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User Guide to Multishot

Introduction

"Legend has it that the fabled Amazon archer, Palashia, bragged in her youth that she could best the combined skills of all her greatest rivals. Taking umbrage, her rivals gathered to challenge her outrageous boast, arranging a contest to decide the question. To preserve her honor, Palashia was to strike the targets of all her rivals before they can land a single arrow. When dawn arose on the day of the contest, Palashia stood ready with her bow. At the signal, her rivals nocked their arrows and loosed a volley towards their targets. Palashia gathered her energies and let fly her own, single arrow. To the amazement of onlookers, her arrow split into many, cleaving the arrows of her rivals, and moving on to strike every target directly in their centres. This mysterious technique quickly became a martial secret that only the finest archers are able to master."   -- Diablo II Game Manual

Multiple Shot is a low level skill which many amazon tend to neglect in favour of the damage-enhancing Strafe. While strafe does indeed kill faster in many cases, multishot does have its uses as well. In this short article, i would try to cover as much of the uses and strategies involved in using this very under-rated skill. Any nits, flames or comments are greatly welcome.

Basic Statistics

Level 6 Skill, Prequisite: Magical Arrow
Effect: Fires multiple arrows

A simple skill whereby the amazon fires off a fan-shaped volley of arrows in the direction of the mouse-click. How wide-spread the arrows are depends on the placement of the mouse cursor, which will be explained in detail in the coming sections. The skill is virtually useless at level 1 as only two arrows are fired but reach its optimum at around level 8, where the number of arrows give ample coverage for an affordable cost. Higher skill levels simply produces excessive arrows which goes to waste.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Crowd Control.  With multishot, you are able to fire a volley of multiple arrows, enabling you to hit multiple monsters at the same time. Hence you will be able to hit more monsters at the same time with multishot as compared to strafe, and although multishot has no damage modifier, it is still the most rapid way to clear large crowds of monsters; while keeping them all well under control.

Cover Fire.  Assuming that you have cold damage, multishot is also useful in mass-chilling a mob chasing you. At mid-range levels, multishot offers a good spread of arrows that will be able to hit and chill a large group of monsters, while allowing you to run off immediately after that. Rinse and repeat and you would be able to thin out any mobs that is chasing you as the slowed monsters (in general) cannot catch up with you.

Offscreen Attacks.  Multishot also has very long range (at least longer than the auto-targetting range of strafe) and is able to hit monsters well off the screen. This is particularly useful in taking out dangerous archers or mages before they come into view and start bombarding you with their attacks. Simply fire off a volley or two in the general direction you are going to take and see if you steal any life or mana (red/blue swirl above the head); if there is simply stay put and continue firing until you hear the sound of monsters dying or the swirling stop. This almost totally keeps monsters from getting into melee range with you.

Greater "Accuracy".  Every amazon should have no problems hitting the enemies but multishot sort of guarantee that you almost never miss. Each volley of arrows can only hit each monster with one arrow, but since so many of the arrows can hit the monster, if one miss, another is bound to hit, giving rise to numerous chances of hitting the monster, thereby having greater "accuracy". Or perhaps, it is just an incorrect observation on my part (i certainly DO hit more often with multishot than strafe or normal arrows).

Weaknesses.  No other bonus. No damage modifier. Also, while strafe can hit a monster multiple times with each volley of arrows, only one arrow will hit under multishot. There is also no auto-targetting as with strafe or auto-hitting as with many other skills; although firing in the general direction is almost certain to hit the target due to the good spread of the arrows.

Multishot Strategies

Tips on Spreading Arrows

To fully utilize the skill Multiple Shot, it is very important to know how to get the correct spread of arrows that you want and the positions of the monsters where you can best hit them. In general, the further you click away from your amazon, the tighter the spread of the arrows (hence more arrows per unit area), and the greater your chance of hitting the monsters.

Firing to the corners [click to enlarge]

Firing to the left/right [click to enlarge]

Firing to the top/bottom [click to enlarge]

In the above three pics, the mouse is clicked at the edge of the screen, whether in the corners or the sides, resulting in the tight arrow spread as shown. This is the kind of spread which IMO is ideal as it gives you the most number of chances to hit the monsters and will ensure that you do not miss out on any monsters... of course, if you have a higher skill level (the demonstrating amazon has skill 8), then a wider spread of arrows giving the same amount of coverage can be achieved by clicking slightly closer to the centre of the screen.

You might also notice that by firing to the corners you also get a tighter spread than if you fire to the left/right or top/bottom of the screen, thus it would be best to retreat from enemies in a diagonal fashion in order to bunch them together at the corners. This can also be done by letting your valkyrie or decoy distracting the enemies at the corner of the screen before you let fly your multishots. Let us now see the effects if you click closer to the centre of the screen...

Firing to the corners [click to enlarge]

Firing halfway across screen [click to enlarge]

Firing close to character [click to enlarge]

The three pics above shows the difference between firing at the edge of the screen, halfway across the screen and very close by the amazon. By varying this distance, the difference arrow spread can be obtained, but only experience and practice can tell you exactly where to click in each situation. For example, in the third pic, the amazon would be able to handle a wider spread of monsters (ie two very dangerous enemies approaching, one from the top and one from the right) but would tend to miss out more monsters due to the large gaps between the arrows; whereas the first pic shows a tight, waterproof volley which will certainly hit all within its cone of fire.

Wide angles to the right [click to enlarge]

Wide angles to the top [click to enlarge]

Essentially, the two pics above simply shows how widespread the arrows can get when firing towards the left/right and top/bottom respectively.

23 arrows to the corners [click to enlarge]

Firing halfway across screen [click to enlarge]

Firing close to character [click to enlarge]

The problems of Multishot at too low or too high levels can easily be captured in pics as well. At too low levels (demo at lv 3), you get either a particularly small fan of arrows as seen here; or ridiculously large gaps as seen here, depending on how you fire off the multishot. On the other hand, multishot at level 22 gives the three pics above. As can be seen, clicking roughly halfway across the screen or near the edge, give you very good tight arrow coverage (though lots of wasted arrows). However as you click closer to your amazon, the distribution of the arrows around the fan starts to distort and results in very few arrows targeting the intended direction; whereas the bulk of the arrows are flying towards a direction perpendicular to the intended direction as shown here.

Cautious Movement

One of the reasons for choosing Multishot over Strafe is that multishot offers greater safety when engaging enemies offscreen. Throwing a few multishots in front to detect enemies give you a distinct advantage, especially since they will usually be severely injured by the time they appear on screen, and thus can be easily despatched by various means. Of course, you might say that Guided Arrow can be used to serve the same purpose but then GA can only damage one monster (and does slightly less damage) whereas multishot can hit and chill multiple monsters at the same time; and monsters usually don't come in ones.

Multishot during Withdrawal

As mentioned before, multishot is a useful skill when retreating from fast advancing enemies, far better than strafe. The key is that MS delivers multiple arrows at one shot, thereby allowing you to run away immediately after firing. This is something that strafe can never do, since if you decide to (stupidly) strafe at a charging mob, you are most likely to get strafelocked and massacred. The widespread chilling effect of the multishot will certainly slow the enemies down to a speed where you can reasonably get away, especially if you have some other supporting +cold items which would increase the chill duration of the arrows fired.

Possibly more to be added if I find more stuff to add...

General Notes

Some people prefer to keep Multishot at even levels as this will produce an odd number of arrows, which will mean that there will always be one arrow firing towards the direction clicked.

Personally, I feel that Multishot (up to around level 8) is an excellent skill and very useful up till the end of Hell/Act III, which is when I started to feel the lack of damage modifiers. Before that, I was able to comfortably MS such that very few enemies can survive to reach melee range with me but in Hell/Act VI, this inability to kill fast really hurts.

I'm not saying that Multishot is a better skill than Strafe or vice versa but just that there are quite a few situations whereby a mid-range level Multishot (around lv 8) can be far more useful than Strafe but a lot of people are not giving enough (if any) credits to multishot at all.

Many thanks to Lok and Trucidation for their comments in response to my Bowazon guide. Any further nits, comments, flames are welcome to my e-mail address.

Ice(BNR)
Versatility is strength...

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