FA/Strafe Skill Points

[Celestial Wind]

FA/Strafe Skill Points

I'm building a FA/Strafe zon around Mav's set and I wanted to know what skill points to put in. Currently I have

20 cold arrow
20 freezing arrow

How many points should I put into strafe, valk, and pierce? I'm only playing 1 player PvM. Should I also put points into Pentrate?

Also, anyone know how many "points" pierrcing attack gives? I'm using Buriza and Razontail right now, both of which have pierce and I think I'm getting 100% pierce, but I'm not certain (didn't put any points into pierce yet).

I know this is a common question and I've already read some answers, but I want some more opinions on this.

Thanks

 

[NASE]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

Razortails give 33% pierce. buriza should have 100% all by itself.

As for pionts, penetrate is easy. You want as little as possibly while still getting a high cth. You really can't afford to miss many hits with the low damage the bow has and the ar on the cold skills doesn't work IIRC - and even if it does, more is always better as you need to hit to pierce IIRC.
Pierce: quite a bit. I'd aim for something like 15 including +skills.
Valk: as little as possible. Mav's with freezing arrow should give enough safety. No need for a super strong tank.

P.S. You may want to put points in strafe if you want to go fa/strafe. And you may want points in critical. Try to hit the point where you don't gain 1% per skill level (16 or 17).

 

[Celestial Wind]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

Ok thanks.

Since I'm mainly trying to use FA and only use Strafe against Cold Immunes, should I still socket my Mav gear with IAS jewels? I actually saw one build where a guy put in lots of lightning jewels instead into his gear probably to get damage against cold immunes. What do you think?

 

[NASE]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

I think it's very stange to go with the lightning javazon side one a character that uses a bow from a set.

But as you probably noticed, some people claim the build to be much stronger. lightning fury is stronger the strafe. And that bow you will use to strafe is useless.
Try it out for yourself. It's the only way I guess.

P.S. About the sockets, as mentioned, the bow doesn't have much physical damage. Thus my advise is to socket as damage as possible. Note that it's not just a cold immune solution. You will probably use strafe to leech mana back too. Thus, good damage might be more important than you think.

 

[ak404]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

Well, let me throw my two cents in.

If you're only playing 1 player PVM, I think you might've overdid it with 20 CA/20 FA. You'll be one-shotting a lot of monsters, but you'll also be eating through mana fast. Thus, it's probably a good thing M'avina's Caster isn't so strong.

Let's start with Pierce. You're not going to have any equipment slots open for Pierce, but you're getting a minimum of +6 to all skills from the completed set: even with one point in Pierce, you'll have boosted it to level 6, meaning a 59% chance to pierce your first target. You can only hit five targets with a single Pierce (which sucks, I know), so it's possible to overinvest in this skill.

Personally, I'd suggest 10 base points, so you're starting with a 71% chance to pierce the first target. With a +6 point bonus, you'll have a great chance to hit five in a row - 82% for the first, 67% for the second, 55% for the third, 45% for the fourth. Also, I like having skills in multiples of 5, I'm funny that way.

Strafe. The primary purpose of Strafe for this build will be mana recovery, not damage. This may change in v1.13 when Blizzard finally takes care of the damage nerf to Strafe, but for now, just concentrate on hitting the maximum amount of targets: 10. That's level 6...

...oh, what the hell, you can definitely dump 20 into this skill and get away with it.

Valkyrie. Everything else goes here. I'm an old-timer, so I never did with anything less than 17 points into this skill, but YMMV.

 

[NASE]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

You can only hit five targets with a single Pierce (which sucks, I know), so it's possible to overinvest in this skill.

I would like to point out that the maximum number of pierce isn't 5. Atleast, there isn't a consensus about this.
There are people (people who know what they are talking about) that claim there to be no cap. The apparent cap of 5 was introduced when pvp-players in 1.09 tested this on a single target, however, it's not the pierce that's capped at 5 by the time of flight of the arrow is capped so that it only has time to turn 4/5 times.

Just to make sure everyone is up to date.

 

[ak404]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

I would like to point out that the maximum number of pierce isn't 5. Atleast, there isn't a consensus about this.
There are people (people who know what they are talking about) that claim there to be no cap. The apparent cap of 5 was introduced when pvp-players in 1.09 tested this on a single target, however, it's not the pierce that's capped at 5 by the time of flight of the arrow is capped so that it only has time to turn 4/5 times.

Just to make sure everyone is up to date.

References, please. I tend to go by librarian's FAQtoids, which state a 5 target limit.

 

[Celestial Wind]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

I'm finally up to lvl 70 and have Mav's set on:thumbup:

Right now my skill points are
20FA
20CA
6Strafe
6Valk
8Pierce
and the rest is pre-req (I think I might have 5pt to penetrate, but not sure)

So then +6 to all these skills to get my actual values.

I also want to ask how many hard skill points I should put into penetrate? I heard that later on in hell mode AR is really vital.

The gear I have now is:
Mav set
Saracen's Chance (has perfect resists)
rare rings (both with resists, and one has mana leech)
Silkweaves (for the bonus mana)

Now I also want to ask how important resists are in hell mode for amazon? Right now I have 75% in all and 68% in lightning because I'm using silkweaves instead of my rare boots. I want to switch out my amulet for my highlords or maybe getting a Crescent Moon, but that will decrease my resistances a lot. Any ideas?

Lastly, I going mainly for FA so IAS isn't that important. I did put a shael into the bow to get to the next breakpoint, but I was wondering what I should socket into the helm and armour. I wanted to do ed/max or min but then I heard about the bug involved with that. Any ideas about the remaining 2 sockets?

 

[ak404]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

Penetrate depends on your merc. If you went for a Blessed Aim merc, don't invest in Penetrate at all. In either case, you'll want to bump up your AR with +AR charms and equipment, maybe even putting an Eth in your bow. If you're using a Blessed Aim merc, you might want to consider an Insight polearm, unless you have something better planned out. With an Insight, your mana needs would be taken care of...so long as the merc stayed alive.

As for resists, I did well with 50% resists in Hell, but I also play things dangerous. Your call entirely, but I usually threw a valk or decoy in front of anything that could use an elemental attack on my bowazon; once those occupied the mobs, I just fired away. The only things that killed her were enemies with piercing attacks, and we're talking bugged gloams and vipers here.

As for sockets, I think the best you can possibly hit with M'avina's is 120% IAS total, but 90% should be fine, as that's just enough for a 9-frame attack. If you go for an Eth in your bow (for the defense debuff), then you might want to consider a pair of IAS jewels in the armor to get back up to a 9-frame attack speed. If you go for an Eth in your bow, then switch to an IAS amulet (I'd recommend a Cat's Eye over a Highlord's), then your choices for sockets in the armor are quite open, though I'd lean towards a pair of cold Rainbow Facets.

 

[Dacar92]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

The only problem with Mav's set is the relative low damage output of the bow. I might consider spending those points in penetrate and use a might merc for the damage addition. Every little bit helps, especially against CI's in hell.

 

[ak404]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

On the other hand, with such low physical damage (the set still has decent non-physical damage), you might also want to ensure that you land as many shots as possible, especially with those FAs with their high mana cost.

Thus, a Blessed Aim merc is also recommended.

 

[NASE]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

Ar can easily be made up by using enchant from that big club on switch.
Damage however can't be fixed with a switch.

 

[Celestial Wind]

Re: FA/Strafe Skill Points

Thanks for all the advice guys.

I'm playing with a Might merc that I got in nm, but I guess I should try to get that tyrant club for the enchant charges. I'm not rich, so hopefully I can get one for only perfect gems.