Magezon enjoying CTA Matriarchal Bow

[J-Dog]

For months now I've planned out many build variations of Magezon in my head but haven't got around to actually making one. My level 94 Javazon has been sitting around doing nothing for quite a while so It thought I'd skip the whole leveling process and just re-spec her.

I've always wanted to make CTA in a bow . I thought it would be a great weapon for Magezon when made into MB or GMB granting +5 to bow skills when including BC and the "convenience" of casting BO with your main weapon. So I made one:

Not too happy with the roll but what can you do.

I'm sure Ice, Faith and a few other choices are superior damage wise but I have to say I've really enjoyed the utility of CTA. Not so much the BO casting with your main weapon which is nice but rather the ease of reaching 99% FCR (and max res) with Wiz Spike and Lidless on switch. It's not often teleporting feels nice with a bowazon. @ffs has a great video on Youtube of a physical damage bowazon with 99% FCR, check it out.

Skills:


Stats:


Gear:

CTA MB +3 B&C skills
Shako 'Um'
Enigma Light plate
Highlord's
Ravenfrost
Rare ring 10fcr, 4ml, 21 poison resist, 35 mana, 36 ar
Arachnid Mesh
Rare boots 20 fr/w, 36 cres, 6fres, 38pres, 18mf, 3 dex
Rare gloves shown in picture
5 skillers, resist/mf charms

Wiz Spike and Lidless on switch
Merc with Infinity, Treachery, Andy's


I've been farmin AT and Pit on P3-P7 and Chaos Sanctuary on P3 with her and I'm enjoying it. I never thought Immolation Arrow could be a one point wonder but it is! It's a nice damage boost especially against Diablo. Magezon is obviously not tier 1 build but it kills fast enough especially in AT and Pit so playing one doesn't feel like a waste of time in that sense. With 288% mf and with her kill speed some goodies are just around the corner and there's already a few appetizers in the Item Find -thread.

I like this one.

 

[Albatross]

Seeing underutilized skills and hard points into energy is very refreshing
This is also one of the few builds which can use high cold/fire damage charms. Depending on rolls, they can outclass bow skillers by increasing explosion damage without raising the mana cost.

Edit: forgot about synergies, elemental SCs can't surpass bow skillers. They would be an interesting low-mana alternative if they weren't so scarce.

I also plan to respec my java into a megazon some time in the future, but could never figure out how to fit a bow, battle orders, and enough FCR on her. Decided to ignore FCR/teleport and walk around wearing Tyrael's Might. It's actually not as badly outclassed for this build if you give up on Enigma (and probably my only half serious opportunity to use it).

You skipped Decoy, but skilled the dodges?

 

[zemaj]

Hell yeah... ever since I made my +3Matbow CtA, I have urged others to as well... it really works so much more seamlessly than you would think and is just a great option. I 'lucked out' with skill rolls, only rerolled once, but naturally +%ED is low since skills are high...I really was hoping for 'middle' of both for once, so naturally couldn't do that.

One day I'm going to follow up on that threat to make a beta in a GMB... still need a pre-1.10 +3GMB though, and they aren't exactly littering the ground...

 

[saracen85]

Nice! Whenever I see Mageazon, I look at Mana. 1k+ is definitely impressive!

Seeing underutilized skills and hard points into energy is very refreshing
This is also one of the few builds which can use high cold/fire damage charms. Depending on rolls, they can outclass bow skillers by increasing explosion damage without raising the mana cost.

Interesting.. I have been building up quite the number of boreal and smoking charms for quite a while now, and might as well try this out..

 

[J-Dog]

@Albatross I'll definitely try out elemental damage charms. It's hard to justify using them on most builds but maybe Magezon is different! +Fire damage probably won't boost Immolation Arrow's fire damage over time, will it? Oh and Tyrael's on a Magezon is a tasty choice.

Edit: I switched 4 skillers (one had dex which allows me to wear MB so didn't switch that) into elemental damage charms that got me 47-87 cold damage and 49-117 fire damage. and ended up with this:

So a clear loss if we look at numbers in LCS. Does this mean that my elemental damage charms aren't good enough to justify the change or is +elemental damage calculated into splash damage that doesn't show in LCS? I'm asking because when killing on P7 in AT I feel barely any difference in kill speed between the setups.

Oh and I didn't take Decoy because I felt like FA's freeze is enough defense. I feel D/E/A gives me quite a nice boost to survivability and the occasional arrow that gets shot 180 degrees in the wrong direction doesn't bother me and I haven't felt dps loss because of the bug. I think it's because most of the time I get the first shot so most things are frozen already.

@zemaj I'm actually thinking of making another one in GMB. With my current setup I reach 8fpa. With GMB I'd need 10% additional IAS to reach 9 FPA so that's a bit of a bummer.

@saracen85 Still chugging those mana pots with 1k mana I have only 1 To mana after each kill so there's room for improvement.

 

[Albatross]

+Fire damage probably won't boost Immolation Arrow's fire damage over time, will it?

Doubt it, probably just the explosions.

Skill and attack fire damage are applied by both the arrow and the explosion. +% Fire Skill Damage only applies to the skill's explosion fire damage: despite what is displayed, it does not apply to pyre fire damage per second.

So a clear loss if we look at numbers in LCS. Does this mean that my elemental damage charms aren't good enough to justify the change or is +elemental damage calculated into splash damage that doesn't show in LCS?

Does the LCS damage change if you pick up one of the charms? Looks like I overlooked the synergy bonus, oops

Lets see FA for example, at level 20 with 20 points in CA it's average cold damage is 1071, adding another level will take it to 1139, a 68 damage increase. L30 -> 31 is 1819 -> 1900, an increase of 81. A perfect hibernal sc of winter adds 22-29 cold damage, add 3 and the average added cold damage is 76.5. And we come to the conclusion that I was hasty and you can never have good enough elemental charms to make them better than bow skillers, especially for a megazon

Edit: unless the cold damage added by charms is boosted by the synergy? Pretty sure it doesn't work that way.

However, if you happen to have some really high elemental SCs they will work nicely if you can fit them along with skillers or be used if you don't have enough skillers. For trivia, an amazon focusing only on EA would be better off with a theoretical full inventory of flaming SCs of incineration. 3 would add 106.5 average fire damage vs 951.5 / 1024.5, 73 damage with a bow skiller at level 30/31.

Don't think there are any other interactions with elemental charms. A few more quotes from the amazon basin, just in case I've misinterpreted something...

Skill damage is only applied by the explosion, while attack cold damage is added to both the arrow and the explosion. +% Cold Skill Damage only applies to skill damage.

Skill damage is only applied by the explosion, while attack fire damage (including that from Enchant and Holy Fire) is added to both the arrow and the explosion. +% Fire Skill Damage only applies to skill damage.

 

[ffs]

Cool character. I’ve been collecting bow bases for CtA as well but haven't made one yet. The easy 99 FCR switch is convenient.

Have you tried running P7 Arcane Sanctuary with this build for rune finding? Could work very well with 99 FCR teleport, EA as main skill and FA as backup against bigger Hell Clan groups. Lots of options to try, too, like Faith Merc, Insight Merc, various bow options etc.

 

[J-Dog]

@Albatross Interesting. FA with good Pierce is such a good skill that the difference after 200 damage drop is probably barely noticeable. Thanks a lot for thorough analysis!

@ffs Great idea, I'll go ahead and try running AS. Also I was sort of fixated on Infinity merc. Why not go ahead and test different setups? Well you've just made a solid Sunday plan for me, cheers.

 

[Babyhell]

Interesting stuff here! I have to try my Wrathazon with lower player settings, I quested on p7 and haven't tried farming player settings yet.

Good read, thanks for sharing!

 

[Luhkoh]

I really like this idea. I had always though a cta bow could be cool as the weapon swap for a hybrid javazon (have seen zemaj run this in the past), but never considered the fact that maining one as a FAzon leaves you easy 99fcr on swap. Thats super fun. Might try this out in the future.

EDIT: also whats the appeal of considering a GMB over MB? For a strafe backup or something? Is the mana leech significant enough to consider? What about even making it in a stag bow for less stat requirements? Guess that depends on the answer to my first question haha. Could see running with silkweaves and maybe like a 15/2 jewel somewhere, but idk how far that will go to mitigating mana issues either.

Also, can get 9fpa on your gmb setup if you want to make one with a jewel in the helm, but again am curious what the appeal is. Great stuff!

 

[J-Dog]

@Luhkoh GMB is probably sub-optimal because of the attack speed. Pros would be lower dex req and higher physical damage for higher leech. Slower attack speed would mean less mana spent aswell although at the cost of kill speed so not that great of a trade off One version of the build could be a face tanking full/almost full vita variation with slower attack speed and more MPK as you said. Don't get me wrong this build is pretty safe in the areas it can somewhat efficiently run but I can see myself having fun with teleportinyourfaceandblastyourtaintwithfreezingarrow -version of the buld.

Oh by the way. Further proof of my diminished attention span: re-spec'd my decked out Dragon Tail assassin back to trapped and went with similar to your AT running variation wearing Wiz Spike and Phoenix with maxed out Fire Blast. Did runs yesterday evening and today morning and it's a great build too.

 

[Luhkoh]

@J-Dog very nice. Enjoy! I love phoenix on assassin.