Changes

=Bowazon Subclasses=

Theme: Like a sorceress this amazon relies on her manapool. She has more mana than life and replenishes it the natural way. Like the sorceress the main idea is that she can spawn her most mana-intensive elemental skills without interruption or the pressing need to drink mana potions. In several of the previous patches, Freezing arrow and Immolation Arrow could not leech and thus mana had to be replenished the natural way.

The theme of these subclasses is that a Frostmaiden does not pick fireskills nor does an Immozon use cold skills. This limits the subclasses to just one damage type and it is often seen that instead of picking a build related to the modern Magazon. This means that next to either cold or (NOT "and") fire damage, the amazon now has also physical damage at their disposal, which makes it easier to compete with immune creatures later on.

Frostmaidens focus their build initially on doing massive cold damage. They max the cold skills Ice Arrow and Freezing Arrow. At times they even max Cold Arrow for the early levels, but that's an extreme. They try to get as high as a freezing length with these skills as they can. This is done by using more cold damage gear and more cold damage charms than Magazons. Since Frostmaidens should be able to spawn Freezing Arrow without having to switch to alternative skills, they need a good balance between manaleech and physical damage.

For dual-immune cold/physical creatures, the Frostmaiden is forced to use either lightning, fire and poison damage charms or switch to a bow that does good fire, lightning or poison damage. Kuko Shakaku, Skystrike, 6 Emerald socketed Bows, Venom bows, or magical bows with good fire or lightning damage mods are often put on weapon switch.

Immozons max Immolation Arrow and often also Exploding Arrow. Fire Arrow is sometimes also maximised for the early levels, but in the current version 1.09 it is kept at level 1. Immozons are a lot harder to play with than Frostmaidens because it's natural not to choose any source of cold damage for these characters. The lack of a chilling factor for the Immozon can be fixed by a few different methods.

For physical immunes Fire Arrow, Exploding arrow and Immolation Arrow will all do well, but for fire immunes you need another damage type. You can use Multiple Shot and Strafe for if you choose physical damage and build your Immozon as a Vamp. You can also build the traditional way and deal by using either lightning and poison damage charms or switch to a bow that does good lightning or poison damage (remember that cold is rarely used for this subclass). Skystrike, 6 Emerald socketed Bows, Venom bows, or magical bows with good lightning or poison damage mods are often put on weapon switch.

After these elemental builds I could discuss my elemental Maiden, but since that build can be created for both Spearazon and Javazon alike, I'd best discuss that later. So it's now up to discuss the builds that have as a main purpose the doing of physical damage. First up...

The theme of the Dexazon is to invest as much as she can into acquiring the highest dexterity possible. This means they increase their physical damage tremendously. They also focus on at least 1 physical damage skill, but are often also found to make use of 1 or more elemental skills for variation or as use against physical immune creatures. As for the Magazon there is a lingering debate about what a true Dexazon is. This actually falls apart in two arguments of which one is on statpoint allocation and the other on equipment choice.

* Pierce: 8+ (65%+)

A Speedazon goes for the maximum amount of speed possible in killing creatures. I would have loved to refer everyone to Dinho's Speedazon guide, but that is not listed in the Strategy Compendium. Therefore I have to sum up a few main points.

=Other Bowazon themes=

The Sniper is one that attacks from afar. The main skills are Guided Arrow and Magic Arrow is used as a backup. Guided Arrow gives the illusion of being heat-seeking and Magic Arrow looks like the same soaring fast projectile. There is little to say about this amazon, other than that she is often fast and does incredible damage. She can have any setup, but most of the time it will be Speedazon related. She will go for a fast hit and run tactic. This involves fast run and often a good Evade skill value because she is running most of the time.

Pierce: 8-20

There is a subclass called the Multizon, which uses a maxed Multiple Shot as main attack. Very powerful for crowd control and good for players who don't want to bother about adjusting the "fanning out" of Multiple Shot. Clicking closer to you makes Multiple Shot fan out more, clicking further away from you makes it shoot arrows closer together.

Pierce: 8-20

Another subclass that has emerged lately is the Burizon. This CrossBowazon's only true features are that it uses the powerful crossbow Buriza-Do Kyanon in conjunction with maxed guided arrow. It is one of the easiest classes to make and a real cookiecutter. Many people hate this amazon because she's so easy to play with. The reasons I will list below.

Pierce: 0

The Rebelzon is one of my own trademarks. I basically created her to investigate the viability of the lesser skills and the lack of uberskills. She was also built without using the most powerful exceptional ranged weapon named Buriza-Do Kyanon. She was created to prove that the most powerful skills and items aren't needed for finishing Hell. Her build quite simple. First she started out as an average amazon, except that she didn't use skills further down the bow tree. I'll list what I did.

There are a few more subclasses possible for Bowazons, but they can be created for other amazon main classes as well, so I will discuss them where they are best put to right or list them at the end of this overview. First I'll continue with Javazon subclasses.

The Javazon can be created in many ways, but it's throwing skills are rather limited and therefore it's difficult to define exact subclasses. I have seen two good general guides with personal preferences, which are listed on the amazon forum. They belong to Talon and Angry. And I hope that one of the guides gets put up on a page.

This Javazon uses Lightning Fury as its main attack and a nice guide on do's and don'ts is supplied by Flux. Note however that a true Javazon class does NOT have a bow or crossbow on weapon switch. Flux describes a hybrid subclass in truth, but for a Lightning Fury build, his guide is the one to check out. A few pointers I will give right here.

Energy: some points are okay, but the best way to replenish your manapool will be manaleech, mana charms and if you kill fast enough, mana per kill.

The Staticzon focuses her attacks and often also the rest of her gear on doing lightning damage. This subclass can be created for both Spearazon and Javazon. Picking a lightning skill is often not the only way how lightning damage is delivered to her foes. If a Staticzon has chosen to also use items that give good lightning damage, she can deliver this damage by doing a melee attack that quickly hits one or more foes. That means fend and/or jab comes into play. I will list below the lightning skills that can be considered.

A good mercenary to have for Lightning Strike is a Blessed Aim act 2 mercenary. If you choose to not use this skill you can pick any mercenary you like. The most well-liked mercenaries are those from act 2, either with a might or defiance aura.

The Poison theme can be applied to all amazons. All you have to do is get many sources of poison damage. For knowing which sources to pick I refer you to the Second Tao of Poison article. The theme for Javazons is that next to using poison from gear, she uses her poison skills as main attack. There are two kinds of javelin skills that can be used together when fighting creature packs. The main skill is Plague Javelin which you throw to one side of the creature pack. The other skill is Poison Javelin which you can use to attack the monsters on the other side of the pack until the Plague Javelin poison has ended. One can also instead of Poison Javelin use a melee skill to inflict poison damage on your foes. Be aware that to best use poison is not to attack creatures that are already inflicted with it.

There are a few more subclasses possible for Javazons, but the following are more specific to the Spearazons so I will discuss them here.

The Spearazon's main feature is the balance between defense and attack.High defense, damage reduction, high life and the ability to dodge attacks are very important as defense whereas high attack rating and chance to do a critical hit are important for attacking. The skills that are mainly used for physical damage are Jab, Impale and Fend. Depending on the choice of the Spearazon this has led to three specific subclasses. They can be created for Javazons also, who have an additional bonus of blocking with a shield.

Spearazons benefit most from act 2 Mercenaries. Might and Defiance are probably the most favorable mercenaries, but one shouldn't underestimate the value of the other ones. Barbarians make equal impressive tanks as act 2 mercenaries. Act 3 mercenaries can provide you with an elemental damage type you have not covered in your own build and act 1 mercenaries when used correctly are perfect for some ranged support.

The Jabazon is the amazon (Spearazon or Javazon) who uses Jab as her main attack. Jab is the melee skill that enables you to deliver the most hits over time. It is not incredible for doing high physical damage, because the skill gives rather low bonus, but it is an impressive way to deliver elemental damage to creatures at a tremendous speed. Every jab attack makes you hit one creature three times. The downside is that it only hits one creature, but it does hit three times, though these

The Impalazon is the amazon (Spearazon or Javazon) who uses Impale as her primary attack. It does incredible damage, but there are two significant downsides to the usage of Impale. First of all it is extremely slow and second of all, with every hit there is a chance that your weapon will lose durability. This is a skill that will drain your cashflow for repairs, but the damage sure is worth it. It will help greatly to have increased durability on your weapon or a self-repair mod so you can keep using your weapon for a considerable amount of time. You also should have some sources that contain increased gold dropping on monster deaths. That'll help with repairing.

The Fendazon is the amazon (Spearazon or Javazon) who uses fend to clear her path. Fend is the most powerful attack for the melee amazon, increasing her damage and attack rating by a large amount and giving her the ability to hit multiple monsters multiple times. If you want an easy time with your Spearazon or Javazon, go with fend. With every minion standing close to you, you will hit every nearby monster an extra time. With minion I mean Decoy, Valkyrie, Mercenary and party members. Minions of party members don't give you extra attacks. This would be a little bit too intensive if you were fighting with say... an Overlord Necromancer by your side, which can have over 80 minions of his own.

Fend is only a little bit bugged because not every of these extra attacks seems to hit even when the screen does indicate it to be so, but on average you won't have any problems with the skill..

The Tankazon is an amazon that does not use spear, javelin, bow or crossbows as weapons. She only benefits from the usage of passive skills. Whilst this seems a large disadvantage over other amazons it really is not. The extra physical damage, elemental damage and crowd control that skills provide can be replaced by a different setup of your character and by playing with certain adapted techniques.

The one-handed Tankazon will have more points left because he can save up on Penetrate. A chance to hit of 85% will be quite adequate. Left over skills can be put in Dodge, Avoid or Evade, or they can be used to max Critical Strike or boost Slow missiles, Decoy and Valkyrie.

Subclasses... one can hardly call them subclasses, but they have gotten a specific name. I am pointing towards Swordazons, Axazons, Macazons and Throwazon. Basically they just only wield weapons of these specific types. I can say which weapons are often preferred.

There are many hybrid subclasses available and I urge you to do some experimenting with skills you like and create a hybrid of your own. None of the hybrids have flashy names, but there are two known variants that have been seen in use.

Lightning Fury is one of the few Spear and Javelin skills used together with an assortment of Bowskills. This is described in detail by Flux, so I feel no need to further elaborate.

The name is made up, but the idea is well-known to exist. Not many play it, but the build is quite viable. Basically this amazon maxes the four most damaging elemental skills. To fully benefit from the elemental damage, they possess as many +skills items as they can. Because of this, all other skills that are normally boosted to a fair amount can be left at base. To use the elemental skills one needs to be able to leech quite a bit and is often build as a variant of the Vamp. Good dexterity or high mana leech next to the +skills will be important to replenish the mana cost of the skills. The stat points will be allocated as following:

Overall the rule is that Lightning Fury nor Freezing Arrow should be used as main killing tools, but that the other two skills get used to full potential as well.

I guess that brings us to my own customized idea for an amazon build. It can be created for any amazon classes, but is best put to right as a Bowazon. This is not a full guide, but a good introduction on the idea.

A few interesting subclasses have sprouted from the minds of a few visionary people that I want to share with you all. There are many more themes available if you only use your imagination. Hopefully the following ones will inspire you to come up with a theme of your own.

The Demon/Undead Hunter uses mainly items that give damage bonuses when fighting Demons and Undead creatures. The usage of sockets is again one of the ways to increase the damage of your character versus these creatures. It was kind of extracted from the Paladin subclass, the Undeadhunter, which uses the Sanctuary as his main aura to dispatch of the undead with little difficulty. The gear of choice is listed below. Skill- and statpoint allocation is all up to the player.

Pearl: 25-50% ED vs Undead, 25-50 AR vs Undead

The Goldfinder theme was brought up by me as a guide on accumulating loads of money for gambling. After testing it showed to accumulate over a million gold when doing a Mephisto Gold find run, killing all creatures in sight and picking up all gold stashes that dropped. The listed gear shows the best way of accumulating better gold find. Skill- and statpoint allocation is all up to the player.

No specific Bowazon, Javazon or Spearazon weapons

An idea we got from the forum was to create a passive amazon, like there is a passive paladin, who kills through thorns and items that give "attacker takes damage of X" and a "chance to cast spell when hit". Through some misunderstanding I thought that this subclass was called the Angel build, so I referred to her as the Angelzon. Later I found out that this was an error, that the Angelzon is an amazon build that I know better as the Stormcaster. This amazon uses items that give a "chance to cast spell on attack" and a "chance to cast spell on hit" to give a nice display of assorted skills.

Now I'm kind of in dubio on how to call both these amazons, but I will describe their gear anyway.

Passive amazon that relies on mercenary to kill, but more so on items that give "chance to cast skill when hit" and "attacker takes damage of X". A Thorns Act 2 mercenary is a must have. The idea is to cast a Decoy and a Valkyrie into the monster packs and have the thorns aura take effect. The idea was also that Decoy and Valkyrie spawn with the same "chance to cast spell when hit", but it doesn't seem to work, sadly. Gear is listed below... skills... well.. just Slow Missiles, Decoy and Valkyrie and 1 into their prequisites. You don't want to Dodge/Avoid/Evade with this build.

Mercenary armor: Hwanin Armor: 10% level 3 Static Field when hit

"Chance to cast spell on hit" and "chance to cast spell on attack" are the main characteristics of this build. Mainly this theme was designed for Bowazons which use mainly crowd control skills like Multiple Shot, Strafe and Freezing Arrow to trigger their spell effects, which results in a really impressive show. Often "Blind", "freeze" or "dim vision" is among the triggers, simple to keep monsters in one place while the spell effects kick in.