Point Blank Archer Keystone

Why not simply make it scale linearly all the way from +50% to -100%?

Because you wouldn't physically be able to get 50% more damage, and for a good distance you would still get decent bonuses without being very close at all.

If my attack is linked with chain or fork (in other words, a new projectile is spawned upon the original projectile hitting the target) will the range for point blank be calculated from my character to the second target, or from the first target to the second target?

Also, will the damage bonus apply to the AOE damage dealt by Lightning Arrow?

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yazzlecat wrote:

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Sairony wrote:

It will pretty much always be useless, the pros does not out weight the cons. The idea of making a melee ranger is currently not possible. Under all circumstances I can think of you would be better of just building a cleave mara ( because that is pretty much what you reduce yourself to if you're going to go this route ). Cleave mara will have a ton higher DPS, survivability etc.

Either make the bonus A LOT higher, like at least +200% increased, or completely remove the long range penalty.

This is, unfortunately, very true at the moment. At the higher difficulty levels my ranger can get quickly killed allowing monsters in close. Since the range to get increased damage is basically double melee (which is too close!), this is not worth it at all forget about adding in the long distance penalty.

I believe the fix for this is to allow this keystone to still grant additional damage to close range monsters, but no penalty for long range monsters.

(Note: Personally, I still would never grab this keystone even after it's fixed. It's all about attack speed, life leech, and damage - not about defense, evasion, or armor with a ranged char. Monsters get close, I die. End of story.) -- Again, talking about higher difficulty levels, not normal.

I agree. I made my bow dualist quite tanky. I have 56% physical dmg reduction before molten shell flasks and enduring cry. I have rejuv totem too and I basically "tank" with my brother who is playing a cold crit shadow caster.

Still, I think this is a poor keystone for me for several reasons. My job is basically to keep hard hitters at just enough distance from him. Against hard hitting mobs like kole, you don't face tank or ass tank and any intermediate distance is a hard hit. Armor scales poorly. Secondly, when you do get the chance to attack, it's far less frequent. Tanking doesn't just mean standing there and absorbing hits. It means kiting, facing the boss away from the group, and using traps to keep your distance.

Moreover, with the recent buffs to melee, a 50% dmg increase isn't enough. Not to mention that -100% at max range is a death sentence. Believe me, with the nerf to curses, specifically elemental weakness, I am looking for a reason to justify doing more physical dmg and less weapon elemental dmg, especially with the number of frenzy charges that I take. I've looked into crit, and now I've looked into point blank. But even being the perfect candidate to spec this, I can't justify making myself a pseudo-melee character. For starters, 2h weapons do more far more dmg than lionseye. Not to mention the "more" buff from melee dmg, splash dmg, and melee dmg on full life that you just can't compete with or take as a ranged character. Increased projectile speed can give you some range, but the dmg bonus of 19% at max level is atrocious. The time that you need the most dmg is when you need to stand at max range. The bonus should be more like 125% at close range, down to 67% at max distance, or 100% more dmg and double crit at close range. You could also say 80% more dmg at close range with double crit, and melee gems work at close range with positive dmg and crit multipliers. It would be worth it then because you could switch to traps when you needed to kite. But first, the devs need to figure out what to with melee to make them equal to ranged. I imagine fixing point blank is already on the list. If not, it seems blatantly obvious that it should be on the list.

As others have said, going up to monsters and shooting them point blank with a bow all the time is crazy. You might do it occasionally if a mob happens to get close to you, but in that case you'd use a Point Blank support gem so that you can have a strong point blank shot without messing up your usual long-range attack. If you're Point Blanking full time with a bow, you may as well play a melee character. (There is an argument for a point-blank wand build, since wands can theoretically do comparable damage to 1h melee weapons, but it is difficult to pull off given where the passives are.)

What *does* make sense though is to use Point Blank to make ranged attack totems, traps and mines stronger when the monsters walk right up to them. No real danger for you, but potentially lots of extra damage. So an Ancestral Bond ranged attack build could make some use of the Point Blank keystone.

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Incompetent wrote:

What *does* make sense though is to use Point Blank to make ranged attack totems, traps and mines stronger when the monsters walk right up to them.

I'm not sure if this still holds true, but i believe that even with totems, it's still based on the mobs distance to your character.

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Xendran wrote:

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Incompetent wrote:

What *does* make sense though is to use Point Blank to make ranged attack totems, traps and mines stronger when the monsters walk right up to them.

I'm not sure if this still holds true, but i believe that even with totems, it's still based on the mobs distance to your character.

Huh. I'd read that it was based on the spawn point of the projectile.

I just checked, it's based on the distance between the mob and the totem
It's fairly easy to try it out by yourself

This makes the keystone very valuable for a dual ranged attack totem archer.
I'm not sure I've seen one of those, yet. But might be worth experimenting with.

I've been using it for a while now with my LA marauder and I think I can safely say that the distance calculation is based on where the projectile spawns, not where your character stands. By utilizing chain or fork your secondary arrows will do max point blank damage when bouncing between two adjacent enemies, even if they are off-screen.