1 in critical strike.

Gear:
Couple of ideas but the choices is between an 8/2 strafe and a 9/2 strafe. 8/2 requires 105% IAS and 9/2 requires 86%.
Head - Blackthorn for PMH slow target and lightning absorb. Or Delirium if I win the lottery.
Amulet - All the higher end unique amulets are nice. On highlord the deadly strike is wasted but the other mods are very nice. Atma's scarab adds to percent to cast amp and AR. Cat's Eye has the run/walk and IAS.
Gloves - Laying of Hands or crafted knockback gloves with IAS and +2 passives (can you get +2 passives on gloves?)
Rings - 1 mana leech and resists rare, 1 raven
Belt - Razortail to get 100% pierce and dex
Boots - resists, cow king? sigons?
Armor - Lots of choices: Lionheart would be great to save me 20 strength that I could put into dex, and has nice resists. Crow Caw has open wounds and can be socketed to 30% IAS, also has dex. 60% ias 4 socket armor would give me lots of gear choices including socketing a nef or damage jewel into witchy.

I'm planning on 5 or 6 rows of charms for resists and elemental damage.

Not that I have any of this gear (got a low damage witchy) but how does the plan look?

[brianc84]

Couple of ideas but the choices is between an 8/2 strafe and a 9/2 strafe. 8/2 requires 105% IAS and 9/2 requires 86%.

Some new Strafe data suggests that going from 86% IAS to 105% IAS with a 0 speed bow doesn't increase Strafing speed at all. The speed of a normal attack still increases, but the Strafe still ends up at the same speed. The next speed change in Strafe would actually come in at 113% IAS.

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...showtopic=43673

[vor_lord]

Don't neglect AR. If you don't hit, you don't live. I would use at least one of your sockets in your witchy for AR (put in an Eth).

I currently have a freezer/strafer just finishing NM. She has an upgraded Lycander's as the primary bow, and a witchy on the switch.

Her problem is that you can't seem to do both. The +skills to make FA more effective makes the necessary IAS with a 0 speed bow hard to get. I need to experiment and see if witchwild with lots of IAS will end up giving me a better killing rate than Lycander's with a +skills setup for high cold damage.

Suffice it to say, so far my killing speed stinks in Hell with my setup, even though I tried base vitality in favor of dex.

[Guest]

I built a softcore witchy zon with 400 dex, 90% IAS, tal's armor/head/belt for magic find. I upgraded her bow to get extra damage. The bow was mid-range in the enhanced damage department. I found that she could not kill fast enough in hell to be useful for magic find, at least in my personal expectations for softcore. Specific observations:

The 2% chance to cast amp is not nearly often enough. Strafing PI bosses in the (Hell) river of flame took some minutes to kill just one boss, with most of the time spent waiting for the amp to go off so I could do some damage. Adding atma's for the 5% amp was much better, though the killing was still too slow for my tastes.

Laying of hands was nice for the extra damage vs demons, but the chance-to-cast blocks _all_ your skills for a short while when it goes off, which was annoying at times. Gloves with crushing blow worked much better
overall, as they gave a comparable amount of extra damage, against all foes, and did not have the annoying chance-to-cast delays.

Regarding strafe speed issues mentioned in the other responses: I found that there was a visible difference between the strafe speed at 90% vs 80%, namely, at 80% the arrows do not overlap vs a single target; at 90% they do.

Also, I recently learned that strafe arrows have a next-hit delay attached, so only one arrow can hit per 4 frames against a single target. :angry: This explains something I had observed and wondered about: My guided arrows were much more effective at taking down Diablo than my strafe arrows. (This was in nighmare--I wouldn't suggest strafing Hell Diablo, even in softcore. :) ) Apparently my 2-frame strafe, plus the 4-frame next-hit delay meant that at most half of my strafe arrows could hit.

I've still got my Witchyzon hanging around, so if the Lurker's can suggest some way to help her kill fast enough to be fun in Hell, I'm all ears. :)

Cheers,

Jimbowe

[Baajikiil]

I've still got my Witchyzon hanging around, so if the Lurker's can suggest some way to help her kill fast enough to be fun in Hell, I'm all ears.

Anyone interested in Witchy builds should read this thread at the AB. Covers most of the questions one could have about the bow.

PS: Don't be fooled by the age of the first pages, the thread is ~30 pages long.

EDIT: Pytos