bow-skills are weak?

[moscito]

in Vanilla, and later on in some mods, i liked to play as Bow-Ama, Ranger or - even in older median versions - as bow-druid.
why are there no actual guides?
i played a bow-druid on server, and sporeshot workes pretty well till end of NM...

any suggestions?

[xxdiablo2]

I love the bow builds also, by far my favorit class. So boring weak now. Atleast if you play single player off line.

[ChuckNoRis]

since when are bow druids weak ?

and since when is SP inferior to MP for playing (any) builds ?

[Frytas]

Ben just killed Samael with bowdru, aside from proving that he's good at the game it also shows that bow druids aren't exactly terrible imo

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33796

[thunderman]

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[Biadlo]

I just rejoined Median Community 2 month ago and play a Bow Ama as my 2nd char. (First was a Summoner Nec.)
I had no real problems getting most of the Ubers to 120.

- Quov Tsin is a Gear check,
- Bartuc needs a bit of luck,
- Akarat and Jitan are easy,
- the Bull prince was quite easy,
- Terul is really easy with barrage,
- Athulua needs patience.....
- Asmodan needs a bit movement training but fire elementals tank him,
- Assur is a joke with tanking fire elementals,
- Judgement day (one of them) is easy too.

I am struggling with:
- killing Malthael and Imperius within 1 minute ... but that doesn't hinge on the build ... this is personal incompetence^^
- My Kabraxis tries were depressing.
- Lucion ... but that has absolutely nothing to do with the build (I just had to go to bed when I had Lucion to ~30% HP after 1 hour confusion)
- I didnt try Juris Khan yet but I expect that to work becaus of Amazon passive walk/run sped.

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My Ama in a nutshell:

Skills:
Max Skills: Dragonlore (ELE-DMG), Balance (ARMOR), Fire Eles (just because there is nothing else to max^^)
Bow Skills: Phalanx exactly 15 for Cooldown = 0, Wyrmshot 8, Sunstrike 6, Barrage ~5
Passives: Wild and Free ~5, Ecstatic Frenzy 1 or more, defensive harmony ~5
Reward Skills: Spellbind ans War Spirit 1-Pointer, Paragon ~5

--------
Stats: Some in STR, Rest in DEX

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Items:
From Normal to Hell I used Buriza-Do Tsuru (Tiered Short Battle Bow)
I found a Gjallarhorn (SU Composite Bow) quite early which is a nice midgame bow.
Then I farmed 1 XIS rune and made a Dawn ElXIs Stag bow - just because of the "ok" Dmg stats and the 100% to all Attributes.

With the ElXis-Bow I have ~12k HP, ~60k Def, ~3500 Dex, 3200 Vit (without investing a single Vita-Point oOo).

The Rest of the gear is a bit random. Trying to get Elepiercing, DEX, EleDMG, Leech and having some items MO'd with Minion life/res.

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Pros:
- Ranger Build^^
- Covering all types of damage sources (but poison) easily

Cons:
- Since all Bow Attacks target multiple enemies - the Bow Ama surprisingly has problems doing single target damage.
- You need oskills etc. if you want to do focussed damage.
- These Elementals just dont fit the playstyle and they are definitily not worth maxing the skill - since they do nothing but tank a little for you. But there is really nothing else to max .. I spent massiv skill points here.
- While the Summoner Nec has way more viable skills than the number of existing D2 key bindings - the Bow Ama can only put Points into two skill trees ending up with 2 buffs, 1 summon and 3-4 attack skills total. One could say this leads to a boring playstyle.

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I guess some 100 signets more and I can (hopefully) dismiss the Fire Elementals completely.

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And if someone has the SU Stag bow Athulua's Wrath for trade... plz contact me ingame! :)
Account: Biadlo
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Just my 2 cents,
Biadlo

[smartasss]

Ben just killed Samael with bowdru, aside from proving that he's good at the game it also shows that bow druids aren't exactly terrible imo

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33796

That build cant do p1 Fauzt/Brem/Vizjun. It has no lifesteal with full ele conversion. Not exactly a benchmark for bow dru.

[ChuckNoRis]

Maybe it's not, but the fact is someone uploaded save file when sigma launched with all charms and trophies and samael items on discord.
It's been free to download for like 2 months..

i don't use Discord to know that (i've only logged in 4 or 5 times since it exists)

And let me ask you, what you do once you find important umo for your build, let's say lodestone or essence of itharael, because some players who done Samael on Realm had to buy 10 umos of same type, I wonder how long it would take to find those in SP...

there is trading in SP too ,so getting your hands on some items ain't hard even if you are SP .

Do you think it's still fun to play SP?

yes . i would not go MP for anything in the world . maby just if i get payed to do that

it all depends on what makes you happy and what things are you willing to do or not . i got 12 years since i play median in SP only , so if i didn't have fun i would not have been around here all this time , i would have got bored and quit long ago .

the definition of "fun" can be different from one person to another . i usually play between 50 and 100 different builds per big patch while others stop after 1 or 2 builds and cry for ladder resets - what's funny is that sometimes they keep playing the same builds after reset too , again and again . i believe i got the advantage

[thunderman]

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[Manu300000]

My Ama in a nutshell:

Skills:
Max Skills: Dragonlore (ELE-DMG), Balance (ARMOR), Fire Eles (just because there is nothing else to max^^)
Bow Skills: Phalanx exactly 15 for Cooldown = 0, Wyrmshot 8, Sunstrike 6, Barrage ~5
Passives: Wild and Free ~5, Ecstatic Frenzy 1 or more, defensive harmony ~5
Reward Skills: Spellbind ans War Spirit 1-Pointer, Paragon ~5

- These Elementals just dont fit the playstyle and they are definitily not worth maxing the skill - since they do nothing but tank a little for you. But there is really nothing else to max .. I spent massiv skill points here.

I recommend you to max spellbind, its way better than points into fire elementals ( 25% life per point in spellbind i guess)
You reach 20k + life with only one point invested in fire elementals and maxed spellbind