Explosive Arrow

Is there any news as to when the tooltip for this ability will work properly?

currently no matter what I do to the gem or my build, the listed explosion damage doesn't change. I initially thought there is simply no way to improve the explosion damage as it is "the arrow causing the explosion, not you" or somesuch (to explain why + elemental damage wasn't doing anything).

Reading online though it seems like that is not the case and somehow some stuff still works, even though it doesn't display correctly (not on the dps screen, just on the tooltip). Trying to make a build when you don't even know when anything works or not and what effect it has is a bit frustrating, so I'm pretty much shelving the character until it works :-(

Does + Elemental Damage % work with this skill? For example the nodes right outside the templar tree?

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Kryzitex wrote:

Does + Elemental Damage % work with this skill? For example the nodes right outside the templar tree?

AoE Passives
Fire Passives
Elemental Passives

The above all seem to work

I've also read that projectile damage passives work on the explosion, but I haven't had a chance to test that.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Zentradi wrote:

I need a clarification tho : now that EA explosions is projectile dmg, we can put points into passives nodes that give some and the dmg of the explosion will get buffed right ?

Yes. The change made was that projectile damage modifiers now affect the explosion of the arrow, so now they do.

So yes, Projectile Damage passives work for the Hit AND Explosion.

So I've made an entire build around explosive arrow and elemental hit and I'm doing pretty fucking well if I say so myself. In fact I'd dare say it's a little OP.

However I have some qualms.

Arrows don't explode when they're off screen, there needs to be someone in your party at the point of impact for it to explode which sucks when you mostly play solo.

Chain and Fork gems aren't working properly (Don't know if this is a bug but still) they pass through the enemy and the arrow only sticks on the last target chain hits and the next target that fork hits. I honestly thought it would stick a charge into the first target I hit them another one into the second and third and so on. Kind of dissapointing.

THE TOOLTIP NEVER CHANGES! Like wtf! This is a massive design flaw that keeps me from knowing whether my passive points I've invested in are even working at all! Please fix this.

Crit chance DOES NOT work with the explosion of the arrow. I'm not going crazy here am I? But considering I USUALLY have 30+ explosive arrows in a group and I hardly EVER hear that oh so sweet critical hit sound with 17% crit chance I'm pretty damn sure that any +crit modifier is not applied to the charges of the arrow just the arrows themselves.

And the last but not least, actually the most important one. Charges cap at 5 I understand that, the damage is pretty high and I don't mind that but making it so you have to stop firing for 1 second is irritating and counter productive. Not to mention that if you happen to have 10+ charges in an enemy, THEY WON'T EVEN DETONATE AT ALL! ;_;

My suggestion, like a lot of other here is that when your 6th charge lands in an enemy worth 5 charges in them it automatically explodes.

I really love this skill and this build but at the moment it's super frustrating not knowing if my crit chance modifiers work, my elemental or spell damage modifiers work and having this archaic as shit "lets not attack for 1 second to detonate the charges" mechanic. The only reason I use elemental hit ATM is that 1 second I can get a few hits of that in before my 5 charges detonate before going back to explosive arrow again otherwise I'd use two separate EA gems, one for single target and one for aoe.#

Also the mana cost is stupid high.

<3 Thank you for reading, I luv u.

I've got to agree with everyone else about an instant detonation on the 5th or 6th charge application.

Currently level 45 on my explosive arrow user with a powerful build and it still feels leagues weaker than a basic freezing pulse build.

Even after loading them up with charges, I'm still in extreme danger as the enemies have over a second of uninterrupted damage on me as they're waiting to die.

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Elboat wrote:

Chain and Fork gems aren't working properly (Don't know if this is a bug but still) they pass through the enemy and the arrow only sticks on the last target chain hits and the next target that fork hits. I honestly thought it would stick a charge into the first target I hit them another one into the second and third and so on. Kind of dissapointing.

THE TOOLTIP NEVER CHANGES! Like wtf! This is a massive design flaw that keeps me from knowing whether my passive points I've invested in are even working at all! Please fix this.

Crit chance DOES NOT work with the explosion of the arrow. I'm not going crazy here am I? But considering I USUALLY have 30+ explosive arrows in a group and I hardly EVER hear that oh so sweet critical hit sound with 17% crit chance I'm pretty damn sure that any +crit modifier is not applied to the charges of the arrow just the arrows themselves.

Chain and Fork is "intended" behaviour. That's how it's supposed to work, with the current mechanics. It could be buffed later but this is similar to many other abilities that lose their effect when forking/chaining, such as fireball.

The tooltip issues are plentiful in this game, they'll fix them when they can. For now you just have to do the math yourself. Everything that's supposed to work works unless proven otherwise.

Crit chance should work, but am I understanding correctly, when you say you have 17% chance to crit, you mean you have +~200%crit right? Because that's what you'd need to have a 17% chance to crit. If you have only +17%, then you're not gonna see much of a difference because crit% is applied to the base crit(in this case 6% iirc), so it adds about 1% crit, which wouldn't be discernable. I'm not entirely sure it does get affect by crit however, because of the specificity of the ability(non attack non spell). Mark might have answered that in the past if you wanna google it.

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Elboat wrote:

And the last but not least, actually the most important one. Charges cap at 5 I understand that, the damage is pretty high and I don't mind that but making it so you have to stop firing for 1 second is irritating and counter productive. Not to mention that if you happen to have 10+ charges in an enemy, THEY WON'T EVEN DETONATE AT ALL! ;_;

My suggestion, like a lot of other here is that when your 6th charge lands in an enemy worth 5 charges in them it automatically explodes.

I came here to suggest just that and it seems you have beat me to it! +1!

i also notice that to don't explode if you put to many on them...

I feel like this skill would be a lot better if the charge duration never reset, and there was no hard cap to the number of charges on an enemy.

So, currently this is how it works:

Maximum 5 charges
Each new charge resets the countdown timer to 1s.

These two aspects of the skill essentially punish you for increased duration passives and attack speed. You have to stop attacking for 1s or more if you have increased duration - this nullifies any attack speed bonuses and makes it worse if you have increased duration passives.

If it worked instead as such:

The first charge on an enemy starts a countdown timer of 1s. At the end of the countdown all charges on the enemy will explode.

Now you get rewarded for attack speed and increased duration passives. Your goal now becomes landing as many charges in that short period as possible. The ability now also balances itself with attack speed rather than with itself (maximum charges are no longer 5 but a function of your attack speed relative to the skill charge duration).

Like many of the other posters here, I feel like it's counter-intuitive and plays opposite of evrey other playstyle. You have to stop attacking to do damage, and your damage can't scale with gear. Getting attack speed does almost nothing for you, and getting increased duration passives hurt you. The way the ability scales is in direct contrast to the risk/reward aspect of ranged attacks (attack as the enemy nears you and they'll be able to hit you). Instead, this ability caters to the playstyle of "attack for a bit then run" - which is actually fairly efficient, but counter-intuitive.

I feel as though attacking the kiting has it's place, but having a skill that rewards that playstyle is incorrect. The playstyle's reward comes from not getting killed, but should come at a cost of DPS.

Making explosive arrow explode at 5 charges or making it a function of attack speed would be overpowered. It would also make it like every other skill; stand still and kill stuff.

The beauty of the skill is that if you get to 5 charges with a proper build, you are rewarded with killing pretty much everything on your screen. The drawback is staying alive for that period. That 1 second creates an entire dynamic different from the endless spam of other skills. But only if you properly utilize that one second.

Things you can do in 1 second of downtime: flammability (hint: you should be doing this every time they aren't cursed and shouldn't be cursing before shooting EA), refresh decoy totem, re-position, loot, kill the pack that's in a different direction, use your switch bow to kill a rare with elemental hit, etc.

Speaking of decoy totem, if anything has any sort of kill potential on you, you should be using it. Not only does it buy time for the explosion thus partially nullifying the defensive drawback of explosive arrow, it groups enemies for increased damage.

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These two aspects of the skill essentially punish you for increased duration passives and attack speed.

Attack speed does not punish you. Quill rain is the best bow for this skill for a reason (1 other bow might be as good). The difference between 3 aps and 5 aps is immense. Yes the charge timer can devalue attack speed. But depending on how you utilize the duration of the charge timer or 5 stacks will kill everything anyway, it may not devalue it at all. In every scenario though, it increases dps.

-A player who uses EA on 70 maps.