Cleave

Did a lot of testing with Cleave since the buff with my twohander Marauder. The damage is decent now and feels well in place with other options (except for the fundamental 2H vs. crit dagger issue -.-).
The AOE coverage is still rather underwhelming compared to for example Reave. I use it with an Increased AoE support gem on my Marauder (+30% radius atm) but without any passive aoe increase and the skill feels like it should already have that range without any aoe increase. Without the gem it only hits 2-4 very close targets in most cases and feels more like a multi target than an aoe skill.
Because of the fact that mobs are rarely exactly where they appear to be in the client, the 180° angle feels more like 120-150°. I like the fact that, unlike Melee Splash, the skill makes it necessary to plan your positioning when fighting groups but you still often get that slightly stale aftertaste when you should have been able to hit 'that mob just over there' but didn't because it was slightly out of sync/position.

Suggestion: buff the radius a little bit to around 24 units and maybe change the angle to 210-240°. This should be enough to change the skill from 'i might be able to hit those 2-4 mobs directly in front of me' to 'i should be able to cover that small area in front of me'. Another interesting idea would be a slight range progression with gem level. Maybe something like 18 @ lvl 1 to 28 @ lvl 21; this would also give the +level of melee gems affix some more use.


On another note: the visual range of the animation and the actual hit range seem a little inconsistent.

I really like the idea to make the AOE bigger. Reave just got a buff for its AOE and now it is hard to even get anything in comparison with clear speed. Cleave is only 20, while Reave is 31 on full stacks. I get that the stacks are what make reave at less of an advantage but with multistrike it seems really easy to get those stacks up. People only really make builds with fast attack speeds too. On top of that Vaal Reave makes it even more powerful because you can now get a HUGE AOE.

I'd really love to see Cleave get a AOE increase. I mean even Melee splash feels bigger because of the whole circle thing...

The AOE does not feel good.
Replaced the Cleave gem with Reave for a better effect.

Build/Tree:



Gear:

Really strong melee skill(dw version), especially with crit. Cause you can crit with one or both weapons. So freeze and shock are very consistent. DPS is nice even with mediocre gear, just from using auras and leveled quality gems.

It would be great if Cleave could get a buff to its AoE range but let me explain my chain of thought why i think it is necessary:

With the upcoming reduction of block we will see a lot more Dualwield and 2H builds. It seems that Dualstrikes damage was nerfed for that reason, which now leaves the option of Cleave vs. Dualstrike + Melee Splash for dualwield builds. Due to the reduction od Dualstrikes damage, Cleave now becomes a good alternative damage wise but a DW Ranger or Duelist has hardly any acess to the AoE nodes on the opposite side of the skilltree. Even with >30% increased AoE i fealt that Cleaves AoE was just too small so it suffered greatly from mobs being just slightly out of position due to desync between server and client.

I played a Cleave build up to level 87 to do some extensive testing and the skill does good damage now but is very annoying to use and at every other mob pack it left a rather stale aftertaste when i should have been able to hit some mobs but didn't. Another problem is the conveyance of the actual range. I had to do a lot of testing with immobile totems in the Vaal ruins to analyze Cleaves actual range, which makes it very hard to use effectively for newer players.

Therefore i would suggest two changes to the current skill:
1. increase the base AoE radius by 2-4 units or give it an increase from leveling/quality
2. give better visual feedback of the actual range

The suggested range increase would give Cleave a better feel when playing but the total damage potential might be a bit high so this would probably have to go hand in hand with a slight damage reduction to maybe 95% effectivness.
The most important change, however, would be the better visual feedback. This could be done by simply letting the 'arc' scale correctly with the range and display at the outer boundary of the AoE (currently it displays at around 2/3 down my 2H sword).

So today I used cleave for the first time on a dual wielding build, utilizing the wrath aura for added damage. Before starting I examined both skills and noted these relevant details from their respective descriptions:

Cleave: When Dual Wielding, Deals 65% Damage from each Weapon combined

Wrath: You and nearby allies deal x-y additional Lightning Damage with attacks

I wasn't sure how these two skills would interact, but based on the wording I concluded that it would be one of the following scenarios:

1. wrath damage is applied to each weapon separately, resulting in two instances of 65% damage
2. wrath damage is applied to the attack as a whole, resulting in one instance of 100% damage

To my surprise, the tooltip suggested that the wrath damage was instead applied once at 65% effectiveness. Balance aside, this seems counterintuitive given the wording used on each skill. Dual strike looks like it works the same way in this scenario, except the wording makes it much clearer.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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FunkyFritter wrote:

1. wrath damage is applied to each weapon separately, resulting in two instances of 65% damage

It's this one.

As well as any other bonus damage, BTW. Any flat damage bonus from gear, buffs, etc will apply in two instances (if applicable).
Same for Dual strike.

Not sure if right topic but I would like to see a Vaal Cleave gem which acts as a physical version of Freeze Pulse which first hits like a normal cleave (maybe with increased radius increased physical damage) and then travels across the screen dealing bleed damage to every enemy which got hit by the cleave wave animation.