View source for Guide:Amazon Subclasses v1.09, by Celine

===Mageazon===

Theme: Like a sorceress this amazon relies on her manapool. In several of the previous patches, Freezing arrow and Immolation Arrow could not leech and thus mana had to be replenished the natural way, but with recent patches this has changed, a fact which can let many aspiring Mageazons breathe a sigh of relief.   A Mageazon's two main skills, freezing arrow and immolation arrow, are very mana-intensive, so being able to leech some of that cost back is extremely helpful.   There are two primary ways of regaining mana with a Mageazon - through mana leech, perhaps with the help of other skills that do physical damage such as Strafe, or through mana regeneration.

Magazons are also often found to use +skills items to boost the damage of their elemental skills to kill quicker, but that depends a great deal on personal preference, and wealth.

I will describe both of the Mageazon subclasses. 

'''Magazon build A: "the traditional Mageazon"'''

In previous patches, the "traditional" Mageazon would pour a great deal of her stat points into energy, using mana-increasing and mana-regenerating items to keep her blue bulb up.   That may still be the case with Diablo 2 Classic, but in the expansion, we have a number of new options open to us.   New items make it much easier to gain large amounts of items, such as Tal Rasha's mask, which gives a large mana boost, and Silkweaves, a pair of boots that increases mana by 10%, as well as gives additional mana for every kill you make.   Also, we have access to the runeword "Insight", which gives us a constant Meditation aura, increasing our mana regeneration by over 300%!   This allows us to forget about mana steal, and instead focus on getting the most out of our attack skills.

Skills that are predominantly used are Freezing Arrow and Immolation Arrow as her main attacks. She does not use any of the central bowskills because would detract from the elemental damage she's pouring out.  Also, with low dexterity these amazons don't have high attack rating and hence don't use these skills a lot. Guided arrow sometimes does get used to deliver possible elemental damage that is on the bow to a single stray monster, however.

For this Magazon, some good sources mana and mana-replenishment gear are more or less these: (no strength value means no requirement or that it's a magical item, in which case requirement is item-dependant).

{|
! Item
! Name
! Req Str
|-
| Helm
| Nightwing's Veil<br /> Harlequin's Crest<br /> Peasant Crown<br /> Rare/magic Circlet
| 96<br /> 50<br /> 20<br /> -
|-
| Armor
| "Chains of Honor" (Dol Um Ber Ist)<br />Que Hegan's Wisdom<br /> Skin of the Vipermagi<br /> "Stealth" (Tal-Eth)
| -<br /> 55<br /> 45<br /> -
|-
| Gloves
| Laying of Hands<br />Frostburn<br /> Magefist
| 30<br /> 60<br /> 45
|-
| Belt
| Gloom's Trap<br /> Razortail<br /> Caster belt
| 58<br /> 20<br /> -
|-
| Boots
| Silkweave<br /> Caster Boots<br /> Dragon's Boots
| 65<br /> -<br /> -
|-
| Amulet
| Mara's Kaleidoscope<br /> Highlord's Wrath<br /> Magical/rare amazon skill amulet
|
|-
| Ring
| Stone of Jordan<br /> Bul-Kathos'<br /> Manald Heal<br /> Bahamut Ring
|
|}

To adapt the bow requirements to the choice of picking a high energy value and having a lot of mana for the skills, it leaves basically the following main choices. 

{|
! Item
! Req. Strength
! Req. Dexterity
|-
| "Ice"<br /> Kuko Shakaku<br /> Lycander's Aim<br /> Skystrike<br /> Buriza-do Kyanon
| height="96" | bow<br /> 53<br /> 73<br /> 25<br /> 110
| height="96" | bow<br /> 49<br /> 110<br /> 43<br /> 80
|}


This leads to a statpoint setup of:

* Strength: up to 65, or enough for your bow
* Dexterity: up to 65, or enough for your bow
* Vitality: As much as possible
* Energy: Preferrably none, though some if you're playing untwinked can't hurt too much

'''Note''': one can only put points in Vitality and fix strength, and dexterity issues with items and charms.

The tactics are easy enough. Use Freezing Arrow, to freeze enemies in place, then drop Immolation arrows to lite pyres underneath their feet.   Continue using Freezing arrow to keep them in place until Immolation's timer has run out, then use Immo again.   Decoy and Valkyrie can be used to hold enemies in place, and can be particularly useful if your enemies are cold immune.

The idea is to get a good freezing time by using the cold skills and for that you can add cold damage gear and a few charms to lengthen the freezing time (each charm adds 1 second chill/freeze duration in normal, this is ½ in nightmare and ¼ in hell). This helps greatly for your freeze length, which increases your Immolation Arrow's fire damage over time.

Add a few lightning damage or poison damage charms for cold+fire immunes might be a nice backup, or use a fitting bow that does lightning or poison damage. Magical ones can be bought at act vendors, but you can also socket your own. Try to find a 4-, 5- or 6-socketed bow and use either Topazes, Ort runes and jewels to add lightning damage, or use Emeralds and Tal runes to add poison damage.

'''The recommended skill choices are:'''

* Cold Arrow: 0-20
* Freezing Arrow: 0-20
* Fire arrow: 20
* Exploding Arrow: 0-20
* Immolation Arrow: 20
* Guided Arrow: 0-1 just in case you meet stray creatures or cold and fire immune in one.
* Critical Strike: 1
* Penetrate: 1+ (Extra points to be placed here to flavor)
* Peirce: 0-10
* Valkyrie: 0-20

Passive skills extra notification:

Critical strike, only 1 as prequisite, no physical damage is done so no need to amp it.
Penetrate, only 1 as prequisite, all skills used are autohit
Pierce: in the 60% or higher will be okay. That's level 6 or higher.
The rest can go into the other passive skills to your delight.

To max the usage of your pierce skill leave the skill at:

* 4 points = 49% if Kuko (innate pierce is 50%) is used
* 8 points = 65% if Razortail (innate pierce is 33%) is used
* 0 points = 0% if Buriza-do Kyanon (Innate peirce 100%) is used

'''Mageazon B: Modern Version, sometimes called "Vamp"'''

This Magazon type relies more on leech than on natural mana replenishment, hence the name Vamp. Over the last months I've chatted with numerous people and I've come to the conclusion that people make Magazons in other ways too and with some limitations I second the thought that they are still Mageazons. They're now more numerously used than the "old" version. One point brought up is physical damage and leeching.

To most, the definition of a mageazon is an amazon that uses Freezing and Immolation arrow near-exclusively. Her killing is mainly done with these skills, but it will not be all that bad to revert to other skills at the same time. Regaining mana by manaleech seems okay to them. Where Sorceresses have "warmth", Amazons have "leech". The statpoint allocation then changes into something this.

* Strength to use items, can be up to 110 (for Buriza)
* Dexterity to about 200 for Attack Rating and Physical Damage increase
* Vitality to your delight
* Energy the rest

This may be a big sacrifice to energy, but with all the items you can have to boost your manapool and with a bit of manaleech, you'll have no problems at all. You may not replenish your mana like a sorceress anymore, but to most, since the tactic of using this amazon still revolves solely around the usage and maintenance of your extensive manapool, it is. Debatable for sure.

The limitations in my opinion lay upon these Magazons is that the main killing is done by elemental skills, but they use physical skills on a regular basis, as well.  This means your choice of weapons is more limited, as you have to pick something that has enough physical damage to be worth your time.

Despite being open to fewer weapon choices, the rest of your gear options remain more or less the same. Take the items from the first Magazons and add the following to the list of options. They are either heavy or good sources of manaleech:

(no value means no requirement or that it's a magical item, in which case requirement is item-dependant) 


{|
! Item
! Req. Strength
! Req. Dexterity
|-
| Goldstrike Arch<br /> Eaglehorn<br /> Windforce<br /> "Silence"
| height="96" | 95<br /> 97<br /> 134<br /> -
| height="96" | 118<br /> 121<br /> 167<br /> -
|}




The skill choices also change, as now you need to focus more on a balance of three separate kinds of damage.   You will likely end up removing a fair amount of your cold damage, and dropping Exploding arrow, in exchange for gaining a physical attack skill such as Multishot, Guided Arrow, or Strafe.   Each has advantages and disadvantages - Multishot can hit a lot of monsters faster, but since it's mana cost rises with each level and our purpose is to leech, that may not be the best choice.  Guided Arrow lets you target a single foe, and it's mana cost drops with increased levels, which makes it an excellent choice, particularly for when there is only one enemy remaining, and it isn't worth using one of the other skills.   Strafe strikes a balance, as it has a higher mana cost than Guided, but hits multiple foes (or the same foe many times).  It also carries a damage increase.

'''The recommended skill choices are:'''

* Ice Arrow: 0-20
* Freezing Arrow: 0-20
* Fire arrow : 20
* Immolation Arrow: 20
* Either Multiple Shot to about 15 arrows, <b>or</b> Strafe 20, <b>or</b> Guided 20
* Valkyrie 0-20

Critical strike is now put to about 50% (level 7) to aid your physical damage and leech
Penetrate is used somewhat for your Multiple Shot or Strafe.
Pierce comments and other passive skill comments are still the same. 

The tactics have thus changed a little bit. You still use Freezing to keep them stationary (Even if your Freezing arrow is unsynergized and level 1, it freezes just as well as if it were maxed), while lighting fires under their feet, but now you also use a physical attack to ensure your blue bulb stays full. With good balance between physical damage and manaleech you won't even have to switch to a physical damage skill all that often. You will also use the physical damage skill against certain immune creatures and in tougher areas. For fire immunes you simply keep spawning Freezing Arrows, but for cold immunes you have to use Immolation Arrow. Due to its timer you can use your Strafe and Multiple Shot skills in between.

The usage of a Valkyrie, a mercenary and a Decoy as bait remains the same. To get a good freezing time, again, use Freezing Arrow, gear that adds cold damage and cold damage charms (each charm adds 1 second chill/freeze duration in normal, this is ½ in nightmare and ¼ in hell). Add a few lightning damage or poison damage charms for cold+fire immunes will help you again in hell.

The best bow options for a modern Mageazon would be : Lycander's Aim (Extra skills, mana leech, but slow), Windforce (Lots of damage, mana leech, decent speed, but no skills), or Eaglehorn (Decent damage, +1 skills, ignore target's defense, but no leech and not a lot of skills).  A Buriza-Do Kyanon would also be a nice option, a little slow, but cheap and good damage, with a lot of freeze length added in it.

Choose your own way for defining and building your Magazon. 

'''Magazon Subclasses: Frostmaiden / Immozon'''

Subclasses within a subclass: Frostmaiden and Immozon. These two amazons are related to the Magazon in the sense that they specialise in one of the two elemental types, but most of the time also use a physical damage skill on the side. They typically rely on some sort of manaleech, since they tend to add physical damage alongside their chosen element.Stat choices and gear choices can differ from the traditional Magazon to the modern Mageazon. 

The theme of these subclasses is that a Frostmaiden does not pick fireskills nor does an Immozon use cold skills.  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.