Explosive Arrow

What actually affects how much damage the fuse charges do? +fire does. What about weapon elemental or weapon fire damage? Spell damage presumably doesn't since well, it's not a spell.


If anyone ever played a freezing arrow amazon in d2, I think you could use that as inspiration for an explosive arrow ranger. For those who didn't, the key concept was that a freezing arrow which pierced could catch the same monster in several explosions. In this case, combining explosive arrow with pierce and multiple projectiles. Unlike most AoE, the damage dealt scales quadratically with how many monsters you're hitting (rather than linearly) since if you hit 5 monsters with exploding arrow, each gets hit 5 times when the fuses expire (assuming they're clumped).


It's certainly a bit weak at the moment, but there are two supports which would be very powerful for a build like this. If you're using it as a single target skill without pierce or multiple projectiles I don't think it's being used nearly as well as it could be.

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dainbramage wrote:

Unlike most AoE, the damage dealt scales quadratically with how many monsters you're hitting (rather than linearly) since if you hit 5 monsters with exploding arrow, each gets hit 5 times when the fuses expire (assuming they're clumped).

Exactly. I'm glad someone else gets it. Who cares if it takes charges a second or so to go off when the damage can be mind-boggling with enough tightly-packed monsters?

I'm about to move into merciless with my new explosive arrow build. It's pretty much a copy of my old fire ranger (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W4lnUPRN94), only rebuilt as a witch with blood magic and tons of +health on hit gear. Well, it won't have the power charges, but that pretty much goes without saying and I mostly got those because it was hilarious.

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The skill seems decent if you build around it, although hardly fantastic.

The biggest problem i have with it currently, on my 32 templar built around it, is the mana cost. I'm spending 61 mana per use with 2 support gems, while still not doing a whole lot of damage. Either the mana cost needs to come way down, or the damage/aoe need to be improved a lot.

I've been using explosive arrow in my basic ranger. She's got some majorly stupid issues with mana cost while using this skill. It's not a poor skill damage wise but it must be spammed for it to be effective at all. The 21 base mana cost is absolutely ridiculous. Considering that you want me to stack it on a mob for maximum damage.

The main issue I have with this skill and many others though is that when I miss I still lose the mana. Sometimes it also feels like it should have hit, should have placed a charge on the mob, but did nothing and still takes my mana.

Either way this skill is an extreme mana hog and I could never imagine using it with support gems. At least poison arrow only needs casts once and can be utilized with kiting. Explosive arrow kiting goes something like this,

"Shoot arrow -> charge placed -> another mob takes over your line of sight -> oh fuck -> start over -> waste mana -> not achieving maximum damage -> try to focus on one mob -> oh shit another got in the way -> start over."

I need some clarification from GGG on some things related to this skill.

My entire character is built around this and I don't want to put in a lot of work if it just plain doesn't work.

I equip a "3% Increased Fire Damage" amulet but Explosive Arrow's tooltip doesn't change.

It still says "38-57 Base Fire Damage per Fuse Charge"

So, do +% Increased Fire Damage on gear and +% Increased Fire Damage passives actually boost the explosion damage? If not, it needs to, and it needs to say so on the tooltip, since it doesn't show up in the character sheet at all...

I really want to give this skill an honest try with a build centered around it, but if +% Increased Fire Damage doesn't boost it then it's completely pointless. If it does, it really needs to actually show me a number somewhere saying what is actually working to increase it. It's really frustrating.

A couple other things:

I would also be curious to know if Elemental Hit's added damage is increased by +% elemental damage types (it also doesn't update tooltip and can't be checked in character sheet), and

If +% Increased Fire Damage works but just doesn't display, then does +% Increased Elemental Damage with Weapons also work with Explosive Arrow?

Thanks,
Daniel J.P.

Thanks for the reply Mark! It makes perfect sense now.

I think in the distant future it would be really nice to be able to see proper DPS values for ALL skills.

If that means showing separate entries in the character skill sheet for something like...

Fuse Charge Explosion Damage
1 Charge: xxx
2 Charges: xxx
3 Charges: xxx

...then so be it. It would be worth the benefit of actually being able to compare my damage with other players (and actually know what's affected the damage).

Does Added Chaosdamage or other flat damage support gems work on a per-Fuse basis?

The mana cost of this skill is absolutely ridonkulous.
I have it on level 11 atm and it uses 34 mana. 112 mana if linked with multi pro, added fire dmg and added ele. dmg.
Elemental Hit level 12 uses 19 mana, 62 if linked with the mentioned supports. Level 10 Frenzy 16/52.

Got 138% increased mana reg atm, spamming pots and using Warlord's Mark constantly, yet still running out of mana pretty damn fast.

SUP?