a little excerpt from an article published September 17, 2001 on diabloii.net...
"One controversial item now is the Buriza-Do Kanyon, the Exceptional Unique Ballista. This isn't that hard to find, most any monster past Act Three in Nightmare can drop it, and it's enormously useful, due to the mammoth damage and other stats. If this were an Elite item it would be more balanced, but since the Buriza is a semi-common exceptional Xbow, and it's comparable in damage and performance to the virtually-impossible to find Elite Eaglehorn and Windforce, there is a point to be made.
Amazons using this are now so common and so powerful that they are being called Burizons, and are easily picked out in a game due to their using xbows, firing slowly, and killing everything in just a few shots.
While extremely useful for PvM, the Buriza is even more so in PvP play, used with something to slow the target, such as Cleglaw's Pinchers or Blackhorn's Face, it makes the target, once hit, virtually doomed. Many players are upset about how it's made dueling basically pointless, if there is a Bowazon with that set up in the game.
The other thing people are annoyed by is that the items needed for this are pretty easy to get, and cover up for other equipment that can be far less than ideal. To make a really successful dueling Barbarian or most other character types, all optimal equipment is required, with damage reduction and extra fast speed and high AR, etc. A Burizon can just raise her Dex and Penetrate and get some Cleglaw's Pincers and win 90% of the time by standing still and holding down the right click."
(this was published right after 1.09 came out (august 2001))