View source for Guide:Mageazon v1.09, by Icewraith

=Main Offensive Skills=

The main skills will definitely be frozen arrow and immolation arrow. In the past, ice arrow was an option for a main attack skill because frozen arrow had lower damage then, so the chill time made a difference. Now, however enter the world of charms and you can easily hit just the same amount of freeze time with frozen arrow, while more damage and to multiple enemies.

One interesting perk about both frozen arrow and immolation arrow (ice arrow too), is that there is a significant boost for the skills at levels 8 and 16. Damage-up-per-level increased from 10 to 15 to 20 for FA and from 10 to 20 to 30 for IA. This means that there is no reason NOT to max both skills as damage only starts to get spectacular after level 16.

'''Ice Arrow (1 or Max points)'''

Ice arrow auto-hits and freezes for a good amount of time even without much added cold duration. The damage is lower than that of FA and can only hit a single target but the big plus point of it is the light mana cost (less than 1/3 that of FA), which allows you to manage your mana much better. Overall, a good choice if your mana is somewhat restricted by gear choices to provide greater safety such as in hardcore.

For a mageazon choosing maxed Ice Arrow over Frozen Arrow, I would recommend a fast bow (ideally at 8/2) and as high +skills as possible. In this way, you will be able to churn out as many Ice Arrows as possible during the one-second cast delay of Immolation Arrows. However, even then, I would still recommend 20 Ice Arrow and 10 Frozen Arrow for the mass freeze and cold damage of Frozen Arrow.

{| cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3"
!
! 1
! 5
! 10
! 15
! 16
! 17
! 18
! 19
! 20
! 25
! 30
|-
| Cold Damage
| 6-10
| 30-34
| 72-76
| 132-136
| 144-148
| 162-166
| 180-184
| 198-202
| 216-220
| 306-310
| 396-400
|-
| Cold Duration
| 2.0
| 2.8
| 3.8
| 4.8
| 5.0
| 5.2
| 5.4
| 5.6
| 5.8
| 6.8
| 7.8
|-
| Mana Cost
| 4.0
| 5.0
| 6.2
| 7.5
| 7.7
| 8.0
| 8.2
| 8.5
| 8.7
| 10.0
| 11.2
|}

'''Frozen Arrow (1 to Max points)'''

An auto-hit skill, FA does it's cold damage in a fixed splash radius of 3.3 yards and freezes all hit for 2 seconds (boosted by items) in normal. With pierce and a tight pack of monsters, it's easy for FA to be doing 4x the splash damage to each monster in the radius. Chance to cast on attack items works fantastically well with this skill as the chance of releasing a charge is very high with FA piercing and hitting so many enemies with one shot.

{| cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3"
!
! 1
! 5
! 10
! 15
! 16
! 17
! 18
! 19
! 20
! 25
! 30
|-
| Cold Damage
| 40-50
| 80-90
| 140-150
| 215-225
| 230-240
| 250-260
| 270-280
| 290-300
| 310-320
| 410-420
| 510-520
|-
| Mana Cost
| 9
| 13
| 18
| 23
| 24
| 25
| 26
| 27
| 28
| 33
| 38
|}

'''Immolation Arrow (Max points)'''

Previously, the power of immolation lies in its long burning duration and stackability. Now nerfed down to only 3 seconds of burning with 1 second cast delay, it's only chance of being a viable skill lies in the fact that its basic explosive damage (1.3 yard radius) is significantly better than in the past (especially after around level 20). The extra burning damage is just icing on the cake I guess.

{| cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3"
!
! 1
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! 30
|-
| Fire Damage
| 10-20
| 50-60
| 120-130
| 220-230
| 240-250
| 270-280
| 300-310
| 330-340
| 360-370
| 510-520
| 660-670
|-
| per second
| 8-10
| 31-33
| 60-63
| 90-92
| 96-98
| 101-104
| 107-110
| 113-116
| 119-121
| 148-151
| 178-180
|-
| Mana Cost
| 6
| 10
| 15
| 20
| 21
| 22
| 23
| 24
| 25
| 30
| 35
|}

'''Guided Arrow (0 or 1 point)'''

You can say that GA is usually for the big guns to take out bosses, yet it is also a very nice skill for mageazons as well. When faced with a single boss, firing off your big skills is extremely taxing on mana, since you are wasting a hell lot of damage (cannot multiple hit and hence no multiple splashes). With decent elemental bow (skystrike, kuko, 1-4xx lightning bow etc) and 100% pierce, even a level 1 GA can do lots of quick damage to the boss at an affordable mana cost (well covered by mana regeneration).

Other bow and crossbow skills are largely useless for a mageazon and would serve at best as pre-requisite skills for the above mentioned three skills.