FIRES MAGIC ARROWS

[Ferengi]

I've never been able to figure out why a bow with "Fires Magic Arrows" might be important. Since a new unique bow has been added with this property, it makes me think it must be valuable somehow....

:unsure:

[Ruvanal]

In v1.10 the Widowmaker will use Magic Arrows instead of a normal attack which will consume no arrows and for this particular bow will convert 11% of the physical damage to magic damage. Some of the other bows with 'magicarrow' will convert at different percentages depending on the level of magicarrow that is assigned to the bow.

[MMAgCh]

And for the sake of completeness, here are the levels of the Magic Arrow mod found on some unique/set bows. The percentage of physical damage converted to magical is equal to the MA level.

Normal
Witherstring - level 3
Wizendraw - level 5

Exceptional
Witchwild String - level 20

Elite
Widowmaker - level 11
M'avina's Caster - level 1

edit: can we make it so previewing a post does NOT reset the subject to "RE: ..."?

[Bolty]

edit: can we make it so previewing a post does NOT reset the subject to "RE: ..."?

This is a bug with the threaded hack we're using on the forum and is not likely to be fixed by the author anytime soon. :(

-Bolty

[Ferengi]

which will consume no arrows

I've used most of these bows, but not on normal attack, and never experienced "consume no arrows". I recall trying normal attack back in patch 1.05, but still I was consuming arrows. I used Witchwild a lot in 1.09, but I don't recall using normal attack enough to notice a lack of arrow exhaustion. I recall thinking that Magic Arrows must be something else, which eventually lead to this question.

Is the effect that it always coverts some fraction of the physical damage to magical? Or perhaps only a fraction of the time, the entire damage is converted? [same end result over sufficient time] That might explain why it seems that arrows are consumed.

TIA for the info, Witchwild is an interesting bow often overlooked. I liked the Amp Damage so much eventually that I employed Atmas with Windforce when lady fortune smiled upon me later.

[adeyke]

Like the "fires explosive arrows or bolts" ability, the "fires magic arrows" ability works only when using normal attack. These abilities just replace the normal attack with exploding arrow or magic arrow, except that it still costs no mana. They have no effect at all if you're using one of the amazon bow skills.

It does convert a fraction of the physical damage to magical with each arrow.

Note that many of the magic/exploding arrow bows have had the level of this ability adjusted between 1.09 and 1.10. These are the stats for the magic arrow bows in 1.09:

Normal:
Witherstring: level 35
Wizendraw: level 1

Exceptional:
Witchwild String: level 1

[LavCat]

Note that many of the magic/exploding arrow bows have had the level of this ability adjusted between 1.09 and 1.10.  These are the stats for the magic arrow bows in 1.09:

Normal:
Witherstring: level 35

Are the 1.09 skill levels a property of the 1.09 uniques that carry over into 1.10? If so a 1.09 Witherstring upgraded to a razor bow could be a nice present for a rogue. Still, maybe not quite as nice as 1.10 Witchwild String.

A related question (a bit off topic), do the 1.09 set items get their new partial set bonuses in 1.10, or are the 1.09 set items like the DII set items post LoD? If they don't get the new bonuses is there some way of telling the 1.09 set items from the 1.10 set items? The set item durabilities do not seem to have changed between 1.09 and what is listed on arrate.

[adeyke]

Items do not get upgraded stats from 1.10. So, AFAIK, old Witherstrings would still have that very high level of magic arrow. As the level isn't displayed, it'll get easy to mix up 1.09 and 1.10 bows if you have both ;).

Note that the elite unique upgrade recipe is ladder-only, so you won't be able to use it on 1.09 items on the realms.

Also note that an elite Witherstring would have only 48 average damage. 35% of 48 is 16.8. OTOH, an elite WWS would have 91-98.5 average damage. 20% of 91 is 18.2. So if you just want a high amount of magic damage conversion, the 1.10 WWS is slightly better. IMHO, the other bonuses on the WWS are also very worthwhile. WWS also has 2 sockets in 1.10, which it didn't have in 1.09.

Set items won't get the new green or blue bonuses unless you find them new in 1.10. They will get the gold bonuses. They'll apparently also get the new colours (for example, Vidala is black now). Aside from Arctic Mitts (which require clvl 3 in 1.09 and clvl 2 in 1.10), only the 7 class-specific sets have changed stats. In the case where blue bonuses were added to an item, it's possible to identify the version at a glance. Otherwise, you'd have to either equip it or know where it came from to identify the version.

[Crystalion]

Items do not get upgraded stats from 1.10.  So, AFAIK, old Witherstrings would still have that very high level of magic arrow.

My recollection from v1.10beta1 was that an imported from v1.09 Ravenclaw had obscenely high level for Exploding Arrow (as opposed one from v1.10, which worked as expected). I don't remember if I reported this as a bug, since neither I nor Blizzard seem too worried about normal realm (as opposed to the new fresh start v1.10 Ladder).

Clearly this, being "hidden", will cause some v1.10 Single Player player's who just convert characters to inadvertently "cheat" the game. Seems like the same sort of thing as the "Eth" bug pre-v1.10.

[adeyke]

If you're bringing legit 1.09 items legitimately into a legit 1.10 game, I really can't see that as cheating. And I really don't see the comparison to the Eth bug.

While some people did just put an Eth in a weapon for the -25% defense, the vast majority of Eths were there to actively exploit the bug. In most cases, if you haven't heard of the bug, you're not going to put an Eth in a weapon, so there isn't that big of a risk of accidentally exploiting it.

OTOH, the issue you're referring to could well happen to a legit character simply from upgrading to 1.10. In order to avoid it, you'd have to go through the list of item changes and destroy everything you have that's on the list. This means, for example, that all characters using any part of the Aldur, Griswold, Tal-Rasha, Natalya, Trang-Oul, M'avina or Immortal King set would automatically be "cheating" if they didn't remove the offending items.

That is, unless you define the "cheating" items as those with changes to invisible bonuses, or as items that were better in 1.09 than 1.10. But these restrictions seem rather arbitrary, and sometimes subjective.