I don’t know if anyone noticed, because I haven’t seen a single other person actually trying to play charged Puncture (or if they did, they gave up like 4 years ago back in early access), but I’d like to submit some feedback and suggestions, because currently I’m not sure how you justify even having that branch in the Puncture talents.
Here are the biggest problems and some ways I think they could be fixed:
1) Raw damage scaling
- charged puncture in the context of Marskman seem to favor increasing mana cost of the skill to deal more damage, via the Ethereal Arrows passive. It doesn’t help much, because you can only get Puncture’s mana cost to 26.25. Unlike, say, Hail of Arrows which can go to ridiculous numbers. Passive Coated Blades and Dark Quiver’s talent Archer’s Focus do not actually count, because you intentionally made it into a separate mechanic (that’s 60 mana getting consumed without actually counting)
- suggestion: change the puncture’s Penumbral Ambush passive to instead have the 2 extra shadow arrows as a “does not scale with points allocated” baggage, and make it into a 2-3 pointer that would make it deal 15/30(/45)% more damage while increasing mana cost by 15/30(/45). This would provide a very simple, but effective way to scale the base damage of charged Puncture (without inconveniencing the normal Puncture’s DoT builds) based on your gear (aka how much mana can you afford to pump into a skill so you can actually do something in endgame when you’re no longer limited by your pathetic mana pool. Stacking mana also allows the other synergy to thrive (Mind Piercer rewarding you with physical penetration scaling with max mana)
2) Single hit, slow skills just don’t work in this game
- problem: Unlike fast hitting builds, charged Puncture has very hard access to damage scalers like Armor shred, because you’re not really hitting all that often. There are ways around it, but they are kind of uncomfortable (Smoke Bomb can apply 8 stacks per second when fully specced, and you can sacrifice the cool factor and spam Flurry for some more stacks, but it will still pale in comparison with any real fast build which has no problem stacking hundreds of stacks in a second or two)
- suggestion: add a clause to puncture’s Stay of Execution (aka charged Puncture) to convert all chance to inflict Bleed into armor shred (and if you want to go the extra mile, also Damage over Time modifiers into Armor Shred effect or duration)
3) Mana problems
- oh god, the mana problems. If you actually take all the passives and talents that deal with mana costs and their damage boosts, you end up with a skill you can fire like, once or twice. Maybe 3-4 times at best if you fully invest in mana stacking.
- the issue is, charged Puncture is not really a “screen clearing” ability. It’s a pretty narrow line attack even if you take Penumbral Ambush. So either you need to use it a lot more times than, say, Hail of Arrows, or use Flurry to regenerate a bit of mana like 3 times for each use of charged Puncture.
- suggestion 1: MAKE it a better screen cleaner. You know how similar ability works in D4? Rework the EXTREMELY USELESS Longshot unique bow to be higher lvl (aka based on Obsidian Bow), that would spawn Mirage archers any time Puncture crits an enemy, which would shoot 1 arrow to each side in a 90 degree angle ( ----|-|–|— you get the idea if you played rogue in D4). It would make the bow good at clear, without compromising bossing damage too much (or rather, at all, if you make Puncture only register one hit for each enemy once no matter how many arrows get launched sideways). Keep the “puncture can no longer be evaded” node tho, nothing worse than shooting into a mob and having 3 mobs miraculously dodge the barrage and pounce you… Rain of Arrows marksman passive COULD do some heavy lifting if it wasn’t so LAUGHABLY BAD. After you invest at minimum 6 points into it, you realize it’s not really doing any damage, and thanks to it proccing on a 10sec CD, AND only proccing on targets you HIT (which, if you play with charged Puncture, you likely deleted outright), it doesn’t really help with clear. If it had no CD and could proc on each target you hit separately while launching the Rain of Arrows at a random mob on the screen, it would potentially be a very good mobbing helper. But it would still kinda ruin the archer fantasy if you have random arrow showers popping up over the screen like you’re just a forward soldier in an archer regiment lol…
- suggestion 2: put a passive into marksman tree that would add flat base mana regen. Base mana regen is so atrociously low that you don’t even begin to feel any difference until you stack 100%+ % mana regen, and that’s a USELESS stat, nobody really uses it on gear since it does so little. %health regen is another beast entirely because there ARE ways to get flat HP regen, unlike mana one… Base mana regen is just 8. Which is… WILD. Well, unlike other mana stackers, Marksmen don’t really have means to regen 100% of their mana pool in under a second. So having some 3-pointer each adding some 5 flat mana regen would go a long way…
4) Being tagged as “channeled” ability
- you are not really channeling. Channeled abilties fire WHILE channeling. Charged Puncture fires AFTER holding a button for exactly 1 second (or 0.5 with talent and Black Arrow buff)
- this tag has NO UPSIDES for a marksman. The only thing you can even get that buffs channeled abilities is “increased damage WHILE channeling”, which turns off the buff exactly before the damage would register
- meanwhile it only harms charged Puncture, as it means you can’t use items like Hydra Arc bow, and talents that WOULD buff damage of abilities (like Shift’s entire eastern quadrant specifies it only works for non-channeled abiltiies)
- suggestion: Just get rid of the tag.
5) Hit issues
- Puncture can be dodged. I don’t think there’s a single other ranged attack that can be dodged. Maybe it’s because Puncture can be used with melee weapons too, but it’s DUMB AF
- the hitbox of Puncture also starts a wee bit away from the character, so if any mobs leap at you, or leap just behind you, you can’t shoot them. Take Scalebane Rogues in act 9. They keep teleporting behind you, but they teleport into literal chokehold distance, so even if you turn around to shoot at them, your arrows literally spawn behind them, without hitting them. Heck even Flurry sometimes has problems hitting them, let alone Puncture
- Suggestion: a talent that would create a… shockwave, of a sort, centered on player, as you fire charged Puncture, which would hit monsters immediately next to you. Marksman is EXTREMELY fragile, and if you need to stand somewhere for 0.5-1.0 sec, you need to actually kill mobs or you die before you can shoot again. It wouldn’t be an issue if this game didn’t make a point of making almost every trash mob leap at your or outright teleport at or behind you…
PS: if people wonder why I even want to play charged Puncture - I really dislike speed meta in aRPGs. You generally can’t see anything if your screen is constantly 90% covered by whatever ability you’re spamming. And charged Puncture is the ONLY bow attack that feels even halfway realistic (aka actually nocking an arrow, drawing the bow and firing, instead of holding a literal machinegun or magically shooting the sky to make it rain 40000 arrows…