Stream of Arrows?

[arieste]

I am happily leveling up a ranger alt and recently got Stream of Arrows, it looked like garbage to me so I did a search on forums and got pretty much the same consensus. Now there is someone selling a master of this for an absolutely ridiculous price on my server, so I begin to wonder - do they know something I dont? Is there a way to do something ubercool with this?  Does taking the AA line and getting a master actually make it worthwhile?  I looked at the dmg on the master and honestly, I still cant see how it would do anything but lower my dps.  Could someone who is actually 70 and has the master clue me in on this CA please?

[EQ2Magroo]

I maxed out my AA on this and also had the good luck to get a Master from a chest. I was very happy with it indeed. I got good DPS and I fired off loads of arrows at a mob. I looked really cool and all my group mates used to go "wow !" <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> However, I decided to respec and put my AA points into other skills instead for a comparison. My DPS has now gone up quite a lot <img src="/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I also now  get the chance to work on HOs etc. rather than just standing around like a lemon for 24 seconds or whatever it was. Plus my group mates no longer have to dodge so many arrows. So in summary, it's a piece of %$^&, don't waste your cash on it. The same goes for other spells like Hawk Dive that people are trying to sell for 60PP on my server. Crazy.

[Gareorn]

I have the master and I don't use it at all.  I removed it from my hotbar a very long time ago.  I understand that if you spend AAs on the skill, it's not too bad.

[Nightmoon]

<p>I think the biggest problem with Stream of Arrows (I'm 99% sure on this one, if someone is more sure please set me straight) is that poisons do NOT proc off of it. I think they may proc on it the first attack but they will not proc on any other attack during the 24 - 30 seconds it is up. So that is a HUGE kick in the DPS. I think that is the number 1 reason no one uses it. </p><p> So it doesnt matter what its at app1 or M1, poisons are a huge bonus to DPS and a skill that denies that isn't worth us taking. Especially at the rediculous prices people seem to think we'll pay.</p>

[Nulad]

Can't remember the last time I used it, I think somebody once parsed it against auto attack and auto won, by a decent margin IIRC, some people just see that it's a high level Master and throw them up at silly money, there's a guy on my server at the moment with Emberstrike M1 up for 30 odd plat, no where near worth that money, even more so seeing there had been one up at 4 and a half plat for weeks and it was still there when the 30 plat one appeared.

[AfflictedOne]

<cite>Nightmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I think the biggest problem with Stream of Arrows (I'm 99% sure on this one, if someone is more sure please set me straight) is that poisons do NOT proc off of it. I think they may proc on it the first attack but they will not proc on any other attack during the 24 - 30 seconds it is up. So that is a HUGE kick in the DPS. I think that is the number 1 reason no one uses it. </p><p> So it doesnt matter what its at app1 or M1, poisons are a huge bonus to DPS and a skill that denies that isn't worth us taking. Especially at the rediculous prices people seem to think we'll pay.</p></blockquote><p> Poison will proc off of each attack but they proc off of the 1.5 second delay.  Which means they have a 12.5% chance to proc per instead of a 70ish% chance with a 7.0 second delay autoattack. Not to mention that the damage from stream wasn't upped when bow damage/arrow damage was so it has fallen behind the curve.</p><p>The thing about stream.... it used to be the I win button back in the day.  It used to do as much if not more than normal autoattack damage and each arrow would proc everything including melee weapon procs and troubador precision procs and these procs were based off or your bow delay so every arrow had ~70% proc rate on poisons and 30-50ish on most other procs.  Not to mention when used with stun poison which would allow you to keep a mob stunned for pretty much the whole duration of 30 seconds.  In fact I was about to give up my ranger till I found this ability in DoF beta <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>The reason it's expensive tho is because it's one of the masters of that range are considered a bit more rare than others. And where most classes have some nice abilities for their ancient teachings at L52,55, and 58 that they will used for quite a while, the ranger ones are all crap nowadays.</p>

[Hadanelith]

<p>Downside: Does way less damage than bow auto or your other bow attacks.</p><p>Upside: Due to recent change in arrow consumption, Stream doesn't use any arrows, it's a CA.</p><p>Usage: If all your other ranged CA's are down, and you're either waaaaay out of range due to an AoE you're trying to avoid (in a Raid or otherwise), using this for a few seconds rather than running in to do your melee CA's MAY be a good option. That's about the only usage though.</p><p>Don't forget that it can be toggled off early! That's the key to getting ANY use out of this skill. Turn it on for just a few seconds when all else is down, long enough for Bow-Auto to refresh, then click it off. It's a few free shots.</p><p>-Hadanelith Raswrolski / Mossda Odis'Ossda of Kithicor</p>

[LoreLady]

People always sell masters for crazy prices - rain of arrows is going for 60p, archers frenzy 100p.. And yea - stream is junk.