Web hosting Custom Email SiteBuilder

Introduction to the Amazon Class

One of the five character classes that can be chosen in Diablo II, the amazon is certainly not the most powerful of characters, but can be extremely fun to play with. Though she had been the unfortunate victims of several bugs or features, she is still the class i enjoyed playing most. While her main strengths lie in the bow and thrusting weapons, her passive skills make her a viable option to tank as well, being able to avoid more hits than any other class when wearing inferior armor. As a result, there's about a thousand and one ways to play and equip and amazon and that's what i like most about her. And lastly, imo she look good too!

Different people will have different opinions as to how best to equip or play an amazon, and just as with any other class, the answer is a simple: "there is no best way to play an amazon, everything boils down to personal preference". One man's meat is another man's poison, so the only way to find out the best style is to listen to ideas and try all of them out and somehow, one style will probably work out better than others for you. This small guide aims to provide you with some basic information about the amazon which hopefully would help you choose which route to go. Before you start, consider the following questions:

Would you prefer to go toe-to-toe with the enemies or snipe them from afar? .

	Do you want to rely solely on physical damage or do you prefer some elemental fury? .
	Do unorthodox weapons (swords, maces, axes) appeal to you more than traditional weapons (bows, spears, javs)? .
	Lastly, are you content to play the amazon as it is, or would you want to try some challenging variants?

This mini-guide serves to provide a little insight as to how to choose a playing path for your amazon and provide some basic strategies:

1.   Basic Statistics
2.   Archer, Warrior or Mage
3.   Defences against the Mobs
4.   Weapon Choices
5.   Playing Style Summary
6.   Variants of Play
7.   Links to Some Excellent Sites

Basic Statistics

Strength
+1% base damage for melee weapons
Required for wearing heavy armor and weapons
Comments:  Basically, most amazons have little need for strength other than to fulfil a weapon's strength requirements. Melee amazons, however, might want to pump strength a bit more to wear heavier armor and increase damage.

Dexterity
+1% base damage for ranged weapons
+4 attack rating
+1 defence rating per 4 points of dexterity
Comments:  An absolute necessity  for bowazon, dexterity is also important for non-bow amazons due to the need for added attack rating. No point being able to do 10,000 damage with each hit if you cannot even hit in the first place.

Vitality
+3 hitpoints
+1 stamina
Comments:  The difference of a few hitpoints can make a difference between life and death, especially for hardcore characters. The added life cushion can help greatly to prevent pesky lag or one-hit kills. A stats more important for the melee amazons.

Energy
+3 mana per 2 points of energy
Comments:  Energy is virtually redundant for most amazons if you have the aid of even a puny 4% mana steal. Notable exceptions are amazons heavy into the elemental skills (such as freezing or immolation arrow) which are very mana hungry.

Stamina
+1 stamina per levelup
Hit and run is an important aspect of many amazon's play style, and sufficient stamina is needed to keep up the constant running.

Life
+2.5 life per levelup
It is very important to get hitpoint level high enough to avoid one-hit kills in hell, otherwise extreme caution would have to be taken if you want to avoid any nasty deaths.

Mana
+1.5 mana per levelup
Needed for all skills but is generally all mana spent on a skill can usually be recovered with minimal manasteal. With the exception of elemental specialist be it ice/fire archer or lightning/poison javelineers, other types of amazons need little boost in this area.

Resistances
-20% in nightmare and -50% in hell difficulty
Generally helps to protect you from the elemental attacks of the minions of Diablo...
- lightning: the biggest threat to an amazon probably comes from extra strong LEBs and Diablo's lightning inferno.
- fire: the most common and damaging element in the game.
- cold: does minimal damage but chills you, slowing you down and making you more vulnerable to attacks.
- poison: in heavy dosage, can be painful especially when poisoned in the middle of intense battle.

Archer, Warrior or Mage

The most important thing to decide is how you want to kill the enemies... pure melee toe-to-toe? snipe them from behind the safety of your valkyrie and decoy? or flood them with powerful elemental skills? <editor's note: actually, both archer and mage styles are very similar in terms of gameplay> Below are some key points, pros and cons about each style of play.

Archer
One of the two more commonly seen style of play, the archer is characterized by bows or crossbows geared towards high damage and dexterity. Most archers specialize in strafe or multishot, adding a bit of elemental flavours (either freezing or immolation) for sticky situations and perhaps guided arrow for PvP.

General Requirements:
- high investment in dexterity for best effects
- good damage bow (either high damage or average with high speed)
- mana steal from bow or equipment

Pros:
- large mobs are generally not a problem
- enemies almost always die before reaching you

Cons:
- needs a wide spread of skills to supplement main attack skill (critical strike, piercing etc)
- vulnerable in confined areas, especially against formidable enemies and stair traps, due to lack of close-range defence

Warrior
The other common style of play, the warrior style comes in two flavours - spearazons and tankazons. Essentially goes toe-to-toe with the enemies and protects oneself with a barrage of defence (armor, shields and high passives). Spearazons boast much higher damage while tankazons sacrifice speed for greater safety.

General Requirements:
- a good melee weapon and shield if applicable
- at least a half-decent armor (iceblink, rattlecage or high ac armor)
- general need for more vitality and life

Pros:
- generally able to kill enemies with minimal deaths (due to better protection)
- fares better than bowazons against single entities such as Duriel
- takes up little non-passive skill points (1 point in jab at worst)

Cons:
- takes longer to kill enemies due to lack of mass kill stunts like strafe or multishot
- ranged attackers are generally a great pest

Mageling
A rarely seen style of play, more often than not seen as a variant, but is the style that i enjoyed most. Basically kills by using a fast piercing bow and elemental skills at very high levels (my immos can get as high as 27 without sacrificing much). Quite challenging and fun but can cause severe lagging.

General Requirements:
- piercing bow (most ideally probably doomslinger imo)
- elemental skills at very high levels
- significant investment in energy and mana

Pros:
- involves very little skills (Immo, Freezing and Valkyrie), allowing for heavy specialization
- immolation stacks for HUGE damage per second while freezing keeps them immobile
- very powerful against single entities who doesn't kill valkyrie in one blow

Cons:
- very difficult to start such a character as skills needed are high level skills (24 or 30)
- needs very specific equipment (+skills, piercing bow etc)

Defences Against the Mobs

Basic Protection
Every character needs protection from the enemies. Amazons are in a way fortunate to have some passives that can help greatly in defence and thus increase their ability to avoid hits. This can be done in four ways - high armor rating, shield blocking, passives and resistances.

High Armor Rating:
Due to the 4x monster attack rating bug, defence rating for an amazon is generally not very useful. With the maximum DR hovering about 1,500 only, this is scant protection for such a high investment in strength to wear the heavy ornates (even -40% requirement ones). However, with a decent plate and other accessories, it is still possible to reach about 800-1000 DR, which can bring down enemy hit probability to around 50%. This is generally not the route taken by amazons.

Shield Blocking:
Only for tankazons and javazons who wield single-handed weapons, the shield contributes one of the largest part to prevent hits. With blocking going as high as 75% (with twitchroe's +25%) or 69% (for a deflecting tower), it means that only 25% of hits can get through a good shield.

Passives -"dodge, avoid, evade":
For non-shield amazons, the passives are the only defence after armor has failed to prevent the strike. The diminishing formulae for these skills means that each skill point start to lose effectiveness after about level 11-12 (50% dodge and evade; 60% avoid) as each point adds 1% or less thereafter. While useful, evade is also a problem as it can cause animation-lock when hit by Diablo's lightning breath or lava stream.

Resistances:
For protection against elements only, these cannot be neglected. With 20% and 50% resistance penalties in nm and hell respectively, these need significant investment from equipment to provide the necessary protection since armor, shields and passives are generally ineffective against them.

Defensive Alternatives
Other than the basic forms of defence, an amazon can protect herself by slowing down enemy approach, by freezing abilities, crowd control methods or hitting enemies off the screen.

Freezing ability can be attained through iceblink (for melee amazons) or skills such as ice and freezing arrows. By applying equipment that extends freeze duration such as Eye of Etlich or +cold damage items, the enemies can be frozen for a significant amount of time even in hell difficulty where freeze duration is quartered. This makes a good indirect form of defence as frozen enemies cannot hit back at you (specially good with the mass freeze effect of freezing arrow).

The other approach to protect oneself is to play carefully and control the crowd that is activated. Retreat if necessary to thin out the crowd or throw in some freezing or chilling effects to slow down their approach so that the enemies can be handled in more sizeable quantities. Firing off volleys of multishot in the direction you wish to travel in can also help to alert you of any potential dangers (and possibly even eliminate them before they come into view) and prevent you from running into mobs.

Weapon Choices

Ranged Weapons
If you are choosing between bows and crossbows, the main concern would probably be whether you are going for speed or going for greater damage per shot. The choice generally boils down to two weapons - gothic bow (exceptional long war bow) or chu-ku-no (exceptional repeating crossbow).

Gothic Bow:
- steeper requirements (95 str, 118 dex)
- better damage at slower rates (10-50, 15 frames)
- ammunition takes up less inventory space (250 arrows)

Chu-Ku-No:
- less taxing requirements (65 str, 80 dex)
- faster but not as damaging (14-32, 12 frames)
- ammunition takes up more inventory space (150 bolts)

Comments:
"If you find yourself relying more on the physical attack skills such as strafe and multishot, the gothic bow might serve better as it allows greater damage to be dealt. On the other hand if you are more into elemental skills like freezing and immolation arrows, the faster speed of the chu-ku-no means that a greater number of arrows can be fired and hence greater efficiency. Of course, with a super fast chu-ku-no, strafe-lock virtually becomes non-existent and the display of arrow is fascinating to say the least."

Two-Handed vs One-Handed
For melee characters, the choice have to be made between two-handed and one-handed weapons. Two-handed weapons (almost certainly the spear class weapons) is more powerful in terms of damage and at times even speed when Jab is used. However, it bars the use of shields which is a very important form of defence.

Pros:
- very heavy hitting (lances can do 27-114 damage) with very long range (5 squares)
- super fast with jab, even at skill level 1

Cons:
- no shields, meaning greater need for freezing, armor or passives

Comments:
"In general, spears and lances make very good melee weapons as they kill very fast (especially if you have a 300+ lance). With jab, a single enemy can go down in moments while fend plus iceblink can give you great protection even when facing a mob as the long reach of the lance will enable you to freeze almost all enemies nearby."

Javelins, Swords and Maces
The use of shields can prevent up to 75% of the hits that goes through, making a difference of life and death at times. However, even one-handed weapons have to be chosen carefully as there is really a very large range to choose from - javelins (harpoons) to swords (ancient swords) to maces (divine scepters or battle hammers).

Javelins:
- very low damage (18-37) due to lack of magical properties
- can be used in conjunction with jav skills (plague javelin, lightning fury etc.)
- fast speed (jab), good range (3) and can be thrown
- expensive if thrown but no repair costs

Swords:
- best damage and good speed (18-43 base, 13 frames)
- decent repair costs
- easier to find compared to maces

Scepters:
- weaker damage (16-34 base) but faster speed (12 frames)
- 150% damage vs undead
- can have ridiculous repair costs (if imbued with paladin skills)
- can have the piercing suffix, negating the need for dexterity altogether

Hammers:
- strong damage but VERY slow (22-42, 15 frames)
- 150% damage vs undead
- no need for dex requirements

Other weapon types such as axes, throwing axes and polearms are not mentioned as they aer far weaker in many aspects compared to the above-mentioned weapons. Of course, good weapons of such base types can be found and might even surpass the swords and javelins in terms of power but they are very rare and far between.

Comments:
"In general, most people either use javelins for the javelin skills or swords as they are the more commonly found weapons; since hammers are ridiculously slow and good scepters are very hard to come by. Of course, if you can find a increased speed, damage enhancing scepter of piercing, that would be the ideal weapon since that 60+ points in dexterity can be used elsewhere such as strength (for bonus damage) or vitality (for life boosts)."

Playing Style Summary

With the possible wide range of equipment and skill routes an amazon can take up, there can be many different ways of playing the amazon. Below are simply a mini guideline to how people dress up and play some of the more commonly seen styles of play (names may defer from person to person; style names are my own personal preference only).

Bowazons
Typically bow-using amazons, investing mostly in the bow tree with some supporting skills in the passive department. Tends to stay away from close combat, using Valkyrie and Decoy to draw fire while they pelt the enemies with arrows of one kind or another.

        Gatlingazons. Amazons who focuses on gaining speed with their bows, aiming to get a sonic fast attack speed that makes strafe-lock totally insignificant. The usual equipment are a greatly increased speed chu-ku-no with isas gloves and goldwrap to make strafing a blur to watch.

        Strafeazons. Amazons who virtually does nothing but strafe all day long. They usually go for the quickest kills and pump dex to insane levels, while carrying high damage gatling bows or high end gothics with increased speed. Kills very efficiently with the right bow.

        Elementalists. Armed with fast piercing bows, these amazons focuses more on the elemental arrows. The chain explosions caused by high end freezing or immolation arrows marks their arrival. Energy is the stats to pump as physical damage is secondary.

Spearazons
As their name implies, these zons are wielders of the large but damaging spears.

        Jabazons. These are amazons that invests heavily in one spear skill (perhaps with an occasional jab) and jabs whole day long with a whole bunch of passives backing her up in times of need. Valkyrie shares the frontline with her while decoy diverts the missile fire.

        Shockazons. Again, like elementalists, these are less frequently seen but there are the zons who use lightning strike to create chain lightnings to strike their foes. Other than that the basic idea is the same as jabazons. LtStrike, followed by a jab or two to recover, rinse and repeat.

Tankazons
With high block shield, high levels of dodge, avoid, evade; and usually decent armor, these amazons can last a long time in battle due to their inability to get hit.

        Javazons. Javelin lovers, these zons tend to use jab and a couple of other javelin skills such as Plague Javelin or Lightning Fury.

        Battle Maidens. Wielders of swords or maces (scepters), these zons take a long time to either kill or be killed.

Variants of Play

Tired of playing the amazon as it is? Is killing Diablo in hell too easy? Why not try out some challenging variants to keep your cards going and adrenalin gets pumping...

Woody's Diablo Asylum
Not exactly the place for D2 variants, but any mention of variant play would almost certainly have to have a link here, where the grand-daddy of variant play resides.

Realms Beyond Diablo
Charis and KingOfPain's, with great resources for variant play and a large community of variant players congregating at a forum there.

Iceworld: Variant Central
A shameless plug for yours truly. My small but growing variant page. Check back for details later.

Links to Some Excellent Sites

The Amazon Basin *must read*
A guild created for the good of the Amazon class. Wonderful guides and forum discussions available there.

Bowazon Solo Hell Run by DaShiv
A very early solo hell run report, which gives an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the bowazon. While not quite up to date, some of the stuff inside are still quite good.

Of Bows, Arrows and Pincushions: A Guide to Bowazons by AngelKiller404
A very interesting read with comments and various good advices here and there.

Claudio's Amazon Guide v1.23 by Claudio (aka Cat)
Good advices and information from a old time D1 player Claudio.

A Bowazon Guide by ChunLi
A guide providing vital information on powerful skill combinations and especially the duelling aspects of bowazon gameplay.

Bowazon Guide v1.5 by Icemage999
A definitive guide with excellent rundown on skills and particularly useful tips on defeating the difficult enemies.

Bowazon Guide v1.0 by LineNoise
This guide gives a good rundown on the skills and equipment needed for creating a successful bowazon.

Return to Amazon Home
Return to Glaciers of Diablo II