Explosive Arrow

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Nethowler wrote:

I'm working on an EA build right now. When I put points into my passives for Increased Fire Damage" I did not see any gain on the actual skill. All the guides I've been reading suggest investing lots of points into these increased fire damage nodes.

PS (I'm talking about increased fire damage, not increased fire damage from weapon.)

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Nethowler wrote:

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not sure what that means. Is increased fire damage helping this skill?

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Avelice wrote:

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Well, if you dont plan to proliferate burns, then, yes, probably. Also works nice with concentrated effect. But why do you want EE for that? EE means that if mob is hit by 2 (or all 3) explosions, then damage output will be pretty lowered. Also, EE positive bonus affects only mobs hit directly by EA projectile, while negative effect will be apllied to all mobs, clustered together.
The best way to benefit from EE is to proliferate burn from EA, since it will be proliferated from primary target and no DMG loss because of LMP. If you use LMP and no proliferation, then benefits of EE will be pretty questionable, at least.

The thing is, for any groups you want to aoe clear, IE trash mobs, explosive arrow does such insane damage you can just kill them without ever even caring about burn damage. As such, LMP gives you a greater spread, and actually is damage boost if you can hit a target with two or three arrows. This is true even if the subsequent arrows are penalized by elemental equilibrium.

Proliferating burn damage for your AOE clear is simply a waste since you do enough explosion damage most of the time to clear very easily. But, for those times when you don't, it's worth noting LMP gives you extra ignite chances as well if you can hit a mob with multiple explosions.

That said, Elemental Equilibrium is insane to boost your single target damage, and since your AOE clear on EA is insane, picking up the node to improve your single target is very wise. Even if you use LMP, it's still going to be be providing a boost to the first of the explosions, thus making it better than it appears at first glance.

I'm very interested in knowing how burns created by projectiles are treated for damage now. Does +% increased projectile damage improve those burns? Does LMP give less burn damage? Does concentrated effect improve the damage?

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F4F_Lucifer wrote:

I dont know what is GGG intention but the way they make EA can only crit with first hit make crit nodes totally useless because I have to wait 1 sec or .55 sec if using Reduced Duration gem if the first hit doesn't proc crit. Going full crit nodes then I will lose too much defensive nodes as quiver is much worse than shield defensively. I cant see EA as a viable late game content i.e Atziri farm etc. Do I really have to go low life crit ST to go to Atziri?