Guide: Official Bowling Bash

[Playtester]

Just a small guide on the official Bowling Bash implemented on rAthena as of late.

Level - Damage per hit - Max Chain - Gutter Line Size
1 - 140% - 2 - 1
2 - 180% - 3 - 1
3 - 220% - 4 - 2
4 - 260% - 5 - 2
5 - 300% - 6 - 3
6 - 340% - 7 - 3
7 - 380% - 8 - 4
8 - 420% - 9 - 4
9 - 460% - 10 - 5
10 - 500% - 11 - 5

- Bowling Bash knocks the target monster into the direction you last walked into, after the knockback, there will be a 3x3 splash damage around the target cell of the knockback
- Every monsters hit by the splash damage will itself be knocked back one cell into a random direction and causes its own 3x3 splash damage
- Every monster can be hit up to 2 times per bowling bash, after that it will be immune; only on the first hit, it will cause a 3x3 splash itself
- The chain reaction will continue until no new monsters are hit anymore, until the monster is knocked into a wall or until the max number of chains has been reached
- There is a gutter line from coordinates dividable by 40 with a certain size (see table above), at max level that would be 40-44, 80-84, etc.
- On the gutter line monsters are immune to the chain reaction from bowling bash, even if they haven't been hit 2 times yet, instead they will be knocked back by x tiles whereas x is equal to the gutter line size; the initially targetted monsters will always take 1 hit even if on the gutter line
- When there is knockback immunity, targets won't be knocked back by bowling bash, however, the splash will still be around the cell where the target would have ended up if knockback was possible
- Consequently, hitting a target into a wall will cause the chain reaction to stop, even if no knockback is actually possible

Hints:
- Bowling Bash is particularly effective if you have big mobs and also deals nice single target damage (2x500% outside gutter line)
- For smaller mobs it's effective if you can two-hit kill them with BB; otherwise you should run a few cell back after every hit to reunite them
- There are tools that show you the gutter line as well as guides that display the most optimal positions to use Bowling Bash on certain maps
- rAthena offers a configuration "bowling_bash_area" that allows to replace the gutter lines with an area around the caster to make Bowling Bash always chain until the max chain is reached or the target is knocked into a wall or outside that area

[Bue]

Sounds like a decent exam question for recursion. = =

Recursive Case:
One target (hit only 'once' for the first and 'twice' for monsters chained by first) -> Knockback / No knockback -> Splash damage at location -> Chain reaction from damage -> One Target.

Base Case:
Monster hit 2 times.
Monster forced into a wall.
Monster in gutter line.
No monsters left in chain reaction.

[Fruit Pie~]

Just wanna add to the hints that, unless it was fixed, you can control Bowling Bash's knockback direction by SHIFT-clicking. So if you do it right you can actually hit mobs three times before repositioning! Just do it like, say...

Code Select Expand

......
...^..
...^..
..@^..
...O..
......

@ is the Knight, O is a bunch of High Orcs. If you face directly up before Bowling Bashing, the mob stack will follow the ^s (if that made any sense). So you can reach them for a third BB when they're diagonally up and right from you!

Also, wasn't the 11 target max thing actually removed (or at least increased) in Niflheim or Heritage? Depending on your official server of choice, that's when Bowling Bash went from a limited AoE 2x300% to a mob nuking 2x500%.

[Playtester]

Old Bowling Bash version:
- monsters cannot collide with themselves, they will be knocked back 1-5 cells (depending on level and recursive depths) until they hit into another monster before causing the splash, consequently they will also only be hit once in 1on1 combat
- the maximum number of 3x3 splashs is [level+1]

New Bowling Bash version:
- monsters CAN collide with themselves, effectively making every knockback only 1 cell and causing 2 hits even in 1on1 combat
- the maximum number of chain iterations (i.e. recursive depth) is [level+1]

[Fruit Pie~]

Oh. Thanks for that, Bowling Bash went through several extremely confusing changes.

Old BB sounds grotesquely overpowered, now that you mention it. Did it still hit only once per mob or did it splash 11 times for 300% damage each, for a total of 3300% ATK damage? I wouldn't know, I mostly played Priest back in those days.

[Playtester]

Old BB wasn't really strong, it just send the monsters flying far, which was kinda annoying because you had to remob them every time. Also the fact that no monster can be hit more than two times was already implemented in the old BB.
Old BB would be cool for a bowling minigame though!

New BB is actually stronger because first of all there is only 1 cell knockback, meaning it's easier to remob and also, since monsters collide with themselves, you will always do two hits in 1vs1 combat making BB not only a good mobbing skill but also really good for solo combat (why even bother getting pre-renewal Spiral Pierce when you can have BB which does 2x500% damage - that's why they strongly buffed Spiral Pierce to do like 5 times the damage in renewal).

[Fruit Pie~]

New BB is actually stronger because first of all there is only 1 cell knockback, meaning it's easier to remob and also, since monsters collide with themselves, you will always do two hits in 1vs1 combat making BB not only a good mobbing skill but also really good for solo combat (why even bother getting pre-renewal Spiral Pierce when you can have BB which does 2x500% damage - that's why they strongly buffed Spiral Pierce to do like 5 times the damage in renewal).

I've been telling people about BB and Pierce being straight up superior to SpP for AGES now, but nobody listened to me. =-= But yeah, I thought it'd be massively overpowered due to the way it was written (eleven 300% explosions! Knights casting Storm Gust!).

It's good to get BB explained, since I've mostly experienced the new one and even then in eAthena, not on official servers. Danke, herr Playtester.