1.2 Bow Buffs: Skills, Bows, Passives (and Cleave)

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Kheffin wrote:

If Viper strike doesn't get nerfed, Shadows will finally be able to kill Gravicius in Descent Champions.

Shadows in general look ridiculously strong now for racing, but I was assuming they would still be handcuffed by crappy gem rewards. Do you know if they get Flameblast after Brutus now? If so, all hail the new racing overlord.

Yeah, viper strike is now the shadow starting gem (from the beach) and its different.
It reads:

Base duration is 8 seconds.
Debuff deals 30% of hit damage as base chaos damage per second.
50% chance to inflict debuff on hit.

So the degen scales of the weapon now. From what i can tell, it can still stack up to 4 times.
Nevermind, the mighty Chris has spoken:
"Viper Strike now has a 50% chance to deal 240% of the attack's damage as chaos damage over eight seconds. The effect duration won’t be refreshed by new attacks, but there is no limit to how many Viper Strike debuffs an enemy can have on them."
That probably explains why viper strike is ridiculously OP on mobs now.

Hillock killing time doesnt seem to change much, i entered town at 55secs.

The ele damage start nodes for shadows are pretty amazing (its like having a +1 lol), they still do not get Flameblast from brutus though.

Tag, can you please check the cleave buff? Are the dual wield penalties still harsh?

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tagpt wrote:

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Kheffin wrote:

If Viper strike doesn't get nerfed, Shadows will finally be able to kill Gravicius in Descent Champions.

Shadows in general look ridiculously strong now for racing, but I was assuming they would still be handcuffed by crappy gem rewards. Do you know if they get Flameblast after Brutus now? If so, all hail the new racing overlord.

Yeah, viper strike is now the shadow starting gem (from the beach) and its different.
It reads:

Base duration is 8 seconds.
Debuff deals 30% of hit damage as base chaos damage per second.
50% chance to inflict debuff on hit.

So the degen scales of the weapon now. From what i can tell, it can still stack up to 4 times.
Nevermind, the mighty Chris has spoken:
"Viper Strike now has a 50% chance to deal 240% of the attack's damage as chaos damage over eight seconds. The effect duration won’t be refreshed by new attacks, but there is no limit to how many Viper Strike debuffs an enemy can have on them."
That probably explains why viper strike is ridiculously OP on mobs now.

Hillock killing time doesnt seem to change much, i entered town at 55secs.

The ele damage start nodes for shadows are pretty amazing (its like having a +1 lol), they still do not get Flameblast from brutus though.

You should try out EK.

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cwu wrote:

Tag, can you please check the cleave buff? Are the dual wield penalties still harsh?

Cleave now reads:
When Dual Wielding, Deals 65% Damage from each Weapon combined

So the base effectiveness (when using 2h) is 100% (up from 80%)
The DW effectiveness was upped from 60% to 65%. Doesn't specify phys damage so it should still apply to ele damage.

Imho 5% more damage is a joke of a buff and if you want to go 2h there's no reason to not go Leap Slam.
I checked Ground Slam and its unchanged.

Edit: Spectral Throw now deals 38% of base damage at lvl 1 (down from 46%). Ouch. Rip Ranger racers.

Keep in mind the base att speed of all weapons (1h and 2h) up to lvl 12 or so has been increased. Tribal Mauls are 1.10as for example.

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Rithz wrote:

You should try out EK.

In Act1 before Brutus, you will 2shot everything with EK (0.8x2 = 1.6secs) or 1EK + 1FT (0.8+0.5 = 1.3secs).

It's definetly not better than 1FT + 1SC (0.5x2 = 1sec), even though sometimes EK hits targets that SC doesn't depending on mob positioning. But with SC you can aim anywhere, you dont have to position yourself and that certainly makes a difference.

I was using white wands (11 and 12 base) and a 24 rustic.

After Brutus, the damage starts to fall off a little bit, sometimes you need 3 EKs or 2 EKs + 1 FT.
I got added cold instead of fork to test the damage.

Once i got to Act2, i crafted a 36 spell damage total wand.
With that, you 1shot monkeys and snakes in river/old fields, bandits are still 1EK + 1FT

I crafted another wand just to try it out (40 spell damage total) and its still not enough to 1shot bandits.
In sins, it doesn't matter if you have only 1 or both wands with +spell damage recipe, you don't 1shot with EK.

I stopped playing because using EK is known to give cancer over time and playing with 500ping is aids.

Imho there's no reason to use EK when you can 1shot everything with Fire Trap with the insane ammount of ele damage shadows get.

If you go EK, you also don't have a single target at all. You can't use VS on a weapon swap anymore because it scales of weapon damage and you pick phys damage on the tree which doesn't scale with anything but EK.

I got glacial cascade from Brutus because its the only spell you get that does phys damage but the ammount is so small that using EK as single target actually does more damage than GC because of the phys dmg on the tree.

On the tree, i went the obvious route, phys damage to coordination > sniper > quickness. Then i was heading towards Master of Force.


The new Merveil is hard enough as it is for classes that have good single target.
I died 7 times with a cold ring between getting random dc/ed from the server and playing with 600-1k ping not being able to dodge her shit even though i was moving out of the way (because of high latency).

Shadows cant get both EK and bear trap because its the same quest that gives both (eggs).

You aren't very efficient vs blues aswell and you pretty much skip all rares.

So overall, why pick a cancer skill when you can skillfully 1shot everything with fire trap?

With the amount of elemental damage shadows are packing, shouldn't you be just picking up an ele foil for the swap and viper striking Brutus/Merveil + Fire Trap?

I can't foresee EK being a good alternative, not when you have a perfect path to Entropy + Saboteur. And as a plus, rolling flat ele damage on gear will be useful for bosses.


Looks like for D:C with Blood of the Summer being likely nerfed, FT focus will be more crucial + they moved Clever Construction to a nice spot to make Halls 3 not such a fucking pain in the ass.

..which brings us to the next point. They got rid of the res cluster between Shadow and Ranger. I wonder how people will make up for bad luck on crafts in D:C now..

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Lyralei wrote:

..which brings us to the next point. They got rid of the res cluster between Shadow and Ranger. I wonder how people will make up for bad luck on crafts in D:C now..

With flameblast drop.


On a serious note, Tag thanks for the info!

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Lyralei wrote:

With the amount of elemental damage shadows are packing, shouldn't you be just picking up an ele foil for the swap and viper striking Brutus/Merveil + Fire Trap?

With VS scaling of the weapon damage, you need a good ele 1hander for the damage to be worth it. I don't think you can reliably expect to get a good ele 1hander and rolling 1 just for boss killing would be a waste in my opinion. I think just using FT/SC is better. FT/SC is also more mobile than VS which you will need for the new merv.

I haven't rly tried it tho, so im not sure.

I guess I'll just farm coves in 1hr race as shadow

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tagpt wrote:

Edit: Spectral Throw now deals 38% of base damage at lvl 1 (down from 46%). Ouch. Rip Ranger racers.

DAMN