Witchwild String sockets

S

Sir Lister of Smeg

New member
Witchwild String sockets

As the thread title suggests, I'd like advise on what to socket in a Witchwild String bow. Currently I'm using one as weapon switch on my javazon to deal with part of the lightning immune monsters, in particular lightning immune undead (lightning fury works fast enough against living monsters which are leechable, the unliving however...). Since someone is bound to ask for it anyway if I don't, I'll give a round up of skills and equipment.

Javazon
Level 79

Jab 1
Poison Javelin 1
Lightning Bolt 1
Plague Javelin 20
Lightning Fury 20
Inner Sight 1
Critical Strike 4
Dodge 1
Slow Missiles 1
Avoid 1
Penetrate 1
Decoy 1
Evade 1
Valkyrie 5
Pierce 5

Strength 95
Dexterity 109
Vitality 46
Energy 15

As you can see I used very few skill and stat points, indeed she has still 23 skill and 215 stat points spared. There are two reasons for this, the first being that there are two types of monsters, one is the type she will kill quickly no matter what, the second will take ages no matter what. Needless to say, there is little to improve on her killing speed of the former, the latter is a different story however. The best example is probably the Mausoleum, all undead, all lightning immune, I did take her there for practice, and she did eventually manage to take everything down. This was one place were the bow was used extensively. A different example are Tainteds, they are also lightning immune, but demons, so she can use mana intensive skills such as lightning fury and plague javelin almost freely, especially because of her gloves giving +350% damage to demons (iirc). Here lightning fury is faster than the magic arrows of witchwild string.

Now on to the second reason I used so few points, her gear, yes she's massively twinked, her weak point being the need to use charms to get to good resists. IIRC, all her skills got to level 8 or higher with gear, her life is nearly 700, which does seem to be enough for early hell (act I, but she'll need to start act II now), her mana is nearly 300, enough for using lightning fury against lightning immune living monsters.

helm: Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest
amulet: Seraph's Hymn
weapon: Titan's Revenge
armour: Lionheart
shield: Rhyme
gloves: Laying Of Hands
ring: Dwarf Star
belt: Thundergod's Vigor
ring: The Stone Of Jordan
boots: Natalya's Soul
weaponswitch: Witchwild String
charms: mostly resistances, some life, and some mana, and damage is the occasional secondary mod.

With this equipment, her resistances get to 71/46/84/21 iirc, on weapon switch even higher, though she does lose the cannot be frozen mod. Some people will probably point to the fact that I should give her Mara's Kaleidoscope and Raven Frost, so I have more freedom in choices of armour/boots/shield, but I don't have either free (haven't got Mara's, and all my Ravenfrosts are in use by other characters) (and thanks for the offer, but I want self found items only, at least for softcore). I'd like to add more damage charms, but haven't got the room for that, nor do I have good damage charms available with a good second mod.

So in short, we return to the question I may have already asked, what should I put in the sockets of the Witchwild String to improve her effectiveness against troublesome monsters? Apart from the aforementioned undeads, single monsters, such as bosses (especially act bosses), are also very troublesome (as expected).
 
Dual shael runes for speed. Or, if you have them, damage/15 ias jewels.
 
Max the other poison javelin and load up on +skills. Then you'll be doing enough damage to deal with lightning immunes.
 
sorry, I never understood the "unused skill points" idea. It makes no sense. You are needlessly handicapping your character because you claim those points won't increase her overall killing speed (as if that was all the mattered). Is you Valk at level 17? is your CS at 50%? have you synergized plague javelin to better deal with LIs? Do you have 100% pierce?

Seems like before worrying about a couple of sockets, you should think about your wasted skill points.
 
HBeachBabe said:
sorry, I never understood the "unused skill points" idea.
Click to expand...

I do this a lot so I guess I can shed some light on it. Basically there's 2 reasons.

1) Once you spend your points, there's no going back. So if I'm unsure what I want to do with them I put off spending them until I either get more info or until I have enough to max the skill so I can do a test run to see how it works out.

2) I want to see how a build performs with a certain number of skill points. Look at my recent druid, for example. I wanted to see how fissure and tornado do with 20 points in one synergy each and kept the rest. Now that I'm through the game I might spend them.
 
Nightfish said:
1) Once you spend your points, there's no going back. So if I'm unsure what I want to do with them I put off spending them until I either get more info or until I have enough to max the skill so I can do a test run to see how it works out.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's basically it in a nutshell for me. I had a few unspent points on my paladin until recently, which I almost put into vengeance as it seemed I didn't really have anywhere else to put them except synergies. Now I'm really glad I held off on doing this, as I found that as I'm turning out for endgame (endgame in this case being 99, all or nothing) that synergizing holy shield will prove to be infinitely more useful to him than maxxing vengeance.
 
WWS with 2 sockets open and used as a backup to LF on the main switch.

Screams one thing to me.

Strafer hybrid, dual-shael the WWS and upgrade it, the damage doesn't look mighty, but couple it with insane firing speed and the mods that the weapon has, not to mention the chances of hitting criticals, and you'll probably be pleasantly suprised.
 
Is the WWS upgraded? Upgrading it will increase your killing speed, naturally. Whether it is or isn't, you may want to check and see if adding ias to it will help you reach the next breakpoint. With your current setup (if the ias tables are right, and I assume they are...) with 20 ias from laying of hands you shoot at 11 frames with normal attack on the WWS. 40 ias will get you to 10 frames per attack, while 65 will get you to 9. So, without changing some of your gear to add ias, adding 2 shaels will have the same effect as adding 1 shael, so perhaps 1 shael + ed/max/min or whatever jewel would be better (taking into account how nice a jewel you would want to put into a backup weapon). Also, if it's upgraded, a couple of points into multiple shot will make killing packs of lightning immunes much quicker. This might make you into a hybridizon or something, tho :)

The idea about maxing the other poison skill is also an option, it worked OK for me. Nothing too spectacular though, although Trang's gloves do help it a lot. This works better in conjunction with jab, toss a plague jav, then start jabbing, rinse and repeat. I'm not sure if I would switch out my LoH for Trang's to boost a backup skill, however.

For bosses, you can either switch on some crushing blow and jab them to death, or you could max charged strike. With the lightning fury synergy, it works quite well as a boss killer, and synergizes lit. fury as well, and doesn't require attack rating, the bolts fire off even if you miss the melee attack.
 
HBeachBabe said:
sorry, I never understood the "unused skill points" idea. It makes no sense. You are needlessly handicapping your character because you claim those points won't increase her overall killing speed (as if that was all the mattered). Is you Valk at level 17? is your CS at 50%? have you synergized plague javelin to better deal with LIs? Do you have 100% pierce?

Seems like before worrying about a couple of sockets, you should think about your wasted skill points.
Click to expand...

For me an important factor is the ability to improve when needed, if I get stuck, I can try to solve the problem by spending more skillpoints, as long as my character is doing fine and there is no immediate need for spending skillpoints, I often wait. With this build I did immediately max lightning fury, and I maxed plague javelin upon entering hell (before that I didn't use it at all).
As to your questions, I get the impression you did play this type of character before, so maybe you can give some advice on specific questions:
I'm sure I don't have 100% pierce, but the improvement per level is very low where I am now, it would mostly help for improving lightning fury's lightning damage, and I really don't see a need to improve it much at the moment (now about 75%)
Critical Strike: is 50% the maximum?
Evade/dodge/avoid: how high should I put them? Do they work like normal synergies for the valk or do they work after equipment?
Valkyrie: she does seem to survive quite fine, most of the time I lose her she does seem to get lost and forgets to teleport. That said, what exactly is the advantage of slvl 17 above anything else?
If I max poison javelin, I do get an extra 200% poison damage on plague javelin, right?
 
Sir Lister of Smeg said:
For me an important factor is the ability to improve when needed, if I get stuck, I can try to solve the problem by spending more skillpoints, as long as my character is doing fine and there is no immediate need for spending skillpoints, I often wait. With this build I did immediately max lightning fury, and I maxed plague javelin upon entering hell (before that I didn't use it at all).
As to your questions, I get the impression you did play this type of character before, so maybe you can give some advice on specific questions:
I'm sure I don't have 100% pierce, but the improvement per level is very low where I am now, it would mostly help for improving lightning fury's lightning damage, and I really don't see a need to improve it much at the moment (now about 75%)
Critical Strike: is 50% the maximum?
Evade/dodge/avoid: how high should I put them? Do they work like normal synergies for the valk or do they work after equipment?
Valkyrie: she does seem to survive quite fine, most of the time I lose her she does seem to get lost and forgets to teleport. That said, what exactly is the advantage of slvl 17 above anything else?
If I max poison javelin, I do get an extra 200% poison damage on plague javelin, right?
Click to expand...
Critical strike: can be above 50%. It's really not a prioity for javazons, though, unless you jab a lot.

I believe the valk synergies work after equipment, much like the druid's bear/wolf summon synergies work after gear as well.

With a shield and block, D/A/E is less of a priority. With a couple of points and some +skills, they'll be around 50% or higher, which has always worked fine for me, even without a shield.

Valk at lvl 17 has something to do with the level of the equipment she can spawn with. Not sure, someone else will have to clarify, I've forgotten....

Maxing poison javelin boosts the damage of plague javelin.
 
Nightfish said:
1) Once you spend your points, there's no going back. So if I'm unsure what I want to do with them I put off spending them until I either get more info or until I have enough to max the skill so I can do a test run to see how it works out.
Click to expand...
what do you exactly mean by a test run? i have a slight idea, but it'd be a blind guess...

[hijack] what makes Lionheart such a good armor? :confused: [/hijack]

sorry, i can't give any advice. i know absolutely nothing about zons :(
 
The huge resists and +stats (and 20% ED is better than nothing) makes Lionheart a good inexpensive armor, but it also has low defense, no DR, and most importantly, no +skills.
 
SLvl 17 Valk is when she gets her War Pike. (Backing up a bit in case you don't know, the base eq types and magic-or-rare-ness (for lack of a better term) which a valk gets are dependant on the skill level she's cast at. So, more skill points get her higher defense, better mods (maybe, don't know about this one), more damage, etc. in addition to more life and such that actually shows on the skill tree.)

AFAIK, points from +skills help dodge/avoid/evade. IMO, a good level to put them at is 6/4/6 after +skills, respectively, which is something like 40%/48%/40%, and an excellent place on the diminishing returns curve. I've heard 50%/50+%/50% (12/9/12 or something) is another good point if you've got skill points to burn, but I usually don't.

As for the original question, I'd say what to socket it with depends greatly on what you're going to do with your remaining skill points, or, more importantly, if you're considering using them in the bow skill tree. You want to hit a new IAS breakpoint with shael's/IAS jewels if at all possible (it probably is unless you have other godly IAS equipment in use.) After that, you could consider an eth if your AR is low, or a nef if you don't have knockback elsewhere. Failing that, maybe some cold damage (psapph or thul or something) to help with the LI's plus the chill.

I'd also like to touch on the strafe idea that was suggested earlier. This is, IMO an excellent idea; I had a LF/WWS-strafer hybrid a while ago that worked wonderfully. For details about using strafe with WWS, there is an excellent guide which I believe has a link stickied at the top of the forum.

Hope I've been of some use.

-Isch
 
Llathias said:
what do you exactly mean by a test run? i have a slight idea, but it'd be a blind guess...
Click to expand...

I back up my char, spend 20 points on something and if it sucks i restore the old one. It's kinda the same as using shadowmaster to create a test char only that I'm too lazy to do it that way.

Llathias said:
[hijack] what makes Lionheart such a good armor? :confused: [/hijack]
Click to expand...

Nothing. ;) Well, it's cheap but I'd rather have smoke.
 
I maxed Strafe for LI/PI's. WWS really shines for strafers, Amp is going off all the time. In that case, "ShaelShael" and wear enough IAS to hit your next BP.

In your situation however, you might try something a little more low-tech, like a "HelHel" Hellrack. That'd do about 2k damage per shot with a normal attack, plus it has some built-in AR to help you hit.


Llathias said:
what makes Lionheart such a good armor?
Click to expand...

The huge, huge stats. It carries about 20 levels worth of stats. Resists and ED is just icing. My hybrid zon wears it.


-GG
 
Nightfish said:
Nothing. ;) Well, it's cheap but I'd rather have smoke.
Click to expand...

When deciding on what armour to use, I compared Lionheart and Smoke, and decided on the former since it seemed better overall. Still maybe the latter would be better since she doesn't really need the huge stat boni granted by Lionheart, whereas the slightly higher resists from Smoke would help free up some charm space.

Still, I'd consider neither cheap, in fact I do consider any runeword needing a rune higher than Io as expensive (based on the amounts of runes of each type in my stash).
 
I don't really need the stat boni considering all my chars have around 150 stat points to spare when they reach hell. 20% ED is as good as nothing so for me it's 30% resis vs 50% resis. And the former costs a Fal and a Hel in addition to the Lum rune.
 
Log in to Reply / Create Site Account
Remove Ads - Go PurePremium

Latest posts

Back
Top