Lightning Arrow

I have been comparing this to my newly acquired poison arrow and it appears to be much more effective than poison with faster moving targets. The mana cost is higher than poison so I use poison more when I know mobs will linger in an area longer.

I do enjoy the lightning arrow effect very, very much though. And the instant damage is quite satisfying. I'm willing to bet that most everybody prefers the animations of lightning arrow vs poison arrow.

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DiscardedMemory wrote:

I actually think that the mana cost is perfectly fine, if anything, it should be raised. Stick with me on this one, people. The thing is, I'm a lv 40-something ranger, and have used the Lightning Arrow SO much over my characters history, and it's overpowered. The thing is, I use all elemental damage, and when I use the Lightning Arrow, after it branches out to the other enemies, it applies the on-hit elemental damage. Here is an example.

Say I'm using a quiver with added cold damage. I shoot a Lightning Arrow at a creep, and it's friends get hit as well. They ALSO get the cold damage, which will either freeze them and blow them up, or pretty much insta-kill them through added damage.

What I've stated above has been happening to me throughout my experience as a Ranger. You tell me, should the mana cost for something that applies on hit affects AND spreads to other targets with those same affects be lowered? Also, compared to the other special arrows, that can deal a little more damage for less cost.. They will only kill one creep, instead of killing multiple. Those are just my thoughts on the subject though. Please tell me what you think about this and how it affects other players.

You should try it at Chaos and report back on your findings..

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starsg wrote:

You should try it at Chaos and report back on your findings..

Thank you, and I'm having some troubles with the damage calculations per arrow (and since I don't use the Poison Arrow much or know everything about it, could someone help me)?

Does to poison effect only re-apply while that creep is within the radius of the poison? That's what it seems like while I've been testing it. Also, it SHOULD do more damage to the creeps, but from what I understand, wouldn't it only do that if they stay within the radius of the poison and over the allotted time? Otherwise, only how long they stayed within the radius would give the X amount of damage, lowering the total damage, since most creeps other than the undead will be able to move away from it and up to you easily.

I also have another question. When you use the Poison Arrow, it deals the extra elemental damages on impact, correct? Does it also deal the elemental damage in the radius of the Poison (not per second but to the creeps inside of it)?

If not, I believe that because of that reason, the Lightning Arrow would be of higher cost while the Poison Arrow is lower. Please correct me wherever I may be wrong with what I've said.

The main comparison of this ability is to Poison Arrow, which "deals more damage for a lot less cost". This statement, in its barest form, is true, but by and large, Lightning Arrow has many strengths over Poison Arrow, especially when Lightning Arrow is not upgraded.

People who use Lightning Arrow usually put on Lesser Mult. Proj. as well as Pierce. Personally, I also add Chance to Flee. Here is what happens when 1 singular shot of my Lightning Arrow is fired:

I spend ~30 MP.
2 or 3 mobs are hit by my initial Arrows. After all conversions, 100% damage to all of them. Assume only 2 got hit, for the sake of argument.
Those 2 get hit, and 1 of the arrows pierces to another target, hitting. Total, 3 targets get hit in a close proximity.
Because of Lightning Arrow's effect, the damage arcs from those 3, back to each other, as well as a few other mobs. The 3 mobs initially hit take 300% damage, and their nearby friends take damage too. Usually, that's enough to kill them. 3+ targets dead... 1 volley.

Now this is what happens when 1 singular shot of Poison Arrow is fired:

I spend ~12 MP after the same support gems.
2 or 3 mobs are hit by my initial arrows. They take 130% damage each. This is more difficult to resist than the damage dealt above.*
Clouds of poison appear, and all who walk through it take a small amount of Chaos damage over 3 seconds.
Some other mobs take a small amount of poison damage.
...
Nothing dies, and I have to fire another volley.

Now, that's not to say that a person who runs Poison Arrow runs the same supports that I do, but this denotes the difference between the two skills. Lightning Arrow is MP intensive *for a reason*. It wipes out mobs much faster than Poison Arrow does, because the damage from the arrow, if supported correctly, can hit *the same target multiple times*. That is very powerful. I think that something should be done about the fact that the gem scales poorly as it is leveled up, but by and large, the more I try Poison Arrow, the more I *want* to just be using Lightning Arrow.

It seems many people choose to downrank Lightning Arrow which is probably a hint that either the scaling is too weak or that mana cost is too high relative to mana stock/regen. I stopped using Lightning Arrow lvl 8 and switched to a lvl 3 to avoid going oom almost every 3 shots it feels.

I have a lvl 30 bow ranger and I have to constantly juggle with 3 mana pots since I haven't found gear of gems that really help out much on mana cost/regen. I like the flask design but I don't like that it's currently such a core mechanism to just keep up with skill use. I'm still struggling to have a good sense of game flow. combat feels very "stop-go-stop" and having to click to move (vs. wasd) doesn't help.

I really like this skill but so far for me it's the perfect example of that feeling of overall gimpness I have with my character, like a flashlight that's supposed to be powerful but it only flickers because the batteries are almost empty.

Maybe dps is very gear dependent and I just have bad gear, I'm not sure what's off but I would expect to have settled any character into a bit of a groove, 30 levels in.

people don't level it up because the damage doesn't increase AT ALL. you gain shock chance increase on level ups, and added splitting at certain lvs.
yeah the mana cost also goes up pretty fast too. but a lv 1 will be same strength as a lv 20 (except a lv 20 will have a healthy amount of shock chance by then. also hit 5 foes?)

I also think there's a balance problem in terms of maths scaling.

With the way the skill currently levels it costs 6~8 mana per additional target.

If I use it at level 5, I hit up to 2 extra targets for 12 mana.


If I use it at level 6, this becomes 3 targets for 18 mana. I can't afford that, compared to the potential DPS increase afforded by adding LMP instead.

= = =
It would suggest that if we stuck to 2 or 3 extra targets per arrow for all levels, people would actually want to level this thing.

Feedback based on 26 Ranger, only completed normal so far:

Very powerful and versatile skill. Combined with a support gem of puncturing, this is a great attack for close quarters. However, during the first levels and without a support gem attached, I found the mana cost to be rather high for a ranger build. This was remedied with better equipment later on though. Well balanced and fun to use.

Kudos for the visual effect, very nice work!

I've been using this heavily on my current build, but I'm also in the 'wont level it past 5' camp as the jump in mana-cost is not worth the benefit. You are simply better off putting it onto Multiple Projectiles + Pierce (either as passive, or as a support) and you get far more bang for your buck.


Considering how well it works with MP/Pierce - instead of having levelling it up increase the number of targets it can jump to, increase how much physical damage it converts to lightening damage or something to give it some element of damage-scaling.


Just seems odd that pretty much every other gem I have I'll level up without thought, but the once or twice where I've accidently leveled up Lightening Arrow, I've been doing a quick trip to town to down-level it.