11-17-2005, 06:50 PM
From Jarulf's Guide:
The end result is a ton of damage (although not consistently applied) if the enemy is not resistant or immune to lightning. But do you actually kill such creatures with a bow? With a high level, non-variant rogue, I tend to kill everything that isn't resistant to lightning with CL. And in that case, the extra mana and life from the "of heavens" is a bit useful, while the damage suffix isn't.
Quote:Fire and lightning attacks on bows work pretty much the same as the ones on melee weapons. There are some exceptions. As arrows to start with are already effects, there is no need to spawn a special effect for the extra fire and lightning damage like there is for melee weapons. Instead, as soon as the fire or lightning arrow hits and has done its non magical damage, the effect will switch into a fire or lightning damage attack, quite similar to the one spawned for melee attacks. This extra fire or lightning attack will, as opposed to with melee attacks, hit more than once and will try 7 times (9 if fire) before it ends. Any extra fire or lightning damage from any item other than the bow will be added despite the fact that this is a ranged attack.
Fire and lightning arrows are quite buggy and the list below tries to summarize some of the bugs related to them.
* The to hit calculations for the fire and lightning attack part, although magical, still use normal arrow to hit formulas.
* The fire and lightning damage is not halved for player versus player like all other magical damage is.
* Unlike melee fire and lightning damage, they can hit and deal damage more than once. This might not be a bug but probably is.
* Damage calculations for the fire and lightning part still include the normal character damage and will even apply such modifiers as +% damage to the fire and lightning damage. Basically, the damage range of the fire and lightning damage is treated as the "bow damage range" and thus modified as appropriately for a normal arrow attack.
* Despite what is said above, both monsters and players will resist the damage if they have resistance to the appropriate magic type (fire or lightning).
* The actual fire and lightning damage will often not hit the same place as the arrow did, meaning one will often escape the extra high damage caused by fire and lightning bows. {blockable?}
The end result is a ton of damage (although not consistently applied) if the enemy is not resistant or immune to lightning. But do you actually kill such creatures with a bow? With a high level, non-variant rogue, I tend to kill everything that isn't resistant to lightning with CL. And in that case, the extra mana and life from the "of heavens" is a bit useful, while the damage suffix isn't.