Rain of Arrows best AOE attack for bow?

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StealYourFace74 wrote:

If my thicket bow does 3-55 lightning damage and also has a stat that says 30% increased elemental damage with weapons, is that 30% already calculated into the 3-55 or is it an additional 30% to the 3-55?

3-55 lightning damage is your base damage which is then multiplied by the increased elemental damage.

Thanks again. Appreciate it.

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Thalandor wrote:

I find that RoA is better at start... but eventually I just run out of efficient ways to up the damage. There's added fire if you go physical, but that's not enough. There's WED if you go elemental, but that's inherently so inefficient considering the skill physical properties and mana cost of WED. Also you will need elemental damage gear to make good use of WED, which is not easy to get if you're a new player with no wealth. Then there's concentrated effect, but the radius reduction is annoying as fuck and you will want to increase it somehow... more investment in either passive, AoE support which will yet increase your mana cost a lot just to offset the bad side of conc effect...

Anyways, the point is that you will jump through hoops to make RoA work in mid/late game, and you end up with a skill that cost a million mana and does average damage.

RoA is probably the best physical AoE for bow right now in terms of raw physical damage (due to the armor forumla). Split Arrow comes in second and pretty much every other bow skill is better suited for elemental instead.

Carcass Jack
+
RoA
Conc Effect (69% more damage @lvl 20)
Added Fire
WED
Faster attacks
+
Hatred Aura
+
Point Blank (up to 50% more damage at close range)

So your 75% damage effectiveness on the physical RoA scales up with Conc Effect+Point Blank to (0.75*1.5*1.69) = 190% damage effectiveness per target (anything inside the aoe)

For comparison:

-Heavy Strike (150% effectiveness) is at 223% damage effectiveness with lvl 20 Melee Physical Damage. Single Target.

-LA with LMP+Chain is at 24.5% damage effectiveness (0.7*0.7*0.5) but can hit the same target up to 9 times (very rarely, because target cap per LA arrow is 4). So at maximum potential, you will be dealing 220.5% damage effectiveness BUT only against 4 targets. Conditions like distance between targets and number of targets will greatly decrease your damage potential per target. LA's efficiency comes from you being able to kill stuff off-screen better than any other skills. If fireball would explode each time it chained, it would have overshadowed LA by quite a large margin.

split arrow automatically kicks the shit out of RoA because it fires in a gigantic spread and can kill not only the entire screen at once, but screens over.

RoA just cannot and will not compete, ever, even remotely...unless the only thing you are comparing is tooltip DPS, which has pretty much zero relevance.

RoA is just too limited by it's circular damage spread. very weak.

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tikitaki wrote:

split arrow automatically kicks the shit out of RoA because it fires in a gigantic spread and can kill not only the entire screen at once, but screens over.

RoA just cannot and will not compete, ever, even remotely...unless the only thing you are comparing is tooltip DPS, which has pretty much zero relevance.

RoA is just too limited by it's circular damage spread. very weak.

So what supports would you suggest to use with Split Arrow?

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StealYourFace74 wrote:

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tikitaki wrote:

split arrow automatically kicks the shit out of RoA because it fires in a gigantic spread and can kill not only the entire screen at once, but screens over.

RoA just cannot and will not compete, ever, even remotely...unless the only thing you are comparing is tooltip DPS, which has pretty much zero relevance.

RoA is just too limited by it's circular damage spread. very weak.

So what supports would you suggest to use with Split Arrow?

Depends greatly on your build....But you almost always want the following:

Chain.
Life Leech OR Life Gain on Hit (there are a a number of factors that influence which one you get)
Added Fire Damage OR Weapon Elemental Damage

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tikitaki wrote:

split arrow automatically kicks the shit out of RoA because it fires in a gigantic spread and can kill not only the entire screen at once, but screens over.

RoA just cannot and will not compete, ever, even remotely...unless the only thing you are comparing is tooltip DPS, which has pretty much zero relevance.

RoA is just too limited by it's circular damage spread. very weak.

Yea, following that logic, since you can't off-screen with EK and Freezing Pulse therefore they suck compared to Fireball and Ice spear, right?

RoA works best for physical damage (armor formula). Split Arrow is the closest thing to a physical LA due to off-screening but your physical damage done will never compare to an amped up RoA.

Split Arrow/La for off-screen play (with thorns instant-death risk)
RoA for on screen high Damage Per Hit (DPH) AOE.

Good AOE does not equal off-screen-only. Derp.

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Zealflare wrote:

"

tikitaki wrote:

split arrow automatically kicks the shit out of RoA because it fires in a gigantic spread and can kill not only the entire screen at once, but screens over.

RoA just cannot and will not compete, ever, even remotely...unless the only thing you are comparing is tooltip DPS, which has pretty much zero relevance.

RoA is just too limited by it's circular damage spread. very weak.

Yea, following that logic, since you can't off-screen with EK and Freezing Pulse therefore they suck compared to Fireball and Ice spear, right?

RoA works best for physical damage (armor formula). Split Arrow is the closest thing to a physical LA due to off-screening but your physical damage done will never compare to an amped up RoA.

Split Arrow/La for off-screen play (with thorns instant-death risk)
RoA for on screen high Damage Per Hit (DPH) AOE.

Good AOE does not equal off-screen-only. Derp.

No, good AOE = good AOE.

Concentrated effect with RoA is not "good AOE."

It's small, bad aoe. it's a lot of damage in a small AoE radius.

Good AoE means efficiently dealing a large amount of damage over a wide area, something Split Arrow does the most efficiently out of any bow skill.

Thorns is a non-issue if you have Vaal Pact btw. ;)

In summary:

Two archers both with equivalent-valued gear....The one running Split Arrow will clear MUCH FASTER than the one running RoA - due to the nature of the skills in question.

If you don't have a Voltaxic...RoA is the way to go.

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tikitaki wrote:

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Zealflare wrote:

"

tikitaki wrote:

split arrow automatically kicks the shit out of RoA because it fires in a gigantic spread and can kill not only the entire screen at once, but screens over.

RoA just cannot and will not compete, ever, even remotely...unless the only thing you are comparing is tooltip DPS, which has pretty much zero relevance.

RoA is just too limited by it's circular damage spread. very weak.

Yea, following that logic, since you can't off-screen with EK and Freezing Pulse therefore they suck compared to Fireball and Ice spear, right?

RoA works best for physical damage (armor formula). Split Arrow is the closest thing to a physical LA due to off-screening but your physical damage done will never compare to an amped up RoA.

Split Arrow/La for off-screen play (with thorns instant-death risk)
RoA for on screen high Damage Per Hit (DPH) AOE.

Good AOE does not equal off-screen-only. Derp.

No, good AOE = good AOE.

Concentrated effect with RoA is not "good AOE."

It's small, bad aoe. it's a lot of damage in a small AoE radius.

Good AoE means efficiently dealing a large amount of damage over a wide area, something Split Arrow does the most efficiently out of any bow skill.

Thorns is a non-issue if you have Vaal Pact btw. ;)

In summary:

Two archers both with equivalent-valued gear....The one running Split Arrow will clear MUCH FASTER than the one running RoA - due to the nature of the skills in question.

Someone mentioned a carcass jack somewhere, carcass jack almost denies the aoe penalty of conc effect (2/3rds), if you've got aoe nodes around you can actually make it a positive increase.

Of course that means you are kind of stuck with carcass jack and have to learn aoe nodes, so pick your poison.