Cleave

Everyone is talking about dual wield cleave. How is 2h cleave doing atm?

"

nikals wrote:

Everyone is talking about dual wield cleave. How is 2h cleave doing atm?

Ground Slam (or leap slam) is just plain better. And ST is better still.

70% damage Effectiveness does a good job of making the skill bad. For DW you get 42% effectiveness for each hand so you at leats have "84%" damage effectiveness.

"

Autocthon wrote:

"

nikals wrote:

Everyone is talking about dual wield cleave. How is 2h cleave doing atm?

Ground Slam (or leap slam) is just plain better. And ST is better still.

70% damage Effectiveness does a good job of making the skill bad. For DW you get 42% effectiveness for each hand so you at leats have "84%" damage effectiveness.

ya... but I don't think you can use 2h sword / axe to groundslam

The only real reason I can think of for the nerf to cleave was the extreme popularization of the blender build, a build that was really only capable of being "OP" once you were able to pair bringer of rain with some great 1 handers and multiple methods of damage mitigation. The skill itself was almost unusable (except with ele cleave) until near endgame, because the gear requirement to make it decent was enormous.
The 60% damage while dual wielding nerf really doesn't make sense to me. While dual wielding, players should be rewarded for giving up their shield slot and playing a riskier play style, not punished. I hope GGG understands that they made cleave one of the worst skills in the game with the recent nerf, and that there is virtually no reason to use a small 60% damage AOE that only hits once like cleave, over an attack like cyclone or dual strike. It's a straight downgrade.

"

Vipermagi wrote:

"there is virtually no reason to use a small 60% damage AOE that only hits once like cleave, over an attack like cyclone or dual strike."

1. Cleave is big. It has a range of 20 - Cyclone gets to a whopping 9 using Thrusting Swords or two-handed Axes and Master of the Arena. Melee Splash has a radius of 12. Discharge has a radius of 30.

2. Dual Strike hits once all the same.

3. Cleave hits with both weapons simultaneously. Cyclone alternates.

4. Melee Splash requires you to hit something in Melee Range. Cleave can be free-aimed to keep dangerous foes out of Melee Range.

5. Melee Splash takes a socket.

Straight downgrade. Seriously. No redeeming factors.


Cleave is weaker than Dual Strike + Splash only because Dual Strike is the single most powerful Attack skill, striking with two weapons with no inherent Damage penalty. Making Cleave on-par in terms of Damage means making Cleave stronger than DS+MS, because it doesn't take two sockets to actually hit multiple dudes, and it has a notably larger hit radius.

Disclaimer, because inevitably people are going to miss this otherwise: I'm not saying Cleave is fine.

some food for thoughts.

cleave's range is big, however it's only half of a circle in front of you, while cyclone is 360 degrees around you. also with a thrusting sword and master arena the range of cyclone is actually 11 (characters have a radius of 2 inherently), don't even mention that cyclone's quality provides 20% AOE increases.

even though cyclone alternates, it still attacks twice per your attack speed, so it can be considered essentially a DW skill

Comparison between cleave and cyclone

AOE:
Cleave: 3.14 * (20)^2 / 2 = 628 (cuz half circle)
Cyclone: 3.14 * (11*1.2)^2 = ~547 (with quality)

barely noticeable advantage from cleave unless you start scaling the AoE on cleave, and i will talk about it later.

also you can move while cycloning, so if your damage is high enough, you can clear a big white pack in one go; for cleave? attack animation -> stop -> reposition -> stop -> attack animation.

Damage Effectiveness(DW)
Cleave: 42%
Cyclone: 40%
(only 5% difference.......)

Attack Speed:
Cleave: 10% (with quality)
Cyclone: 38%

(major difference here)

Stun immunity:
Cleave: false
Cyclone: true

The only thing that cleave has over cyclone is that, you can use multistrike reliably with cleave. however , for phy dmg, that's further reduction on top of cleave's pathetic 42% DW effectiveness so unless you have really good 1h weapons, it's not worth it to use multistrike at all

another trivial disadvantage is that, since you want as much AOE as possible on cleave to extend its advantage, you want to use carcassjack, but too bad you need at least RRRR(cleave + multi + melee phy + blood magic) on an int / dex armour. GL with that.

"

Vipermagi wrote:

"(characters have a radius of 2 inherently)"
Attacks always factor this in - Cyclone isn't special in this regard. Technically Cleave would be at 22 all the same. Of course, that's not the value you actually use when adding Increased AoE, sooo. Might want to revise that calculation there.

Mark's post on AoE radii.
Cyclone: Uses range of weapon, also measures from edge of player rather than centre, like melee attacks

if you read carefully, he specifically said that for cyclone. so yes cleave measures from the centre of the player rather than edge and it's 20.

Would it be possible to make Cleave work with Claws?

Reave is too slow for party groups, by the time I swing enough to get the range up everything is dead.

I'd use Cyclone but that desyncs me, a lot.

Cleave really doesn't do a spectacular amount of damage, but it is a pretty effective trash killer and works well with groups.

Don't make me ST claws, it looks stupid, not sure why that ability is so universally flexible and most others are heavily restrictive.