Post by Night Ω Wolfe on Dec 12, 2006 8:45:28 GMT -5
Bow Wood Elf- written by Griffman
Overview
This is my personal favorite type of wood elf. You can't do as much damage as a magic wood elf, but it is a lot of fun. It doesn't do much damage in the very beginning (1-10), but it is one of the stronger character builds from lvl 10 till about gold.
Attributes
Physical regeneration. You want fast regeneration times. You won't have as much damage on a regular attack so you want to be able to cast CA's as often as possible.
You may want to put some into dexterity, but don't. In the long run you will find items and rings that have so much +dexterity that your dex will be even higher than the physical regeneration. It will be better for your build in the long run if you hold off on putting points into dexterity.
Skills
If you have set your Default skills to 0, or not.. I'd still go with the same beginning skills.
Agility
Weapon Lore
Concentration
Constitution
Ranged Combat
Armor
________
Parrying
____ is your choice between:
Disarming (same as before, it's up to you if you like it or not)
Trading (if you like to trade it's a good choice..)
Moon Magic (this is useful if you want to have a companion of the woods casted at all times)
Agility- Gives you attack and defense. You want this to be about 1/2 your level. Every other level for this bad boy.
Weapon Lore- Gives you more damage, what you want! In the beginning I'd do this every level. At about 30 or 40 you'll want to split it to every other level, and then stop when the bonuses start to diminish past the point of being useful.
Concentration- Switch this every other level with Agility in the beginning. It will help with regeneration times. If you feel like your regen times are getting to high up there, take a couple more into this. Stop when the bonuses are really low.
Constitution- Every other level on this. You pretty much want to keep it at about 1/2 your level.
Ranged lore- At most get this to level 10. It isn't that useful in the end, because you'll have items that increase your attack speed and attack rating enough. The only reason you'd be taking this to 10 is to equip every type of bow there is.
Armor and Parrying- Keep at about half your level, maybe a little higher if you feel like you are dying too quickly. Armor should be a little higher than parrying if you can do that.
Your choices- if you take moon magic I'd get it to about 50 or so, then stop. If you choose trading it is suggested that you keep it as high as you can to get better trades. Every time I've taken it I've just found as many items with +trading and kept them to wear when I went trading. I usually put maybe 50 points or so in this, but you don't have to put more than 1 if you don't want to. You can still get it over 100 without adding any points. Disarming is the same as before. Do as you feel is wisest with it.
Combat Arts and Spells
Your main combat arts are going to be multiple shot (not multi-hit), explosive arrow, and penetrating arrow. You can possibly add quick as a flash, companion of the woods, or recuperation.
Multiple Shot- in the beginning you want to keep regeneration pretty close to duration, up until you get it to shooting 5 arrows (I think that is level 8, it's been a while
). For a while keep it at level 8, until it is pretty low regeneration time. As you are waiting from leveling this up, save the multiple shot runes. When you have 10 of them, level this up to level 18. This is where you are stopping with this skill. Level 18 shoots 6 arrows at once, and you don't want the regeneration too high on it. When my WE was at level 100 she had 2.5 second regeneration on this CA. It will make you do the most damage you can. Think of it this way- Would you rather do 100 damage with 1 arrow, or do 75 damage with each of 2 arrows? It works out later on that you will be doing a lot more damage with 6 arrows too 
. You can also combine other CA's with this.
Explosive Arrow- This will be your big damage CA. It's damage boosts really high. Typically you want to use this when you have 1 or 2 guys coming at you and you want to kill them quickly. This can also be useful against bosses, as it does a lot of damage, but your next CA will be better for that purpose. You want to keep the regeneration at about .5-1.5 seconds... the lower the better, but you want as much damage as you can get out of it. If combined with multiple shot it can be quite deadly. All you do to combine is cast multiple shot (there will be green on your bow) then cast this as many times as you need to in order to finish off the baddies.
Penetrating Arrow- This is one of the best CAs for the bow WE. It is comparable to guided arrow with max pierce in diablo 2. It essentially follows the target you click on around, hitting them multiple times, until the duration runs out. As you get this higher, the duration gets to be quite high. Mine is at about level 100 and the duration is greater than 30 seconds. When combined with multiple shot you end up with a bunch of these arrows hitting very quickly. This is good for big groups and big bosses. When multiple shot runs out and this is still around, it begins to add the damage big time. As you know, multiple shot reduces damage, but when it runs out, the damage goes back to normal, and any arrows you have out there convert to normal damage, no matter how many there are. So if you have 6 penetrating arrows out there and multiple shot runs out, you'll be doing insane amounts of damage really fast. It is great. Regeneration around 2 seconds is nice on this.
Companion of the woods- Useful only to take hits. I would suggest using it for this build. You don't have to read many runes in it. Keep the unicorns level at about your level. For each rune you read it will have 5 levels. If you are level 100 your unicorn should be level 100 (or 20 levels into the CA). You don't have to read many runes, you can have gear that adds a lot to this.
Quick as a flash- this not only speeds your running up, but also your attack speed. In the beginning this can be quite useful, as you will be attacking slowly. Later on it becomes not as useful, as you should be finding items that add to attack and running speed. I'd get this to maybe 45 second duration at most.
Recuperation- it can be used to heal you, but without taking magic lore it won't recuperate very much. It is useful in the beginning (level 1-10) but not so useful afterwards.
Gear
You want as much regenerate special move (RSM) as possible. I suggest using Ettol'Rahc-Notwen bow set, with all the rings socketed inside of it. As far as a set for your armor goes, most of the time you can find better rare items than the sets. Polemides is good for the beginning, because it has a lot of life leech. Later on, Araelfi's or Lloraneth's sets can be useful, but only parts of them. The whole sets are only so-so for the wood elf. You are looking for about 15-25% life leech with this build, as much RSM as possible, and a lot of defense.
Combos
My favorite combo is the 4x penetrating arrow combo. When fighting a boss or dragon, cast multiple shot then this combo and then cast a couple penetrating arrows of your own, and nothing can stand up to this for very long. Other combos choices could be 1x companion of the woods, 1x multiple shot and 3x penetrating arrow, 4x explosive arrow, 1x quick as a flash and 1x multiple shot, or ?x recuperation (to get full life after a battle). I don't use any except the 4x penetrating arrow, and I am fine.
Overview
This is my personal favorite type of wood elf. You can't do as much damage as a magic wood elf, but it is a lot of fun. It doesn't do much damage in the very beginning (1-10), but it is one of the stronger character builds from lvl 10 till about gold.
Attributes
Physical regeneration. You want fast regeneration times. You won't have as much damage on a regular attack so you want to be able to cast CA's as often as possible.
You may want to put some into dexterity, but don't. In the long run you will find items and rings that have so much +dexterity that your dex will be even higher than the physical regeneration. It will be better for your build in the long run if you hold off on putting points into dexterity.
Skills
If you have set your Default skills to 0, or not.. I'd still go with the same beginning skills.
Agility
Weapon Lore
Concentration
Constitution
Ranged Combat
Armor
________
Parrying
____ is your choice between:
Disarming (same as before, it's up to you if you like it or not)
Trading (if you like to trade it's a good choice..)
Moon Magic (this is useful if you want to have a companion of the woods casted at all times)
Agility- Gives you attack and defense. You want this to be about 1/2 your level. Every other level for this bad boy.
Weapon Lore- Gives you more damage, what you want! In the beginning I'd do this every level. At about 30 or 40 you'll want to split it to every other level, and then stop when the bonuses start to diminish past the point of being useful.
Concentration- Switch this every other level with Agility in the beginning. It will help with regeneration times. If you feel like your regen times are getting to high up there, take a couple more into this. Stop when the bonuses are really low.
Constitution- Every other level on this. You pretty much want to keep it at about 1/2 your level.
Ranged lore- At most get this to level 10. It isn't that useful in the end, because you'll have items that increase your attack speed and attack rating enough. The only reason you'd be taking this to 10 is to equip every type of bow there is.
Armor and Parrying- Keep at about half your level, maybe a little higher if you feel like you are dying too quickly. Armor should be a little higher than parrying if you can do that.
Your choices- if you take moon magic I'd get it to about 50 or so, then stop. If you choose trading it is suggested that you keep it as high as you can to get better trades. Every time I've taken it I've just found as many items with +trading and kept them to wear when I went trading. I usually put maybe 50 points or so in this, but you don't have to put more than 1 if you don't want to. You can still get it over 100 without adding any points. Disarming is the same as before. Do as you feel is wisest with it.
Combat Arts and Spells
Your main combat arts are going to be multiple shot (not multi-hit), explosive arrow, and penetrating arrow. You can possibly add quick as a flash, companion of the woods, or recuperation.
Multiple Shot- in the beginning you want to keep regeneration pretty close to duration, up until you get it to shooting 5 arrows (I think that is level 8, it's been a while
). For a while keep it at level 8, until it is pretty low regeneration time. As you are waiting from leveling this up, save the multiple shot runes. When you have 10 of them, level this up to level 18. This is where you are stopping with this skill. Level 18 shoots 6 arrows at once, and you don't want the regeneration too high on it. When my WE was at level 100 she had 2.5 second regeneration on this CA. It will make you do the most damage you can. Think of it this way- Would you rather do 100 damage with 1 arrow, or do 75 damage with each of 2 arrows? It works out later on that you will be doing a lot more damage with 6 arrows too . You can also combine other CA's with this.Explosive Arrow- This will be your big damage CA. It's damage boosts really high. Typically you want to use this when you have 1 or 2 guys coming at you and you want to kill them quickly. This can also be useful against bosses, as it does a lot of damage, but your next CA will be better for that purpose. You want to keep the regeneration at about .5-1.5 seconds... the lower the better, but you want as much damage as you can get out of it. If combined with multiple shot it can be quite deadly. All you do to combine is cast multiple shot (there will be green on your bow) then cast this as many times as you need to in order to finish off the baddies.
Penetrating Arrow- This is one of the best CAs for the bow WE. It is comparable to guided arrow with max pierce in diablo 2. It essentially follows the target you click on around, hitting them multiple times, until the duration runs out. As you get this higher, the duration gets to be quite high. Mine is at about level 100 and the duration is greater than 30 seconds. When combined with multiple shot you end up with a bunch of these arrows hitting very quickly. This is good for big groups and big bosses. When multiple shot runs out and this is still around, it begins to add the damage big time. As you know, multiple shot reduces damage, but when it runs out, the damage goes back to normal, and any arrows you have out there convert to normal damage, no matter how many there are. So if you have 6 penetrating arrows out there and multiple shot runs out, you'll be doing insane amounts of damage really fast. It is great
. Regeneration around 2 seconds is nice on this.Companion of the woods- Useful only to take hits. I would suggest using it for this build. You don't have to read many runes in it. Keep the unicorns level at about your level. For each rune you read it will have 5 levels. If you are level 100 your unicorn should be level 100 (or 20 levels into the CA). You don't have to read many runes, you can have gear that adds a lot to this.
Quick as a flash- this not only speeds your running up, but also your attack speed. In the beginning this can be quite useful, as you will be attacking slowly. Later on it becomes not as useful, as you should be finding items that add to attack and running speed. I'd get this to maybe 45 second duration at most.
Recuperation- it can be used to heal you, but without taking magic lore it won't recuperate very much. It is useful in the beginning (level 1-10) but not so useful afterwards.
Gear
You want as much regenerate special move (RSM) as possible. I suggest using Ettol'Rahc-Notwen bow set, with all the rings socketed inside of it. As far as a set for your armor goes, most of the time you can find better rare items than the sets. Polemides is good for the beginning, because it has a lot of life leech. Later on, Araelfi's or Lloraneth's sets can be useful, but only parts of them. The whole sets are only so-so for the wood elf. You are looking for about 15-25% life leech with this build, as much RSM as possible, and a lot of defense.
Combos
My favorite combo is the 4x penetrating arrow combo. When fighting a boss or dragon, cast multiple shot then this combo and then cast a couple penetrating arrows of your own, and nothing can stand up to this for very long. Other combos choices could be 1x companion of the woods, 1x multiple shot and 3x penetrating arrow, 4x explosive arrow, 1x quick as a flash and 1x multiple shot, or ?x recuperation (to get full life after a battle). I don't use any except the 4x penetrating arrow, and I am fine
.
So if you have an CAs that you use that can be boosted more go for it.
