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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.