Complete LF Javazon Guide
- Author: Flux
- Version: LoD v 1.09
Introduction
Javazons, Amazons who use javelins (often called "stix") to throw at targets (usually with Lightning Fury as their main/exclusive skill) are a newly-popular character, and a lot of fun to play. Vastly improved from their FPS-unplayable state in D2, many of the top ladder characters are now Javazons. Very versatile, Javazons are able to clear any area in the game, magic find very well, and best of all, play solo while racking up massive experience, far more than the party exp leeches stuck in Bloody Hills runs.
Javazons don't require much specialized equipment, the skills to add to are quite simple, and though techniques vary, any Javazon with decent gear and some playing skill can kill things very quickly in just about any area of the game, and dominate the level-up race once she reaches the Nightmare and Hell Secret Cow Levels.
Javazons aren't especially good for boss killing, especially in big games and especially Act Bosses, though they can be effective Hell Meph runners with good equipment (teleport amulet). Their best item run, other than the cows, is a Pindleskin run, or a full Act Five 3 SuperUnique run. Javazons are the fastest possible character for that run, and all these runs are described in detail in the Specific Area section.
Some common abbreviations used in this guide.
- I = Immune. Lightning, Fire, Cold, Physical. LI, FI, CI, PI.
- E = Enchanted. Boss Modifier. FE, CE, LE, etc.
- MS = Multi Shot, Boss modifier. MSLE is very bad.
- lvl = Level. Character, Monster, Item, Skill. Clvl, Mlvl, Ilvl, Slvl.
- LF = Lightning Fury, your main skill.
- MF = Magic Find. Item modifier you want. Read about it here.
- GF = Gold Find.
Complete Guide?
This guide has my recommendations on how to best play a Javazon at high levels. I've tested a lot of styles, half a dozen Spearazons back in D2c, a 40's Javazon there also, as well as 56, 91, and 97 Javazons in D2X, all with a variety of skills to compliment LF, and this guide recommends what I've found to be by far the most powerful build.
If you want to have an uber-powerful character, follow the steps in here. It's certainly possible to have some success with other styles of play, using a spear or jabbing with your javelin or slowly killing with Plague Javelin, but this isn't a guide that explains every possible variant, regardless of how effective (or not) they are.
My current Javazon is Clvl 97, Hardcore. She has around 450% MF, 500% GF, very low resistances, (15 F/-45 C/40 L/-45 P with Rhyme) no +skills other than Titans and Harlequin, 7% mana leech, 8% life leech (all from Titans), 1250 hps, 310 mana, 75% blocking, and 50% Dodge/Evade with about 15 Valk and 26/24 LF/Pierce. If I went to all the best +skills, resistance, +stats, leech etc equipment, I could probably add 800 hps (including charms) have max resistance to all, 20% dual leech, +10 to all skills, 500 mana, etc etc. But why, when I'm killing quickly now, and surviving?
My goal on all characters is to wear as much magic find and gold find as possible (as you'll see in the equipment recommendations) to make the character very profitable, while still surviving and killing quickly. This Javazon build is perfect for that goal.
The equipment recommendations in this guide cover a wide variety of play styles though, so whether you go all riches, or all power, or somewhere in between, you'll find what you want.
End Game
The "end game" refers to the eventual goal of a character, where they are going to wind up, if successful. For example if you were making a MF Barbarian or Sorceress, you might plan to level them to 80 or 82, and then do Hell Meph runs exclusively. So your strategy along the way would be skewed to getting them to the stats and skills you wanted at that point, when you'd switch their equipment around and specialize them for one purpose.
A Javazon has no real end game. Her end game is her middle game, and her level game; that is the Hell Cows. You can certainly level her up to specialize for Meph runs, or A5SU runs (both detailed later in this guide), but her specialty is doing the Cows, and doing them very quickly. Therefore you might as well profit while you do them, eh? Other characters have to delay their gratification, they have to toil away to get to a higher level, when they can perhaps be strong enough to put on more MF/GF gear and try to start finding good stuff.
A Javazon does that all along. Her end game begins around Clvl 60 (usually), and continues indefinitely. Once you play for some time with a lot of MF, compared to your normal equipment, you'll wonder how you ever played without the magic find.
The Cows aren't real profitable normally. You get a lot of gold, but they are mostly normal monsters, who have very low odds of dropping anything better than magical items. Lots of MF helps greatly on improving your loot there, and after all, it's your end game. You are going to be doing Hell cows from now on to infinity, so you might as well profit as much as possible while doing them, right?
Character Development
The hardest part for a Javazon is getting started. Your main skill is Lightning Fury (LF), which is not available until Clvl 30. You also need a lot of points in Pierce, another Clvl 30 skill, and Valkyrie is very useful also at Clvl 30. So until then you'll be putting just a prerequisite point into most things, while adding a bit more to a few useful lower level skills, but mostly saving points for the Clvl 30 launch.
This section assumes you are progressing more or less at a normal pace, actually playing the game. If you have friends with higher level characters to "turbo" you through to Act Five, or will let you party to leech experience, then obviously less planning and strategy is needed to level up.
Long Term Goals
The Javazon is pretty flexible; you can vary your points somewhat, depending on how you like to play and what equipment you have. My Javazon playing experience is entirely Hardcore, so for standard characters you'll want to follow the skills and equipment goals, but you can get away with lower hit points, resistances, and blocking.
You can play a Javazon anywhere, she's very effective on everything but LI (Lightning Immune) monsters in hell games, and Act Bosses in multiplayer games. However her main area of expertise, and where she is the true master, is the Secret Cow Level. So you should build yours for what you want to do, but you'll likely spend most of your time among the Hell Bovines, so consider the following guidelines. The main difference between Cows and other parts of the game is that in the cows, you can get away with much lower resistance.
For successful Hell Cows runs, able to do them solo in an 8 player game, you'll want to have approximately the following. More in all of them is recommended, and you can go lower, but these are the minimum goals to shoot for.
- 800+ hps (enough to take several cow hits and live)
- 150+ mana (depends on leech, more makes things much easier)
- 8% mana leech (can get by with less, more makes things easier)
- 5% life leech (just from Titans is enough)
- 50% blocking (75% is ideal for cow survival)
- 20+ in Lightning Fury
- 15+ in Pierce (Max it out if possible)
- Valkyrie (I like Slvl 12+)
- Decoy
- 40% in Dodge and Evade (or more)
- 25% Lightning Resistance (more is better, and you can get away with negative to all, just be more careful. I'm currently playing with no cold or poison res, other than on my shield.)
Hotkeys and Controls
Javazons aren't real heavy on the hotkeys. You need Valk, Decoy, Slow Missiles, LF, and Town Portal hotkeyed, and also Guided Arrow and possibly Fire Arrow, depending on your bow/xbow. Jab and Attack are options early on, as well as plain Throw at low levels, but you'll likely just map Jab to your left click with Titan's and never change it after Clvl 30. Teleport is a needed hotkey when you have an amulet with that, and are using it for Meph runs, and you usually need to reset it each new game, if you took off the amulet in the previous game.
You need to know your weapon switch hotkey very well also, since you'll be doing it hundreds of times a game with a Javazon and a Bow on your switch. When you switch weapons, the game returns you to whatever skills you had active on the left and right click, so if you have Jab/LF with Javelins/Shield, and Fire Arrow/Guided Arrow on your bow, when you switch from one to the other both left and right skills will change to whatever you had on that weapon switch when you last had it active.
You should (and will) get in the habit of clicking Guided immediately when you go to bow, and LF immediately when you go to Javs. You'll be using the right click for a variety of skills, Decoy, Valkyrie, Town Portal, and you don't want to switch from javs to bow and right click, thinking it will be Guided, and it's Town Portal. Obviously this isn't the end of the world, but just get in the habit of hitting the weapon switch key and an instant later hitting the attack skill for that weapon type, and you won't waste time casting the wrong skills.
I've recently stopped carrying Town Portal books, and now use that extra 2 spaces for more charms. I now put portal scrolls in my 4th belt slot, and with usually all full rejuvenations in the the first three, in my 12 slot Goldwrap, there's never a need for more than 1 or 2 purples at a time, so I don't miss the never-drunk 4th slot of potions at all, and adding another 11% MF (or whatever you do) on 2 small charms is a nice bonus. If you are still carrying a Town Portal book and have an inventory over run with charms, you should think about trying this technique. You can just change your TP hotkey to point to the scrolls, or else just click 4 to open a TP instantly. You need to remember to refill them pretty often from the NPC, but you can put one in your cube for emergencies.
I do always carry an ID book, since doing cows you find so many dozens of jewels and runes and jewelry that it's impractical to carry them all back to town and ID them, especially since I generally have about 12 non-charm-filled spaces my Inventory. You'll want to always have 12 keys in the Cow Level also, since there are so many locked chests there. I don't think I've ever done a Cow Level where I didn't get at least 2 or 3 Charms/Jewels from the chests, and Unique/Set items are quite common also. I found a Buriza from one in a game recently. [Top]
Mercenary Selection
Javazons are not real merc-dependent, so having one is optional. Most Javazons find that they die much too quickly in the Hell Cows, unless you play very cautiously there, and it's probably not worth slowing down to keep the merc alive when you don't really need him anyway.
The most useful Merc for Cows and other areas is probably the Defiance aura Act Two merc, hireable in Normal or Hell. I don't like Holy Freeze mercs for Javazons, since the slowed monsters are hard to herd properly, especially cows. This rules out Act 3 Cold Mercs also. The defiance mercs can do okay, and it's nice to have your defense tripled as you run around the cows; you'll probably go from 85% chance to be hit by a cow down to 65% or so, which certainly helps over the long run.
The problem is how quickly any merc dies if they tank Cows, and the Act Two (and Act Five) guys will always try to tank. I've had a Clvl 91 Defiance merc with ethereal Corpsemourn (1900+ def), ethereal godly Bone Visage (400 def), and a Spire of Honor (+25% defense), which gave him upwards of 13,000 defense. And he'd still die any time he got into a big pack. If you have the gear, putting one into Shaftstop and Vampire Gaze would probably be useful, for the up to 50% damage reduction, or 64% if you socketed them both with Ber Runes. This wouldn't be a good idea Hardcore, since it sucks to die, but it really sucks if you loose great stuff on your merc when you die, and there's no way to loot him.
You have to alter your playing style to keep the merc alive, herding less aggressively, so your merc isn't trailing after you through huge mobs of Beef, and this will make your killing speed slower (though you'll be safer doing it). While it's well worth modifying your play style somewhat to keep your merc alive for some char types, (Bowazons with Might mercs, for example) your Javazon isn't getting that big a bonus from her merc. If you don't really need him, and it's slowing you down to have him, you'll probably just leave him dead for cows, and perhaps raise him if you do other stuff, helping friends do Baal or with a Hell Turbo, rescue Anya, etc.
Merc Magic Find Aid
The other reason to have a Merc is for MF'ing. Any MF gear on your Merc adds to your MF gear, if the merc makes the kill. So if you have 300%, and your merc has a 3-topaz helm and 4-topaz armor for 168%, that's 468% MF on kills the Merc makes. It's not generally worth slowing down so the merc can kill things, but it is worth it letting them have the last hits/shots on bosses, especially SuperUniques and Act Bosses (Mephisto, mainly).
I've experimented, and found that the best merc for this with a Javazon is an Act 1 Rogue merc. They are smart enough to stay back from the targets, and with your Valk to tank, they can live through anything (though are helpless in the Cows) if you control the situation well. They also have a nice firing rate and do pretty good damage at higher levels, so you don't have to wait 5 minutes for them to finally land a killing hit. The Act Three mercs can be used for this as well, since they have the same AI as the rogues, and won't tank and die immediately. They can also get a lot more MF than a rogue, since you can put a Rhyme and Ali Baba on an Act Three guy and he'll kill just as fast, since he's all about his spells. Unfortunately their spells don't do that much damage, even at higher levels, and most of the monsters you'll want them to attack will have very high hit points, and resistances. Also the Act Three guys have just one element, with Fire being their biggest damage one, and the Four main targets, Meph, Eldritch, Shenk, and Pindleskin all have at least 50% fire resistance, and can often be immune to it, depending on their random mods.
So my recommendation is a rogue merc, with a normal bow, and MF stuff on. I've used 3T and 4T equipment, you can go with a skullders or wealth or shako or whatever you like, if you have the gear. Softcore can be a lot braver about equipping top stuff on a merc, for the whole death/looting reason Hardcore has to watch out for.
If you are doing Meph runs, you want the biggest damage bow you can find. Lycander's Aim would be great, but rogue mercs can't equip Amazon Class bows. So you need to find something like a Cruel Ward Bow, or more commonly use one of the Exceptional Uniques, such as Goldstrike, Magewrath, Cliffkiller, etc.
For Act 5 SuperUnique runs, I like a Kuko Shakaru best, shrot of a Buriza. It's much lower damage than the bigger bows, but it's got very big fire damage, and enough physical damage to get the job done in a solo game. Pindleskin, Eldritch, and Shenk are often PI (Physical Immune), so you must have elemental damage on your merc's weapon if you want her to get the kill. Socket her Kuko with a good damage lightning jewel if you want her to be really well-rounded to deal with PIs.
Rogue Mercs can't use crossbows, or a Buriza would be the best option in all cases, for the huge physical and cold damage. You can also socket a bigger damage (than Kuko) bow, such as Goldstrike, with an elemental damage jewel, and that would work well for Meph as well as the Act Five SuperUniques. Even a perfect lighting damage jewel (1-100) would be 59 less average damage than the 40-180 fire on a Kuko, but that would probably mean waiting the last 6 or 8 shots from the merc, rather than 3 or 4, which isn't a big deal.
You've probably seen the "Lighting Hose" technique, which rogue mercs get when they have +3 to all skills (or +all Amazon skills, but not +bow tree skills though) in gear. This is pretty easily obtained with a Cliffkiller and +1 helm, such as Tarnhelm (for the MF). This causes the Merc to shoot out a slow-moving lightning bolt, which does quite a bit of damage, but has less range than an arrow attack. This is fun to watch, but the damage it does is all Lightning, so you run into the same resistance problems that Act 3 mercs have, and it's useless if you get an LI monster. Meph has 50% lightning resistance, and I found that waiting for the merc to kill him with this attack was painfully slow in a solo hell game. You can try it, but I've had better success with just a Kuko or other bow.
Merc Techniques
The technique for getting the merc kill is pretty simple, you just whittle the monster down to a sliver, and then stop attacking, letting the merc get the last few hits. You should have a Valkyrie tanking, and try to not have other monsters nearby, since the merc will fire at whatever she's closest to.
You want to be sure you are in your maximum MF gear when the kill is made, since that's when it checks. So if you have titans/Rhyme in one switch, and a bow in the other, use the bow to whittle the monster down to a sliver, then switch so you'll have the 25% MF on Rhyme active. You can usually do a little more whittling with a few LF throws also, just to speed things along. But don't get greedy, the Merc has to get the final hit in for the bonus to work.
Pindleskin is a pain since the merc will generally stay in the doorway, and just as she's about to kill Pindleskin she'll turn around and start shooting at the advancing zombies in the garden. You have to run in past Pindleskin so she'll be closest to him, and if he's LE (Lightning Enchanted) she'll probably die there. Shenk has the same problem with the Death Maulers that keep wandering up, but they die quickly to her Kuko shots, or you can kill them with your elemental damage bow/xbow.
Much more on technique in the specific areas section of this guide.