Ground Slam
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Ground Slam's potential does not lie in raw DPS, but in tremendous Stun potential. Maces inherently gain Increased Stun Duration, two big Mace clusters grant Stun Threshold Reduction, and Ground Slam innately comes with 25% STR.
If the only thing you care about is DPS, go with Reave for one-handers, Cleave if you're 2h or dual-wield. Whatever. That's not what Ground Slam is for, so I don't see the relevance. |
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I use Ground Slam now and it's amazing.
Not only do i do tremendous amount of damage, but when i slam every monster freezes in stun and are unable to move closer to me or attack me (almost all one-shots but if not this happens). This is due to the massive stun. If the monsters are stun immune this mechanic don't work but it doesn't really matter anyway as i one-shot every ordinary mob, almost all blue mob and sometimes even bosses. I kill max lvl (lvl8) Vegan master about 1 sec. I one-shot lvl78 map courtyard monsters. And i even have not a 6-link yet, my gems are lvl19. Try this skill with DW, good dps fast crit mace + Soul Taker (for completely ignoring mana cost witch is a must in very high attack speed) My absolutely favorite skill right now. |
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" Maybe you can post your skill tree and gems linked? What is DW btw? GGG listens to its fans!!! Thank you!
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Sadly Stun depends on your damage and so if you use other skills like ice crash you can stun better. That's at least what i experienced in the game although i'm just level 53 with this char i would love to use ground slam, but other skills just outclass even it's stun potential. (Reduced stun threshold may be seen as ~20%increased damage). I just feel like Ground slam isn't that strong compared to others. Aoe is nice but near monsters doesn't get hit(ok reposition but doesn't work against fast melee once) and its stun potential is highly reduced by it's less damage(base damage <100%).
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You are grossly underestimating 25% Stun Threshold Reduction.
If a monster has 1000 Life, you need to deal 500 Damage to guarantee a Stun: 200 * damage / defender_effective_max_life 200 * 500 / 1000 = 1000 / 1000 = 1, so 100% Chance to Stun With 25% Reduced Stun Thresold, you only need to deal 500 * 0.75 = 375 Damage. Without the 25% Stun Threshold Reduction, you need to deal 33% more Damage. 20% Increased Damage will get you 4%, maybe. The inner ring on Ice Crash deals 80% more Damage than Ground Slam, the second ring 44% more, the outer ring only 8% more. It is also 25% slower by default and cannot benefit from Multistrike. Even without the big fat speed penalty, the outer ring is already worse at Stunning than Ground Slam. If you want to go for Stunning enemies, Ground Slam is still a solid pick. For single targets, you have Heavy Strike. 25% STR, a fraction more Damage than Ice Crash's innermost ring, no speed penalty, can benefit from Multistrike. |
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The thing is that you are dealing far more damage with other skills and from my experience in the game you do stun better with other skills because of that more damage and you also kill faster with this. Only thing ground slam is better may be its range. I will surely try it out more but at the moment it doesn't work for me.
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"if you're looking for stuns, threshold goes FAR more than damage. the "issue" with ground slam is its cone shaped AoE. that will more honestly be what causes you trouble, not its reduced damage. |
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Ground Slam is never going to appear in the Gorge Book of World Records. If you just want raw deeps and Stun is just a nice bonus to you, then Ground Slam is not the Skill for you. If you want to make bosses entirely incapable of taking any actions, that is when you want to look at Ground Slam, or even Heavy Strike if you like.
Last edited by Vipermagi#0984 on Aug 10, 2015, 11:49:04 PM
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" first off, i've been less active because of dark souls 3 as well, haha. so this statement used to ring true im sure, but with cast on crit ground slam is....just extremely powerful. there are a few weird things i've noticed with ground slam though, which im sure are not intended. not sure if they've been pointed out in this thread already, because i really don't feel like sifting through all the pages since again, im busy with dark souls 3. the first one is height tiers. ground slam traverses terrain both up and down. if you're on a lower level and use ground slam, it will be active on the upper level, hitting mobs, procing coc and whatever else. same with if you're on the higher level hitting down to a lower one. im not just talking about stairs either, which would sorta make sense, but cliffs and ledges. the next is objects in your way. it won't go through everything, but it seems like half of the objects that can get in your way ground slam will still blast through it and damage enemies. its all great because i use ground slam, so im currently at an advantage, but it seems extremely weird to me the skill is able to do this, and doesn't make much sense that it can |
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Me being a Ground Slam stunner, have felt some unfortunate changes during these years in the game. Ground Slam was first replaced by Ice Crash, and Ice Crash got later replaced by Earthquake.
GS's damage is only 104% of base at level 20. Yes, I know it comes with 25% stun threshold reduction, but that drowns in EQ's (lvl 20) 109% base damage and 79% MORE damage aftershock, which pretty much overrides any stun threshold reduction provided by ground slam, becoming more suited for stun builds than the original stun skill itself. Great damage overrides the meaning of stun threshold, not to mention their 360 -degree effect. GS with Multistrike can easily be replaced with EQ and Recuded duration, simply for both higher and faster damage output. Speaking of Stun, we have 2 skills designed for it. Ground Slam, and Heavy Strike. Heavy Strike being a classic namelock melee attack with a high (lvl 20) 184% base damage and GS's 25% Stun threshold reduction is nearly enough to Stun high map bosses, but then comes the knockback. Why would anyone want a namelock melee skill to have a knockback? It is a massive damage reduction having to take a step towards the enemy after every single hit. It takes off alot of DPS, and the stun threshold's and duration's meaning gets downgraded by the very skill itself. The timer keeps ticking and my character has to walk after every blow to land another. To get further with the problems of GS, is that it's designed Threshold jewel isn't used by anyone. A 90 degree attack getting 20% more angle, resulting in 108 degree doesn't do it any justice. In my opinion, what the skill needs, is simply a better damage to become comparable with EQ, and other skills that in the future will replace earthquake. It's threshold jewel might have something important (a lot bigger increased angle/More damage/Stun Threshold reduction, GS Doesn't suffer as much dmg reduction from Multistrike, anything else but +20% angle). Ground Slam, now and forever.
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