- Mar 13, 2019
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I must have read every relevant thread on faith bases on the internet before choosing a base for mine and all of them came to slightly different conclusions with people advising for pretty much any bow except for Spider and Hydra. (There is even a post by me where I say that Crusader Bow/GMB are the best choices alltogether 
)
Since this thread is the most recent on the topic (on any forum as far as I can tell) I will put the things I gathered here so people don't have to look at 20 threads before choosing a reasonable base.
I do NOT compare damage here. Doing that is completely unfeasible with the amount of item combinations and charm options available. If you have the wealth to make the best possible Bowazon available (i.e. you are WoRG) you will not need any advice anyway because you have played the game for twenty years straight and know everything about it
What I do attempt here is in fact more of a qualitative approach. I want to narrow the choice of bows down without assuming too much, the actual choice between the (hopefully) few remaining bows is up to you and your equipment.
***
Some things I kept in mind while arguing for and against the different bases:
***
For convenience here are the stats of the ten elite bows:
View attachment 15166
We immediately see that Spider Bow can't get 4os so we are left with nine elite Bows with WSM of -10, 0 and 10 respectively.
Requirements; eliminating Hydra and Ward Bow
First off I want to eliminate regular Bows that are simply worse than others just from looking at their stats.
Level: Every elite bow has a lvl requirement below 65 (Jah Rune) so this requirement does not affect our choice.
Strength: A Bowazon will most likely wear War Travellers which means that she will have at least 105 strength; 95 needed for equipping WTs and 10 granted by them. Additionally ANY rogue will have at least 107 strength at level 65 which means that the only Bows where strength can be used as an argument against them are Great Bow, Hydra Bow and GMB. In the case of the GMB we only have to consider the Amazon and I'm sure she can spare three strength
Dexterity: A level 65 rogue has at least 159 Dex and hence the only bow that might be out of reach for her is the shadow bow. None of the dex requirements are really an obstacle for an Amazon.
Now Hydra and Crusader Bow have the same Weapon Speed Modifier of 10, i.e. they have the same speed, and they have the same average damage. However Hydra Bow has significantly higher requirements as well as lower minimum damage than Crusader Bow and hence is simply worse.
In the same vein Ward and Diamond Bow have the same WSM, average damage and unproblematic requirements but the minimum damage of the Diamond Bow is 13 points higher than that of the Ward Bow.
Eliminations for an Amazon-only Faith
In the case that we do not want our Rogue to be able to use the Faith the choices become much simpler. The GMB has significantly higher average damage (more than 10% extra!) than the other two WSM 10 bows and similarly the Matriarchal Bow has higher average damage than the other two WSM -10 Bows.
Since we do not have to think of the Rogue's ability to equip a shadow bow it will be better than Diamond Bow for us. So we are left with Matriarchal Bow, Shadow Bow and GMB.
Considerations for a first Faith and low runewealth
If you do not have Jahs lying around like some people () you might be interested in the number of rerolls it takes to get certain fanaticism levels on your faith:
View attachment 15168
The less than 1 in 50 chance to get lvl 12 Fana if you make three faiths is somewhat reasonable if you're rich, but avoiding lvl 12-13 at all costs will drive you into poverty.
Now why is the lvl 12 roll so dreaded? The answer is actually very simple:
An Amazon wielding a WSM 10 bow (Hydra, Crusader, GMB) under the influence of a Faith (either her own or her mercenary's) needs 100% IAS to reach 7fpa if fanaticism rolled level 12 and 95% IAS if the roll is level 13 or higher.
It just so happens that you can get a maximum of exactly 95% IAS by using the glove, belt, helm and amulet slots together and that is assuming a 45% IAS helm and NO Razortail. This means that either your Bow or your Armor will have to provide the IAS in order for you to reach 7fpa. If your Bow does not provide any IAS (e.g. Faith) this means that you can't use Fortitude AND reach 7fpa at the same time.
If you use GSA you have an inherent 50% IAS and no problems reaching the needed IAS. For a Windforce you will have 20% on the Windforce so even if you do not socket it with more IAS you can still use Razortail AND Fortitude at the same time while reaching 7fpa.
Needless to say it's quite a lot harder to make a good 4os IAS body armor than to make a Fortitude.
***
My takeaway here is that it is a huge risk to make your first Faith in a WSM 10 bow if you do not have the runewealth to reroll. So the list of remaining bows for a first/'poor man's' faith is down to the WSM -10 and 0 bows excluding the Ward Bow, i.e. five bows remaining.
WSM -10 vs. 0
I will now compare those non-classspecific bows with WSM -10 to those with WSM 0 for an Amazon. Before I do this I want to note that the difference between min and max damage is 7 for Diamond and at least 20 for every other bow, so assuming a non-superior base the difference between mix and max after applying the On-weapon ED from Faith is 30,1 for Diamond and at least 86 for every other bow. This only becomes larger in a superior base. I do not know exactly what happens when min exceeds max damage but it won't matter in most cases because only the richest of the rich could ever afford to put 86 min damage on their equipment. So for the time being I assume that the max damage bonus on equip exceeds the min damage bonus.
If we want to compare the dps of WSM -10 and 0 bows we only need to compare the term:
where aps is the amount of attacks per second, avgbonus is the average of the min and the max bonus on equip and avgbase is the average of the min and the max damage of the base weapon.
In order to get a Faith in a WSM -10 base to 7fpa you need 50%/45% IAS at Fana level 12-13/14-15. I can't imagine a scenario where you would not get that, so this is the fpa I will use for the WSM -10 calculations.
Similarly a Faith in a WSM 0 base reaches 8fpa at 35%/30% IAS if the Fana level is 12/13-15 and again I will take this as the absolute lowest fpa acceptable. Additionally it reaches 7fpa at 70%/65% IAS with Fana level 12-13/14-15. This is perfectly achievable with something like 35% Andi, 20% Gloves and 20% Amulet. (You can also use Giant Skull for the Knockback!)
The point I will attempt to make here is that a 7fpa Faith in a WSM -10 bow barely outdamages an 8fpa Faith in a WSM 0 bow. So even if you lack the equipment to get to 7fpa with a WSM 0 bow it is still better to avoid the WSM -10 base because a lucky drop can get you to the next IAS BP and hence significantly more dps while the WSM -10 base is maxed out for good and will never beat a 7fpa WSM 0 base anyway.
To facilitate things I assume that the bows in consideration are all superior with 15% ED. I only look at some of the possible average damage bonuses from equipment. Among them the baseline 0, the WT+Razor Combo 25, the same with eight 1.14d max dam GCs and then the same with eight 1.07 max dam GCs. For reference a GC can get up to 14 max dam in 1.14d and 40 in 1.07. The last value is just for science since the chances of having eight 40 maxdam GCs from 1.07 but not being able to hit 70% IAS from your equip are rather low (Valkyrie Wing anyone?)
View attachment 15171
Remember that to get the average bonus you have to divide all that maxdam from the GCs by 2 On the far right I calculated the dps for WSM -10 bows at 7fpa and the dps for WSM 0 bows at 8fpa. I then marked the lowest value in each column with red color and the highest value in green (everything in between is yellow). The values in the last row are obtained by dividing the highest WSM -10 value by the highest WSM 0 value.
So you need a total of 320 max dam on top of your WT+Razortail combo just to make your 8fpa WSM -10 bow do 7% more damage than your 8fps WSM 10 bow. Case closed.
I would argue that this eliminates Blade and Great Bow for good if you want to use this on your Bowa.
Why did I not make the same argument for Mat Bow vs. GMB? The difference here is that due to the 'WSM 10 + lvl 12 Fana' combo you might very well be stuck with 8fpa on your GMB while in the WSM 0 case you can reach 7fpa even with a bad roll AND you get to keep your armor. I have no doubt in my mind that 8fpa GMB always outdamages 7fpa Mat Bow.
Conclusion
In my opinion I gave good arguments to disregard Spider, Blade, Great, Ward and Hydra bow altogether which means that there are only five options in total: Crusader+GMB in the WSM 10 category, Diamond+Shadow in the WSM 0 category and Mat Bow in the WSM -10 category.
So what did I pick? Well, I don't swim in Jah's so no Crusader/GMB for me. Also I want to use this on a Rogue for weird builds (or you know, go full Gripphon with an AS Java) so no Mat Bow either. That leaves the choice between Diamond and Shadow where I landed on Diamond because it requires no extra Dex to equip for the Rogue at lvl 65. The damage difference here matters very little ultimately.
I hope this settles the Faith base debate for good
)Since this thread is the most recent on the topic (on any forum as far as I can tell) I will put the things I gathered here so people don't have to look at 20 threads before choosing a reasonable base.
I do NOT compare damage here. Doing that is completely unfeasible with the amount of item combinations and charm options available. If you have the wealth to make the best possible Bowazon available (i.e. you are WoRG) you will not need any advice anyway because you have played the game for twenty years straight and know everything about it
What I do attempt here is in fact more of a qualitative approach. I want to narrow the choice of bows down without assuming too much, the actual choice between the (hopefully) few remaining bows is up to you and your equipment.
***
Some things I kept in mind while arguing for and against the different bases:
- Requirements for str, dex and lvl should not be too restrictive
- If two bows have the same average damage then the bow with the higher minimum damage is to be prefered. (people want reliable leech!)
- Rogues can't equip amazon specific bows or crossbows
- Due to the way that animations work in this game there is no way to get a crossbow to 7fpa, so they won't be considered here at all.
- We live in the post 1.13a era, so making a Fortitude is not the limiting factor when building a Bowazon. In fact making any other sort of damage armor is significantly more time and resource draining.
***
For convenience here are the stats of the ten elite bows:
View attachment 15166
We immediately see that Spider Bow can't get 4os so we are left with nine elite Bows with WSM of -10, 0 and 10 respectively.
Requirements; eliminating Hydra and Ward Bow
First off I want to eliminate regular Bows that are simply worse than others just from looking at their stats.
Level: Every elite bow has a lvl requirement below 65 (Jah Rune) so this requirement does not affect our choice.
Strength: A Bowazon will most likely wear War Travellers which means that she will have at least 105 strength; 95 needed for equipping WTs and 10 granted by them. Additionally ANY rogue will have at least 107 strength at level 65 which means that the only Bows where strength can be used as an argument against them are Great Bow, Hydra Bow and GMB. In the case of the GMB we only have to consider the Amazon and I'm sure she can spare three strength
Dexterity: A level 65 rogue has at least 159 Dex and hence the only bow that might be out of reach for her is the shadow bow. None of the dex requirements are really an obstacle for an Amazon.
Now Hydra and Crusader Bow have the same Weapon Speed Modifier of 10, i.e. they have the same speed, and they have the same average damage. However Hydra Bow has significantly higher requirements as well as lower minimum damage than Crusader Bow and hence is simply worse.
In the same vein Ward and Diamond Bow have the same WSM, average damage and unproblematic requirements but the minimum damage of the Diamond Bow is 13 points higher than that of the Ward Bow.
Eliminations for an Amazon-only Faith
In the case that we do not want our Rogue to be able to use the Faith the choices become much simpler. The GMB has significantly higher average damage (more than 10% extra!) than the other two WSM 10 bows and similarly the Matriarchal Bow has higher average damage than the other two WSM -10 Bows.
Since we do not have to think of the Rogue's ability to equip a shadow bow it will be better than Diamond Bow for us. So we are left with Matriarchal Bow, Shadow Bow and GMB.
Considerations for a first Faith and low runewealth
If you do not have Jahs lying around like some people (
) you might be interested in the number of rerolls it takes to get certain fanaticism levels on your faith:View attachment 15168
The less than 1 in 50 chance to get lvl 12 Fana if you make three faiths is somewhat reasonable if you're rich, but avoiding lvl 12-13 at all costs will drive you into poverty.
Now why is the lvl 12 roll so dreaded? The answer is actually very simple:
An Amazon wielding a WSM 10 bow (Hydra, Crusader, GMB) under the influence of a Faith (either her own or her mercenary's) needs 100% IAS to reach 7fpa if fanaticism rolled level 12 and 95% IAS if the roll is level 13 or higher.
It just so happens that you can get a maximum of exactly 95% IAS by using the glove, belt, helm and amulet slots together and that is assuming a 45% IAS helm and NO Razortail. This means that either your Bow or your Armor will have to provide the IAS in order for you to reach 7fpa. If your Bow does not provide any IAS (e.g. Faith) this means that you can't use Fortitude AND reach 7fpa at the same time.
If you use GSA you have an inherent 50% IAS and no problems reaching the needed IAS. For a Windforce you will have 20% on the Windforce so even if you do not socket it with more IAS you can still use Razortail AND Fortitude at the same time while reaching 7fpa.
Needless to say it's quite a lot harder to make a good 4os IAS body armor than to make a Fortitude.
***
My takeaway here is that it is a huge risk to make your first Faith in a WSM 10 bow if you do not have the runewealth to reroll. So the list of remaining bows for a first/'poor man's' faith is down to the WSM -10 and 0 bows excluding the Ward Bow, i.e. five bows remaining.
WSM -10 vs. 0
I will now compare those non-classspecific bows with WSM -10 to those with WSM 0 for an Amazon. Before I do this I want to note that the difference between min and max damage is 7 for Diamond and at least 20 for every other bow, so assuming a non-superior base the difference between mix and max after applying the On-weapon ED from Faith is 30,1 for Diamond and at least 86 for every other bow. This only becomes larger in a superior base. I do not know exactly what happens when min exceeds max damage but it won't matter in most cases because only the richest of the rich could ever afford to put 86 min damage on their equipment. So for the time being I assume that the max damage bonus on equip exceeds the min damage bonus.
If we want to compare the dps of WSM -10 and 0 bows we only need to compare the term:
Code:
aps*(avgbonus+(1+onweaponED/100)*avgbase)In order to get a Faith in a WSM -10 base to 7fpa you need 50%/45% IAS at Fana level 12-13/14-15. I can't imagine a scenario where you would not get that, so this is the fpa I will use for the WSM -10 calculations.
Similarly a Faith in a WSM 0 base reaches 8fpa at 35%/30% IAS if the Fana level is 12/13-15 and again I will take this as the absolute lowest fpa acceptable. Additionally it reaches 7fpa at 70%/65% IAS with Fana level 12-13/14-15. This is perfectly achievable with something like 35% Andi, 20% Gloves and 20% Amulet. (You can also use Giant Skull for the Knockback!
)The point I will attempt to make here is that a 7fpa Faith in a WSM -10 bow barely outdamages an 8fpa Faith in a WSM 0 bow. So even if you lack the equipment to get to 7fpa with a WSM 0 bow it is still better to avoid the WSM -10 base because a lucky drop can get you to the next IAS BP and hence significantly more dps while the WSM -10 base is maxed out for good and will never beat a 7fpa WSM 0 base anyway.
To facilitate things I assume that the bows in consideration are all superior with 15% ED. I only look at some of the possible average damage bonuses from equipment. Among them the baseline 0, the WT+Razor Combo 25, the same with eight 1.14d max dam GCs and then the same with eight 1.07 max dam GCs. For reference a GC can get up to 14 max dam in 1.14d and 40 in 1.07. The last value is just for science since the chances of having eight 40 maxdam GCs from 1.07 but not being able to hit 70% IAS from your equip are rather low
(Valkyrie Wing anyone?)View attachment 15171
Remember that to get the average bonus you have to divide all that maxdam from the GCs by 2
On the far right I calculated the dps for WSM -10 bows at 7fpa and the dps for WSM 0 bows at 8fpa. I then marked the lowest value in each column with red color and the highest value in green (everything in between is yellow). The values in the last row are obtained by dividing the highest WSM -10 value by the highest WSM 0 value.So you need a total of 320 max dam on top of your WT+Razortail combo just to make your 8fpa WSM -10 bow do 7% more damage than your 8fps WSM 10 bow. Case closed.
Looking at the value ('7fpa Great Bow dmg + avgbonus'/'8fpa Shadow Bow dmg + avgbonus')-1 one can see that it grows as avgbonus grows. It is bounded from above by its limit for avgbonus->infty which is (8/7)-1=1/7=1,14... and that in turn means that no matter how much avgbonus you stack on you will never get to 15% higher damage on your 7fpa WSM -10 bow compared to the 8fpa WSM 0 bow.
If this was too technical for you, check this out: I told excel to NOT display stuff after the decimal point and then to double check my results I wrote down the above ratio on a piece of paper using the incorrect values 142 and 165 from the +345% ED column. (they are higher than what's displayed of course)
I then proceeded to try and find out why the formula I came up with for the ratio did not agree with the values obtained in the spreadsheet. Took me way too long to figure that out ...
If this was too technical for you, check this out: I told excel to NOT display stuff after the decimal point and then to double check my results I wrote down the above ratio on a piece of paper using the incorrect values 142 and 165 from the +345% ED column. (they are higher than what's displayed of course)
I then proceeded to try and find out why the formula I came up with for the ratio did not agree with the values obtained in the spreadsheet. Took me way too long to figure that out ...
I would argue that this eliminates Blade and Great Bow for good if you want to use this on your Bowa.
Why did I not make the same argument for Mat Bow vs. GMB? The difference here is that due to the 'WSM 10 + lvl 12 Fana' combo you might very well be stuck with 8fpa on your GMB while in the WSM 0 case you can reach 7fpa even with a bad roll AND you get to keep your armor. I have no doubt in my mind that 8fpa GMB always outdamages 7fpa Mat Bow.
Conclusion
In my opinion I gave good arguments to disregard Spider, Blade, Great, Ward and Hydra bow altogether which means that there are only five options in total: Crusader+GMB in the WSM 10 category, Diamond+Shadow in the WSM 0 category and Mat Bow in the WSM -10 category.
So what did I pick? Well, I don't swim in Jah's so no Crusader/GMB for me. Also I want to use this on a Rogue for weird builds (or you know, go full Gripphon with an AS Java
) so no Mat Bow either. That leaves the choice between Diamond and Shadow where I landed on Diamond because it requires no extra Dex to equip for the Rogue at lvl 65. The damage difference here matters very little ultimately.I hope this settles the Faith base debate for good
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