How I believe GA and pierce should work together

[ALnitak]

Hi all,

What a can of worms I opened :-)

Swirly,

I see your point and find it interesting. But when using guided arrow, it's not really following an arc. First if you aim at your target manually (or as a primary skill without shift key), guided arrow follows a straight line - unless the monster has moved a lot. Then if you use guided arrow aiming at nothing (secondary skill pattern), guided arrow first goes straight, then aims, changes its direction for another line going straight to the monster : two straight lines. So guided arrow arriving on a target is always along a line, not an arc.

As for why guided arrow would pierce once and no more, the explanation would be : "once" for the logical (level 30 skill > level 18 skill), "no more" for the nerf, cause it has to be nerfed. The idea of the timer is special, could be good.

Isolde,

You say this is a real bug, could you give me a link to an official source saying so ? Not that I don't trust you, I only want to see how they said it, in which terms.

The purpose of the Arreat Summit is to reflect how the game *is* rather than how the game is meant to be.

I did quote Arreat's Summit, saying it was out-to-date until recently - and maybe still biased compared to the reality of the game. I could have quoted the game itself : where, in the game, in the skills' description, is it said that GA doesn't pierce, or that pierce doesn't work with GA ? And prior to this 1.09 bug thing, it wasn't written either.

No idea  I don't think it's actually taking precedence either - that argument would only apply if pierce was useless if you had points in guided arrow, but it isn't: it still applies to all your other arrow skills.

Pierce is not useless with other skills, true. What I meant is that if guided arrow is used and doesn't pierce, to me guided arrow takes precedence over pierce in that case. (no other bow skills than guided arrow could hijack pierce) Does it make sense ?

As for sorcs nerfing, yes it had a lot to do with lags. But in the end, frozen orb is less efficient than it was before, even if its damage has been increased. True firewall now ends up at damage summits, but you could have got something similar casting numerous firewalls at the same place - and that's what I'm doing with my classic sorc at the moment. My point was to say that if pierce doesn't work with guided arrow anymore in patch 1.10, then it will be the first time a level 30 skill doesn't work with a level 18 skill whereas it "is supposed to do so", according to me.

The Langolier,

Also, it is irrational to use physics as an arguement to describe certain spell behavior. Do I really need to say more?

Yep I do agree with that, as we would have to explain spontaneous combustion for sorc spells, which is a tough call. Note I was only replying to Elric with physics arguments, I didn't do so in my original "demonstration".

The arrow having energy has nothing to do allowing it to pass through an enemy. An arrow has energy even when it isn't moving. When a moving arrow collides, it will transfer energy to the object- it can then (depending on many factors) go through the target or simply stop.

An arrow not moving has what's called potential energy, linked to its altitude and earth's attraction ; an arrow moving has both potential energy and kinetic energy - directly linked to its speed and mass. When I talked about energy, I was referring to the kinetic part. I agree with you it depends on many parameters whether the arrow will keep on going after it hits : the arrow's speed, its mass, the product of those two (called quantity of motion), the nature of the target, the nature of the shock (soft, elastic...)... I didn't want to get into those details as I doubt Blizzard did.

Well, in your further argumentation, you seem to agree with me that guided arrow should pierce. And I do agree with you it has to be nerfed somehow, cause it's too powerful as it is. What I suggested is in between : pierce once will stick to logic (at least yours and mine), and in the same time limit guided arrow's power. Thus this constant hitting should no longer apply, or to a lesser extent.

Sometimes there are monsters which I can only pierce once, even at 100% pierce. Often happens to me with Shenk the overseer. Honnestly, guided arrow piercing once is much less powerful than piercing 4 (obvious), and nlt overpowered in itself, and I think it would be a great solution to satisfy everybody. Instead, I fear Blizzard will basically prevent pierce from working with guided arrow. sigh