Mageazon
Zenmaster with a Bow
by Jondefool

Class: Amazon
Tag: None.

Introduction

Imagine playing a bowazon without use of mana steal items.
And without developing skills like penetrate and piercing.
No point in critical strike, too.
Only going for a total of 50 in dexterity.
Simply not having any base damage worth mention.
And not using strafe or multiple shot!

And still using a bow!!

The Mageazon is based on the fact that a lot of bow skills always hits. ALWAYS Hits means that the need for dexterity is gone. But what about the increase in damage dex gives, you might ask. The whole point of this variant is to play without needing it. This means to play and think like a sorceress. And develop the character like it, too.

Rules

Statistic Overview
Strength: 40 minimum needed for Doomslinger; 60 when going for Frostburn
Dex: 50 (Doomslinger)
Vitality: When needed to keep alive(!) as with other bowazons and sorceresses
Energy: All that's possible

It does looks like a sorceress to me!

Being without the skill warmth and having a mana increase on 1.5 each energy point spend compared to the sorceress 2 leaves the Mageazon behind, but again due the minions and piercing it's possible to play with a low and effective mana use. It is also needed because there are no point in shooting normal arrows around, and without mana steal the low level fire/and ice skill does only give free hits, at high expense of valuable mana!

Mana steal is of very little use with the low physical damage.

Items

Bow Speed
High bow speed is preferred, to fire quickly like a Sorceress with +Cast Speed% items.

Piercing
Without Doomslinger or one of the other piecing bows, it's difficult to play this variant in a pure form. And it still might be better to develop piercing by yourself, and stick with a higher damage bow and do a lot of mana steal. The problem is that a better bow does require a lot more dexterity, and this is fewer points to go into energy.

The question is if this variant with its insane high mana is able to fire more freeze/immolation than a regular elemental bowazon with the help of a strong bow and mana steal - this makes the difference between this variant being a curiosity and the possible other choice to Multishot/Strafe.

So I had stick with Doomslinger. You might want to transfer it from the start, because without it this way of play is rather slow, but of course it's possible. And it could even be fun to play a real Zenmaster never take a point in strength and just a few in dexterity!

Skills

The skills used for dealing damage is Immolation arrow and the level 30 Freezing Arrow spell, and a Valkyrie. Use them together with Doomslinger and you are ready to be a Mageazon. Doomslinger is a very fast unique repeating crossbow there require 40 in strength and 50 in dex and deals 7-14 dam adds +1 to skills and have piercing attack.

Immolation arrow is compared in the chaos sanctuary to firewall. (Meteor is more like it (imho).) Immolation arrow looks bad up against both with a lower damage potential even without Fire Mastery involved, but is much more easy useful, due the ally situation. Valkyrie and decoy simply hold moving targets in the flames. An option the sorceress doesn't have. And other targets like non moving shooters just take longer to burn, which is not that big disadvantage. Together with auto piercing it is possible to get all enemies cowered in the flames really fast , close to the same way as meteor when used to cower the whole screen. In my opinion Immolation arrow is very easy to use. It might even be the best damage fire spell there is!

Freezing Arrow is compared to glacial spike. And here again it does looks like its a bad case because it does lover damage (around 120 at the cost of 29 mana compared to around 150 at cost of 19 mana, for both at level 20). But adding , the base damage of the bow with an possible critical strike makes it more even. The freezing of 2 seconds is bad (compared to 6), but 3,3 yards radius is good (2,6 for glacial spike). Again its the piercing attack that makes the day. (though I hear a sorceress can use Doomslinger too , a bug imho). But with cold mastery the balance does clearly tip to the sorcerer. The Mageazon does have the option to shift between fire and ice which catch up with a lot of the advantage the sorceress mastery skills gives.

Cast Rate and Attack Speed
Using a very fast bow (like Doomslinger), gives the option to go for increase in attack speed (in addition to using +Attack Speed% on other gear) in the same way as the sorceress playing with fast cast rate items.

Immolation Arrow now has a cast spell timer, so it cannot attack as quickly as some other arrow skills can.

Summary
by LemmingofGlory

The concept of the Mageazon is to play the her like a Sorceress in all respects. She prefers low physical statistics (Str/Dex) and high Energy (to fuel her mana usage).

Her favorite skills are Immolation Arrow and Freezing Arrow, which give her something similar to Fire Wall (or Meteor) and Glacial Spike. Valkyrie, Decoy, and a Merc can be helpful to keep enemies roasting in Immolation's fire.

To increase the potency of her arrow skills she likes the "Piercing" effect, though she will greatly favor a bow that provides this ability to pumping it herself. She also quite enjoys fast attack speed to emulate the "Tweaker" style of Sorceress (fast cast speed).

Mana may become an issue for her. If at all possible, she will avoid upgrading to a more damaging bow in order to provide her with more mana steal. This is to keep her from simply evolving into a powerful run-of-the-mill Bowazon.