Bowazon decisions decisions

Focusing more on my Bowazon finally since the pally just kinda needs a little gear tinkering (yeah Im slow I know I don't play 6 hrs a day) I started to build it with a freezing arrow, GA, pierce and a pt into everything else in the passives pretty much. But I decided for what I'll be doing with it, freezing arrow isnt going to do anything for me since I'll always have the level 20 magic arrow to fall back on for immunes from the WWS if I was that desparate. So....I restarted and rebuilt. Level 25 now with no skill points spent where do you think I should put the points?

Right now I'm thinking:

Bow Tree
MA: 1 (prereq)
MS: 1 (prereq)
CA: 1 (prereq)
GA: 20

Passive Tree:

CS: 1 (useless with the DS on WWS...Im pretty sure it wont check for this if DS works)

Penetrate: 1
Pierce: 9 or 20 if I use razortail or verdungos or nos
Dodge: 1
Avoid: 1
Evade: 1
Inner Sight: 1
Slow Missles: 1
Valkyrie: 1

Even if I use 20 into pierce which I probably will as razortail isnt that great outside of the pierce, thats only 51 skill points used. So...I'm going to have like 45 skill points to use still. I know I probably should throw a few more into D/A/E for defense but I'm not quite sure what else I should be doing...I could boost the valkyrie maybe or up CS for a secondary bow...or penetrate just for more AR?...But my dex will already be above 300...I suppose I could throw in a couple points in the jav tree for a jav switch in cows or something but it seems like such a waste.

I think you need to max double strike, or critical strike. Whatever is called that gives you a chance to do double your damage that is what skill you really need.

With a high level char you would be doing 90%+ deadly strike with WitchWild so maxing it out wont really b a great help. I dont know about relying on magic arrow with WWS to kill physical immunes coz theres about 20+ packs of monsters everywhere with that mod. Sif you will shoot each monster with 1 arrow. I'd say put points into your passives or frozen arrow and its synergies.

Is this pvm or pvp...

Why do you want pierce? Is it for the frozen arrow?

I actually answered my own questions already. I'll let you know how it turns out when its done.

To answer yours though Pierce was for the 1 pt in multishot for both pvm as well as pvp (monsters get in the way sometimes) similar to the teeth spread manuver some necros use when they can't namelock.

PvP or PvM ...its going to be for both. It probably won't be as effective as a build dedicated to one or the other but I'm confident it will be ok in the end. By nature WWS is a pvm bow with its amp damage trigger but I think overall it might work out well enough. I am considering pumping up str enough to use a WF as well as collect the gear for a WF bowazon to compare how it works. My spread will probably be similar to Endurak's proposal in his guide except I have a couple dots in pierce rather than javalins so it should be good enough to compare as this is..in the end an experiment and something for fun.

You'll get raped PvP but I wish you the best of luck.

You'll get raped PvP but I wish you the best of luck.

I don't know really. We'll see I guess. I've only put a couple points into pierce and as Im not placing any more than 1 point into multi and Im not using and javalin skills ...and if I dont max crit strike and decide to just use a WWS (or even if I do max crit to test how a WF compares in the end and just realize in a pure WWS build i would have had a bunch of points to spend somewhere) I don't think its going to be off any real amount. Im not convinced that a 10/15/15 in d/e/a is much worse than a 11/16/16 once +skills takes effect and the benefit of the extra points drops like a rock and the percentage of avoiding levels off.

We'll see. I'll let you know when its done and post the stats/eq if its working.

So hows the zon going? it seems your like it isnt doing well since you wanna make a new druid.

So hows the zon going? it seems your like it isnt doing well since you wanna make a new druid.

Fantastic actually. No what I usually do is while Im finishing up a character, Im building a new one and I plot my next all at the same time.

So: V/t being finished, Building a Zon, Beginning to Plot a new character

Zon right now is about level 74 (Im slow and dont get to play a ton right now due to work) and does a pretty good amount of damage. I ended up breaking what I was going to do initially because I wanted to compare directly how it matched up with a WF setup. Essentially what I decided to do was make my skill point spread exactly like a classic WF pvp bowazon and simply have noted that if I stuck straight up with WWS my damage with it would be a couple hundred points higher than it is due to not needing as much str as I pumped into it and I would have a level 20 freezing arrow as well.

Disagree or agree but this has been my experience thus far:

I've decided that a WWS is more versitile in the end. PvM I'm going hands down with WWS because to reach the breakpoints with a WF you need to sacrifice other fantastic mods in your gear...for instance you cannot use a CoH and reach an 8fps breakpoint....believe me I tried to figure out a way. So unless I want to make gigantic sacrifices in resistances, +skills, other cool mods, I'm stuck at 9fps. When killing say....cows the extra shot I think makes up for the lower damage...but more importantly with the incredible range of damage on a WF Im finding the average damage is higher with a WWS (and Im 30+ pts of dex or vit lower than where I would be normally and lacking a maxed freezing arrow or more passives). Thus groups monsters are going down faster on average between my gear and my avg damage. This isnt even including the amp damage trigger but in hell it helps a lot as well (nightmare things die too quickly to have it really noted). Granted at a slightly higher level my WF will do a little more damage but Im not convinced its going to be enough.

PvP: This is actually a toss up. Against really good people you probably should go with a WF just because there's so much luck involved now that you just shoot and hope because no matter how high your resists and DR is (and you wont have that much DR with a WF setup if you want a decent breakpoint) you'll still die if you get hit as your vitality is usually no where near what a tank's would be. I can see why Sov in a PvP setup claims his Zon could beat a WWS one. However against 90% of the duelers out there who don't have perfect eq or strategy, the ability to have much higher resists, a faster break point and more versitility in what gear/mods you want I think the WWS is actually better. Bow vs Bow you'll probably need a WF though just because of the luck factor involved though perhaps reaching a faster breakpoint will help...I haven't tested it.

In the end its not a bad setup and its much cheaper than WF one. The worst part of it in leveling was the mid levels around 45 because I couldnt use it if I upgraded it yet and I wasn't high enough level to use enough of my endgame gear. I'm quite sure if I was using a lycanders or something it would have been easier to level but once it was upped to a diamond bow and I was able to start using things like shakos and the like its become easy.

So how'd it go? Fantastic thus far. Max damage is a little lower than I want at the moment but I haven't had any issues really and its been fun. So far the gear I acquired to compare with has easilly been double the cost of the normal gear I'm using. I think this is a neat build to try for something slightly different in feel, especially for pvm though it works in most duels (though I suspect at the highest levels it might have more problems) and its cheap as hell compared to other zon builds in gear, partially because getting a 167-170% ed WWS isnt that hard.

Shoot yourself, if your on west and you made this zon just shoot yourself.

And saying your V/T is done is probally 100% false, my V/T was never done after like 6 months. Depends on how you look at "done".

Shoot yourself, if your on west and you made this zon just shoot yourself. And saying your V/T is done is probally 100% false, my V/T was never done after like 6 months. Depends on how you look at "done".

Easy killer its a game man take it easy. Yes I made this zon and no I'm not going to shoot myself over it. No I'm not on West I've said many times I'm on East. I had fun with it and that's all I care about. You can talk all the trash you want and post yourself as whatever you want. Not everyone needs to act like they're still in 7th grade and keep making the same things over and over and over again just because they are potentially a "better" build for pvp. It was an experiment from the outset I wanted to try something I never had before and someone asked how it went.

Your comment was unnecessary and frankly useless. I would have expected more from someone who supposedly posts on the forums to help people. I suppose that's a naive sentiment though and an unreasonable expectation.

As far as your next leap of conclusions and insults, saved only by your complete backtracking and almost retraction of the entire statement at the end, I said my V/t was finished...finished as far as I'm concerned which is different than "done". Nothing is ever "done" unless you have the best twinked out gear possible with +life on all your skill charms and perfect upgraded everything and level 99, etc etc....Diminishing returns from spending time on working on it so I moved on to come back later to it when I find something better for it or feel the need to play it. As I said before the game is played to have fun with.

The post you replied to was over a week old let it die if you don't like it. No one is making you play anything and this isnt stickied as a build so anyone who's looking for a zon build and has never tried one will be far more likely to go for a tried and true method, which this isn't. Everyone else I'm sure doesn't need you deciding what is an acceptable build and what isn't. In short you just made yourself look like an idiot. Constructive criticism on why certain things are better than others is far more helpful and informative to everyone than just "shoot yourself". I don't claim to be anywhere close to the best in this game or the most knowledgable in fact I probably suck at it compared to the people who spent their months and years playing non stop. I merely replied in response to someone with my findings when they asked how it was going.

The solution to all idiots.