Barrage

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Perq wrote:

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PHRandom wrote:

As far as i understand, its better if you use barrage for elemental damage builds, not sure about it.

Still getting less damage overall than say, Frenzy, since it cuts your damage. So Frenzy is better at single target. AoE? Can't GMP or LMP, because it will just shoot (and cut damage even more) more arrows. So Split arrow/rain of arrows are better in that regard.

Barrage is 160% damage effectiveness over 4 hits. Frenzy is 110% Damage effectiveness plus bonus AS/PD. The comparison is washy at best.

I tried using Barrage with Trap, Multiple Traps and Chain with Sunblast to make a bullet hell build, but the targeting is insanely off. Most of the time the three traps activating at the same time hits no monster, does ranged trap attacks make no effort to hit monsters when the trap is not actively activated by them? In that case, the Sunblast unique mechanics is really less useful.

I had a lvl 70 bow ranger lying around. I was saving her last passive reset, but I finally used it to make an elemental lvl 1 barrage build using using a skill tree similar to elemental buzzsaw. It looked promising at first, but the fixed 40% multiplier on base damage from Barrage is a huge hinderance to proper damage scaling. Spectral Throw, by comparison, does scale its damage effectiveness and also scales all damage it deals (as opposed to just physical). I believe that they'll have to make the 40% base damage multiplier scale with level (at least 1% per level) before it's worth a damn for anything other than CoC.

I'm baaaaack.

It occurred to me that one of the major ways most projectile attacks scale damage are the LMP/GMP gems - I'd realized that before, but it didn't occur to me that they're basically 110% and 150% more damage multipliers, which is pretty massive. On barrage, they act as a 5% and 0% more multiplier. While there is utility to creating additional hits (survivability with LGoH), it's not really enough to compensate for the massively lower "more" multiplier.

I think it's current behavior with them is probably best mechanically, so I'd maybe suggest giving it some sort of implicit "more damage per additional projectile" stat.

Alternatively have ranged support gem options that are actually useful.

Do LMP and GMP improve barrage's arrows shot per minute, thus improving its dps that way?

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elindred wrote:

Do LMP and GMP improve barrage's arrows shot per minute, thus improving its dps that way?

no, only increases the projectile count and damage reduction.

I'm actually pretty certain that it doesn't take longer if you fire more projectiles. The reduction in damage does obviously eat up any advantage. It's really only CoC and triggering other similar effects.

I'd love to make a build with this skill, but it desyncs too bad.

If you go to attack something with your barrage skill and simply hold down the button to continue using barrage repeatedly, things get all out of sync after a time. At first, your attack animation and the damage being dealt are in sync: an arrow hits, the monster takes damage. As you continue holding barrage, the damage ticks get further and further out of sync with the attack animation.

When you try to move your character after a barrage while it isn't synced, you'll move on the client side, but on the server side you'll still be firing a barrage. Worst case, this will result in death if you needed to move out of the way quickly to avoid dying.

This problem is very consistent and can be reproduced pretty much on demand. No other skills seem to desync in this manner. Or if they do, they aren't nearly as noticeable.

I can only speculate as to why this happens, but maybe eventually GGG will take a look at it.

The damage penalty on this skill seems unnecessarily harsh. I just don't see how it can compete with Tornado Shot now, even versus single targets.