Mavina Bowie - Help me on the gear setup

d2lover

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Oct 8, 2019
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Hi, I want to make as my next char a Mavina Bowie that beats Hell on p1 softcore.

What you think about the remaining slots:

Amulet: HLW vs Maras
Ring1: Raven
Ring2: 1.07 bugged mana per kill ring, SoJ, dualleecher?
Boots: WTs
second slot: Titans revenge + resistance shield to compensate for no fullset and use the lightning javelin that converts phys to light for PI+CI monsters

a few Bow skillers

Skills will be FA+Syn max, decent points into pierce, AR-boost max (or not, kinda forgot if it works with FA), 1 pt into the lightning jav skill
then GA 1-x points and multi to a decent amount of arrows

sockets will be filled with Shael on weapon and then ias-jools or PTs depending if I need more IAS or not

What would you give the merc, Infinity or Insight? I find Infinity more useful, what about reapers for crowdcontrol?

Which areas will be the toughest to get through, I kinda guess act3 durance of hate because of the puppies

Also would you go full vita, or pump dex? I read that FA only does damage on a pierced attack if the first monster got hit actually, tho I wouldn't want to go in hell with just 300 life
 
Amulet: Maras. With shael'd Bow, you'll reach 9FPA. 8 isn't really achievable unless you go the Faith merc route.

Ring: I prefer those 1.07 MPK rings. FA eats Mana! Leech rings only if you concentrate on physical attacks as backup.

Second slot: Up to you. Titans is ok if you go FA/LF route.

AR is only for pierce's hit check and your GA/Multi. FA's AR bonus is bugged but the cold splash effect will still trigger upon arrow contact. And if you choose Infinity merc, everything will be taken care of anyway.

Merc: Infinity for damage min-maxing. Insight for Mana sustenance. Your preference.
No need for crowd control; Even in Hell, non-immunes will get frozen for quite a bit.

Toughest area(s): Act 5. Crystalline Passage/Glacial Trail/Ancient's Way etc.

Vita vs Dex: Depends on whether you want to boost your GA/Multi/Strafe/Leech. As mentioned above, AR isn't really a major factor. Pierce will still trigger often enough.

Anyway, 1 point multi is enough for a Mav Zon, especially when you go with more Bow skillers.
 
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Ok, but I don't go LF, I just convert my phys damage into light damage, don't know what the skill is called, it's above LF, I think LF is strong, but why would I play Mavina when I could play a java, hope you get what i mean^^

at which skilllevel wears the valkery every possible item? 17?

also would you put any empty inventory full of SCs of cold damage to enhance the freeze duration? will look at my resistances once at hell and full mavset on
 
level 17 valk = equip rare war pike. Other gear may still be upgraded as level increases (see this), but lvl 17 is sort of a breakpoint since the weapon can actually cause damage in hell.

As for charms, it's not really efficient if you concentrate just on cold scs since their main benefit is only to add freeze length. If needed, use those with secondary cold mods after useful ones like life/mana/ar/resists etc.
 
Have been thinking of Lightning bolt as backup attack too. :) I think raw damage is better for it than +javaskills. But my hypothetical use case had Fortitude to beef that lightning damage even higher.

Even so, you could check if you have a hard hitter javelin in stash if not going for Titan's for the +stack & replenish.

Also check out Thunderstroke: has Lightningbolt in built so you save some skillpoints and it has -elr too (not that big of a deal with Infi though).
 
well, I have this one:

Code:
Wraith Flight
Ghost Glaive
Throw Damage: 113 - 320
One Hand Damage: 70 - 226
Quantity: 75
Required Level: 76
Required Strength: 79
Required Dexterity: 127
Fingerprint: 0x6e6d17be
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
152% Enhanced Damage
9% Life stolen per hit
+15 to Mana after each Kill
Replenishes quantity Ethereal

good that you pointed that out, but if I find eth titans I upp them
 
I have a M'avina MA/Strafe Frost Maiden, she uses CtA on switch (demon limb before I made that). CtA gives a big boost to clear speed by increasing skills and mana pool as well as increasing the whole squad's survivability.

I found this thread about Ice Maiden theorycrafting incredibly illuminating, and though I haven't followed its advice precisely I gained a lot of knowledge that I used to make my choices about this build. Specific points of interest include arguments for Pdam over raw magic DPS.


I read another thread somewhere that made a really compelling argument for Strafe as 1 point wonder (main point being you can hit max number of arrows with multiple targets at 1 point +skills, and no strafe lock).

She uses L8 Strafe and L10 MA for CIs, mostly MA. I don't find they slow her down at all but it depends what you're running I suppose. She runs P7 AT extensively, she's not as fast a blizz sorc obviously but she's close.

I use Cat's Eye, I'd use HLW if I had one. I prefer to get my IAS here rather than the weapon for reasons described below.

I use a Pskull in my bow, which I think is a first for me in LoD at least. I ran Nef for a while, big meh. The PSkull upped my clear speed substantially. Unless I found a really killer dual leech ring I doubt I'd even replace it with a facet. I have been strongly considering a Vex here.

I run Raven Frost and a LL/Resist/minDam/MF ring. I ran a dual leech ring for a bit but found the +mindam and other stats on this ring superior overall. Along with perfect WT and a few charms, this also gets my MF near 200.

I suppose if a 1.07 Mpk ring got you there, you could then run Mara's and Shael for more DPS. I don't have such things so I couldn't comment as to how this stacks up, but I can say that I have very few mana issues with this character as she is currently built.

Cold Facets in Helm and Chest. No brainer here.

I have 110 base vit +10 from war travs. I run max decoy and level 17(+) valk. I recast decoy often and often use it to pull, also cast Slow Missiles often. Between these factors she is very safe and only dies when I get lazy. Leveling was dicey (see: slow, but only dangerous if I got lazy) in some areas but she benefits from a patient, pull-based playstyle.

90 Str (132 with gear), minimum to avoid annoying Str bug issues.

Rest goes to Dex, currently sitting at 417. Extra skills go into MA at this point.

I put 1 point into Penetrate (AR skill), she hits 95% with FA and 90% with MA.

14 points (80%) pierce. I have never noticed FA to *not* damage all targets in its AoE on a pierce, though my AR is quite high so it's hard to say honestly. Stuff is usually puddles before I have a chance to notice such things.

She ran max Strafe and 1pt valk/MA for a while, I find her current setup safer and more effective. I found MA just as effective as strafe for bosses, single targets, and convenient rows of CIs, if not better. I swap between them often, even with max strafe and 1pt MA I found I was preferring MA which is why I made the switch. Really underrated skill.

Merc uses Insight, GBane, VGaze. Infinity is probably good but again this is a question of sustained DPS. I don't have infinity but I feel like in my case it wouldn't be a huge upgrade. Mpk ring could make this a different story.



General observations from playing this build:

Don't skimp on your physical DPS, even with insight you'll never keep up with the mana consumption of FA. War Travs, +pdam on rings, might merc, DEX, pdam charms if you have good ones, whatever you can do to get that leech up. The more you leech the more you cast FA the more stuff continues to get deader.

+Cold Damage on charms scales incredibly well, especially as you start adding facets. It gets counted on your physical shots as well as FA, each source adds a second of freeze time to FA(!!!), and it takes your +cold dmg% on physical shots. I was using some Sharp GCs (no 1.07 tho) for a while and eventually replaced everything with +CD.

I ran council with her for a bit with this same setup, her team was very safe and cleared the council fairly quickly when I used the decoy smartly but maps with lots of ghoul lord spawns went slowly due to CI/phys resist and I often ditched these. Ultimately the going was slower than I liked (but much more effective than I expected) and she went back to AT.

This is my favorite AT runner, and my favorite character to play overall. I find the playstyle really engaging, she has incredibly potent offense combined with dynamic defense and has the perfect answer to any situation that AT at the very least can throw at her.
 
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Titans on a Mavina Amazon is a sacrilege...

Beautiful writeup intersilva. For general gameplay, I was thinking about Strafe as a backup, with either Atmas-Infinity/Insight or Cats/HLW-Reaper. I would love to tune that build up, but I don't have time. You have it figured out nicely, well done.
 
Titans on a Mavina Amazon is a sacrilege...

Beautiful writeup intersilva. For general gameplay, I was thinking about Strafe as a backup, with either Atmas-Infinity/Insight or Cats/HLW-Reaper. I would love to tune that build up, but I don't have time. You have it figured out nicely, well done.
Thank you, she's probably the character I've put the most theorycrafting work into. Not much mystery left to a blizz sorc or hammderdin haha.

I have to agree here, to the extent that if I were going to build a LF (or L anything)/FA zon I wouldn't use the M'avina set, and I wouldn't use partial M'av on any build. Once you break the full set bonus, the pieces on their own are really lackluster in my experience. I've tried using partials on a few different builds, diadem+something is okay, but compare to say, shako+2bow/ias gloves+Tgods/razor, it just doesn't stack up. Even if you swap shako for Pcrown the hybrid setup is still better imo.

Nightfish wrote a really incredible WSK FIshyzon guide that covers the LF/FA build, though personally I am bad and I found this build much more challenging to play so mine is parked in A4 Hell.

I did forget to mention +bow charms, I think I only have one. I prioritize res til cap>bowskill>cold dam on charms, though I want to say this may have been different before I had so many good-to-decent cold SCs. Hard to remember.
 
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Overall, have to agree with @intersilva, Frostmaiden really shines best with full Mav's, and Fishyzon doesn't want anything of Mav's.

That said, with the route you detail, have you considered spear on swap over javs? IIRC, that would still work with Lightning Bolt, and damage numbers would be much better than javs. Also, would open up some interesting possibilities, such as 'Passion' (ZerkerZon!) or CtA spear.

Other than that, I'd go with 'Infinity' on merc, less for damage boost, more for the wonder of not having to worry about AR once its equipped, which can be quite annoying with bowzons, imo.
 
Ah, was confusing Lightning Bolt with Lightning Strike, my bad. Only ever used Lightning Bolt a few throws between Jabs until CS was available. Be interesting to see how that works out for you.
 
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Mav bow has decent, but not great damage. Strafe or Multi gets the job done in Act3, barring higher player counts.
 
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