Guide:Faith/Fury Hybrid v1.10, by XZON
The Faith/Fury Hybrid Amazon is a PvM build that uses javelins with Lightning Fury and Charged Strike, with some bow skills for support against LI enemies.
Contents
Introduction
I have been a bowazon fan ever since Diablo 2 came out. It was my first character in single player as well as softcore ladder season 1. Since then I have built over 20 different bowazons. My first character to kill Diablo clone was an amazon wielding a buriza using guided. I have built WWS straffers, Windforce straffers, Buriza straffers/multi zons, Faith multizons, WF multizons with act 1 faith mercs so on and so on. What motivated me was the fact that bowazons were considered by many to be weak / difficult builds. Getting resists is tough. Major trade offs in damage/AR if going the vitality route. Dealing with immunities was difficult. Extremely item dependent. The only thing the lowly bowazon had going for her was that she was ranged and therefore did not have the same problems with Iron Maiden or Stygian Dolls that other characters had. I have had incredible success with some of my recent builds and perhaps have hit the apex of my ability with bowazon builds. All this and never once had I experimented with the Javelin tree. The time had finally come.
The Build
After reading through the guides I decided to go Max Lightening Fury for cows -n- crowds, Charged Strike for boss’s and at lease one synergy. Now it was time to decide how to handle Lightening Immunes and even worse…Lightening and Physical Immunes. I did not like any of the options offered in the other builds (poison is just not for me) and I needed to be able to handle all areas of the game solo. Since this build would be working much closer to the enemies than my previous builds, I figured that resists and life would be far more important than ever before. I figured a bow on switch would be best as this was what I was used to anyway but this build would have much less dex than I was used to. Heck, my previous bowazons were 450+ Dex builds and I still kept a demon limb on switch. How would I hit anything? That’s when it hit me. Faith has ITD and since it has fanaticism, lower ias requirements to hit a decent shooting speed. PERFECT.
Gear
I tend to let my gear determine my stat/skill point placements so this is where I started. Since this was primarily a Lightening zon, I would focus on +skill items but make sure that I had the necessary leech to survive.
- Helm – Shako w/ 15% ias jewel – (mf, life, mana, +2 all skills) sweet
- Armor – COH (resists, life leech, +2 skills) perfect
- Shield – Spirit (cheap and +2 skills. Great other mods)
- Boots – War travelers (mf, frw and damage boost. Great boots)
- Gloves – crafted +2 bow skills, knockback, 20% ias (I will explain why bow skills later)
- Belt – Thundergods Vigor (light absorb, +3 LF and STR)
- Amulet – Cats eye (frw, dex, 20% ias)
- Ring – Ravenfrost – (dex, can not be frozen)
- Ring – manald heal (our mana leech)
- Weapon – upped titans (mine ethereal 190% but any will do)
- Switch – Faith GMB (mine has +2 bow skills,+2 all skills, level 14 fanaticism)
- Annihilus charm
Charms
I carry 3 Javelin Skillers with + life & 1 passive with life. I also carry a bunch of 20 life sc’s with resist second mods and 1 x 15% resist all GC with life. In general this is the best place for this amazon to get additional resists/life. The Javelin charms are just overkill.
Ok. Let’s see what we have here. In javelin mode we have +9 to passive skills and +11 to javelin skills. In bow mode we have +7 to passive skills and +11 to bow skills. We have life and mana leech covered. We have 55% ias which will net an 8/2 strafe with faith GMB. We have knockback. We can absorb lightening which is always a bonus and we cannot be frozen. Our resists look pretty strong.
Our damage for strafe will be a bit low without fortitude or a lot of dex but let’s be real, we are building a Lightening based zon with a very fast strafe as back up. My strafe damage with this build is 1,850 without any merc auras. Respectable to say the least (ask any WWS straffer).
Stats
Str – Enough for Gear. Highest Req will be spirit @ 163 I believe. You will get a big boost from your items so work backwards.
Dex – Enough for Gear. Highest is Upped titans @ around 159. Same as above.
Vit – The rest. Keep your life high and you don’t die. Simple as that.
Energy - None.
Skills
Javelin
- LF – max (crowd control when close together)
- CS – max (boss skill)
- LS – max (another great crowd skill when enemies are spread out)
- 60 total in javelin tree
Bow
- Magic arrow – 1 (level 12 with + skills. For the rare PI/LI)
- Multi – 1
- Guided – 1
- Strafe – 1 (level 12 with + skills. Main switch skill)
- That’s right. Only 4 points in bow tree. Outstanding.
Passive (I carry 1 passive skiller which = +8 in bow mode and +10 in jav mode.
- Critical strike – 1 (9 in bow mode = 54%)
- Penetrate – 1
- Pierce – to taste (I have 9 which gives (19) 84% in jav and (17) 82% in bow
- D/A/E 1,1,1 = 49,57,49 in javelin mode
- Inner site – 1
- Slow missles – 1
- Decoy – 1
- Valk – 1 (level 11 if cast in jav mode)
- 18 total skill points in passive tree
82 total skill points. This is achieved at level 71. Remaining skill points can be spent in valk, pierce, magic arrow or another synergy for Charged Strike.
Merc
I never bothered to level a merc to help me. Did not even need to. If I had to choose, I would probably go holy freeze. You could Go might merc and get concentration from a runeword. This would substantially increase your strafe damage but I have never felt the need. I am in the process of leveling a Holy freeze merc at the moment just for the hell of it.
Recap
Basically spending hard skill points in the bow or passive tree does not increase damage substantially for bowazons. When making bowazons we are forced to spend these points here as our equipment is geared to leeching, damage and speed. Bowazons benefit very little from +skills. Now javazons are similar to many other builds in that +skills directly affects damage output. This build takes advantage of the +skills to increase our damage while maintaining high attack speed and maintaining high passives.
The build is not all that expensive besides Faith GMB and Chains of Honor. Faith is a must but Vipermagi could replace COH. I sometimes use a rare circlet with dual 7 or 8% leech, +2 amazon skills and 8% resist all with a 15% jewel in it. Then I throw on an SOJ. I use the +2 bow skills gloves to save skill points in magic arrow and strafe. You could always wear +2 Javelin crafted gloves and spend a couple extra points in the bow tree. I choose Thundergods Vigor over razortail as I have so much + passive skills that the light absorb is a better value. The strafe damage coupled with COH (ed% to demons) and knockback makes Chaos Runs very doable.
I am at level 88 with this zon and have spent at least 10 additional skill points in a 3rd synergy for CS. Cows are a joke with level 37 lightening fury. Baal and Diablo go down very quickly from level 34 Charged strike. Most builds have 1 or more areas of the game that cause them difficulty. I can honestly say that with this build, I have yet to come across one.
Hope you enjoy this build as much as I have.
