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All the skills in this tree work with javelins, either throwing them or using them for melee. When using spears, only the melee skills will work, since spears can not be thrown. All of the elemental type attacks in this tree are lightning or poison, there are no fire or cold attacks in this tree.

Damage bonuses are something to consider with javelins, or the Amazon class-specific spears. Regular javelins add .75% damage per point of each stat, while Amazon class-specific javelins and spears add 80% from strength, and 50% from dex. Most other melee weapons are 1% damage per point of strength, with no damage bonus from dex at all. This means that you can add bonus damage by adding both to your Spearazons strength or dexterity, but each individual stat point will add less damage than you'll get with a normal spear, such as a Pike or Lance. Dexterity is more useful to add than strength, generally speaking, since it increases your Attack Rating, Defense, and blocking, while strength just boosts damage (and helps you meet item requirements).

This tree was originally called 'Healing, Movement and Repair' but as the skills changed, Blizzard changed the name to better reflect the collection of skills and spells in it.

Most of the skills in this tree have "diminishing returns", which means they increase quickly with the first few points you put in, and then add much less bonus at higher and higher levels. Despite this, some of them are still well worth multiple points, since with some skills adding just another percent or two is very useful.

Bow is the weapon of choice for Rogue players from Diablo I, and there are a lot more options and techniques to using a bow in Diablo II than there were in Diablo. Long gone are the days of shooting nothing but a steady stream of normal arrows, in Diablo II there are ten bow skills to boost your attacks, which are also assisted by several skills from the Passive and Magic skill tree. There are also a number of types of bows and crossbows in Diablo II, all of them with varying damage, firing rates, and strength/dexterity requirements. See the Bows and Crossbows pages in our Items Database for full info.

Socketed bows can be very useful at early levels, especially with chipped or flawed gems adding elemental damage, or poison. They aren't the super low level weapon they were in D2C anymore, since Clvl requirements have been added to gems in D2X, but early on you can probably do a lot better with a bow that has 2 or 3 chipped topaz or rubies or emeralds than with any other bow you'll find at that point.