Melee Detonating Arrow doesn't feel viable

Good afternoon peeps! I have been trying so hard to have fun with Detonating arrow dual wield melee rogue, but Detonating arrow needs you to be inside of an enemy for it to go off. Is there a way that you can have this skill active like the other melee skills? eg. flurry, cinderstrike etc

Having to be inside an enemy for this to take, makes it very dangerous. I was able to get to L56 before i got frustrated and just stopped playing this spec :frowning:

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I agree. The skill needs to be like flurry or similar skill, otherwise detonating arrow just doesnā€™t feel good in combat. My rogue build uses the Cold converting detonating arrow node, but it doesnā€™t work. I have 2 unique daggers both with tier 7 melee cold damage and the extra cold damage doesnā€™t stack the damage. Itā€™s even more frustrating when the damage scaling for the nodes donā€™t work with some stats.

Interesting. Have you checked out @vapourfireā€™s recent post (Jelkhors DA?

I know this wasnā€™t the first Jelkorā€™s DA build as one was done right after it came out.

I havenā€™t tried either so I donā€™t know personally how well they work but apparently Vapourfire has been having fun with it.

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Hey thereā€¦

I am having a blast with Dual wielded Jelkhors as @Travoas mentionedā€¦

I have however been messing with it on a level 90+ Marksman as part of theorycrafting - so I am not sure how it would work at level 56. The key is that you really need two of themā€¦ one on its own isnt that great as you cannot get the additional skill nodes easily without the +6.

From your post, it seems like you are suffering from the usual defensive challenges with Rogue - especially when using Dodge on its own. I solved this using the Foot of Mountain boots to convert it to being a primarily Endurance defense when standing still in the middle of the mobs. Dodge & Glancing blow becomes secondary. I was not able to get this build to work with Dodge because you either take no damage or get hit for a ton with just dodgeā€¦ pure Glancing blow helps, but its not enough on its own. Endurance & GB together work really well in keeping you alive long enough for the massive leech to kick in.

Not having any problems with Detonating arrow as to dps - I went the full lightning route and am using suckerpunch to proc crit explosions that wipe anything close to you.

The only problem I have found with the build is the targetting that plagues all LE skills - you have to aim at the base of the mob models - especially the floating ones - else you just dont hitā€¦ And you need to tap tap the key or mousebutton because of the way LE doesnt move you to the next melee mob if you hold down the key/button. (annoying).

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I never went the cold route, but I dont see how it cannot work. cold damage, melee damage should all scale perfectlyā€¦ and if you throw in some freeze, it should be doable.

With lightning I have 500% increases on almost all damage by default and over 700% lightning & melee when buffed. Plus its all 100% crit at 300% added multiā€¦ I expect I will need to get that closer to 1000% for higher corruption but its definitely good for 150+ corruption already.

Melee detonating arrow currently uses default attack range and animation, which is why it feels so bad. Hopefully theyā€™ll fix it soon.

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The reason why this build is difficult to use is that you need a very close range to attack. It obviously does not lack damage, but the act of stuffing the dagger into the monsterā€™s mouth obviously greatly increases the danger. Advanced equipment can make up for some defenses, but it does not make it a comfortable build.

I toyed arround with this kinfes and before empowered monos itā€™s just stupidly easy like almost every other build. Itā€™s terrible to pick the right stuff to scale it thou. Outside of this itā€™s just walk up and press a button and everything goes boom. Nothing fancy.

Edit: havenā€™t played it lately so they mightā€™ve nerfed the crap out of it.

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They only reduced flat dmg on dagger for 0.9 release abit compared to open multiplayer testing in february.
No big deal, dmg was never a problem for jelkhors.
You realize the dmg loss with cone at some point though. Sucker/Rapid can carry you into higher corruption.

And attack range was confirmed to be fixed with next patch.

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From a defense perspective, gear is important but Dodge is always going to be a problem if used as the primary defence mechanic when in melee range/surrounded. DPS wise, it absolutely nukes everything before empowered monos and even after dps isnt much of a problem.

Comfortable build - in comparison to a sentinel just duking it out blindly while watching Netflix - probably not. But I am finding it very easy to play skill sequence wise and with only one main DPS skill and everything else supporting, its not as complicated as some.

This would be fantastic as its the only ā€œirritationā€ I have with the build right now. I am working around the issue by adjusting playstyle, but if they do fix this it would be even easier to play and I have a feeling that it would function even better overall by being able to hit successfully without having to reposition if the range is fixed.

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I have 2 legendary daggers with 50 melee cold damage bonus and when i tested the damage, it doesnā€™t go up even by 1. Itā€™s literally making the same damage if i have clean unique daggers or legendary daggers with 50 melee cold damage bonus each. Itā€™s really weird, but iā€™m not surprised because so many stats should stack with some nodes, but donā€™t stack at all in this game.

#bug-reports

Has this happened yet?

Patch is coming next thursday. We have to wait for the patchnotes, but it got confirmed by devs in discord that they will include it in patch 0.9.2

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I wish it were just an irritation. I donā€™t know how many times Iā€™ve almost died to large-model mobs. Especially those large floating guys with the ā€˜drillā€™ hands (Iā€™m terrible with monster names). I appear to be standing right next to them, but just hitting nothing but air.

Thats the oneā€¦ My change in playstyle is the dreaded stutterstep to overcome thisā€¦ :wink:

Very keen to test this after the patch drops because its really a fun build and as much as I love my FG I am really bored playing it. :wink:

That one doesnt sound right - I have a similar setup on two daggers and the increase in damage is noticeable. My first thought would be asking how you are interpretting/testing the damage output - just to verify your findings correctly. Viewing DPS tooltips etc is just unreliable and I found that even the dummy test figures were not great representations of the damage vs seeing how well it worked in game.

I also did a pure lightning build - not cold so it may be as Llama8 suggests, a possible bug with any conversions or scaling you may have ā€œenabledā€ - this could need the devs to check your skill tree vs the affixes and see where the problem is or might be

My favorite jelkhorā€™s build so far has been the cold variant with one dagger. You use the deicide shatter lance set in the offhand and it feels really good, super speedy. Marksman, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.9.0g) - Last Epoch Build Planner

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Iā€™ve tested it everywhere. The flat melee cold damage doesnā€™t scale when the skill is converted to cold damage. Iā€™ve also created bug report a while back, but probably is not fixed yet or will be in the future. Hopefully we will see in the next big patch. Also itā€™s rather hard for most people to test it out because they need legendary daggers with cold melee damage on them, otherwise there is simply no other way to test it.

Thatā€™s a good idea. I will check this build out on a later date. Edit: ( I just tested it and sadly i donā€™t get any damage scaling from any of the melee cold bonus stats from deicide shatter lance and my Legendary Jelkhorā€™s dagger +50 melee cold damage bonus. Is this bug only for me or do you get proper damage scaling? Iā€™m literally having under 1000 damage on my detonating arrow skill with both weapons on a level 97.