WitchyZon - New Journey!

C

Contragor

New member
Hi All,

I'm new to this forum, which has been my major source of info on D2 so far!

I started playing this game about 2 month ago (after getting totally bored with D3). Wish I discovered it a few years ago.

Anyhow, I'm rolling self found, mostly solo or with friends. No trading.
Started with a meteorb sorc, made all the way to Act 1 Hell where things got really annoying with dual immunies. That's where I found my Witchwild string (164% ED roll) and a Pul rune.

And that's when things got really interesting. So, I made a Witchyzon and by the end of NM upped the WWS and slapped two Shaels in it.
Now, I read a lot of discussions on WWS and how it compares to WF, Faith and other top bows. I saw a few comments completely trashing this bow, saying it won't work in Hell and is a waste a Pul, which could be used to buy a WF. Since I don't trade and go by what I find, there was no real choice...
Anyhow, I made it to Hell and went through it like knife through butter, melting everything in my way including extra strong+stone skin+PI elites. The latter took time but here's my gear:

Helm:
Peasant Crown

Armor:
Smoke

Boots:
GoreRyder

Ammy:
Atma

Ring1:
SoJ

Gloves:
Crafted KB/IAS

WWS

The rest is yellow garbage.

I'm not using a merc because he keeps dying - I don't have any endgame stuff to keep him alive.

So witch the above gear I finished Hell Baal at level 81 (one stupid death which could have been avoided)

The only skill I'm using is Strafe, the rest is put into Penetrate, Pierce, DEA, and Valk.

Upon finishing Baal I went for a challenge - Diablo Clone and surprisingly killed him in under 3 min with no deaths. That is with 500 sheet damage! Now I have a crappy Anni with 14% All Res and +1 to skills.

Shortly after I did 3 Lower Kurast runs at P8 and while killing was really slow, I got one lucky drop - Lo! Guess what, I ran the Pit one time and found a white Archon Plate! Made 4 sockets and viola - Fortitude with 29% All Res and Max life roll!
Sheet Strafe damage went to 800! Now I'm comfortably soloing P8 and the killing speed is ok. It's probably nothing compared to Faithzons with top gear but now I'm able to farm Hell P8, that is 3 days after finishing NM.

So to answer to all those who used to say : "WWS sucks, go try it yourself and you will see" I have to say this:

It works just fine. Probably not the best choice for endgame but totally adequate! And for someone with 1 Fal and 2 Mal runes as his top finds so far (Except for that godly Lo and a Pul), it's pretty good!

One argument some people made, that the proc rate of Amplify Damage is too low for it to be viable. False. As long as you have 3+ mobs attacking your Valk - they get perma AD'ed 90%+ of the time. Even with my lowly +40% IAS, far from the desired strafe bps, every strafe attack applies AD if monsters are grouped together.

Anyhow, going to do some 85 areas now.

Will be posting my progress here. Please share your thoughts, suggestions, etc.

Thanks
Contra
 
Update:

It's been a couple of weeks of some serious brainstorming and trying various setups and builds (I'm new to this game, so it takes some learning).
My WitchyZon is now lvl 89, doing primarily lvl 85 areas. All I found so far is a few Mals, Fals, Lums and Lems.
Found a Burito (Buriza do Kyanon) with a lowly 170% ED, sheet damage went up to 1.5-3k but the killing speed is about the same as with my WWS. None of these would work without ATMA's scarab I think, but with the ammy the killing speed at P8 is quite decent. Found a few interesting items along the way:
Homunculus
Marrowwalk
WizardSpike
Goldwrap
2 pieces from IK and 2 from Aldur's

Decided to make a MF fishymancer and went all the way to Hell on P8 (lvl 74 now). With 30 to SM and RS it's still pretty slow even with CE. Feels way slower than my zon but with 300%+ MF it might be ok farming P5-7.
Got a Sorc to lvl 75, but without Infinity or decent merc gear can't handle dual immunies efficiently. Will put on hold for now.
Will keep alternating between my Witchy and Fishymancer to find a good farming strategy. Hoping to get some endgame items for a barb (singer/MF looks good on paper but will it work well on P8)
Looking for white diadems now for imbuing. Not sure if it's easier to get good stats or farm a shako lol

Anyhow, lot's of things to try, back to hell...
 
drmalawi said:
WWS is really an underestimated bow! Especially if you have ATMAS amulet with even more chance of casting amp damage.

Another good budget bow worth upgrading is goldstrike arch. The extra damage to undead and demons is really nice
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'd like to give Goldstrike a try but am yet to find it. The only too options I have for now is WWS and Buriza. I love the freezing and piercing effect of the Burrito, but it kills my resists and is much slower than the Witchy...
 
I'm confused - you mention /players settings, but also that you have an Annihilus charm . . . are you playing on battle.net, or Single Player?
 
Noodle said:
I'm confused - you mention /players settings, but also that you have an Annihilus charm . . . are you playing on battle.net, or Single Player?
Click to expand...

No battle.net, single player only. But I do use plugy which adds ladder only items and events. Now, I read that it's frowned upon here, but in my defense, I only wanted the unlimited stash and a benchmark/challenge option like DClone, to test my builds against. I'm actually thinking to restart the entire journey with a fresh install using gomule instead. But then will need some challenge, so maybe HC untwinked P8?
 
So, after trying various builds and farming approaches, I switched to a fishymancer and got stuck in Hell P3. Next tried a WW Barb but lost patience in the middle of Nightmare (mana burn sux). Next, rolled a windy druid and went all the way to Hell without a single death, never dropping below P8. No endgame gear items on the horizon, however, got quite a few interesting drops along the way. One of them is a Goldstrike Arch (237% ED, 199% Demons and 103% Undead). In addition, found another Pul rune! Should I upgrade it and give to my Bowazon? Is it better than WWS?

As for the runes, in all this time (over a hundred hours since my last update), got 2xFal, Io, 2xKo, Pul, 3xLum, and Vex.
Nothing as godly as that Lo which was probably a beginner's luck :(


Wait, just realized, I now have all the runes for HoTO! Should I reward my Druid instead? Will then have to look for another Pul. Man, this game is amazing.
 
drmalawi said:
HoTo is a great "weapon" for any caster :) Hammerdin, Sorc, Elemental Druid and Singerbarb
Just make sure you make HoTo in a Flail
Click to expand...
Thank you! Took me all day to get one with 4 sockets. Finally made HoTo!
Also upped my vipermagi to 980 defense, though it only has 22 all res :(
Also found a Honed Sudan (for merc?) and andariel's (can't use it just yet, need to reach lvl 83)
 
Contragor said:
Thank you! Took me all day to get one with 4 sockets. Finally made HoTo!
Also upped my vipermagi to 980 defense, though it only has 22 all res :(
Also found a Honed Sudan (for merc?) and andariel's (can't use it just yet, need to reach lvl 83)
Click to expand...

Hmm the vipermagi can be ok since you get much res from HoTo, perhaps socket an Um or all-res jool in it or Ptopaz?

Sudan is great for merc weapon, it does not have to be upped to be effective
 
The best jool I have is +6 str and 11 all res. Guess it will do for now. I'm now comfortably doing P4 Hell. Those PI + Cold immune elites are annoying though, skipped quite a few already. No deaths still.
 
Found a Raven Frost! It dropped from Andy. I read some builds use this ring as part of their endgame. One more lvl and I can use Adariel's! Is it only good for mercs?
 
Not sure how I missed this thread for a few weeks. Maybe I get too busy hammering spammers. Anyway, I have used Andariels on a zon before. The life steal is nice as is the IAS. If you are already at the highest attack breakpoint then you don't really need to use it. The life steal would help your merc stay alive.
 
Dacar92 said:
Not sure how I missed this thread for a few weeks. Maybe I get too busy hammering spammers. Anyway, I have used Andariels on a zon before. The life steal is nice as is the IAS. If you are already at the highest attack breakpoint then you don't really need to use it. The life steal would help your merc stay alive.
Click to expand...

I will try it on my witchyzon now. Looks like it's the only build (from what I have) that can do P8 fairly fast so far from all the classes/builds I've tried. Granted I don't have any endgame gear for any of my toons except for Fortitude and Hoto. Buriza feels powerful but then my resists drop dangerously low.

...can't believe I wasted 5k hours on D3... lol
 
Glad you tried D2. Keep us posted on your build.
 
Contragor said:
Found a Raven Frost! It dropped from Andy. I read some builds use this ring as part of their endgame. One more lvl and I can use Adariel's! Is it only good for mercs?
Click to expand...

If you don't have knockback on your bow, it's second to a Giant Skull IMO. I think that helm plus LoH gloves is better than Andy's + knockback gloves.

A Giant Skull is about as hard to find as WF and not much more common than a Jah rune, however, in particular one with two sockets. That means, once you have one, you might already have a better bow than a Witchwild String :)
 
krischan said:
If you don't have knockback on your bow, it's second to a Giant Skull IMO. I think that helm plus LoH gloves is better than Andy's + knockback gloves.

A Giant Skull is about as hard to find as WF and not much more common than a Jah rune, however, in particular one with two sockets. That means, once you have one, you might already have a better bow than a Witchwild String :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I may never find a G.Skull or WF, playing self found only. But I did manage to craft a +2 Bow/Xbow/ 20% IAS/ KB gloves on 5th try. As for better bows, would upped Goldstrike be better than WWS or Buriza? These are my only options currently.
 
Knockback gloves: Not bad, but I think they are more useful on an elemental bowazon or in PvP while LoH are better for physical PvM bowazons... if you have them. In that case, you could socket the bow with a Nef rune.

Which bow: That's a matter of a couple of things. If you have Atma'as Scarab, I would choose Goldstrike Arch, but it's close and being forced to make a decision would make me cringe a bit.

A zon can receive deadly strike with the critical strike skill, shoot magic arrows from another skill and Atma's Scarab will give her a better chance to cast amp. I think the bonus to demons and undead and the AR bonus gives it an edge. That bonus will go into the off-weapon %ed part on the damage calculation (even though it's on a weapon) and strafe and multishot won't add anything to there at all.

The best choice for the weapon switch would probably be the Buriza, not the loser of the above contest. A Buriza freezes monsters very well, deals lots of cold damage, gives 100% piercing to any character and deals lots of damage, that has its charm as well. It's a bit slow, however, in spite of its IAS, but that's not much of a matter for strafe because you can achieve 3 fpa strafe with it... no matter what the animation might show or what may be heard, strafe arrows are shot no more often than 3 frames.
 
Thank you for the insight, Krischan.

I do have atma's, so might give goldstrike a try but don't have another pul to up it. I did notice that buriza isn't that much slower than wws. Just did a quick pit run on p8 using andys+kb/ias gloves+atma and it was a blast. Life leech helps quite a bit, didn't have to worry about my health pool at all. The only issue is low resists which can mean instant death in some situations. Wanted to do some pindleskin runs but realized that I closed the red portal on hell with this char... sux to be a noob.

So at the moment, trying to figure out the most efficient way to farm gear.
I now have the following:

Strafezon lvl 89 - fast but very glassy

MeteOrb sorc lvl 75 - sux against dual immunies

Windy druid lvl 84 - no reaper's toll

Fishymancer lvl 74 - very slow even with maxed out CE and overall decent gear (marrowwalk, homunculus)

Barb lvl 50 - not sure what to do here. Ww is strong but mana burners kill him easily. Found a Pier tombale's partizan so damage and range are great.

Zealot lvl 50 - same here, not sure which way to go.

MA assassin lvl 50 - same here. Trapsin sounds interesting but will it be efficient self found without infinity?
 
Log in to Reply / Create Site Account
Remove Ads - Go PurePremium

Latest posts

Back
Top