Good job doing that underussed skills or builds get more use with 2.4, but guys you missed some important things:
Amazon Multiple Shot: Nearly no one is using it. Please, remove the 1/4 damage reduction like you did in Strafe. Now multiple shot amazons are extremely unused and everyone is using strafe or other skills. You improved strafe but forgot to improve multiple shot. Also, only two of the arrows get adds from crushing blow, knockback, etc… please solve that, every arrow must get the adds (like in strafe) to make this skill again used. Another possible correction will be reduce mana use. And another will be to give damage bonus like in strafe, up to 100%. Then, using multiple shot amazon will be again enjoyable in all difficulties.
Amazon Immolation Arrow: No one is using it, and probably no one will use it with your minor changes. Please, remove or reduce the casting delay, it is too much high.
Please, reconsider adding these changes, those skills are very wonderful but extremely underused now.
EDIT: another extra is that amazon haves very low resistances in hell, but this is more hard to solve i think.
Are we playing the same game? Multishot is one of the most used bow skills and certainly trumps strafe right now in overall DPS. All of the buffs you have suggested for multishot are not needed. All arrows of multishot carrying procing effects will be severely overpowered.
For immolation arrow, if the casting delay is removed, then why have explosive arrow at all? Immolation arrow and explosive arrow are supposed to be alternated between each other much like fireball + meteor. I do think immolation arrow could use a further damage boost or have its area of effect widened however.
For sure we are not playing the same game, from each 10 bow ama I see, 9 of them are strafe and 1 Multiple Shot, and they even improved strafe in 2.4. Non sense. But OK, it’s your opinion, no problem.
i only support MANA REDUCTION…not removing the 1/4 dmg reduc…and i believe removing it from strafe was a mistake(i own a bow zon so i know how the dmg feel built properly)
the only other buff i would like to see is bow receiving 40-70% all resists(because thats the 1 huge issue for bowzon in hell…they have literal no elemental resistance and prone to get 1 shot
I always use a combination of strafe and multi. Multi is very good to use when there are large amounts of spread out mobs. Strafe excels when there are fewer and they’re closer together. Both attacks have their purpose.
Immolation arrow will still need some love. The fire pit it leaves is still going to be very weak judging by the patch notes. It should definitely burn for a lot more considering it has a cooldown. Maybe combine the synergies into one.
I just dont see many amazon players using MS. Its one of the most iconic skills in the D2 universe. You look cool using it until a hammerdin joins your game. MS when compared to other S tier skills is severely underpowered. MS should be an overpowered skill, which was the fantasy of the character. To be able to clear an entire screen of enemies with one vollely of arrows.
Speaking about resources, bowazons have 2 resources to manage, her meager mana pool and her arrow/quivers.
She does not get additional stats from her off hand slot like every other class in this game. That is a lot of power lost. Not to mention she has to sacrifice her body amor, shield or helm with perfect 40/15IAS to reach specific breakpoints. Her resistances suffer hard because of this. She definitely needs some love.
MS should get the same treatment that strafe did and so should barb WW. Cap the mana cost and increase the multiplier for each additional arrow spawned from hard skill points invested.
Even with all that MS will still be less powerful than a maxed-out Lighting fury or hammerdins magic hammers or decked out Blizzard.
That is a sensible statement, however for such an iconic skill and the fantasy that was sold pre nerfs early game, this skill is not performing as well as other S tier skills. Back in D2 pre LOD, MS was insanely good. Freezing entire screens of monsters and one shotting trash mobs. Of course being in the spotlight it got a lot of hate and in my opinion the Amazon got the hardest nerfs of all.
Let me guess, the hammerdin uses enigma right? That’s really the problem there. Most bowazons don’t use enigma.
Arrows/bolts need to hold more I agree, this becomes fairly obvious in players 8 gameplay. Happy if this got bumped up to 600/450 for arrows/bolts respectively, then see how this goes in the next patch.
Mana’s not really a problem for multishot zons but moreso for magezons, so 2.4 is promising mana reductions for those skills.
I have tested the new strafe with hero editor, simply adding 33% more damage and some ar and strafe seems pretty decent now, even with crappy bows like upped lycanders aim.
but multishot is not ok, imo it also needs the 100% damage buff strafe got instead of 3/4.
The problem with multishot is that you have to aim for a very high attack speed to make it useful, and it’s impossible to get the max bow fps without faith. It’s also very mana hungry
Fair point here… so what about an idea of the quivers like D3 ones? With stats and enchantment?.. no needs for picking arrows/bolts… but once your quiver is broken u need to repair it by blacksmith to recharge its arrows/bolts.
Maybe like every 10 levels, an extra middle arrow carries procing events? All arrows can leech already BTW.
Strafe has a lower IAS threshold to max out… but strafe is fundamentally slower compared to multishot - UP TO 7 arrows per second per strafe volley vs 10+ arrows per multishot volley (2.5+ volleys per second) is just no comparison. More often than not you are going to do more damage with multishot than strafe.
Mana costs should not be an issue if you have some mana leech and even a moderate amount of damage. This is probably worth making a video topic about for levelling bowazons.
i have tested a max fps faith bowazon vs a strafer and while i agree the multishot pumps a lot more arrows per second, the new strafe simply does more damage and feels better. It also procs amplify damage from atmas and knockback, which is a huge boost in damage and survivability.
Even with an act2 merc with pride, might aura and using a faith bow, the clear speed is just still ok, for a multi hr investment. And i don’t mean mobility, i mean the amount of time you have to stand and shoot to kill some mobs in p5 in hell. p8 is even harder
Removing the 3/4 penalty would help lower budget zons and maxed out zons alike, and the damage would still be nothing absurd compared to hammerdins, sorcs and tesladins.
But soon we will all be able to test it live and make our own conclusions
I did some playing around today with a WF + faith merc setup. Multishot hands down still has more DPS vs large crowds, but I’m liking strafe now with less than 8 monsters on screen at a time and vs bosses. And this is the point:
Strafe is designed for targeting small groups of monster’s in different directions
Multishot is designed for fighting large groups of monsters
Based on my testing, both skills now fill their respective roles quite well. Buffing multishot with the same buff will break this role distinction and make strafe less utilised again
Ok let’s try and put some numbers to this then. Go make a hero edited bowazon with the best (legit gear that is findable in current patch) in slot gear and run hell cows on players 8, 5 runs using strafe from portal up to full clear.
Until you can do even 1 hell cow run in under 9 minutes with strafe alone, we’re going to have to take “my opinion” as common sense and that there is nothing to ‘solve’.
The problem is that Multishot should be the multiple enemy killer while strafe should be the single/low target destroyer.
Let’s be honest though, with like 5-8 enemies and if they are somewhat lined up, strafe wins easily. Multishot is the go to for huge packs.
I don’t see why multishot has a penalty though. Bows are one of the weakest weapon types as it is. They don’t get to be ethereal and neither skill has synergies. I had faith Act1 merc plus windforce with decent gear in the PTR and while it did clear players 1 hell chaos okayish, it wasn’t able to justify the 25% multishot reduction.
Even if Multishot and strafe was 150% damage, it would probably just be barely viable still.
Because compared to strafe, multishot is shooting many, many more arrows per second. Damage on the character screen may appear low, but multishot vastly excels vs large monster counts.
That’s why I said to the guy above, do some hell cow runs and see which one does better.
I know caster characters dominate D2 right now, but that’s a separate problem to multishot vs strafe, and requires a completely different approach to fixing.