Explosive Arrow

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Vipermagi wrote:

Projectile Damage will improve the explosion damage.
How could Projectile Speed have an impact on the radius? :/ It's not a Diablo II style nova made out of many individual projectiles, it's an explosion.

Projectile speed improves the range of every projectile, at least it is supposed to do so. To be honest, this classification really surprises me. I don't think infernal blow's explosion is classified as a projectile, so I'm not really sure how this explosion is much different, or corpse explosion for that matter. To me classifying this explosion as a projectile, but not something that can be improved by projectile speed is as dumb as saying that bear trap (despite being called a spell) is not a spell because it is a man-made device, but fire trap is a spell and benefits from spell damage (despite the fact that you can easily make a trap with gasoline) because this designation is important to make for the role-playing of the game. Lightning arrow, of course, which can chain lightning coming off of arrow, of course, could be man-made, amirite? But, oh wait, we just call bear trap a spell because it's not an attack. The same way that my keys are my mom because they are not my dad.

The point is, the explosion should never be classified as an projectile in the first place, unless you also want to count the infernal blow explosion and corpse detonation as a projectile as well. Of course, if you want to say that both of these are projectiles, then the range has to be affected by projectile speed, otherwise this is just silly.

And as far as I understood it, explosive arrow was supposed to be a niche attack that templars, witches, and marauders could benefit from, not some other bow attack designed for rangers and dualists. So not only do I see it as silly to be generous to say that the explosion benefits from projectile damage from a role-playing perspective, I really don't see the point in it from the point of game balance either. Why does this explosion need to benefit from projectile damage in the first place?

Furthermore, this opens up another HUGE can of worms. If the explosion is a projectile and it is not a spell (which seems fine to me that it isn't a spell), can it be evaded? Can you dodge the explosion? Can you block it? I hope you see the point and I really wish GGG would think about these things. If it is evaded does boosting my accuracy make it so the enemy can't dodge the explosion as easily?

So you can have a projectile that is not a spell, and cannot be evaded? That is interesting, to say the least. I still don't consider an explosion an aimed projectile. The fact that the arrow is a projectile seems to be immaterial to me as buffing the weapon damage does absolutely nothing to the explosion damage. It seems strange to think that a skill or talent that was designed to make arrows do more damage should effect the damage of an explosion, particularly for a niche attack like explosive arrow. To me there is a limit. I guess we will agree to disagree here.

Wait one more comment....if the explosion cannot be evaded to prevent it from hitting, then I also assume that a crit from the explosion cannot be evaded either. Is that correct?

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Vipermagi wrote:

Correct, the explosion's Crits cannot be Evaded.

Personally, I'm far too much of a mechanical thinker to really care about whether it should or shouldn't benefit from Projectile damage. I care more about the answer than the reasoning :P

I know what you mean. :p

Well, the fact that the crits can't be evaded potentially makes Lioneye's Glare that much better of a bow for this build besides the Quill Rain. Even though a Quill Rain would have a 3.11 attack speed and a Lioneye's Glare would have a 1.8 attack speed (at least the one that I have does), the time that it takes to generate 5 attacks and have it explode with a 3.11 attack speed is (1/3.11)*5 + 1 sec = 2.60 seconds whereas it takes the Lioneye's Glare (1/1.8)*5 + 1 = 3.78 seconds so the Quill Rain is 45% faster, but that is with 5 stacks. With one stack it takes a Quill Rain 1.32 seconds and it takes a Lioneye's Glare 1.55 seconds so the Quill Rain is only 17.8% faster at one stack. Now the Lioneye's Glare doesn't miss, never fails a crit based on accuracy/evasion and with AoE elemental proliferation, chances are the explosion will crit somebody and therefore everybody. Plus the Lioneye's Glare has 100 mana to potentially help you avoid blood magic with auras. Also, the fact that it doesn't miss and doesn't have -50% weapon damage really helps with building 3 shocks stacks and allows more leech to take place up front which makes the damage of the explosive arrow not so problematic from a leech perspective in that you would normally have to wait all that time just for the leech to start happening.

Also, those calculations are based upon having zero bonuses to attack speed. The more attack speed bonuses you have, the better Lioneye's Glare becomes as the time it takes to generate 1-5 stacks becomes less but you still have to wait the one second for the explosion anyway, regardless of what bow you use.

What if i shoot the first strong arrow with a totem or remote mine and then i add charge myself, the reflect damage hit me or the totem?

When I first read the skill gem I was amazed of how I thought the skill would work, but then I got really dissapointed in what the mechanics actually are.

Let me explain what I thought the mechanics were:
The i-th arrow adds a fuse time t_i, which decrease in geometric progression such that the total fuse time converges!
Each arrow adds its damage for the eventual explosion and the limit of added arrows is only determined by the amount arrows that hit keeping up the fuse time, which I repeat is limited.

The increased duration support gem would multiply each fuse time by the corresponding factor, this would result in the total maximal fuse time beeing multiplied by the same factor. (Though this is not necessary)

If you need an example to think about it: Put t_i=(1/2)^{i-1}s, for a total maximal fuse time of 2s. This would allow a Quillrain to apply up to 6 stacks without scaling.

Pros:
-The Arrow will detonate, this allows ranged attack totems to work properly with this skill.
-Crit builds would do more damage as the added damage to the explosion is higher, but they would miss some arrows leading to an earlier detonation.
-Resolute technique builds could apply more arrows and do more damage in this way.
-The Skill open ups to more builds.

Cons:
-Needs damage tweaking especially in late game. (I came up with a build able to apply about 20 arrows (with the increased duration and Quillrain))

-This also effects the radius of detonation, which would need to be capped or better beeing made less effective in the higher stack counts.