The perfect solo HC bowazon

[Virid]

The perfect solo HC bowazon

Here's something I'm trying to figure out, and I'm hoping you all can help me fill in the blanks.

HC requires 3 very specific things: safety, control, efficiency.

Safety - You need to be able to kill monsters without exposing yourself to dangerous auras or enchanted monsters.

Control - You need to be able to avoid being over run or having any of your escape options limited by pressure from monsters

Efficiency - You need to be able to avoid spending a long amount of time killing monsters. The longer it takes, the more dangerous and them more out of control the situation becomes.


So, if you accept those rules, and also the rule that it MUST be a bowazon you can formulate some pretty simple needs that I need your guys' help in listing all of them and figuring out unique solutions.

For safety, you've got your mercenary and valkyrie. These are important for drawing the focus of all the monsters. Capped resists...or at least significantly positive resists are a must.

For control, you've got a few more options. Freezing arrow, holy freeze aura (a2 defensive or Ice runeword), and slowing weapons (Kelpie Snare).

For efficiency, you've got high damage in frost and physical damage (fire is largely ignored, and I haven't heard enough good things about it to put any faith into it. Correct me if I'm wrong), which when combined with pierce and CTA amp damage (atma's, witchwild).



If you guys have any way more ideas on how to cover these three aspects, I'd appreciate it.


I have a lot of problems with this.
-What do I do about physical/cold immunes?
-What do I do if kelpie snare + holy freeze isn't enough to safely kill act bosses?
-What do I do to avoid the horribly demanding resist requirements without access to a shield?
-How do I accomplish all of this while still maintaining any semblance of efficiency which includes both damage and longetivity?
-Are Bowazons truly just subpar to the point that these problems all combined render them useless?
-What am I missing?

 

[ancalagon the black]

Re: The perfect solo HC bowazon

PI/CI's -- skip them. They're rare enough that you can just park them and move on. Even if you have something that reliably procs amp, physical/poison/cold immunes, especially ones that get the phys immune from stone skin, are going to be incredibly tough. You might be able to kill them, but it will take so long that it isn't worth it.

Bosses -- If you're playing an HC bowazon, I highly recommend maxing valk and investing heavily at least in decoy. With the two of these tanking for you, you aren't going to have a terrible time with bosses. A maxed synergized valk is next to invincible, and a high level decoy is very tough. It might be a matter of my not having enough decent gear, but in my experience, mercs last about as long as tissue paper in a situation that would kill a high-level decoy or significantly dent a maxed/synergized valk's health bar.

Resists without a shield -- this is a little tough. However, as long as your resists are decently positive, and you're paranoid enough, it is doable. I got as far as act V Hell with an untwinked mercless HC bowazon that had <50% resists and put no points in vit. I was doing that for a tournament, so I wouldn't recommend that as a strategy, but if you play her right, you don't need maxed out resists and an incredibly large life-bulb to survive.

Some pieces of gear that are good and have some resists -- Um'd Tal's mask, WWS, Lionheart, Duress. Treachery procs fade, but that isn't really useful, since you'd need to get hit first, and if you're playing her right, getting hit is something that almost never happens.

I'd recommend strafe + knockback. Crafted hitpower gloves are better than a Nef in your weapon, since they don't take up a socket. High pierce + strafe + knockback can keep all of your enemies away from you. Sometimes so efficiently, that you have to stop shooting and run after them.

Use the decoy to scout, especially in dangerous areas that might have archers, gloams, or dolls.

Remember to use Slow Missiles when it would come in handy -- it's a pre-req for valk, and it doesn't need more than one point, conveniently.

Probably my biggest mistake with the HC bowie I mentioned was not putting more than one point in frozen arrow. One point is decent for crowd control (and between valk/decoy/strafe/knockback I didn't really need more crowd control), but it isn't very damaging.