The Ear Collector: An amazone on the prowl
Ok, so strictly speaking, I am more of a fan of leaper barbies, thrower barbies, clvl 13 charger paladins and kicksins, not to mention Jabber-zons (kudos for Jabberzons a dying breed). However, if you want to collect ears, and want them quick and with no hassle, the the Ear Collector is for you. I shall elaborate, and write down the complete build below. I did a fast one in the "for pk's" thread thingie, but it is a tad more than just that. The Ear Collector is a definate glass cannon by the way. If someone so much as breathes on the thing, it dies.
Level an amazone to level 18. We are going to use a Stag Bow for this example, because it requires no Strength investment whatsoever. Any and every point in Strength is thus utterly wasted. All your points go into Deterity, and Dexterity alone. At clvl 18, provided someone helps you with Normal quests, you should have 18*5 = 90 points for Dexterity, which leads to a net end result of 115 Dex. Get 1 point into Guided arrow, and stick all the rest into Critical Strike. There is no reason for Dodge, Evade etc, as we are not going to be there to do that.
Gear choices are:
Death's Hand and Deaths Sash (no other ones are possible, this is the only valid combination due to 30% IAS).
Angelic Rings and Angelic Amulet (you do not need the AR since you use guideds, but you do need the life, and +10 to dex is 10% ED).
Bootwise we are either going for the Cow Kings (Ideal choice, 20 dex is 20% more ED, and 30% run/walk is very helpfull) or less ideal threads or somesuch, which require Str (baahaaad! because it limits the options) or Gorefoot, 20% ED and 2% mana leech.
3 socket mask with Carnages. Accept no other.
And then we have the make or break choices: Either we use a STR-bugged Twitch with a single Carnage for 20% IAS and 10 STR/DEX, or we use a 3 socket light armor thingie for the 3 sockets. That would be a Breast Plate, which requires 30 Strength, which we only invest if we have a 6 socket bow. Don't add str, as it takes away from damage, and we need damage. Unless you have sharp charms of dex or somesuch... in that case do add Str. Depends on the charms. Bla.
At that point you have several options for a bow. You can go with:
- a 4 socket Hunters Bow. Advantage: no STR required, and it is already fast. With a twitch and deaths sahs its a 9-framer. Disadvantage: low basic damage.
- 4 socket Composite bow: Just as fast as the Hunters bow, slightly more damage. Still sucks damage-wise. Effectively, its a (assuming 4 carnages) 4-68 weapon instead of a 2-66 weapon. Uh-huh.
- 5 socket short battle bow: 5 socket short battle bows are 5-86 weapons. A tad nicer. However, since you are at base speed 0 instead of base speed -10 now, you drop to 10 frames. A tad slower, yet a tad more damage.
-5 socket Stag Bow: A 6-87 weapon, 0 speed. Obviously the "superior" choice. *giggles*. It's more damaging than the others, that much is true. I'd prefer a weapon like this.
You can also go for the 6 socket bows, but they are slower, and they require more str. We shall divert to that a little furher below.
Assume we went with Twitch, Angelics, CK boots, have no damage charms, no dex charms, +15's all around and are using the Stag Bow. At that point we have
25 base dex
90 dex from levelling
20 dex from boots
10 dex from rings (I'm wondering here for a glass cannon, perhaps a few rare rings with +5 dex and +3/4 to minimal/max dam would be better, but they are hard to find).
10 dex from twitch
that makes a total of 155 dex or 155% ED for the bow. With clvl 18 you have 21 skill points, so that's 4 skills for Guided leaves 17 for Critical Strike for a 65% of crit. Not bad.
Damage... we have a base weapon of 6-87, add in another 45 from the mask and 15 from the twitch for 60 to max, makes 6-147 damage. 155% ED from dex on top of that makes for 374 listed. So, I hear you thinking “yeah, but 374 listed, that aint much... my chargerdin does 1200 listed at clvl 18, and he’s got a load of DS on top of that”. No, never said it was an easy build, but hey, 65% of the time you get double that amount, and erm, your charger, does it auto-aim? It needs to be on the same screen as its target right? No auto-aim? Pitfull... nor does it fire that stuff at 10 frame (or 2.5 shots per second).
Of course, of you DO invest 20 points into STR, you lose 20% ED but can potentially gain another socket in a bow, and wear a 3 socket armor for another 2 extra sockets, so then you get +45 max, for a bow of say (Long Battle Bow, the extra 5 max damage of the Long War Bow does not warrant loosing 10% ED imho, as 10% over 200 dam is 20 damage and +5 max with 190% ed yields 15 more damage)3-108 damage, and another 90 damage from the sockets for a total of 3-198 damage, and you add 145% ED over that total for 485 max damage. That’s rather painful, at 11 frames
You can add that 20 STR in rather various ways... first, you can add them in cold hard points. If your stash is overflowing with smalls of +14 life, that’s the way to go, but I’d not waste any small +14 lifers on a glass cannon. Secondly, you can use +5 STR charms. Assume you have 4 of those, and fill the rest with +dex charms (inventory can hold 20, minus 1 for town portal tome, minus one for two stamina pots), you get another 14 dex charms for a grand total of 14*5=70 DEX or 70% ED. Since we added 4 charms for Strength, we have a total of 155% ED already, now up to 210% ED. That will make a 3-198 bow a listed 613 damage (doing 200 PvP on a high crit roll). Of course, with sharp charms you can raise this even further, but those are more expensive and better used on real duelers.
Since you are hunting puny punters with this (anything between clvl 9 and clvl 30 is fair game), a PvP dam of 50-150 averaging out at 100 will do, since if you do it correctly, they’ll never get close enough to even harm you. Bear in mind that Cleg’s gloves will drop you to 15 frames, which is rather unacceptable imho. If you want to KB< stick in a Nef and accept a hit on the damage. But its seldom necessary... anyone worth his salt will recognize the guided arrow hits, and either exit in 1 second or die in 2.
And you could also use a crossbow... a repeating crossbow. Not as fast, not as damaging, but has more style points.
Just don’t ever stand in someone’s way as you’ll only have 250 life. Any real dueller will eat you in one or two bites... a decked out charger will a) block 75% of the guideds b) takes about 6-7 100 PvP damage hits to kill, if he’s not popping juvies and c) will kill you in one hit as he can’t miss and you don’t have block. with a+b means you need to fire up to 30 arrows before he's down... you'll run out of mana long before that. Don’t even think about it.
Ok, so strictly speaking, I am more of a fan of leaper barbies, thrower barbies, clvl 13 charger paladins and kicksins, not to mention Jabber-zons (kudos for Jabberzons a dying breed). However, if you want to collect ears, and want them quick and with no hassle, the the Ear Collector is for you. I shall elaborate, and write down the complete build below. I did a fast one in the "for pk's" thread thingie, but it is a tad more than just that. The Ear Collector is a definate glass cannon by the way. If someone so much as breathes on the thing, it dies.
Level an amazone to level 18. We are going to use a Stag Bow for this example, because it requires no Strength investment whatsoever. Any and every point in Strength is thus utterly wasted. All your points go into Deterity, and Dexterity alone. At clvl 18, provided someone helps you with Normal quests, you should have 18*5 = 90 points for Dexterity, which leads to a net end result of 115 Dex. Get 1 point into Guided arrow, and stick all the rest into Critical Strike. There is no reason for Dodge, Evade etc, as we are not going to be there to do that.
Gear choices are:
Death's Hand and Deaths Sash (no other ones are possible, this is the only valid combination due to 30% IAS).
Angelic Rings and Angelic Amulet (you do not need the AR since you use guideds, but you do need the life, and +10 to dex is 10% ED).
Bootwise we are either going for the Cow Kings (Ideal choice, 20 dex is 20% more ED, and 30% run/walk is very helpfull) or less ideal threads or somesuch, which require Str (baahaaad! because it limits the options) or Gorefoot, 20% ED and 2% mana leech.
3 socket mask with Carnages. Accept no other.
And then we have the make or break choices: Either we use a STR-bugged Twitch with a single Carnage for 20% IAS and 10 STR/DEX, or we use a 3 socket light armor thingie for the 3 sockets. That would be a Breast Plate, which requires 30 Strength, which we only invest if we have a 6 socket bow. Don't add str, as it takes away from damage, and we need damage. Unless you have sharp charms of dex or somesuch... in that case do add Str. Depends on the charms. Bla.
At that point you have several options for a bow. You can go with:
- a 4 socket Hunters Bow. Advantage: no STR required, and it is already fast. With a twitch and deaths sahs its a 9-framer. Disadvantage: low basic damage.
- 4 socket Composite bow: Just as fast as the Hunters bow, slightly more damage. Still sucks damage-wise. Effectively, its a (assuming 4 carnages) 4-68 weapon instead of a 2-66 weapon. Uh-huh.
- 5 socket short battle bow: 5 socket short battle bows are 5-86 weapons. A tad nicer. However, since you are at base speed 0 instead of base speed -10 now, you drop to 10 frames. A tad slower, yet a tad more damage.
-5 socket Stag Bow: A 6-87 weapon, 0 speed. Obviously the "superior" choice. *giggles*. It's more damaging than the others, that much is true. I'd prefer a weapon like this.
You can also go for the 6 socket bows, but they are slower, and they require more str. We shall divert to that a little furher below.
Assume we went with Twitch, Angelics, CK boots, have no damage charms, no dex charms, +15's all around and are using the Stag Bow. At that point we have
25 base dex
90 dex from levelling
20 dex from boots
10 dex from rings (I'm wondering here for a glass cannon, perhaps a few rare rings with +5 dex and +3/4 to minimal/max dam would be better, but they are hard to find).
10 dex from twitch
that makes a total of 155 dex or 155% ED for the bow. With clvl 18 you have 21 skill points, so that's 4 skills for Guided leaves 17 for Critical Strike for a 65% of crit. Not bad.
Damage... we have a base weapon of 6-87, add in another 45 from the mask and 15 from the twitch for 60 to max, makes 6-147 damage. 155% ED from dex on top of that makes for 374 listed. So, I hear you thinking “yeah, but 374 listed, that aint much... my chargerdin does 1200 listed at clvl 18, and he’s got a load of DS on top of that”. No, never said it was an easy build, but hey, 65% of the time you get double that amount, and erm, your charger, does it auto-aim? It needs to be on the same screen as its target right? No auto-aim? Pitfull... nor does it fire that stuff at 10 frame (or 2.5 shots per second).
Of course, of you DO invest 20 points into STR, you lose 20% ED but can potentially gain another socket in a bow, and wear a 3 socket armor for another 2 extra sockets, so then you get +45 max, for a bow of say (Long Battle Bow, the extra 5 max damage of the Long War Bow does not warrant loosing 10% ED imho, as 10% over 200 dam is 20 damage and +5 max with 190% ed yields 15 more damage)3-108 damage, and another 90 damage from the sockets for a total of 3-198 damage, and you add 145% ED over that total for 485 max damage. That’s rather painful, at 11 frames
You can add that 20 STR in rather various ways... first, you can add them in cold hard points. If your stash is overflowing with smalls of +14 life, that’s the way to go, but I’d not waste any small +14 lifers on a glass cannon. Secondly, you can use +5 STR charms. Assume you have 4 of those, and fill the rest with +dex charms (inventory can hold 20, minus 1 for town portal tome, minus one for two stamina pots), you get another 14 dex charms for a grand total of 14*5=70 DEX or 70% ED. Since we added 4 charms for Strength, we have a total of 155% ED already, now up to 210% ED. That will make a 3-198 bow a listed 613 damage (doing 200 PvP on a high crit roll). Of course, with sharp charms you can raise this even further, but those are more expensive and better used on real duelers.
Since you are hunting puny punters with this (anything between clvl 9 and clvl 30 is fair game), a PvP dam of 50-150 averaging out at 100 will do, since if you do it correctly, they’ll never get close enough to even harm you. Bear in mind that Cleg’s gloves will drop you to 15 frames, which is rather unacceptable imho. If you want to KB< stick in a Nef and accept a hit on the damage. But its seldom necessary... anyone worth his salt will recognize the guided arrow hits, and either exit in 1 second or die in 2.
And you could also use a crossbow... a repeating crossbow. Not as fast, not as damaging, but has more style points.
Just don’t ever stand in someone’s way as you’ll only have 250 life. Any real dueller will eat you in one or two bites... a decked out charger will a) block 75% of the guideds b) takes about 6-7 100 PvP damage hits to kill, if he’s not popping juvies and c) will kill you in one hit as he can’t miss and you don’t have block. with a+b means you need to fire up to 30 arrows before he's down... you'll run out of mana long before that. Don’t even think about it.
