Introduction
I didn’t come up with the idea of the Titan Barbarian, but it seems that by posting a couple of my screenshots, I have popularized it to some extent. Well, that’s fine and dandy. After all, it has to be about the "funnest" PvM build on the Realms, and a decent way to show off the power of the barbarian.
What is a Titan? A Titan is a barb whose stat investment is purely strength, if possible. The focus is on huge damage, and is usually built around a big range, big damage weapon, like the coveted Cruel War Pike of Quickness or one of the famed (and expensive) Robopikes. The basic skills employed are mostly the same as any cookie-cutter barb, but with the addition of maxed Berserk.
Some folks view the Titan as not so much a variant or sub-class as it is a build style. Titan-Frenziers are viable, as are Titan-Zerkers that use War Cry as a secondary skill instead of WW. In a way, a BvB dueler is a Titan of sorts, in that while he has no investment in vitality, and puts in dexterity for blocking, but the rest goes into strength. I’m even experimenting with a semi-Titan (400strength/150vitality) Fendazon that may be interesting. In any case, for the purpose of this guide, I’m describing a specific type of barbarian variant focused on maximizing his killing efficiency in PvM.
The Titan is obviously equipment dependent, but outside its weapon, the equipment isn’t particularly rare or expensive. Only minimal leech is required, and damage reduction is not necessary, so the Titan can focus on equipment with stats, life, and even IAS to some extent. The Titan is no dueler. By definition, he will have very little investment in vitality, so life is at a premium. He depends on the huge damage and his minimal leech to stay alive… that and killing things before they can do him any harm!
Skills
Basic Cookie Cutter stuff here…
Max Mastery
Max Whirlwind
Max Battle Orders
Max Berserk (incredible damage!)
3 to 5 in Natural Resistances
1 in Battle Command
2 to 4 in Increased Speed.
Maybe one in Hork (Find Item) if you have any left over. Being a PvM build, you just as well have Hork!
Statistics
The basic rundown is this:
Strength - Everything
Dexterity-– Whatever is needed for the weapon, and should come from equipment if at all possible.
Gitality - Nothing
Energy - What’s that?
OK, so what is up with all the strength anyway? With most melee weapons, you get an Enhanced Damage bonus for every point in strength. For most weapons, 1 point in strength = 1% ED. So a Titan with 550 strength is getting 550% ED from his stats alone. Add in the bonus from the mastery, and the skills, and any ED equipment you own, and you can stack up some serious wicked damage.
Some folks will be quick to point out that mauls/maces get 1.1% ED for every point in strength, and have no dexterity requirement, which would appear to make them the ultimate Titan weapon. Unfortunately, mauls lack the range of most of the preferred Titan weapons. (For further discussion on how range equates into hits per whirl with Whirlwind, see the Barbarian FAQ.) This naturally takes us to a discussion of the main focus of the Titan build, their weapon.
Weapons/Equipment
I originally started messing with Lance barbs after months of reading how Lance barbs owned all in D2 Classic, but were not really viable in D2X. I started out making a PvP Lance – S/S hybrid… I figured if you could make a viable thrower hybrid, why not a lancer hybrid? (This topic should probably be addressed further by other D2 dueling junkies.) At any rate, in building that guy, I launched myself on a search for a Cruel spear of some sort with speed modifiers that would allow it to hit the -60 BP when properly socketed. Overall, I ended up with a 252% ED Cruel Ghost Spear of Alacrity, a 255% Cruel War Pike of Quickness (curse Larzuk for one hole!) and finally, my good friend Eblocher blessed me with a 278%ED Cruel War Pike of Quickness with 2 sockets. Later came the Mother of All War Pikes, which I’ll talk about later. After achieving only limited success with my Lancer - S/S hybrid, (probably due to my lack of skills more than anything) I began to look around for something else to do with the War Pikes, and the answer was soon obvious.
Weapons [in order of priority]
A. War Pike: For the most part, the preferred weapon of choice is the Cruel War Pike of Quickness, 2 Shael. This is for the following reasons:
Pros:
1. Insane damage. War Pikes have a max damage of 178, the highest of all elite weapons, save the Thunder Maul, which only has a range of 3.
2. Range 5. No discerning Titan would be without a range 5 weapon.
3. Relatively low dexterity requirement. In fact, only the Great Poleaxe has less of all the range 5 elite weapons, but with substantially less damage.
4. There is no number 4.
5. Coolness factor. When in channels, the tip of the War Pike sticks up almost all the way to the “Create” button! (The spear look, I’ll admit, it eclipsed by the Cruel Giant Thresher look, but I digress…)
Cons:
1. Very rare! While War Pikes can be shopped in act 5 Hell, they only show up about once every 10 or 15 times. And then, getting a good set of mods is a real crap shoot. Some folks like to roll them in the cube with perfects. Also, being TC90, they can’t be dropped by cows, and can only be dropped by Baal’s minions, and few others.
2. Very Slow. With a base speed of 20, you really need a “Quickness” mod and two Shaels to reach the -60 Whirlwind breakpoint. A “Swiftness” with one hole can do OK at the -30 BP, and you can use an ED/IAS jewel to reach it, upping the damage even more.
3. Low durability = lots of repairing. Many people make a big deal about this, but as long as gold in D2X is like water, then the point is moot. You’ll get about one run of the cows before it needs a $55,000 repair.
4. Expensive. Decent Cruel War Pikes with Quickness mods can go at Windforc-ean levels.
B. Robopikes: Robopikes are even rarer, but deserve mentioning. The base weapon is a 6 socket non-magic Ethereal War Pike. One of the rarest things on the Realms. You then add Zod, Shael, and 4 x ED/IAS jewels to make it. Also, if the non-magic Ethereal War Pike also happens to be a 15% ED Superior, you’ll end up with the highest damage, range 5 weapon available that reaches the -60 breakpoint, and would top out at 730ish max. An Ethereal CWPoQ would reach 1068 max damage, but you’d have to Zod it, voiding any chance of reaching the -60 BP. (Robo-weapons got their name from the guy who popularized the concept, a frequent barb forum poster, RoboTurtle.)
Pros:
1. Same as the CWPoQ above, but add that it’s indestructible because of the Zod.
Cons:
1. Even rarer, due to almost-impossible drop rate of non-magic Ethereal War Pikes.
2. VERY expensive to put together all those jewels.
C. Giant Thresher/Great Poleaxe: Some of the coolest looking range 5 elites on the Realms.
Pros:
1. Good looks. LOTS of comments from other players.
2. More common than War Pikes. It seems more of them show up at Larzuk’s Emporium of Desirable Weapons than War Pikes.
3. Speed. They have a base of -10, meaning they can reach the -60 breakpoint with a single socketed ED/IAS jewel if you get a “Quickness” mod. Even a “Readiness” mod and 2 Shaels will reach it as well. This makes viable versions of them more abundant.
4. Fair Durability – less repairs.
5. Low dexterity requirement for the Great Poleaxe, allowing more flexibility in the other equipment.
Cons:
1. Lower Damage. Only 114 max damage base, which is 64 less than a War Pike.
2. High dexterity investment required for the Thresher, either forcing you to invest some in dexterity, or re-focus your equipment to accommodate it.
D: Ghost Spear: The infamous Picklefork. Looks like a Trident, and is small-looking compared to other range 5 weapons.
Pros:
1. Speed. A range 5 weapon that can reach the -60 BP with just an “Alacrity” suffix and 2 Shaels doesn’t suck.
2. Damage. Second highest range 5 elite, though the minimum is quite low at 18.
3. They can actually be dropped by cows! In fact, finding an ethereal one to make a Robo-Picklefork out of may actually be something you could accomplish in your lifetime. Also, because of the base speed of 0, you can add and ED/Max Jewel or an OHM to the Robo-Recipe instead of the Shael and have a Max damage eclipsing a good Cruel War Pike.
Cons:
1. Huge dexterity requirement. At 163 it’s almost silly. Maybe with that last hole on a Robo-Picklefork, you should use an ED/-Requisites jewel. (A Cruel Ghost Spear of Alacrity was my weapon of choice for my PvP Lancer – S/S Hybrid, since I had to have the dexterity investment anyway for blocking on the S/S switch.)
2. Kinda dainty lookin’.
E. Honorable Mention: Cruel Thunder Mauls, Ethereal Hellslayers, yadda, yadda, yadda…
Pros:
1. Dunno of many, other than the No-dexterity requirement of the Mauls.
Cons:
1. Range 3 mostly.
Finally, don’t forget to put two echoing weapons on your switch to boost your BO. Cast Battle Command first as well to get a little more boost. Your life bulb will need all the help it can get!
Once you have chosen your weapon, and know your dexterity requirement, you need to carefully plan your other equipment. I’m going to list my favorite for each slot, and then a short blurb on other things to consider. Getting Stats (mainly dexterity for the weapon) and vitality/HP are the most important issues.
Armor:
Lionheart Runeword in a light Elite armor, like a Archon Plate or a Great Hauberk. (I prefer the lighter armor so I don’t have to deal with speed penalties of the heavier stuff, though they work fine.) The insane Stats, 25 strength, 15 dexterity, 20 vitality and 10 energy are awesome, then add in 50 HP, and good resists. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, you get 20% Enhanced Damage on top of it!
Other choices are possibly a +2 Barb Valor with an ED/Max jewel, or maybe one of them fancy 160/60 armors. No help on dexterity from those though.
Hat: Arreats Face. There’s no other choice here. The 20 strength/dexterity take you a long way to making your goal with a Titan. And, if you get lucky and get 6% LL on it, you’re set in the life leech department. Put an ED/dexterity or ED/Max jewel in there if you get one.
Other choices include a Crown of Thieves, the life leech and 25 dexterity are cool, and the gold find may actually help pay for repairs. Shako’s good with it’s skills, a few stats, and the big life boost, but I’d prefer one of the others before it.
Gloves: IK mitts. 20/20 strength/dexterity is so huge they can’t be beat.
Other choices include: Mavina’s with their duel stats, or any rares/crafted with stats would be nice.
Boots: War Travelers. The only way to go. The dual strength/vitality stats are critical, the fast R/W is nice, and that added damage is multiplied INSANELY with this build.
Other choices include: Sanders are nice. The faster R/W is a plus, and they have 10 dexterity and 5 strength. A nice choice to make up some lost dexterity if you need to.
Belt: Thunder God’s Vigor. With 20 strength and 20 vitality you can’t beat it in the life boost department. The other non-Amazon mods are nice too.
Other choices include: Razortail for the nice dexterity boost and addition to Max damage. The high-level thorns effect is neat when rushing folks, too. Just walk slow through the mobs and kill them without taking a swing!
Amulet: Cats Eye. 25 dexterity, what can you say about that? The R/W and IAS are pure gravy here.
Other choices, if you don’t need so much dexterity is maybe a Maras, or perhaps a Crescent Moon, which would be ALL the leech you’d need. I personally use a rare with +2 barb skills, 6% ML, 15 dexterity amulet on my Titan.
Rings: Ravenfrost on one hand (dexterity, CBF), and a Rare/Crafted with stats on the other, assuming you have Mana leech from somewhere else. Otherwise suck it up and put a Manald on there. 20 to life helps!
Charms: You’ll want about half of your inventory filled with 18 to 20 life charms. It is desirable to put Sharps, fast R/W, etc. in the other side. Sharps with Vita are awesome, but stay legit, will ya!
I often get a lot of people asking, “well what about vampire gaze, or what about string of ears, or what about shaftstop?” While they are excellent equipment choices for PvP builds, they have far superior counterparts for the PvM Titan build... I mean who needs damage reduced gear if any monster within 5 feet of you dies in a whirl or two...
A note about leech: Some folks believe that since you will have life under 2000, you’ll want tons of life leech, like a BvB dueler. This is simply not true for many reasons. First of all, this build is mainly PvM, and not may things can one-hit kill you. With such huge damage, you can often fill a bulb with one blow, certainly with one whirl, even with just 5% life leech. Also, unlike BvB or PvP, monsters don’t block, so you don’t have to rely on a lucky shot to leech back your life. You’ll hit most every time.
Mercenary Tips
1. Get a Nightmare Act 2 Offensive Mercenary for his Might aura. Level him with you and get him stuff to stay alive. (Mine even has his OWN CWPoQ!)
2. See number one above.
Leveling Guide
I know, you’re saying, “What the hell I need a leveling guide for a PvM cookie cutter barb!??! Rush me to cows, level me to 66 and get me my War Pike and let me cut loose!”
Bah to that! This is such a cool build, and his mercenary is such a big help, take your time and enjoy it!
Normal – 1 to 25
This IS the place you can hurry a little. Try to find a nice lance or something with 75% to 100% ED and a minor speed modifier. Larzuk sold me a Merciless Lance of Swiftness, and I Shaeled it to the -30 BP, and it has a max damage of 212. Level requirement is 25, and it is good enough to get me to 66 when I can use the War Pike. Polearm Titans could put a Shael in the set Bill (Hwanin’s Justice) and use it from 28 on up to their final weapon. (Thanks, Skitril, for the tip… shouldn’t be surprised you’d be watching out for the polers!)
Nightmare – 26 to 66
This seems like a long time to spend in Nightmare, but the payoff is worth it. Take your time in this diff, and keep your mercenary alive and level him as fast as you can. Get him a Spire of Honor as soon as he can use it. When you complete the difficulty, stay in NM cow runs until 66 and he is about there with you. It’ll really pay off in Hell. A good weapon here would be an ethereal Hone Sundan (unique Yari) with 3 Shaels. You can use it at 37. Just don’t forget to stop killin’ Nightmare cows every few minutes to let it repair itself! (Thanks again, Skit!)
Hell – 66 – on up
Once you can equip your War Pike, you’ll be the big man on campus. It’ll seem like you can run through Hell like you’re doing normal with all that damage, but the baddies actually have nasty auras, immunities, curses, etc. you have to deal with. I like to really play the game as it was intended, doing every quest and walking to every waypoint. Did you know there are actually six other whole waypoints in Act 3 besides Town and Durance 2?!? Wow! And you know how much of a pain those little fart Flayers are? Give them a taste of that big damage/range pike and you’ll see it’s the next best thing after Multishot to deal with them.
Once you get through Baal, you’ll be ready for cows, and you’ll see the Titan come into his own. No other barbarian build kills cows like a Titan with a big spear. It is truly a sight to see. Find some way to wiggle him into MF gear, and you’ll also find him to be one of the best Baal runners you can make, too.
Conclusion
I promised to mention The Mother of All War Pikes… Well, first take a look at this screenshot. It is of my Titan at level 89.
After wiping the drool off your face from looking at the weapon, check out his stats and damage. 12.3K WW and 15.7K Berserk. Definitely a “WOW-ER”. The only outside influence is his level 89 Might mercenary's aura. If that wasn’t enough, he’s actually not in his normal Titan regalia there. He has his MF jewelry on (boosts dexterity a lot so I can wear a Stealskull and Wealth) but he also has on a 160/60 armor. He normally has 577 strength, 105 dexterity and lists about 11.2K WW and 14.4K Berserk in his regular gear and Lionheart armor. Not too shabby!
The Mother of All War Pikes belonged to Fade2Grey, who was a frequent poster on the USEast trade forum. He was a super guy who recently retired, and had the heart to think of me to pass on the War Pike to. I’m honored to possess one of the most incredible, rare, and fully legit weapons on the Realms.
Oh yeah, and EVERY ONE of my buds say I need to repeat… This is NOT a viable PvP or BvB build!! Your ears will litter the marshes of the Blood Moor.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Diablo 2 LOD Blender Assassin Guide
Introduction
Blender Assassins are called this because they use a Blade Shield that whirls around them to constantly hit targets near them with Hit Freezes Target and Crushing Blow. Low level creatures in comparison to your character will simply shatter, regardless of hit points. A Shatter death is an instant kill. Blenders are most trying to get this shatter effect which can do incredible amounts of damage very quickly. Freeze will keep those creatures that are near you from being able to hit you. Even if the creatures don't shatter a constant beating from Blade Shield, which will always hit targets within the range, with 100% Crushing Blow will very quickly whittle away at monsters hit points since Crushing Blow reduces a creatures hit points by a percentage (See Formula Below) of the hit points they have left. The more life points that a creature has the more effective Crushing Blow becomes. Blenders still have to find a way to take away those last few life points of creatures being attacked. This can be done through a weapon switch or to by the use of a high level Phoenix Strike and with the help of Tiger Strike and Dragon Tail.
What is Crushing Blow?
Crushing Blow D2C: In Diablo II, Crushing Blow was enormously powerful, since it had the listed % chance of reducing a monster's current hit points by 50%. You could hit multiple times with this and kill quickly while doing very low damage. For example hitting for 1 damage on a 100 hps monster, but with Crushing Blow the monster's hps would be 100 > 49 > 24 > 12, in just 3 hits, rather than 97, if you had no Crushing. It only worked on normal monsters, not on bosses or other characters, and didn't work with ranged attacks at all.
Expansion and v1.08+ D2:Crushing Blow works with all attacks and on all targets, but the reduction in hps is much less than it was in D2. The following lists the actual percent hps removed. This is from a monster's current hps, not it's maximum, so you'll notice big drops on full hps monsters and very little on ones that are low.
Normal monster: 1/4 Melee, 1/8 Ranged Attack. Other: 1/10 Melee, 1/20 Ranged Attack.
"Other" includes all types of boss monsters as well as other players and their hirelings. This doesn't sound like much, but if Izzy has 100,000 hps, taking off 1/20th with your bow would be worth 5,000 hps.
Crushing Blow is best used with a high percentage, and when hitting very fast and for low damage it makes a big difference.
Why Hit Freezes Target?
Not only does it freeze creatures when it automatically hits creatures within your Blade Shield range, but it also gives you a chance to Shatter the creature right there. Player level vs. creature level is very important.
Hit Freezes Target Formula: The chance of freezing is 50 + (AL + (B*4) - DL) * 5 AL = attacker level, DL = defender level, B = freeze bonus from item (default is 1) if it's ranged, the AL has a -6 penalty. If it's ranged, the chance is divided by 3 freeze length = (chance - roll) * 2 + 25 frames with a minimum length of 25 frames (1 second) and a maximum length of 250 frames (10 seconds). Thanks to IceWraith
There is a level-based comparison rule in place that greatly diminishes the applicability of many Blade Shield friendly mods. Some of the mods impacted are: Hit Slows Target, Hit Freezes Target, Hit Blinds Target. From my experience, the only things where "What % you see is what you got" really are Knockback (behaves oddly), Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike and Hit Causes Monster To Flee. This means if you're not at least about 5 levels less or higher than your target monster, certain mods will basically not work, i.e., slows target. It makes weapons like the Minotaur, which would be a godly axe, totally suck.
Skill Allocation
9 Burst of Speed; See Below, figure out what level of BoS you need to hit your fastest breakpoint with your weapon of choice
20 Phoenix Strike
10 Blade Shield (Can Max if you are using some Double Strike)
20 Dragon Tail'
1 Tiger Strike (optional)
1 Venom (Optional)
1 Shadow Master
1 Dragon Flight (Extra Points)
1 Claw Mastery (Prerequisite, Not currently used)
1 Dragon Claw (Prerequisite, Not currently used)
87 Points Allocated so far
Note: You will get bonuses from + skill items you are wearing and take that into account so you do not waste skill points.
Note: Both Blade Shield and Blade Fury are supposed to be drastically changed in version 1.10, so save points in case you are required to put more points into those skills to keep them effective.
Mercenary Selection
Blessed Aim Mercenary (360% AR Bonus at level 20)
Interesting pick since almost no build, except the melee Necromancer or Sorceress, choose this Mercenary. But you have plenty of reasons for this choice.
1. You don't have a Mastery to improve attack rating. Claws don't work with a blender build because of limited range.
2. While some of your attacks (Phoenix Strike, Tiger Strike, Dragon Tail) will have an attack bonus many will have none or almost no attack bonus (Normal Attack, Cobra Strike, Dragon Flight).
3. Your equipment cannot really adequately fix this problem without Eth bug which may be fixed in 1.10.
4. Hitting with Cobra Strike for charges and actually landing a finisher to release the charges is what actually keeps you alive.
Defiance Mercenary
1. You will be close to the action so a higher defense rating can't hurt
2. This mercenary also tends to stay alive longer because he gets hit less too.
3. He does nothing to help your killing speed though
Might Mercenary
1. Added damage from this is nice, but doesn't aid much in the Crushing Blow damage
2. Does help for finishing blow, since Crushing Blow reduces by percentage it can never actually do the last point of kill damage
Holy Freeze Mercenary
1. Slows down how often you are hit
2. Slows down creatures
3. Chill from Blade Shield should do the same thing to everything but Cold Immunes
4. Phoenix Strike can also chill enemies
5. Burst of Speed already increases your R/W speed a lot
Statistics Allocation
Strength -- What you need for equipment (Possibly even taking into account tweaking for pluses from items
Dexterity -- What you need for max block (Blessed Aim will take care of the rest, but this will add to Kick Damage)
Vitality -- Everything else (3 life points for every point of vitality), important to this build because, blenders tend to be close to the action
Energy -- Base, unless you are attempting the Faster Cast Rate Build (See Below)
Equipment Selection
Extra Mods to Look For
Hit Freezes Target: This mod gives you a chance to Shatter your enemy which can be the most damage in the game. Chilling nearby creatures when they are hit by your Blade Shield also will keep them from hitting you.
Amplify Damage: Currently the Hell Physical Damage Penalty is in effect and, I believe affects Crushing Blow in Hell. This is can be rectified by the use of Atma's Scarab or other item that has % chance to cast Amplify Damage when you hit. Between your very fast attack speed and your Blade Shield you will be hitting very often and will be able to set off Amplify Damage a lot with this build. This will help your leach, your mercenary's leach, as well as your damage. The Physical Damage Penalty is rumored to be eliminated in version 1.10.
Plus skill Items especially plus Martial Arts Items help this build. Final Damage is done thru Phoenix Strike, Tiger Strike, and Dragon Tail finisher, all dependant on skill level for damage.
Staying alive when in close proximity to melee creatures when using your blade shield makes
Physical Damage Reduction
Resist All is important
Plus Vitality/Life Mods
Knockback ???-- Good and bad - Good because it can keep a crowd off you especially usefully with a quickly pulsing Blade Shield. Bad because it will also push creatures outside the range of your Blade Shield and weapons. (My recommendation is to try your setup both ways and see which works best with your style of play)
Hit Slows Target, this mod may currently be bugged however.
IAS-- while you don't need a lot, you may need some extra IAS to hit your last break point for your weapon speed. Some weapons need a lot of IAS to reach last breakpoints
Deadly Strike A % chance of dealing Double Damage. The damage is doubled after all other bonuses Strength or Dexterity modifying weapon damage, this excludes elemental damage. Will never stack with Asn/Barb/Ama Critical Strike bonuses (You won't be getting a critical strike bonus since you won't be using claw mastery). It rolls for 2x damage for one, then the other if it fails. So having this increases double damage chances, but never allows 4x damage. This will double the normal damage of Blade Shield and help to do more damage.
Defense: Being hit less is very important to a Blender. You will be right on top of your enemies, so being hit less is very important. Often this should be your guide when picking a shield or armor.
To a much lesser extent:
Pierce -- Currently not important, but if Blade Fury is improved in version 1.10 then Pierce may allow Blades to pass through to multiple targets
Life Leech isn't that important for two reasons
1. You don't do that much physical damage, since you can't leech off of crushing blow damage
2. Cobra Strike is such a good source of life leech
Attack Rating isn't as important if you are using Blessed Aim Mercenary
Enhanced Damage isn't all that important for the weapon. You will only really be leaching with Cobra Strike on the finishing moves, which will be either Dragon Tail or your normal attack (another reason for the Blessed Aim Mercenary).
Hit Causes Monster to Flee is a curse and will override Amplify Damage, which you absolutely do not want unless you want to spend most of your time running after fleeing cows.
Equipment for the Blender Assassin
Helms
Guillaume's Face: Winged Helm (Great Helm)187-245 Defense, 40 Durability,115 Strength Required, Clvl Req: 34, Item Level: 41 +120% Enhanced Defense, +30% Faster Hit Recovery, +35% Chance of Crushing Blow, +15% Chance of Deadly Strike, +15 Strength
Note: The only way you can get away without using this is with using some sort of really expensive Robo weapon.
Harlequin Crest: Shako +2 to All Skills,+1.5 Life per clvl. +1.5 Mana per clvl, +50% Better chance of getting magical item, Physical Damage Taken Reduced by 10%, +2 to Strength,+2 to Dexterity,+2 to Vitality,+2 to Energy
Assassin Circlet with +2 Assassin Skills or +3 Martial Arts Skills
Amulets
Atma's Scarab: (20% bonus to Attack Rating and 5% chance to cast Amplify Damage)
Highlord's Wrath: Deadly strike and plus one to all skills
Mara's Kaelidescope:
Assassin Amulet with Plus 2 Assassin Skills or Plus 3 Martial Arts, Plus Life or Vitality
Armor
Arkaine's Valor: Balrog Skin, (Splint Mail), 1027-1449 Defense, 30 Durability, 165 Strength Required, Medium Armor, Item Level: 85, Clvl req: 85 +150-180% Enhanced Defense, 30% Faster Hit Recovery, +1-2 to All Skills, -10-15 Physical Damage, +0.5 Vitality per Clvl
Shaft Stop (PDR)
Duriel's Shell (Resists and Cannot Be Frozen)
Ice Blink 154-172 Defense, 30 Durability, 51 Strength Required, Medium Armor, Item Level: 30, Clvl Req: 22, Hit Freezes Target, +30% to Cold Resist, +4 Light Radius, Magical Damage Taken Reduced by 1, +70-80% Enhanced Defense
Rattlecage 328-335 Defense, 55 Durability, 70 Strength Required, Medium Armor, Item Level: 39, Clvl Req: 29, Hit Causes Monster to Flee 40%, +45 to Attack Rating, +25% Chance of Crushing Blow, +200 Defense
Fast ReCast of Blade Shield Build:
Skin of the Vipermagi: Serpent skin Armor, 246-279 Defense, 24 Durability, 43 Strength Required, Light Armor , Item Level: 37, Clvl req: 29 +120% Enhanced Defense, +20-35% Resistance To All, 30% Faster Cast Rate, Magical Damage Taken Reduced by 9-13, +1 to All Skills
Que-Hegue’s Wisdom - Honorable Mention
MageFists
Silkweave Boots
Stones of Jordan
Shields
Stormshield: (Kite Shield), 94-114 +3.75*Clvl Defense, Indestructible, 156 Strength Required, Item Level: 77, Clvl req: 73 +3.75 Defense per Clvl, Physical Damage Reduced by 35%, +30 to Strength, Indestructible, 35% Faster Blocking, +25% to Lightning Resist, +25 Chance to Block %, +60% to Cold Resist, Attacker Takes 10 Lightning Damage Listed-Blocking:Pal: 77%, Am/As/B: 72% D/S/N: 67%, Weight: Light
Whistan’s Shield: 175% Enhanced Defense: Fastest Blocking, +55 to block, Half Freeze Duration, +5 to Light Radius, Note: this is a set item with Guilliume’s Face
Gloves
Blood Gloves: Magical Heavy, or Sharkskin Gloves (Excep),,Vampirebone Gloves (Elite), + Jewel (any), + Nef Rune (#4), + Perfect Ruby Blood Gloves, Preset Mods:1-3% Life Leech, +10-20 Hit Points, 5-10% Crushing Blow
Venom Grip: Demonhide Gloves 81-118 Defense, 14 Durability, 20 Strength Required, Item level: 37, Clvl req: 29, +30% to Poison Resist, +5% to Maximum Poison Resist, Adds 59 Poison Damage Over 4 Seconds, +5% Chance of Crushing Blow, +5% Life Stolen Per Hit, +15-25 Defense, +130-160% Enhanced Defense
Hellmouth Gauntlets: No help for the build but fun to see a volley of meteors and firestorms around your Assassin.
Hit Power Gloves Magical Chain Gloves, or Heavy Bracers (Excep), or Vambraces (Elite), + Jewel (any), + Ort Rune (#9), + Perfect Sapphire Hitpower Gloves Preset Mods: 5% chance of casting Slvl 4 Frost Nova when hit, +3-7 Damage to Attacker, Knockback
Biggest Mod is +2 Martial Arts Skills (affects Phoenix Strike, Tiger Strike, Cobra Strike (attack rating bonus included), and Dragon Tail) IAS may be another mod you'll need to hit your last breakpoint for your weapon
Belt
String of Ears (PDR, Life Leech)
Razortail (Pierce)
Trang's Belt (+75-100 Defense, +30 Stamina, +5 Replenish Life (0.488 Life Per Second), +66 Life, Cannot be Frozen , -40% Item Requirements, +25-50 Mana
Rings
Assassin Rings + Assassin skills, plus life,
Raven Frost (Cannot Be Frozen), Cold Damage, Attack Rating
Bul Kathos Wedding Ring + Skills and Life Leech
Boots
Goblin Toe: 25% Crushing Blow, 20% Faster R/W
Gore Rider: 15% Deadly Blow, 15% Crushing Blow, 30% Faster R/W
Note: Crushing Blow is a very rare mod, but Hit Freezes target is even more rare, IceBlink is the only non-weapon I could find. Woestave is one of the few weapons with Hit Freezes Target.
Note on Ophiums Call Set: If you are not going to use stormshield or a Robo weapon and want to run with the Blender Build, you might want to use Ophiums Call set. It is just a shield, helm, belt, and gloves. The shield may be the second best shield for the build because of its enormously high blocking percentage. While ideally you might want to get the extra 10% Crushing Blow from BLOOD crafted gloves, the Magnus Skins have dual leach and 20 IAS, and no belt really effects this build too much. The set bonuses aren't bad: Partial Set Bonuses: ! Wearing any two items: +35 Life ! Wearing any three items: Attacker takes 5 damage Full Set Bonus: +50 Life, +10 Dexterity, +20 Strength, +100 Defense, +15% Resistance To All, +80% Better chance of getting magical item.
Note Low Level Items:
Clegclaw's Pincers: Knockback and hit slows -- Set has +35% Crushing Blow on it
STRENGTH Runeword AmTir has 25% Crushing Blow
Magic Find Setup
Skulder's Ire
Harlequin Crest Shako
Goldwrap
War Travelers/Gore Rider/Goblin Toe
Chance Guards or better yet MF CB gloves
Atma's Scarab Amulet 20% bonus to Attack Rating and 5% chance to cast Amplify Damage
MF Amulet and Rings with plus Martial Arts Skills
Tancred’s Amulet and Boots? - +78% Magic Find when both worn
-- Normally good for Magic Find, but since you can usually get MF and other better + skill mods on an Amulet and resists on the boots
Weapon Switch : Gull Dagger & Rhyme Shield or MF Claws
Best Weapon:
Theories for Weapons:
1. Weapon and Shield
2. Two-Handed Weapon with a lot of Range
3. Faster Cast Rate Weapons
4. Huffing Weapons
5. Magic Find Weapons
6. Robo-Weapons
7. High Damage Weapons
8. Ranged Weapons
9. Claws
For Theory 1: Weapon and Shield
BLACK: ThulIoNef, Thul (10) + Io (16) + Nef (4), Clubs, hammers, maces only. Clvl Required: 35, v1.09: Realm & Open, +120% Enhanced Damage, +200 to Attack Rating, +3-14 Cold Damage (3 sec), 15% Increased Attack Speed, Knockback, 12 Level 4 Corpse Explosion Charges, 40% Chance of Crushing Blow, -2 Magic Damage, +10 to Vitality
Note: BLACK Runeword Scourge, not terribly expensive. And is considered the item to use for this build right now. BLACK Runeword may only be placed in Maces, Clubs, etc. The Runeword has tremendous mods for this build.
Robo-Berserker Axe: 24-71 Damage Average ( 47.5), 26 Durability, Strength Req: 138, Dexterity Req: 59, Item Level: 71, Clvl Req: 63 D2 Sockets: 3, D2X Sockets: 1-6, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 2x3, Weapon Speed: 0, Swing Speed: Fast: Am/As/B/D/N/P, Normal: S
Robo-Phase Blade: 31-35 Damage Average (33), 0 Dur (Indes), Strength Req: 25, Dexterity Req: 136, Item Level: 63, Clvl Req: 55 Sockets: 1-6, Range: 2, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 2x3, Weapon Speed: -30, Swing Speed: V Fast: Am/As/B/D/N/P/S,
Robo-Scourge: 3-80 1H Damage Average (38.5), 65 Durability, Strength Req: 125, Dexterity Req: 77, Item Level: 67, Clvl Req: 59 Sockets: 1-5, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 1x3, 150% Damage to Undead Weapon Speed: -1 0, Swing Speed: Very Fast: As/P, Fast: Am/B/D/N/S
Note: Either may be very good for a one handed Robo-Blender Weapon. Noting that Phase Blade is indestructible, but also only range 2.
Stormshield
Whistan’s Shield
Note: This setup basically requires Iceblink Armor to get Hit Freezes Target Mod. Shattering while cool, is not terribly effective unless you are extremely higher level than the creatures you are attacking.
Note: Banar's Star & Tiamat's Rebuke-- Maybe much better after v1.10 if Elemental Damage can be passed on thru Blade Shield and Blade Fury
For Theory 2: Two-Handed Weapon with a lot of Range
1. Hone Sundan: Yari, (75-90) - (156-180) Damage, 28 Durability, 101 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Socketed (3) , Item Level: 45 , Clvl Req: 37 +160-200% Enhanced Damage, Adds 20-40 damage, 45% Chance of Crushing Blow, Repairs 1 durability in 10 seconds Range: 5, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Weapon Speed: 0, Swing Speed:, Normal: Am/B, Slow: D/N/P/S/, Very Slow: As
Note: Yari has three open sockets - See Robo for socketing advice.
2. The Cranium Basher: Thunder Maul, (Great Maul) (122-135) - (563-635) Damage, Indestructible, 253 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Item Level: 91, Clvl Req: 87 +200-240% Enhanced Damage, Adds 20 Min & Max damage, +25 to Strength, 20% Increased Attack Speed, Indestructible, All Resistances +25, 75% Chance of Crushing Blow, 4% Chance to cast level 1 Amplify Damage on striking, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 110 Strength, Weapon Speed: 20, Swing Speed: Fast: D, Normal: Rest (Assassin 2.5 attacks per second possible, enormous IAS necessary)
Note: I almost didn’t list this item under this theory, but with both Amplify Damage and Crushing Blow on the same item, this item gets mention, even though it only has a range of 3. Cranium Basher also requires an enormous amount of IAS to get to 2.5 attacks per second.
3. Woestave: Halberd, (15-18) - (55-64) Damage, 55 Durability, 75 Strength Required, 47 Dexterity Required, Item Level: 38, Clvl Req: 28 +20-40% Enhanced Damage, -3 to Light Radius, 50% Chance of Open Wounds, -50 to Targets Defense Per Hit, Hit Blinds Target, Slows Target by 50%, Prevents Monster Healing, Hit Freezes Target Range: 5, Weapon Speed: 0, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Swing Speed:Fast: D/S, Normal: As/B/N/P, Slow: Am
Note: While Woestave has no inherent Crushing Blow, it does have many very good modifications for this build. It has high range and hit freezes target. It also has high range. This may be a good item. But look to make sure that Hit Blinds Target isn’t overwriting your Amplify Damage.
4. Robo-Giant Thresher 40-114 Damage: Average (74), 55 Durability, Strength Req: 188, Dexterity Req: 140, Item Level: 76, Clvl Req: 68 Sockets: 1-6, Range: 5, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 2x4 Weapon Speed: -10, Swing Speed: Very Fast: D, Fast: N/P/S, Normal: Am/As/B (2.5 attacks per second)
Note: This has six sockets, so you could get all your Crushing Blow from this weapon in theory. See Robo-Weapons.
For Theory 3. Faster Cast Rate Weapons
1. Wizard Spike
2. Suicide Branch
3. Claws with Faster Cast Rate on them
4. Lidless Eye Shield
For Theory 4. Huffing Weapons
Often used by Barbarians who use echoing weapons on weapon switch in order to have the greatest possible battle orders and to use Find Item and Find Potion. Burst of Speed, Venom, Cloak of Shadows and Shadow Master all benefit from the level of the skill at the time it was cast. This makes having claws with +3 to Shadow Skills (even better if it also has + to one of those individual skills) on weapon switch more effective.
Note: It might be possible in this build to have claws with + Skill that might have up to three sockets each or a total of six sockets.
For Theory 5. Magic Find Weapons
1. Gull Dagger
2. Rhyme Shield
3. Pair of MF Claws
4. Ali Baba Sword
For Theory 6. Robo-Weapons
Robo-Weapons, What should be Socketed?
1. Ber -- 20% Crushing Blow
2. Eth -- Currently the Eth bug makes attack rating useless (hopefully this will be fixed in 1.10)
3. Jah -- ITD (attack rating can be a problem)
4. Lo -- 20% Chance of Deadly Strike (Doubles Damage--What it doubles for Blade Shield Damage is in question)
5. Zod -- Indestructible (Blade Shield seems to drain Durability)
6. Shael -- 20% IAS (Possibly very important for Werewolves)
Note: Cham -- 32% Chance of Hit Freezes Target (It appears that this doesn't work as it should and just give cold damage in weapons, which will not be passed on through blade shield)
For Theory 7. High Damage Weapons
1. Cruel Colossus Blade of Evisceration
2. The Cranium Basher: Thunder Maul, (Great Maul) (122-135) - (563-635) Damage, Indestructible, 253 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Item Level: 91, Clvl Req: 87 +200-240% Enhanced Damage, Adds 20 Min & Max damage, +25 to Strength, 20% Increased Attack Speed, Indestructible, All Resistances +25, 75% Chance of Crushing Blow, 4% Chance to cast level 1 Amplify Damage on striking, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 110 Strength, Weapon Speed: 20, Swing Speed: Fast: D, Normal: Rest (Assassin 2.5 attacks per second possible, enormous IAS necessary)
3. Schaefer's Hammer: Legendary Mallet, (War Hammer) (102-117) - (124-142) Damage +2* Clvl Max Damage, Indestructible, 189 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Item Level: 83 Clvl Req: 79 +100-130% Enhanced Damage, +2 Max damage per Clvl, +16 to Attack Rating per Clvl, Adds 50-200 lightning damage, +50 to Life, Lightning Resist +75%, 20% Increased Attack Speed, Indestructible, +1 to Light Radius, 20% Chance to cast level 10 Static Field on striking, Range: 1, Damage Bonus: 110 Strength, Weapon Speed: 20, Swing Speed: Fast: As/P, Normal: Am/B/D/N/S
4. High Damage Claws
Note: All these weapons should be used to deliver the finishers and release charges. These would want to use normal attack instead of a kick to deliver final damage. These would benefit highly from Tiger Strike charges and would be a good source to use Cobra Charges to leech.
Note: Special for Schaefer’s Hammer, Its range is 1, but it does give off Static Field charges when it hits. Which can be released by the Blade Shield.
Note: Special for Claws: This build may want to use Claw Mastery and Dragon Claw may add up to quite a lot of damage especially when coupled with Tiger Strike.
For Theory 8. Ranged Weapons
Hydra or Crusader Bow 6 Socket Bow with 6 Perfect Emeralds
Kuko Shakaku
Demon Machine
Note: All these items would benefit from added Pierce, probably from the Razortail Belt. Pierce allows you to hit more than one target with a single arrow.
Note: Both Kuko and Demon Machine have splash damage from explosive bolts they fire. This splash damage also carries the Crushing Blow of the character. Splash Damage can hit the same target more than once.
For Theory 9. Claws
Scissors Suwannah Three Sockets with nice mods with Ber Runes
Cruel Scissors Suwaanhah with good mods (MA or Venom)
Bartocs +6 to Martial Arts
Note: Each claw hits separately so CB is only effective for the claw that actually hits not the characters total Crushing Blow Chance.
Note: Disadvantages: Range of Blade Shield only one, at least for 1.09;
Skills in Gameplay
Blade Shield: This is the key to the Blender Build. Damage from this skill is negligible. All chances to cast when you hit do apply to blade shield, which is why this is such a nice skill. It can attack multiple creatures at the same time. Currently the range is not the listed 3.3 yards, but the attack range of your weapons. This precludes you from using claws (range 1) in this build. Just like the weapon affecting the range of Blade Shield, your weapon's Attack Speed will also affect your Blade Shields rate of pulse, or how often it will automatically hit creatures within its range. This is obviously very important to a Blender build so absolutely hitting the best break point for your weapon is important. Note: Blade Shield currently very quickly runs through your weapons durability. Putting points in Blade Shield will make it last longer, cost more to cast, and do slightly more base damage. For version 1.09, putting more than one point (remember that you will have some plus skill items as well) in Blade Shield will only gain you more time (at level 1 only 20 seconds) before you have to recast your Blade Shield, but in future versions this may be very important. Level 20 Blade Shield does 110-141 Damage but cost 65 mana to cast and will last for 96 seconds. Level 1 Blade Shield 1-30 Damage but costs 27 mana for only 20 seconds.
Blade Shield does appear to pulse every time you recast it. Thus you with Faster Cast Rate gear you can pulse Blade Shield very rapidly. This means that Crushing Blow can be delivered to every creature within Blade Shield range with each recast. This will be much quicker than any weapon speed that you can achieve. But remember that the current build has low mana pool. Recasting Blade Shield, much like recasting high level Lightning Nova can be very mana intensive.
Elemental Damage from items is not passed on when Blade Shield hits, at least in v 1.09. Blade Shield pulse speed may not vary upon weapon speed. Confirmation would be helpful.
Phoenix Strike: Even though this build is based around the Blender and Crushing Blow, this is your main attack. It can attack multiple creatures at a time, just like your Blade Shield. It has an Attack Rating Booster built into it as well. This attack allows you to use the appropriate finisher for each elementally immune set of monsters. Remember quite often this will be what does the majority of damage other than Crushing Blow.
Dragon Tail: I use this as my primary finisher, because I’m almost always hitting more than one target with this attack. Its a kick damage to target is calculated with a formula. All Kick damage is determined by the following formula: minimum damage = (STR+DEX-20)/4 maximum damage = (STR+DEX-20)/3 example: If your STRENGTH is 150, and your DEXTERITY is 150, then your base kick damage would be 70-93. +%Enhanced Damage on weapons does not affect kick damage. +%Enhanced Damage on non-weapons is added as if it were an additional +strength in the equation. Plus Additional Damage does not affect Kick Damage. Basically, the more Strength and Dexterity you have the more damage you will do. Realize the dexterity you are using to obtain max Shield Block is also extra Dexterity for extra damage in Dragon Tail. Often this is less than your normal attack damage; check this, if it is you will want to be able to switch to normal attack for single targets. Dragon Tail's real beauty is that is has splash damage. (Supposedly additional fire charms and fire damage will increase this radius, but I haven't tested this.) Splash Damage is fire damage calculated as a percentage of the physical damage done by your kick to all those within the radius of your splash. Additional Tiger Strike Damage does seem to increase both the damage and radius of this blast. As a bonus you can hurt PI's with the splash damage from your Dragon Tail attack. The splash damage will not carry Crushing Blow damage, like the Crushing Blow damage is carried over the splash of Demon Machine Crossbow. This will probably be your best finisher most of the time especially when fighting multiple foes. Note that especially when you are leveling this can eat up your mana, as you get to higher levels you will have a larger mana pool and effective use of Cobra Strike will help to keep your Mana Pool full. Also remember that your splash can effect PI's but the kick must hit a non-PI creature.
Note: Some People don't find Dragon Tail necessary or even all that useful.
Dragon Talon: This is another finishing move worth mention, since this is an enormously quick series of three kicks. The damage from the kicks won't be that much and only the first kick will deliver the charges from your other skills. But its a great way to get three very fast Crushing Blow hits onto a single target.
Normal Attack: Many characters simply use normal attack to deliver the finishing move. Because of Kick damage calculation does not take into account many weapon bonuses.
Burst of Speed: This is your primary "Aura." It allows you the most freedom to actually hit your weapons top break point for attack speed. It also grants you extra run/walk speed. Of the most importance is having enough points in this skill to hit your last weapon speed breakpoint. Again see here. BTW, the German calc uses the client-side speeds (what you see on your monitor), which are faster than server-side speeds (what battle.net sees). However, the server automatically takes priority over the client, so you're actually slower than what you see. So, going by server-side speeds, you actually need slvl 9 BoS + 29% IAS to hit 8 frames with a Berzerker Axe. Slvl 15 BoS + 20% IAS works as well. For the 'Black' Scourge, you need slvl 9 BoS + 15% IAS (the 'Black' runeword already provides the 15% IAS you need, though).
Tiger Strike: Will be modifying finisher, either your Dragon Tail, Dragon Talon or your normal attack. Considering the low physical damage of your weapon of choice, this can be more useful when you think you are about to kill your prey with a real last hit or when you need to recharge life or mana through the use of Cobra Strike. Having a cruel colossus blade of evisceration on weapon switch may also be useful to finishing off big targets.
Note: Tiger Strike too is not a crucial skill to this build.
Cobra Strike: has enormous Life Leach (Mana Leach as well with two charge ups). More points in this skill equals more LL and ML, but more importantly more Attack Rating. On far too many of my assassins, I have died because I couldn't charge up my Cobra Strike because I couldn't hit with it. This skill and the fact that you cannot use Claw Mastery for this build are probably why you most need that Blessed Aim Mercenary.
Dragon Flight: At high levels has an enormous damage bonus, but it hits only a single target and has a casting delay. Its biggest bonus is a limited teleport ability when caught in a pack or to cross obstacles with the Shadow Master trick.
Venom: is a great "Aura" to use before you begin a fight. This is not an important part of this build, it may be helpful in v 1.10 if Blizzard fixes Poison. If you want to try it, You should Poison your enemies from a distance. Also, if you are using Venom, you aren't using Burst of Speed (which will drastically increase both your walking speed and Attack Rate), thus you will want to infect as many creatures with Venom as possible (emphasis on Pierce and Explosions) then start using Burst of Speed. Then use Crushing Blow and other Melee/Elemental attacks in this build to kill while you are still doing what is really timed damage from Venom. Since this build emphasizes plus skills much like a Sorceress or Necromancer, you will have a very high level Venom if you max this skill. Adding a poison charm or two to change your timer to the correct speed is very important. See the Venom Strategy Guide in the Strategy Compendium for a more comprehensive guide to using this skill, even though it says it is Player vs. Player it has an entire section on Player vs. Monster. See http://www.diabloii.net/strategy/x-...pvp-xenotip.php
Shadow Master: Purely a meat shield in this build. More points are really only more hit points. All traps and Cloak of Shadows the Master will lay will be half the level you have in Shadow Master skill. You will have a lot of plus skills in this build and if you want to max this guy out so that he will be laying heavy duty traps, its your choice. Often big Venom users that have lots of plus Assassin skills or Shadow Tree Skills enjoy a Master that can lay traps that can do damage. Personally, I figure he's just a meat shield and thus he can always be recast, so go with base points and let your plus skills boost his life.
Cloak of Shadows: Especially if you decide to use a Defiance or Might Mercenary as opposed to a Blessed Aim Mercenary, you may want this skill to enhance your attack rating.
Blade Fury: may get a substantial increase from version 1.10. Its rumored that this skill will pass on elemental damage and also Venom damage. If this occurs then this build will almost surely want to make use of the skill. Venom would be a great opening round attack, initially poisoning the enemy (letting that damage continue to occur during the entire fight) and then quickly casting Burst of Speed, allowing you faster Blade Fury attack speed. This would allow you to use nasty Crushing Blow from a distance in one weapon setup. Very nice for the Strong Lightning Enchanted Bosses, which you aren't going to want to get on top of. Then as you get on top of the enemy, you would quit using Blade Fury and start using Blade Shield and Phoenix Strike. Points in this may or may not be important, depending on the formula for damage on Blades, currently Blade Fury carries no mods from your equipment and is worthless.
Claw Mastery: You will have a point in this as a prerequisite. If you do use Claws on weapon switch you will get some bonus and the Deadly Strike bug. But with this build you probably won't have the points to add more to this skill unless you are planning on using this as a weapon switch. Maxing this may be very helpful if you actually are going to attack with your Claws.
Double Claw: Just as above this build doesn't normally use claws because of the small range it grants to blade shield. However in purely attacking a boss, claws can be effective since if you are hitting a single target, they are also automatically within your Blade Shield range. If you aren't worried about dealing with crowds or more than one or two enemies at a time, you may want to use Claw Mastery and Double Claw as a finisher. Maxing this may be helpful if you want to use this as a finisher.
Mind Blast: Not heavily used in this build. Might be a good escape skill. There is also a bug that allows converted creatures that return to being evil with only 1 hitpoint.
Psychic Hammer: Not heavily used in this build.
Death Sentry: One point in Death Sentry can be helpful in leveling and to finish off whittled down creatures. Death Sentry allows the trap to explode for an enormous amount of damage with a Corpse Explosion when a creature comes near it. The lightning damage of the trap goes up with each additional point, but most of the damage is from the Corpse Explosion damage. Also Death Sentry has a number of prerequisites so try to pick it up on an item. Corpse Explosion is a good skill for when you have a lot of creatures on top of you closely packed because of the massive damage it can do.
Note: Someone has said that at level 10 you get a larger range of damage from your Corpse Explosion on Death Sentry. I haven't personally confirmed this.
Other Traps: Some players like to use traps for additional damage and to stun opponents. Maxing one of these might be worth investment since they will continue to fire without a lot of attention from you and you will be using a lot of plus skill items to up the trap damage. The Blender build only requires a few skills to be effective, so it gives you a lot of choices to build your character in whatever way you'd like.
Blender Assassins are called this because they use a Blade Shield that whirls around them to constantly hit targets near them with Hit Freezes Target and Crushing Blow. Low level creatures in comparison to your character will simply shatter, regardless of hit points. A Shatter death is an instant kill. Blenders are most trying to get this shatter effect which can do incredible amounts of damage very quickly. Freeze will keep those creatures that are near you from being able to hit you. Even if the creatures don't shatter a constant beating from Blade Shield, which will always hit targets within the range, with 100% Crushing Blow will very quickly whittle away at monsters hit points since Crushing Blow reduces a creatures hit points by a percentage (See Formula Below) of the hit points they have left. The more life points that a creature has the more effective Crushing Blow becomes. Blenders still have to find a way to take away those last few life points of creatures being attacked. This can be done through a weapon switch or to by the use of a high level Phoenix Strike and with the help of Tiger Strike and Dragon Tail.
What is Crushing Blow?
Crushing Blow D2C: In Diablo II, Crushing Blow was enormously powerful, since it had the listed % chance of reducing a monster's current hit points by 50%. You could hit multiple times with this and kill quickly while doing very low damage. For example hitting for 1 damage on a 100 hps monster, but with Crushing Blow the monster's hps would be 100 > 49 > 24 > 12, in just 3 hits, rather than 97, if you had no Crushing. It only worked on normal monsters, not on bosses or other characters, and didn't work with ranged attacks at all.
Expansion and v1.08+ D2:Crushing Blow works with all attacks and on all targets, but the reduction in hps is much less than it was in D2. The following lists the actual percent hps removed. This is from a monster's current hps, not it's maximum, so you'll notice big drops on full hps monsters and very little on ones that are low.
Normal monster: 1/4 Melee, 1/8 Ranged Attack. Other: 1/10 Melee, 1/20 Ranged Attack.
"Other" includes all types of boss monsters as well as other players and their hirelings. This doesn't sound like much, but if Izzy has 100,000 hps, taking off 1/20th with your bow would be worth 5,000 hps.
Crushing Blow is best used with a high percentage, and when hitting very fast and for low damage it makes a big difference.
Why Hit Freezes Target?
Not only does it freeze creatures when it automatically hits creatures within your Blade Shield range, but it also gives you a chance to Shatter the creature right there. Player level vs. creature level is very important.
Hit Freezes Target Formula: The chance of freezing is 50 + (AL + (B*4) - DL) * 5 AL = attacker level, DL = defender level, B = freeze bonus from item (default is 1) if it's ranged, the AL has a -6 penalty. If it's ranged, the chance is divided by 3 freeze length = (chance - roll) * 2 + 25 frames with a minimum length of 25 frames (1 second) and a maximum length of 250 frames (10 seconds). Thanks to IceWraith
There is a level-based comparison rule in place that greatly diminishes the applicability of many Blade Shield friendly mods. Some of the mods impacted are: Hit Slows Target, Hit Freezes Target, Hit Blinds Target. From my experience, the only things where "What % you see is what you got" really are Knockback (behaves oddly), Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike and Hit Causes Monster To Flee. This means if you're not at least about 5 levels less or higher than your target monster, certain mods will basically not work, i.e., slows target. It makes weapons like the Minotaur, which would be a godly axe, totally suck.
Skill Allocation
9 Burst of Speed; See Below, figure out what level of BoS you need to hit your fastest breakpoint with your weapon of choice
20 Phoenix Strike
10 Blade Shield (Can Max if you are using some Double Strike)
20 Dragon Tail'
1 Tiger Strike (optional)
1 Venom (Optional)
1 Shadow Master
1 Dragon Flight (Extra Points)
1 Claw Mastery (Prerequisite, Not currently used)
1 Dragon Claw (Prerequisite, Not currently used)
87 Points Allocated so far
Note: You will get bonuses from + skill items you are wearing and take that into account so you do not waste skill points.
Note: Both Blade Shield and Blade Fury are supposed to be drastically changed in version 1.10, so save points in case you are required to put more points into those skills to keep them effective.
Mercenary Selection
Blessed Aim Mercenary (360% AR Bonus at level 20)
Interesting pick since almost no build, except the melee Necromancer or Sorceress, choose this Mercenary. But you have plenty of reasons for this choice.
1. You don't have a Mastery to improve attack rating. Claws don't work with a blender build because of limited range.
2. While some of your attacks (Phoenix Strike, Tiger Strike, Dragon Tail) will have an attack bonus many will have none or almost no attack bonus (Normal Attack, Cobra Strike, Dragon Flight).
3. Your equipment cannot really adequately fix this problem without Eth bug which may be fixed in 1.10.
4. Hitting with Cobra Strike for charges and actually landing a finisher to release the charges is what actually keeps you alive.
Defiance Mercenary
1. You will be close to the action so a higher defense rating can't hurt
2. This mercenary also tends to stay alive longer because he gets hit less too.
3. He does nothing to help your killing speed though
Might Mercenary
1. Added damage from this is nice, but doesn't aid much in the Crushing Blow damage
2. Does help for finishing blow, since Crushing Blow reduces by percentage it can never actually do the last point of kill damage
Holy Freeze Mercenary
1. Slows down how often you are hit
2. Slows down creatures
3. Chill from Blade Shield should do the same thing to everything but Cold Immunes
4. Phoenix Strike can also chill enemies
5. Burst of Speed already increases your R/W speed a lot
Statistics Allocation
Strength -- What you need for equipment (Possibly even taking into account tweaking for pluses from items
Dexterity -- What you need for max block (Blessed Aim will take care of the rest, but this will add to Kick Damage)
Vitality -- Everything else (3 life points for every point of vitality), important to this build because, blenders tend to be close to the action
Energy -- Base, unless you are attempting the Faster Cast Rate Build (See Below)
Equipment Selection
Extra Mods to Look For
Hit Freezes Target: This mod gives you a chance to Shatter your enemy which can be the most damage in the game. Chilling nearby creatures when they are hit by your Blade Shield also will keep them from hitting you.
Amplify Damage: Currently the Hell Physical Damage Penalty is in effect and, I believe affects Crushing Blow in Hell. This is can be rectified by the use of Atma's Scarab or other item that has % chance to cast Amplify Damage when you hit. Between your very fast attack speed and your Blade Shield you will be hitting very often and will be able to set off Amplify Damage a lot with this build. This will help your leach, your mercenary's leach, as well as your damage. The Physical Damage Penalty is rumored to be eliminated in version 1.10.
Plus skill Items especially plus Martial Arts Items help this build. Final Damage is done thru Phoenix Strike, Tiger Strike, and Dragon Tail finisher, all dependant on skill level for damage.
Staying alive when in close proximity to melee creatures when using your blade shield makes
Physical Damage Reduction
Resist All is important
Plus Vitality/Life Mods
Knockback ???-- Good and bad - Good because it can keep a crowd off you especially usefully with a quickly pulsing Blade Shield. Bad because it will also push creatures outside the range of your Blade Shield and weapons. (My recommendation is to try your setup both ways and see which works best with your style of play)
Hit Slows Target, this mod may currently be bugged however.
IAS-- while you don't need a lot, you may need some extra IAS to hit your last break point for your weapon speed. Some weapons need a lot of IAS to reach last breakpoints
Deadly Strike A % chance of dealing Double Damage. The damage is doubled after all other bonuses Strength or Dexterity modifying weapon damage, this excludes elemental damage. Will never stack with Asn/Barb/Ama Critical Strike bonuses (You won't be getting a critical strike bonus since you won't be using claw mastery). It rolls for 2x damage for one, then the other if it fails. So having this increases double damage chances, but never allows 4x damage. This will double the normal damage of Blade Shield and help to do more damage.
Defense: Being hit less is very important to a Blender. You will be right on top of your enemies, so being hit less is very important. Often this should be your guide when picking a shield or armor.
To a much lesser extent:
Pierce -- Currently not important, but if Blade Fury is improved in version 1.10 then Pierce may allow Blades to pass through to multiple targets
Life Leech isn't that important for two reasons
1. You don't do that much physical damage, since you can't leech off of crushing blow damage
2. Cobra Strike is such a good source of life leech
Attack Rating isn't as important if you are using Blessed Aim Mercenary
Enhanced Damage isn't all that important for the weapon. You will only really be leaching with Cobra Strike on the finishing moves, which will be either Dragon Tail or your normal attack (another reason for the Blessed Aim Mercenary).
Hit Causes Monster to Flee is a curse and will override Amplify Damage, which you absolutely do not want unless you want to spend most of your time running after fleeing cows.
Equipment for the Blender Assassin
Helms
Guillaume's Face: Winged Helm (Great Helm)187-245 Defense, 40 Durability,115 Strength Required, Clvl Req: 34, Item Level: 41 +120% Enhanced Defense, +30% Faster Hit Recovery, +35% Chance of Crushing Blow, +15% Chance of Deadly Strike, +15 Strength
Note: The only way you can get away without using this is with using some sort of really expensive Robo weapon.
Harlequin Crest: Shako +2 to All Skills,+1.5 Life per clvl. +1.5 Mana per clvl, +50% Better chance of getting magical item, Physical Damage Taken Reduced by 10%, +2 to Strength,+2 to Dexterity,+2 to Vitality,+2 to Energy
Assassin Circlet with +2 Assassin Skills or +3 Martial Arts Skills
Amulets
Atma's Scarab: (20% bonus to Attack Rating and 5% chance to cast Amplify Damage)
Highlord's Wrath: Deadly strike and plus one to all skills
Mara's Kaelidescope:
Assassin Amulet with Plus 2 Assassin Skills or Plus 3 Martial Arts, Plus Life or Vitality
Armor
Arkaine's Valor: Balrog Skin, (Splint Mail), 1027-1449 Defense, 30 Durability, 165 Strength Required, Medium Armor, Item Level: 85, Clvl req: 85 +150-180% Enhanced Defense, 30% Faster Hit Recovery, +1-2 to All Skills, -10-15 Physical Damage, +0.5 Vitality per Clvl
Shaft Stop (PDR)
Duriel's Shell (Resists and Cannot Be Frozen)
Ice Blink 154-172 Defense, 30 Durability, 51 Strength Required, Medium Armor, Item Level: 30, Clvl Req: 22, Hit Freezes Target, +30% to Cold Resist, +4 Light Radius, Magical Damage Taken Reduced by 1, +70-80% Enhanced Defense
Rattlecage 328-335 Defense, 55 Durability, 70 Strength Required, Medium Armor, Item Level: 39, Clvl Req: 29, Hit Causes Monster to Flee 40%, +45 to Attack Rating, +25% Chance of Crushing Blow, +200 Defense
Fast ReCast of Blade Shield Build:
Skin of the Vipermagi: Serpent skin Armor, 246-279 Defense, 24 Durability, 43 Strength Required, Light Armor , Item Level: 37, Clvl req: 29 +120% Enhanced Defense, +20-35% Resistance To All, 30% Faster Cast Rate, Magical Damage Taken Reduced by 9-13, +1 to All Skills
Que-Hegue’s Wisdom - Honorable Mention
MageFists
Silkweave Boots
Stones of Jordan
Shields
Stormshield: (Kite Shield), 94-114 +3.75*Clvl Defense, Indestructible, 156 Strength Required, Item Level: 77, Clvl req: 73 +3.75 Defense per Clvl, Physical Damage Reduced by 35%, +30 to Strength, Indestructible, 35% Faster Blocking, +25% to Lightning Resist, +25 Chance to Block %, +60% to Cold Resist, Attacker Takes 10 Lightning Damage Listed-Blocking:Pal: 77%, Am/As/B: 72% D/S/N: 67%, Weight: Light
Whistan’s Shield: 175% Enhanced Defense: Fastest Blocking, +55 to block, Half Freeze Duration, +5 to Light Radius, Note: this is a set item with Guilliume’s Face
Gloves
Blood Gloves: Magical Heavy, or Sharkskin Gloves (Excep),,Vampirebone Gloves (Elite), + Jewel (any), + Nef Rune (#4), + Perfect Ruby Blood Gloves, Preset Mods:1-3% Life Leech, +10-20 Hit Points, 5-10% Crushing Blow
Venom Grip: Demonhide Gloves 81-118 Defense, 14 Durability, 20 Strength Required, Item level: 37, Clvl req: 29, +30% to Poison Resist, +5% to Maximum Poison Resist, Adds 59 Poison Damage Over 4 Seconds, +5% Chance of Crushing Blow, +5% Life Stolen Per Hit, +15-25 Defense, +130-160% Enhanced Defense
Hellmouth Gauntlets: No help for the build but fun to see a volley of meteors and firestorms around your Assassin.
Hit Power Gloves Magical Chain Gloves, or Heavy Bracers (Excep), or Vambraces (Elite), + Jewel (any), + Ort Rune (#9), + Perfect Sapphire Hitpower Gloves Preset Mods: 5% chance of casting Slvl 4 Frost Nova when hit, +3-7 Damage to Attacker, Knockback
Biggest Mod is +2 Martial Arts Skills (affects Phoenix Strike, Tiger Strike, Cobra Strike (attack rating bonus included), and Dragon Tail) IAS may be another mod you'll need to hit your last breakpoint for your weapon
Belt
String of Ears (PDR, Life Leech)
Razortail (Pierce)
Trang's Belt (+75-100 Defense, +30 Stamina, +5 Replenish Life (0.488 Life Per Second), +66 Life, Cannot be Frozen , -40% Item Requirements, +25-50 Mana
Rings
Assassin Rings + Assassin skills, plus life,
Raven Frost (Cannot Be Frozen), Cold Damage, Attack Rating
Bul Kathos Wedding Ring + Skills and Life Leech
Boots
Goblin Toe: 25% Crushing Blow, 20% Faster R/W
Gore Rider: 15% Deadly Blow, 15% Crushing Blow, 30% Faster R/W
Note: Crushing Blow is a very rare mod, but Hit Freezes target is even more rare, IceBlink is the only non-weapon I could find. Woestave is one of the few weapons with Hit Freezes Target.
Note on Ophiums Call Set: If you are not going to use stormshield or a Robo weapon and want to run with the Blender Build, you might want to use Ophiums Call set. It is just a shield, helm, belt, and gloves. The shield may be the second best shield for the build because of its enormously high blocking percentage. While ideally you might want to get the extra 10% Crushing Blow from BLOOD crafted gloves, the Magnus Skins have dual leach and 20 IAS, and no belt really effects this build too much. The set bonuses aren't bad: Partial Set Bonuses: ! Wearing any two items: +35 Life ! Wearing any three items: Attacker takes 5 damage Full Set Bonus: +50 Life, +10 Dexterity, +20 Strength, +100 Defense, +15% Resistance To All, +80% Better chance of getting magical item.
Note Low Level Items:
Clegclaw's Pincers: Knockback and hit slows -- Set has +35% Crushing Blow on it
STRENGTH Runeword AmTir has 25% Crushing Blow
Magic Find Setup
Skulder's Ire
Harlequin Crest Shako
Goldwrap
War Travelers/Gore Rider/Goblin Toe
Chance Guards or better yet MF CB gloves
Atma's Scarab Amulet 20% bonus to Attack Rating and 5% chance to cast Amplify Damage
MF Amulet and Rings with plus Martial Arts Skills
Tancred’s Amulet and Boots? - +78% Magic Find when both worn
-- Normally good for Magic Find, but since you can usually get MF and other better + skill mods on an Amulet and resists on the boots
Weapon Switch : Gull Dagger & Rhyme Shield or MF Claws
Best Weapon:
Theories for Weapons:
1. Weapon and Shield
2. Two-Handed Weapon with a lot of Range
3. Faster Cast Rate Weapons
4. Huffing Weapons
5. Magic Find Weapons
6. Robo-Weapons
7. High Damage Weapons
8. Ranged Weapons
9. Claws
For Theory 1: Weapon and Shield
BLACK: ThulIoNef, Thul (10) + Io (16) + Nef (4), Clubs, hammers, maces only. Clvl Required: 35, v1.09: Realm & Open, +120% Enhanced Damage, +200 to Attack Rating, +3-14 Cold Damage (3 sec), 15% Increased Attack Speed, Knockback, 12 Level 4 Corpse Explosion Charges, 40% Chance of Crushing Blow, -2 Magic Damage, +10 to Vitality
Note: BLACK Runeword Scourge, not terribly expensive. And is considered the item to use for this build right now. BLACK Runeword may only be placed in Maces, Clubs, etc. The Runeword has tremendous mods for this build.
Robo-Berserker Axe: 24-71 Damage Average ( 47.5), 26 Durability, Strength Req: 138, Dexterity Req: 59, Item Level: 71, Clvl Req: 63 D2 Sockets: 3, D2X Sockets: 1-6, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 2x3, Weapon Speed: 0, Swing Speed: Fast: Am/As/B/D/N/P, Normal: S
Robo-Phase Blade: 31-35 Damage Average (33), 0 Dur (Indes), Strength Req: 25, Dexterity Req: 136, Item Level: 63, Clvl Req: 55 Sockets: 1-6, Range: 2, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 2x3, Weapon Speed: -30, Swing Speed: V Fast: Am/As/B/D/N/P/S,
Robo-Scourge: 3-80 1H Damage Average (38.5), 65 Durability, Strength Req: 125, Dexterity Req: 77, Item Level: 67, Clvl Req: 59 Sockets: 1-5, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 1x3, 150% Damage to Undead Weapon Speed: -1 0, Swing Speed: Very Fast: As/P, Fast: Am/B/D/N/S
Note: Either may be very good for a one handed Robo-Blender Weapon. Noting that Phase Blade is indestructible, but also only range 2.
Stormshield
Whistan’s Shield
Note: This setup basically requires Iceblink Armor to get Hit Freezes Target Mod. Shattering while cool, is not terribly effective unless you are extremely higher level than the creatures you are attacking.
Note: Banar's Star & Tiamat's Rebuke-- Maybe much better after v1.10 if Elemental Damage can be passed on thru Blade Shield and Blade Fury
For Theory 2: Two-Handed Weapon with a lot of Range
1. Hone Sundan: Yari, (75-90) - (156-180) Damage, 28 Durability, 101 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Socketed (3) , Item Level: 45 , Clvl Req: 37 +160-200% Enhanced Damage, Adds 20-40 damage, 45% Chance of Crushing Blow, Repairs 1 durability in 10 seconds Range: 5, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Weapon Speed: 0, Swing Speed:, Normal: Am/B, Slow: D/N/P/S/, Very Slow: As
Note: Yari has three open sockets - See Robo for socketing advice.
2. The Cranium Basher: Thunder Maul, (Great Maul) (122-135) - (563-635) Damage, Indestructible, 253 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Item Level: 91, Clvl Req: 87 +200-240% Enhanced Damage, Adds 20 Min & Max damage, +25 to Strength, 20% Increased Attack Speed, Indestructible, All Resistances +25, 75% Chance of Crushing Blow, 4% Chance to cast level 1 Amplify Damage on striking, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 110 Strength, Weapon Speed: 20, Swing Speed: Fast: D, Normal: Rest (Assassin 2.5 attacks per second possible, enormous IAS necessary)
Note: I almost didn’t list this item under this theory, but with both Amplify Damage and Crushing Blow on the same item, this item gets mention, even though it only has a range of 3. Cranium Basher also requires an enormous amount of IAS to get to 2.5 attacks per second.
3. Woestave: Halberd, (15-18) - (55-64) Damage, 55 Durability, 75 Strength Required, 47 Dexterity Required, Item Level: 38, Clvl Req: 28 +20-40% Enhanced Damage, -3 to Light Radius, 50% Chance of Open Wounds, -50 to Targets Defense Per Hit, Hit Blinds Target, Slows Target by 50%, Prevents Monster Healing, Hit Freezes Target Range: 5, Weapon Speed: 0, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Swing Speed:Fast: D/S, Normal: As/B/N/P, Slow: Am
Note: While Woestave has no inherent Crushing Blow, it does have many very good modifications for this build. It has high range and hit freezes target. It also has high range. This may be a good item. But look to make sure that Hit Blinds Target isn’t overwriting your Amplify Damage.
4. Robo-Giant Thresher 40-114 Damage: Average (74), 55 Durability, Strength Req: 188, Dexterity Req: 140, Item Level: 76, Clvl Req: 68 Sockets: 1-6, Range: 5, Damage Bonus: 100 Strength, Inv Size: 2x4 Weapon Speed: -10, Swing Speed: Very Fast: D, Fast: N/P/S, Normal: Am/As/B (2.5 attacks per second)
Note: This has six sockets, so you could get all your Crushing Blow from this weapon in theory. See Robo-Weapons.
For Theory 3. Faster Cast Rate Weapons
1. Wizard Spike
2. Suicide Branch
3. Claws with Faster Cast Rate on them
4. Lidless Eye Shield
For Theory 4. Huffing Weapons
Often used by Barbarians who use echoing weapons on weapon switch in order to have the greatest possible battle orders and to use Find Item and Find Potion. Burst of Speed, Venom, Cloak of Shadows and Shadow Master all benefit from the level of the skill at the time it was cast. This makes having claws with +3 to Shadow Skills (even better if it also has + to one of those individual skills) on weapon switch more effective.
Note: It might be possible in this build to have claws with + Skill that might have up to three sockets each or a total of six sockets.
For Theory 5. Magic Find Weapons
1. Gull Dagger
2. Rhyme Shield
3. Pair of MF Claws
4. Ali Baba Sword
For Theory 6. Robo-Weapons
Robo-Weapons, What should be Socketed?
1. Ber -- 20% Crushing Blow
2. Eth -- Currently the Eth bug makes attack rating useless (hopefully this will be fixed in 1.10)
3. Jah -- ITD (attack rating can be a problem)
4. Lo -- 20% Chance of Deadly Strike (Doubles Damage--What it doubles for Blade Shield Damage is in question)
5. Zod -- Indestructible (Blade Shield seems to drain Durability)
6. Shael -- 20% IAS (Possibly very important for Werewolves)
Note: Cham -- 32% Chance of Hit Freezes Target (It appears that this doesn't work as it should and just give cold damage in weapons, which will not be passed on through blade shield)
For Theory 7. High Damage Weapons
1. Cruel Colossus Blade of Evisceration
2. The Cranium Basher: Thunder Maul, (Great Maul) (122-135) - (563-635) Damage, Indestructible, 253 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Item Level: 91, Clvl Req: 87 +200-240% Enhanced Damage, Adds 20 Min & Max damage, +25 to Strength, 20% Increased Attack Speed, Indestructible, All Resistances +25, 75% Chance of Crushing Blow, 4% Chance to cast level 1 Amplify Damage on striking, Range: 3, Damage Bonus: 110 Strength, Weapon Speed: 20, Swing Speed: Fast: D, Normal: Rest (Assassin 2.5 attacks per second possible, enormous IAS necessary)
3. Schaefer's Hammer: Legendary Mallet, (War Hammer) (102-117) - (124-142) Damage +2* Clvl Max Damage, Indestructible, 189 Strength Required, No Dexterity Required, Item Level: 83 Clvl Req: 79 +100-130% Enhanced Damage, +2 Max damage per Clvl, +16 to Attack Rating per Clvl, Adds 50-200 lightning damage, +50 to Life, Lightning Resist +75%, 20% Increased Attack Speed, Indestructible, +1 to Light Radius, 20% Chance to cast level 10 Static Field on striking, Range: 1, Damage Bonus: 110 Strength, Weapon Speed: 20, Swing Speed: Fast: As/P, Normal: Am/B/D/N/S
4. High Damage Claws
Note: All these weapons should be used to deliver the finishers and release charges. These would want to use normal attack instead of a kick to deliver final damage. These would benefit highly from Tiger Strike charges and would be a good source to use Cobra Charges to leech.
Note: Special for Schaefer’s Hammer, Its range is 1, but it does give off Static Field charges when it hits. Which can be released by the Blade Shield.
Note: Special for Claws: This build may want to use Claw Mastery and Dragon Claw may add up to quite a lot of damage especially when coupled with Tiger Strike.
For Theory 8. Ranged Weapons
Hydra or Crusader Bow 6 Socket Bow with 6 Perfect Emeralds
Kuko Shakaku
Demon Machine
Note: All these items would benefit from added Pierce, probably from the Razortail Belt. Pierce allows you to hit more than one target with a single arrow.
Note: Both Kuko and Demon Machine have splash damage from explosive bolts they fire. This splash damage also carries the Crushing Blow of the character. Splash Damage can hit the same target more than once.
For Theory 9. Claws
Scissors Suwannah Three Sockets with nice mods with Ber Runes
Cruel Scissors Suwaanhah with good mods (MA or Venom)
Bartocs +6 to Martial Arts
Note: Each claw hits separately so CB is only effective for the claw that actually hits not the characters total Crushing Blow Chance.
Note: Disadvantages: Range of Blade Shield only one, at least for 1.09;
Skills in Gameplay
Blade Shield: This is the key to the Blender Build. Damage from this skill is negligible. All chances to cast when you hit do apply to blade shield, which is why this is such a nice skill. It can attack multiple creatures at the same time. Currently the range is not the listed 3.3 yards, but the attack range of your weapons. This precludes you from using claws (range 1) in this build. Just like the weapon affecting the range of Blade Shield, your weapon's Attack Speed will also affect your Blade Shields rate of pulse, or how often it will automatically hit creatures within its range. This is obviously very important to a Blender build so absolutely hitting the best break point for your weapon is important. Note: Blade Shield currently very quickly runs through your weapons durability. Putting points in Blade Shield will make it last longer, cost more to cast, and do slightly more base damage. For version 1.09, putting more than one point (remember that you will have some plus skill items as well) in Blade Shield will only gain you more time (at level 1 only 20 seconds) before you have to recast your Blade Shield, but in future versions this may be very important. Level 20 Blade Shield does 110-141 Damage but cost 65 mana to cast and will last for 96 seconds. Level 1 Blade Shield 1-30 Damage but costs 27 mana for only 20 seconds.
Blade Shield does appear to pulse every time you recast it. Thus you with Faster Cast Rate gear you can pulse Blade Shield very rapidly. This means that Crushing Blow can be delivered to every creature within Blade Shield range with each recast. This will be much quicker than any weapon speed that you can achieve. But remember that the current build has low mana pool. Recasting Blade Shield, much like recasting high level Lightning Nova can be very mana intensive.
Elemental Damage from items is not passed on when Blade Shield hits, at least in v 1.09. Blade Shield pulse speed may not vary upon weapon speed. Confirmation would be helpful.
Phoenix Strike: Even though this build is based around the Blender and Crushing Blow, this is your main attack. It can attack multiple creatures at a time, just like your Blade Shield. It has an Attack Rating Booster built into it as well. This attack allows you to use the appropriate finisher for each elementally immune set of monsters. Remember quite often this will be what does the majority of damage other than Crushing Blow.
Dragon Tail: I use this as my primary finisher, because I’m almost always hitting more than one target with this attack. Its a kick damage to target is calculated with a formula. All Kick damage is determined by the following formula: minimum damage = (STR+DEX-20)/4 maximum damage = (STR+DEX-20)/3 example: If your STRENGTH is 150, and your DEXTERITY is 150, then your base kick damage would be 70-93. +%Enhanced Damage on weapons does not affect kick damage. +%Enhanced Damage on non-weapons is added as if it were an additional +strength in the equation. Plus Additional Damage does not affect Kick Damage. Basically, the more Strength and Dexterity you have the more damage you will do. Realize the dexterity you are using to obtain max Shield Block is also extra Dexterity for extra damage in Dragon Tail. Often this is less than your normal attack damage; check this, if it is you will want to be able to switch to normal attack for single targets. Dragon Tail's real beauty is that is has splash damage. (Supposedly additional fire charms and fire damage will increase this radius, but I haven't tested this.) Splash Damage is fire damage calculated as a percentage of the physical damage done by your kick to all those within the radius of your splash. Additional Tiger Strike Damage does seem to increase both the damage and radius of this blast. As a bonus you can hurt PI's with the splash damage from your Dragon Tail attack. The splash damage will not carry Crushing Blow damage, like the Crushing Blow damage is carried over the splash of Demon Machine Crossbow. This will probably be your best finisher most of the time especially when fighting multiple foes. Note that especially when you are leveling this can eat up your mana, as you get to higher levels you will have a larger mana pool and effective use of Cobra Strike will help to keep your Mana Pool full. Also remember that your splash can effect PI's but the kick must hit a non-PI creature.
Note: Some People don't find Dragon Tail necessary or even all that useful.
Dragon Talon: This is another finishing move worth mention, since this is an enormously quick series of three kicks. The damage from the kicks won't be that much and only the first kick will deliver the charges from your other skills. But its a great way to get three very fast Crushing Blow hits onto a single target.
Normal Attack: Many characters simply use normal attack to deliver the finishing move. Because of Kick damage calculation does not take into account many weapon bonuses.
Burst of Speed: This is your primary "Aura." It allows you the most freedom to actually hit your weapons top break point for attack speed. It also grants you extra run/walk speed. Of the most importance is having enough points in this skill to hit your last weapon speed breakpoint. Again see here. BTW, the German calc uses the client-side speeds (what you see on your monitor), which are faster than server-side speeds (what battle.net sees). However, the server automatically takes priority over the client, so you're actually slower than what you see. So, going by server-side speeds, you actually need slvl 9 BoS + 29% IAS to hit 8 frames with a Berzerker Axe. Slvl 15 BoS + 20% IAS works as well. For the 'Black' Scourge, you need slvl 9 BoS + 15% IAS (the 'Black' runeword already provides the 15% IAS you need, though).
Tiger Strike: Will be modifying finisher, either your Dragon Tail, Dragon Talon or your normal attack. Considering the low physical damage of your weapon of choice, this can be more useful when you think you are about to kill your prey with a real last hit or when you need to recharge life or mana through the use of Cobra Strike. Having a cruel colossus blade of evisceration on weapon switch may also be useful to finishing off big targets.
Note: Tiger Strike too is not a crucial skill to this build.
Cobra Strike: has enormous Life Leach (Mana Leach as well with two charge ups). More points in this skill equals more LL and ML, but more importantly more Attack Rating. On far too many of my assassins, I have died because I couldn't charge up my Cobra Strike because I couldn't hit with it. This skill and the fact that you cannot use Claw Mastery for this build are probably why you most need that Blessed Aim Mercenary.
Dragon Flight: At high levels has an enormous damage bonus, but it hits only a single target and has a casting delay. Its biggest bonus is a limited teleport ability when caught in a pack or to cross obstacles with the Shadow Master trick.
Venom: is a great "Aura" to use before you begin a fight. This is not an important part of this build, it may be helpful in v 1.10 if Blizzard fixes Poison. If you want to try it, You should Poison your enemies from a distance. Also, if you are using Venom, you aren't using Burst of Speed (which will drastically increase both your walking speed and Attack Rate), thus you will want to infect as many creatures with Venom as possible (emphasis on Pierce and Explosions) then start using Burst of Speed. Then use Crushing Blow and other Melee/Elemental attacks in this build to kill while you are still doing what is really timed damage from Venom. Since this build emphasizes plus skills much like a Sorceress or Necromancer, you will have a very high level Venom if you max this skill. Adding a poison charm or two to change your timer to the correct speed is very important. See the Venom Strategy Guide in the Strategy Compendium for a more comprehensive guide to using this skill, even though it says it is Player vs. Player it has an entire section on Player vs. Monster. See http://www.diabloii.net/strategy/x-...pvp-xenotip.php
Shadow Master: Purely a meat shield in this build. More points are really only more hit points. All traps and Cloak of Shadows the Master will lay will be half the level you have in Shadow Master skill. You will have a lot of plus skills in this build and if you want to max this guy out so that he will be laying heavy duty traps, its your choice. Often big Venom users that have lots of plus Assassin skills or Shadow Tree Skills enjoy a Master that can lay traps that can do damage. Personally, I figure he's just a meat shield and thus he can always be recast, so go with base points and let your plus skills boost his life.
Cloak of Shadows: Especially if you decide to use a Defiance or Might Mercenary as opposed to a Blessed Aim Mercenary, you may want this skill to enhance your attack rating.
Blade Fury: may get a substantial increase from version 1.10. Its rumored that this skill will pass on elemental damage and also Venom damage. If this occurs then this build will almost surely want to make use of the skill. Venom would be a great opening round attack, initially poisoning the enemy (letting that damage continue to occur during the entire fight) and then quickly casting Burst of Speed, allowing you faster Blade Fury attack speed. This would allow you to use nasty Crushing Blow from a distance in one weapon setup. Very nice for the Strong Lightning Enchanted Bosses, which you aren't going to want to get on top of. Then as you get on top of the enemy, you would quit using Blade Fury and start using Blade Shield and Phoenix Strike. Points in this may or may not be important, depending on the formula for damage on Blades, currently Blade Fury carries no mods from your equipment and is worthless.
Claw Mastery: You will have a point in this as a prerequisite. If you do use Claws on weapon switch you will get some bonus and the Deadly Strike bug. But with this build you probably won't have the points to add more to this skill unless you are planning on using this as a weapon switch. Maxing this may be very helpful if you actually are going to attack with your Claws.
Double Claw: Just as above this build doesn't normally use claws because of the small range it grants to blade shield. However in purely attacking a boss, claws can be effective since if you are hitting a single target, they are also automatically within your Blade Shield range. If you aren't worried about dealing with crowds or more than one or two enemies at a time, you may want to use Claw Mastery and Double Claw as a finisher. Maxing this may be helpful if you want to use this as a finisher.
Mind Blast: Not heavily used in this build. Might be a good escape skill. There is also a bug that allows converted creatures that return to being evil with only 1 hitpoint.
Psychic Hammer: Not heavily used in this build.
Death Sentry: One point in Death Sentry can be helpful in leveling and to finish off whittled down creatures. Death Sentry allows the trap to explode for an enormous amount of damage with a Corpse Explosion when a creature comes near it. The lightning damage of the trap goes up with each additional point, but most of the damage is from the Corpse Explosion damage. Also Death Sentry has a number of prerequisites so try to pick it up on an item. Corpse Explosion is a good skill for when you have a lot of creatures on top of you closely packed because of the massive damage it can do.
Note: Someone has said that at level 10 you get a larger range of damage from your Corpse Explosion on Death Sentry. I haven't personally confirmed this.
Other Traps: Some players like to use traps for additional damage and to stun opponents. Maxing one of these might be worth investment since they will continue to fire without a lot of attention from you and you will be using a lot of plus skill items to up the trap damage. The Blender build only requires a few skills to be effective, so it gives you a lot of choices to build your character in whatever way you'd like.
Diablo 2 LOD Mageazon Guide
Mageazon
Introduction
The mageazon has its humble beginnings in Diablo II Classic, where it shone due to the tremendous power of stackable, long-lasting immolation flames. With the huge nerf on immolation arrow, the variant style of play has been weakened but the better gear available and the availability of charms allowed the mageazon to remain a very much viable and strong way to play the amazon.
The principles of the mageazon are:
*
low strength and dexterity, since the bulk of the damage would be from the elements
*
reliance on immolation arrow and either ice arrow or frozen arrow for fire/cold damage
*
no mana leech items at all, instead relying on huge mana pool and mana regeneration for survival
*
played and built like a sorceress, hence the name mageazon!
With heavy reliance on the two elemental skills, there is no need for a big bow that requires large strength. Likewise, the auto hit feature of the elemental skills allow the mageazon to enjoy 100% hit rate without having to bother with dexterity and attack rating.
Stats Distribution
Strength and Dexterity
These two stats are almost totally not useful to a mageazon. She doesn't need a big damage bow and she certainly does not need to rely on high dexterity to get her good damage, hence strength and dexterity should be kept to a minimal - 50 to 60 each in most cases as that figure would allow you to equip almost all the best gear for a mageazon. Just for show, here's some of the uber-gear that are strongly recommended for mageazons:
Equipment Str Dex
Silkweave 65
Frostburn 60
Gloom's Trap 58
Que-Hagan's Wisdom 55
Elite Caster Boots 50
Harlequin's Crest 50
Magefist 45
Skin of Vipermagi 43
Razortail 20
Kuko Shakaku 53 49
Doomslinger 40 50
Stag Bow Runeword 30 45
Skystrike 25 43
As you can see, with the exception of Silkweave (65 strength), the rest of the best mageazon gear all has a maximum of 60 strength and 50 dexterity.
Vitality
In general, with most monsters frozen solid or distracted by decoy and valkyrie, a mageazon has little fears, but more life is definitely good, especially for HC mageazons. All spare points should go to vitality upon reaching a decent mana pool.
Energy
A sorceress needs energy to sustain her magic. A mageazon wielding magic with a bow likewise needs energy, and lots of it too. A sorceress can spam high-level nova all day long with a 1000+ mana pool but mageazon cannot do likewise because the sorceress has warmth. A mageazon can only depend on a huge mana pool which will result in a decent mana regeneration rate.
Main Offensive Skills
Key skills will definitely be frozen arrow and immolation arrow. In the past, ice arrow was an option for a main attack skill because frozen arrow had lower damage then, so the chill time made a difference. Now, however enter the world of charms and you can easily hit just the same amount of freeze time with frozen arrow, while more damage and to multiple enemies.
One interesting perk about both frozen arrow and immolation arrow (ice arrow too), is that there is a significant boost for the skills at levels 8 and 16. Damage-up-per-level increased from 10 to 15 to 20 for FA and from 10 to 20 to 30 for IA. This means that there is no reason NOT to max both skills as damage only starts to get spectacular after level 16.
Ice Arrow (1 or Max points)
Ice arrow auto-hits and freezes for a good amount of time even without much added cold duration. The damage is lower than that of FA and can only hit a single target but the big plus point of it is the light mana cost (less than 1/3 that of FA), which allows you to manage your mana much better. Overall, a good choice if your mana is somewhat restricted by gear choices to provide greater safety such as in hardcore.
For a mageazon choosing maxed Ice Arrow over Frozen Arrow, I would recommend a fast bow (ideally at 8/2) and as high +skills as possible. In this way, you will be able to churn out as many Ice Arrows as possible during the one-second cast delay of Immolation Arrows. However, even then, I would still recommend 20 Ice Arrow and 10 Frozen Arrow for the mass freeze and cold damage of Frozen Arrow.
1 5 10 15 16 17 18 19 20 25 30
Cold Damage 6-10 30-34 72-76 132-136 144-148 162-166 180-184 198-202 216-220 306-310 396-400
Cold Duration 2.0 2.8 3.8 4.8 5.0 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.8 7.8
Mana Cost 4.0 5.0 6.2 7.5 7.7 8.0 8.2 8.5 8.7 10.0 11.2
Frozen Arrow (1 to Max points)
An auto-hit skill, FA does it's cold damage in a fixed splash radius of 3.3 yards and freezes all hit for 2 seconds (boosted by items) in normal. With pierce and a tight pack of monsters, it's easy for FA to be doing 4x the splash damage to each monster in the radius. Chance to cast on attack items works fantastically well with this skill as the chance of releasing a charge is very high with FA piercing and hitting so many enemies with one shot.
1 5 10 15 16 17 18 19 20 25 30
Cold Damage 40-50 80-90 140-150 215-225 230-240 250-260 270-280 290-300 310-320 410-420 510-520
Mana Cost 9 13 18 23 24 25 26 27 28 33 38
Immolation Arrow (Max points)
Previously, the power of immolation lies in its long burning duration and stackability. Now nerfed down to only 3 seconds of burning with 1 second cast delay, it's only chance of being a viable skill lies in the fact that its basic explosive damage (1.3 yard radius) is significantly better than in the past (especially after around level 20). The extra burning damage is just icing on the cake I guess.
1 5 10 15 16 17 18 19 20 25 30
Fire Damage 10-20 50-60 120-130 220-230 240-250 270-280 300-310 330-340 360-370 510-520 660-670
per second 8-10 31-33 60-63 90-92 96-98 101-104 107-110 113-116 119-121 148-151 178-180
Mana Cost 6 10 15 20 21 22 23 24 25 30 35
Guided Arrow (0 or 1 point)
You can say that GA is usually for the big guns to take out bosses, yet it is also a very nice skill for mageazons as well. When faced with a single boss, firing off your big skills is extremely taxing on mana, since you are wasting a hell lot of damage (cannot multiple hit and hence no multiple splashes). With decent elemental bow (skystrike, kuko, 1-4xx lightning bow etc) and 100% pierce, even a level 1 GA can do lots of quick damage to the boss at an affordable mana cost (well covered by mana regeneration).
Other bow and crossbow skills are largely useless for a mageazon and would serve at best as pre-requisite skills for the above mentioned three skills.
Passive and Magic Skills
With just a maximum of 47 (20 FA, 20 Immo and 7 prerequisites) points in the bow and crossbow tree, and requiring only very little points in pierce and its prerequisites, there's a whole lot of option available to pump into valkyrie or the evasive skills.
Slow Missile (1-4 points)
Chaos Sanctuary is the place of oblivion knights. High elemental damage with a whole lot of curses as well. A slow missile cast here and there will allow you to easily move away from the elemental bolts without fear since they simply travel so slowly. Similarly, against lebs and using a KB bow on switch, the sm'ed le bolts will not even come close to reaching you.
Dodge (1+ points)
Most of the melee monsters you encounter are going to be either frozen or engaging your minions (Decoy, Valkyrie or Merc). Chances are that the only melee you are going to face will be stray members of a frenzytaur pack that comes your way and batters down your poor Merc. In this case dodge might come in useful but not so much otherwise.
Avoid (12+ points)
When standing still and firing at enemies, there's always the chance of a stray big damage shot coming your way. Also, with mixed melee/ranged enemies, the ranged attackers may not always target your minions. Having around 12 points of avoid gives you the chance to avoid the attack a good 60% of the time.
Evade (12+ points)
While dodge and avoid are for an immobilized zon, evade is for the zon on the run. Beyond 12 in evade (50% chance) gives you rather severely diminishing returns.
Decoy (1 point)
One of your best friends after Valkyrie. Repeated casting of decoy in strategic locations can help you draw attackers off your back while you retreat or help you tank against ranged attackers while you pick them off with your bow.
Valkyrie (5, 10 or Max points)
A good level of valkyrie can take a severe beating and may even do enough damage to kill something on its own. Level 5 gives it a credible amount of life to tank with and allow repeated castings without draining mana too much. Of course, with a mageazon's good mana pool, having higher or even a maxed out Valkyrie can be more useful since there should not be much mana problems recasting even a maxed valkyrie.
Pierce (1+ points)
For a mageazon, it is quite important to get maxed pierce, whether by items or by skill. Check the total piercing of your items and get enough pierce (with +skills) to allow you 100% piercing.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Piercing % 23 34 42 49 55 59 63 65 69 71 73 75
Other passives such as inner sight, critical strike and penetrate are largely useless to the mageazon due to the low physical damage output and auto-hit feature of the skills involved. Also, it is far more important for a mageazon to max her offence skills and pierce before adding to her defensive passives. Assuming enough gear for level 1 pierce to be sufficient, a mageazon can actually max out her offensive skills and have 1 point in each passive at a mere level 49-54 depending on how many skill quests have been done.
The Dressing Room
The mageazon is not an easy style of play to dress, if you intend to be at least quite powerful. Most of the better gear fortunately isn't that hard to get and if you are on closed Battle.Net, there really shouldn't be much problems getting the basics since they are largely "junk" discarded by those ignorant noobs.
The main properties a mageazon should be looking out for is piercing, +mana, +mana regeneration and +skills. Resistance and +life should be kept enough for survival but the key is still the above four properties... offence is always the best form of defence (especially when your offence involves getting enemies frozen).
In addition, the +mana per kill mod is also highly prized, though not many items have such a mod. Several uniques mentioned - que hagan's wisdom, silkweave - have it, rare/magical jewels can also come with a "+1-3 mana per kill" prefix while TIR rune adds +2 mana per kill. A mageazon built around several such items can also go a long way, especially in lower difficulties since lesser shots are needed to kill a whole mob of monsters.
Bows and Crossbows
Bows are the most important piece of equipment for the mageazon, and you would want a bow that's relatively fast and preferably with piercing, +skills or big fat elemental damage. Some good bows are :
Kuko Shakaku
Cedar Bow
Two-Hand Damage: (27-30) to (75-84)
Required Strength: 53
Required Dexterity: 49
Required Level: 33
Firing Speed: 13/3 (11/3 with shael)
+150-180% Enhanced Damage
Fires Explosive Arrows or Bolts
Piercing Attack (50)
Adds 40-180 Fire Damage
+3 to Immolation Arrow [Amazon Only]
+3 to Bow and Crossbow Skills [Amazon Only]
Skystrike
Edge Bow
Two-Hand Damage: (17-21) to (50-60)
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 43
Required Level: 28
Firing Speed: 11/3 (10/3 with shael)
+150-200% Enhanced Damage
+1-250 Lightning Damage
2% Cast Level 6 Meteor on Striking
30% Increased Attack Speed
+100 to Attack Rating
+1 to Amazon Skill Levels
+10 to Energy
Both of these bows can be found rather early in the game and IMO, Kuko Shakaku is simply the best end-game bow for a mageazon due to its 50% pierce, nice fire damage and +3 bow skills (+6 immolation) coupled with a decent firing speed (11/3 with shael). On the market, both are not very expensive too, unlike the unearthly price of the Buriza.
Yet, in SP mode, they are still hard to find. Cheaper alternative is the Doomslinger unique repeating crossbow, THE weapon of choice for Diablo II classic mageazons. +1 amazon skills, 35% piercing and 12/3 (11/3 with 5 more IAS) firing speed makes it a real good mageazon weapon if not for the existence of the Kuko.
Zephyr (OrtEth) and Melody (ShaelKoNef) are both decent runewords for mageazons. Socketed into a +3 ashwood bow, you will have an 11/3 bow with either fastwalk and a little lightning damage (zephyr) or a +6 bow skills and knockback. Also, a Zephyr'ed razor bow is equippable at level 21, does decent damage and fires at a nice 10/3 speed.
Yet another no-hard-to-find bow is the magical shocking bow (with 1-4xx lightning damage). With the potential of 2 sockets and a good suffix (ideally cold damage for more freeze time), this bow will make a good backup bow against fire/cold immunes and could even hold its place among other good mageazon bows. Base bow type should have low requirements, and either be fast (composite, hunter's, razor) or with +skills (ie ashwood). Throw further lightning jewels or +mana/kill stuff in to make it even more powerful.
All in all, most bows work fine, but the six bows mentioned would really make a difference to a mageazon.
Armor
Again, the focus will be on +mana, mana regeneration and +skills. This brings about two main contenders for top armor:
Que-Hegan's Wisdom
Mage Plate
Defence: 542-681 (Base 225-261)
Required Strength: 55
Required Level: 51
Durability: 60
+140-160% Enhanced Defence
+1 to All Skill Levels
+3 to Mana After Each Kill
20% Faster Cast Rate
20% Faster Hit Recovery
Magic Damage Reduced by 6-10 (varies)
+15 to Energy
Skin of the Vipermagi
Serpentskin Armor
Defence: 246-279 (Base 111-126)
Required Strength: 43
Required Level: 29
Durability: 24
+120% Enhanced Defence
+1 to All Skill Levels
30% Faster Cast Rate
Magic Damage Reduced by 9-13 (varies)
All Resistance +20-35 (varies)
While not easy to come since they are exceptional uniques, Que-Hegan's Wisdom and Skin of the Vipermagi are both good +skills armor. Que-Hegan's has good defence and generally more useful mods for a mageazon (+3 mana per kill, +15 energy) but Skin of Vipermagi has far better protection against magic (35% resistance and 13 MDR). I must say that mage plates look much better on zons than the iron-look of a serpentskin armor, though.
Another low-level unique missed is the Spirit Shroud, another +skills armor but with cannot be frozen property instead. For starters, Stealth (TalEth) is a decent armor with 15% mana regeneration while Smoke (NefLum) is also quite good with its 50% resistance and +10 energy.
Runewords and uniques aside, good rares with +mana, +life and good resistances are also decent substitutes. In fact, if incredibly rare jeweller's armor of simplicity can be found, a 4-socketed duskshroud could be useful with say, 2 skulls and 2 sapphires in it.
For single-socket uniques, the space would definitely go to a perfect skull, mana regeneration is quite lacking in anything a mageazon can wear and 19% mana regeneration in the armor slot would go a long way.
Helm
Like armor, the focus is also on +mana, mana regeneration and +skills. One helm is the clear winner here, but is an elite unique and very hard to find:
Harlequin Crest
Shako
Defence: 98-141
Required Strength: 50
Required Level: 62
Durability: 12
+2 to All Skills
+(1.5 per clvl) 1.5 to 148.5 to Life
+(1.5 per clvl) 1.5 to 148.5 to Mana
Damage Reduced by 10%
50% Better Chance of Finding Magical Items
+2 to Strength
+2 to Dexterity
+2 to Energy
+2 to Vitality
Peasant Crown
War Hat
Defence: 92-108 (Base 45-53)
Required Strength: 20
Required Level: 28
Durability: 12
+100% Enhanced Defence
+1 to All Skills
15% Faster Run/Walk
Replenish Life +6-12 (varies)
+20 to Energy
+20 to Vitality
The harlequin crest's impressive array of +2 skills, huge +mana and +life as well as 10% DR has just about anything a mageazon wants (except resists). Socketing it would be difficult as a perfect skull would definitely devalue the shako, so perhaps a 15% res all jewel or um would be more fitting for this elite item. IMO both the peasant crown and harlequin crest looks terrible on an amazon though.
A rare circlet would probably look the best on an amazon but a good one would be hard to find. +2 skills would be great with some resistance and maybe +life, +mana or any other icing on the cake. From a cheaper standpoint, a 2-3 socketed helm with a combination of perfect skulls and/or perfect sapphires would likewise make a good mageazon helm.
Gloves
If not for the presence of the two outstanding uniques, the caster craft would probably be the best bet for the mageazon:
Frostburn
Gauntlets
Defence: 43-48 (Base 12-15)
Required Strength: 60
Required Level: 29
Durability: 24
+10-20% Enhanced Defence
+30 Defence
+5% Enhanced Damage
Increase Maximum Mana 40%
Adds 1-6 Cold Damage (2 Secs)
Magefist
Light Gauntlets
Defence: 20-24 (Base 9-11)
Required Strength: 45
Required Level: 23
Durability: 18
+20-30% Enhanced Defence
+10 Defence
+1 to Fire Skills
20% Faster Cast Rate
Regenerate Mana 25%
Adds 1-5 Fire Damage
40% max mana is simply huge and to have cold damage (2-second cold duration) makes frostburn one of the best bet for mageazon gloves. Magefist lose out a bit with only 25% mana regeneration but the big plus is the +1 Fire skills, which boosts Immolation Arrow by 1 as well! These are normal uniques too, making them very cheap to trade for and not all that difficult to find.
Caster crafts, on the other hand, are the alternative to go - Perfect Amethyst, Ort, jewel and a magical leather glove (demonhide and bramble mitts too) - would give you a nice crafted glove with: 4-10% mana regeneration, +10-20 mana and +1-3 mana per kill. This can result in some nice resist gloves with even the possibility of a +2 bow skills gloves with resists... woah!
Boots
Good mageazon boots are hard to come by... Silkweave is good but does not provide mods that are significantly better than a pair of caster boots and has a rather steep strength requirement (65) too.
Caster Boots
Perfect Amethyst
Thul rune
Jewel (any)
Leather, Demonhide or Wyrmhide Boots
Preset Mods:
Regenerate Mana 4-10%
Mana +10-20
Max Mana +2-5%
Silkweave
Mesh Boots
Defence: 95-130 (Base 37-44)
Required Strength: 65
Required Level: 36
Durability: 16
+150-190% Enhanced Defence
30% Faster Run/Walk
+5 to Mana After Each Kill
Increase Max Mana 10%
+200 Defence vs. Missiles
Silkweave's bonus of 10% max mana, +5 mana per kill and 30% run/walk are the main highlights, yet it is possible to get a fast run/walk caster boots with resistance. Tri-resistance boots are of course greatly useful for a mageazon lacking in that department. IMO, the gloves, boots and belt slots are about the best place to get resistance unless you chance upon a godly +2 prismatic circlet.
Belt
Mainly two best belts, each of which would be THE choice depending on whether you have any pierce on your bow:
Razortail
Sharkskin Belt
Defence: 85-107 (Base 31-36)
Required Strength: 20
Required Level: 32
Durability: 14
16 Slots
+120-150% Enhanced Defence
+15 Defence
+10 to Maximum Damage
Piercing Attack (33)
+15 to Dexterity
Attacker Takes Damage of (1) 1 to 99
Gloom's Trap
Mesh Belt
Defence: 79-102 (Base 35-40)
Required Strength: 58
Required Level: 36
Durability: 16
16 Slots
+120-150% Enhanced Defence
5% Mana Stolen per Hit
Increased Max Mana 15%
Regenerate Mana 15%
+15 to Vitality
-3 to Light Radius
If you don't have pierce on your bow, get razortail. Gloom's mage bonuses are good but the difference between 70+% pierce and 100% pierce can be very great. Razortail can also save you 15 stats points for energy if you had planned ahead. Gloom's Trap, on the other hand, has good mana bonuses (15% max mana and 15% mana regeneration) and +15 vitality too. While the mana leech is juju, that really can't be helped (would just make you stronger with that bit of leech :).
The less hard to find alternative would be to obsessively gamble belts. With 60 strength, I would gamble for plated belts in normal difficulty since it is a standard 4-tiers, rather than risk getting a 3-tiered belt with real nice mods. For rares, DEFINITELY go for +cold damage with resistances, life and/or mana. The cold damage will give you extra cold duration and the resistance available could be nice too.
Amulet
Hard to choose, but I give my vote to the Eye of Etlich... a simple looking but gorgeous amulet:
The Eye of Etlich
Amulet
Required Level: 15
+1-5 Light Radius (varies)
+1 to All Skill Levels
3-7% Life Stolen per Hit (varies)
Adds (1-2) to (3-5) Cold Damage (varies)
Cold Duration: 2-12 secs (hidden)
+10-40 Defence vs Missiles (varies)
The Rising Sun
Amulet
Required Level: 65
+2 to Fire Skills
2% Cast Level 1-10 Meteor when Struck (varies)
+(0.75) 0.75 to 74 Fire Absorb (based on clvl)
Adds 24-48 Fire Damage
Replenish Life +10
+4 to Light Radius
The Eye of Etlich can be worn real early and has a a potentially HUGE 12 seconds built-in cold duration, allowing you to freeze monsters for an extra 3 seconds in hell. This can make a difference if trying to control a big swarm of monsters for a party. Party members would thank you for all that frozen prey. +1 skills simply made it even more desirable.
The rising sun, with +2 fire skills gives a good +2 to the non-spammable Immolation Arrow while not to Frozen Arrow. This may sound bad but from a mana conservation point of view, it isn't. Spamming FA is very mana draining at high levels, yet you want as much out of your IA as possible because of it's 1 second cast delay. Rising sun allows you to keep a moderate FA level while boosting Immolation by +2. The extra fire damage and fire absorb makes it worthwhile too.
Two other uniques for consideration are Saracen's Chance and Mara's Kaleidoscope. The Saracen's is good only if you plan ahead and decide to use it for good. This will save you 24 stats points to place into energy, effectively giving you +54 mana and +36 life with 15-25% resist all, not too shabby for an amulet. Mara's, on the other hand, has a great +2 skills and lightens your resistance burden a lot with 20-30% resist all. A little more +stats wouldn't hurt.
Uniques aside (difficult to find), rare amulets with +2 skills, resistance, +mana, +life and all sorts of other mods are a good bet for the amulet slot. Finally, if you're really running low on mana and have nothing much better to use, a Bahamut's Amulet (+100 over mana) does give you quite a lot of ground mana-wise.
Rings
If resources are available to you, there can be only one choice... a Stone of Jordan and a Ravenfrost:
The Stone of Jordan
Ring
Required Level: 29
+1 to All Skill Levels
Increases Maximum Mana 25%
Adds 1-12 Lightning Damage
+20 to Mana
Raven Frost
Ring
Required Level: 45
+150-250 to Attack Rating (varies)
Adds 15-45 Cold Damage (4 secs)
Cannot be Frozen
+40 to Mana
Cold Absorb 20%
+15-20 to Dexterity (varies)
It doesn't take a genius to tell you that Stone of Jordan is good. +1 skills and 25% max mana is something you will find nowhere else. Raven frost on the other hand has all the mods a mageazon wants, most importantly "cannot be frozen". You do not want to be caught trying to control a crowd with a super slow firing pace and having monsters thaw out before you can take a second shot. To add to the cake, there's more cold damage (and 4 more seconds), +40 mana, 20% cold absorb and a good +dex which if you plan ahead can net you 20 more energy and hence an effective +70 mana on this godly ring.
Given a lack of resources, a bahamut's or great wyrm's ring would have to do as well. Adding to base mana, these can work out real well with the right gear (ie. +100 mana with frosties is +140 effectively). If you have two stones of jordans, replacing one SoJ with a Bahamut's ring could actually yield you better mana and less intensive mana usage (lower FA level). However, IMO, the SoJ combined with the effectively +70 mana Raven Frost is the best combination you can have on a mageazon.
Charms
Everyone knows what charms are good. Charms of vita, resist charms, good elemental charms are all standard issues with the mageazon just like any other characters. However, do keep every single one of those small cold damage charms (especially those with both cold damage prefix AND suffix). Each of these small charms, no matter what damage, adds 1 second to your freeze duration - even 2 seconds if it was a double cold damage charm. This may seem little, only 1/4 second in hell, but with the right gear and a decent number of charms, the result is simply outstanding. Just giving an example:
Frozen Arrow
Kuko Shakaku
Frostburns
Belt of Glaciers
Eye of Etlich
Raven Frost
12 cold charms
2
0
2
2
12
4
12
------
34
.seconds (8.5 secs in Hell)
That's a very long freeze time you have there. Without the charms, you would be left with 5 seconds, thanks to 3 full seconds from the Eye of Etlich. Take that out for another amulet and you would be left with a measly 2 seconds without the charms.
Conclusion
Basically, that's about it for dressing up. All the gear I can think of that fits has already been shown and explained. Any that I have left out pls email me here.
Mageazon Strategy
Mana Management
Mageazons are an extremely mana-hungry style to play. Managing mana would be no easy task, with two skills having very high mana costs. Even a 1000 mana pool will not last forever if you have a ton of +skills, especially since an amazon does not have huge mana regenerating skills like warmth or meditation to help.
There are four main ways you can recover mana:
(i) potions, either rejuvenation or mana pots,
(ii) returning to town for refill,
(iii) natural recovery,
(iv) mana per kill or damage taken goes to mana.
Potions are of course the simplest way out but mana or rejuvantion potions don't always drop from the sky and it would be very important to have a good control over your rate of mana consumption. Returning to town constantly for refills can often prove to be tedious and irritating to do.
Mana regeneration takes place all the time, the speed of which is dependent on your mana pool as well as any +% mana regeneration you might be wearing. Check out this site for a calculation of how much mana you are actually regenerating each second and try to find a good balance between +mana and +mana regen gear to use.
Other gear option to try out are +mana per kill and damage taken goes to mana. The former would add a substantial amount of mana each time you kill a monster (especially if you take very few arrows to kill each on average). The latter would add mana based on the amount of damage you are taking, which would at least ensure that you don't run out of mana at a time when you're somehow getting pummeled.
If after maxing out the amount of mana you can regenerate each second, you still find yourself burning a whole lot of pots, I'd recommend you tone down on your FA's skill levels to a level where you can comfortably keep up a sustained rate of fire. Potential choices are the use of items like Rising Sun or Magefists which adds to your Immo level without bumping up your FA level. While this leads you to a lower damage with FA, you will at least not face any mana shortage problems.
Mercenary
Act 1 has the wonderful rogue merc with a nice +3 lightning hose. This can, and will give you a good tri-elemental damage team hiding behind a meat shield (Valkyrie and decoy). Armed with +3 skills and a relatively fast bow, she can do devastating lightning damage to enemies immune to either of your elements. The choice between fire and ice isn't that important.
Act 2 mercs come in 6 flavours.... prayer, blessed aim, defiance, thorns, holy freeze and might. Yet only two are useful to the mageazon in hell. Blessed aim with auto-hit skills? Defiance on a 100 defence outfit? Thorns on a not-gonna-be-hit character? And might on a cracked hunter's bow? Holy freeze slows down monsters to a crawl so that they can less of a threat. This is particularly useful against cold immunes which cannot be frozen. Frozen Arrow is at least able to control those vulnerable to freezing. Arm the man with a big pokie with a lightning armor (potentially 1-3xx lightning damage) and he'll be doing high physical and lightning damage.
If however, you intend for your merc to be an effective standalone, might and defiance would both be good choices to have. Might would give a huge damage boost to the merc (although you usually wouldn't need him all that much) whereas defiance would keep the merc alive longer in areas where there are hard-hitting physical attackers.
Act 3 mercs has fire, cold and lightning, all single elemental. Since you already have good cold and fire damage, lightning would be a better choice among the three but I would still not recommend it. After all, it is pure lightning no physical. Hence mercs from all the other acts are all superior in this aspect as they can deal both high physical and lightning damage.
Act 5 barbarians have the life and the resistance to tank, and it's a close fight between a HF or defiance merc and the barb for a merc who will be the third shield (after Valkyrie and decoy) for you. A high lightning armor, with a high physical sword and good leech should be enough for this beast to tank most creatures including the most feared frenzytaurs.
Very hard to choose, but my pick goes to the HF merc for his ability to slow down non-cold immunes or prayer mercs for their life recovery aura.
Valkyries and Decoy Deployment
Your two best friends in single-player environment are decoy and valkyrie. They tank for you and draw all the missile fire away from you while you take out all the baddies for them. To utilize them well, you have to know where to position them so that they will be of best use to you. Below are just some of the ways you can position your minions in different situations:
Purely Melee Monsters
For purely melee enemies, I would throw Valkyrie into the heat of the battle and cast decoy a bit further back in case a few of the creatures break away from valkyrie and make its way towards me. Also, should Valkyrie die, the enemies will swarm towards decoy first, buying me some time to recast valkyrie.
M
MV A
MM D
M
Ranged enemies tend to spread out more, so valkyrie can only entertain a small portion of them, the rest would be shooting at either my minions or me. By pulling back a little and casting decoy 2-3 squares in front of me, most of the shots would be directed at val while decoy will take any stray shot that comes this way.
R
R M
R D A
R V
R
Mix of Melee and Ranged Monsters
For a mix of monsters, the strategy is much the same as the previous one, just that i don't fall fall back as much. Valkyrie will again bear the brunt of the attacks with the decoy there to take any stray shots.
R
M
R VMM D A
M
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Swarming from Both Flanks
When somehow engaged on two flanks, valkyrie is left on one flank while i cast a decoy and proceed to clear the decoy side of enemies first since decoy never last as long as valkyrie. Of course, valkyrie's life is always kept in check and when it runs low, i would recast valkyrie and come to her help after decoy's side is clear.
MM
M V
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MD A
M M
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Boss Fight
When fighting a boss, the surrounding critters are first cleared off. Then Valkyrie is positioned between the bowazon and the boss. Decoy would be placed next to the boss so that the boss will attack the decoy first. This helps to extend the lifespan of Valkyrie and prevent you the trouble of recasting her again.
BV
DM A
Lightning Enchanted Boss (LEBs)
This is my preferred method of dealing with lightning enchanted boss. Somehow, i find that standing at the top or bottom of the boss allowed me to avoid most of the lightning discharges as compared to when i am standing at the left or right of the boss.
A
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VM
B
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Biggest Threats
The mageazon has two major offensive skills - Frozen Arrow and Immolation Arrow - and guided arrow as a backup support skill. In normal cases, fire immunes can be frozen solid and pinged upon by either FA or just GA with a high elemental weapon. Cold immunes on the other hand cannot be frozen but can be kept busy with a Valkyrie and toasted by immolation fire. Both are easy to handle. Eventually, there are only two kinds of enemies you have to worry about: a fire/cold dual immune boss and those fire immune frenzytaurs.
The boss can be handled by first getting rid of it's minions, leaving a 3v1 fight with it against you, valkyrie and merc. Valkyrie can hold the boss in place while your merc hits with either a high physical or high lightning weapon (better still, both). You can also chip in with some GAs using your alternate weapon switch (hopefully a high lightning weapon such as skystrike or arcing bow).
Fire immune frenzytaurs are fearsome for a mageazon. Cannot be frozen means that it can deal massive damage, even killing your high level valkyrie in just a few hits and immolation arrow just doesn't work. Two solutions: (1) Get a high elemental weapon with knockback (ie. Nef'ed lightning bow) and GA to pin and push the minotaur packs away from your valkyrie to protect her, (2) Do 1 and get yourself a Holy Freeze merc to slow them down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember that HF does work on frenzytaurs...
Act Boss Fights
For a mageazon, boss fights are perhaps the hardest. Your main skills are made to handle mobs, no powerful single entities that can take out your minions with relative ease. If you have a HF merc, he will move in for the kill (usually to be killed rather), so hopefully the boss will target your valkyrie or decoy instead. For yourself, throw out an Immolation and let it burn. In the mean time, FA or GA with elemental weapon to pass the 1 second mark before releasing another immolation arrows. Just keep the immolation burning while the boss is stuck fighting your minions, recasting decoy, valkyrie when needed. Sometimes, the boss will break free and advance towards you. Simple solution is to throw a decoy where you are standing (possibly valkyrie as well) and back off. This way, the boss will reengage itself with your minions and you can repeat the immolation progress.
Lightning Enchanted Boss (LEBs)
Immolation might not be that good an idea since it sparks off bolts like firewall (correct me if this is wrong). If your merc can take the beating, slow missile the LEB and either FA (mana intensive) or GA with an elemental bow (cheaper) from far while keeping the LEB under SM all the way. Else, use a knockack bow to pin the boss against a wall or something, stand FAR away and use immolation arrow while the boss is under the effect of SM.
Can't really think of anymore at the moment, more will be added as the ideas come. Basically, playing the mageazon is easy. Freeze those guys, immolate them, spam FA, immolate them, spam FA, immolate them... rinse and repeat.
Last note, in case you still didn't catch it, other than your main weapon (ideally Kuko Shakaku), get yourself a high lightning weapon (skystrike or magical 1-4xx lightning bow) and Nef it for control purposes.
Conclusion
Character Development
Most of the best starter gear involves socketed items. Jewels of envy does 20 poison damage over 2 seconds and can be used in armor and helm as well. With 2-socketed armor and helm of envy and a 3 or 4 socketed hunter's bow with assorted chipped gems, damage done is very significant and you shouldn't have much problems leveling until you get exploding arrow at level 12. From then on, normal arrow against normal monsters and exploding arrows against mobs or strong bosses should be plain sailing.
If at all possible, get an Eye with at least 7-8 seconds of chill time. By the time you get ice arrow, you will have a real solid >10 seconds of freeze time. Throw on the freeze and shatter their corpses so that reanimators can no longer work properly. This should solve most of the problems you will face in act 2 especially in Tal Rasha's Tomb with so many reanimators around.
Fast forward to level 24, getting immolation arrow. This is the first of your offence skill, but at the current level, it is still weak, becoming stronger at level 8 and starting to overtake frozen arrow's damage at level 16. Max this as soon as possible (at level 43) and it will serve you for life.
Level 30 will be yet another benchmark, where you will get frozen arrow, Valkyrie and PIERCE.... the skill that made mageazons almighty. If you have a piercing bow like Kuko waiting, one point in pierce with +skills will suffice for now. You will want to max out Immolation as soon as possible and FA as well if you can manage your mana. Assuming 1 point in each passive and no strafe, such a setup will require 57 skill points - achievable at level 50 if you had completed all the skills quests in normal and nightmare.
After that will be a matter of personal preference for people. Some like low Valkyrie and high evasive skills, while others go for max Valkyrie and lower evasive skills. All of them work to their strengths and have their own pros and cons. It's just up to the player to choose the style that suits him best.
Softcore vs Hardcore
Most of the suggestions and strategies have been for softcore play, thus there have been recommendations that does not quite suit that of a hardcore player.
For one thing, a hardcore mageazon would likely to want more life and resistances to prevent any accidental mishaps. This could lead to some gear or skill sacrifices as a hardcore mageazon goes a bit more defensive. For example, while a softcore mageazon could quite easily get away with going all energy (after meeting str/dex requirements), it's unlikely that a hardcore mageazon would follow suit. She's more likely to add more to vitality or spend a larger proportion of her charms and gear adding life and resists to make up the shortfalls.
This means that mana management will become even more important and it's not uncommon to see hardcore mageazons giving up some +skills gear for resistances or life; or even leave FA way less than max in order to maintain the ability to keep up continuous firing of FA and IA without running out of mana.
Vamps and Mageazons
A subclass similar to mageazons is the 'vamp', which also uses high levels of FA and IA for damage but relies on leech to recover the mana instead of mana regeneration and mana per kill. These 'vamps' typically has less need for energy and could thus afford more points into str and dex, making some of the bigger bows available. Correspondingly, their reliance on leech means that they would have a weakness against physical immunes much like their cookie cutter physical damage counterparts.
One possible way to resolve it is to find a balance between mana regeneration and mana leech. This would usually entail some investments into energy or heavy +mana gear to provide the base mana needed to recover mana against physical immunes. At the same time, damage and leech should also be kept high to provide a smooth and flawless execution when faced with monsters you can leech from.
Some possible outstanding gear deviations would be the Lycander's Aim and Razortail. The former has good damage, +skills and leech for a very decent str and dex requirement. The latter would provide the pierce that would be needed for the amazon to still hit max pierce while using non-piercing bows. Of course, there are a whole range of other possible gear to choose from but that would be up to the individual player to experiment and try out for themselves which works best for them.
Tri-Elemental Hybrids
If you're not fully into the evasive skills, a mageazon might find herself with quite a ton of skill points to spare. What better way to increase her offensive capabilities by adding another element to her attacks - Lightning Fury. There's no need for any fanciful javelins such as Titan's Revenge since all you're looking for is +skills... With that in mind, a good choice for gear could be Lancer's maiden javelins, with a max of +6 to javelin skills and Lidless Wall (58 strength). Razortail belt would also allow you to hit max pierce with level 9 pierce while throwing out lightning fury.
For those deviating into the 'vampish' route, titan's revenge would of course be a good choice with its fantastic mods and such. Various gear such as Lycander's Aim (mentioned above) and Thundergod's Vigor would also make their way into the list of uber gear to look out for.
With that, I thank you for listening with an open mind. All the best collecting uber-mageazon gear and happy playing!
Introduction
The mageazon has its humble beginnings in Diablo II Classic, where it shone due to the tremendous power of stackable, long-lasting immolation flames. With the huge nerf on immolation arrow, the variant style of play has been weakened but the better gear available and the availability of charms allowed the mageazon to remain a very much viable and strong way to play the amazon.
The principles of the mageazon are:
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low strength and dexterity, since the bulk of the damage would be from the elements
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reliance on immolation arrow and either ice arrow or frozen arrow for fire/cold damage
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no mana leech items at all, instead relying on huge mana pool and mana regeneration for survival
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played and built like a sorceress, hence the name mageazon!
With heavy reliance on the two elemental skills, there is no need for a big bow that requires large strength. Likewise, the auto hit feature of the elemental skills allow the mageazon to enjoy 100% hit rate without having to bother with dexterity and attack rating.
Stats Distribution
Strength and Dexterity
These two stats are almost totally not useful to a mageazon. She doesn't need a big damage bow and she certainly does not need to rely on high dexterity to get her good damage, hence strength and dexterity should be kept to a minimal - 50 to 60 each in most cases as that figure would allow you to equip almost all the best gear for a mageazon. Just for show, here's some of the uber-gear that are strongly recommended for mageazons:
Equipment Str Dex
Silkweave 65
Frostburn 60
Gloom's Trap 58
Que-Hagan's Wisdom 55
Elite Caster Boots 50
Harlequin's Crest 50
Magefist 45
Skin of Vipermagi 43
Razortail 20
Kuko Shakaku 53 49
Doomslinger 40 50
Stag Bow Runeword 30 45
Skystrike 25 43
As you can see, with the exception of Silkweave (65 strength), the rest of the best mageazon gear all has a maximum of 60 strength and 50 dexterity.
Vitality
In general, with most monsters frozen solid or distracted by decoy and valkyrie, a mageazon has little fears, but more life is definitely good, especially for HC mageazons. All spare points should go to vitality upon reaching a decent mana pool.
Energy
A sorceress needs energy to sustain her magic. A mageazon wielding magic with a bow likewise needs energy, and lots of it too. A sorceress can spam high-level nova all day long with a 1000+ mana pool but mageazon cannot do likewise because the sorceress has warmth. A mageazon can only depend on a huge mana pool which will result in a decent mana regeneration rate.
Main Offensive Skills
Key skills will definitely be frozen arrow and immolation arrow. In the past, ice arrow was an option for a main attack skill because frozen arrow had lower damage then, so the chill time made a difference. Now, however enter the world of charms and you can easily hit just the same amount of freeze time with frozen arrow, while more damage and to multiple enemies.
One interesting perk about both frozen arrow and immolation arrow (ice arrow too), is that there is a significant boost for the skills at levels 8 and 16. Damage-up-per-level increased from 10 to 15 to 20 for FA and from 10 to 20 to 30 for IA. This means that there is no reason NOT to max both skills as damage only starts to get spectacular after level 16.
Ice Arrow (1 or Max points)
Ice arrow auto-hits and freezes for a good amount of time even without much added cold duration. The damage is lower than that of FA and can only hit a single target but the big plus point of it is the light mana cost (less than 1/3 that of FA), which allows you to manage your mana much better. Overall, a good choice if your mana is somewhat restricted by gear choices to provide greater safety such as in hardcore.
For a mageazon choosing maxed Ice Arrow over Frozen Arrow, I would recommend a fast bow (ideally at 8/2) and as high +skills as possible. In this way, you will be able to churn out as many Ice Arrows as possible during the one-second cast delay of Immolation Arrows. However, even then, I would still recommend 20 Ice Arrow and 10 Frozen Arrow for the mass freeze and cold damage of Frozen Arrow.
1 5 10 15 16 17 18 19 20 25 30
Cold Damage 6-10 30-34 72-76 132-136 144-148 162-166 180-184 198-202 216-220 306-310 396-400
Cold Duration 2.0 2.8 3.8 4.8 5.0 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.8 7.8
Mana Cost 4.0 5.0 6.2 7.5 7.7 8.0 8.2 8.5 8.7 10.0 11.2
Frozen Arrow (1 to Max points)
An auto-hit skill, FA does it's cold damage in a fixed splash radius of 3.3 yards and freezes all hit for 2 seconds (boosted by items) in normal. With pierce and a tight pack of monsters, it's easy for FA to be doing 4x the splash damage to each monster in the radius. Chance to cast on attack items works fantastically well with this skill as the chance of releasing a charge is very high with FA piercing and hitting so many enemies with one shot.
1 5 10 15 16 17 18 19 20 25 30
Cold Damage 40-50 80-90 140-150 215-225 230-240 250-260 270-280 290-300 310-320 410-420 510-520
Mana Cost 9 13 18 23 24 25 26 27 28 33 38
Immolation Arrow (Max points)
Previously, the power of immolation lies in its long burning duration and stackability. Now nerfed down to only 3 seconds of burning with 1 second cast delay, it's only chance of being a viable skill lies in the fact that its basic explosive damage (1.3 yard radius) is significantly better than in the past (especially after around level 20). The extra burning damage is just icing on the cake I guess.
1 5 10 15 16 17 18 19 20 25 30
Fire Damage 10-20 50-60 120-130 220-230 240-250 270-280 300-310 330-340 360-370 510-520 660-670
per second 8-10 31-33 60-63 90-92 96-98 101-104 107-110 113-116 119-121 148-151 178-180
Mana Cost 6 10 15 20 21 22 23 24 25 30 35
Guided Arrow (0 or 1 point)
You can say that GA is usually for the big guns to take out bosses, yet it is also a very nice skill for mageazons as well. When faced with a single boss, firing off your big skills is extremely taxing on mana, since you are wasting a hell lot of damage (cannot multiple hit and hence no multiple splashes). With decent elemental bow (skystrike, kuko, 1-4xx lightning bow etc) and 100% pierce, even a level 1 GA can do lots of quick damage to the boss at an affordable mana cost (well covered by mana regeneration).
Other bow and crossbow skills are largely useless for a mageazon and would serve at best as pre-requisite skills for the above mentioned three skills.
Passive and Magic Skills
With just a maximum of 47 (20 FA, 20 Immo and 7 prerequisites) points in the bow and crossbow tree, and requiring only very little points in pierce and its prerequisites, there's a whole lot of option available to pump into valkyrie or the evasive skills.
Slow Missile (1-4 points)
Chaos Sanctuary is the place of oblivion knights. High elemental damage with a whole lot of curses as well. A slow missile cast here and there will allow you to easily move away from the elemental bolts without fear since they simply travel so slowly. Similarly, against lebs and using a KB bow on switch, the sm'ed le bolts will not even come close to reaching you.
Dodge (1+ points)
Most of the melee monsters you encounter are going to be either frozen or engaging your minions (Decoy, Valkyrie or Merc). Chances are that the only melee you are going to face will be stray members of a frenzytaur pack that comes your way and batters down your poor Merc. In this case dodge might come in useful but not so much otherwise.
Avoid (12+ points)
When standing still and firing at enemies, there's always the chance of a stray big damage shot coming your way. Also, with mixed melee/ranged enemies, the ranged attackers may not always target your minions. Having around 12 points of avoid gives you the chance to avoid the attack a good 60% of the time.
Evade (12+ points)
While dodge and avoid are for an immobilized zon, evade is for the zon on the run. Beyond 12 in evade (50% chance) gives you rather severely diminishing returns.
Decoy (1 point)
One of your best friends after Valkyrie. Repeated casting of decoy in strategic locations can help you draw attackers off your back while you retreat or help you tank against ranged attackers while you pick them off with your bow.
Valkyrie (5, 10 or Max points)
A good level of valkyrie can take a severe beating and may even do enough damage to kill something on its own. Level 5 gives it a credible amount of life to tank with and allow repeated castings without draining mana too much. Of course, with a mageazon's good mana pool, having higher or even a maxed out Valkyrie can be more useful since there should not be much mana problems recasting even a maxed valkyrie.
Pierce (1+ points)
For a mageazon, it is quite important to get maxed pierce, whether by items or by skill. Check the total piercing of your items and get enough pierce (with +skills) to allow you 100% piercing.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Piercing % 23 34 42 49 55 59 63 65 69 71 73 75
Other passives such as inner sight, critical strike and penetrate are largely useless to the mageazon due to the low physical damage output and auto-hit feature of the skills involved. Also, it is far more important for a mageazon to max her offence skills and pierce before adding to her defensive passives. Assuming enough gear for level 1 pierce to be sufficient, a mageazon can actually max out her offensive skills and have 1 point in each passive at a mere level 49-54 depending on how many skill quests have been done.
The Dressing Room
The mageazon is not an easy style of play to dress, if you intend to be at least quite powerful. Most of the better gear fortunately isn't that hard to get and if you are on closed Battle.Net, there really shouldn't be much problems getting the basics since they are largely "junk" discarded by those ignorant noobs.
The main properties a mageazon should be looking out for is piercing, +mana, +mana regeneration and +skills. Resistance and +life should be kept enough for survival but the key is still the above four properties... offence is always the best form of defence (especially when your offence involves getting enemies frozen).
In addition, the +mana per kill mod is also highly prized, though not many items have such a mod. Several uniques mentioned - que hagan's wisdom, silkweave - have it, rare/magical jewels can also come with a "+1-3 mana per kill" prefix while TIR rune adds +2 mana per kill. A mageazon built around several such items can also go a long way, especially in lower difficulties since lesser shots are needed to kill a whole mob of monsters.
Bows and Crossbows
Bows are the most important piece of equipment for the mageazon, and you would want a bow that's relatively fast and preferably with piercing, +skills or big fat elemental damage. Some good bows are :
Kuko Shakaku
Cedar Bow
Two-Hand Damage: (27-30) to (75-84)
Required Strength: 53
Required Dexterity: 49
Required Level: 33
Firing Speed: 13/3 (11/3 with shael)
+150-180% Enhanced Damage
Fires Explosive Arrows or Bolts
Piercing Attack (50)
Adds 40-180 Fire Damage
+3 to Immolation Arrow [Amazon Only]
+3 to Bow and Crossbow Skills [Amazon Only]
Skystrike
Edge Bow
Two-Hand Damage: (17-21) to (50-60)
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 43
Required Level: 28
Firing Speed: 11/3 (10/3 with shael)
+150-200% Enhanced Damage
+1-250 Lightning Damage
2% Cast Level 6 Meteor on Striking
30% Increased Attack Speed
+100 to Attack Rating
+1 to Amazon Skill Levels
+10 to Energy
Both of these bows can be found rather early in the game and IMO, Kuko Shakaku is simply the best end-game bow for a mageazon due to its 50% pierce, nice fire damage and +3 bow skills (+6 immolation) coupled with a decent firing speed (11/3 with shael). On the market, both are not very expensive too, unlike the unearthly price of the Buriza.
Yet, in SP mode, they are still hard to find. Cheaper alternative is the Doomslinger unique repeating crossbow, THE weapon of choice for Diablo II classic mageazons. +1 amazon skills, 35% piercing and 12/3 (11/3 with 5 more IAS) firing speed makes it a real good mageazon weapon if not for the existence of the Kuko.
Zephyr (OrtEth) and Melody (ShaelKoNef) are both decent runewords for mageazons. Socketed into a +3 ashwood bow, you will have an 11/3 bow with either fastwalk and a little lightning damage (zephyr) or a +6 bow skills and knockback. Also, a Zephyr'ed razor bow is equippable at level 21, does decent damage and fires at a nice 10/3 speed.
Yet another no-hard-to-find bow is the magical shocking bow (with 1-4xx lightning damage). With the potential of 2 sockets and a good suffix (ideally cold damage for more freeze time), this bow will make a good backup bow against fire/cold immunes and could even hold its place among other good mageazon bows. Base bow type should have low requirements, and either be fast (composite, hunter's, razor) or with +skills (ie ashwood). Throw further lightning jewels or +mana/kill stuff in to make it even more powerful.
All in all, most bows work fine, but the six bows mentioned would really make a difference to a mageazon.
Armor
Again, the focus will be on +mana, mana regeneration and +skills. This brings about two main contenders for top armor:
Que-Hegan's Wisdom
Mage Plate
Defence: 542-681 (Base 225-261)
Required Strength: 55
Required Level: 51
Durability: 60
+140-160% Enhanced Defence
+1 to All Skill Levels
+3 to Mana After Each Kill
20% Faster Cast Rate
20% Faster Hit Recovery
Magic Damage Reduced by 6-10 (varies)
+15 to Energy
Skin of the Vipermagi
Serpentskin Armor
Defence: 246-279 (Base 111-126)
Required Strength: 43
Required Level: 29
Durability: 24
+120% Enhanced Defence
+1 to All Skill Levels
30% Faster Cast Rate
Magic Damage Reduced by 9-13 (varies)
All Resistance +20-35 (varies)
While not easy to come since they are exceptional uniques, Que-Hegan's Wisdom and Skin of the Vipermagi are both good +skills armor. Que-Hegan's has good defence and generally more useful mods for a mageazon (+3 mana per kill, +15 energy) but Skin of Vipermagi has far better protection against magic (35% resistance and 13 MDR). I must say that mage plates look much better on zons than the iron-look of a serpentskin armor, though.
Another low-level unique missed is the Spirit Shroud, another +skills armor but with cannot be frozen property instead. For starters, Stealth (TalEth) is a decent armor with 15% mana regeneration while Smoke (NefLum) is also quite good with its 50% resistance and +10 energy.
Runewords and uniques aside, good rares with +mana, +life and good resistances are also decent substitutes. In fact, if incredibly rare jeweller's armor of simplicity can be found, a 4-socketed duskshroud could be useful with say, 2 skulls and 2 sapphires in it.
For single-socket uniques, the space would definitely go to a perfect skull, mana regeneration is quite lacking in anything a mageazon can wear and 19% mana regeneration in the armor slot would go a long way.
Helm
Like armor, the focus is also on +mana, mana regeneration and +skills. One helm is the clear winner here, but is an elite unique and very hard to find:
Harlequin Crest
Shako
Defence: 98-141
Required Strength: 50
Required Level: 62
Durability: 12
+2 to All Skills
+(1.5 per clvl) 1.5 to 148.5 to Life
+(1.5 per clvl) 1.5 to 148.5 to Mana
Damage Reduced by 10%
50% Better Chance of Finding Magical Items
+2 to Strength
+2 to Dexterity
+2 to Energy
+2 to Vitality
Peasant Crown
War Hat
Defence: 92-108 (Base 45-53)
Required Strength: 20
Required Level: 28
Durability: 12
+100% Enhanced Defence
+1 to All Skills
15% Faster Run/Walk
Replenish Life +6-12 (varies)
+20 to Energy
+20 to Vitality
The harlequin crest's impressive array of +2 skills, huge +mana and +life as well as 10% DR has just about anything a mageazon wants (except resists). Socketing it would be difficult as a perfect skull would definitely devalue the shako, so perhaps a 15% res all jewel or um would be more fitting for this elite item. IMO both the peasant crown and harlequin crest looks terrible on an amazon though.
A rare circlet would probably look the best on an amazon but a good one would be hard to find. +2 skills would be great with some resistance and maybe +life, +mana or any other icing on the cake. From a cheaper standpoint, a 2-3 socketed helm with a combination of perfect skulls and/or perfect sapphires would likewise make a good mageazon helm.
Gloves
If not for the presence of the two outstanding uniques, the caster craft would probably be the best bet for the mageazon:
Frostburn
Gauntlets
Defence: 43-48 (Base 12-15)
Required Strength: 60
Required Level: 29
Durability: 24
+10-20% Enhanced Defence
+30 Defence
+5% Enhanced Damage
Increase Maximum Mana 40%
Adds 1-6 Cold Damage (2 Secs)
Magefist
Light Gauntlets
Defence: 20-24 (Base 9-11)
Required Strength: 45
Required Level: 23
Durability: 18
+20-30% Enhanced Defence
+10 Defence
+1 to Fire Skills
20% Faster Cast Rate
Regenerate Mana 25%
Adds 1-5 Fire Damage
40% max mana is simply huge and to have cold damage (2-second cold duration) makes frostburn one of the best bet for mageazon gloves. Magefist lose out a bit with only 25% mana regeneration but the big plus is the +1 Fire skills, which boosts Immolation Arrow by 1 as well! These are normal uniques too, making them very cheap to trade for and not all that difficult to find.
Caster crafts, on the other hand, are the alternative to go - Perfect Amethyst, Ort, jewel and a magical leather glove (demonhide and bramble mitts too) - would give you a nice crafted glove with: 4-10% mana regeneration, +10-20 mana and +1-3 mana per kill. This can result in some nice resist gloves with even the possibility of a +2 bow skills gloves with resists... woah!
Boots
Good mageazon boots are hard to come by... Silkweave is good but does not provide mods that are significantly better than a pair of caster boots and has a rather steep strength requirement (65) too.
Caster Boots
Perfect Amethyst
Thul rune
Jewel (any)
Leather, Demonhide or Wyrmhide Boots
Preset Mods:
Regenerate Mana 4-10%
Mana +10-20
Max Mana +2-5%
Silkweave
Mesh Boots
Defence: 95-130 (Base 37-44)
Required Strength: 65
Required Level: 36
Durability: 16
+150-190% Enhanced Defence
30% Faster Run/Walk
+5 to Mana After Each Kill
Increase Max Mana 10%
+200 Defence vs. Missiles
Silkweave's bonus of 10% max mana, +5 mana per kill and 30% run/walk are the main highlights, yet it is possible to get a fast run/walk caster boots with resistance. Tri-resistance boots are of course greatly useful for a mageazon lacking in that department. IMO, the gloves, boots and belt slots are about the best place to get resistance unless you chance upon a godly +2 prismatic circlet.
Belt
Mainly two best belts, each of which would be THE choice depending on whether you have any pierce on your bow:
Razortail
Sharkskin Belt
Defence: 85-107 (Base 31-36)
Required Strength: 20
Required Level: 32
Durability: 14
16 Slots
+120-150% Enhanced Defence
+15 Defence
+10 to Maximum Damage
Piercing Attack (33)
+15 to Dexterity
Attacker Takes Damage of (1) 1 to 99
Gloom's Trap
Mesh Belt
Defence: 79-102 (Base 35-40)
Required Strength: 58
Required Level: 36
Durability: 16
16 Slots
+120-150% Enhanced Defence
5% Mana Stolen per Hit
Increased Max Mana 15%
Regenerate Mana 15%
+15 to Vitality
-3 to Light Radius
If you don't have pierce on your bow, get razortail. Gloom's mage bonuses are good but the difference between 70+% pierce and 100% pierce can be very great. Razortail can also save you 15 stats points for energy if you had planned ahead. Gloom's Trap, on the other hand, has good mana bonuses (15% max mana and 15% mana regeneration) and +15 vitality too. While the mana leech is juju, that really can't be helped (would just make you stronger with that bit of leech :).
The less hard to find alternative would be to obsessively gamble belts. With 60 strength, I would gamble for plated belts in normal difficulty since it is a standard 4-tiers, rather than risk getting a 3-tiered belt with real nice mods. For rares, DEFINITELY go for +cold damage with resistances, life and/or mana. The cold damage will give you extra cold duration and the resistance available could be nice too.
Amulet
Hard to choose, but I give my vote to the Eye of Etlich... a simple looking but gorgeous amulet:
The Eye of Etlich
Amulet
Required Level: 15
+1-5 Light Radius (varies)
+1 to All Skill Levels
3-7% Life Stolen per Hit (varies)
Adds (1-2) to (3-5) Cold Damage (varies)
Cold Duration: 2-12 secs (hidden)
+10-40 Defence vs Missiles (varies)
The Rising Sun
Amulet
Required Level: 65
+2 to Fire Skills
2% Cast Level 1-10 Meteor when Struck (varies)
+(0.75) 0.75 to 74 Fire Absorb (based on clvl)
Adds 24-48 Fire Damage
Replenish Life +10
+4 to Light Radius
The Eye of Etlich can be worn real early and has a a potentially HUGE 12 seconds built-in cold duration, allowing you to freeze monsters for an extra 3 seconds in hell. This can make a difference if trying to control a big swarm of monsters for a party. Party members would thank you for all that frozen prey. +1 skills simply made it even more desirable.
The rising sun, with +2 fire skills gives a good +2 to the non-spammable Immolation Arrow while not to Frozen Arrow. This may sound bad but from a mana conservation point of view, it isn't. Spamming FA is very mana draining at high levels, yet you want as much out of your IA as possible because of it's 1 second cast delay. Rising sun allows you to keep a moderate FA level while boosting Immolation by +2. The extra fire damage and fire absorb makes it worthwhile too.
Two other uniques for consideration are Saracen's Chance and Mara's Kaleidoscope. The Saracen's is good only if you plan ahead and decide to use it for good. This will save you 24 stats points to place into energy, effectively giving you +54 mana and +36 life with 15-25% resist all, not too shabby for an amulet. Mara's, on the other hand, has a great +2 skills and lightens your resistance burden a lot with 20-30% resist all. A little more +stats wouldn't hurt.
Uniques aside (difficult to find), rare amulets with +2 skills, resistance, +mana, +life and all sorts of other mods are a good bet for the amulet slot. Finally, if you're really running low on mana and have nothing much better to use, a Bahamut's Amulet (+100 over mana) does give you quite a lot of ground mana-wise.
Rings
If resources are available to you, there can be only one choice... a Stone of Jordan and a Ravenfrost:
The Stone of Jordan
Ring
Required Level: 29
+1 to All Skill Levels
Increases Maximum Mana 25%
Adds 1-12 Lightning Damage
+20 to Mana
Raven Frost
Ring
Required Level: 45
+150-250 to Attack Rating (varies)
Adds 15-45 Cold Damage (4 secs)
Cannot be Frozen
+40 to Mana
Cold Absorb 20%
+15-20 to Dexterity (varies)
It doesn't take a genius to tell you that Stone of Jordan is good. +1 skills and 25% max mana is something you will find nowhere else. Raven frost on the other hand has all the mods a mageazon wants, most importantly "cannot be frozen". You do not want to be caught trying to control a crowd with a super slow firing pace and having monsters thaw out before you can take a second shot. To add to the cake, there's more cold damage (and 4 more seconds), +40 mana, 20% cold absorb and a good +dex which if you plan ahead can net you 20 more energy and hence an effective +70 mana on this godly ring.
Given a lack of resources, a bahamut's or great wyrm's ring would have to do as well. Adding to base mana, these can work out real well with the right gear (ie. +100 mana with frosties is +140 effectively). If you have two stones of jordans, replacing one SoJ with a Bahamut's ring could actually yield you better mana and less intensive mana usage (lower FA level). However, IMO, the SoJ combined with the effectively +70 mana Raven Frost is the best combination you can have on a mageazon.
Charms
Everyone knows what charms are good. Charms of vita, resist charms, good elemental charms are all standard issues with the mageazon just like any other characters. However, do keep every single one of those small cold damage charms (especially those with both cold damage prefix AND suffix). Each of these small charms, no matter what damage, adds 1 second to your freeze duration - even 2 seconds if it was a double cold damage charm. This may seem little, only 1/4 second in hell, but with the right gear and a decent number of charms, the result is simply outstanding. Just giving an example:
Frozen Arrow
Kuko Shakaku
Frostburns
Belt of Glaciers
Eye of Etlich
Raven Frost
12 cold charms
2
0
2
2
12
4
12
------
34
.seconds (8.5 secs in Hell)
That's a very long freeze time you have there. Without the charms, you would be left with 5 seconds, thanks to 3 full seconds from the Eye of Etlich. Take that out for another amulet and you would be left with a measly 2 seconds without the charms.
Conclusion
Basically, that's about it for dressing up. All the gear I can think of that fits has already been shown and explained. Any that I have left out pls email me here.
Mageazon Strategy
Mana Management
Mageazons are an extremely mana-hungry style to play. Managing mana would be no easy task, with two skills having very high mana costs. Even a 1000 mana pool will not last forever if you have a ton of +skills, especially since an amazon does not have huge mana regenerating skills like warmth or meditation to help.
There are four main ways you can recover mana:
(i) potions, either rejuvenation or mana pots,
(ii) returning to town for refill,
(iii) natural recovery,
(iv) mana per kill or damage taken goes to mana.
Potions are of course the simplest way out but mana or rejuvantion potions don't always drop from the sky and it would be very important to have a good control over your rate of mana consumption. Returning to town constantly for refills can often prove to be tedious and irritating to do.
Mana regeneration takes place all the time, the speed of which is dependent on your mana pool as well as any +% mana regeneration you might be wearing. Check out this site for a calculation of how much mana you are actually regenerating each second and try to find a good balance between +mana and +mana regen gear to use.
Other gear option to try out are +mana per kill and damage taken goes to mana. The former would add a substantial amount of mana each time you kill a monster (especially if you take very few arrows to kill each on average). The latter would add mana based on the amount of damage you are taking, which would at least ensure that you don't run out of mana at a time when you're somehow getting pummeled.
If after maxing out the amount of mana you can regenerate each second, you still find yourself burning a whole lot of pots, I'd recommend you tone down on your FA's skill levels to a level where you can comfortably keep up a sustained rate of fire. Potential choices are the use of items like Rising Sun or Magefists which adds to your Immo level without bumping up your FA level. While this leads you to a lower damage with FA, you will at least not face any mana shortage problems.
Mercenary
Act 1 has the wonderful rogue merc with a nice +3 lightning hose. This can, and will give you a good tri-elemental damage team hiding behind a meat shield (Valkyrie and decoy). Armed with +3 skills and a relatively fast bow, she can do devastating lightning damage to enemies immune to either of your elements. The choice between fire and ice isn't that important.
Act 2 mercs come in 6 flavours.... prayer, blessed aim, defiance, thorns, holy freeze and might. Yet only two are useful to the mageazon in hell. Blessed aim with auto-hit skills? Defiance on a 100 defence outfit? Thorns on a not-gonna-be-hit character? And might on a cracked hunter's bow? Holy freeze slows down monsters to a crawl so that they can less of a threat. This is particularly useful against cold immunes which cannot be frozen. Frozen Arrow is at least able to control those vulnerable to freezing. Arm the man with a big pokie with a lightning armor (potentially 1-3xx lightning damage) and he'll be doing high physical and lightning damage.
If however, you intend for your merc to be an effective standalone, might and defiance would both be good choices to have. Might would give a huge damage boost to the merc (although you usually wouldn't need him all that much) whereas defiance would keep the merc alive longer in areas where there are hard-hitting physical attackers.
Act 3 mercs has fire, cold and lightning, all single elemental. Since you already have good cold and fire damage, lightning would be a better choice among the three but I would still not recommend it. After all, it is pure lightning no physical. Hence mercs from all the other acts are all superior in this aspect as they can deal both high physical and lightning damage.
Act 5 barbarians have the life and the resistance to tank, and it's a close fight between a HF or defiance merc and the barb for a merc who will be the third shield (after Valkyrie and decoy) for you. A high lightning armor, with a high physical sword and good leech should be enough for this beast to tank most creatures including the most feared frenzytaurs.
Very hard to choose, but my pick goes to the HF merc for his ability to slow down non-cold immunes or prayer mercs for their life recovery aura.
Valkyries and Decoy Deployment
Your two best friends in single-player environment are decoy and valkyrie. They tank for you and draw all the missile fire away from you while you take out all the baddies for them. To utilize them well, you have to know where to position them so that they will be of best use to you. Below are just some of the ways you can position your minions in different situations:
Purely Melee Monsters
For purely melee enemies, I would throw Valkyrie into the heat of the battle and cast decoy a bit further back in case a few of the creatures break away from valkyrie and make its way towards me. Also, should Valkyrie die, the enemies will swarm towards decoy first, buying me some time to recast valkyrie.
M
MV A
MM D
M
Ranged enemies tend to spread out more, so valkyrie can only entertain a small portion of them, the rest would be shooting at either my minions or me. By pulling back a little and casting decoy 2-3 squares in front of me, most of the shots would be directed at val while decoy will take any stray shot that comes this way.
R
R M
R D A
R V
R
Mix of Melee and Ranged Monsters
For a mix of monsters, the strategy is much the same as the previous one, just that i don't fall fall back as much. Valkyrie will again bear the brunt of the attacks with the decoy there to take any stray shots.
R
M
R VMM D A
M
R
Swarming from Both Flanks
When somehow engaged on two flanks, valkyrie is left on one flank while i cast a decoy and proceed to clear the decoy side of enemies first since decoy never last as long as valkyrie. Of course, valkyrie's life is always kept in check and when it runs low, i would recast valkyrie and come to her help after decoy's side is clear.
MM
M V
M
MD A
M M
MM
Boss Fight
When fighting a boss, the surrounding critters are first cleared off. Then Valkyrie is positioned between the bowazon and the boss. Decoy would be placed next to the boss so that the boss will attack the decoy first. This helps to extend the lifespan of Valkyrie and prevent you the trouble of recasting her again.
BV
DM A
Lightning Enchanted Boss (LEBs)
This is my preferred method of dealing with lightning enchanted boss. Somehow, i find that standing at the top or bottom of the boss allowed me to avoid most of the lightning discharges as compared to when i am standing at the left or right of the boss.
A
.
VM
B
D
Biggest Threats
The mageazon has two major offensive skills - Frozen Arrow and Immolation Arrow - and guided arrow as a backup support skill. In normal cases, fire immunes can be frozen solid and pinged upon by either FA or just GA with a high elemental weapon. Cold immunes on the other hand cannot be frozen but can be kept busy with a Valkyrie and toasted by immolation fire. Both are easy to handle. Eventually, there are only two kinds of enemies you have to worry about: a fire/cold dual immune boss and those fire immune frenzytaurs.
The boss can be handled by first getting rid of it's minions, leaving a 3v1 fight with it against you, valkyrie and merc. Valkyrie can hold the boss in place while your merc hits with either a high physical or high lightning weapon (better still, both). You can also chip in with some GAs using your alternate weapon switch (hopefully a high lightning weapon such as skystrike or arcing bow).
Fire immune frenzytaurs are fearsome for a mageazon. Cannot be frozen means that it can deal massive damage, even killing your high level valkyrie in just a few hits and immolation arrow just doesn't work. Two solutions: (1) Get a high elemental weapon with knockback (ie. Nef'ed lightning bow) and GA to pin and push the minotaur packs away from your valkyrie to protect her, (2) Do 1 and get yourself a Holy Freeze merc to slow them down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember that HF does work on frenzytaurs...
Act Boss Fights
For a mageazon, boss fights are perhaps the hardest. Your main skills are made to handle mobs, no powerful single entities that can take out your minions with relative ease. If you have a HF merc, he will move in for the kill (usually to be killed rather), so hopefully the boss will target your valkyrie or decoy instead. For yourself, throw out an Immolation and let it burn. In the mean time, FA or GA with elemental weapon to pass the 1 second mark before releasing another immolation arrows. Just keep the immolation burning while the boss is stuck fighting your minions, recasting decoy, valkyrie when needed. Sometimes, the boss will break free and advance towards you. Simple solution is to throw a decoy where you are standing (possibly valkyrie as well) and back off. This way, the boss will reengage itself with your minions and you can repeat the immolation progress.
Lightning Enchanted Boss (LEBs)
Immolation might not be that good an idea since it sparks off bolts like firewall (correct me if this is wrong). If your merc can take the beating, slow missile the LEB and either FA (mana intensive) or GA with an elemental bow (cheaper) from far while keeping the LEB under SM all the way. Else, use a knockack bow to pin the boss against a wall or something, stand FAR away and use immolation arrow while the boss is under the effect of SM.
Can't really think of anymore at the moment, more will be added as the ideas come. Basically, playing the mageazon is easy. Freeze those guys, immolate them, spam FA, immolate them, spam FA, immolate them... rinse and repeat.
Last note, in case you still didn't catch it, other than your main weapon (ideally Kuko Shakaku), get yourself a high lightning weapon (skystrike or magical 1-4xx lightning bow) and Nef it for control purposes.
Conclusion
Character Development
Most of the best starter gear involves socketed items. Jewels of envy does 20 poison damage over 2 seconds and can be used in armor and helm as well. With 2-socketed armor and helm of envy and a 3 or 4 socketed hunter's bow with assorted chipped gems, damage done is very significant and you shouldn't have much problems leveling until you get exploding arrow at level 12. From then on, normal arrow against normal monsters and exploding arrows against mobs or strong bosses should be plain sailing.
If at all possible, get an Eye with at least 7-8 seconds of chill time. By the time you get ice arrow, you will have a real solid >10 seconds of freeze time. Throw on the freeze and shatter their corpses so that reanimators can no longer work properly. This should solve most of the problems you will face in act 2 especially in Tal Rasha's Tomb with so many reanimators around.
Fast forward to level 24, getting immolation arrow. This is the first of your offence skill, but at the current level, it is still weak, becoming stronger at level 8 and starting to overtake frozen arrow's damage at level 16. Max this as soon as possible (at level 43) and it will serve you for life.
Level 30 will be yet another benchmark, where you will get frozen arrow, Valkyrie and PIERCE.... the skill that made mageazons almighty. If you have a piercing bow like Kuko waiting, one point in pierce with +skills will suffice for now. You will want to max out Immolation as soon as possible and FA as well if you can manage your mana. Assuming 1 point in each passive and no strafe, such a setup will require 57 skill points - achievable at level 50 if you had completed all the skills quests in normal and nightmare.
After that will be a matter of personal preference for people. Some like low Valkyrie and high evasive skills, while others go for max Valkyrie and lower evasive skills. All of them work to their strengths and have their own pros and cons. It's just up to the player to choose the style that suits him best.
Softcore vs Hardcore
Most of the suggestions and strategies have been for softcore play, thus there have been recommendations that does not quite suit that of a hardcore player.
For one thing, a hardcore mageazon would likely to want more life and resistances to prevent any accidental mishaps. This could lead to some gear or skill sacrifices as a hardcore mageazon goes a bit more defensive. For example, while a softcore mageazon could quite easily get away with going all energy (after meeting str/dex requirements), it's unlikely that a hardcore mageazon would follow suit. She's more likely to add more to vitality or spend a larger proportion of her charms and gear adding life and resists to make up the shortfalls.
This means that mana management will become even more important and it's not uncommon to see hardcore mageazons giving up some +skills gear for resistances or life; or even leave FA way less than max in order to maintain the ability to keep up continuous firing of FA and IA without running out of mana.
Vamps and Mageazons
A subclass similar to mageazons is the 'vamp', which also uses high levels of FA and IA for damage but relies on leech to recover the mana instead of mana regeneration and mana per kill. These 'vamps' typically has less need for energy and could thus afford more points into str and dex, making some of the bigger bows available. Correspondingly, their reliance on leech means that they would have a weakness against physical immunes much like their cookie cutter physical damage counterparts.
One possible way to resolve it is to find a balance between mana regeneration and mana leech. This would usually entail some investments into energy or heavy +mana gear to provide the base mana needed to recover mana against physical immunes. At the same time, damage and leech should also be kept high to provide a smooth and flawless execution when faced with monsters you can leech from.
Some possible outstanding gear deviations would be the Lycander's Aim and Razortail. The former has good damage, +skills and leech for a very decent str and dex requirement. The latter would provide the pierce that would be needed for the amazon to still hit max pierce while using non-piercing bows. Of course, there are a whole range of other possible gear to choose from but that would be up to the individual player to experiment and try out for themselves which works best for them.
Tri-Elemental Hybrids
If you're not fully into the evasive skills, a mageazon might find herself with quite a ton of skill points to spare. What better way to increase her offensive capabilities by adding another element to her attacks - Lightning Fury. There's no need for any fanciful javelins such as Titan's Revenge since all you're looking for is +skills... With that in mind, a good choice for gear could be Lancer's maiden javelins, with a max of +6 to javelin skills and Lidless Wall (58 strength). Razortail belt would also allow you to hit max pierce with level 9 pierce while throwing out lightning fury.
For those deviating into the 'vampish' route, titan's revenge would of course be a good choice with its fantastic mods and such. Various gear such as Lycander's Aim (mentioned above) and Thundergod's Vigor would also make their way into the list of uber gear to look out for.
With that, I thank you for listening with an open mind. All the best collecting uber-mageazon gear and happy playing!
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