question about APEX ARROW

[Jilliebeans]

correct me if am wrong, but for a skill that does 500 potency dmg for every 20 voice gauge is kinda "weak"? it does way less dmg than i expected, am i doing something wrong here?

[Furious]

It does 500 potency at 100 gauge; the tooltip is badly worded. Almost always you want to use it at or near full gage only.

[Siliandra]

Its a fire and forget skill. Its 500 potency at 100 gauge.

You will fire it immediately at 100 gauge.

Or if in the next gcd come a party/raidbuff up.

[HyoMinPark]

It does 500 potency at 100 gauge; the tooltip is badly worded. Almost always you want to use it at or near full gage only.

The tooltip for Apex Arrow is a huge trap for any BRD. It honestly should have been changed before release because of how misleading it is.

[Dogempire]

It does 500 potency at 100 gauge; the tooltip is badly worded. Almost always you want to use it at or near full gage only.

Wait, why only at or near full gauge? Is it not 100 potency every 20 gauge?

[Furious]

Wait, why only at or near full gauge? Is it not 100 potency every 20 gauge?

It consumes a GCD to use apex arrow, which could otherwise be used on burst shot (230 potency) or quick nock (150 potency and 30% chance to reset rain of death). Every time you use apex arrow earlier than 100 potency, you functionally lose (100-current gauge)/100*230 potency on single target, or (100-current gauge)/100*183 potency on aoe.

Using it at 20 gauge on single target, you lose ~180 potency from burst shot opportunity cost and gain nothing, as an example.

Apex arrow is a very trappy ability. It should either be ogcd or it should not scale linearly so as to incentivize earlier use, or atleast not punish it so badly. Right now, the only time you would ever use it early is if you urgently need to burst something down, AND you have atleast 47 gauge (using it at 46 is equivalent to burst shot in damage), AND you have zero value for any damage going out after that point (basically, the fight is about to end and you're not going to run into another pack of anything). Even then, it's extremely questionable until significantly higher than 50.