Diablo II: Plague Javelin / Lightning Fury Javazon Skill Layout

Guides for Amazons using Plague Javelin and Lightning Fury are not very abundant. There is one guide for PvP play, but none I could find that covered PvM specifically, although this guide would do fine in that regard.

The skill setup is as follows:

Jab - 1
Pierce - 1
Poison Javelin - 20
Plague Javelin - 20
Lightning Fury - 20
Valkyrie - 20

Valkyrie doesn't have to be maxed, but since I prefer a more durable tank and there isn't anywhere else to place the extra skillpoints they go into valkyrie. I like to provide a breakdown of when the points were allocated:

Jab - 1
Critical Strike - 1
Dodge - 1
Lightning Bolt - 1
Avoid - 1
Poison Javelin - 7

This brings us to character level 12 and Poison Javelin is doing decent damage, just very slowly. This is where the character is throwing javelins and then running around the screen for several seconds while the poisoned monsters chase her until they expire. The going is slow but steady.

Poison Javelin - 10
Inner Sight - 1
Slow Missile - 1
Plague Javelin - 1

At level 18 Plague Javelin finally becomes available and the damage output increases more sharply from here onwards. Plague Javelin also has a shorter poison length, causing the monsters to fall quicker and requiring less running around evading monster packs. At level 18 Andariel will be encountered; the catacombs will be a cakewalk compared to facing her.

Plague Javelin - 7
Evade - 1

Now at level 24 each point into Plague Javelin causes the monsters to fall faster and faster and most of Act II will be fairly simple, especially now with an Act II Desert mercenary to tank for the character. No longer does the character need to run away from monsters, simply let them swarm the mercenary and throw a javelin from time to time.

Decoy - 1
Plague Javelin - 13
Valkyrie - 1

At level 30 the ultimate tank becomes available, Valkyrie, taking some of the heat off of the mercenary and making the Act bosses much easier to deal with. At this point a desert mercenary is no longer required and and Act I or III mercenary may be hired for additional elemental damage.

Plague Javelin - 20

At level 37 Plague Javelin is maxed. It is doing a respectable amount of damage and monsters are starting to fall in one javelin throw, a theme that will continue through the first few Acts of Hell.

Valkyrie - 10
Penetrate - 1
Pierce - 1
Poison Javelin - 20

At level 56 Plague Javelin and its synergy are maxed, making a formidable weapon for the character. Poison resistant and immune monsters are starting to be encountered, so a backup is now needed.

Lightning Fury - 20

At level 74 all offensive skills are maxed and monster packs fall very quickly. An initial Plague Javelin is followed up by a few Lightning Fury strikes to eliminate the majority of the monsters, the few remaining ones succumb to poison soon afterwards. Bosses are still going to be difficult as neither offensive skills is designed for single opponents so the fights will be long. This is why it is better not to have a melee mercenary, the ranged ones last much longer and this saves resurrection fees.

Valkyrie - 20

By level 81 all of the skills are maxed. With plus skill bonuses the valkyrie should have around 3000 life, more than enough to tank almost anything in the game. The general gameplay for normal monsters is to allow them to surround the valkyrie and then use either Plague Javelin or Lightning Fury, depending on which type of immunity the monsters posses. Single monsters can be dealt with either a combination of the valkyrie, rogue mercenary and Jab or a single Plague Javelin. The only monsters that are immune to both offensive skills are the Black Souls of the WSK and monster bosses. This is where the rogue mercenary with elemental damage is extremely useful, equip her with a fast bow and she'll make short work of the souls, especially with the valkyrie drawing all of their fire.

For this type of build there aren't any equipment pieces that are vital, only a few that make progress much simpler. Titan's Revenge for a weapon and Trang's Gloves are the only two pieces that make a large impact to the effectiveness of this character. Questing is still possible without them, but the progress will be much slower and require far more patience and trips back to town. All other equipment is subjective to the player's playing style.

Diablo II: Matriarch Chiana

In a recent tournament I played a Plague Javelin / Lightning Fury Amazon. Due to extremely poor planning on my part, in other words no planning whatsoever, she had to drop out of the tournament. The restrictions of the competition required me to use elite gear in Hell, where I didn't meet the requirements to equip such gear. An hour clearing out the Blood Moor naked convinced me it wasn't worth the effort to continue, so I retired.

This travesty of course demanded some sort of redemption on my part, so Chiana was born. Played over the span of six months, due to interruptions to play additional tournaments, Chiana slogged her way to become a Matriarch. A few personal rules are put in place to keep the game interesting, namely that all characters are untwinkled unless a weapon is required to continue questing. Only when Hell is reached may items be twinkled on. This is to ensure no character becomes boring due to the ease of Normal/NM and that tactics are learned in these earlier levels to be used in Hell when they are truly needed.

The journey started off rather slow for Chiana, since Poison Javelin isn't the most damaging spell considering its time requirement. This means she was poking monsters with her starter javelin for quite a while or throwing Poison Javelins and then running around the screen wildly while poisoned monsters chased her. None of the normal monsters posed much of a threat to Chiana, only the act bosses and even then it wasn't so much a fear of death as length of time required to win the duel. For example Andariel eliminated the mercenary with a poison shot early and proceeded to chase Chiana round and round the blood pit in the second room. All the while Chiana would stop from time to time to throw Poison Javelins at Andariel and then continue running around the blood pool a bit more. The same tactics were used against all Normal and Nightmare bosses.

Hell was a different story, which was run at /p1 instead of the /p8 previously used. Chiana and her cold rogue mercenary was able to be twinkled at this point to offset the severely increased challenge that this difficulty produced. Progress was actually quicker in Hell than Normal / Nightmare due to the fact Plague Javelin and Lightning Fury were both maxed. I never quite understood why everyone was excited about Lightning Fury Amazons, I preferred to use Charged Strike / Lightning Strike instead. Now watching how quickly packs can be dealt with using LF I finally understand.

Nothing really withstood Chiana until she ran into very nasty stair trap in the Kurast Bazaar. Upon entering one of the temples she was greeted with triple boss back; 2 Wailing Beasts and 1 Black Rogue with one of the Wailing Beasts having the Fanaticism aura. She got off a few LF shots and a single PJ throw before being put into stun lock and then...death. I determined that a few PJ throws would finish off the rest; simply pop in, throw a javelin and then pop out. Well apparently I forgot that all my equipment was lying on the ground in the temple as Chiana popped in and for some reason couldn't throw a PJ. I was very confused when she died again, until I saw her spawn at the docks and she wasn't holding a javelin....oops. A quick purchase at the local store solved that issue and the remaining monsters were dealt with.

All other monsters and bosses were dealt with fairly easily, until Baal was encountered. The fight with Baal was an epic battle worth of song, dance and much consumption of recreational beverages. For fifteen grueling minutes Baal, his clone, Chiana, her rogue companion and the valkyrie slugged it out. Baal remained cloned for most of the battle, but Chiana was not to be intimidated and refused to retreat. As a result frost cones, mana draining breath and festering appendages filled the screen continuously. Chiana was actually able to keep her rogue companion alive for most of the battle, although I'm unsure how helpful she was overall. Plague Javelins slowly drained Baal's life while he and his clone teleported all over the chamber unleashing deadly havoc. Eventually he fell and Chiana gained her Matriarch title.

Stats:
Level 83
Strength - 50 (80)
Dexterity - 103 (141)
Vitality - 337 (337)
Energy - 15 (25)

Life - 1225 (1301)
Mana - 138 (221)

Lightning Resistance - 75
Fire Resistance - 75
Cold Resistance - 57
Poison Resistance - 63

Skills:
Jab - 1 (11)
Poison Javelin - 20 (30)
Plague Javelin - 20 (30)
Lightning Fury - 20 (30)
Pierce - 1 (9)
Valkyrie - 20 (28)
Decoy - 4 (12)

Equipment:
Weapon: Titan's Revenge
Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi (socketed with Pruby)
Shield: Lidless Wall (socketed with Pdiamond)
Boots: Fire Resist +40%, Lightning Resist +26%
Belt: Razortail
Gloves: Trang-Oul's Claws
Helm: +10 to Strength, +38 to Life, +101 to Attack Rating, All Resistances +17, +2 to Amazon Skill Levels, Poison Length Reduced by 75% (socketed with Pruby)
Ring 1: Lightning Resist +28%
Ring 2: Cold Resist +21%, Poison Resist +23%, 3% Mana stolen per hit
Amulet: +50 to Mana, Poison Resist +5%, 5% Mana stolen per hit, +2 to Amazon Skill Levels

Mercenary:
Helm: Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest
Armor: The Spirit Shroud
Weapon: Goldstrike Arch