Dual Arrows behavior

[fourphoton]

Can someone explain the mechanics for Dual Arrows? Here is what I have observed.

I use Dual Arrows on A, I hit both A and B:

Code: Select all

#####...
..@..A..
#####B..

I use Dual Arrows on A, I hit A once:

Code: Select all

########
..@..A..
########

I use Dual Arrows at floor behind A, I hit A once:

Code: Select all

########
..@..A..
########

I use Dual Arrows on A, I hit A twice:

Code: Select all

########
..@..AB.
########

I use Dual Arrows on B, I hit A twice:

Code: Select all

########
..@..AB.
########

[Hedrachi]

Fire two arrows at B, if the first one kills A, then the second one will hit B. Like how the iceblock bug causes you to flurry/burn/poison/etc yourself if you do more damage through multiple attacks in a single power, than the iceblock has health.

[Frumple]

Dual arrows only fires two shots if there's two critters in its area of effect, iirc.

In the third and forth examples, what's happening is it's firing one shot at both A and B, but the shot intended for B is having to path through A, thus A gets hit twice. If you swapped the position of A and B, B would get hit twice.

Whether you targeted A or B in that case would be irrelevant, because they're both in the AoE of the talent.

[greycat]

I use Dual Arrows on A, I hit both A and B:

Code: Select all

#####...
..@..A..
#####B..

Only in beta 34. In beta 33 or earlier, the arrow aimed at B will hit the wall first.

I use Dual Arrows at floor behind A, I hit A once

You can't use it on floor. You have to have at least one creature in the targeted region.

I use Dual Arrows on A, I hit A twice:

Code: Select all

########
..@..AB.
########

You must have used it on A and B, or it wouldn't have fired two arrows.

I use Dual Arrows on B, I hit A twice:

Code: Select all

########
..@..AB.
########

Again, you must have targeted both. It's identical to the previous question, but this time your first arrow didn't kill A. In the previous case, the first arrow killed A, and the second arrow was then free to travel to B.

See also: http://te4.org/wiki/archer

[fourphoton]

Dual arrows only fires two shots if there's two critters in its area of effect, iirc.

In the third and forth examples, what's happening is it's firing one shot at both A and B, but the shot intended for B is having to path through A, thus A gets hit twice. If you swapped the position of A and B, B would get hit twice.

Whether you targeted A or B in that case would be irrelevant, because they're both in the AoE of the talent.

Ah that explains it, genius! I suspect volley of arrows works very similar? I remember something like this happened with an escort (e): I was fighting a boss (b), saw the creatures (m) at the other side then used volley centered at x hoping to kill them without putting the escort next to the boss. Escort was dead with several arrows sticking out his back (Player hits escort for xx damage (3x))

Code: Select all

#####..........
#####..........
#####..mmm.....
b@e..mmmxm.....
#####..mmm.....
#####..........

You must have used it on A and B, or it wouldn't have fired two arrows.

So as long as pathing allows it, I will hit my target (center of the region) at least once then a random creature next to it? Or do the two shots target creatures within the region randomly?

[bricks]

Perhaps dual arrows should be changed to be more like high-level Turn Back the Clock (with a stamina cost increase). The current behavior is very unintuitive.

Volley could stand a rework too. Plain AoE ranged damage (scaled downwards, maybe 80%) would be great, seeing as how few Archer abilities let them hit behind crowds.

[greycat]

Are people allergic to reading the wiki? Here, quoted:

Dual Arrows: Oddly, this has no stamina cost. You select a square region containing (ideally) two or more enemies. The game will select two of these and fire arrows straight at them. Prior to beta 34, you must have direct line of sight to each of them, without any "shoot past the enemy" tricks, since the game will not use them. As of beta 34, this is much more powerful, as it will pick optimal firing routes for each monster.

If one of the enemies is occluding the other, there is a chance that the arrow intended for the rear enemy will be fired first, and will hit and kill the front enemy; then the arrow intended for the front enemy will be fired at the spot where the front enemy was, and will stop there, never reaching the rear enemy. Therefore, this talent works best if your targets are not lined up behind each other (unless you aim at the rear two out of a group of three or more).

Dual Arrows can be targeted on yourself, for example if you are in a narrow corridor with an enemy on each side. Targeting the region that includes both enemies and yourself will cause an arrow to fire at each enemy. You'll have to say yes to the "really target yourself" confirmation prompt, but you won't hit yourself.

Or do the two shots target creatures within the region randomly?

That.

[bricks]

Greycat, I don't think that the wiki is all that usable. Searching the site for "dual arrows" didn't bring me to that page, nor is what you are quoting from the talents/techniques or tom4-classes-archer page. I had to go to archer, and then click on the "general information/tips" page. I only know that these pages exist because I've dug through the wiki before.

[fourphoton]

Sorry I posted the reply then looked at the wiki...
It seems volley can deal very high damage given the right situation. Thanks for the info!

[greycat]

I cited the URL in my previous post in the thread, so I was referring to that specific page.

In general, I don't know how to fix the wiki. The basic issue is that different people (myself included) have all tried to impose their own differing schemes for how the basic layout should look, and the different schemes only occasionally cross-reference each other.

I had to go to archer,

Well, the thing is, the page I referred to (the one I wrote) is [[Archer]] on the wiki. The page you must have gone to first (and here, I'm guessing) is [[Tome4 classes archer]], oddly also called "spoilers for this class" (although it's the opposite of spoilers, being simply a copy-paste of the basic information available to every level 1 archer).

I don't know how to reconcile these namespaces. You can't make redirects in this wiki (I tried very hard), so you can't just merge two pages and make one a redirect to the other. That would be too easy! The only reconciliation I can think of would be to utterly obliterate all but one of the namespaces, manually copying and merging all the content into one surviving namespace, and then laboriously tracking down every page that links to the old pages and editing those to link to the surviving pages.

[bricks]

Ah, indeed you did. My bad.

I don't think there is a way to make the current wiki work. Is it meant for play guides? FAQs? A reference source? There's only a finite amount of information in the game, as vast as it might be, so a wiki doesn't seem like the right format for what is trying to be done. Either way, there are definitely better options for wikis out there.

[TheRani]

Dual-Arrows used to be more expensive than it was worth in Stamina, and people rarely bothered investing in it. It was actually worse than Piercing Arrow, but a higher tier. Just a speed-bump on the way to Volley. So DarkGod made it worth using by removing the stamina cost. It aims an arrow at whatever enemy you target, and then if there's another enemy next to it, it will try to shoot a second arrow at that one. If the first enemy is between you and the second enemy and it's still alive, it will get hit by the second arrow.

[greycat]

Well... Dual Arrows calls archeryAcquireTargets which is in game/modules/tome/class/interface/Archery.lua... and archeryAcquireTargets calls project, which appears to be in game/engines/default/engine/interface/ActorProject.lua. My Lua reading skills are still subpar, so I can't quite tell what project is doing... it's not clear whether it's traversing the squares starting at the center and working out with increasing radius, or starting at one corner and working across rows, etc.

So I have no idea, from my poor attempts to read the code, whether it actually tries to hit the target in the center of the highlighted region, or not. Playtesting might be a better way to figure it out -- I admit I haven't attempted any scientific approach to see how the targets are chosen.