Please help this Javazon rule the earth

That is one advantage of the LF/FA combination. You can kill all with auto-hit, no AR needed. You can focus your gear on skills (and/or MF).

Randall
 
Well yes, the LF/FA hybrid has that advantage. FA doesn't need to physically hit; the cold damage is applied regardless to the listed radius.

Despite that, I'm really keen on giving PJ a go. It seems a sheer waste to not use those +java skills my build has to invest in PJ synergised. And I don't want to use FA on this build, since a future build will be a Mageazon using both FA and ImmoA.

I'll see; if the PJ really sucks with the timer and slow damage, I might very well re-build and try a different approach.
 
FrostBurn said:
6. I'm going with a Might merc, but is putting The Reaper's Toll on him a good idea considering that I'm hoping WWS's Amplify Damage will trigger when I'm fighting WSK Gloams? Obviously, -100% physical resistance is better than -50% from Reaper's Decrepify, and I don't want my merc over-riding WWS's Amp Damage.

How often does Decrepify trigger, and what level is it (i.e. the duration)? Because if he takes their physical resistance down from 90% to 40, the merc will probably be able to kill them by himself (as long as he can stay alive, that is!).

I notice you are a bit worried about Gloams in Hell. Righfully so, since they can´t be frozen and an amazon has no inherent way of blinding them. However, I notice you will have a level 9 Decoy at hand. I have found that good movement and precise recastings of Decoy and Valkyrie can reduce the danger a lot against Gloams. Cast one of them inside the gloam pack, and the other between you and the gloam pack but so much to the side that lightning aimed at it will miss you.
A level 9 Decoy sure is not the strongest companion but she should help a bit. A temporary 'Nadir' helm is another/an extra solution.



Getting to level 95 requires you to repeat araes (something I would never do myself). A /players 8 Complete Game Clear (with no "runs") gets you to level 89.
 
jiansonz said:
How often does Decrepify trigger, and what level is it (i.e. the duration)? Because if you can take their physical resistance down from 90% to 40, the merc will probably be able to kill them by himself (as long as he can stay alive, that is!).

The merc will be using The Reaper's Toll which has a 33% CtC slvl 1 Decrepify, which last for 4 seconds. In-game, with a 33% CtC, the merc's enemies are almost contantly decrepified. The more I think about it, the more I'm swayed towards this rather than WWS's 2% CtC Amp Damage. And with only 1 point in Strafe, even with +skills she won't be strafing at 7 arrows, which means even less chance of Amp triggering, not to mention the very low 2% CtC.

Thanks for the tips on using Decoy! That was very helpful. I'll play around with your suggestion when the opportunity comes up.
 
Well, I thought this would be a good place to post a progress report. I don't normally do so, but I've been having such a heck of a lot of fun with my Javazon.

So she started untwinked at /p8 on 2.8.2006 at 20:06 hours. First point into Javelin tree at clvl 6 Poison Javelin (that's right, no Jab). Andariel was with a combo of PJ and Lightning Bolt (LB), but mostly from a 3 sox hunter's bow gemmed with chipped/flawed sapphire, ruby and topaz. I then tossed the gemmed bow to carry the nice rare items... big mistake.

A /p8 Duriel at > clvl 24. I thought PJ and LB would do, just like Andariel. Well, without a gemmed bow with cold damage, and Duriel's Holy Freeze aura, he chased my ama down faster than she could run, even with 10% FRW boots. Her decoys popped in pretty colours with just one swipe from Duriel. There was barely time to even cast 1 or 2 LB before running again. Eventually, my Prayer merc took Duriel down with a gemmed polearm socketed with normal gems. But not without 3 deaths, and one of them because I forgot to buy a TP scroll!

After having learnt my lesson, I gemmed another bow with normal gems, and used the moat trick on Mephisto with Valkyries to keep him in place, as well as using LF until the javelins ran out. Same with Diablo, but by then LF was stronger thanks to more points invested. By the time with Baal, I didn't even have to make a trip back to town before he fell to LF. So much for normal.

For NM at /p8, I twinked on all the stuff that she could wear at clvl 46 (except the Java skillers). That was when the true power of LF showed itself. It's frightening! NM Bishibosh had a horde of minions surrounding him... a couple of LF, the whole screen turned white, and there were corpses splattered on the trees.. very scary.

It was at this stage that I did the SoJ vs 6% mana leech ring, which is the only source of mana leech for my Javazon. The conclusion was that the mana leech won out over the +1 to skills. It is just too inconvenient to run out of mana and spend so much time picking up super mana potions. Well, 1 more hard point into Valkyrie then...

Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo and Baal... all died too easily to a maxed LF and enough mana leech to only require a blue pot or two. If I had realised how devastating LF is, perhaps I would not have twinked on all those +skills items...

/p8 Hell is fun, except with LIs. I've tried Eaglehorn, Kuko Shakaku and WWS on them, and they are all too slow. She is now in Hell Act 2, with 58 unused skill points and 235 unused stat points. Only LF is maxed, with 1 point in the pre-reqs, 1 in each Passive and Magic, and none in Jab or CS.

That's because I'm once again uncertain whether to go poison or cold, which seems to be the only two viable options against LIs. I'm starting to agree that poison, although doing huge damage over time, still takes too much time to act. And if I go the NF route with a Melody MB, I can shoot FAs at 10 frames which does about 1000 more damage (approx 1982 cold damage per 10 frames with FA, compared to approx 985 poison damage per 10 frames with PJ), albeit at a smaller radius of effect of 3.3 yards. So I've got to work on that some more...

Oh, I don't know why some people don't like D/A/E. I love it, I find the shouts my Javazon makes amusing, and it doesn't really interrupt her attacks, what with a Valk and merc to take most of the ranged attacks.

Can someone tell me how Inner Sight works? Lets say it does -300 enemy defense. Does it work on just the first cast, or can I keep casting for a cumulative effect? Lets say cast it 10 times for -3000 enemy defense? If the former, then it's pretty useless? If the latter, then it could be handy for monsters like Baal.

If you've read this far, congratulations.:wink3:
 
Hey^^

Ok, so up to date I've tried

A) lightning/strafe hybrid
B) Fishyzon
C) Pure lightning zon (made it for the MFO after an unique diadem dropped)

Of all three, the lightning zon is easily the best Baal runner (IMO). Reason being that none of Baal's Minions are naturally lightning immune AND no one in the throne is naturally lightning immune other than gloams. How do I deal with gloams? Eth upped titans + might merc (obedience RW + Treachery RW + andy's visage 27fire res/15 IAS socketed). You can get rediculously short distances in WSK 2 so that isn't a problem. The only problem there is when i get a group of the LI beetles that block the entire passageway (just respawn).

WSK 3 has lightning immune horror mages/those storm casters, both which never block your way. The OK's/Hell temptresses that do block your way get absolutely murdered by lightning fury.

And WSK only have gloams, which I happily jab away. There is also a noticeable kill speed difference with all four lightning skills maxed (though you may not believe it) and CS is really good at clearing out a throne room.

That's my case for a pure lightning zon. Some other comments

If you don't get CS what are you going to take down bosses with? I don't have an answer so I say at least get CS (although IMO one skill synergized CS is rather underpowered).

I love D/A/E. Partly because I spend most of my time running from things and partly because I never have to tank the Minions because of Merc + Valk + Decoy. Personally my valk is casted once in the game (put on a secondary hotkey) while I keep Decoy on a more accesible hotkey (I use decoy for each of the merc waves). Decoy is IMO the best single summonable in the game because it stays were you tell it to stay

I'd get Valk to level 17 (after EQ), where you get the rare weapon. I found that the survivability of the Valk increased dramatically from 16-17.

If you do decide to go the route of the lightning Zon, I'll post you my set up, but right now I got to eat and resumre running Baal until my eyes fall out. I run Baal at average 3:30 per run (counting from death of one Baal to another), and I'd say about 15-17 per hour (counting muling/restarting). She has died once so far: I was grabbing for a glass of water and I didn't know I got IM'ed and just held down my left mouse button (i play with music on).
 
Decisions, decisions. I was already struggling between a LF/PJ zon and a LF/FA zon (ala NF), and now I've got a pure lightning zon to throw in. Oh, this is going to be fun...:laugh:

Still, it was great reading your post. If I confine my Javazon to just the WSK, I could get away with a pure lightning zon. But I'm planning to cram on about 200-250% MF on her, and use her in the Pits (LI archers), Ancient Tunnels (LI Horror Mages), River of Flame (LI Stranglers and Abyss Knights) and the Chaos Sanctuary (which I rarely run but would love to). Would you agree that a pure lightning zon would struggle in those areas? If so, then I'm back to either poison or cold, even though I love the idea of four maxed out lightning skills! I still would like to keep the /players at 8 in those areas, if I can...

Yeah, I'm going to max out CS and get Jab as a consequence. Bizarrely, I did not earlier on, and if I did, I probably would not have taken as long with the bosses.

So which four skills did you max for your pure lightning zon? And how did you find Strafe with your previous LF/Strafe zon? I was initially planning to use 1 hard point in Strafe with WWS, but after playing in-game, I realised that my AR already sucked in Hell Act 1.
 
FrostBurn said:
Can someone tell me how Inner Sight works? Lets say it does -300 enemy defense. Does it work on just the first cast, or can I keep casting for a cumulative effect? Lets say cast it 10 times for -3000 enemy defense? If the former, then it's pretty useless? If the latter, then it could be handy for monsters like Baal.

I would say only once (as long as the effect runs, just like necro curse)

Baal has 2847 defense so -300 is around -10% defense.

When you max it (with +skills to around 29) it will do -1515 defense, so around -50% for baal. If you have no base AR to start with, it might be a better option as boosting penetrate.

Randall
 
My PJ/FA zon is in Act 3 Hell. PJ is awesome, especially at level 38 and with Trang's gloves (around 58k damage). For CIs, I have points in LF to hammer them after I poisoned them. The Pits were pretty easy, but I only ran them once since I am trying to finish her in a reasonable amount of time.
 
FrostBurn said:
Decisions, decisions. I was already struggling between a LF/PJ zon and a LF/FA zon (ala NF), and now I've got a pure lightning zon to throw in. Oh, this is going to be fun...:laugh:

Still, it was great reading your post. If I confine my Javazon to just the WSK, I could get away with a pure lightning zon. But I'm planning to cram on about 200-250% MF on her, and use her in the Pits (LI archers), Ancient Tunnels (LI Horror Mages), River of Flame (LI Stranglers and Abyss Knights) and the Chaos Sanctuary (which I rarely run but would love to). Would you agree that a pure lightning zon would struggle in those areas? If so, then I'm back to either poison or cold, even though I love the idea of four maxed out lightning skills! I still would like to keep the /players at 8 in those areas, if I can...

Yeah, I'm going to max out CS and get Jab as a consequence. Bizarrely, I did not earlier on, and if I did, I probably would not have taken as long with the bosses.

So which four skills did you max for your pure lightning zon? And how did you find Strafe with your previous LF/Strafe zon? I was initially planning to use 1 hard point in Strafe with WWS, but after playing in-game, I realised that my AR already sucked in Hell Act 1.

I don't know about other areas or so, but I hold 160 mf (on gear) with additoinal 60 mf or so from charms and I'm doing fine. I don't know how chaos will go with the many storm casters and you're merc dying. As an area runner, i don't think the pure light is as efficient as a FA/LF fury hybrid (although I don't know, after the MFO i'll try it out and tell you) but I do 1-2k jab and my merc does about 4.5k av (@ 80IAS) so the pits/ancient tunnels shouldn't be too hard. Actually thinking about it, chaos shouldn't be so hard, as the Storm Casters are few and have low hp.

Baal can easily be done at p8 (run down and clear throne on p/1 though). A hybrid will NOT be able to do this efficiently. Also, unlike other chars, its very relaxing to Baal with her.

I maxed CS and it's three synergies including fury. (sorry don't recall names) on my pure lightning zon.

My strafe/lf zon was a HUGE mistake. What I did was 20LF/CS, 10 Strafe/20 penetrate + high level valk. I went titans/spirit + WWS on switch with enough dex for max block on spirit. Still, my damage sucked so much. Trying to strafe gloams = gg. It took about ten years and I used up about 10 health potions per pack of gloams.

Also, if you can get your hands on a griffon's eye, definately do it. I was considering just using a shako (for the 50 mf/stats/dr) but the -20 lightning resistance is so nice (-25% if faceted). LMK and I'll post my setup.

/back to running Baal. I am being teased with multiple sacred armors
 
Yeah, when I find that Griffon's I'll use it... on a new pure lightning sorc.:laugh: Sorcs are my first love. And Death Web for Trang-Oul PNovamancer, when I find it.

Anyway, I'm a little surprised to read how poorly your Strafe/LF zon did, even with maxed Penetrate. It makes me wonder how pure Straferzons are Hell viable. They must need a lot more AR from their gear in order to hit consistently with Strafe, and with maxed Penetrate as well.

Yeah, I really want to build an area 85 runner, and not just Baal and his minions only killer. So I guess pure lightning is out for me, which is a shame. I've been told that Multi is no good with a LF zon. Strafe seems to do poorly. MA and GA are only for single targets, which is too slow for an area runner.

So it's back to either FA or PJ, it seems. Of the two, it seems that FA will work better, with it being faster and with bigger damage over time. I really wish the poison route was more viable on paper. I might still try it out in practice, just to prove if it really does or does not work.
 
My LF / PJ zon runs the Pit faster than my meteorb, skelliemancer, blizzsorc, FA / strafer (full Mav's with WWS on switch), fanazealot, or IK Barb. Blizzsorc would be faster in Ancient Tunnels at /Players 8, but using PJ as an alternate skill to Lightning Fury is extremely viable.

- Noodle
 
Er, quick question. Lets say I have over 100% Pierce, and fire a Freezing Arrow at 3 monsters all lined up one behind the other, and FA is auto-hit in terms of the elemental damage. Will the FA auto-hit the 1st monster, freeze it, and trigger the cold damage in the 3.3 yard radius, then pierce and hit the 2nd monster and do the same thing, and then on to the 3rd? In other words, how does FA work?
 
FA does do the radius explosioin on each monsters it pierces. So if 5 are in a line and tightly packed and you pierce the each one with a frozen arrow it will explode 5 times hopefully hitting atleast some of them multiple times. This makes it highly affective and add to that they are frozen...

I started a LF/FA zon friday i believe.

Now finishing up act 2 of hell now and i'm around lvl 75. It was a little tedious until lvl 42, then i put titans and lycanders aim on and havn't looked back. LF is just insane. FA was suprisignly affective from 30-42 with +3 to skills. At 42 FA got a nice boost.

I tried peace runeword early on to see if i could have a free valk, but it dissappears randomly without a point in the skill, so is useless. I may have to invest in her soon... starting to miss her in hell.

I have decent gear focused on Resists outside of skulders and shako, but still don't have high resists in hell. Put mosers on to have decent resist and maxed lightning resist as i run around. Its a little dangerous on switch, but i'm only trying to get throught the acts i'll harvest some good charms from my other chars later.

Using insight on the merc and some +mana charms to feed both the mana hungry skills.

I don't have any +skill rings, so using raven and natures peace. Rest in peace has been nice in act 1 and 2 and didn't dig around the rares for anything nicer. Wanted to get back to playing ;)

I havn't been doing FA on players 8 yet, but it seems to be 2-3 shots to kill things depending on how the pierce lines up and its not fully synergized yet. Maggot layer was a breeze ;)
 
Thanks Peppe. I should have looked at Freya's FA Guide before posting my question, but her guide supports what you just said.

Darn, which makes my Javazon build particularly suited for FA with Melody on switch, since I have a good amount of +skills and Razortail to give me 96% chance to pierce when I switch (although I'll have poor AR due to only 1 hard point in Penetrate). Trust NightFish to build a Fishyzon that covers all the bases.

Gg NF, but I'm rather uncomfortable with low resistances when using FA against Souls. Hmm, I might just stick with my Fend as back-up idea for the X-factor.

Peppe, if you don't mind, please post an update on how you found FA on /p8 in Hell, especially in the WSK. Thanks.
 
I'll try to post an update. It may be a week or so... the girlfriend will be up soon and then its a day of shopping and roadtrip to a barbeque at her folks place.

For the resists i'm considering dropping the ptopaz's in the skullders and shako for Ums. I should have around 200mf with unsocketed skullders, shako, and gheeds.

This build does have some tough calls, but overall its nice to have crowd control/killers in two elements and charged strike provides good single target killing power for non LI.
 
RTB said:
Note that the ar% bonus on all of the amazon's ranged skills does not work. Pump penetrate if you want to hit with skills other than the auto-hit ones.

Sorry for the semi-hijack, but I need to know:

Is Magic Arrow is an auto-hit? It says so if the inaccurate strategy guide.
A list of all Amazon auto-hit skills would be great...

Since the AR bonus on the Amazon's ranged skills doesn't work, does this mean that the AR% and chance to hit (monster) that shows up in the character screen is inaccurate for the Amazon, and if so, is there any way to calculate the chance to hit a particular monster depending upon skill and dexterity?

Thanks for any info.

Good luck, FrostBurn!

Jude
 
Jude said:
Since the AR bonus on the Amazon's ranged skills doesn't work, does this mean that the AR% and chance to hit (monster) that shows up in the character screen is inaccurate for the Amazon, and if so, is there any way to calculate the chance to hit a particular monster depending upon skill and dexterity?
You can switch to the normal attack (for bows and spears) or throw (for javlins) to see what your real AR is. Since no skill is selected, it won't show the AR bonus for the skills. :smiley:
 
Cattleya said:
You can switch to the normal attack (for bows and spears) or throw (for javlins) to see what your real AR is. Since no skill is selected, it won't show the AR bonus for the skills. :smiley:

So the character screen is lying about this, too... :( Thanks, Cattleya. Is there a list somewhere of which Amazon skills are auto-hit, other than Guided Arrow?

Jude
 
FA is nice for gloams because as long as you divert attention with your merc/decoy/valk, the actual glaoms you're attacking will remain frozen, so max resists won't be needed.

However, bear in mind that the FA/LF zon is designed for players 1 play. It struggles rather greatly when the players setting is raised to p8 against LI's and you might have a problem with javs running out.

My final advice?

I don't think there is a non Faith/Infinity zon that can p8 all a85 levels comfortably. If you want to p8 Baal, go pure lightning. If you want to p8 the pits, go strafer with LF backup. If you want to do p1 all a85 levels go a FA/LF zon.

However, I am far from a Zon expert so I hope I am wrong. I also haven't tried a PJ/LF zon, so I can't say anything there. Good luck with your zon; whatever route you choose, be sure to give us updates.
 
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