Crash wrote:seen many people report charged strike isn't as crazy as it was in vanilla d2, possibly because the bolts don't all hit initial target and spread outward from there, otherwise charged bolt would probably be the top boss killer in the game. its still surprisngly decent for farming. seen melee sorc and melee zon use it well
This is what I'm trying to find out.
My understanding of the D2 engine is that it can either hit once (1+ ND), or up to the number of bolts launched by the attack (0 ND), as all bolts are launched from the initial melee target at the same time. There is still an attack roll (attack rating vs defense) on each individual bolt, so bosses with higher defense will be hit less. You'd need massive attack rating to reach 95% chance to hit on harder bosses and therefor hit with every bolt of charged strike.
I only knew how the mechanics worked back when Median was a single .mpq file (so cLoD rules applied), not an engine mod as well. Many things have changed that I know longer know the math of, and let's face it, this is a (D&D based) math game at heart.