arcanist brand new skills

with arcanist brand blazing salvo even with 1 target wont target just them and still spreads all the projectiles

and on cracking lance the lightning just shoots out of your character not from the brand no matter hoe far away you are and seems not to target enemies

i tested this again in blood aqua and blazing salvo i think might just have weird targeting for single target but crackling lance is 100% bugged

I've been testing Arcanist Brand Blazing Salvo too (brand targeting the branded enemy). It looks like only 1 projectile hits (projectile shotgun rule) and I think maybe due to some minimum travel distance set for the 'projectiles travel in an arc' mechanic most of the projectiles land too far away for their explosions to deal damage to the branded enemy (without a lot of AoE investment or special positioning).

This basically means Arcanist Brand Blazing Salvo only does reliable damage with a single projectile vs single-targets (the projectile that hits in-air on cast). Without investments into 'additional projectiles' that puts it at 1/7'th the damage potential of the skill and very far below other skills. :|


Some of the wording in the teaser strongly suggests 'closer is better single target':

"

Blazing Salvo releases a torrent of fiery mortars that can hit enemies as they fly and land in rapid succession, with each mortar causing an explosion. When targeting up close, the explosions can hit a target multiple times, while targeting at range causes them to spread out and have a higher explosion radius, giving you a wide damage spread.

Arcanist Brand is about as 'up close' as we can get yet the explosions do not seem to hit multiple times (or even at all sometimes). Hopefully this can be changed otherwise the skill will suffer greatly at single target (even for self-cast/totems/traps/mines if too close to the enemy).

this hasn't been added to known issues or addressed in the patch notes for today is this not bugged?

The Crackling Lance issue definitely sounds like a bug but Blazing Salvo missing the enemy it's attached to might just be terrible mechanical interactions (and incredibly misleading skill teaser information). If the skill has a minimum projectile travel distance (it appears to, due to the 'arcing path') it stands to reason it can't be used to hit enemies (with explosions) while they are within that minimum projectile travel distance. However, this is contradictory to the teaser text regarding "targeting up close" = "explosions can hit a target multiple times" and drastically (and suddenly) reduces the DPS of the skill if the enemy gets too close.

This is a very general idea of how I imagine the DPS scales with enemy distance from cast point:

yea the minimum distance for blazing salvo hurts but there is also that if there is any other enemy on screen the arcanist brand targets the other enemy and not the branded target

im just going to bump this thread and hope crackling lance will shoot out of the brand at some point