Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta OP Arrow Spray kills basicaly everything,

Hi,

I'm currently playing with a Ranger/Warrior combo and I'm in a situation where my ranger wins nearly all the fights thanks to Arrow Spray.

My warrior sure will deliver some blows and finish off some foes but during most of the fights he will just absorb dmg while the Arrow Spray's colldown is over.

Seriously, it can hit like, what, 20-25 times in total? Sometimes I put down 3, even 4 foes at once depending on their position OR one big target if I stand in a sweet spot in front of it.

For comparison, the single target (non-spray) multi-shot(forgot the name) arrow skill only fire 3 times.

What about using Arrow Spray with crossbows? Way too OP.

In my opinion, It should fire less arrows per use, and/or fire even less when used with a crossbow.

Thoughs?

Agreed. My ranger (level 3) has just killed 2 skeleton archers (both level 3), one explosive bomber (level 3) and heavily damaged one skeleton warrior by shooting just one arrow spray (admittedly the bomber exploded so some of the damage might be due to the fire - but still it seems a bit overpowered). The AP costs for arrow spray is 4 AP which is the same as for a normal bow shot but the damage done is much higher.

True.

Arrow spray with a crossbow will instantly kill the Source Horror at the end of blackcove cave, and that's highly anti-climatic.

We happened is we killed the first giant crab straight away with the Spray and thought "well... that was disappointing..." Then we saw the Source Horror and said "Oh ok! Big boss, looks pretty ugly too (in a good way)! Let's do this! I'll quick save first, just in case!" and followed up by instantly killing him on round one with another arrow spray.

As soon as my coop partner got a crossbow, the arrow spray that was already pretty powerful simply became absurd and ruined most of the fights. It needs to fire less arrows, or have a huge damage penalty applied to each shot. As of right now, it's officially the new broken winterbreath.

Well I may avoid using it for a wile, see if I can still progress normaly But I hope it gets well tunned for lauch.

Arrow spray is a tier 1 skill too, in contrast barrage is tier 3 and a total waste of AP to use.

I think it's when you get it, rather than it's power that's the problem.

It's much more powerful than Barrage, so you could argue it's a Way of the Ranger level 5 skill (the AP cost should be a couple more than a normal bow shot as well).

It's something you should be working hard to get to - the culmination of your development as a Ranger, rather than the first skill you receive.

Agreed.
OR
The number of hits every unique target could recieve should be limited to 3.

I'd go so far as to limit the hits per unique target to 1. The point of it is to hit multiple targets at the same time.

This sounds reasonable to me as well.

I'am not agree! I hope the Larians don't weaken the arrow spray!
I'ts the only possible spell for me to kill strong enemies.

I see no other way to kill Evelyn and her Ringmembers and other hard enemies.
My 2 wizzards revive each other or revive my ranger every second round and with her now fresh arrow spay she make a remarkable damange! Madora is to slow, she run to Evelyn and had no more AP's to make damange! Evelyn call a new zombie and run away. Madora follows Evelyn and my ranger kill the zombie with the spay after and normal arrows ... and was killed from the poisson, the zombie produced.

That's a problem with you not being good at the game in general. That's a reason for difficulty settings, not a case for keeping in a badly overpowered skill.

I admit that the game is very challenging right now, and I do have to think and plan carefully to deal with large fights, and I have to be cautious and know when to use healing items, and pick what buffs/debuffs I should use, and I get it wrong a lot of the time.

I agree to the fact that arrow spray is OP.

My ranger rogue is OP. Smokescreen vs melee + arrow spray = nearly invincible + nearly one shot everyting. At level 1. I think the smoke is OK, since bows or spells can still affect you, but arrow spray made me progress with a single character so far, with the others just farming.

As a one-shotting Arrow Spray ranger with Lone wolf and Raistlin, yeah, I definitely concur with the fact that it's way, way overpowered. Sure, every traps are instant death, but fights are just a matter of when my archer will be in position to hit every foes in view.
In previous builds, Barrage was the level 1 skill and Spray level 3, which was more reasonnable then. And I have the feeling that it wasn't shooting as much arrows as it now does. Right now, it's not an "arrow spray", it's a Gatgling Gun. Especially with crossbows and their absurd damage range barely offset by a higher cost to use - Raistlin makes sure that you've got a very high AP per turn anyway, making a char able to shoot twice even with the level 1 buff active.

There is still a lot to do, balance-wise. I suspect that lowering the damage on ranged weapons ( especially crossbows, seriously, those things deal almost twice as much damage as same level bows ) could be a good starting point. Swapping Barrage and Arrow Spray again, too.

And more visibility on the "interaction" abilities such as Pickpocket/lockpicking/crafting could help. Because then, one may not be as eager to reach higher Way of the Ranger ranks as soon as possible and instead choose to invest in those skills. Well, I did dump points in Crafting and Lockpicking and Loremaster and still was able to mow through foes like a hungry kid through a sugar house, but I guess that more valid choices can lead to more diversity. Or, you know, investing wholeheartedly in a skill to reap benefits at the expense of options. The good old specialization vs versatility.

I quite like it the way it is. Yeah, I'm rubbish at combat, and it's a useful escape route for those of us so afflicted.

Ruins the point of combat for everybody else. At least you can improve, I have a hard time getting worst at the game.

I know that, but I am not in the mood to calculate every figth!
I want to use pickpocketing, crafting, lore, repair and lockpicking also and not use all the points for fighing....

If there are not some powerfull spells, there is no fun in fighting.

You like challenges? So don't use arrowspay!!!
But let some powerful spells in the game, for those people who like to be powerfull or maybe overpowered.
I have no problem to be a powerful wizzard, who can use sword and bow also very good and waer a good suit of metal armour! And I have no problem with 4 of such superheros!
I like to talk with the People, open chest, find good treasurys and sometime to figth an easy fight!


You can't do this only with an easy button! That would mean, that the arrowspray use 5 arrows in hard mode and 100 arrow in soft mode! How should the larians make this?

Actually, why wouldn't this be possible? I think this could be easily done using just different multipliers: as an example: 5 damage per shot for hardcore, 10 damage per shot for difficult, 15 damage for medium, 20 for easy and 25 for casual.

Difficulty in a game should never, absolutely never comes to "just don't use this or that if you want challenge". Or "try do finish the game naked if you want some challenge". This is pure bad balancing and gamedesign.

Arrow Spray, as it stands, is way overpowered and completely unbalanced, and even if you want to put multipliers based on a difficulty parameter selected when starting a new game, it still has to be re-balanced.
Powerful spells or abilities aren't a bad thing, but only when they are acquired ingame by either getting a high enough ranking, completing a difficult mission, succeeding at a difficult achievement, etc. Here, we are talking a *beginning* skill, which by its very presence and present balancing, tend to invalidate every other skills except Heals and rezzes.

Skills/spells should not be balanced manually depending on difficulty. This would be terrible game design. They have to all be balanced with each others, and THEN, a difficulty setting would apply modifiers.

Anyway combats are a huge part of D:OS. Explaining you want overpowered spells because you don't like combats in D:OS is like telling you want a "kill everything on screen" as the starting weapon in a FPS. Or a Auto-solve button in a puzzle game. Or a Auto-build-base function in a RTS.
This is no Blizzard game where everything is tailored for casual players, up to the point where you can just pay to get your character to max level. This is a RPG with the ambition to go back to the fundamentals of the RPGs, difficulty being a big part of it.

Sorry, but fights are only hard when you rush your character into the middle of the room wearing a g-string right where they can get butchered. Well fights tend to BE hard, but I'm just trying to explain that using common sense and thinking before acting will get you a long way. Blame the player, not the game, unless somes bugs make the game not enjoyable because they are either too easy ( arrow spray ) or too hard ( badly balanced encounters ).

D:OS will get a difficulty level.

And I assume, like every other game does really, that that just means you do less damage and the enemy more (on higher levels, reverse if you go easy mode).

But for 'normal' they obviously will need a balanced game without heavily overpowered stuff that makes everything a cakewalk.