Point Blank Archer Keystone

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

I'm also wondering if explosive arrow charges will work with this passive. You could build charges as the enemy closes and let them go off or quickly close distance on ranged mobs (or lightning warp?) to get within melee range.

If I get curious enough, I may try it out with one of my rangers that haven't had passives reassigned yet... In fact, I might still have a legacy character that was already built for explosive arrow...

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lemekim wrote:

tl;dr: I took Point Blank Archer keystone. I tested it. I refunded my points and will not pick it up again until changes are made. Read on to find out why!

I asked GGG about the specifics on the damage dropoff, but got no reply. Being the impatient person, I did my own testing. I tested this on Plague Vomit, boss zombie in the Fetid Pool area, since he has a good amount of life and is slow enough to allow me to more or less control the distance that he is at. Essentially I just killed him one way, see how many hits he took, rinse, record, repeat. Here is what I found:

1) Rain of Arrows does NOT work with this keystone. At all. The damage remained the same up close or at the edge of the screen. Rain of Arrows is probably not flagged as a projectile, since Faster Projectiles support gem had to be specifically enabled for it AFAIK, so it might be a similar issue.

2) I am not sure if there is a smooth damage curve the father you are from the target, but for the purposes of testing, I divided up the distance into three zones:

- Melee range: at point blank (melee) range, the damage indeed seems to be roughly 50% more as advertised. Unfortunately, this zone seems to be quite small - it doesn't seem to be much bigger than melee range, hence the name.

- Half the distance to screen edge: this is a pretty large area, where you do normal (100%) damage. It doesn't seem to stretch out much further than half the distance from your character to the edge of the screen.

- Edge of the screen: anything that lies closer to the edges of your screen will take half of your normal damage (so 50% less).

So what is my opinion of this? With Maelstrom of Chaos being what it is right now, being in melee range of anything is just asking for a one way trip to town. Since ranged users pretty much have to keep the distance away from melee, this keystone is somewhat counter-productive, and most of the damage done will be either normal, or reduced to half by the keystone.


I suppose this is the part where I provide constructive criticism on how can it be made better... 1) Fix RoA bug 2) Reduce the far distance penalty to 33% or buff the point blank damage buff 3) Increase the area where damage increase buff takes effect - or just make it so that I can actually be in point blank range and not die in seconds.

Until then, my advice is to save those two points (or more) that you would have spend on this and put them into increased bow damage or something similar, that will get you a far more reliable damage increase.

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Karakkonor wrote:

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lemekim wrote:

tl;dr: I took Point Blank Archer keystone. I tested it. I refunded my points and will not pick it up again until changes are made. Read on to find out why!

I asked GGG about the specifics on the damage dropoff, but got no reply. Being the impatient person, I did my own testing. I tested this on Plague Vomit, boss zombie in the Fetid Pool area, since he has a good amount of life and is slow enough to allow me to more or less control the distance that he is at. Essentially I just killed him one way, see how many hits he took, rinse, record, repeat. Here is what I found:

1) Rain of Arrows does NOT work with this keystone. At all. The damage remained the same up close or at the edge of the screen. Rain of Arrows is probably not flagged as a projectile, since Faster Projectiles support gem had to be specifically enabled for it AFAIK, so it might be a similar issue.

2) I am not sure if there is a smooth damage curve the father you are from the target, but for the purposes of testing, I divided up the distance into three zones:

- Melee range: at point blank (melee) range, the damage indeed seems to be roughly 50% more as advertised. Unfortunately, this zone seems to be quite small - it doesn't seem to be much bigger than melee range, hence the name.

- Half the distance to screen edge: this is a pretty large area, where you do normal (100%) damage. It doesn't seem to stretch out much further than half the distance from your character to the edge of the screen.

- Edge of the screen: anything that lies closer to the edges of your screen will take half of your normal damage (so 50% less).

So what is my opinion of this? With Maelstrom of Chaos being what it is right now, being in melee range of anything is just asking for a one way trip to town. Since ranged users pretty much have to keep the distance away from melee, this keystone is somewhat counter-productive, and most of the damage done will be either normal, or reduced to half by the keystone.


I suppose this is the part where I provide constructive criticism on how can it be made better... 1) Fix RoA bug 2) Reduce the far distance penalty to 33% or buff the point blank damage buff 3) Increase the area where damage increase buff takes effect - or just make it so that I can actually be in point blank range and not die in seconds.

Until then, my advice is to save those two points (or more) that you would have spend on this and put them into increased bow damage or something similar, that will get you a far more reliable damage increase.

So what you're saying is you'd rather have the disgusting amount of range advantage than 50% damage? I think that's a fundamental problem, rather than an issue with the keystone.

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Garr0t wrote:

Does this keystone work with all ranged damage?
What if I spec this and use Fireball or Ice Spear?