Split Arrow

As ShadowUltra mentioned on the first page of this thread, have you considered doing a custom animation for Split Arrow? By nature the animation of firing a bow is much more repetitive than swinging a weapon and the only place to really deviate from that is with the bow and arrow based skills. As ShadowUltra recommended, having an animation with the archer holding the bow horizontal rather than vertical would be a nice touch. And since the arrows fan left to right rather than up and down it would be much more realistic as well.

i first played a bow-character today, naturally using splitarrow (lvl 19 now)
(had no manaproblems whatsoever, but that is more because of the mighty manaflaks, i think)
anyway:
it is just a minor cosmetic issue, but i noticed, that when you activate the skill and aim it from 6oclock towards 12 oclock(may be not as accurate as that)
the trails of the arrows created dont emerge from the bow/hand in a "natural" way, but (the trails) actually cross BEHIND their point of origin. just try it out, i hope youll see what i mean.
especially the crossing looks odd to me, but as mentioned, it only occurs at certain directions aimed.

yeah, wanted to report the mana problem aswell, but it seems it has already been reported :)

Currently level 10, I don't feel the need to replace my basic attack with elemental hit, so I'm always full mana... until I use Split Arrow.
In 4 casts, I'm out of mana. Luckily the flask system is really good, so it helps in this situation.
But the use of Split Arrow seems really binary.

Like Caphriel suggested, make it scale if it's balance toward late game, or with +Mana on Hit gears.

Another problem I have, my basic attack seems more accurate than Split Arrow. Sometimes, only 2 arrows will hit, and they don't even seem to deal damage.
Is there an optimal range to use this skill?


edit:
I didn't pay enough attention to the mana cost on Poison Arrow, which is the same as Elemental Hit. I changed the way I use my skill. Now I use Poison Arrow if I need AoE damage, and Split Arrow if I need burst AoE damage. It makes more sense like this.

Have no compare to any changes on the manacost, at the begining the cost were high indeed.
From level ~20 it became really funny and usefull.

This skill, in combination with pierce: Great!

It is as my good old "multishot", it looks the same, it works nearly the same way - and the most important thing - it feels the same!

With this funny thing you convinced me :)

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that it appears a target can only be hit by one arrow from the skill, even when at extreme close range.

This is probably for balance purposes, but it seems if a monster is slamming you in the face, that penalty could be offset by you doing more damage to said monster?

Anyway, otherwise, I love this skill. I do burn through mana flasks fairly quickly, but it is great fun, and I would imagine even more fun with Pierce - though I did not get a chance to use that combination before the end of stress test weekend.

Keep up the good work!

"

Devantor wrote:

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that it appears a target can only be hit by one arrow from the skill, even when at extreme close range.

This is probably for balance purposes, but it seems if a monster is slamming you in the face, that penalty could be offset by you doing more damage to said monster?

Anyway, otherwise, I love this skill. I do burn through mana flasks fairly quickly, but it is great fun, and I would imagine even more fun with Pierce - though I did not get a chance to use that combination before the end of stress test weekend.

Keep up the good work!

You could always get point blank, or use the point blank support gem.

Level 33 Ranger. Level 8 split arrow basic with no support 15 mana, whereas my level 8 poison arrow with lesser multiple projectiles and penetrate support only costs 14 total.

With this setup, poison arrow does more damage per projectile, AND puts out 3+ poison clouds per use, with the exception of firing 1 less projectile than split arrow. I understand that it's not fair to judge a skill by itself with a supported skill, but it should highlight at least the mana cost is too high for split arrow if its base cost is higher than a 2x supported skill that ends up being far superior. I've never used split arrow since I got LMP on my poison arrow.

tldr: multiple projectile supported poison arrow is better than split arrow.

Complete agreement with above post. At the start, Split Arrow was a nifty semi-AOE spell, but then I started comparing it to Poison Arrow, and it just does not stack up favorably. The mana cost becomes grossly prohibitive quickly as it does less for more. This is unfortunate since Split Arrow has some interesting targeting dynamics (you can control the width of the arc depending on where you shoot, each arrow follows its own trajectory, etc...) but there's really no justifying using it over other bow options at the moment.