Explosive Arrow

Im a dexterity bow ranger.
I'd say that this skill is kinda useless. You are always better off using split arrow/poison arrow.

The damage it causes is too weak, although i like the idea of the skill

I agree with lonewolf

Tried to use this skill around 15-20 on a Ranger.

The weapon damage -50% seems like just too big of a penalty to use this skill as a primary attack. If I wanted an AoE attack split arrow and rain of arrows both seem superior. Honestly this skill doesn't even seem like it needs to reduce weapon damage at all.

Part of the problem is mobs space out as they run around so even after you kill something with 4 fuses, it might hit 1 extra mob on average (or quite often none).

So for example, at 100 damage a shot, x4 to build the fuse stack (I think I saw 4 fire swirly effects)

You do 200 in actual damage instead of 400, and then explode them for ~100 AoE when they die because it only hits one mob. This means you have pretty much hit 2 mobs EVERY time just to make back it back shooting them with a plain attack, not counting opportunity cost damage from using poison/elemental/whatever.

Edit: Patch .94c

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Zaanus wrote:

Tried to use this skill around 15-20 on a Ranger.

The weapon damage -50% seems like just too big of a penalty to use this skill as a primary attack. If I wanted an AoE attack split arrow and rain of arrows both seem superior. Honestly this skill doesn't even seem like it needs to reduce weapon damage at all.

and actually if you look at the numbers, split arrow is superior to rain of arrows in almost every way. the only situation in which you want RoA > SA is if you are fighting a large creature that sustains multiple hits from each firing of RoA.

Lvl 40 frenzy ranger.

Love the concept, hate the skill. Maybe it's for non-frenzy builds, but right now I tear everything up with split arrow/frenzy on main, poison arrow for backup, RoA on the side for boss groups and elemental hit for singles. Also have temporal chains and projectile weakness but never need them. I used explosive arrow before 9.4 when I wasn't frenzy speced and it fit into a rotation ...better... but it's really weak single target, its the 4th best AoE, the AoE delay means you have to be really weak for the AoE to even trigger and if the monsters do live that long, you have to spend extra time running them around so their pathing brings them close enough together that the AoE actually hits them, instead of using a different skill to actually kill them.

So when would you use this skill?

Lvl 50 Frenzy Ranger and I completely agree. I want to like it. I keep lvling it up and trying it again and again and still it is inferior in every way to the other skills. Needs a different mechanic. Even with more damage and radius of explosion I would still use Split Arrow as the mana/life on hit/leech will refill better with SA then EA.

I'd rather be guaranteed to hit something spraying lots of arrows than maybe aim and hit a mob and maybe he will run into a group when he pops.

Maybe if you added a chance for the EA effect to "jump" to other mobs on explosion, and then they will pop etc. Might add it as an opener with an effect like that. Just a thought.

I'm not flat out disagreeing with anyone here as to whether it is or isn't a useful skill, because I haven't done much with it since 0.9.2. But I am confused as to why all these physical damage rangers dismiss this skill right away because it doesn't work well with their setup.

This is basically the equivalent of a pure fire mage putting on lightning nova and then saying "it looks cool, but it doesn't do any damage!" It's pretty clearly not intended to be a skill that is good for your average physical damage/attack speed ranger. It halves your damage right out of the gate, so why would it be? The payload is where the real damage potential lies, just like it was in 0.9.2. And the payload is fire damage, not physical.

So, in theory, you'd want a build that attacks very quickly with a bow and has fire/elemental damage passives. The bow damage does not matter very much, at least while you're using explosive arrow. Pierce and multiple projectiles would also be advised as this is a pure AoE skill anyway.

Well, the problem then is, this skill requires two opposite parts of the skill tree.

You need Dexterity's attack speed, you need Int's +Fire Damage, and you need Elemental Hit with +Elemental Weapon Damage from the Templar area.

That is a problem, and I agree that there is a serious lack of attack speed (and especially non-frenzy charge attack speed) in every area but the dex slice. But this might not be a build-killer. Being spread out across the tree isn't inherently bad.

Templar would probably be the best starting location for such a build. One arm of the skill tree would shoot up toward avatar of fire thru elemental damage, the other would head thru the center (possibly picking up the 16% fire damage nearby) to pick up lots of dex and 3 frenzy charges on that east skill highway and near ranger start location. That would be 55 points. So it's not that much of a stretch. And that would be +110 total dex on that path, so you'd be pretty close to required dex for bows.

You could even skip avatar of fire if you want to just focus on attack speed and fire damage passives and keep some phys for blood rage leeching. It makes a little more sense to me to go avatar and frenzy for some single-target damage though. You could even go with blood magic for a few more points if you like.