Guide:Mageazon v1.09, by Icewraith
Contents
Introduction
The mageazon has its humble beginnings in Diablo II Classic, where it shone due to the tremendous power of stackable, long-lasting immolation flames. With the huge nerf on immolation arrow, the variant style of play has been weakened but the better gear available and the availability of charms allowed the mageazon to remain a very much viable and strong way to play the amazon.
The principles of the mageazon are
- low strength and dexterity, since the bulk of the damage would be from the elements
- reliance on immolation arrow and either ice arrow or frozen arrow for fire/cold damage
- no mana leech items at all, instead relying on huge mana pool and mana regeneration for survival
- played and built like a sorceress, hence the name mageazon!
With heavy reliance on the two elemental skills, there is no need for a big bow that requires large strength. Likewise, the auto hit feature of the elemental skills allow the mageazon to enjoy 100% hit rate without having to bother with dexterity and attack rating.
Stats Distribution
Strength and Dexterity
These two stats are almost totally not useful to a mageazon. She doesn't need a big damage bow and she certainly does not need to rely on high dexterity to get her good damage, hence strength and dexterity should be kept to a minimal - 50 to 60 each in most cases as that figure would allow you to equip almost all the best gear for a mageazon. Just for show, here's some of the uber-gear that are strongly recommended for mageazons.
| Equipment | Str | Dex |
|---|---|---|
| Silkweave | 65 | |
| Frostburn | 60 | |
| Gloom's Trap | 58 | |
| Que-Hagan's Wisdom | 55 | |
| Elite Caster Boots | 50 | |
| Harlequin's Crest | 50 | |
| Magefist | 45 | |
| Skin of Vipermagi | 43 | |
| Razortail | 20 | |
| Kuko Shakaku | 53 | 49 |
| Doomslinger | 40 | 50 |
| Stag Bow Runeword | 30 | 45 |
| Skystrike | 25 | 43 |
As you can see, with the exception of Silkweave (65 strength), the rest of the best mageazon gear all has a maximum of 60 strength and 50 dexterity.
As you can see, with the exception of Silkweave (65 strength), the rest of the best mageazon gear all has a maximum of 60 strength and 50 dexterity.
Vitality
In general, with most monsters frozen solid or distracted by decoy and valkyrie, a mageazon has little fears, but more life is definitely good, especially for HC mageazons. All spare points should go to vitality upon reaching a decent mana pool.
Energy
A sorceress needs energy to sustain her magic. A mageazon wielding magic with a bow likewise needs energy, and lots of it too. A sorceress can spam high-level nova all day long with a 1000+ mana pool but mageazon cannot do likewise because the sorceress has warmth. A mageazon can only depend on a huge mana pool which will result in a decent mana regeneration rate.
Main Offensive Skills
ey 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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 1 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 25 | 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.
Passive and Magic Skills
With just a maximum of 47 (20 FA, 20 Immo and 7 prerequisites) points in the bow and crossbow tree, and requiring only very little points in pierce and its prerequisites, there's a whole lot of option available to pump into valkyrie or the evasive skills.
Slow Missile (1-4 points)
Chaos Sanctuary is the place of oblivion knights. High elemental damage with a whole lot of curses as well. A slow missile cast here and there will allow you to easily move away from the elemental bolts without fear since they simply travel so slowly. Similarly, against lebs and using a KB bow on switch, the sm'ed le bolts will not even come close to reaching you.
Dodge (1+ points)
Most of the melee monsters you encounter are going to be either frozen or engaging your minions (Decoy, Valkyrie or Merc). Chances are that the only melee you are going to face will be stray members of a frenzytaur pack that comes your way and batters down your poor Merc. In this case dodge might come in useful but not so much otherwise.
Avoid (12+ points)
When standing still and firing at enemies, there's always the chance of a stray big damage shot coming your way. Also, with mixed melee/ranged enemies, the ranged attackers may not always target your minions. Having around 12 points of avoid gives you the chance to avoid the attack a good 60% of the time.
Evade (12+ points)
While dodge and avoid are for an immobilized zon, evade is for the zon on the run. Beyond 12 in evade (50% chance) gives you rather severely diminishing returns.
Decoy (1 point)
One of your best friends after Valkyrie. Repeated casting of decoy in strategic locations can help you draw attackers off your back while you retreat or help you tank against ranged attackers while you pick them off with your bow.
Valkyrie (5, 10 or Max points)
A good level of valkyrie can take a severe beating and may even do enough damage to kill something on its own. Level 5 gives it a credible amount of life to tank with and allow repeated castings without draining mana too much. Of course, with a mageazon's good mana pool, having higher or even a maxed out Valkyrie can be more useful since there should not be much mana problems recasting even a maxed valkyrie.
Pierce (1+ points)
For a mageazon, it is quite important to get maxed pierce, whether by items or by skill. Check the total piercing of your items and get enough pierce (with +skills) to allow you 100% piercing.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piercing % | 23 | 34 | 42 | 49 | 55 | 59 | 63 | 65 | 69 | 71 | 73 | 75 |
Other passives such as inner sight, critical strike and penetrate are largely useless to the mageazon due to the low physical damage output and auto-hit feature of the skills involved. Also, it is far more important for a mageazon to max her offence skills and pierce before adding to her defensive passives. Assuming enough gear for level 1 pierce to be sufficient, a mageazon can actually max out her offensive skills and have 1 point in each passive at a mere level 49-54 depending on how many skill quests have been done.
The Dressing Room
The mageazon is not an easy style of play to dress, if you intend to be at least quite powerful. Most of the better gear fortunately isn't that hard to get and if you are on closed Battle.Net, there really shouldn't be much problems getting the basics since they are largely "junk" discarded by those ignorant noobs.
The main properties a mageazon should be looking out for is piercing, +mana, +mana regeneration and +skills. Resistance and +life should be kept enough for survival but the key is still the above four properties... offence is always the best form of defence (especially when your offence involves getting enemies frozen).
In addition, the +mana per kill mod is also highly prized, though not many items have such a mod. Several uniques mentioned - que hagan's wisdom, silkweave - have it, rare/magical jewels can also come with a "+1-3 mana per kill" prefix while TIR rune adds +2 mana per kill. A mageazon built around several such items can also go a long way, especially in lower difficulties since lesser shots are needed to kill a whole mob of monsters.
Bows and Crossbows
Bows are the most important piece of equipment for the mageazon, and you would want a bow that's relatively fast and preferably with piercing, +skills or big fat elemental damage. Some good bows are :
Kuko Shakaku
Cedar Bow
Two-Hand Damage: (27-30) to (75-84)
Required Strength: 53
Required Dexterity: 49
Required Level: 33
Firing Speed: 13/3 (11/3 with shael)
+150-180% Enhanced Damage
Fires Explosive Arrows or Bolts
Piercing Attack (50)
Adds 40-180 Fire Damage
+3 to Immolation Arrow [Amazon Only]
+3 to Bow and Crossbow Skills [Amazon Only]
Skystrike
Edge Bow
Two-Hand Damage: (17-21) to (50-60)
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 43
Required Level: 28
Firing Speed: 11/3 (10/3 with shael)
+150-200% Enhanced Damage
+1-250 Lightning Damage
2% Cast Level 6 Meteor on Striking
30% Increased Attack Speed
+100 to Attack Rating
+1 to Amazon Skill Levels
+10 to Energy
Both of these bows can be found rather early in the game and IMO, Kuko Shakaku is simply the best end-game bow for a mageazon due to its 50% pierce, nice fire damage and +3 bow skills (+6 immolation) coupled with a decent firing speed (11/3 with shael). On the market, both are not very expensive too, unlike the unearthly price of the Buriza.
Yet, in SP mode, they are still hard to find. Cheaper alternative is the Doomslinger unique repeating crossbow, THE weapon of choice for Diablo II classic mageazons. +1 amazon skills, 35% piercing and 12/3 (11/3 with 5 more IAS) firing speed makes it a real good mageazon weapon if not for the existence of the Kuko.
Zephyr (OrtEth) and Melody (ShaelKoNef) are both decent runewords for mageazons. Socketed into a +3 ashwood bow, you will have an 11/3 bow with either fastwalk and a little lightning damage (zephyr) or a +6 bow skills and knockback. Also, a Zephyr'ed razor bow is equippable at level 21, does decent damage and fires at a nice 10/3 speed.
Yet another no-hard-to-find bow is the magical shocking bow (with 1-4xx lightning damage). With the potential of 2 sockets and a good suffix (ideally cold damage for more freeze time), this bow will make a good backup bow against fire/cold immunes and could even hold its place among other good mageazon bows. Base bow type should have low requirements, and either be fast (composite, hunter's, razor) or with +skills (ie ashwood). Throw further lightning jewels or +mana/kill stuff in to make it even more powerful.
All in all, most bows work fine, but the six bows mentioned would really make a difference to a mageazon.
Armor
Again, the focus will be on +mana, mana regeneration and +skills. This brings about two main contenders for top armor:
