Ice Shot vs LA vs Split Arrow
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Hello, im a Crit Bow Ranger lvl 61. I use Frenzy as single target skill and Split Arrow.
In lvl 60 I started testing LA and Ice Shot. I found out that Split Arrow has the most DPS between these 3 skills. Am I wrong? I really liked LA, but I cant see the advantage over Split Arrow. Can someone explain that? why is LA so popular? And last, I found Ice Shot really, really good. Better DPS over LA, and the slow effect it has on monsters its nice. I only cast proj weakness, no need for temporal chains. Why is Ice Shot so unpopular? what am I missing here? |
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on critical LA applies shock stacks on the target. Although Iceshot has a bit more initial dps, LA has a higher damage potential because of the shock status ailment. a target can have up to 3 shock stats, each shok stack increases all damage done to the target by 30% up to a max of 90%.
Additionally, because of the nature of LA, LA has tremendous synergy with elemental damage and gems such as "Life On Hit" Split arrow is unique in that it has the lowest mana cost out of all these gems and only requires a quality pierce gem and the pierce node from the tree to do significant aoe. As such you have more room to use damage gems, more effectiveness with less gems, and less of a damage because you don't need gems such as gmp and lmp, fork and chain. Iceshot has the highest mana cost out of all 3 gems and has a huge problem with elemental reflect. If you read the gem you will notice that by the end of the skill effect, all of the intial physical damage is converted to elemental damage by the end of the effect. However this makes WED very good for the gem. People usually choose whats good for them. Do no go directly off the dps numbers because they can be misleading ;). hope this helps IGN: Omjak
"THIS WORLD... IS AN ILLUSION EXILE". |
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Thanks a lot Omjak!
More opinions are welcome! Last edited by Javaleus#3307 on Dec 5, 2013, 9:21:39 AM
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Ice shot is indeed very good in cases where you would need to move, it gains you time not to move since enemies are slowed / frozen.
I have personally investigated all 3 options playing different HC leagues. I was using blood magic passive in all of my builds I think. I can say that Ice shot is severely underrated - especially the variant with chain gem. That variant had performance issues problems (Radical FPS drop down when used) - I don't know whether this problem has been fixed yet. The problem with ele reflect for Ice shot with LMP, chain, life gain on hit is virtually non-existent. :-) LA is very fast if you can really manage to shock stack monsters which is not always the case - at least with HC builds. I agree that the main advantage of split arrow is that it does deliver massive number of arrows - either with chain or pierce. Therefore best mana utilization and best gem efficiency. I haven't been trying crit variants - always been playing with resolute technique. For the crit variants: Ice shot - Kirielis recommends going Pierce gem + pierce node from skill tree LA - you don't need to go for shock nodes from skill tree - just grab the crit chance Split arrow - without Black gleam quiver I can foresee the problem with phys reflect dmg MY CHALLENGES ARE DONE ON HC, IT'S NOT SC GUYS!
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" Thanks Filousov. I use LA and Ice Shot with LmP+BM+LoH gems, no mana problems at all. I think I will stick with Ice Shot for a while. That slow really improves my survivability against fast monsters |
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" Ah, Al i do are crit builds so thats where i'm basing my information off of. If your playing HC, the goal is to gain as much defensive power as you can to win a fight of attrition basically. Work with Iceshot+crit against reflect mobs and u will see what i'm talking about. As for Iceshot, they did fix the fps issue at 1.0.0 with new skill effects. I myself used to be an iceshot build in open beta and loved the cc from it. I ended up moving iceshot to a totem because of reflect, and because i found the life regen from LA and LoH to be superior on my mainhand. However, fork is a better option for iceshot than chain is just because of how the damage wave stacks easier and fork provides more frontal-mob aoe in terms of aoe. Additionally, the damage cut is 50% for chain and 30% for fork. Pierce is supperior to both chain and fork. On SA, if ur going phys criticall all u need is immortal call and there is absolutely no problem with reflect. IGN: Omjak "THIS WORLD... IS AN ILLUSION EXILE". Last edited by Omjak_777#2685 on Dec 5, 2013, 10:24:33 AM
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" This is what has been discussed extensively and really don't underestimate chain. Especially with the projectile weakness curse combination. It creates effect of multiple directions ice cone hits and still sometimes piercing the first line of mobs. As illogically it looks like it works wonders in practice. :-) I think main advantage of the pierce is the mana cost. As I was playing with blood magic passive, the mana cost wasn't an issue for me, but when you go for crit version -> you go mana -> and it starts to matter. On the performance side I'd say pierce / chain is about the same (if not chain better). :-) I haven't really tried fork - so can't really say about that. MY CHALLENGES ARE DONE ON HC, IT'S NOT SC GUYS!
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It would be really nice the effect applying an attack speed slow to its target too
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" being frozen or chilled impedes all movement lol... so ya it does. :D combine it with temporal chains and u can turn guys like kole and brutus into babys. IGN: Omjak "THIS WORLD... IS AN ILLUSION EXILE". Last edited by Omjak_777#2685 on Dec 5, 2013, 10:28:00 AM
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" Should I invest in some cold passives if I choose to stick with Ice Shot? |
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