Well after god knows how many years of playing, I've decided to give hardcore a try. This won't be easy given my penchant for a haphazard playstyle, but I guess I'll either sink or swim. In addition, I'm doing single player, untwinked with a character I don't have hardly any experience on, Strafezon. I'm hoping to eventually build her around a Witchwild String, but I suppose that's pretty far down the road. I know the basics for this character, and the basic guidelines for HC play, but does anybody have any experience with a Strafezon on HC that would care to give some input?
My Introduction to HC
- Thread starter Clervis1
- Start date
Hiya,
Playing one now-using skin of vipermagi and Buriza. Resists and AR are an issue. But she is clearing everything. At Travincal now.
Playing one now-using skin of vipermagi and Buriza. Resists and AR are an issue. But she is clearing everything. At Travincal now.
First word of advice, be wary of strafe-lock. It can sometimes land you in a bad situation if you are swarmed quickly and unable to move out of the area because you are launching a volley of arrows.
Second word of advice, untwinked is sometimes difficult for a physical based damage dealer, I did a combination strafe/FA for my zon, as it does decent damage without having a reliance on your bow and it stops most enemies in their tracks, frozen = safety.
Also, harmony isn't usually too difficult to get the runes for so you should consider putting one of those together for some decent elemental damage + fast running.
Good advice guys. Thanks. Knockback will probably be huge, too. I was thinking of doing FA hybrid as well, Pyro. Although, I'm curious, did you put a lot of skill into it and its synergies, or did you just one-pointer it?
This post has all my end game gear/skills/stats that I ended up with:
http://www.purediablo.com/forums/sh...n-FreezingBarrage-Freezing-Arrow-Stafe-Amazon
Its not a very exciting read, but eh. Thing about zons is that passives suffer from terrible dimnishing returns, so there is flexibility in your skill choices for the most part. I synergized mine with the one that added additional damage, the one that adds additional cold length is not worth it in the slightest and your better off using additional cold damage charms since they extend length and your not wasting so many skill points.
Some people do other types of hybrids (javelins on switch, using lightning fury for example) and they seem to do fairly well, but I'm a big proponent of slowed/frozen in HC.
http://www.purediablo.com/forums/sh...n-FreezingBarrage-Freezing-Arrow-Stafe-Amazon
Its not a very exciting read, but eh. Thing about zons is that passives suffer from terrible dimnishing returns, so there is flexibility in your skill choices for the most part. I synergized mine with the one that added additional damage, the one that adds additional cold length is not worth it in the slightest and your better off using additional cold damage charms since they extend length and your not wasting so many skill points.
Some people do other types of hybrids (javelins on switch, using lightning fury for example) and they seem to do fairly well, but I'm a big proponent of slowed/frozen in HC.
Wow. That's a whole read out. Gives me a few questions though. Did that 23 mana per freezing arrow hurt? You didn't upgrade your WWS? Was that HP sufficient to give you a good margin of error? Same for your resists? How did your low level Valkyrie fare?
The joy of single player, Go mule allows you to do a full character dump, so it lists out all of your stats/skills/etc, in a semi presentable format.
Mana drains quickly, a big drawback of FA is that its a hog, if I didn't have meditation from insight it would have been either so many blues you wouldn't believe or be sitting and waiting. I know another forum member doesn't use FA because of this, they rely on a buffed magic arrow to handle any Physical immunes since the mana cost on that is nil. But that's also not in HC.
I had mostly group play near the end of the playthrough, so upgrading the WWS just didn't come to mind as I was constantly using Frozen arrow to keep my melee teammates safe, and I think I dropped the WWS for Harmony after Nightmare. If I were to keep the WWS in action I definitely would have up'd it at some point.
Unfortunately that HP is about as good as it gets, any spare points I didn't need for str/dex went straight to vit. I was never a big fan of dexazons but thats just my personal playstyle, I rather have the extra 4 (3?) health rather than the 1% ed.
Valk would die quite a bit, but I think I used decoy more than I used the valk. The valk is really only there as an extra tank, and the merc does pretty well on its own for that purpose.
Mana drains quickly, a big drawback of FA is that its a hog, if I didn't have meditation from insight it would have been either so many blues you wouldn't believe or be sitting and waiting. I know another forum member doesn't use FA because of this, they rely on a buffed magic arrow to handle any Physical immunes since the mana cost on that is nil. But that's also not in HC.
I had mostly group play near the end of the playthrough, so upgrading the WWS just didn't come to mind as I was constantly using Frozen arrow to keep my melee teammates safe, and I think I dropped the WWS for Harmony after Nightmare. If I were to keep the WWS in action I definitely would have up'd it at some point.
Unfortunately that HP is about as good as it gets, any spare points I didn't need for str/dex went straight to vit. I was never a big fan of dexazons but thats just my personal playstyle, I rather have the extra 4 (3?) health rather than the 1% ed.
Valk would die quite a bit, but I think I used decoy more than I used the valk. The valk is really only there as an extra tank, and the merc does pretty well on its own for that purpose.
Code:
Passives:
Valkyrie 20
Decoy 20
Penetrate 20
Crit. Strike 6
Bow & Crossbow:
Strafe 6
MultiShot ~8-12
Freezing Arrow 1Here's a skeleton of a strong HC build. It keeps your AR high, your summons are the best tanks in the game, and you've got all the bow skills you really need to beat the game. You can hold things still with FA, cover a crowd with MS, Strafe your 2-3 target packs, or use GA for singular targets. Those are your tools to do damage.
It doesn't have a PI solution. Most ways of achieving this are pretty ad-hoc: amp stick for the merc, elemental damage charms, fire rogue (popular choice). Witchwild String solves the PI problem: highly suggested item!
Your switch setup holds some sort of shield (Rhyme Tower or Bone/Grim) and a Strength runeword in a Kris or other suitable stabber. This is your boss killing setup. You've got AR, a pretty speedy attack anim, maxed block. Yeah, get max block; it's an easy way to gauge how much dex to pump.
I've built 3 of these: dex-heavy, vit-dex-balance, vit-heavy. They all reached Guardian. One of them was mostly untwinked (staying single-pass wasn't working in favor of my character compared to my friends', oh well). I've written a lot about one playthrough over on theamazinbasin boards, where there's also a ton of other bowazon information to be gleaned.
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