Split Arrow

Lvl 50+ frenzy ranger. This is my bread and butter skill. Its d2licious and instant gratification. Added pierce passive and every mod gem I could get my hands on. At spd, faster proj, cld dam, life gain on hit, mana leech.

I use bloodrage and open with poison arrow. I keep up 7 frenzy charges and a specter for distraction. Works well with vulnerability curse.

Only prob, if I try to click instead of holding down mouse button, eventually my hand will cramp.

I have a question in here. For me it looks like when using split arrow actually only maximum 1 arrow can hit 1 target. I didnt notice anything like all arrows hitting the target in front of me. Shouldnt it be like this - when i have 1 mob in front of me and i use split arrow all the arrows should hit him ? If i want the arrows to fly further thats what pierce is all about ...

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O MY LORD, i feel like shooting my self in the face, few shots and takes all my mana and now with slow flask recharges i think you way over did it!

ok i can now sort of play but with two charges and slower flash recharge im running out of mana all the time, my archer only has 250 mana and my flashs are like 600+ ? there a big gap here

I guess this ability only works with at least 4% manaleech now...

There is a very annoying thing about split arrow: when an enemy dies my character stops casting, why? this makes the use of this quite a pita... instead of holding down my key I have to constantly spam and its very bad for my laptop:(

The other thing is that lots of times my character shoots the arrows in the direction he is facing instead of the direction where the cursor is, mostly while im kiting the mobs, this is also need to be fixed.

Mana sucker all the way. Impossible to play with if you don't go hard on mana leech as szesan already said.
In my eyes it sucks way to much mana. I have to fill up flasks in town 5-10 times per level (difference mainly depends on types of mobs).

Using split arrow should generate portal scrolls for constantly going back to town :D

Jokes aside: Maybe giving us a special split arrow reduced mana cost passive could help without negating the (intended?) nerf on split arrow.

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szesan wrote:

There is a very annoying thing about split arrow: when an enemy dies my character stops casting, why? this makes the use of this quite a pita... instead of holding down my key I have to constantly spam and its very bad for my laptop:(

This isn't just split arrow, it applies to all targeting skills. If you click and hold on an enemy, you'll stop firing when it dies. Just target the ground instead, e.g. behind the enemies or in front. Click and hold and you're golden.

Impending wall of text:

I just played a bow Ranger to level 20, solo to about level 10, and with a friend playing a mostly-2H melee Templar from levels 10-20. Throughout the entire experience, split arrow has taken too much mana to ever be a viable choice. I have tried items for increased max mana, increase mana regen, chugging mana flasks constantly, and none of them have made this a usable skill. I haven't been able to get my hands on mana leech high enough to help.

Here's my weapon, with the gem, for reference:


Passive skills, in case they're relevant, are straight down the projectile damage/accuracy/attack speed path, picking up all 6 crit boosts, 4x +10dex, and 3x +6% bow damage after that.

When I started, it took about 1/4 of my mana to use. Currently, it takes 15, and I have 150-ish. There's still a damage penalty that the physical damage bonus doesn't compensate for given the mana drain, which is really high. If I want to use it, I can clear out a group of 10-15 mobs, but drain all my mana in process.

I understand from reading the discussion that it was apparently nerfed because at higher levels mana leech let players use it indefinitely, but for lower level characters, it's an unusable disappointment.

I would suggest starting the mana cost lower and scaling it up as necessary to reach the same end result, so that when a starting Ranger picks Split Arrow as a skill gem, they get something they can use.

When soloing, Poison Arrow was a viable substitute for crowd control. I could poison a crowd, retreat, maybe drop a Rain of Arrows or two on them, and pick them off as they advanced. However, playing with a single Ground Slam/Sweep Templar who only rarely uses spells, Poison Arrow takes too long to do its damage. I can only imagine this will get worse in a larger party.

I'm not sure what role a bow-using ranger is supposed to play in a party. Poison arrow is a decent single-target damage skill, on par with elemental hit in most circumstances, plus bonus damage over time. Rain of Arrows is good damage efficiency on a dense crowd, but not so much on enemies that are more spread out, and it also has a very high mana cost. I was expecting to use Split Arrow as my primary skill, and I've been finding the bow Ranger pretty disappointing compared to every other character I've played.

Bothers me that MP Frenzy is more effective than Split Arrow. Its also disappointing that Split Arrow cannot be used in a shotgun fashion blasting one target with multiple arrows at close proximity.