I don't get the difference. aren't both DPS, 6 mob AoE attacks? Which should i max first for mobbing and what is the difference in attack?
Max Arrow Rain first. The difference between the two skills is actually quite big. Arrow Rain attacks "around" you and requires no space, I mean you won't slam the monsters with your bow if you stand too close. Inferno is like a normal arrow you fire , kind of like Arrow Bomb, but it will cause monsters to burn and is also strong against monsters that are weak to fire.
Arrow Rain is much better for mobing cause you can never fail arrow rain for being too close to mobs. Bread and butter grinding skill with strafe. With Arrow rain you can train at places such as Wolf Spiders, Typhoons, and Himes
arrow rain will be your end-game mobbing skill overall. you won't be using inferno for any circumstance unlike a sniper does in order to FREEZE monsters. plus, there's no increase in damage. you're better off using arrow bomb since it stuns rather than just burning them. I'd say leave inferno at lv.21, and max every other skill during your ranger path
As a 174 BM, i uses Arrow Rain and Arrow Bomb (2nd job) more often than inferno. Not sure why but Arrow Bomb does more damage than Inferno. Plus it can stun unlike inferno. If i could turn back time, i would never pump inferno as per the guides out there.
Arrow bomb hits higher because for some reason instead of getting an additive crit bonus it gets a multiplier. For example with SE an inferno hit would hit 390% crit (150+240%) while arrow bomb would hit 442% (130X3.4), and with the new buff to arrow bomb in new source (it no longer does weak damage on the first target) it's a better skill. I'd still max inferno though, it looks pretty cool and it's not like you have other skills to max instead (strafe is completely useless at 4th job so you can just keep it at lvl 1 if you leech, and hawk isn't that useful later either) The main advantage of inferno is that it seems to have a long range (it looks longer than arrow bomb) so it's good for taking out a group of weak mobs (like when farming keys for APQ Personally I'd suggest buffing inferno, right now it does 150% damage without burning and at a later version in GMS (maybe v90 or v83?) it did 160% damage+burning damage over time which made it more useful
I didn't know about that for Arrow Bomb, guess i should lurk around frequently in forum to learn something new! I still like strafe though, cause sometimes its easier to 1 hit ko mobs using strafe and hurricane always have a delay to kill mobs. E.g. a mob takes in 5 to 8 hurricane arrows before it dies vs 1 hit KO using strafe. Just my observation!
Hurricane is usually better for killing mobs because after a mob dies the arrows will go past it and kill the second mob while strafe will sometimes overkill things, and against weak mobs you will often be able to kill them with a single arrow so you could take out a lot of mobs quickly this way. Strafe is also unstable as the damage is based on how many crits you can get so getting a 100% 1 hit against a strong mob can be very difficult
