Shattering Steel

I just have a complaint about Call of Steel. It's a super interesting idea and it works pretty well, but with Shattering Steel its pretty annoying.

It feels like it was just added to slow the skill down. The explosions are pretty nice but without Lord of Steel jewel the skills feels awful. Just slow and clunky.

Even with Lord of Steel, the playstyle is still pretty clunky. Explosions are nice for map clear but once you get to a boss you have to back away a couple of times just to gather more shards.

I think it would be better if the steel skills had passive shard generation and you added Call of Steel as a skill gem to support steel skills. Maybe a Steel tag could be added? That way we could increase CD recovery, add aoe to the explosions, maybe mess around with ele conversion even. It also just feels odd having a skill and not be able to change anything about it besides adding one jewel to it. Doesn't quite fit the PoE gameplay I expect.

I'm playing a shattering steel champion with 2h swords. The damage is decent and the leveling scaling was great, but call of steel is what makes it so clunky and frustrating to play.

The fact that you have to "reload" every 6 attacks is what kills this skill. There are builds that attack 5+ times a second and you can't realistically use call of steal that frequently. When you're clearing it's not so bad because you can attack, CoS, attack, CoS, and 1-2shot packs. But if there's anything with more hp you spend so much of your time attacking, reloading, attacking, and reloading. Compare this skill to any other non-steel melee attack and you can just right click a target. I feel like call of steel interrupts my play, rather than complimenting it.

I think having Call of Steel be a button that grants you a buff is great, but let the main attack work without it.

Here is my feedback on new Shattering Skill:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2939714

"

Additional Projectiles: If you use the skill without any Steel Shards, it will always launch only one projectile, even if you have additional projectiles from other sources.

This is bad. We are being heavily punished if we decide to use the skill without CoS.

And regarding the feedback from the guy in the above post. Not causing bleeds from steel explosions? Everyone should avoid this skill, and perhaps all other steel skills as well.

I am playing shattering steel champion since the league start and i got to sirius with it and noticed 2 big problems with this skill.

I am 99% sure the 100% more damage per shard doesnt work.
There is absolutely no difference in damage against single target whenever i have shards or not. I dont know if anyone else noticed this.

There is also problem with legion as shards doesnt stick to legion and call of steel do nothing, i cant do legion at all with this skill because of that.

Would love some help with Shattering Steel. Level 91 Gladiator, bleed, impale, max block/spell block, Shattering Steel build.

I have been playing SS since start of build and have found it to be pretty good in terms of mob clear when used in conjuction with: the impaler, great old one's tentacles and call of steel.

One hit with SS and a CoS as I move away generally clears the screen. Most map bosses get vaped, even red tier, but every now and again I really struggle to keep the dps up, obviously this is when there are no extra mobs.

I wish there were a way, other than running away to get out of range, that I could reload SS without having to strip impales off hard to kill targets. I feel like this is the best way to fix SS when it comes to single target DPS. I know dropping the impaler will help, but that seems a Little OTT.

I have some questions about the mechanics of the new Shattering Steel skill that i"v been struggling to find answers for:

Is it possible to hit a target with a projectile and the aoe explosion at the same time?

If so wouldnt that make pierce a bad option?

Finally from what I read about the new mechanics GMP would be a really bad idea for single target dps, it seems trying to overlap the explosions is damn near impossible, is this true?

Link to build in PoB if anyone is interested
https://pastebin.com/r4tYMfgF

Cheers

Well might as well post it to the relevant skill as well:

At the moment, projectiles behave in a very random fashion:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2942740/page/1#p23527042

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2938487


No other skill has this kind of randomness about travel distance? Why this one now? And this makes scaling projectile speed (distance) quite useless.

IM NOT SURE IF IM PLAYING PATH OF EXILE? OR TIME CRISIS
it be a much better skill if they made a support gem/item that will make the steel charges return to you heres my ideas

magnetism support
calls back steel charges after depleted

and for the love of god at least give the skill more than 12 charges or make a item that adds more charges when you have a dual wield char thats attack speed is insane? 12 charges and the fact that you have to reload it every 3 swings it seems is pretty dumb when frost blades has literally the same mechanic AND IT CHAINS

From a long time, super casual player.

History:
The first build I made in the Bestiary league was 2h sword, strike build, that used dodge as its primary defense and I still play that character today (with many many modifications). I have explored all the strike skills and when desperate for equipment have used other builds to generate small amounts of currency. Nothing has worked exceptionally well as 0 range melee build, but things have gotten better. Most early patch changes hurt my builds and caused me start over, wasting the currency used to roll gear that no longer worked. Playing in standard all these years, the currency hits were the hardest (not as bad now).

My general design style was (and still is) to use multiple, non-channeling, strike skills in support of each other create something that could compete with the damage and survivability of ranged melee, cyclone, bows and spells.

Today:
I have been desperately trying to find ways to move away from totems because they don't fit the style of the character I want to play. Prior to this patch, I kept finding myself forced to come back to totems if I had any chance at running t16 maps. This last patch has finally given me a set of solutions that allows me to step beyond the totem crutch.

Shattering Steel + Impact support + The Impaler (tree) + Point Blank (tree) seems to finally be the answer for my fast-swinging melee. Swinging fast means not hitting hard. A big hitting impale seemed like it could be a decent answer but the small impales overwrote them too frequently. Shattering steel now allows me to have 100% impale on my big impale hit and 0 impale on my small super fast hits. Since I am a 0 range melee, point blank makes that impale more impactful. The combo allows my character to happily replace my old unwanted totem with my new friend Shattering Steel.

Current strike matrix:
Frenzy (thank you, thank you, thank you for upgrade here as well)
Bladestorm (huge survivability buff when this came out too, because of life gain on hit)
Shatter Steel (OMG it makes the above so much better)


After years of taking away from every build I have come up with, thank you for starting to give a little back. Loving the new skill. Please don't nerf to spite me :)

-Character Build
Shattering Steel (of Ammunition) Champion/Raider(R.I.P)/Slayer
(6-link) Slower Proj, Brutality, Vicious Proj, Increased Crit Stike/Dmg
-Level
85 - 95 Trade, SSF, HC SSF
Complimenting Abilities
-Offensive - War Banner, Dread Banner, Precision, Vaal Haste, Assassin's Mark, Flesh and Stone (blood) Melee attack speed totem (R.I.Piecesyouturd)
Getting slower proj speed on tree, crit, point blank etc.
-Defensive - Determination, Arctic Armour, Fortify on hit helm enchant(R.I.P), Grace etc.

With 3.25 around the corner and Melee getting some awesome buffs I would like to point out some problems I'm perceiving with Shattering Steel of Ammunition as I feel it is getting left behind just a bit.

Offensive (perceived) Issues
SSoA is a Melee skill at heart, but uses projectiles, I think it is a very neato skill (my personal favorite), but it has run into some problems due to its nature.
~1st~ The skill really doesn't have many options when it comes to support gem choice. Personally, I don't see this as a huge issue as the gem's tags kind of dictate this being a thing. The limited support gem choices should be mentioned though in context of the other issues.
~2nd~ A big point of this skill is to hit things up close in order to get a large (110%) more percent multiplier. That being said there is really not a lot of slower projectile speed available for this skill. 45% less and 20% reduced altogether. This by itself may not be a huge issue if it were not for the next point.
~3rd~ The distance this projectile travels is all over the damn place, I'm pretty sure even with full reduced proj speed currently available the max distance the projectiles can travel is the middle distance it travels with no reduction. That is to say some projectiles travel twice as far as others in the same attack and its random what one it is.
This is a big issue for the skill since it needs to shotgun in the same area for the damage to be decent.
If you're against a small sized enemy (in melee range) you're only ever going to hit with one aoe, making your skill do 1/3 its total damage.
~4th~ This is a melee skill at heart but because of the gem tags it doesn't play well with any of the melee systems in place.
for example, the skill has a hard time with rage, as rage is only naturally gained with melee hits, you can use a war cry to gain rage as well but the only war cry that really gives you anything is enduring cry, and to heavily invest into war cry's just to get rage from them is just not a viable option with everything else you need to make the skill work. At the same time the skill has now lost the use of Banners as the only way to use the new banners is to gain Valour through melee kills and hits. The skill has even lost its melee totem (20% more attack speed)
~5th~ SSoA uses call of steel, I really like the idea of this as it feels like I'm reloading a shotgun, that also means I have limited ammunition.
The "problem" with this is that it really hammpers your attack speed as you can't get your ammo back fast enough if your attacking to fast.
This isn't an issue for me as I use two-handers and don't mind slow APS but again with the other issues of the skill I feel it needs to be stated
as the avenues to increase this skills damage are very limited.

Offensive Issue Fixes
Those are all the problems I can think of off the top of my head, as for fixes for my percived issues I can think of a few
~1st~ Fix the spread, please, this is not a feature of the skill, maybe it is for the non-transfigured version but for SSoA it just hurts the skill and makes the damage inconsistent, and not in a fun way.
~2nd~ I'm not a developer and you all know way more than I do about how all this works, but this "melee" skill not working with any of the melee systems hurts a lot, I don't want it to lose what it is, but at the same time the gem tag restrictions, attack speed restrictions
and lack of enough reduced proj speed has me feeling it needs some more love then the buff it is getting in 3.25, even raising the damage effectivness
at level 20 to 396% (from 265%) would be a fine addition. *disclaimer* number chosen at random.
~3rd~ I don't know how it can be done, but if somehow SSoA could be used with the new banners that would be awesome because I think the new banners are pretty damn cool and I would like to use them with SSoA.

I realize my "fixes" other then the 1st are really just buffs, but with the new melee league around the corner I would like to see this skill, that is more melee than a lot of actual melee tag skill gems, get the same love.

Defensive Issues - (but also offensive issues)
As has been stated before SSoA is a melee skill at heart, it is often in melee range and because of that needs melee level of defenses. The skill has a baked in projectile block that maxes out at 48%, random but hey ok cool not going to complain.
The issue is this being a melee skill but not being melee, because of this the skill cannot gain fortify from the fortify skill gem, it cannot gain fortify from the passive skill tree, it can only gain fortify from Unique's(?) or maybe some other interaction I don't know about.
In 3.23 when all the helm enchants were deleted SSoA lost its only non-champion source of fortify that being "Hits At Close Range With Shattering Steel Fortify" In 3.25 even that fortify has been nefed as champion now only has 15 fortify from ascending. This has created an issue that you just need even more defenses for a SSoA build, the easiest source I see for this is now Flesh and Stone but now it needs to be in sand stance, meaning the skill is losing another damage source.
The long and short of it is that this skill is spread very thin across multiple avenues to make it work, and with how much investment there is needed to get decent damage with the skill the defenses are suffering with the changes. The only answer I can come up with for all this is just to buff the damage so that the skill has more leeway to invest in serviceable defenses

Conclusion
Thats all I have for now; this was really a stream of consciousness so it is not as concise as I would like it, but I wanted it on the forums before 3.25.
Some things to note in 3.25 is that Impale on the tree was said to be buffed, it kind of is, but your point strapped pretty hard with this skill already
so it may not pan out that well. The other thing that 3.25 is bringing (to the core game) is Reflecting Mists, this will give us another -25% proj speed
from inverting an amulet so that may help a bit.
To finish, I think the skill just needs a bit more love in fixing its spread and damage, I really like the skill and will be running it for league launch so if I find anything else this go around, I'll be back with more, Thank you.