Barrage

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gigaomega101 wrote:

Despite what everyone says about barrage only being worth using if you have over 7+ projectiles, i disagree completely. Let's look at some numbers. All these are based on lvl 20 gems:

Cyclone: 56.4% dps with 50% more attack speed * 2(cyclone hits twice per spin) = 169,2% dps
Ice Crash: 208 % dps with 20% less attack speed = 166,4% dps
Sunder: 181,1% dps with 15% less attack speed = 153,9% dps
Blast Rain: 47,6% dps with 4 explosions = 190,4% dps
Blade flurry: perfectly timed 56,4%*1.6*2*(1+0.75*1.2) = 342,9% dps (this should also be touched upon)
Sweep: 138% dps with 10% less attack speed = 124% dps (could buff that a bit)
Barrage: 61,4% dps with 4 arrows = 245,6% dps (fairly high, but kinda acceptable)
Most builds however don't stop at 4 arrows. The most common variation I've seen:
4 (base) + 2 (uber helmet enchant) + 1 (quiver corruption) + 3 (dying sun with atleast 50% flask effect)
which comes out to: 61,4% dps * 10 arrows = 614% base dps. Wands get one projectile less, but that does little to fix the problem.

How this was okayed by the developers and never touched upon (apart from one buff), I have trouble understanding.
My suggestion would be either making it so additional arrows have diminishing returns instead of linear scaling, perhaps a Less modifier, like the hierophant has, or putting a hard cap at the maximum number of arrows you can have. I would also suggest lowering the base damage of the skill. Anything over 250% attainable dps makes it pointless to ever use another skill, thereby severely limiting the build diversity you so wish to have.

Death's Opus... GMP... Deadeye Endless Ammo...

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sherkhan wrote:

People here obviously agree that barrage is mechanically too strong because it's easy to stack extra projectiles for effective more modifiers on single target.

I recommend addressing this the Hierophant way - put an overall "less" modifier per projectile after a certain amount. This addresses the issue instead of nerfing sources of additional projectiles overall.

Thought about this too!

Was brainstorming about it today...Here are some numbers I conjured up.

At level 1
70% damage effectiveness, 5% reduced damage effectiveness per projectile
4 projectiles-> 70-(4x5)=50% x 4 proj = 200% dmg
5 projectiles-> 70-(5x5)=45% x 5 proj = 225% dmg
6 projectiles-> 70-(6x5)=40% x 6 proj = 240% dmg
7 projectiles-> 70-(7x5)=35% x 7 proj = 245% dmg

At level 20
80% damage effectiveness, 5% reduced damage effectiveness per projectile
4 projectiles-> 80-(4x5)=60% x 4 proj = 240% dmg
5 projectiles-> 80-(5x5)=55% x 5 proj = 275% dmg
6 projectiles-> 80-(6x5)=50% x 6 proj = 300% dmg
7 projectiles-> 80-(7x5)=45% x 7 proj = 315% dmg

The scaling wouldn't go through the roof with more projectiles.

The current Barrage skill's scaling also needs to be looked at, at level 1 you get 50%x4 = 200% damage against single target. Whereas at level 20 it just scales to 61%x4 = 244% damage
It needs to be weaker at lower levels.

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JHWSX wrote:

Thought about this too!

Was brainstorming about it today...Here are some numbers I conjured up.

At level 1
70% damage effectiveness, 5% reduced damage effectiveness per projectile
4 projectiles-> 70-(4x5)=50% x 4 proj = 200% dmg
5 projectiles-> 70-(5x5)=45% x 5 proj = 225% dmg
6 projectiles-> 70-(6x5)=40% x 6 proj = 240% dmg
7 projectiles-> 70-(7x5)=35% x 7 proj = 245% dmg

At level 20
80% damage effectiveness, 5% reduced damage effectiveness per projectile
4 projectiles-> 80-(4x5)=60% x 4 proj = 240% dmg
5 projectiles-> 80-(5x5)=55% x 5 proj = 275% dmg
6 projectiles-> 80-(6x5)=50% x 6 proj = 300% dmg
7 projectiles-> 80-(7x5)=45% x 7 proj = 315% dmg

The scaling wouldn't go through the roof with more projectiles.

The current Barrage skill's scaling also needs to be looked at, at level 1 you get 50%x4 = 200% damage against single target. Whereas at level 20 it just scales to 61%x4 = 244% damage
It needs to be weaker at lower levels.

Yeah, well, no... At 9 projectiles you'll start losing damage. Artificially reducing the potential for upgrades is just bad. Not to mention that at 17 projectiles (if it is even possible to achieve), you'll go into negatives. Unsure how you want to do negative damage.

If anything, it could be less modifier.

Base damage: 60% (at, say level 20). 5% less per projectile.

4 - 195,48% base
5 - 232,13% base (18,75% more damage compared to 4 proj)
6 - 264,63% base (14,00% more damage compared to 5 proj)
7 - 293,30% base (10,80% more damage compared to 6 proj)
8 - 318,44% base (8,57% more damage compared to 7 proj)

Barrage is a good ability. Don't get me wrong. But ONLY for elemental builds. But then again, which ability is NOT OP for elemental? Cursed double dipping.

- the terrible 'per arrow' base damage means that damaging ailments deal practically no damage, same with non-damaging ones having almost no effect
- doesn't really make your weapon damage stand out as it only gets 47.5% of it out. High crit build is also kinda pointless, because even with large crit dmg multi, you're still working with low base, and therefore crits will still be low
- tooltip shows dps for 1 arrow out of whole barrage I think

It's mind-boggling how skills in this game work. I have LOADS of damage, bow damage, phys bow damage, global phys damage, projectile damage and damage against bleeding targets, but it's ALL FOR NAUGHT as any budget elemental builds deals 2-3x more dps with less investment (as any ele dmg you can get is at least 2x higher in magnitude - same as EDWA, not to mention way more common). Heck my frost blades character clears whole screen in half a sec, yet my phys barrage archer struggles even with single target.

This ability, as nice as it looks on paper, only really works when sitting in boss's face with Point Blank


Suggestion:
Deals (60-67.6)% of Base Damage
Deals 25% less Elemental Damage
Fires 4 additional Projectiles
10% less damage per each additional projectile.

(Volley Fire jewels don't count as those can't hit main target)

- would deal more physical damage, but would be a bit less effective for elemental conversion (or, well, about as effective as it is now)
- diminishing returns for arrow count. Additional projectiles are expensive AF anyway and I can't afford them :D

The new interaction Barrage + Arrow Nova is kinda nice, but it feels that there is a higher delay in attack compared to Tornado shot. Maybe longer animation to point the bow up? Is that on purpose with Barrage?

Greetings Exiles!
I wanted to play a Barrage CoC build and so I was looking deeper into when/how fast Barrage shoots out projectiles at different attack speeds. In my testing I found something quite interesting which I couldn't find any good explanation for.
This post is about Barrage and Barrage Support and might be related to a bug.
This post is going to be numbers heavy.


This is what I tested:
White Long Bow (1.3 Base ApS) - ApS means attacks per second
Barrage lvl 1
Frenzy lvl 1
Frenzy lvl 1 supported by Barrage Support lvl 1
all at two different attack speed points (1 low, 1 high)
I simply stood still and fired away the skill. Recorded that with 60fps and then counted the frames between attacks/arrows for at least 20 full attack animations. For example: I started using Barrage, holding down the key for about 1.5 minutes and then cut out a segment of 20 full attack animations, counted total frames, then divided that by 20). I know that this is not the best / most accurate testing strategy, but for what I originally wanted to test this was good enough.

Test 1, 2, and 6 are the more interesting ones

Test 1 (low aps) Barrage (lvl 1 no links)


Test 2 (high aps) Barrage (lvl 1 no links)


Test 3 (low aps) Frenzy (lvl 1 no links)


Test 4 (high aps) Frenzy (lvl 1 no links)


Test 5 (low aps) Frenzy (lvl 1 linked with barrage support lvl 1)



Test 6 (high aps) Frenzy (lvl 1 linked with barrage support lvl 1)


My testing shows that using Barrage / Barrage Support ends up in having a much higher attack speed than somebody would expect.
I believe that when just straight up firing without doing anything else (no different animation) the character cancels parts of the animations which leads to much lower attack time between firing the actual projectiles / starting to fire another barrage of projectiles.

I would like to know if that's intended and if I am correct with my believe of auto-animation cancelling. Because that pretty much means that stacking attack speed with Barrage / Barrage Support ends up in huge unexpected damage gains (in test 2 58% MORE) against single targets (when standing still and firing away non-stop).
It would also be interesting to know if a volley of projectiles within the same barrage attack can shotgun. On high attack speed it sometimes fires only 2 sequential volleys with 2 and 3 projectiles next to each other instead of 5 projectiles sequentially.

barrage used to be a "rapid fire " single target skill - now its another spread-like aoe - we already have split arrow and stuff. it really broke my ST dps that the projectiles now spread instead of focussing on the one target.

Would it be possible to make this skill channeling? I'd like to use it, but you have to shoot all projectiles in the same direction, which kind of defeats the purpose of firing a sequence of projectiles in the first place.

Barrage support is considered channeling, but Barrage attack isn't considered channeling. You cannot trigger Barrage via Maloney's quiver either, which is confusing considering it's support is considered channeling, but the attack itself is not.

so Total new player here and I literally just got this gem skill ... I am really just curious why this even exists?

Its so under whelming and under performs verus what Ive already been using. Every other gem ive tried or looked at seem to have a higher base damage then previous gems I was using except this one.

I atleast thought id give it a try thinking ; maybe it just doesn't look good on paper and its a sleeper skill. SO I stacked it with Pierce, Volley and Faster attacks and it Literally Does Less Damage then a Normal Base Attack.

So is this just in here because 'copy and paste' from diablo?

I went so far as to look through MaxRoll and other websites to see if any "build" uses this at all ... even just as a throw away early on and came up with nothing.


I Would REALLLy like to see this skill get buffed all of these Guides that spend all this time coming up with the "Best" builds it would be nice to do something original or have something more oriented towards bossing or a skill thats a good swap to for Single Target.

just my take