Perforate

Awesome skill. Very fun to use. Been using it quite a lot in legion league, alternating between this and cleave.

Must be used with blood and sand and flesh and stone for maximum efficiency. Remember to link flesh and stone with maim support since the increased damage stacks that way.

Sand stance is aoe clearing mode and blood stance is single target nuking mode.
It deals sick single target damage in blood stance and has great aoe coverage in sand stance. Works very well and feels great to use.

Get this helmet enchantment to cover the blind spots with 6 spikes.


I don't really have anything bad to say about this skill. It felt great to level with and it's been an absolute blast to map with.

Really like the way it works with stances too. More stance skills and add some mtx for this one!

Is there something off about blood stance's aoe pattern?

I was testing out how many spikes actually hit by counting virulence stacks.
Each attack has 6 spikes so we should see 6 stacks per attack. I was expecting some spikes to be off target but man the results were worse than I originally expected. I am also keeping a close eye on the virulence stacks wearing off but with the numbers we're dealing with, they don't wear off very quickly.

1 Attack:
~4-6 stacks.
Usually get 4 or 5 stacks, chalk that up to randomness of the pattern.

2 Attacks:
~7-9 stacks.
Way less than the expected 12.

3 Attacks:
~11-13 stacks.
Way way less than the expected 18.

3 Attacks using Multistrike:
~11-13 stacks.
Same as above.

My best guess is there is some anti-shotgun mechanism in the blood stance where spikes from a previous attack don't allow new spikes to be created near them causing all spikes to spread out kind of like molten strike?
Maybe I am doing something wrong with my test? Can anyone try out their own tests? I really wanted to try perforate in upcoming Metamorph league but the numbers seem very low and this anti-mechanism makes it seem even worse.

Edit: forgot to mention the multiple attacks were with sufficient attack speed to create overlapping spike attacks and to be faster than virulence wearing off.

You keep reworking skills but you don't adress their damage/why they are horrible and why nobody plays them which is either attack speed or gem damage stat. Like 98% of melee skills currently.

I decided to give perforate a shot and really liked perforate as a skill, I leveled with it to maps in HCSSF on my gladiator and only because i used a tabula. I wish it was good. But perforate is bad and nothing special. And because it's inherent dmg is shit to it's competitors it was a no brainer to swap it out.

There is not reason to play bad skills, and there's absolutely no reason to use it compared to something like cyclone.

I don't understand why you can't show melee skills some love in general compared to casters. Does GGG's balance dev(s) not play melee? Our only top tier skills are literally cyclone/sunder and some offmeta stuff that again, nobody plays but CAN be decent on very specific gear crafts but unless you have it nobody will touch it because again, gem is bad itself.

Has anyone worked out why it even has the aoe tag, when as far as i can tell, no aoe supports, items, or nodes affect it?

We need to highlight this skill guys, it seems that perforate is being forgotten!!!

Perforate is not affected by AoE scalings at all!!!

1)What's the point of AoE as quality% on perforate?!!
2)What's the point of Blood and Sand reduced/increased AoE?!!
3)What's the point of increased AoE effect on helm enchantments?!!

If the devs can fix so much bugs in Delirium in such a short time span, why is it so hard to fix Perforate to be affected by AoE and correct a skill gem?!!

It seems that this problem already existed since Jun 2019 and this post is for feedbacks and it seems that none is being done.

Not asking the skill to be buffed, to be nerfed, to be balanced, but to work as intended. That's all we are asking for.

Hello to all would be perforate users, the skill is looking a lot better in the upcoming 3.11 Harvest league patch notes.

++ 2 more spikes when you swap stances. Every spike is a huge damage multiplier in blood stance and you have less blind spots while in sand stance (there is also a helmet enchant for even more spikes).

+ added physical damage. Very nice for smooth leveling and overall damage

+++ Better blood stance spike tracking! We'll have to see how this feels in game but this really buffs perforate since old blood stance had you miss a lot of spikes as your attack speed went up.

- Blood stance's less damage is even less damage. I think this is justifiable with the above buffs. You just have to be aware that your blood stance is a lot of smaller hits so plan accordingly.

- Blood stance's anti-synergy with knockback/Lion's Roar Flask. Maybe the better tracking helps here but you will essentially be knocking bosses away from your spikes leading to less single target damage. No real fix since this is just what the skill is like.

Personally I was perforated out from using the skill in a Ngamahu's perforate build for Metamorph. Maybe my casual analysis will encourage more people to check it out now after the buffs.

I have checked out Perforate after the buffs. The AOE in sand stance is a lot better. I am using terminus est and am using the auras flesh and stone/blood and sand/pride. I am going with beserker using seismic cry at the moment.

AOE seems ok, but the real problem is in blood stance. I was facing a metamorph in blood stance and that metamorph had life regen and I was actually dealing less damage than in sand stance which should no longer be the case. This would imply that spikes are not overlapping which was supposed to have been fixed. I am using just 6 spikes. I don't have the helmet enchant and have not switched stances recently, but even so this skill should be able to overlap spikes.

I tried Perforate when it was first released, and I'm glad it was buffed this league. The changes in combination with Fist of War make Sand Stance reasonable at clear compared to other melee builds I've played, so thank you for that.

That said, I'm still unclear about how to make the best use of Blood Stance. My current best seems to be pushing the target against a wall, and hoping I hit them with enough spikes to be worthwhile. I presume this works by reducing the number of places spikes can spawn, while also body blocking the target so Lion's Roar doesn't push them out of hit range.

Unfortunately, you can't do this with most bosses, and even if you do it still seems like there's a decent chance most spikes will miss. Because of this, Sand Stance still seems to be easier, faster, and safer to use for bosses. I say this as someone who enjoys playing and refining complex, high-risk off-meta melee builds. I want Blood Stance Perforate to require good execution and precise control in order to pay off, but I feel like it doesn't offer control, largely due to the unpredictability of where spikes appear relative to the targeted location.

It feels like there's no way to make the randomness of Blood Stance Perforate's damage output worthwhile compared to the consistent damage output you can get from Sand Stance. You burn through temporary buffs and flasks, only to get small chance of dealing more damage than Sand Stance. The important thing here is that when it doesn't pay off, it doesn't feel like a failure of skill, it just feels like I wanted to roll a 20 and got 1-19.

What I'd really like to know about Blood Stance is, what does increased AoE scale about it? Does it give individual spikes larger hit area, does it make spikes spawn over a larger area, does it do both, or none of the above?

I would love it if increasing AoE let Perforate's individual spikes have larger radius, resulting in higher chance of hitting the targeted location. But when testing I just can't easily enough tell what impact increasing or reducing AoE has. It could be doing this, but I just can't tell.

There is something kinda weird when we use Perforate in Blood Stance.

If we are too close from a enemy, the spikes goes behind so we need to move back from he.

The minimal distance should be lower than currently.

Tried perforate this league (impale champion) and got mixed results.
Overall, both perforate and bladestorm are really cool and strong now, but the former still needs some tweaks. I especially like this whole concept of stances and getting something extra for a limited time upon switching from one to another. I would like to see the older skills (like heavy strike, cleave, sweep) to get the "stance treatment" as well. As for perforate specifically, though:

Sand stance is soooo much better than before 3.11, mainly due to how well it scales with the +2 enchant and increases to aoe.

However, blood stance is extremely clunky and... weird. I really dislike that the blood spikes always spawn at a fixed distance from the character, with 1-3 of them often spawning very far away from the targeted area. Increases/decreases to aoe don't help, melee range doesn't do anything either.
Since it's a fixed distance, then why is there so much variance in their spawn scheme? Why can't I target a bit farther or closer? It feels absolutely horrible against anything that doesn't just stand in place, and even worse if the player also has to maintain mobility to avoid heavy damage (fights like eradicator, sirus etc.). I think the fix for this should be relatively easy to implement.