Exploding Arrow Amazon Guide

Exploding Arrow* is your main Damage Skill. On impact, the arrow explodes and deals Fire Damage in an area around the target. Up to 5 explosions can be caused by a single shot, if the concurrent hit-checks are successful AND you successfully pierce each target. Note that item stat +x to xx Fire Damage increase the power of the explosions!

Immolation Arrow* is your secondary Damage Skill. On impact, the arrow explodes and deals Fire Damage in an area around the target. A circle of Fire is created for 4 seconds at the impact location. Up to 5 explosions and circles of Fire can be caused by a single shot, if the concurrent hit-checks are successful AND you successfully pierce each target. Use this whenever it's off Cooldown. Note that item stat +x to xx Fire Damage increase the power of the explosions!

* Increased Attack Speed Skills (IAS)

Penetrate* adds a large amount of Attack Rating to the Character, increasing the Chance to Hit enemies. This is extremely important for this build, as it increases our chance to cause multiple explosions with Exploding Arrow, and immolation arrow.

Pierce* is a very important Skill for this build. It allows your Projectile (Arrows/Javelins) to pass through your enemies allowing you to not only deal damage to your first impacted target, but also the ones behind them.

Dodge* / Avoid* / Evade* passively grant you a chance to dodge enemy attacks in the situations mentioned in the Skill. A dodged attack is negated completely.

Decoy* spawns a duplicate of yourself on the area you target drawing the enemy's attention to it.

Valkyrie* can be used like a Decoy but she acts similar to a Mercenary as it follows you and attacks monsters.

strafe* is exclusively used to proc burst of speed from hustle due to high output of attacks per second.

burst of speed* is procced with strafe using hustle. It allows us to reach the final Attack Breakpoint and grants additional Movement Speed.

* Increased Attack Speed Skills (IAS)
* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) Only use a Matriarchal Bow as a base. We need its Weapon Speed Modifier to reach the faster attack speed possible!

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to Immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter Variant.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 5

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Infinity, Holy Freeze

Use a Desert Mercenary with Holy Freeze Aura for its powerful Crowd Control. A Mercenary with Might Aura isn’t used, since we don’t rely on his damage or benefit from the Physical Damage increase.
Equip him with Infinity to reduce enemy Resistances and Defense with Conviction Aura, drastically boosting damage. This Aura is also capable of breaking some Immunities.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

General

• If you have gained the optional Skill Point, cast Valkyrie at the start of each farming session.
• Switch to your Weapon Swap that contains hustle and hit monsters with strafe until burst of speed is activated.
• Run to your farming location. Yes, running is the only mobility you have got.
• Pull together clumps of monsters before attacking them to maximize your attack's explosion potential. Place a Valkyrie near the pack and use Immolation Arrow first. Followup with Exploding Arrow during the Skill's cooldown. Get into a rhythm of 1 Immolation Arrow - 2 Exploding Arrows - 1 Immolation Arrow - etc. for optimal damage output.
• Keep a close eye on your Mercenary! He needs some major babysitting until he is equipped with his end-game gear. His insight makes managing your Mana a lot easier!

Immunities

• Avoid farming areas with Immune to Fire monsters until you have access to infinity and / or Flame Rift.
• Some Immune to Fire monsters can be broken with Bone Wand of Lower Resistance. This is expensive in the long run, but can help out in certain situations!
• With Flame Rift and some -x% Enemy Fire Resistance items you begin to farm more quickly in high Immunity areas. Adding infinity lets you farm anywhere you want!

Late-Game

• Before I go through the prebuff procedure... You can absolutely play this build without using call to arms!
  If you want to pre-buff both burst of speed and battle orders, first attack some monsters to proc hustle. Now swap off hustle for call to arms and proceed by casting Battle Command 2 times and then Battle Orders. Switch back to hustle on your Weapon Swap, so you can reactivate it at a moment's notice.
  Note: You cannot place both call to arms and a +x to Skills Shield in your cube.
• Target enemies close to your Mercenary when he is equipped with infinity. The Fire Bowazon is not equipped with a way to reposition him, so we need to play by his rules.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Increased Attack Speed (IAS)

Increased Attack Speed speeds up your attack animations. Weapon bases have different IAS breakpoints. Values for recommended weapon options provided below. Consult the d2planner for other bases.

Faith Matriarchal Bow

Matriarchal Bow

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery is not required for survivability in this build, but early breakpoints can be utilized.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary focus is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build can become Hardcore viable with key changes to the Skills, Stat Point allocation, and items. Review the changes below before building this character, as they may differ significantly from the normal build.

Stat Point Changes

• Allocate enough Stat Points into Strength and Dexterity to equip all of your gear.
• Put remaining Stat Points into Vitality.

Skill Point Changes

• Put 1 Skill Point into Decoy and valkyrie. Both can act as a tank / distraction to give you some breathing room.

Item Changes

Capping Resistances on Bow-builds is notoriously difficult. The Softcore setup abandons that concept entirely. To the Resistances you'll have to make drastic changes to the gear setup which result in more safety and significantly decreased damage output.

• Equip Flickering Flame Diadem to cap your Fire Resistances. This Runeword also counteracts the negative effect of flame rift.
• Switch out The Rising Sun for Mara's Kaleidoscope.
• Rare Gloves with +2 to Bow and Crossbow Skills, +20% Increased Attack Speed and Resistances help to shore up the rest of your Resistances.
• If that was not enough, replace The Stone of Jordan for a Rare Ring to get you additional Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistances.
• Temper and Ground are great options to easily cap out your Fire or Lightning Resistance.
• Even more survivability can come from our Inventory. Switch out Fletcher's Grand Charm of Inertia for Fletcher's Grand Charm of Vita to increase your Life-pool.

• Teleport instantly moves you to a selected square on the visible screen in which you can stand. The game tries to to place you within a small radius around your cursor even if it would be impeded normally.
• Teleport is not obstructed by walls or other impediments but can fail if your cursor is not completely passed those impediments when cast. Your Mercenary and Minions are teleported with you, Traps do not.
• Certain Minions in large quantities can become “stuck” in position after teleporting. Move away from that position to give them the chance to spread out.
• You can “extend” the visible screen by opening UI-windows like the Inventory or the Character screen. Continuously cast Teleport and drag your mouse to the edge of your screen.
• The Mana cost of Teleport decreases with additional Skill Levels down to 1 Mana per cast.
• You can use “ESC” to open the menu in single player to pause the game after a Teleport to determine if you are safe.