Split Arrow

I'm playing a ranger and I've used this as my main skill from very early levels to about lvl 26 where I am now.

fire arrow/poison/arrow/lightning arrow or really any bow skill I've gotten my hands on all seem pointless when compared to split arrow, which is a little sad cause it means my play gets more repetetive since I have no tactical reason to ever vary it up.

The thing that makes split arrow so much better than all of them, is damage from non-weapon items. I have rings, gloves etc that all add cold, lightning or fire damage to my attacks, so that in the end I do more elemental damage than physical damage. Most enemies I face are oneshotted by my regular non-skill attack (I'm currently in act 2, mostly facing bandits).

Now, take for example fire arrow. It adds damage based on a percentage of my physical damage (which is less than half of the damage I do), which in effect makes almost no difference to my damage output. Now compare this to split arrow, who makes almost the full damage of the regular attack, but does it to up to four targets. With that, I never fear a horde of enemies. It's even occasionally useful against single enemies since it requires less precise aim so I can attack slightly quicker, or at a range where I don't really see the enemy.

I'd suggest changing split arrow to do 80% of physical damage, as it does now, but only something like 40% of other damage kinds. That way my build would still work, but it would be less rediculous and I'd be incentivized to not use split arrow against single targets (meaning a little more variation).

Clicking very near the player, makes the arrows fly in strange* and non-predictable ways, at least at low levels.

*I mean, two arrows go to the left together and the other one to the right, having an empty arc of ~180º.

Also, it could be interesting that the arc angle increased by level so as to, for example, be able to fire 10º wider per gem level, starting at some narrow 10º or so.

well without the gem, you can click your character and fire backwards :D, with the gem you can shoot forwards and to both sides XD.

Split gem looks funny, because when you fire for the first time, you see what looks like an "X" shape coming out from the backside of the bow as your character holds the bow forward and fires.

It's tacky. Should be fixed imo.

Also.. something feels off about bow animations in general.. I can't tell if its because the character doesn't pull the string back far enough or perhaps because the character seems to not bend his legs at all when firing. They just stay planted.

I think it's the leg animations that need to be fixed to make it flow smoother but.. not 100% sure.

It could also be the way the player pulls the arrow, it seems like the ratio of time spent pulling the arrow from the pouch verse firing the arrow from the bow is to small. They should be evened out more to make it flow better. Also it seems like the character isn't pulling the arrow from the pouch at the proper height.

However, I feel like the overall motion of the body is off, beginning with the legs, the player is firing such a large bow and their seems to be no recoil or torque put into the shot by the player. It seems as if they are doing it absolutely effortly and no force is going into the pull and release of the shot. The transion from the bending of the legs slightly to the recoil of the fire in the upper body is just not there.

Please fix this though.

Also, if your crosshair is directly over head of your character, your character will aim forward but fire backwards.

Edit: I also really think you should fix the fact that the closer your cursor is to your character the wider the arrows will fire. It should be a fixed cone that the arrows fire in and the benefit to having a higher level gem and multiple projectile pass ive is that you can ACHIEVE a WIDER CONE but as it stands now.. I just need to alternate between how close or how far my curser is form my character when I fire to vary the cones radius.

In comparison with other skills, Split Arrow is next to useless as Rain of Arrows. Reason being is because other arrow skills can be supplemented with Lesser/Greater Multiple Projectile support gems (easy to get as Ranger) and basically eliminates the need for Split Arrow.

It's a great skill to have in the beginning levels (1-20) until later when the skill simply pales in comparison to other arrow skills.

Lv75 Ele Ranger and Split arrow in a 5L as my main skill.



5L - Faster Attacks, Mana Leech, Weap ele Dmg, IIQ

Mana Cost is 40 Mana at lv17 with the link set up.

Auras Wraith, Anger, Haste.

DPS 3.9K

Combined with Projectile Weakness it makes a great DPS skill.

I think the Mana Cost needs reduced by at least 5-8 but besides that I dont see any negatives to using it. The spread is easy to control, easy to hit targets spread or grouped once you are used to it.

Will be interesting to see how the next patch changing arrow behavior will effect the skill.

what about this build ???

critical + atk speed

its a good build for a split arrow ranger ???

Split Arrow is now broken in 9.12:

It no longer fires a single arrow when you are out of mana (like all other bow skills do.) so I am forced to relegate it to middle click and use it as a lead-in skill and instead have switched to lightning as primary for groups.

I'm not a fan of the maximized spread. I'd prefer to be able to make it narrower the further away from me I click, as previous to 9.12.

Also, this skill now misses every mob the first time it is used after switching weapons.