- Strafe is great! I currently have it at rank 2, against a large group it does indeed let fly 6 shots. Against a single target, it looks like it only shoots 3 arrows? Against 2 targets, it only lets loose 1 arrow per target for a total of 2. A bit of a disappointment, as I thought it might work like Zeal - where all attacks can go to a single target.
So how does strafe work against fewer foes or a single foe? When it's maxed out (to 10 arrows), will it shoot a single target 5 times? 2 targets once each?
- Been researching quite a few guides, some players recommend going the Ice Arrow/Freezing Arrow route to counter physical immunes. Some say "screw magic damage" and instead put points into more skills for the Valkyrie. Others even say going to rank 13 Magic Arrow is nice, as your attack becomes free (no mana or arrows needed) and does damage physical immunes where strafe cannot. Personally I'm kind of partial to the Magic Arrow idea.
What advice do you guys have?
- Been researching quite a few guides, some players recommend going the Ice Arrow/Freezing Arrow route to counter physical immunes. Some say "screw magic damage" and instead put points into more skills for the Valkyrie. Others even say going to rank 13 Magic Arrow is nice, as your attack becomes free (no mana or arrows needed) and does damage physical immunes where strafe cannot. Personally I'm kind of partial to the Magic Arrow idea.
What advice do you guys have?
I dabbled a bit with a bowazon in SP. My conclusion is that she sucks without a great bow. In Hell that is. Strafe works wonders through nightmare with just a decent bow, but after that it's just not possible. I mean I coulnd't even kill the zombies, I had like 170-300 damage or some ridiculously low amount.
Without a great bow, neither magic arrow nor freezing arrow work. So I guess Valkyrie is the way to go?
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Strafe is no good for single targets because the arrows are affected by next hit delay. This means that when a mob gets hit by arrow 1, arrow 2 cannot impact. Depending on the speed of your shots arrows 3 and 4 may miss also. If you really want to use it on a single target get a big slow xbow on switch and use a good fast (hunter/composite type) bow for general cleanup.
I have had builds with magic arrow and it does work well. once its free you can also kill Mephisto without being in the same room as your pc as theres a way to lure him close enough to shoot but far enough away he can't attack. Just leave a weight on your mouse button and go make a cup of tea, come back and pick up loot
The majour benefit of the frozen arrow route is that it is dual function. Yes you get it for killing physical immunes but it's also useful as a way to calm a situation if thing's get out of hand. Freeze the groups, back off, replant decoy, switch back to strafe.
Thanks for the insight. I just entered Hell difficulty, and it's VERY slow going with only a halfway decent bow. Valkyrie is basically saving my ass every single time, plus the holy freeze aura Act 2 merc.
It looks like I have a choice between sinking points into Magic Arrow, Guided Arrow, and Freezing Arrow. My friend swears by Guided Arrow, and I personally have enjoyed having to carry fewer arrows and worry less about mana (my mana drain sucks) with Magic Arrow. Between the three of these, what are your recommendations?
(Magic arrow seems like it does pitiful damage. 1 pt for each 1% physical damage converted to magic damage? That seems excessively low. Also.. adding only 1 additional pt of damage per rank? Is that a tooltip typo?)
Strafe is no good for single targets because the arrows are affected by next hit delay. This means that when a mob gets hit by arrow 1, arrow 2 cannot impact. Depending on the speed of your shots arrows 3 and 4 may miss also. If you really want to use it on a single target get a big slow xbow on switch and use a good fast (hunter/composite type) bow for general cleanup.
I have had builds with magic arrow and it does work well. once its free you can also kill Mephisto without being in the same room as your pc as theres a way to lure him close enough to shoot but far enough away he can't attack. Just leave a weight on your mouse button and go make a cup of tea, come back and pick up loot
The majour benefit of the frozen arrow route is that it is dual function. Yes you get it for killing physical immunes but it's also useful as a way to calm a situation if thing's get out of hand. Freeze the groups, back off, replant decoy, switch back to strafe.
Thanks for the insight. I just entered Hell difficulty, and it's VERY slow going with only a halfway decent bow. Valkyrie is basically saving my ass every single time, plus the holy freeze aura Act 2 merc.
It looks like I have a choice between sinking points into Magic Arrow, Guided Arrow, and Freezing Arrow. My friend swears by Guided Arrow, and I personally have enjoyed having to carry fewer arrows and worry less about mana (my mana drain sucks) with Magic Arrow. Between the three of these, what are your recommendations?
(Magic arrow seems like it does pitiful damage. 1 pt for each 1% physical damage converted to magic damage? That seems excessively low. Also.. adding only 1 additional pt of damage per rank? Is that a tooltip typo?)
I'd recommend freezing arrow. Also change you're merc. NM act 2 offensive (might aura) is the best for a strafer since you're main skill is physical damage. It really does boost you're damage.
Holy freeze is good for crowd control I suppose but my advice would be to practise using decoy. Once you've got the idea with decoy placement other crowd control is far less needed and you can just work on your damage output.
Magic arrow is good but it's single target skill whereas freezing arrow is aoe. I would say put 21 points minimum towards it spread 1/10/10 down the cold tree. It wouldn't give as high damage as a flat 20 in FR but the 10 points in ice arrow extend freeze time which is well handy. Others would disagree but it works for me.
Guiding arrow... Never used it. It's always been thought of as a pvp skill though as far as I can tell.
Hmm... the problem with FA is that it's too mana-intensive to be used as a single-target spam ability. I thought about using FA for the crowd control, but it wasn't sustainable. At the moment, the same applies to Guiding Arrow (though if I sink a lot of points into it, the mana consumption becomes easier to deal with). That's why I got the Holy Freeze merc to replace FA, and was looking for other options.
I guess for now that only leaves me with Magic Arrow. Is it really as weak as the tooltip says? Converting 1% per point into magic damage and only adding 1 damage per point invested?
Strafe is no good for single targets because the arrows are affected by next hit delay. This means that when a mob gets hit by arrow 1, arrow 2 cannot impact. Depending on the speed of your shots arrows 3 and 4 may miss also. If you really want to use it on a single target get a big slow xbow on switch and use a good fast (hunter/composite type) bow for general cleanup.
I have had builds with magic arrow and it does work well. once its free you can also kill Mephisto without being in the same room as your pc as theres a way to lure him close enough to shoot but far enough away he can't attack. Just leave a weight on your mouse button and go make a cup of tea, come back and pick up loot
The majour benefit of the frozen arrow route is that it is dual function. Yes you get it for killing physical immunes but it's also useful as a way to calm a situation if thing's get out of hand. Freeze the groups, back off, replant decoy, switch back to strafe.
Thanks for the insight. I just entered Hell difficulty, and it's VERY slow going with only a halfway decent bow. Valkyrie is basically saving my ass every single time, plus the holy freeze aura Act 2 merc.
It looks like I have a choice between sinking points into Magic Arrow, Guided Arrow, and Freezing Arrow. My friend swears by Guided Arrow, and I personally have enjoyed having to carry fewer arrows and worry less about mana (my mana drain sucks) with Magic Arrow. Between the three of these, what are your recommendations?
(Magic arrow seems like it does pitiful damage. 1 pt for each 1% physical damage converted to magic damage? That seems excessively low. Also.. adding only 1 additional pt of damage per rank? Is that a tooltip typo?)
I'd recommend freezing arrow. Also change you're merc. NM act 2 offensive (might aura) is the best for a strafer since you're main skill is physical damage. It really does boost you're damage.
Holy freeze is good for crowd control I suppose but my advice would be to practise using decoy. Once you've got the idea with decoy placement other crowd control is far less needed and you can just work on your damage output.
Magic arrow is good but it's single target skill whereas freezing arrow is aoe. I would say put 21 points minimum towards it spread 1/10/10 down the cold tree. It wouldn't give as high damage as a flat 20 in FR but the 10 points in ice arrow extend freeze time which is well handy. Others would disagree but it works for me.
Guiding arrow... Never used it. It's always been thought of as a pvp skill though as far as I can tell.
Hmm... the problem with FA is that it's too mana-intensive to be used as a single-target spam ability. I thought about using FA for the crowd control, but it wasn't sustainable. At the moment, the same applies to Guiding Arrow (though if I sink a lot of points into it, the mana consumption becomes easier to deal with). That's why I got the Holy Freeze merc to replace FA, and was looking for other options.
I guess for now that only leaves me with Magic Arrow. Is it really as weak as the tooltip says? Converting 1% per point into magic damage and only adding 1 damage per point invested?
Yeah, it can be. Of course I never max FA. I tend to go 10/1/10 using the cold arrow synergy to boost the damage, which ends up with a reasonable cold arrow attack for single targets, but still with reasonable freeze length on FA. I honestly couldn't comment on the math around MA as I haven't played a bowie in ages and stopped going the strafe/ma route a long time ago.
The development of FA and how much you can invest depends on the rest of the build really.
- Strafe is great! I currently have it at rank 2, against a large group it does indeed let fly 6 shots. Against a single target, it looks like it only shoots 3 arrows? Against 2 targets, it only lets loose 1 arrow per target for a total of 2. A bit of a disappointment, as I thought it might work like Zeal - where all attacks can go to a single target.
So how does strafe work against fewer foes or a single foe? When it's maxed out (to 10 arrows), will it shoot a single target 5 times? 2 targets once each?
- Been researching quite a few guides, some players recommend going the Ice Arrow/Freezing Arrow route to counter physical immunes. Some say "screw magic damage" and instead put points into more skills for the Valkyrie. Others even say going to rank 13 Magic Arrow is nice, as your attack becomes free (no mana or arrows needed) and does damage physical immunes where strafe cannot. Personally I'm kind of partial to the Magic Arrow idea.
What advice do you guys have?
Without a great bow, neither magic arrow nor freezing arrow work. So I guess Valkyrie is the way to go?
And I have no idea about Strafe.
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Thanks for the insight. I just entered Hell difficulty, and it's VERY slow going with only a halfway decent bow. Valkyrie is basically saving my ass every single time, plus the holy freeze aura Act 2 merc.
It looks like I have a choice between sinking points into Magic Arrow, Guided Arrow, and Freezing Arrow. My friend swears by Guided Arrow, and I personally have enjoyed having to carry fewer arrows and worry less about mana (my mana drain sucks) with Magic Arrow. Between the three of these, what are your recommendations?
(Magic arrow seems like it does pitiful damage. 1 pt for each 1% physical damage converted to magic damage? That seems excessively low. Also.. adding only 1 additional pt of damage per rank? Is that a tooltip typo?)
Hmm... the problem with FA is that it's too mana-intensive to be used as a single-target spam ability. I thought about using FA for the crowd control, but it wasn't sustainable. At the moment, the same applies to Guiding Arrow (though if I sink a lot of points into it, the mana consumption becomes easier to deal with). That's why I got the Holy Freeze merc to replace FA, and was looking for other options.
I guess for now that only leaves me with Magic Arrow. Is it really as weak as the tooltip says? Converting 1% per point into magic damage and only adding 1 damage per point invested?
I know this doesn't contribute in any way, but infinite quoting FTW!!!