The bright physical Bowie in Classic Guide

The physical bowie

Since I finally found an Amabuild with bow after trying out various things, which makes it without any problems worth mentioning, with constant speed, few rips, no leech problems and last but not least lowcost to Diablo Hell, I would like to describe it here again in a short sketch to motivate the one or the other classic player on the “last meters” of D2 to the unjustified condemned and feared Char Bowama.

Since this Bowie doesn’t need any equipment to get through Hell, which is more expensive than what you get benevolently given and can even be found on Gems, Uniques, Sets on the way through the game and during Exp-(MF-)Runs, it can also be started if you don’t have any items at all and just want to level an interesting Char (maybe for the first time) through Classic.

The char described here can’t keep up with Hammerdin or Dualsorc, if this is really unclear. Fluid Flayer-(Hell-)runs can be done without any problems, and with good EQ, especially bowing, this also applies to act 4; especially River and CS are still so comfortable that you’ll surely find yourself there more often when you’re looking for a nice area to clean ( at least I do :] ).

The guide is written primarily for SC, killspeeds refer to 1ppl Game.

Especially the equipment will seem to be rather unstructured, but that seems to me inevitable. I think at the latest when you read it twice, you will understand what it is about.

Enjoy.

Assembly of the equipment

What is the difference between punishment and multi? Apart from the obvious mechanisms, one major difference is that Penalty can bring certain tactically beneficial effects to the monster, which nobody else in Multi does except the two middle arrows in the fan. These triggers include (together with relevant items)

• Knockback (Cleglaws Gloves)
• Flee (Howler, Rattle)
• Slow (Cleglaws Gloves)
• Open Wounds (Boneflesh)
• Crushing Blow (Goblins, Rattle)
• Blind (glory cap)

Add to that Colddam and Giftdam, which Multi also transmits, and the spectrum of relevant attack effects is complete, in addition to raw physical damage.

The most important finding is that it takes exactly two effects from the list to bring a Bowie with Punishment, which has at least one bow that is at the top of the range in terms of power, completely and without insurmountable problems through Hell: Flee and Knockback.

Both effects are necessary and sufficient to get through, that is, without them it is difficult, and with them not. Knockback alone is not enough; the monsters are back too fast, Flee neither; if that doesn’t trigger you need the insurance of knockback and above all you can only keep champs and bosses away from the ama and – just like with normal monsters – in stun.

(The combination of knockback and blind, for example, is much more unpleasant, you won’t be able to keep the monsters at a distance, and especially with many and maybe even fast ones, like flayers, this quickly becomes fatal: many monsters on the screen, not all get a hit, a few get through, problem).

So in principle, I claim, every Bowie that is skinned and punished and finds Flee and Kb in its equipment besides the bow mentioned above can do Hell alone. To make this process a little more pleasant and faster, a few more remarks:

1. Leech: There is de facto only one cruel way around Life- and Manaleech. Appropriately, sufficient values for Hell are easy and cheap to achieve in terms of equipment.

2. Crushing blow: In ranged combat it has a fairly noticeable effect on Calc and experience. We’re trying to put this somewhere.

3. Open Wounds: Actually up to Act3 Brightly pure, the OW damage is always in not insignificant proportion to the monster life, up to: Schinder (lvl 82) approximately 3000 life, OW (lvl 70) approximately 1400, (lvl 80) 1800 damage.
Furthermore it is of course optimal that a fleeing monster continues to take damage via this effect while running out of the range of the arrow, instead of (depending on the presence of poisonous damage) either ‘only’ not regenerating anymore, or without doing it at all, which is the worst thing in mapcleanspeed terms.

4. On the speed of attack of penalty: of particular importance is the speed of the arrows between the first and last shot. This can be accelerated up to three frames per attack. For the two relevant bows, gothic/style bow and rune/bow, only 20 and 0 ias respectively are required on equipment. You have to get them out, there are enough possibilities.

[By the way, crossbows are useless for reasons of attack speed, they never make it under 4 fpa].

5. Expressly one does not need on the equipment: Life, Mana, resistances of all kinds, FHR, Run. The ama goes through with 250 life, -50 allres, 0 fhr, 0 run.

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The equipment is now gradually built up as follows:

First, you fill the boats with goblins, there is no reasonable alternative. You do not need Run, Resis or FHR. All you can and should improve is damage, and the goblins do that like no other.

Secondly, you think about the Armor. In my opinion there are two possibilities here. Either load more CB via Rattle or install it via Boneflesh OW. Both have their advantages and after many comparative river runs I realize that no alternative is really much faster than the other one, but my tendency is more towards boneflesh (OW with fleeing monsters just makes a big difference). Anyway, the fact is that both of them speed up the killspeed significantly, so without either of these two armors, what changes significantly. With the same reason as with the Boots – damage above all, we don’t need anything else – you should choose between these and no other armor. Details:

• Boneflesh has two more advantages over Rattle besides OW. First of all, there is no need for poison damage on the equipment anymore. Not all monsters that flee actually have OW on them when they run away, but most of them do – before they’re gone, they usually get at least two or three hits, that’s enough. Secondly Boneflesh has a not inconsiderable 5 Lifeleech on it.
  The two ways to get to Flee when using Boneflesh are to use the Face of Horror (50% Chanfe auf Flee) together with Cleglaws Gloves (Knockback), or alternatively Heulhauer (25% Flee and Knockback).
• Rattle increases the CB value to a whopping 50 (although his 25% does not increase the killspeed as much as the goblins’ initial ones (“decreasing marginal utility”)). Also, Rattle already has (40%) Flee on it, which means for KB you can now choose between Heulhauer and Cleglaws Gloves.
  (I think it’s wrong to use the face of horror together with Rattle for maximum monster escape: Flee has (especially with Rattle, Boneflesh looks different) only the sense to provide crowd control, and the existing 40% Flee together with KB do that without any restrictions. More Flee reduces the damage output in my eyes, because fleeing monsters are always (when the poison damage has expired) potentially regenerating monsters. So they should be kept as low as possible so that the Bowie has just enough crowd control).

More details:

1. Rattle as Armor:

• If you’re wearing a 0 ias Gothic now, you need 20 ias of the Gloves, in fact only the T&T combo will do. 8 Lifeleech set bonus is not bad either. Take CNBF with you. I don’t think it’s essential, so the Belt would be set in every setup, but it’s nice to have it every now and then.
  In this case you take Heulhauer as your helmet.
• If you have a rune or 20ias Gothic, you can use Cleglaw Gloves to get KB. By the way, the known 25% slow, which is especially true for opponents with Colddmg, have slowed down from 1/2 to 1/4 of their original speed. In any case, with Rattle as Armor, I would always use these gloves instead of Heulhauer when you don’t need ias anymore. With a 10ias Gothic you need another 10, you can get them either via T&T as above or via Gold Carriers (-> Gloves (for Cleglaw) free).
• In the case of Rune/20ias Gothic, the helmet and belt are still free, where you should now place poisonous damage against the Monsterreg, provided that it is not already on the bow due to affixing or socketing. The two options are Wormskull (80 poison damage over 8 seconds) as helmet or Snakeband (12 over 3) as Belt.
  Just a little bit more about the helmet: If you don’t use Wormskull, you can use a glory cap to install shields, which is the overkill in terms of safety. I underestimated this for a long time, but in the game you can see the difference between blind and noBlind very clearly, because all monsters either flee (with up to 75% slow) or stop completely, it couldn’t be any more calm. Overflushing is not a big issue, there are still enough fleeing monsters. Alternatively, you can take whatever you want, according to your style, for more raw damage especially Higgins or a 3 PA (big) helmet (30 Str = 30 Dex = 30 ed + 150 ar), which fits well into the purple Rattle picture.
  If you don’t choose the Glory Cap for safety reasons, I’d recommend Wormskull in any case, the long poisonous damage speaks for itself, the otherwise accepted monster regeneration eats up all damage dealt. By the way, the 5 Lifeleech are also ingenious. With a glory cap or any other helmet than Wormskull, I would inevitably tend to use a snake band for the belt. It only poisons over 3 seconds, which is not long enough for many fleeing monsters to get a hit again, but on the other hand better than nothing. I would take it here, there is no alternative that is much better.
  Belt: If you have Pdmg on the bow or use Wormskull, you can choose between T&T or a Rare (Str, 24 fhr, cdmg, …) or something else (Irathas Belt for example has 5 mindmg left).
• The Amu and the rings are still free and you have to get Manaleech, in case of Cleglaws Gloves instead of T&T also Lifeleech, and if you want Colddmg. The last two attributes are given to you by Ettlich, whose cold duration is considerably longer than that of rare amulets, which only slow down a fraction of a second, which is clearly noticeable. Manaleech then over the rings, a Manald does excellent service here. Otherwise rare Leecher with lots of AR. If you have enough leech, a clean AR ring is also possible.

2. Boneflesh as Armor:

• Here you have to choose between Face of Horror + Cleglaw Gloves or Heulhauer to get Flee and KB (whereas Heulhauer + Cleglaw Gloves (for additional Slow) does not exclude of course).
  Face of Horror has with +50% damage to undead, +20 Strength and +10 allres besides the 50% Flee some very tasty stats. Again, if the (25%) Flee chance of Heulhauer is enough to have good crowd control, more Flee might be a hindrance for the total damage, despite the 37 off ed that the mask still brings. Here it’s time to try out what you can drive better with individually.
  Also decisive for the choice between these two alternatives is the question if ias is still needed. If this is the case, choose T&T Gloves and Belt, and Heulhauer. If not, you have the free choice between FoH+Cleg or HH. At Heulhauer the Gloves are still free, here you can either use the Cleglaw Gloves for the Slow despite already existing KB, or Leech Gloves (if necessary hand of Broc), or Bloodfist for FHR (best together 24 fhr rare Belt for the cap), or whatever.
  Both alternatives leave the belt free in case you don’t need it, the same applies here as said in the last paragraph about Rattle.

• For rings and amu the same applies as for Rattle.

The overall picture is therefore as follows:

With Rattle

• Gothic with lots of ed, 20 ias and ar/dmg/pdmg/skills/-req… or corresponding rune (0 ias)
• Cleg Gloves
• Goblins
• Wormskull, otherwise glory cap for maximum safety, 3 PA helmet, Higgins
• rare Amu with as much of skills/ml/dmg/cdmg… as possible… or Several for ll and long freezing time
• rare rings with leech, ar, dmg… or a manald
• any belt at Wormskill, e.g. T&T, otherwise snake band

(for a 0 ias Gothic: T&T Gloves and Belt and Heulhauer
with a 10 ias Gothic: like 0 ias, or gold carrier. In both cases without pdmg on the bow no pdmg anywhere -> but rather use boneflesh)

With Boneflesh

• Gothic with lots of ed and ar/dmg/skills/-req…
• T&T Belt and Gloves
• Goblins
• Howler
• rare Amu with as much of skills/ml/dmg/cdmg… as possible… or Several for ll and long freezing time
• rare rings with leech, ar, dmg… or a manald

(in Rune or 20 ias Gothic, Gloves and Belt can be exchanged for any item
Furthermore, Face of Horror (instead of Heulhauer) and Cleglaw Gloves) can be used 🙂

For those who still can’t decide, the following rules:

• If you want damage above all else, take a thick gothic, which doesn’t cost anything with 0ias, and use Boneflesh together with the T&T combo.
• If you want maximum safety, depending on your budget, you take a 20ias gothic or I’ll give you an 0ias rune, and use Rattle, Cleg Gloves and Glory Cap.
• One word about the attack value. Sadly, even with the same level as the monsters, 3xx dex, 1xx ar on the bow and 1x penis you still don’t have a 75+%cth guarantee. So you have to make sure that you somehow get as much ar as possible, especially about the jewellery this works well; either raw AR on the rings or Str so you can put more in dex, accordingly -req on the bow works well.
  Tip: If you play with Rattle, you can solve this problem elegantly with Sigon helmet and belt (but then (without the matching bow) you have the problem of the non-existent Pdmgs again).

Status points

The stats are certainly not going to be a big surprise now:

Strength: For the equipment (Rattle: 70, Boneflesh: 65, Gothic 95, Rune 73 (each without -req)
Skill: Rest
Vita: Nothing
Ene: Nothing

(With rare only jewelry and -30%req Gothic you can theoretically state dexonly, with 3 PA helmet at Rattle anyway)

Skill points

• Penalty: “max”
• Critical: “high”, 13+
• Pierce: “high,” 14+.
• Walk: 8
• Decoy: 1
• Avoid (the middle dodge, for ranged attacks when standing or attacking): “medium high”, 9+
• Penis: “Rest”

A few remarks:

• If you are penalized, the number of arrows shot will not change after level 7, there is only 5ed per level. So if the CTH looks really bad, it is possible that points in Penalty are more useful than in Penalty, so max in ” “. It’s similar with Critical (here you can easily calculate if a point in Critical is more useful than in Penalty: 1% more Critical is 1% more onweapon ed (1 point in Penalty is 5% offweapon ed)) and Pierce.
• With Pierce, as well as with Critical, there is not much more to do on higher slvls, here simply increase according to taste. To pierce is said to be not as interesting in Penalty (and Mule) as in Elemental Arrows, I don’t see it that way. Often enough the enemies stand one behind the other, then you give away up to five(!) times more damage if you don’t skill pierce high.
• Always increase your Penes when the CTH drops below 75% even though the ama is on the same level as the monsters. In the end you will have to score 15 points.
• The Walk gets on 7 a rare ornate as armor, on 8 a rare lance as weapon. With slvl 7 it stands against everything like a wall, especially if the monsters attacking it are already overstrained with KB, Flee, Cdmg and Slow. Increasing it to 8 not only has the advantage that it can help a bit in normal combat, but also that if you rip and – e.g. in the worm vault, but also in wider underground areas – you have to kill some monsters that are in the way to get to the corpse, which Walk can do with a little patience.

• The Docoy orients itself lifemäßig at our life supply and is with slvl1 therefore just as stable we with 20, namely not at all. This does not mean that it is completely useless, here are two examples:

1. you approach a group of Abyss Knights or OKs – the ones with the bullets – where you don’t survive two on each other, but you are not yet in penalty range, it would be with the next step, but from then on the knights will shoot, too. The Walk doesn’t get it and doesn’t go ahead, but you don’t want to recast it (in the direction of the knights), but do it with the decoy. Immediately afterwards you run two meters further and shoot a penalty series, the knights are just about to aim at the decoy. Meanwhile the Walk is trailed and takes over the blocker function. Sounds artificial, but it works great, even with defiled or blowpipe fetishes for example.
2. flayer dungeon, at the end of a corridor is a large room, which is certainly full of flayers. Same situation as with the walk before, so you cast the decoy to the passage between the corridor and the room, the Flayers come and attack the decoy, at that moment they are in the field of fire and that’s it for them. If the ama would just walk into the room instead, she would be dead instantly.

• Avoid: Melee fighters will never actually make it to the Bowie, the wall of Walk, KB, Flee and maybe more is too strong for that. Ranged fighters can be problematic, although they too, if you’re careful and use Walk, Decoy, Offscreen Shooting skillfully, should have nothing to report. If you are not highly concentrated or get indolent, avoidance comes into play. One knight’s bullet for example is not onehittet (two usually are), but this and practically every other bullet forces the ama into the hitrecovery. If this happens during the attack, the so-called zero rounds are created: From the moment you are sent to the HR, the ama still attacks optically but none of the arrows are real anymore and bring damage, leech or trigger. If the ama now attacks Avoid instead of HitRecovery, the attack is interrupted in the same way, but you take no damage, great.

Tactics

Is relatively simple. In difficult areas always shoot into the void and see if the whole penalty series is shot (-> monsters in range) or not. Use Decoy and Walk skillfully. In underground areas you can sometimes see a group of monsters lurking behind the next door. In this case you should cast Slower Missiles, so that if a Bossmod defiled hides behind the door, you can defuse them instead of getting knocked out by five lightning balls.

Against the few physically immune (non-bosses) you can sometimes just use the decoy and keep running, or you can do it without the decoy. If you want or need to kill them, a Boneflesh-Ama doesn’t have to do anything else than what she already does, if you have patience. If you don’t have patience, you just change a 6 sock Perf Topaz bow for example. The Rattle-Bowie either leaves the opponents standing or changes Boneflesh and/or the elemental bow. Tip: If you have a few +skills on your equipment or Barbseidank under your feet, the slvl1+skills cold arrow is also a means, which then turns 1x% of the physical damage into cold damage, you can clearly see that (then of course with original instead of 6pg bow).

Maybe just for clarification, since I could imagine misunderstandings in view of the life and res values that are declared playable here and the repeated occurrence of the term ‘rips’: If you are not either 1. very inattentive or very stupid (running through a flayer-mob, level of desperation when souls are there, filling up the blacksmith, …) or 2. very extraordinary events occur (just behind the big door to Anda there is an extra almost defiled mob waiting), then this Bowie will not die. When I do a CS-walk with my Boneflesh-Ama, it hasn’t happened the last twenty times that I was seriously on a rip.
Even with the wildest, really wildest boss enchantments, extra fast and strong, fana…, at the most you have to walk back a few steps to straighten the pack a bit, like with the infector (so that the first part just flees, while the second comes, after the next volley it’s the other way around), at the latest then the crowcontrol effects are just so dominant that servant and boss, no matter how well enchanted, have nothing to say anymore.

Speaking of CS, there’s one more special feature, and that’s the slide. Unfortunately, it has a fire nova that you can’t escape. So you have to stock up on +fres items for the final fight, otherwise she’ll have you up in no time. Since Flee, Blind and Knockback don’t work anyway you can change a number of items without losing anything. By the way, use GA instead of penalty against Dia for lightning and very low CTH. If necessary also against normal bosses, that depends on the CTH and the so called Next Hit Delay, more information about this in the Lod Strafe Guide in the Ama Forum, imo you also do more damage per time with penalty than with GA for single enemies, if the CTH is right.

Up to 80 you can level in the Flayer very well and fast. The better the equipment, the more comfortable river- or CS-walks become.

Uplevel

Actually, it goes straight forward. Through Norm you can easily get through with a bow in which there are dropped gems on the way. All other equipment is not that important yet, even with Baselife you can get a lot of hits until the later acts. (Tip: The Arctic Set, Level Req 2!, is completely overpowered and shoots you through Norm quickly at 8ppl) When the corresponding level req is reached, you change the Uniques/Sets/other items described in the equipment section. In case of acute poverty, slowly enter the marketplace from the middle of the alp and ingame your hand after 150+ runebows. Tip: Mercs are useful before the trigger items are created because they are still relatively strong, and with the trigger items because they have little resistance. They are reliable blockers in the beginning until the decoy is available in act 3, which is replaced by the walk in act 4. But he already had a Merc that survived the A3 Hell from the city exit to Travi undamaged, so always hire him.

With the skills I don’t recommend to score Critical at the beginning just because you have nothing else to score. A handful of points are good, but not 10+. If you don’t have good AR-rings early on, at some point the CTH is not right anymore anyway, then you need the points for Pene. Penalty also only increase to 7. From level 30 on there should be enough points left to get Walk straight to 8 and Pierce to 7. In Meiden only a maximum of 5 points, but once the basic structure is in place, raise everything appropriately.

Hardcore

I haven’t really thought about HC. Spontaneously I would say that as Unique you only need Heulhauer and all other items are aligned to Res/Life(/FHR) to not fall over in the few dangerous situations. Calmly also 100 Vita staten and all three avoiders ‘appropriately’ score. As usual, advance carefully, then this should also work in this mode I think, although slower. If you have the impression to stand “too safe”, you can always switch to Rattle/Boneflesh or Goblins for more killspeed.