There are a few masochists that think Dark Quiver is great, but most players would probably agree with your take.
Dark Quiver is great as a concept but scurrying around like a chicken without a head for the meagre benefits it provides is simply rubbish. No other way to put it.
This has been a topic of discussion every so often with various suggestions on how to fix it floating to the top:
Make the arrows fall ahead of the player so that forward momentum is not lost
Make the arrow buffs last longer than a single attack per pickup.
Turn it into something more like a traditional buff like Holy Aura for Sentinels/Enchant Weapon for Mages which have an active and passive parts/durations based on collecting arrows.
The only single build Iāve found that Iāve ālikedā Dark Arrow on is the long gestation version of Hail of Arrows. Itās the only time Iāve found that running around to pick them up even remotely bearable and/or effective.
I feel like one possible solution would be some sort of vacuum like affect that has a timer.
So the skill would go.
Throw Dark Arrows.
They land.
The moment you pick up the first one, thereās a six (arbitrary number for spitball purposes) second timer that you have to fire. During this when you use an arrow another one nearby is automatically vacuumed up and ready to be used.
The timer only occurs once per use of the skill (not an individual arrow) and once it goes out, youād still have to manually pick up any remaining arrows.
Its just a bad skill. There is no way to really use the skill in an effective way. Clearly the Devs felt that the bows are underpowered and needed a buff to compete with other builds, so I just have to askā¦
Why did you make a whole skill to specialize in a 1 hit buff for all other bow skills and make it an active skill at that? You basically took Jade Arrow from the shift skill and expanded on the idea and made it an active skill. Why not get rid of the skill entirely and just add nodes to the skills with the effects the dark quiver provides now? Or, make it a passive skill, like arrow storm.
Personally, I would prefer to see a complete re-design. Something like when you specialize dark quiver, it MUST be on your skill bar in order to activate.
You then would have dark quiver and a few nodes that allow you to activate it⦠something like āDark Quiver becomes active when you have channeled flurry with a bow for at least 3 secondsā when activated, dark quiver adds a cost of 2 additional mana consumed by flurry while active.
Then you would have nodes specific to flurry, such as crit multiplier, or maybe resistance shreds, or even have additional penetration, or maybe something really fun like āwhile dark quiver is active, arrows have a 10% chance to drop an acid flask on hitā the trade off being that you pay the mana cost for each flask dropped this way, or maybe its chakrams with the effect that makes chakrams bounce between enemies, or maybe umbral bladesā¦
The idea here of course is to buff the bow skills for a cost and each skill has its own activation criteria and only 1 skill can activate dark quiver at a time.
Skills like chakram have defensive skills attached to them, maybe dark quiver provides a reliable way to keep up the defensive skills or offers its own. I feel like this could be a fun way to do it.
There is.
-HoA huge benefit.
-Ballista
-Stacking Dusk Shrouds
-Frenzy buff.
You dont need to completely delete a skill. A small adjustment like āā¦to the next bow attackā to āpicking up a black arrow grant skill x a buff for duration yā would already allow different combos and make some nodes for Puncture/Flurry/Multishot/Ailments way better.
The skill came with Rogue releaseā¦so how did the devs see if bow builds are under or overpowered when the playerbase has not even played it before?
They received alot of feedback already, there might be adjustments to it once they add more skills for rogue to compensate with new skills and synergies
And Balista is a horrible skill, so that just leaves Hail of Arrows & Channeled Flurry and only if you build it to consume shadows and play around that mechanic. If you build around it its OP - you get x5 damage.
Every other node from the tree can be safely removed, since they are all incredibly unbelievably bad. Jade arrows - inside shift - are mediocre and still they give you more than Dark Quiver and you get the buff for doing something that you already want to do.
Thanks for the education and correction on the timeline.
The skill, in my opinion, just does not feel great. It feels very boring and tedious. Thats my personal take.
I still feel that there is something that can be done to mechanically make the skill enjoyable and intuitive. Those are my thoughts. They dont have to delete a skill, yeah, but maybe they should consider a redesign.
Again, I really appreciate the response and the corrections.
Definitely agree, Iām sure there are people who enjoy it as it is currently thus:
Make Dark Quiver a self-buff ability, buff your next attack instantly.
Put a node in the tree that holds true to the current iteration, give it multi-player interaction.