Maloney's Nightfall - RIP

Hm I'm glad for the necro somehow.
Never seen the designthread for Maloney's.
Interesting post.

Managed to corrupt this today for my Ranger. Very pleased.

Oh and great story about your Grandfather...seems like a cool dude.

So it actually started as a GG Quiver for the current meta and ended up being a vendor Unique. Kinda sad. :/

thank you for sharing your story Kaysee and thanks to whoever brought it up again.

Got to say after reading the OP kool story ; I too tried to love this unique. But alas it turned out to be a very lame quiver. It basically didnt work well and is completely out shined by other lower level uniques.
I am kind of mad that I spend good ex's buying it. And Ive hung on to it hoping that its stats will be revisited by GGG. That some of the original ideas, like dots damage or higher percentage for blind etc would be seen as the only way to make this useful.
I would not be surprised to hear it is a never used item. I hope some common sense will prevail , eventually.

So... I'm a bit more excited about my unique again now. :)

with all due respect, can I ask why? the smoke cloud thing is (typically) poorly explained if it has any positive effect. Seems like pretty much anyone would be better of with basically any other quiver instead of yours. Sorry, I don't mean to offend, just speaking from game experience.

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Xaxarius wrote:

with all due respect, can I ask why? the smoke cloud thing is (typically) poorly explained if it has any positive effect. Seems like pretty much anyone would be better of with basically any other quiver instead of yours. Sorry, I don't mean to offend, just speaking from game experience.

Of course you can ask “why” mate… and there is no need to worry about offending (but I realise this is the internet, so you’re being considerate). :)

As Vipermagi stated, the Smoke Cloud inflicts all monsters within an area with Blind. Blind works in synergy with evasion by reducing the Chance to Hit by 50% and reducing the Chance to be Crit.

“Better off…” this is always an interesting concept… what is “best”? Of course it is subjective to the player and their build, but I’m happy to discuss quivers:

First, rares should almost always be BiS items, as intended by GGG. Only where specific builds synergise with uniques should uniques be BiS.

Next, comparing the uniques: Asphyxia's, Blackgleam’s, Craghead and Soul Strike are all pretty much for: Cold/Curse, Fire, Stun and ES builds respectively… while Hyrris is a great levelling quiver (never seen this used in high end builds).

That leaves us with: Maloney’s, Drillneck and Rearguard... so let’s compare the item mods and “what is best” will depend on players opinions and builds.

Increased Attack Speed… Drillneck and Maloney’s are almost the same. Rearguard has no IAS… it does have Projectile Speed making Rain of Arrows better or for using with Slower Projectiles.
Added Physical Damage… Drillneck is the clear winner here, easily. Maloney’s and Rearguard are about the same.
Life… Maloney’s has the highest life, easily. Drillneck as mid range life and Rearguard has none at all.
Resists… Maloney’s is the only one with any sort of resist, with a low range, on the hard to find Chaos Resist. Others have none at all.

DEFENCES
Drillneck… gives a strong flat 350 to Evasion… this is really nice on a quiver.
Rearguard… gives a strong flat 400-450 to Armour… again this is really strong on a quiver (with provisos below).
Rearguard… also gives strong block chance to Attacks and Spells and Stun Recovery (with provisos below).
Maloney’s… has a low chance to proc a Smoke Cloud (provisos below).

OTHER OFFENCES
Drillneck… provides a 10% chance to pierce which is handy for spreading damage (and synergises with mechanic below).
Drillneck… provides a mechanic to increase Projectile Damage based on Pierce Chance (with provisos below).
Rearguard… provides a 15-20% increase to Projectile Damage.
Maloney… provides 20-40% increase Damage against Blinded enemies (with provisos below).


PROVISOS
So now we get into the nitty gritty… and this is where a player’s build comes into effect.

Let us cover the easy one first… the Rearguard. I’m currently loving this quiver, preparing for a build idea for the upcoming Talisman league. Reaguard is a great defensive quiver… provided you’re armour based. It is a waste to go Evasion, Acrobatics and Arrow Dancing, because you’re probably going to be Armour Based (perhaps Iron Reflexes) and get yourself in and amongst it. All of this is fine. It fills a certain niche and play style for a bow user. So it is “better” for that purpose and the other quivers can’t compare.

The next is more tricky… the Drillneck. Commonly, and currently deservedly, viewed as the BiS unique quiver. I have no issues with this (it isn’t a competition) as Maloney’s was designed to solid without being OP, but back to the Drillneck. Obviously increasing your Pierce chance increased your Projectile Damage on top of your ability to hit multiple targets. So how do you build your pierce… at what cost? 10% from the Drillneck itself. Piercing Shots cluster gives you 40% Pierce for 3 Passive Nodes (with other slight Projectile Damage bonuses). Then the Pierce support gem gives 50% to 69% Pierce for 1 socket slot at 110% mana multiplier. Finally, Pierce is capped at 100%... so Drillneck has a DPS cap.

Drillneck summary… 100% Pierce cap = 100% Increased Projectile Damage. For the cost of speccing into “Piercing Shots” clust and 1 socket slot with 110% multiplier. Is this “better”… it depends on your build. Combined with the other modifers on the Drillneck this makes the quiver the BiS offensive quiver… and the reason it sells for around 1ex (no idea on current price TBH).

Finally… Maloney’s. It’s mechanic is to proc Smoke Cloud and increase damage to Blinded Emenies. First the smoke cloud, details of the mechanic are above, but the proc rate is rather low. This is a more thematic mod, because as evasion bow users we should be trying not to get hit in the first place. However, occasionally when we do we drop a smoke cloud (about 60% bigger than Smoke Mine and isn’t increased by area radius... at design time). This blinds enemies so that our evasion is now “doubled” (meaning less getting hit and less getting critted) and our damage against them is increased. This increase links to the other mod… which is Increased Damage to Blinded Enemies… NOTE: it is all “Damage”, not just Projectile Damage, your DoT, your minions, your spells DPS are all increased against these effect targets. The limitation so far has been, how to blind the enemies: Smoke Cloud from the quiver, smoke mine or Shrouded Shrines are all very limited. The Blind support gem gives a flat 10% chance (with increased duration) for the cost of 1 socket slot.

Maloney’s summary… chance to proc a smoke cloud. The Smoke Cloud and Blind work in synergy with Evasion, Acrobatics and Arrow Dodging… increasing your defences. This is different to Rearguard’s armour/block and Drillneck’s limited defences. If your building towards evasion and blinding enemies than you get increased global damage, that is lower than the 100% from Drillneck, but isn’t limited to Projectile Damage. Maloney's also provides more incentive to corrupt, with the implicit being undesireable, whereas Drillneck and Rearguard the implicit is more useful.

Currently the limitation with Maloney’s was the lack of options to synergise/build with compared to say the Drillneck and Pierce. I was OK with this knowing that by designing it around a mechanic there was scope in the future for it to become stronger or weaker as the game changes.

I linked the above, because I am excited to see some of that come to fruition… the game expanding to build on the mechanic, which in turn opens up more potential for Maloney’s. The above Ascendency class (limited to Duelist) gives you the following:

- Ability to further increase global damage against blinded enemies.
- Increased blind duration.
- Another 10% chance to create a smoke cloud when hit.
- 10% chance to Blind ON HIT… this is huge given the crazy attack speeds possible.
- Reduced damage from blinded enemies
- Plus you’re immune to blind :)

So what is “better”… it depends. 

HTH Cheers

PS – I rushed this post before starting work for the day. No time to proof-read etc, so hopefully it all makes sense. Happy to hear feedback or discuss further and consider options/mechanics/synergies I’ve missed.

PPS - also sorry for lack of formatting and blocky text.

I learned some things^^

Thanks for the elaborate post & generous support.

May you & your grandfathers legacy live on forever :)