Gonna kinda use Mike’s words against him here: Restriction breeds creativity.
The issue here, in my opinion, is that the Rogue class is currently extremely secular between the two masteries. There’s not a lot of variety (yet) with skills, and Dark Quiver makes a lot of sense for a lot of builds for MM. It’s a general buff skill that currently you’re not going to do much better slotting a different skill with something else. The same could be argued with Shift. Are you going to not spec shift and use it?
I wouldn’t say the DQ turns me off of MM, in fact, MM is currently my main. I would just say this is more currently a byproduct of Rogue being the newest class than anything along with two secular masteries.
Now will I think DQ be preferred in certain builds? Absolutely, HoA builds in particular get a huge boost with DQ and the two skills are very complimentary/synergistic
It’s not that DQ serves HOA the most while it is not that good for other builds.
DQ is useless for all other builds that need you to attack in high frequency. It’s a DPS loss in all that cases. Because in the time you run around collecting a single dark arrow that boost solely your next attack, you could have attacked maybe 5 times. For stacking ailments this is not viable. The increased chance to apply an ailment with the DQ buff doesn’t compensate.
Same is for direct damage. Maybe in edge cases where you have to evade an enemy attack and you would have moved anyway, collecting an arrow is ok. But only if the arrow is not too far away or sticking directly in an enemy ground effect.
This skill is unique and good on paper. But it doesn’t really work in reality. Either there has to be a mechanical change (let us collect more arrows than one and get rid if the timer) or the numbers have to be increased massively.
Currently it’s only playable with HOA or Balista. Every other build will be gimped. And it’s not that the skill is so much fun to play that you would ignore its weakness to just have fun with it - at least in my opinion.
There is a detonating build as well. Suckerpunch snapshots. So you can pick up a black arrow, hit a high power starter then unload suckerpunch stacks into it building that initial big arrow.
I do agree with you that DQ does not make a lot of sense for rapid strike skills like channeled flurry/MS price with it being a single charge at a time and on a timer. Also the MS pierce node only is ver bleh and doesn’t do much if anything, at least with flurry it applies to the three hits since a multi hit attack.
However, it has usefulness with other builds such as CS with on demand first strike access without the need for Overexertion and the subsequent mana efficiency nodes. Which you will probably want to invest in if going that route and as Trikster said, the 15% kill threshold is very nice.
The DA node could probably use a damage increase with explosion, but Nature’s Fury should still boost the damage for Fire/Lightning/Cold, though I can test this as I’m not 100% sure but I think it should.
Outside of possibly non-HoA ailment builds, it’s also not like flurry/MS builds are hurting currently. Even non-bowmage, channeled flurry with MS is doing pretty well. That’s not an excuse that DQ shouldn’t be looked at and improved upon, but with the class being so young, there is plenty of room to grow to implement other skills to help compliment those builds.
The biggest reason why I’m not all gung-ho for the changes to the mechanic is mainly because of the effects it will have on HoA builds. If I can collect multiple Dark Arrows, along with shift’s Jade Arrows and all the sources of HoA duration extension. At nearly full mana I can pop off three HoA in relatively quick succession and I can comfortably maintain two at any given time, three if I’m concentrating purely on offense. If I can maintain a store of DA along with Jade Arrows… why wouldn’t you play HoA only?
yep. the first time i used it i couldn’t figure out why they weren’t landing where I put the cursor.
it seemed like the most natural thing that i would place them farther along the path and pick them up as i went. then i saw they were going behind me . wtf ? lol
