Melee Splash

I love it, I think it is awesome here's why:

I DW Claws and thus can't use GS, Cleave, Leap or any of the other AoE skills that are probably better than Dual Strike supported with this; given what I saw with Cyclone I was expecting this to be only good for characters that didn't have access to anything better (the problem with Cyclone is that everyone except unarmed has access to better lol).

But the BEST thing about Melee Splash is that rather than causing desync, it REVEALS desync; so when you hit a mob and there is no splash on the mob right next to it, but there is on a mob on the other side of a wall and 1/3 map away you know something is up and can /oos.

Sometimes the AoE seems so small as to be non existent, other times the AoE seems quite good; in those cases I know the mobs are not where they seem, but when it is in between those extremes I figure things are synced up all right.

One thing that I am not quite sure about is if there is an Accuracy/Evasion roll for mobs in the splash zone - if there is then I suppose that could explain some of the odd situations (like 3 mobs in a line, you hit the first and the third gets splashed but the second doesn't); if not then there is a lot more small desyncs going on than I think most people realize.

Ok here's the deal as you guys are coming out with builds and claiming splash is fine.

There are 3 single target skills that benefit well from splash. Others you have to rework how you'd normally do them, most likely making them function way worse (HS + splash w/ 2h weapon would be better in mara/duelist area but because of the AOE needs would require being in templar/witch area which lacks str/IPD)

1. Flicker strike. With the addition of MS, flicker strike is OP as fuck again. It's back to the state it was before it had a cooldown. Splash works well with this combination because it will do mild AOE damage to surrounding targets, weakening the mob as a whole allowing you to kill the group quicker and therefore hold charges easier with blood rage. This build functions well even without splash, it's just better with.

2. Infernal blow. Here's the thing with IB, it's a build that you'd normally take AOE with. If you were to do a IB build per splash you'd get as much IAOE as you could get to make the damage go across a larger area. If you throw splash on this you have a larger initial hit, built up by all the additional AOE passives you gathered making it so you take down 2-4 targets which allows you to take down the entire group. A successful IB should be able to take down a group with just one explosion, adding more allows it to be done much easier (as one explosion would require good gear, alot of damage passives and a few other things to make it really shine).

3. Dominating Blow. This is the only one I see really getting a major buff from splash. If you are able to kill 2-4 enemies rather than 1, you build an army much faster which gives a great deal of effective DPS and EHP. Also your minions now have MS (I assume it's basically required for this build) and splash, along with whatever else you have linked to it. Basically you double dip the gems. You might only be hitting 1-4 targets with the initial hit but each one of your minions is doing the same (assuming they are melee) leading to a very large AOE.

Flicker, doesn't need it. Infernal blow, minor benefit and already built in a way to capitalize on it. Dominating blow, only build I see that really shines from the addition of splash.

HS, like mentioned previously, goes out of their way to get AOE. Leaving them sacrificing damage to acquire decent range. Basically you trade raw damage for effective damage. The latter might actually take away any benefit you'd gain with going with the former.

Glacial hammer, works in that area of the tree but without ele prolif you are putting yourself into alot of danger and not freezing nearly enough targets to justify not going with GS, as the stun would hit everything in a large area.

Double/Dual strike, while can be used in that top area, benefit more from the IAS and crit of dex side of the tree. There's no AOE down there.

I'm drawing a blank on more single target skills.

Just look at all the people saying splash is fine, they are using it with one of the 3 skills I mentioned. The best are guys with big AOE cleaves saying it feels fine. If you have 100% IAOE, of course the area is going to feel fine. The huge differences are, cleave you can hit shit on the other side of the board with no risk, it's the reason for this AOE bonus, the safety and effective DPS it gives. With splash, you are getting the AOE ONLY for effective DPS, there's no safety, as it requires you to be in the middle of the group to work properly.

Even if splash hit every single thing on the screen you'd still have to be toe to toe with something (which usually is more than 1 thing) making other AOEs much safer and without IAOE bonuses, having much better effective DPS.

At this point I just don't even know what else to say about it. All 4 of you that like this skill can have it. Sure you can get it to work. But look at all the resources it fucking takes. You should be able to throw a support gem on and be done with it. But not this one. You need to take inc radius nodes, use a inc radius gem, use inc radius gear, high quality gems blah blah blah. OR you could use 1 gemslot and get an aoe that performs better for cheaper. But w/e its your baby now.

This skill could have been HUGE for melee, but GGG seems to have no intention of putting melee on equal footing with ranged. Making a "game changing new melee support skill" that REQUIRES nodes from the templar and witch areas is a fucking slap in the face. Passives should make this support gem BETTER, not USABLE. You don't need ANY passives OR additional supports to make LMP or chain work. Those 2 gems are plug and play.


Am I losing my mind here? How is it ppl can't see this?

And you guys with the "i'm level 30 in a2 and i love this skill" posts. What are you comparing it to? Did you just decide to roll a melee b/c of these new gems? Have you even tried other aoes like cleave, ground slam, leap slam, or sweep? Or did you just toss this garbage support gem on and start killing things and shrug that it works fine.

I'm not gonna be like some and claim that the only relevant feedback comes from endgame map runners, but you guys are killing me. Read through these feedback posts supporting this gem. They give no information, no comparison, and some of them are just laughable.

Examples


Edit: sorry for those offended by my fucking language. I'm just pissed. Sorry.

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Dragon585 wrote:

At this point I just don't even know what else to say about it. All 4 of you that like this skill can have it. Sure you can get it to work. But look at all the resources it fucking takes.

Just because I'm not completely negative about the gem doesn't mean I think it is perfect. As I said in my very first post, it needs the ability to ground attack, both for survivability, and just for sanity in parties. Trying to find a guy to click on in a 6 player map can be a huge annoyance.

The radius being bigger would be nice too, but I think with quality gems we'll find it isn't as bad as initial impressions suggest. For example:

Quality IB + quality MS + quality IAoE = 83% increased AoE without any passives. That's more than I had in the video I linked earlier, which had a completely decent radius. Blast radius may be out of reach for most melee builds, but adding in amplify and the two nodes behind it is easy for a lot of melee builds, for a total of 103% increased AoE.

It is definitely not good for every skill though, as Moosifer notes. On the one hand, I agree with him that single target skills are pretty marginally useful in this game, and so want more skills to be viable via multitarget/AoE. On the other hand, I'd hate to see melee splash simply become the mandatory support for all melee. Hopefully they'll find other things to add to help out the melee skills that don't benefit as much from this.

@magicrectangle

Well, if you'll notice I didn't list any of your posts in my rant. I found your feedback to be very valuable and well written. But I still can't agree with you on the radius. Sure with all that inc radius the skill shines, but with zero radius it is absolute dogshit. The radius should be a bonus not a requirement. Don't you agree? Don't you think it is a little bit BS that other supports are plug and play but yet this one, which had the potential to put melee in a GREAT place, requires you to MAKE it viable?

I don't hate this skill. Not even close. I am so angry right now because I WANTED this skill.
Two weeks up built up anticipation, hearing rumors of how OP the new skills were, and how melee were finally getting some love. But then to try it out and be so utterly disappointed (again) has caused the little angry man in my head to surface. And again, I am not asking that one hit clears the entire screen. But seriously, if they are close enough to hit me yet my splash dmg doesn't hit them how can anyone call that acceptable radius? I even had 15% on my IB and master of the arena.

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magicrectangle wrote:

The radius being bigger would be nice too, but I think with quality gems we'll find it isn't as bad as initial impressions suggest. For example:

Quality IB + quality MS + quality IAoE = 83% increased AoE without any passives. That's more than I had in the video I linked earlier, which had a completely decent radius. Blast radius may be out of reach for most melee builds, but adding in amplify and the two nodes behind it is easy for a lot of melee builds, for a total of 103% increased AoE.

You are proving my point here. That is a TON of effort to get a SUPPORT GEM to have "a
decent radius" I can understand it if it were a skill gem that you build around. But its not, its a support gem that provides no support unless you spec for it. If GGG is so worried about certain builds becoming OP with this then put a cap on the radius ffs, but don't make it unusable w/o talents and an inc aoe support gem.

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magicrectangle wrote:

The radius being bigger would be nice too, but I think with quality gems we'll find it isn't as bad as initial impressions suggest. For example:

Quality IB + quality MS + quality IAoE = 83% increased AoE without any passives. That's more than I had in the video I linked earlier, which had a completely decent radius. Blast radius may be out of reach for most melee builds, but adding in amplify and the two nodes behind it is easy for a lot of melee builds, for a total of 103% increased AoE.

It is definitely not good for every skill though, as Moosifer notes. On the one hand, I agree with him that single target skills are pretty marginally useful in this game, and so want more skills to be viable via multitarget/AoE. On the other hand, I'd hate to see melee splash simply become the mandatory support for all melee. Hopefully they'll find other things to add to help out the melee skills that don't benefit as much from this.

Like I said though, an IB build would be going for IAOE anyways. I can't think of any gems with quality that are REQUIRED to have quality to be good, it just makes them better. Also I can't think of any AOEs that require another gem to make them on par mechanically with others.

MS is a gem I could see becoming required for all builds, which is why it's hard to balance as it's so easily OP. Splash could be OP and because of how you have to position would still only be for people seeking to make a build based around a single target ability. Dual strike + splash even with cleave's AOE wouldn't remove cleave unless they changed splash's damage. GS will still be a great melee AOE, a single target + splash won't replace it.

It opens up different options, there's no requirement there like LMP is for projectiles or added melee damage is for physical melee users.

My thing with splash as it stands right now, is either the AOE needs to be vastly improved, like I said, you could hit everything on the screen and it still wouldn't be better than normal AOEs. I don't expect that type of range but it needs to be probably double what it is now. If that's not happening then the damage needs to be much better. If I'm turning a single target into a 2-3 target skill then I should have decent kill speed.

It's balanced around LMP, not considering that with LMP you are away from the targets.

I'm more calm than Dragon is but I went from livid to just flat out depressed. I waited 5-6 months for this, Chris hinted to it back in like November/December and I lit up with excitement. There's so many build possibilities if the AOE is comparable to even cleave but they feared certain skills being too powerful so they had to balance around those.

We are in month 3 of OB still waiting on the melee patch, this should have been a bit of a gap closer but instead it's another let down. I think the only thing they did was bring a few builds back into popularity, created very few new ones.

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Moosifer wrote:

I'm more calm than Dragon is but I went from livid to just flat out depressed.

I feel like I am screaming at a brick wall and everyone is watching. It's just so hard to look forward to changing from boring GS to a fun new IB/splash build that could potentially be melee's LA. Especially after being let down with cyclone. I will try to calm down, but I fear that like you, when I reach that calm the reality of what is happening will set in.

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Ceykey wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

Just started using this on my level 19 1H IB Templar. Don't know what all of the QQ is about. Mind, I am in low level content, but that also means no inc aoe yet (only the Templar starting nodes, which if the aoe is as pitiful as this thread suggests, that would be irrelevant). Also, inb4 trolls, my level and use of IB are also irrelevant; I can observe the basic behavior of the gem and extrapolate that with my previous experiences throughout higher level content and with other skills. It's far from useless, and of course it is not the come-all-be-all savior of melee. That problem is far more deeply rooted in the game's mechanics and balance than any single support gem can possibly hope to fix.

Having said that, the aoe is definitely UP, and I also share the sentiment that GGG's tendency to over-nerf content prior to release is becoming tiresome. But I also feel the community's knee-jerk QQ'ing at every little thing is becoming tiresome as well. It's a new support, so of course it's "niche." In the same way your current builds are "niche" built for pre existing content. It will not fit into every build, and will require some speccing to use properly. Just like every other damn thing in the game.

It goes like this: New content, 30 pages of QQ, a month goes by, a few pages of "hey this works pretty well with (...)"

Yeah u observed so well with little experience u know what i respeced for this gem and its no where near efficient as cleave the range its pure garbage when we compared with cleave but if u like single target and little splash dmg at your screen then u are welcome to use this on hard hitting mobs on maps.

People QQed(as ur definition)about because this could be the game changer for better melee aoe but instead its an another cyclone. With full aoe nodes and gems u ll do better with cleave,sweep and gs so here is the reason why people complained about this.

For last cyclone works pretty well with dysnc and lightning thorns.

Lol, you totally missed my point. Probably doesn't help that Im forcing my sleep schedule into a full 180 and can't be arsed to pay attention long enough do much more than ramble atm.

Of course you're disappointed with Splash. You spent probably a considerable amount of savings to force your build (a niche) to accommodate the new support (another niche). The two are incompatible. The issue with this support is not its function, but your expectations of it and your failure to look before you leap. Maybe next time they release something new you'll be wiser to not waste a bunch of regrets ;)

Moos pretty much said it, there's three single target skills worth using this on: Flicker, IB, and Dominating Blow. Also possibly Viper Strike but nerfing the DoT will likely result in more expectation fail.

Seems like certain people were expecting this gem to be the be all end all support for melee.

Personally I think it's just fine and it is a tremendous boost for my flicker strike duelist.

As it is right now, flicker strike, infernal blow, dominating blow, and glacial hammer all benefit a lot from this. Other skills do not need to use melee splash.

I'm not sure what people were expecting, that melee splash would be super overpowered and become mandatory for EVERY skill?

Worked really well for the few minutes I used it with my Infernal Blow. Although im not creating my build around it. Its a support gem, not a skill gem.