Barrage - TERRIBLE! Or am I missing something?

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Natharias wrote:

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raics wrote:

I still think the skill has serious potential, all for the better if it's not obvious.
I'll save my final judgement for after I try building for it from level 1, after all, Reave was also 'terrible' at first glance.

Barrage + Cast on Crit + Increased Critical Strikes + Spell + Spell + Spell.

Barrage isn't so useless, now is it?

That's what everyone is saying. It has potential for CoC focused build.

But as a stand-alone skill it just does not compete with the likes of Frenzy/Power Siphon for single target physical attacks. Having mechanics (spread in a small cone vs fire in a straight line) that limits its effective range does not help, either.

I have a physical point blank ranger and RoA acts as a much more effective single target than Barrage is. That is pretty darn sad.

Barrage, Chain, Life on Hit, LMP for my Quill Build - I'll never die.

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Zealflare wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

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raics wrote:

I still think the skill has serious potential, all for the better if it's not obvious.
I'll save my final judgement for after I try building for it from level 1, after all, Reave was also 'terrible' at first glance.

Barrage + Cast on Crit + Increased Critical Strikes + Spell + Spell + Spell.

Barrage isn't so useless, now is it?

That's what everyone is saying. It has potential for CoC focused build.

But as a stand-alone skill it just does not compete with the likes of Frenzy/Power Siphon for single target physical attacks. Having mechanics (spread in a small cone vs fire in a straight line) that limits its effective range does not help, either.

I have a physical point blank ranger and RoA acts as a much more effective single target than Barrage is. That is pretty darn sad.

while it has limitations it seems like GGG's policy (and for a good reason imo) to not let multihit attacks have the same efficiency and single heavy hitters.

don't forget that 4 projectiles as "base" means 4x lgoh one shot triple shock stacking, multi knockbacking, multi fear, multiple chances for blind and etc proc effects.

a singel "hit" from barrage is 216hp from just a lgoh gem.

the thing that saddens me though is that it's a dex skill when it should have been dex/int to fit with the whole wand thingy

Haven't used the gem, might as weigh in a half baked opinion...

Cast on Crit pretty much. I was thinking about the Darkscorn bow with the update and thinking about how much better it could be with Chaos damage nodes and physical projectile damage, but everything just seems to make the other maraketh bow, Chin Sol better. Like it has damn good DPS potential, with Barrage it's should be pretty damn good. Darkscorn probably still sucks as your better off using a high physical dmg bow with Poison Arrow, and been that way since forever.

I just don't think Barrage is particularly interesting but I would have been an idiot and make it wand only and throw some other mechanic with it. If it was a support I'd use it on Elemental Hit because I've nothing really interesting to say.

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shroudb wrote:

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Zealflare wrote:

That's what everyone is saying. It has potential for CoC focused build.

But as a stand-alone skill it just does not compete with the likes of Frenzy/Power Siphon for single target physical attacks. Having mechanics (spread in a small cone vs fire in a straight line) that limits its effective range does not help, either.

I have a physical point blank ranger and RoA acts as a much more effective single target than Barrage is. That is pretty darn sad.

while it has limitations it seems like GGG's policy (and for a good reason imo) to not let multihit attacks have the same efficiency and single heavy hitters.

don't forget that 4 projectiles as "base" means 4x lgoh one shot triple shock stacking, multi knockbacking, multi fear, multiple chances for blind and etc proc effects.

a singel "hit" from barrage is 216hp from just a lgoh gem.

the thing that saddens me though is that it's a dex skill when it should have been dex/int to fit with the whole wand thingy

Nope, a lvl 20/20 LGOH gem with barrage would only get you (44*0.4)*4 = 88~ hp per cast (assuming that ALL arrows hit). LGOH gem scales off the damage effectiveness, and each shot is 40% effectiveness, not 100%.

Using the same support gems (faster attacks/increased crit damage/phy projectile attack dmg), I can fire off 13-14 frenzy shots in 5 seconds (WITHOUT frenzy charges), or about 8 sets of barrage.

Each shot of Frenzy deals 110% physical damage. Each shot of barrage does 40% damage.

13*110 = 1430% phy damage in 5 seconds
8*4*40 = 1280% phy damage in 5 seconds

When you factor in things like frenzy charges (some builds can get up to 7-8+), you start to see a even larger gap between the two skills.

And your part on multi-hit is not true. Look at Double Strike + Multistrike. Considered one of the strongest melee DPS set up in the game (aside from Dual Strike, since it only applies to dual wielding). Literally everyone uses it. Significantly better than heavy strike due to the lack of knockback. Skills like Heavy Strike still have a place, however, in places like PVP since most players have a lot more armor than monsters do, and Double strike+multistrike does literally no damage to those high armored players.

It doesn't work good with CoC, or if you think it is good, then ST with CoC is GODLIKE

Either the whole pack of hits will crit, or they don't crit at all, just as expected.

Daggers are better in terms of speed and crit chance, and provided that ST just need a single LMP to hit almost any type of mob formation, with auto pierce and multi hits, using CoC on Barrage will be much more weaker.

Also the attack speed of barrage is very long when compared to a single ST throw, so on average ST is much more reliable if you use those spells for DPS output. Besides the ST projectile itself has waaaaaaaaay more DPS than Barrage itself.

It's basicly this. It's good at procing but 9/10 people are interested in more damage then utility. If at some point crushing blow would be added then everyone would go "barrage op".

It wins ST for CoC on single target / small group hands down.

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Nonsensei436 wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

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raics wrote:

I still think the skill has serious potential, all for the better if it's not obvious.
I'll save my final judgement for after I try building for it from level 1, after all, Reave was also 'terrible' at first glance.

Barrage + Cast on Crit + Increased Critical Strikes + Spell + Spell + Spell.

Barrage isn't so useless, now is it?

Nothing is useless if you slap it in a 6 link.

You can't just slap something into a six link and make it good or worthwhile. Certain skills require certain supports to be worthwhile. Discharge is weak alone, but with certain supports it becomes overpowered. Put the wrong supports with it and it will suck more than as a stand-alone skill.

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Zealflare wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

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raics wrote:

I still think the skill has serious potential, all for the better if it's not obvious.
I'll save my final judgement for after I try building for it from level 1, after all, Reave was also 'terrible' at first glance.

Barrage + Cast on Crit + Increased Critical Strikes + Spell + Spell + Spell.

Barrage isn't so useless, now is it?

That's what everyone is saying. It has potential for CoC focused build.

But as a stand-alone skill it just does not compete with the likes of Frenzy/Power Siphon for single target physical attacks. Having mechanics (spread in a small cone vs fire in a straight line) that limits its effective range does not help, either.

I have a physical point blank ranger and RoA acts as a much more effective single target than Barrage is. That is pretty darn sad.

You are making it sound like Barrage sucks. Barrage isn't meant to be used for anything other than a Cast on Crit build.

Frenzy and Power Siphon are much like rares, while things like Barrage are more like uniques. The majority of the uniques are only build enablers, which use other gems and items as a source of damage. Facebreaker, Quillrain, and Chaos Inoculation are examples of this.

It's not always about the raw damage from a skill, any experienced player knows that.

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raics wrote:

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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raics wrote:

However, the forum was overflowing with 'reave is crap' threads for weeks.

Reave was bugged, it consistently failed to hit enemies without any reason. That's why people called it crap.

Yeah I remember, they fixed it in a couple of days but the shitstorm continued for some time.

Complaints were pretty colorful too :)
- it's much worse than my good ol' cleave in every aspect... of which I won't specify any
- increase timer duration so I never run out of stacks but leave damage as it is
- make it strike with both hands at once when DW, this is lame
- damage is too low (this one just might be the biggest BS of them all)
- aaaargh, I keep losing my stacks when I run out of mana and switch to default attack
- (after they fixed the previous) aaaargh, I can't use normal attack to leech mana when I run out of it, all skills let me do it, only reave doesn't and I absolutely need that speck of mana my normal attack leeches. IT COULD SAVE MY LIFE DAMMIT!
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youve made up most of these (except losing stacks after OOM - but guess what, it was a valid complaint as GGG fixed that)

Reave had TWO serious bugs: 1) it lost stacks after interacting with world objects(picking up loot) that SUCKED HARD and had shown testing quality.. 2) it had the same issue melee splash had just after release when (probably) ground collision made some monsters avoid hits even if they stood right next to you. both were fixed - people stopped yelling

before 2) got fixed EFFECTIVE (not paper) dps of Reave was below abysmal..