Pros: Able to dodge attacks well, High attack rating, Usually fast attack speeds, Solid defense magic.
Cons: Some low damage rates, needs some careful attribute building,
This strategy takes through another side of the Amazon is good at, using the sword. Although you may think a Paladin or Barbarian is designed for this task, with careful attribute building you can have an effective sword-using amazon.
The skills:
Well first off you will want to get your critical strike rate to about 7 or 8 (or more if you have extra skills). This will help immensely since you have to type of thing as where you can boost attack damage. Then after you have gotten to that level start pumping at least 6 in dodge and 6 into evade. You also need to upgrade Inner Sight and Slow Missiles during that time. Penetrate will most likely the skill to upgrade later…as in normal you won't need a high attack rating to pass.
Using your defensive magic will be important if you want to be effective with your swords.
Inner Sight
The first magic you will need to learn is to get rid of that armor your foes have so you will want to pump about 4 points into Inner Sight. This combined with a high Critical Strike will kill almost anything that you see that paladin with a level 20 might can do…maybe even harder. Use this frequently, as you will need it. Place this as f1 and move on to f2.
Slow Missiles
A great skill if you are planning to go this route. Place about 3 skill points here it will help you greatly in act III where little fiends armed with blow darts might just be the end of you. It will also help later through nightmare, and hell difficulties. Use this as much as you do Inner Sight…if you see missile shooters.
Decoy/Valkerie
This shouldn't need any explanation just use these figures to soak up damage as you go in for the kill.
Stat Building/Weapon Choosing:
Well with the sword amazon you will need careful building in this area. The way I see it is you have two routes: the two-handed sword route, and the one-handed sword route. Choose one and follow:
Two-handed Swords
Going this route, you will be able to compare to those massive Paladins and Barbarians with the their oh-so lovely damage. But you will need to build up a crazy amount of strength and follow suit with a low vitality, and energy setting. Those sacrifices make up with your immense amount of strength, and dexterity. Use those swords that fancy you and you will want a sword that has lots of damage. Try skipping Charsi's Imbue option and when you find a regular great sword imbue it. You will be happy with what your get (unless you get a crappy rare…hehe).
One-handed Swords
This route you can probably focus on the all the skills and giving all of them 1 and the second switching them each level. Then you will be able to use a shield! A shield will help you greatly. I suggest using a kite shield because you won't have the stats by the end of normal…unless of course you get a sigon's gage and some other good strength increaing items. Since you will be using a weaker sword you can ditch a few Avoid/Dodge ponts(in place with a shield), and put it in the Inner Sight and Critical Strike options.
Armor
To get you to some good armor you will need to put on a few points in strength. Personally I think if you will be going the two-handed route you will have no hard time getting armor, and one-handed you will be using a weaker plate. But it really doesn't matter since you're only about 1 or 2 plate difference in what you use I wouldn't care much since you can always get a "sturdy" or "glorious" armor. Same thing goes with gauntlets, and greaves. Again, if you are the lucky one who finds good strength-enhancing items use them!
Conclusion:
This strategy is for those who like to be a little different and I suppose when I went out and made my one-handed sword amazon I was thinking different. Lady RamosaXOXO gave all the information on the two-handed sword amazon to me. So if you want that different side of building characters an amazon is great with using any weapon. Maybe I should take on making that potion-throwing Paladin everyone has been talking about! (err…maybe not)
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