04-04-2003, 12:09 AM
Quote:Pierce:
Passive Effect: A chance that your missile will continue through its victim.
Guided Arrow:
Effect: Imbues an arrow with the ability to seek its nearest target.
Looking at those two descriptions and not thinking about how it actually works, has in the past, or anything else along those lines gives me the following image. I see an amazon shooting an arrow and it homing in on a target. I see it following a kind of arc in its path to the target. Then once it hits the target it goes through it and travels in another arc towards the next target.
If you go with an image like that then it becomes less likely for a guided arrow to hit the same monster twice. It would have to go through it and then arc completely around in a full circle and hit it again from a different direction. In most situations the arrow would probably hit some other obstacle before making this complete turn. Even assuming it didn't though, I would imagine that the spell guiding the arrow would fade before it would make it completely around again.
Now I know this isn't really practical, but it gets at how I think it should work. So going off of that idea and applying the way it works in the game I end up with thinking that it should hit the first monster, then hit another one that isn't too far out of its path, and then possibly one more before flying off in a straight line. If the others aren't there then I think it should just fly off in a straight line because there are no more valid targets.
Having said that I do admit that when I was playing my first (and only actually) amazon I remember thinking "wouldn't it be cool if guided came back and hit the same monster" or some such like that. I don't remember if I just hadn't noticed at the time that it did, that I thought it only damaged the first time, or what exactly I thought. My point though is that I do recognize that it is kind of cool having it do that. Even having said that I still think it shouldn't do it though. : )
Since I don't play PvP and have only played one amazon in PvM I can't really say how things need to work in the game to be balanced correctly for the amazon. I do think that the hitting of a single target multiple times with one shot is against the spirit of how it was imagined to work though. Of course this is just my opinion. I'm sure many people have a different feel for the spirit of how it was meant to be.
As to your idea of it piercing the same target once, but no more. I think it needs to be explained why it can only pierce once. Now this could be solved by implementing a spell timer on it. Something so that after a certain amount of time the guided spell fades and it becomes a normal arrow again. With a system like this if you were point blank with a monster then the arrow might pierce 3 or 4 times. If you were a decent distance away it might pierce 1 or 2 times and if you were a good ways away it wouldn't pierce at all. I'm not sure what length of time we would be talking about so that it would still be functional, but also not be as abusable. Somebody who played amazons more would probably have a better idea of how that would work. It also may be possible to have the spell timer increase with more skill points. It would be like the more skillful you became at the ability the longer you could sustain it.