Frenzy

10s length makes it a high maintenance skill that becomes tedious to use, and watching the countdown in the top left corner takes your eyes off the action. Since it's otherwise a really plain attack that's not attractive to put in a rotation, I'd rather see that become a support gem rather than tweak the duration. Then the player can find which attack skill(s) to attach it to in order to maximize ramp up speed and/or uptime.

Lvl 49 Duelist here.

I primarily use dual strike, lightning strike and cleave as my main attack skills. I focus on high alpha strikes by using crit passives.

I really want to like frenzy, but at this stage it is underwhelming and I'm left disappointed.

Firstly, I seem to miss more often when I strike with frenzy compared to dual strike (with no supports). I have an 87% chance to hit with dual strike, but with frenzy, it 'feels' like 65%. I don't have raw data to back those numbers up, but It is a noticeable difference.

Most importantly, frenzy breaks the flow of combat no matter what your build is. I have a hit and run playstyle, and I want frenzy to complement it by allowing my attacks to be fast enough to get in and out quickly. With Frenzy, this is almost impossible because:

1. It costs too much mana
2. It takes too long to build up charges.
3. The duration is far too short.
4. Can't maintain charges while using other melee skills.

If frenzy was converted to a support gem that allowed any combat skill to build charges upon strike, that would solve all four problems. (just have it increase the cost of the skill by an additional 30% or so.)

Editing this to reorganize my thoughts :


This is playing on a level 45 duelist.

The speed : I use it with an IAS support gem and it does not feel slow at all. The pace is extremely fast.

Gathering charges : I barely have time to think about it before I get all my charges. But I would expect a character with a lower attack speed to take more time... I suppose it wouldnt be as pleasant. Lets say you use a slow 2h weapon, it will take a lot more time before gathering all charges.

Duration : I dont even have the passive to increase the duration. To be honest I will probably not bother. My character does not really have any movement speed augmentations but I do use phase run between the fights to move faster.

The damage : It feels just fine, where it should be. Where I agree with the above poster though, is that when looking at the numbers, it does not feel right. My frenzy DPS is above dual strike... But to be honest, when I need to get rid of a monster quickly, I always use dual strike and it does feel more effective.


The way I play it is use frenzy as my default attack to gather up my charges. Once they are gathered I will use cleave/dual strike and still get the benefits. I will sometimes use the charges with flicker strike if I need to get rid of meanies.

I would hate to see it go as a support gem !

"

nihlanth wrote:

Lvl 49 Duelist here...

Most importantly, frenzy breaks the flow of combat no matter what your build is. I have a hit and run playstyle, and I want frenzy to complement it by allowing my attacks to be fast enough to get in and out quickly. With Frenzy, this is almost impossible because:

1. It costs too much mana
2. It takes too long to build up charges.
3. The duration is far too short.
4. Can't maintain charges while using other melee skills.

If frenzy was converted to a support gem that allowed any combat skill to build charges upon strike, that would solve all four problems. (just have it increase the cost of the skill by an additional 30% or so.)

I'm running a level 30 Str/Dex sword dual-wield Duelist, and my impressions have been almost exactly the same. I immediately thought to myself that Frenzy would work better as a support gem.

Additionally, I'd love to see Frenzy charges passively increase both my global Attack and Movement speed, even at the cost of the global(?) damage increase. When I think "frenzy" I think "fast."

This is my main skill on a level 70 duellist using a bow. At range it's very easy to keep 5 charges going as you can engage the enemies sooner, so maybe you melee character could put a bow on weapon swap and maintain those frenzy charges as you engage.

DPS wise I get up to 5000 with 5 charges, using elemental weapon damage, added fire damage and faster attacks support gems.

This puts the mana cost at 43 which is pretty reasonable, as I don't need a mana leech gem (or life leech as I'm using Blood Magic)

Overall, a great skill imo, no changes needed.

Apart from maybe the horrible twisting metal noise it makes on a bow.

Build below if anyone's interested

The skill needs fixing, because on the description it says it gives 1 charge per hit, yet when i combine the skill with multiple projectile support gem and hit several monsters with the skill it only gives me 1 frenzy charge. (Obviously I'm a bow user)

"

nihlanth wrote:

Lvl 49 Duelist here.

I primarily use dual strike, lightning strike and cleave as my main attack skills. I focus on high alpha strikes by using crit passives.

I really want to like frenzy, but at this stage it is underwhelming and I'm left disappointed.

Firstly, I seem to miss more often when I strike with frenzy compared to dual strike (with no supports). I have an 87% chance to hit with dual strike, but with frenzy, it 'feels' like 65%. I don't have raw data to back those numbers up, but It is a noticeable difference.

Most importantly, frenzy breaks the flow of combat no matter what your build is. I have a hit and run playstyle, and I want frenzy to complement it by allowing my attacks to be fast enough to get in and out quickly. With Frenzy, this is almost impossible because:

1. It costs too much mana
2. It takes too long to build up charges.
3. The duration is far too short.
4. Can't maintain charges while using other melee skills.

If frenzy was converted to a support gem that allowed any combat skill to build charges upon strike, that would solve all four problems. (just have it increase the cost of the skill by an additional 30% or so.)

I actually didn't have much problems with frenzy apart from the nerfing of flicker with charges. However, you seem to have a good point there. If double strike can be adjusted for dual wielders (alternate slashes between main and off hand) then frenzy can definitely become a very meaningful support gem. The problem is then frenzy will become a lot more popular than the other support gem combinations because it offers a lot of benefits in terms of charges that also influence certain other skills like flicker.

What about the faster attack support gem? Well that will have to be removed as well since it will be redundant. As I understand a couple of builds ago frenzy was exactly that popular. Its benefits were just too good to give up for other skills and some combinations would be just OP. (Frenzy + Double strike for eg).

You idea is actually a good one but it might cause the whole balance to destabilize quickly.

This skill is too much of a constraint when you have high attack speed, it should be passive or buff you can just cast on yourself (this means longer duration)

Been using Frenzy for a while now on my level 42 Shadow.

Thoughts/Observations:

1) Mana cost is too high to replace my default attack with it. I don't see this changing at higher levels.

2) Short duration means it's not intended for me to carry the charges over to the next mob group, so I need a Frenzy dump.


Frenzy charge dumps are: Discharge and/or Flicker. I don't want to discuss Discharge or Flicker in this thread, so I'll leave it at that.


I'm aware there's ways to increase charge duration, but I think the skill points could always be better spent elsewhere. I don't necessarily see a problem here, unless 1 & 2 are not intended.

I'm used to playing a charge build since I played a charge-based Assassin in D2 before respeccing to a Kicker/Trapper hybrid. Using charges was a (more) fun playstyle, so I see why this idea was expanded to the other classes here in PoE.

Kudos to the devs for recognizing fun game elements.