We'll discuss gear, skills, breakpoints, and general gameplay ideas to ensure you’re prepared to tackle Hell’s minions.

I. Skills Breakdown

Primary Skill - Strafe

Put 20 points in Strafe, because this is your main damage-dealing skill. Strafe shoots multiple arrows rapidly, hitting multiple targets inside a line.

Put 20 points in Multishot, because this is the strongest damage synergize to strafe, and offers you a wide damage radius ability, helpful for areas such as the Cow Level.

Put 20 points in Guided Arrow, because this is another damage synergize. You will not be utilizing this frequently in PvM content because Strafe and Multishot are most of your skills.

Secondary Skills

Valkyrie (Up to 20 points): A powerful tanking companion that distracts enemies helping with crowd control. Valkyries become powerful, offering another damage soaker alongside your merc.

Pierce (10-15 points): A passive skill that boosts the chance of your arrows passing through enemies, dealing harm to multiple targets. 100% pierce ought to be easily attainable for beacons, using the right gear choices. Aim for this.

Critical Strike (10-15 points): Another passive skill that boosts the chance of dealing double damage together with your attacks. Players can buy D2R Ladder Items and d2 resurrected runes from a trustworthy shop like MMOWTS to gain access to powerful new abilities and strategies.

Utility Skills

Decoy (1 point): A dummy that distracts enemies, is beneficial in tough situations, or is an additional frontline shield.

Inner Sight (1 point): Lowers enemy defense, allowing you to hit them more reliably. An optional ability given you begin dealing damage offscreen and don’t require close-range damage buffs.

Slow Missiles (1 point): Slows enemy projectiles, offering some protection against ranged attacks. Useful if you're having survivability problems.

Dodge / Avoid / Evade, Any extra skill points should be used on these three fantastic defensive utility skills, further buffering your evasiveness. This is important given you’re very fragile, despite perfect items.

II. Gear Breakdown

Weapon: Windforce (Unique Hydra Bow) if you're using a Faith merc, or Faith (Rune Word) inside high damage, fast bow base. Grand Matron Bow, Matriarchal and Shadow bow bases are fantastic choices. Faith grants a Fanaticism aura, increasing your overall DPS and it is required to optimize this build.

Armor: Fortitude (Rune Word) or Chains of Honor (Rune Word). Fortitude offers more damage and resistances, while Chains of Honor provides additional resistances, life, and +2 to any or all skills. Fortitude can be viewed as the more widely chosen option given your relative safety at range.

Helmet: Andariel's Visage (Unique Demonhead) or Giant Skull (Unique Bone Visage).

Andariel's Visage offers increased attack speed, life steal, and +2 to any or all skills, while Giant Skull grants knockback and strength, in addition to 2 sockets for IAS/Damage jewels. Knockback is really a key mod for beacons because the animation when hitting minions provides you with extra leeway and time. A more expensive option is really a magic circlet with FRW or leech mod and 3 sockets. Use 3 Enhanced Damage and IAS jewels for the top damage choice.