Its pretty much unique in being unresistable, yes. But calling it reliable or high value is misleading.
The base value is woefully small. Even with Power Boost (15 sec every 80 seconds with a good build), it has slightly more effect than everyone eating a small purple pill, ie not a lot.
Even if you only ever run Task Forces, you'll spend over 90% of the PvE game fighting enemies who are Boss class or less, and against them, Flash Arrow does somewhere between 20% (against even-con) and 40% (against +4s) of the To Hit Debuff of Radiation Infection.
I've played a duo of Trick Archers with slotted Manouvers and Flash Arrows, and had enormous trouble keeping my team alive for a Defender duo.
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Actually although Flash Arrow is unresistable it is still affected by the Purple Patch. It ignores the AV resistance but is still reduced when fighting higher con enemies.
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Originally Posted by DrMike2000
Even if you only ever run Task Forces, you'll spend over 90% of the PvE game fighting enemies who are Boss class or less, and against them, Flash Arrow does somewhere between 20% (against even-con) and 40% (against +4s) of the To Hit Debuff of Radiation Infection.
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I did not know that. Oh well.
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Actually although Flash Arrow is unresistable it is still affected by the Purple Patch. It ignores the AV resistance but is still reduced when fighting higher con enemies.
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I've been able to do some fairly impressive defending with my TA character. I can't tell you how much is due to what powers (ie. freezing rain as opposed to PGA) but i can say that with a TA/Ice, you can even step in as your teams alpha absorber. |
Originally Posted by DrMike2000
Its pretty much unique in being unresistable, yes. But calling it reliable or high value is misleading.
The base value is woefully small. Even with Power Boost (15 sec every 80 seconds with a good build), it has slightly more effect than everyone eating a small purple pill, ie not a lot. Even if you only ever run Task Forces, you'll spend over 90% of the PvE game fighting enemies who are Boss class or less, and against them, Flash Arrow does somewhere between 20% (against even-con) and 40% (against +4s) of the To Hit Debuff of Radiation Infection. I've played a duo of Trick Archers with slotted Manouvers and Flash Arrows, and had enormous trouble keeping my team alive for a Defender duo. |
That said, I really like what Flash Arrow does even if it doen't seem like a lot on paper.
To be fair, I should point out that my worse memories were fighting Freakshow. Flash Arrow's click debuff nature means that it doesn't stick to rezzers, and since they don't all rez at once, but one after the other it makes it fairly hard to keep the whole group debuffed.
This of course appplied to all sources of mitigation, like PGA, as well. So rating TA on that incident would be as fair as rating Sonic against mostly psi enemies.
I also had an annoying vocal teammate telling me we needed a Tanker, and he was getting proved right for once, since my Defender duo weren't able to keep the team safe. Pretty much two of any other primary would have sufficed, either by capping the teams Defence/flooring the enemies to hit or providing a massive AoE heal-bath.
I agree Trick Arrow can be "fairly impressive", but I've always found it to be near the bottom of the rung for Defenders.
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Enhanced Flash Arrow is 9.9% vs even cons and 9.9% vs lvl 50 AV|
Originally Posted by Crim_the_Cold
If you account for all situations such as AVs and purple patch does Flash Arrow have the highest reliable To-Hit debuff in the game? I was looking at it and it is marked as unresistable. On defenders, when it is fully enhanced, it has a 9.9% to-hit debuff. If you add power build up it has a 16.1% to-hit debuff. I wonder if any of the other large to-hit debuffs after AV resistances and/or purple patch is applied is still that good.
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Hurricane is 59.4% vs even cons and 8.91% vs lvl 50 AV
Darkest Night+fearsome stare(slotted for tohit debuff+ 2 twighlight grasp (not slotted) is 71.9% vs even cons and 10.8% vs lvl 50 AV
Everything is affected by the purple patch.
Flash arrow is reliably crappy.
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Out of curiosity, where were you on the leveling scale? |
Originally Posted by DrMike2000
To be fair, I should point out that my worse memories were fighting Freakshow. Flash Arrow's click debuff nature means that it doesn't stick to rezzers, and since they don't all rez at once, but one after the other it makes it fairly hard to keep the whole group debuffed.
This of course appplied to all sources of mitigation, like PGA, as well. So rating TA on that incident would be as fair as rating Sonic against mostly psi enemies. I also had an annoying vocal teammate telling me we needed a Tanker, and he was getting proved right for once, since my Defender duo weren't able to keep the team safe. Pretty much two of any other primary would have sufficed, either by capping the teams Defence/flooring the enemies to hit or providing a massive AoE heal-bath. I agree Trick Arrow can be "fairly impressive", but I've always found it to be near the bottom of the rung for Defenders. |
If you were higher level, I would have thought that you could take turns alternating OSA and EMP arrow, or double-stacking PGA to open to break up alpha, then casting glue arrow for a big nosedive in mob damage, movement, and recharge. With OSA being targetable to a location, you could lay it down, and then pull mobs onto it as you jump out of sight, perhaps, depending on the situation.
I admit I'm theorycrafting here, as I've not duo'd with a TA in the alpha absorption role. I've only ever been the alpha absorber as the lone TA on a large team, and I admit to finding that pretty rough on anything other than my TA MMs and controllers. I'm a little surprised to hear that a TA duo would find handling alpha difficult, though, unless you were low level. Am I missing something?
I was level 23. Nice deduction. 
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Quoted for the unfortunateness of TRUTH. |
Originally Posted by Frosticus
Flash arrow is reliably crappy.
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It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
I find the tohit debuff of some defender sets overkill in teams, Flash Arrows tohit debuff can stack to some reasonably well defensed characters build. Let them be first in to consolidate aggro just as I poison gas. I tend to move ahead of the team more of as a Scout when playing a Trick Archer to ensure that Flash is in first, the fact that there are no anchors means I can push ahead by a couple of seconds. The late notice mobs get from being -per'd is helpful too. The difference of using FA to a typical teams health bars is notice able to me at any rate.
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If you account for all situations such as AVs and purple patch does Flash Arrow have the highest reliable To-Hit debuff in the game? I was looking at it and it is marked as unresistable. On defenders, when it is fully enhanced, it has a 9.9% to-hit debuff. If you add power build up it has a 16.1% to-hit debuff. I wonder if any of the other large to-hit debuffs after AV resistances and/or purple patch is applied is still that good.
Work in progress no more. I have decided that I'm going to put my worst spelling errors here. Triage Bacon, Had this baster idea, TL
"I'm going to beat the Jesus out of Satan!" My Wife while playing Dante's Inferno