Mageazon (Zenmaster with a bow)
Imagine playing a bowazon without use of mana steal items
And without developing skills like penetrate and piercing
Maybe no point in critical strike too
Only going for a total of 50 in dexterity
Simply not having any base damage worth mention.
And not using strafe or multiple shoot!

And still using a bow!!

Its based on the fact that a lot of bow skills always hits. ALWAYS Hits, means that the need for dexterity is gone. But what about the increase in damage dex gives, you might ask. The whole point of this variant is to play without needing it. This means to play and think like a sorceress. And develop the character like it too.

The skills used for dealing damage is Immolation arrow and the level 30 Freezing Arrow spell, and a Valkyrie. Use them together with Doomslinger and you are ready to be a Mageazon. Doomslinger is a very fast unique repeating crossbow there require 40 in strength and 50 in dex and deals 7-14 dam adds +1 to skills and have piercing attack.

This means the point allocation looks like this:
Strength: 40 for (Doomslinger), 60 (when going for Frostburn)
Dex: 50 ( Doomslinger)
Vitality: when needed to keep alive ! as other bowazons and sorceress
Energy: all what's possible

It does looks like a sorceress to me ! So let them be compared

Immolation arrow is compared in the chaos sanctuary to firewall (Meteor is more like it (imho)) . Immolation arrow looks bad up against both with a lower damage potential even without Fire Mastery involved, but is much more easy useful, due the ally situation. Valkyrie and decoy simply hold moving targets in the flames. An option the sorceress doesn't have. And other targets like non moving shooters just take longer to burn, which is not that big disadvantage. Together with auto piercing it is possible to get all enemies cowered in the flames really fast , close to the same way as meteor when used to cower the whole screen. In my opinion Immolation arrow is very easy to use. It might even be the best damage fire spell there is!

Freezing Arrow is compared to glacial spike. And here again it does looks like its a bad case because it does lover damage (around 120 at the cost of 29 mana compared to around 150 at cost of 19 mana, for both at level 20). But adding , the base damage of the bow with an possible critical strike makes it more even. The freezing of 2 seconds is bad (compared to 6), but 3,3 yards radius is good (2,6 for glacial spike). Again its the piercing attack that makes the day. (though I hear a sorceress can use Doomslinger too , a bug imho). But with cold mastery the balance does clearly tip to the sorcerer. The Mageazon does have the option to shift between fire and ice which catch up with a lot of the advantage the sorceress mastery skills gives.

Cast rate and attack speed.
Using a very fast bow like Doomslinger, gives the option to go for increase in attacks peed ( with gloves, belt and armor) in the same way as the sorceress playing with fast cast rate items. But I haven’t tried to max it yet.

The Mana situation:
Being without the skill warmth , and having a mana increase on 1,5 each energy point spend compared to the sorceress 2 leaves the Mageazon behind, but again due the allies and piercing its possible to play with a low and effective mana use
It is also needed because there are no point in shooting normal arrows around, and without mana steal the low level fire/and ice skill does only give free hits, at high expense of valuable mana!

Mana steal is of very little use with the low regular damage.

Doomslinger!
Without Doomslinger or one of the other 2 piecing bows (or the Vidala's set), its difficult to play this variant in a pure form. And it still might be better to develop piercing by yourself, and stick with a better damage dealing bow and do a lot of mana steal.

The problem is that a better bow does require a lot more dexterity and this go from energy. And soon its a normal bowazon, tempted to develop Strafe /Multishot instead of fire and ice.

The question is if this variant with its insane high mana is able to fire more freeze/immolation than a regular elemental bowazon with the help of a strong bow and mana steal - this makes the difference between this variant being a curiosity and the possible other choice to Multishot/Strafe.

So I had stick with Doomslinger. You might want to transfer it from the start, because without it this way of play is rather slow, but of cause its possible. And it could even be fun to play a real Zenmaster never take a point in strength and just a few in dexterity!

Disclaimer.
I am in no way saying that what I have here is a good variant , or that what is achieved here couldn’t be done better with a regular bowazon , I don't know if high % mana steal and a good gothic bow would make you able to unleash the same crazy amount of Immolation and frost arrows as a high energy Mageazon. I don't know because I haven't tried the regular bowazon. But I like to hear your experience. What I think is fun is that its works to do it this weird way to, so far . Having reach level 37 in a single-player game I am still to face real challenge.

Jondifool
December 12 2000

Original thread
ArrowWitch, Lok's Mageazon updates