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Vessel of Hatred

Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

Re: Something about

Dacar92 said:
Thanks Yogi for the input.



I totally forgot about Arctic bow. Or any of that set for that matter. My current untwinked FA/Strafezon, however has found nothing, except for Clegs shield. Darn the luck. She is level 20 and using rare gloves, hat, boots, bow and belt, all gambled. I have a 3 os bow and am waiting for that Amn to drop. I might gem it however if it doesn't drop soon.
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Don't forget that 3 Thuls + a chipped topaz = Amn.:pancake:, I love cooking with the cube. Fill the sockets in that bow, there are plenty more of them around.

BTW, I have a lvl12 zon in HC that is untwinked. One of my deviations is that I almost always put one point into jab. I find it quite a bit easier to hide behind a sheild at low levels.



 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

No thuls either on my untwinked character. :no: Just a glutload of tirs and tals. Nothing is dropping this time around. Just that Clegs shield. Which I gave my son for his low level nec. I need to get my hands on nine orts. :crazyeyes:
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

how is the frostmaiden coming along? i haven't had a chance to play much on mine...she is just getting ready to go to nightmare...i am likely going to go with a buriza end game for her.
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

No time to play the last several nights. Mine remains at mid-act 2, that's all. I ran the countess countless times but never got anything but tirs and tals. Damn luck.
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

CarloC said:
I use 3 socketed chipped/flawed gems on all of my low level (under lvl20) sorcs, druids, necros, zons, and assassins. Well, I use a Jade Tan Do on my Assassins as soon as I can.
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On the whole early game gear thing, I mule a Khalim's Will to all of my characters ASAP, this will breeze your amazon through acts 1-2 easily, killing most monsters in 1-3 hits, with no requirements, leech and lighning damage.


 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

Hello,

Right now I have a lvl 57 FA/Strafe Bowazon and it's pretty fun. I started this character from scratch so gears are not that good. I'm using a CliffKiller that +2 skills, though kinda slow. My skills so far are:

20 Cold Arrow
20 Freezing Arrow
4 Strafe
6 Valkyrie
2 Pierce

I'm deciding to switch my ice act3 merc or not. The choices are:

1) Act 1 Cold arrow
I have an extra bow laying around, but I'm worry about the lack of her defense compare to my act3 merc.

or

2) Act 2 Might
Might is good but being melee would mean I have to worry about his HP bar all the time. Although I just found a Battlebranch poleaxe that has 7% life stolen, I'm guessing that won't help much.

What would be the better choice? or just stick w/ my current merc?
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

Dacar92 said:
Poor Man’s Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon
For v1.12
Click to expand...
Nice guide. Its easy on the eye when reading and that is of some importance for a guide imo. :thumbup:

About skills:
I disagree somewhat on the maxing of Strafe. When you start out with low budget, I would focus more one other skills than maxing it. Its opposite for Penetrate, you will not have alot of items that boosts AR. Allthough you dont need Penetrate much for FA, Strafe will benefit alot from it. Valkyrie doesnt really 'need' 17pts, even though she gets a better weapon at that level she will not be the one doing the killing. I do now only put pts in here as I progress in difficulty. If she starts to die more than I like, then I put some pts
into her. But that might just be me. DEA skills should almost always have only 1pt.
I would suggest this skillsetup: max FA, CA, Penetrate, max arrows for Strafe and rest in Critical Strike/Valkyrie.

About items:
Twitchthrow at lvl 16 is nice. People may not find it themselves, but maybe you could encourage trading more. Harmony is overall a better choice than Melody imo. I also miss the mentioning of set items.
And..where is the Wizendraw? That bow is really the poor mans ICE. Low physical damage, but there is nothing wrong on having it on switch for firing those FAs.
Also, for untwinked chars, a blunt weapon in the beginning is reccomended. Untill you find a decent bow and gems to socket it with, you will kill faster with melee attacks imo.


Thumbs up from me Dacar



 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

obligatory good job
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

KremBanan said:
Also, for untwinked chars, a blunt weapon in the beginning is reccomended. Untill you find a decent bow and gems to socket it with, you will kill faster with melee attacks imo.
Click to expand...

Why blunt? I know you don't want those swing weapons as they have to slow block rate, though dagger/spears seem to be atleast as good as blunt weapons.



 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

I go with a bow immediately. The critters in act one go down fast enough even with a crappy bow.
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

i prefer javs for much of act 1. full inventory of javs are fun.

how many +skills can you expect to find in each difficulty? ie. at the end of norm how many did you have and nm, etc?
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

It's probably cheaper to go with full Mav for FA type, I reckon the cold dmg boost alone is worth it ?
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

its been mentioned already

that your very low level strategies are not the best. Nice guide overall but let a hardcore player (who has started and restarted many characters!) give you some low level pointers to help out your new zons.

very low level tips:

1) You can certainly shop a socketted bow or x-bow almost right away if one doesn't happen to drop during the den of evil. I defy you to gamble a better bow than even a short bow with 2 chipped damage gems in it faster than it would take to put one together.

2) this is general but useful:
When you are doing the den of evil and other low level areas pick up all rings, amulets, wands, staves, and scepters. these are the items that have the most potential to be worthwhile to sell. any ring or ammy will get you 1k+ gold and any of the other items with a + to one or more skills will sell for a ton as well. most of the rest is utter crap not worth the time to pick up. for some reason barb helms and druid pelts aren't worth much even with skills.

3) mana problems at early levels? Well not for a Zon so much. Start running the countess to level up at around level 9. by the time you get to level 13 you should have a few tir runes. buy/find a 2 sock helm and 2 sock armor and stuff them in. There really isn't much better than having essentially unlimited mana for your level 1 multishot. Until you get that first rune-word bow mentioned in the guide I feel strongly that gemmed bows are better than what you will likely find or gamble.

4) You mention how difficult the Andariel fight is and you are correct but there is a simple trick that will make it much less painful. Buy antidote potions from akara and keep a belt slot full of them. Now buy two more and right before the fight take one and feed one to your merc it gives a big temporary boost to poison resist and also raises the max poison resist. Andariel only has 666 hit points in single player normal diff. this goes down very quickly if you have a fire arrow merc since Andi is very vulnerable to fire.

5) a 3 slot belt can be gambled in act one. I don't know the exact level but I usually start looking around level 16 or 17. it takes 25 str to be able to wear a 3 slot belt and equip a longbow so that's the str I usually aim for in early normal with most characters.

6) it's pretty easy to level up to 24-25 in act 2. If you plan on trying to solo Duriel I highly recommend doing so. The most important defensive measure you can take at this point is lightning resist. Those beetles that are found pretty well everyplace in act 2 hurt. With 50% or so lit res you'll have a much smoother time.

7) the summoner has 2 very deadly attacks. one is his ice blast that can certainly kill a character with no cold resist. Thawing potions do the same thing antidote potions do as far as giving some resist to cold and raising the max cold resist. drinking a bunch of them increases the time of this benefit from what I've read in other postings.

His other attack is of course his ridiculous firewall. but there is a trick even to that. No, not fire resist although that also helps a lot. The trick is magic damage reduction. The firewall doesn't hit in big bunches it hits in tiny little bits at something like 20 or 30 times per second. if you have 5 magic damage reduction you can stand right in the thing and take no damage. even 2 or 3 makes it much more likely you will survive being hit by it though.

8) There isn't really a trick that i know of for killing Duriel easily. this will probably be the toughest solo challenge for your bowzon in the game since you don't really have many skills yet and the gear is pretty much junk. no one would think less of you if you did this with a group. If not just be prepared to go back to town and reload on pots quite a few times until you chip him down to nothing. this can be a little hair raising in hardcore. I usually have one belt slot of juves that i use for emergencies and try to get by with reds for the most part. That's assuming untwinked of course. having a bone shield of deflection on your weaponswitch in case you get bum rushed is wise too (~5 min to shop if that). you'll have dex since you are a zon.

at this point we've reached the part of the guide that I have no criticizm about at all. I'm not trying to show you up or be overly critical and most of these ideas were gotten from other places (although I've been using chipped bows for all new characters since classic). Just trying to add to your awesome guide and make it even more awesome.
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

Nice guide, I've been away from D2 for along time and this guide bought me back.
I'm playing a FA/Strafe zon through solo on closed Bnet.

I made a non ladder char before I realised an edge bow would be a ladder item and I started again.

for the second time around I went to an open Norm cows game, ran around for 5 mins and picked up some good socketed bows and a socketed breastplate.
good early defense and low strength req.

you should be able to get some good starter gear this way and then just countess for runes and gems.

Zerker
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

I'd been having a lot of trouble getting Diablo down, but i didn't want to switch from players8 because of the good drops. Finally did, just to get past him (i'm level 34!) and Riphook dropped! The bow I'd been using was pretty crappy for damage, but had decent mods on it. Riphook is... well, almost ridiculous really. Literally a hundred more max damage compared to my old bow, and 30 more min. So awesome, I just had to tell someone. :D
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

xenothaulus said:
I'd been having a lot of trouble getting Diablo down, but i didn't want to switch from players8 because of the good drops. Finally did, just to get past him (i'm level 34!) and Riphook dropped! The bow I'd been using was pretty crappy for damage, but had decent mods on it. Riphook is... well, almost ridiculous really. Literally a hundred more max damage compared to my old bow, and 30 more min. So awesome, I just had to tell someone. :D
Click to expand...

Glad you found it. There are several low level bows besides Riphook that are great for a while during the game: Kuku, WWS, Goldstrike, Lycanders, etc. There are even some rare bows that can drop with nice mods. Need to be patient. Luck happens.



 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

i recently added an upped riphook to my bow collection. i cant wait for ladder reset to fiddle with it as i dont have a bowa on ladder.
 
Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

Just started a2nm and I'm 51. Still on players8. I noticed almost right away in nightmare that I wasn't leeching nearly as much mana as I was before. I am using mana pots almost constantly. IIRC, my leech is about 7%. In a5 normal I would FA until my bulb was almost empty, then switch to strafe (on groups anyway, it of course didn't work so well on singles and bosses) and my mana bulb would fill really fast.

Is it because their defense is so much higher in nightmare? I'm hoping grabbing a might merc will help that, but then I'm going to be losing a lot of AR from my old a2 merc, and I'll have to spend points in dex I'm afraid. I've been saving them right along, only throwing a few in when my AR gets around 80ish, or my health feels a bit low.

Edit: Amazing. Upgrading to the might merc really seems to have helped. I realized when I started up in a2 that another thing that had changed was the increased levels of FA, making it cost more mana.
 
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Re: Poor Man's Guide to a Freezing Arrow/Strafezon

I realize this is an old thread but also know this guide is still read. I thought i'ld add in a couple thoughts that have worked well for me.
I tend to get 3 hard points in critical early on as it helps with any leech you do have and will make your low level MA and CA do more damage. Critical is factored in before the conversion of physical to magic or cold damage and level 3 gives it an approximate 1 in 3 chance to trigger.
I agree that Harmony is a great bow for a strafer but what many overlook is Melody made in a Zon bow can add up to +6 to bow skills and that boosts a low level CA or FA a lot and can result in more damage then harmony in a non-zon bow. I don't recall any mention of zon bows at all except for Lycanders. Edge has several goodies that weren't touched on.
If I'm going to go with a might merc I will keep the rogue thru normal and let her use edge, that way even my decoy can dish out damage and get kills in normal. After you outgrow edge keep it in your stash to switch to in town to make repairs and gambling cheaper.
I check Charsi every town trip early on for 3 socket hunters bows. The first chipped sapphire I get goes in it for the chill from there you can add more elemental or ITH's to make it kill.
Don't underestimate CS and a bow with Iths it can add up quick in damage as you boost your dexterity and while using the skills that convert damage. While I do love the poison in normal if I get jewels of envy they don't go in my weapon, I can't remember how many times I've heard of people making that blunder. I'm also not a big fan of maxed strafe. With it's initial damage reduction more points take forever to get it back to even. I tend to get up to around level 8 with skills so it has about 4 minimum arrows and ten max so if I stop to strafe just a few Real Tough monsters I'm not stuck in place for so long. Too high a number of minimum arrows can get you killed.
I'm not sold on you "need" a level 17 valkyrie. After her first weapon upgrade at level 8 she is pretty sturdy and does a little damage. I have had much success with a 10 10 split decoy and valk. The decoy lasts longer and is a little cheaper, and the valk gets added life and resists frome the boosted decoy. This is another reason I get 3 in Crit. Strike early on so the valk gets a decent chance of double damage too.
Decoy is the best minion in the game period. It does what you want it to do when and where you want it to and has an extra high chance of being attacked over most others. At level 10 it has double your zon's life and it's timer lasts almost a minute. This is ideal for clumping mobs so that your piercing FA can work it's magic.

That's probably enough of my rambling in an old thread like this.

First round is on me! :guiness:

D!
 
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