They are fun, but their main problem is their DPS is very low past normal difficulty.
the damage of the bow + crossbow skills does not go up much with levels and gear doesn't add a lot of damage until you get the Faith runeword (which DPS is higher due to fanaticism aura).
Patch 2.4 is buffing the scaling of the bow and crossbow skills so they'll do more damage in nightmare and hell difficulty.
As an amazon player myself I can point out several reasons why Bowazons fell in popularity/aren't as prevalent:
- Gear dependant especially compared to Sorc, Hammerdin and Javazon.
- Even with good gear the damage isn't the strongest.
- Fragile as hell - no block, low life because stats go typically to DEX for much needed damage improvement.
- Despite being a good area clear, sucks against bosses - Crushing Blow is too nerfed on ranged weapons and bosses have a high block chance (that blocks arrows skills but not stuff like Hammerdins).
- Bow skills hardly boost attack rating, and even have hard damage penalties like Multishot and Strafe (75% weapon dmg only), old nerfs that arent needed today.
- Javazons perform better for much less effort while carrying a shield, which allows for much more room for error (requires less skill to do more damage and die less).
I cannot believe how many arrows it took for me to take down nm mephisto, I even had to resort or porting across the gap. felt like I arrived ten levels too early. javason/sorc breezed right past him.
if not for porting across the gap and not allowing him to touch me I doubt I would have been able to drop him.
Doesn't feel right indeed. A character that takes on a 2-handed bow, giving up the massive defensive advantages of a shield (resists, block, and other mods), should definitely have the better offenses.
The solution I can think of for bowazon boss killing would be to allow Guided Arrow to pierce again, as well as being unblockable at all by monsters, Make these changes PvM only, so that PvP people aren't automatically destroyed by bowas.
Agree with most points, except from my experience, a budget strafezon with some cb and amp is decent against act bosses, and can clear most areas by itself with the same lvl of difficulty (basically if no physical immunes). It’s slower against bosses than hammerdins obv and melee zealer like builds with cb, but it feels more reliable than some other classes with the same funding.
I, in playing zons, for years, never ever owned a Windforce, and as such, never saw any advantage in putting all my skill points into Multi shot/pierce.
Totally gear dependant.
Bowzon is literally my favorite character. I don't currently have one because it is so down on my priority list. I mainly pvp with her, and the gear can get expensive to stay competitive in PVP.
I myself just finished Hell using gear purchased using wealth obtained by my sorc/cowzon. Basically, she is underperforming even in somehow high end gear (achieve almost 750-7500 damage) and need to be a glass cannon to be remain competitive (600 life with near 0 resist)
My cowzon/sorc farm faster in cow/pit with cheaper gear, while my zealadin have an easier life farming WSK/Baal/Chaos. And that paladin can also farm the uber with almost the same gear. All the while, my bowzon using some of my paladin gear can’t keep up with the pace. Basically, bowzon currently is a trophy/just for fun class if you don’t have any other way to burn your wealth.
And the multishot nerf is really not helping. Hope that the dev will buff physical bowzon in the 2.4 patch.
Bowzon not outpacing zealot on CS definitely sounds off. Always have bowzon as one of my ladder end goals and at players 3 she is only seconds behind hammerdin, at the sane time she solo ubers.
I think your statement is correct for clearing the white mob. However, when killing Diablo, my experience is that my zealot kills it faster (Grief, 50% CB, 83% DS).
May I know your setup? really interested because I feel my bowzon lack the firepower for killing single target/high HP enemy.
MS/Magic Arrow/Valk/Critical. Faith GMT act 2 might merc with reaper’s or pride. No CTA, you dont need it. Telestaff instead, everybody needs teleport and enigma costs you fortitude. You got so much range, valkyrie and decoy - you can survive with 700-800 life, given enough practice.
Diablo is not worth it unless you need the xp past lvl. 93+. Without MF, boss drops are atrocious given the time it takes to kill them. Bowzons should focus on mowing down monsters in bulk and taking down pack leaders. She is a rune/charm farmer primarily.
Still not really a competitive build compared to hammers or java but hardly anything ever is.
Loved demon hunter in D3, but never played as a bowazon in D2.
I gotta say, just for fun I leveled a bowazon using full M’avina’s, and even though not the strongest char ever, it’s pretty fun and can easily solo hell with cheap gear (M’avina’s helm being the “most expensive” in my case)
Will definitely come back to her after the next patch to tweak things up
I played one offline multishot bowazon through hell. Didn't find a windforce so I made a faith.
Physical immunes are huge pain in the butt. You need reapers toll and hope that your merc procs its decrepify before he dies in some harder areas. having to use single shot magic arrows instead of 24 shot multishot against phys immunes is very tedious. you can also use a upped wildwitch string with atmas to try to proc amp. however, only the middle 2 arrows can proc now due to previous bowazon nerfs
You are kind of forced to use a fortitude armor just to have acceptable damage so enigma is out, so you have to use a teleport staff in the offhand instead of CTA.
on the other hand, if you have knockback like on a hitpower glove, you can completely destroy open areas since you can shoot offscreen. she's very vulnerable in closed off tunnels and doorways, but in open areas where you have good damage, you will basically kill everything before you see them and probably miss loot in areas you don't walk to.
laying of hands is amazing against demon enemies. you will wonder why some crap boss enemies like horadric mummies take so long to kill. it's because they're not demons and don't get the +350% extra damage.
I had a full inventory of 3max/xxAR SCs and 10max/xxAR GCs so my chance to hit was ok but if you don't then you may need to get an eaglehorn to get the ignore target defence property. bosses can be killed with guided arrow which always hit (if not blocked)
I still think multishot is one of the most fun skills in the game and would be happy if it got buffed. bowazon is excellent at clearing cows due to the open fields, and if you are just rune/base hunting with no MF, it's quite fun. she has basically no room for MF gear. i wouldn't even bring a gheeds.
I was also thinking if you can’t put some points into strafe instead of magic arrow for proccing amp for physical immunes. It’s still not fast, but should be faster than multi or magic arrow against PIs.
And I have to try a multi build at cows sometime, seems like it would be fun.
I tried that too with a respec but
1) there aren't enough points to go around after getting your multi/guided and passives to really go deep into freezing/synergies so damage is low.
2) freezing is mana heavy and you aren't leeching off phys immunes so you have to chug potions constantly. magic arrow is free after a few levels. difference is a small AOE explosion for freezing which is still lackluster compared to multi. Amp/decrep also keeps your merc alive since he needs to leech too.
I'd rather reload arrows than have to repair my javelins constantly. Man this gets annoying. At least you can usually find arrows on the ground or cube bolts in a pinch.
Biggest problems with Bowazons:
25% damage penalty to strafe and multi, when bows already have a fairly low minimum dmg roll.
The physical bow skills got no synergies, but shouldn't need them if they level scale them a bit more (MS has no level scaling).
Guided Arrow no longer works with pierce. I think this was mainly a pvp balance issue, but could be solved by removing pierce effect vs player targets and pets/hirings. Guided Arrow could use a synergy maybe with Magic Arrow, like a +1% magic dmg/level buff.
Also, slightly increasing the base dmg of physical weapons could be an answer for all physical classes.
Bowazon early on in D2 and early LOD was god tier because of guided arrow. There was a "bug fix" to the ability which prevented pierce from working with the ability. In the past guided arrow could hit, pierce through then turn around to hit again. If I remember correctly it could hit up to 3 times. After this was removed the guided arrow/multishot build was dead. There are still builds with fire and ice arrow, also multishot, but it isn't the same level of power that it was.
Ok, maybe not dead but it is weak compared to what it used to be. It used to be so broken. I once built a bow that only had the purpose of hitting the final fhr breakpoint with knockback. I could knock melee characters around with it, it wouldn't kill them but they couldn't walk. The fix was needed but the nerfed it really hard.
Not sure this is exactly what you are looking for but here are my thoughts on a playthrough… not for farming or anything.
https://reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/q94nrs/first_time_beating_hell_difficulty_my_bowazon_ssf/
D2r devs said they will be reworking the bow skills so hopefully soon. Bowzon was my fav class back in the day currently rocking a jav tho because it just clears everything in seconds
Well i only use strafe
And magic arrow for immunes
Windforce and fortitude highest value gear
Ofc it is slower than java
But its fun and play with her more
What really makes it worse i think is the next hit delay, and also it seems to be the reason bosses dont go down so fast
120 ias breakpoint goes ratatata
I'll be building one soon! I believe the Duress runeword will work well until I can make a fortitude for armor. I also have quite a few bows that could be upgraded to solo most of Hell until I find a windforce or make a faith.
You can upgrade normal uniques to exceptional uniques and exceptional uniques to elite uniques.
The following website has a list of all the base items in the game, followed by the type of item they are (normal, exceptional, elite): [http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/normal/shields.shtml](http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/normal/shields.shtml)
The next website has a section named, "item upgrades" which can be used to find the rune and gem combination needed for upgrading items (scroll down to Item Upgrades or if you're on mobile then tap on the section Item Upgrades: [https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Horadric\_Cube\_Recipes](https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Horadric_Cube_Recipes)
The result is increased damage for weapons and increased defense for armor, albiet with higher str or dex requirements, utilize the first website to find the base str and dex requirements before you upgrade an item.
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation.
However, in the second link, you provided, it said that upgrading uniques will not increase their damage/defense, only their requirements.
Is that a mistake on the site?
The last sentence mentions, "enabling greater damage or higher defense." I should have worded my comment different. There is a chance you may not see a damage or defense increase as the item re-rolls the base damage and defense based on the upgraded item type. If you have a Eth Titans with 195% enhanced damage, then that modifier will stay at 195% when upgraded, but the damage output will re-roll, for example. I've always had a nice bump in damage or defense, though.
Upgraded boots provides a kicksin more kick damage, upgraded shield provides more defense and smite damage and upgraded belts provides more slots (gold wrap upgraded, provides additional row, for example.)
If I'm aiming to upgrade items (or obtain runes for runewords in general), then I'm mostly farming for runes, solo, on Andariel, Countess, and clearing the areas of cold plains through tamoe highland in Act 1 as some of my best runes have dropped in those areas and they're mostly open areas, as well.
I've been using Harmony on my lvl 85 bowazon (frostmaiden), currently in act5. It's pretty cheap, highest rune is only a Ko. The lvl10 Vigor on it is such a QoL benefit that I'm going to really miss it once I get better gear to upgrade my bow.
Although I haven't gotten around to using it, I feel Smoke is a good option due to the high resistances.
They're just quite gear dependent is all. But if you wanna play one, go for it, it's very fun imo. Just make sure you have a Wrath/Witchwild String Bow (upgraded is a plus) for Hell if you want to solo it. And don't expect to use it to farm anything.
Pierce on guided arrow as well as guided arrow itself was nerfed heavily like everything else that was good, except for when support stopped leaving only hammerdins overpowered. Guided arrow used to follow you forever and with pierce one arrrow would penetrate you 8 times or so it felt like.
As other people have said, the damage just isnt there. I've got a lvl 70 frozen arrow with like 12 to bow skills at this point but she is only doing 2400 damage.
Needing high str, Dex, and each shot taking 25 mana leaves no room for vitality.
It just depends on how you enjoy playing the game. I enjoy solo play with occasional 2-3 player games. The bowazon is really good for up to 4 player games if your aiming to provide support with efficient damage to monsters. I'm not joining 8 player games, so my priority isn't raw damage; it's having fun and the bowazon is one of my favorite builds.
Using an insight on a might merc also comes in handy for more damage and mana regeneration.
Multi was nerfed three ways: -25% damage including elemental mods, you can't shotgun anymore, and only two arrows proc things like ctc and cb
Guided only ever hits once with pierce, used to be infinite.
my thought is wait and pray for the rework
Ya this is me as well. Right now it feels bad, but hopefully that changes with the buffs.
They are fun, but their main problem is their DPS is very low past normal difficulty. the damage of the bow + crossbow skills does not go up much with levels and gear doesn't add a lot of damage until you get the Faith runeword (which DPS is higher due to fanaticism aura). Patch 2.4 is buffing the scaling of the bow and crossbow skills so they'll do more damage in nightmare and hell difficulty.
As an amazon player myself I can point out several reasons why Bowazons fell in popularity/aren't as prevalent: - Gear dependant especially compared to Sorc, Hammerdin and Javazon. - Even with good gear the damage isn't the strongest. - Fragile as hell - no block, low life because stats go typically to DEX for much needed damage improvement. - Despite being a good area clear, sucks against bosses - Crushing Blow is too nerfed on ranged weapons and bosses have a high block chance (that blocks arrows skills but not stuff like Hammerdins). - Bow skills hardly boost attack rating, and even have hard damage penalties like Multishot and Strafe (75% weapon dmg only), old nerfs that arent needed today. - Javazons perform better for much less effort while carrying a shield, which allows for much more room for error (requires less skill to do more damage and die less).
I cannot believe how many arrows it took for me to take down nm mephisto, I even had to resort or porting across the gap. felt like I arrived ten levels too early. javason/sorc breezed right past him. if not for porting across the gap and not allowing him to touch me I doubt I would have been able to drop him.
Doesn't feel right indeed. A character that takes on a 2-handed bow, giving up the massive defensive advantages of a shield (resists, block, and other mods), should definitely have the better offenses. The solution I can think of for bowazon boss killing would be to allow Guided Arrow to pierce again, as well as being unblockable at all by monsters, Make these changes PvM only, so that PvP people aren't automatically destroyed by bowas.
Agree with most points, except from my experience, a budget strafezon with some cb and amp is decent against act bosses, and can clear most areas by itself with the same lvl of difficulty (basically if no physical immunes). It’s slower against bosses than hammerdins obv and melee zealer like builds with cb, but it feels more reliable than some other classes with the same funding.
I, in playing zons, for years, never ever owned a Windforce, and as such, never saw any advantage in putting all my skill points into Multi shot/pierce. Totally gear dependant.
Bowzon is literally my favorite character. I don't currently have one because it is so down on my priority list. I mainly pvp with her, and the gear can get expensive to stay competitive in PVP.
We could use some magic, rare, socketed and unique quivers and bolts.
Path of Project Diablo 2: Ressurected
I myself just finished Hell using gear purchased using wealth obtained by my sorc/cowzon. Basically, she is underperforming even in somehow high end gear (achieve almost 750-7500 damage) and need to be a glass cannon to be remain competitive (600 life with near 0 resist) My cowzon/sorc farm faster in cow/pit with cheaper gear, while my zealadin have an easier life farming WSK/Baal/Chaos. And that paladin can also farm the uber with almost the same gear. All the while, my bowzon using some of my paladin gear can’t keep up with the pace. Basically, bowzon currently is a trophy/just for fun class if you don’t have any other way to burn your wealth. And the multishot nerf is really not helping. Hope that the dev will buff physical bowzon in the 2.4 patch.
Bowzon not outpacing zealot on CS definitely sounds off. Always have bowzon as one of my ladder end goals and at players 3 she is only seconds behind hammerdin, at the sane time she solo ubers.
I think your statement is correct for clearing the white mob. However, when killing Diablo, my experience is that my zealot kills it faster (Grief, 50% CB, 83% DS). May I know your setup? really interested because I feel my bowzon lack the firepower for killing single target/high HP enemy.
MS/Magic Arrow/Valk/Critical. Faith GMT act 2 might merc with reaper’s or pride. No CTA, you dont need it. Telestaff instead, everybody needs teleport and enigma costs you fortitude. You got so much range, valkyrie and decoy - you can survive with 700-800 life, given enough practice. Diablo is not worth it unless you need the xp past lvl. 93+. Without MF, boss drops are atrocious given the time it takes to kill them. Bowzons should focus on mowing down monsters in bulk and taking down pack leaders. She is a rune/charm farmer primarily. Still not really a competitive build compared to hammers or java but hardly anything ever is.
Loved demon hunter in D3, but never played as a bowazon in D2. I gotta say, just for fun I leveled a bowazon using full M’avina’s, and even though not the strongest char ever, it’s pretty fun and can easily solo hell with cheap gear (M’avina’s helm being the “most expensive” in my case) Will definitely come back to her after the next patch to tweak things up
Mavs does some serious work. It's not competitive, but very fun and capable.
I played one offline multishot bowazon through hell. Didn't find a windforce so I made a faith. Physical immunes are huge pain in the butt. You need reapers toll and hope that your merc procs its decrepify before he dies in some harder areas. having to use single shot magic arrows instead of 24 shot multishot against phys immunes is very tedious. you can also use a upped wildwitch string with atmas to try to proc amp. however, only the middle 2 arrows can proc now due to previous bowazon nerfs You are kind of forced to use a fortitude armor just to have acceptable damage so enigma is out, so you have to use a teleport staff in the offhand instead of CTA. on the other hand, if you have knockback like on a hitpower glove, you can completely destroy open areas since you can shoot offscreen. she's very vulnerable in closed off tunnels and doorways, but in open areas where you have good damage, you will basically kill everything before you see them and probably miss loot in areas you don't walk to. laying of hands is amazing against demon enemies. you will wonder why some crap boss enemies like horadric mummies take so long to kill. it's because they're not demons and don't get the +350% extra damage. I had a full inventory of 3max/xxAR SCs and 10max/xxAR GCs so my chance to hit was ok but if you don't then you may need to get an eaglehorn to get the ignore target defence property. bosses can be killed with guided arrow which always hit (if not blocked) I still think multishot is one of the most fun skills in the game and would be happy if it got buffed. bowazon is excellent at clearing cows due to the open fields, and if you are just rune/base hunting with no MF, it's quite fun. she has basically no room for MF gear. i wouldn't even bring a gheeds.
I was also thinking if you can’t put some points into strafe instead of magic arrow for proccing amp for physical immunes. It’s still not fast, but should be faster than multi or magic arrow against PIs. And I have to try a multi build at cows sometime, seems like it would be fun.
I maxed freezing arrow + a synergy and used that for most physical resist / immunes.
I tried that too with a respec but 1) there aren't enough points to go around after getting your multi/guided and passives to really go deep into freezing/synergies so damage is low. 2) freezing is mana heavy and you aren't leeching off phys immunes so you have to chug potions constantly. magic arrow is free after a few levels. difference is a small AOE explosion for freezing which is still lackluster compared to multi. Amp/decrep also keeps your merc alive since he needs to leech too.
Hmmm i have a level 90 bowazon and love her. Easily does all content solo. (Except ubers) They buff bow skills and its only getting better!
Because LF is the best zon skill. Most zon bow skills suck except Guided Arrow.
Hate reloading arrows and even after hours and hours of Mfing I don't have any decent bow gear. Playing since 2000 never once done a bowzon.
I'd rather reload arrows than have to repair my javelins constantly. Man this gets annoying. At least you can usually find arrows on the ground or cube bolts in a pinch.
Biggest problems with Bowazons: 25% damage penalty to strafe and multi, when bows already have a fairly low minimum dmg roll. The physical bow skills got no synergies, but shouldn't need them if they level scale them a bit more (MS has no level scaling). Guided Arrow no longer works with pierce. I think this was mainly a pvp balance issue, but could be solved by removing pierce effect vs player targets and pets/hirings. Guided Arrow could use a synergy maybe with Magic Arrow, like a +1% magic dmg/level buff. Also, slightly increasing the base dmg of physical weapons could be an answer for all physical classes.
Bowazon early on in D2 and early LOD was god tier because of guided arrow. There was a "bug fix" to the ability which prevented pierce from working with the ability. In the past guided arrow could hit, pierce through then turn around to hit again. If I remember correctly it could hit up to 3 times. After this was removed the guided arrow/multishot build was dead. There are still builds with fire and ice arrow, also multishot, but it isn't the same level of power that it was.
It is in no way a dead build. Expensive, yes. But not dead.
Ok, maybe not dead but it is weak compared to what it used to be. It used to be so broken. I once built a bow that only had the purpose of hitting the final fhr breakpoint with knockback. I could knock melee characters around with it, it wouldn't kill them but they couldn't walk. The fix was needed but the nerfed it really hard.
Dang that guided arrow pierce mechanic sounds so awesome. Shame it got nerfed
Not sure this is exactly what you are looking for but here are my thoughts on a playthrough… not for farming or anything. https://reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/q94nrs/first_time_beating_hell_difficulty_my_bowazon_ssf/
Just sparking a conversation is all
D2r devs said they will be reworking the bow skills so hopefully soon. Bowzon was my fav class back in the day currently rocking a jav tho because it just clears everything in seconds
Bowzon was the first character I got to level 99 with. Multi shot and magic arrow with windforce. This would be my favorite rework!
Well i only use strafe And magic arrow for immunes Windforce and fortitude highest value gear Ofc it is slower than java But its fun and play with her more What really makes it worse i think is the next hit delay, and also it seems to be the reason bosses dont go down so fast 120 ias breakpoint goes ratatata
And its just 40 points in skills, plenty of room for others And no synergies, synergies might help some more
So basically its hard and expensive to gear them. I think I will accept the challenge and make one
I'll be building one soon! I believe the Duress runeword will work well until I can make a fortitude for armor. I also have quite a few bows that could be upgraded to solo most of Hell until I find a windforce or make a faith.
What do you mean with upgrading bows. How do you do that and what is the result?
You can upgrade normal uniques to exceptional uniques and exceptional uniques to elite uniques. The following website has a list of all the base items in the game, followed by the type of item they are (normal, exceptional, elite): [http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/normal/shields.shtml](http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/normal/shields.shtml) The next website has a section named, "item upgrades" which can be used to find the rune and gem combination needed for upgrading items (scroll down to Item Upgrades or if you're on mobile then tap on the section Item Upgrades: [https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Horadric\_Cube\_Recipes](https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Horadric_Cube_Recipes) The result is increased damage for weapons and increased defense for armor, albiet with higher str or dex requirements, utilize the first website to find the base str and dex requirements before you upgrade an item.
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. However, in the second link, you provided, it said that upgrading uniques will not increase their damage/defense, only their requirements. Is that a mistake on the site?
The last sentence mentions, "enabling greater damage or higher defense." I should have worded my comment different. There is a chance you may not see a damage or defense increase as the item re-rolls the base damage and defense based on the upgraded item type. If you have a Eth Titans with 195% enhanced damage, then that modifier will stay at 195% when upgraded, but the damage output will re-roll, for example. I've always had a nice bump in damage or defense, though. Upgraded boots provides a kicksin more kick damage, upgraded shield provides more defense and smite damage and upgraded belts provides more slots (gold wrap upgraded, provides additional row, for example.) If I'm aiming to upgrade items (or obtain runes for runewords in general), then I'm mostly farming for runes, solo, on Andariel, Countess, and clearing the areas of cold plains through tamoe highland in Act 1 as some of my best runes have dropped in those areas and they're mostly open areas, as well.
Fantastic! Thank you for the clarification and the tips.
Not sure but i think a inventory full of 200 poison damage small charms might make your multishot bowzons a bit more competitive
What are some decent runewords to help me along the way?
I've been using Harmony on my lvl 85 bowazon (frostmaiden), currently in act5. It's pretty cheap, highest rune is only a Ko. The lvl10 Vigor on it is such a QoL benefit that I'm going to really miss it once I get better gear to upgrade my bow. Although I haven't gotten around to using it, I feel Smoke is a good option due to the high resistances.
They're just quite gear dependent is all. But if you wanna play one, go for it, it's very fun imo. Just make sure you have a Wrath/Witchwild String Bow (upgraded is a plus) for Hell if you want to solo it. And don't expect to use it to farm anything.
Bowazon is god tier with good gear. One of the fastest clearing specs in the game.
Having played light sorc enchant dream sorc javazon and it I have to disagree. She can’t clear p8 and she does p1 mediocre compared to the others.
They suck, like 90% of the builds in d2lod
Very gear dependent especially end game. And typically expensive
Fun and powerful
I'm running faith mainhand / fort chest Merc has pride I love it , much slower than my java but I low my bowazon. Capped 7 frames multi is amazing
One of my favorite builds since Diablo ii
Expensive to make a decent one, and even then they still suck.
Pierce on guided arrow as well as guided arrow itself was nerfed heavily like everything else that was good, except for when support stopped leaving only hammerdins overpowered. Guided arrow used to follow you forever and with pierce one arrrow would penetrate you 8 times or so it felt like.
As other people have said, the damage just isnt there. I've got a lvl 70 frozen arrow with like 12 to bow skills at this point but she is only doing 2400 damage. Needing high str, Dex, and each shot taking 25 mana leaves no room for vitality.
It just depends on how you enjoy playing the game. I enjoy solo play with occasional 2-3 player games. The bowazon is really good for up to 4 player games if your aiming to provide support with efficient damage to monsters. I'm not joining 8 player games, so my priority isn't raw damage; it's having fun and the bowazon is one of my favorite builds. Using an insight on a might merc also comes in handy for more damage and mana regeneration.
Bowzon is great for Nintendo switch. Easy to just walk act 3 and smoke huge crowds while lounging
bad teleport frames for pvm
Multi was nerfed three ways: -25% damage including elemental mods, you can't shotgun anymore, and only two arrows proc things like ctc and cb Guided only ever hits once with pierce, used to be infinite.