Earthquake

How surprising I am the first to comment on the awesome Earthquake Skill Gem even though Ascendancy has been released for a little over 2 days now as of me writing this. Anyway...

The duration bit in Earthquake's tooltip seems vague. The 1.5 second duration on Earthquake seems to suggest if it were supported by Increased Duration, it will gain benefits from Damage over Time nodes, especially Physical Damage over Time nodes like Bloodletting near the Duelist start location, whereas supporting Earthquake with Less Duration would result in a faster Cast Time.

Is my notion regarding Earthquake's duration portion of the attack True? And if it is true, what does Earthquake work better with: Less Duration (more hits per second) or Increased Duration (less hits per second with heavier hits)?

Thank you in advance for your feedback.
HeavyMetalGear

Wow, this is an underwhelming skill if I ever saw one.
So many downsides without ANYTHING at all to make up for it.

Long delay, does not scale with attack speed.
Less Duration will be mandatory gem to even play with it.

Damage is so ridiculously bad.
This thing actually has a lower damage per hit, than Ice Crash and Sunder. And both of those will put out 2-3 attacks (so will this skill actually, you use this skill without actually using the "aftershock") before this has even occurred once.

As above underwelming, No point using this skill over Ice Crash. Doesn't scale well, and little to no benifit to the aftershock... Needs to always stun or something...

Level 33 2h Marauder, Bloodmagic + HoF

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Snowflake85 wrote:

Wow, this is an underwhelming skill if I ever saw one.
So many downsides without ANYTHING at all to make up for it.

Long delay, does not scale with attack speed.
Less Duration will be mandatory gem to even play with it.

Damage is so ridiculously bad.
This thing actually has a lower damage per hit, than Ice Crash and Sunder. And both of those will put out 2-3 attacks before this has even occurred once.

Actually, Earthquake is not bad skill itself. It's meant to be used with Less Duration (that also provides damage boost so gem slot isnt wasted), and 20/20 gem reduces delay to less than 0.7 seconds. This means, with slow weapon (hello, Marohi Erqi) and minimal attack speed, you will ALWAYS trigger "aftershock slam" between attacks.
At 20 level, Earthquake deals 109% damage in small AoE and 79% MORE from it on aftershock (=195%) in large AoE after a small delay. It's quite solid, actually (~300% AoE damage into small area and ~200% into large). It's much more than Ice Crash does!
Oh, and dont look at tooltip - it doesnt show DPS "added" by aftershock. It's as good as tooltip for Molten Strike (that deals lion's share of its damage through projectiles).

However, Earthquake has one MAJOR problem - there are just TOO FEW support gems that benefit it. Having at least one extra damage multiplier, that applies to physical (not some crap like Hypothermia or Added Fire or conc. effect or Fortify) would help a lot.

Also, it is NOT the skill you want to use while leveling. It shines only with high-level and quality Less Duration gem, and (most probably) with Slayer's Endless Hunger passive. Earthquake gem itself also scales wil level much better than most skills (you gain more damage to initial hist and more on aftershock on top of that, per level).

Earthquake is a great skill and It felt overpowered to me as I progressed in the 60-80 zone. with almost no currency involved (i did dropped myself a marohi erqi) im constantly one shotting packs...blue ...rare...it does not matter. up to tier 5-6 maps without additionnal life roll this skill in a 4link with a decent build is enough to clear really fast.For those of you who are having isssues with the skill or those of you that think that the gems is underpowered ...got for reduced duration and pick a really slow and hard hitting 2 hander you will understand fast enough

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beastygor wrote:

Earthquake is a great skill and It felt overpowered to me as I progressed in the 60-80 zone. with almost no currency involved (i did dropped myself a marohi erqi) im constantly one shotting packs...blue ...rare...it does not matter. up to tier 5-6 maps without additionnal life roll this skill in a 4link with a decent build is enough to clear really fast.For those of you who are having isssues with the skill or those of you that think that the gems is underpowered ...got for reduced duration and pick a really slow and hard hitting 2 hander you will understand fast enough

Sure when you use 5-linked Marohi, everything should be fine. Problems raise when you want to upgrade it into something better (and upgrade your gear as well). For 6-linked Marohi, you feel the lack of gems. For another weapon, you find it hard to go crit with it, also, finding a slow weapon better than Marohi is quite a task.... And since you cant scale your DPS off attack speed, crit look like an appeling alternative.

Got into a problem recently, got myself enough reduced and less duration that the skill lasts shorter than my attack time, but every few hits, it doesn't look like the fissure detonates in time for me.

Here's a GIF without Grave of the Slaughter (0.49 attack time)
https://gfycat.com/WellgroomedLastingEnglishpointer

Am I imagining it? Or did the 3rd quake not detonate?

The screenshot below is with 3 frenzy charges and without Berserkers Grave of the Slaughter (25% IAS when hit).



Last thoughts was, might it be that the effect is skipped on lockstep, similar to lightning warp with enough cast speed? I tried it on predictive as well, but was even harder to tell.

Can always get myself the 45% reduced duration on helmet for an additional 15% to what I currently have, should make this proc 100% of the time, but guess I wanted top make sure, or give feedback to what i experience with the skill.

- Alexander

Earthquake feels a little binary, in that either you don't one-shot things and it is a little awkward, or you do and it feels very strong because of the huge AoE. So I feel like you have to spec a little harder than normal into damage to make the most of it. That's not necessarily a problem though. I've been using it as a Slayer and with a bit of twinking power (Meginord's plus decent unique weapons, currently on a 4L Marohi) the levelling process has been pretty damn trivial. Probably moreso than any other skill I've ever used.

One thing I've had that really irks me and has actually caused a couple of deaths is that mousing some things with Earthquake (seems like interactables, some pieces of terrain, basically anything that isn't an enemy or empty ground) causes you to perform the full attack animation, but with no effect whatsoever. It really sucks to die because you're surrounded by enemies but have your mouse on a rock or something and don't notice, especially because missing a single skill use is so much worse with Earthquake than with basically any other skill.

Edit: For anyone interested, I did a quick DPS (NOT damage per hit) comparison of Earthquake + Less Duration vs various skills + Multistrike. Graph here, full explanation here. This skill is probably too good.

Earthquake is amazing. Does not need multistrike is always a win for me. Before you get less duration earthquake is not as fun, but once you do, fun detected. Its similar to old cyclone, if you did not have blood magic gem, then it would have been unfun. Interesting enough earthquake does scale with attack speed. While not in the conventional way once you hit 2.5 APS it becomes really solid and beyond tht is unnecessary. Looking forward to more hard hitting aoe melee skills that do not require multistrike. This is a massive pass for me.

P.S : one problem I noticed is that sometimes broken walls/ground terrain cause you to do default attack rather than earthquake.