Lacerate

I played a dual Scaeva Lacerate Gladiator and am currently leveling a Starforge Lacerate Slayer (IGN: StarShaper @ lvl85 atm).
The Gladiator build focuses mostly on speed, block and crit and feels very mobile.
The Slayer build focuses mostly on damage, AoE and has some light to moderate crit scaling with 40% critchance and 330% crit multi to make use of the unique "your physical damage can shock" mod on the sword.

As for the links, i currently use a 5L with:
Lacerate - Faster Attacks - Melee Phys - Increased Critchance - Increased AoE (- Fortify in a 6L)


Below some notes regarding the skill (sorted by topics):
Overall damage output:
The damage output of the Starforge build is pretty solid with 25k base tooltip DpS and 47k with full charges etc. Since the build still lacks two damage/attack speed notables and a few smaller nodes, it will probably finish around ~55k tooltip around lvl 90 in a 5L.
With my boss kill setup with Atziri's Promise active and Conc. Effect instead of Increased AoE, it peaks around 90k tooltip currently.
The effective damage output in this form is around 200-250k featuring in the double hit in the overlapping zone and the somewhat inconsistant shock from Starforge crits. Now those are some pretty big numbers but Starforge is cerntainly not a cheap weapon.

The dualwield Scaeva Gladiator has about half the effective damage output, which in my opinion is totally acceptable for a cheap build with a total cost of 15-20c for the endgame setup.


AoE coverage and scaling:
The base AoE is somewhat small, which makles the skill clunky to use in lower levels, similar to Cleave. However, due to the AoE bonus from levels and quality, it can get a decent coverage at higher levels.
Especially with the Slayer AoE scaling, the increased AoE gem and the bonus on Starforge, it can even be used to offscreen groups of mobs, which is really nice.
Overall, i would say that the AoE is rather well balanced as in you can make it rather huge with a ton of investment while it isn't tiny without. Only the overlapping zone or the overall angle could be a bit larger in my opinion.


Attack Speed:
With the dualwield char, the attack speed felt OK but mostly due to the fact that it used very fast hitting one-handed swords for leveling combined with the 10% more attack speed from dual wielding itself.
However, the two-hander build felt very clunky in the start and was only really fun to play once i got enough quality and levels on the Faster Attack support as well as plenty of attack speed from passives.
Talking about the Faster Attacks support, i feel that this one is essential to the skill and i would generally avoid Multistrike here due to the long animation locking unless it is changed to only add another double-swing instead of two.
Overall, the 25% less attack speed still feels a bit harsh, so in case the skill gets rebalanced at some point, this should probably be the first thing to be adressed.


Leveling and overall Evaluation:
Lacerate starts out rather clunky for two-handed weapons while it feels OK for dualwielding due to the relatively small base AoE and awefully slow attack. However, once you reach midgame around lvl 50 with some AoE and a lot of attack speed scaling, it gets really fun to use. The overlap zone makes it usable as a "most-purpose" skill since it provides a decent single target damage output as well. So far, i only switched to Cyclone for Atziri herself but that mostly to avoid accidentally hitting the reflect clone in the split phase.


[TL;DR]
* Great overall for dualwielding but starts out clunky for two-handed builds
* Good endgame potential for both pack clearing and boss killing with gem swap (AoE vs. Conc.)
* 25% less attack speed still is a bit harsh in my opinion. I'd rather see 15-20%
* +1 to make it work with Claws

Why is this not a projectile skill?
Was supprised when i saw AOE.....

"

Rhoa_Power wrote:

What is the base radius of Lacerate in units?

I asked this a while ago and nobody answered so I decided to try and figure it out by myself using the AoE overlay found here.

This is a video of the skill at Level 1, Quality 0, and no sources of increased AoE anywhere. I'm not sure if the overlay is completely precise because the reach of the skill in units varies a bit depending on the angle I aim at, but it seems like it's between 35 and 40 units.

Thoughts?

just a question like that. is the tooltip dps wrong with this skill? i feel like the tooltip dps is for 1 hit and not 2. so if i have a 11k dps tooltip, if both my hit land, its actualy 22k right? most of the other skill have double is not more dps tooltip then lacerate. is lacerate dmg just awfull compared to other skill or the tooltip is wrong?

Terrible skill, you think the dps is double but in reality just a small part of the pack gets hit two times.
The less attack speed is an absolute killer making the skill utter trash.
With cleave having free fortify and AoE increase per mob i would never go Lacerate over it.
Dual wield needs some love.

Lacerate - to tear roughly; mangle:

I think allowing Claws to use this skill would make sense.

I switched to Lacerate in late game and I actually like it. I agree, that leveling with it might be pain in the ass, because of small AoE.
But once you get some AoE bonuses, level it to 20 for +5 radius and get used to its targeting it feels great. You can't do Atziri with it tho, autotargeting will kill you on reflecting clone.

Not to mention, it's great for low spec machines, because of low "flashyness".

Thanks for a tip, but I hated Atziri fight and I don't think, I'll come back there ever again.