Firstly love this game, I’ve played a few characters so far and I’ve almost finished my first play through, that is of course without using Marauder’s talisman and Gunslinger’s talisman for a reason.
At the moment i’m playing a demolitionist and now sorcerer - using 2h weapons with firestrike as my primary dps output.
Considering the stats on these are amazing and hard to pass off for me as everything is fantastic for my build, volley however is absolutely tragic.
Here’s why - in almost all cases, I’m able to one shot targets / or get enough burn dots etc on targets with a kite scenario, which is how this is played as i don’t want to be in melee range. what happens when volley procs and it does all the time for me, i have to wait for the following two shots of volley to shoot off before i can move, and almost in every case playing the target is dead, moved… or i need to move asap when volley procs.
I would suggest with volley as it seems to be a “channeled ability” and you must wait for the consecutive shots, you make it so that if the player moves, you just miss out on your volley shots… and break off from the rest of volley’s shots if the player chooses to move.
For me it’s almost always a bad time for volley, or it wasn’t needed. or i want to get the %!@ out of there and let my burn etc finish targets.
Anyone Else’s thoughts on volley, I’m sure it’s fine in melee?
And, thanks for the great game - the mechanics of GD are so far fantastic
Just to be clear, are you using a 2h rifle/ crossbow or 2 1h guns? =)
But yeah adding up on that it’s kind of a trap when you have low runspeed and attack speed. It can deal a lot of damage, but it’s not really that useful early, I think it’s better for bosses/ heroes or things that don’t straight up charge you, but then there are also ways to cc them usually…
I’m thinking it may be also not that useful late game but I’ll have to see, most things I’ll have to kite and cycle survivability skills - i’m not sure where standing there for that duration is a benefit just yet.
Bump - I’d like to hear about the success of volley from people, and what they find could be improved… and i would like to equip my Marauder’s talisman or equivalent one day.
Bump again, to avoid starting a whole new Volley thread.
I’m using 1h ranged, and I gotta say, having either a Marauder’s Talisman or a Gunslinger’s Talisman equipped since my guy hit L25 in Veteran (now 53/elite), I’ve never once noticed Volley proc. I didn’t know if it was just an ‘invisible’ skill, but as you describe it here I realize I really have never seen it.
Which leads to my current dilemma. I’m working on Rhowani’s Crown in devotion, and I just got Elemental Storm. Since Falcon Swoop is occupying Fire Strike (and I don’t have any other active skills other than Demon’s Breath, I was forced to bind Elemental Storm to Volley. I’ve now seen Elemental Storm proc, so I know Volley IS proccing, but ES doesn’t trigger very often. I’ve killed off a half dozen screens of trash mobs since I got it, and I’ve seen it proc once - far lower than the 25% rate stated (since the 25% only comes into play on Volley procs). The question is, how often does Volley actually proc? i.e, how much am I gimping Elemental Storm by having the two tied together.
Volley has a 5% chance to activate, you can see that in the skill description.
I’m guessing you can proc elemental storm on each enemy you hit with volley. I’m also guessing that hits from volley count as firestrike so you should be able to proc both swoop and elemental storm from the aoe effect and brimstone. But you should really test this on the two target dummies at the start town. I’m curious so please post your findings.
All in all, yeah, you’re gimping yourself massively by tying volley to a celestial skill, 5% times 25% needs a whole lot of aoe to be even remotely useful. I hear that in the upcoming update they fix this by increasing the celestial proc rate if the proccing skill has a cooldown or triggers rarely like volley.
I’ve only got about three play hours to go on since adding it, but after that first slow streak, it now seems like it’s proccing a lot more than I expected. Not 1/4 shots often, but also not 1/100 as you’d expect from 25% of 5%. For each pack of mobs I clear, it seems to be proccing at least once. Now, shots add up fast - maybe I really am firing off 100 shots much faster than I realize, and with a few RNG streaks, it’s just feeling more frequent than I was expecting, or maybe it really is proccing off the aoe of explosive strike (i.e, a chance to proc for each mob affected by a volley-procced explosive strike, which is often many) - so far the data set is too limited to say for sure, but it feels entirely in-line with the build.
I’d forgotten about the adjustment to celestial abilities until you mentioned it - that could turn into a LOT of Elemental Storm swirls up at once - I’ve already seen two on screen at once, which means it’s procced again in the remaining 3.5 sec after the cooldown and before the first ended.
Maybe I’ll pick an active skill to put a single point into and bind it to that, then retract it later, just so I can see what the proc rate really is like at 25% and have a point of comparison.
So I did that experiment - put a point into Blackwater Cocktail (Only chose it because I had +BWC from an item already) and bound Elemental Storm to that. It’s definitely a big difference as far as proc rate, but it also means I’m draining a bunch of extra energy throwing out cocktails during the fights, and I don’t think the benefit of ES is great enough to be worth spamming cocktails during a fight. Maybe on single targets it’d be worth it - I’ve only used it on one hero so far, and while it did proc, I’m not sure it sped up the fight significantly.
I’m thinking I’m going to take the point back and throw ES back on Volley for now. The proc rate may be less, but then it arises as a natural side effect of my main attack, rather than throwing out an energy-intensive but fairly weak debuff hoping it procs. Hopefully the next patch will solve the less-frequent Storm woes.