C4ph's Bow Shadow Compendium (Under Construction)

Based on Tyranthal's Fire Bow Shadow i started building a Bow Shadow and soon realized: I love the sound of frozen mobs dying.

Yes you are right, the sound of it is the only reason i felt giving an ice-bow shadow a shot. And Iit sone became my main tool, who rocks maps (highest I did was 66) easily at lvl 70!

Here is my current Build at lvl 70:

Current Build

Here are suggestions for leveling:

20 Passive Points
40 Passive Points
60 Passive Points

Estimated Build at lvl 80

It allows me to have a ton of cold damage, piercing and knockback on crit. Furthermore decent amounts of ES and ES Leech.

My Skill Setup currently is:

1. Left Klick: Frenzy for high single target damage (synergyses well with Blood Rage and the 2 additional Frenzy Charges)
2. Middle Click: Elemental Weakness, awesome for our purposes!
3. Right Click: Ice Shot (Main/signature skill of this Build)
Q: Bloodrage
W: Phase Run
E: Hatred
R: Discipline
T: Wrath


Gear

General thoughts:
- Focus on ES and EVA armour, pour ES must not be but is definitely more reliable than ES+EVA. Make sure you have at least 3k ES in total for comfortable playing.
- Flat Physical/Elemental Damage especially Cold and Lightning will boost your DPS heavily
- High Physical/Cold dmg Bow since Ice Shot converts physical damage into cold damage. This is more important than attackspeed since Ice Shot is mana Intense and we won't have endless mana to spend.
- Mana is the only bottleneck to this build, every bit of regen and +mana helps

My current Gear





Screenshots (With all 3 auras and 5 Frenzy Charges)

1. Offensive Stats with Ice Shot (3375dps * 3 projectiles)


2. Offensive Stats with Frenzy


3. Defensive Stats (Seems low? See "Gameplay section below")



Gameplay

Playing this character is pretty straight forward:

1. Activate your auras
2. Activate Bloodrage
3. Hit your enemies with Elemental Weakness
4. Shoot Ice Arrows to mass freeze/chill and destroy mobs
5. Use Frenzy for rare/unique mobs or those that don't die that fast
6. Repeat from step 3 onwards

With Elemental Proliferation, High colddamage, Knockback on Crit and Elemental Weakness mobs usually can't even get close to you. If they get too close, run away with phase run for repositioning, or hit one of your granite flask and/or the diamond flask to facetank and kill them.
The only situation that I ever felt entirely chanceless was in a temporal chains map vs. flicker strike mobs.

Usually Flicker Strike mobs are no problem if you keep your distance. Therefore I usually prefer outdoor maps or those indoor maps like Thicket or Grotto where the rooms are not to small. In case I am afraid of dying I sometimes (but rarely) Play in super safe mode, where I move for a few metres, shot Iceshot all around and kill mobs off-screen (boring but works). Please also note that I picked Arrow Dodging for improved Defense vs. ranged mobs!

Map Affixes that really hurt:
1. Temporal Chains (it just sucks since your survival is based on keeping the distance)
2. Elemental Reflection (You do about 75% Elemental Damage with Iceshot, If I play those maps I can usually shoot for 2-3 secs before i have to retreat to regen ES, and that sucks)
3. Blood Magic (If you want to play such a map as CI you can only autoattack and not use a single skill....simply don't play them)

Map Affixes that suck but that are manageable:
1. Vulnerability (Just be careful)
2. Enfeeble (Cut's your dps in half and ruins your leech)
3. Increased Cold Resistance (Slows you down, but thats it)


I hope you enjoyed this guide, and If you have any more questions just ask here or contact me ingame. I am always willing to assist!

Fun Fact: The distribution of the selected passive nodes create a shape of a bow :D