Guided Arrow

Enhances your arrows and bolts to track your target or seek one of its own.

Guided Arrow is a level 18 Amazon skill (Bow and Crossbow tree, requires Cold Arrow and Multiple Shot; it unlocks Strafe). It fires one arrow that steers itself into a target and cannot miss. The numbers that decide it are the damage bonus, +7% a level from level 2, and the mana, which falls 0.25 a level from 8 to a floor of 1.

The numbers

• Damage is calc1, ln34 + skill('Multiple Shot'.blvl) × par8: Param3 is the baseline of 0, Param4 adds 7 a level, so the bonus is 0% at level 1, +133% at level 20 and +203% at level 30. The column above shows the synergy at 0 hard points; each hard point in Multiple Shot adds 12 (Param8) on top. The Basin's page gives the older game's line as 5 × slvl − 5 and the current one as 7 × slvl − 7, which is the table's.
• Mana is 8 at level 1 (mana 32 in quarters, manashift 6) and −0.25 a level (lvlmana −1); the tooltip prints max(usmc, 1) and minmana is 1, so it is 3.25 at level 20 and 1 from level 29 on.
• There is no attack-rating line: the row has no ToHit column, and the skill does not need one.

The damage bonus reads lvl, so +skills from items raise it; the synergy reads blvl.

How it works

The tooltip's own line says it: the arrow always hits (a skilldesc.txt "always hits" line), so the attack-rating check in Chance to Hit is skipped. The Basin's page adds the limits: it can still be blocked, see Blocking, and Piercing Attack does not apply to it; it passes through anything between the Amazon and its target without touching them, and hits only the target. It carries 100% of weapon damage (SrcDam 128) and fires at the normal attack's rate, see Attack Speed.

The Basin's page describes the homing: the arrow looks for a target within a search radius of 10 yards and re-checks its position every 5 frames, turning as far as 180° to follow it. The target must be in the Amazon's line of sight; it will not follow a target around a corner. With no target selected, the arrow picks one within its radius when it reaches the point aimed at, preferring a unique monster over its minions, and with nothing in range it flies straight and hits whatever it meets. If the selected target dies, the Amazon stops firing and the arrows already in the air fly on without hitting.

The arrow does not expire for 128 frames, 5.12 seconds by the Basin's page, against 40 frames for an ordinary arrow: it reaches more than three times as far.

Synergies and +skills

One synergy line: Multiple Shot, +12% damage per level (Param8 = 12, calc1 reads skill('Multiple Shot'.blvl)), hard points only. Guided Arrow in turn feeds Multiple Shot (+12% damage per hard point) and Strafe (+10% damage per hard point): hard points here are the better half of both pairings.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player. The Basin's page says nothing more about this skill against players; the always-hit and the block check work as above.

Build notes

• Level 20: +133% weapon damage, 3.25 mana, no hit check.
• The 12% per hard point in Multiple Shot is nearly twice the skill's own 7% a level: a point there is worth more to Guided Arrow than a point past 20 here, and it also adds an arrow to Multiple Shot.
• The same hard points pay Strafe 10% each, so the three skills are levelled as one block.
• Attack rating on gear does nothing for this skill; chance to block on the target still does.