Reave

I read through the complaints people are making about his skill and I do not understand the logic. Here are a few I have a bone to pick with:

1) I keep seeing people compare it negatively to Double or Dual strike + Melee splash. Well, you are comparing 1 gem to 2, how did you expect it to match up?

Try Lets compare apples to apples here. Before yesterday, I used double strike and melee splash, along with some other links.

Today, I switched those 2 gems to Reave + Melee on full health, leaving all the other linked gems the same, and the dps isn't even comparable. Reave wins hands down and the gem isn't even fully leveled.

2) I see people argue " But it doesn't hit mobs that are behind you when you are surrounded like a melee splash attack would" Neither does ground slam, lightning strike, cleave or many Aoe spells. Are they also useless? Btw, if you are melee I HIGHLY recommend you not let yourself get surrounded, even if you are using splash. You wont survive late game for very long. That is POE melee 101. I will not sit here and give away every spoiler, but try putting a wall to your back when you reave.

3) I see people arguing about situations. This is my favorite. Someone above pointed out the new Weaver fight as an example where you easily get surrounded and Reave isn't as effective. Well again, I think there are things you can do to help avoid that but just for arguments sake lets say you are right and Reave is inferior to other attacks for that fight. That STILL has very little to do with it's usefulness overall. What happens you you fight in a corridor? Or a doorway? Reave dominates in those situation. IN fact in many dungeons situations it is vastly superior.

4) lastly, I would point out some synergies that are convienently left out of many people's negative reviews. The primary 1 being +aoe nodes. As mentioned prior to the patch this was meant to work with those nodes, as well as attack speed. In fact, the aoe range at max stacks is about double the size of the aoe range of double strike + splash(all things equal) so if you get a node that improves you effect by 12% or a carcass jack(as someone above points out) that increased the size by 20% recent. I did some testing tonight and it is VERY easy to get the aoe to about half the screen. YOu can hit archers from a range where they do not back away from you. That in itself is a HUGE relief to me as the 1 thing I cannot stand about melee in this game is the constant chasing a mobs who like to fight at ranged. Splash cannot compare with the aoe size. This makes Raeve vastly superior when it comes to things like applying blind, knockback, and many other supportive skills.

I beg people who had expectations about what they thought the skill to revisit it with no repconvieved notions and try switching some gems around. This is a highly effective skill and people will begin to see some of its uses in the coming days.

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mazul wrote:

Dual Strike + Melee Splash vs Reave + Concentrated Effect; explain to me how the former does more damage than the latter?

Edit: Just noticed you said "double strike", but that one is good to to explain to me:D. Explain how double strike + melee splash does higher dmg than Reave + Concentrated Effect.

Oh goodie, number crunching time

Dual + splash goes like this:
100% more damage from dual (if roughly the same weapons) combined with 16% less to primary target and 31% less to secondary amounts to 68% more to primary and 38% more to secondary.

Reave + concentrated is a nice 69% more to all enemies in area.

However... both dual and splash get physical damage increase on gem level and in reave+conc only reave does. Not an awfully big difference next to all other melee damage increases you got but I guess it tips the scales, on primary hit for sure, depends for secondary.

As for how much we must speculate a bit. Now, if we assume you got around 200% increased damage form str and passives, two 57% bonuses would raise that to 314% increased. Combined with 68% more and 38% more, you will respectively do 132% more damage to your primary target compared to your normal attack and 90% more to your secondary targets.
Reave would give you 76% increased for 276% total increased and with 69% more from conc that amounts to 112% more damage to all targets.
This calculation depends on how much Increased melee you got besides gems, if you got less than 200% the increased bonus on dual+splash will get more significant and if you got more it will amount to less.

Just to throw some numbers around, if you had 100% increased damage instead of 200%, dual+splash would do 164% more on primary target compared to normal attack and 116% more to secondary. Reave+conc would do 133% more to everybody. So, with 100% passive increased damage, reave combo does 7,8% more *area* damage than dual combo, and with 200% increased reave does 11,5% more than dual.

Then again, Reave would take the cake as far as AoE size is concerned, warmup blows also offset misses on splash that don't geenerate AoE so we'll call it even there and win on size. Now, if only it wasn't so buggy and hard to maintain.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Zouphy wrote:

Aside from that, the charge duration feels too short- it seems to be about one second. Extending it to two seconds would make it better, I think.

Actually, it already is two seconds.

We did experiment with other skills not loosing the stages, but it wasn't as good.

better if you guys change useless 10% AS from quality to stacks bonus duration for example 0.05-0.1 per 1%

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guamlegend wrote:

Watching that video Seionage.... The Force is with you. Gj.


List your links, that knockback gem looks like its kicking ass too~! I was using added fire but I think i will switch it to knockback and use added when i needa kill boss.

Thanks Guam.

I have Reave, melee phys, multistrike, increased aoe 11%, and knockback. In a 5L carcass jack.

Skill sure seems to work ok in a 4L without the knockback too. But I really didn't like it with concentrated effect. I also tried with added fire, and it was a minor dps boost, definitely had more fun with utility instead. Now the big debate for me on onslaught is do I go after a carcass jack and the troubles associated with getting red links, the nice part is I only need 2 red links since i don't need blood magic. Or do I go after a bringer of rain. 20% increased aoe with this build is hard to pass up.

On my alt currently lvl 52, using reave with melee phys, multi, and faster attacks. Swapping faster attacks out for inc aoe soon as I am able. The range and damage on it is fairly poor. But it's useable enough to clear content my level. It is on onslaught so I don't have much in the way of damage passives yet.

Having tested Reave with multiple weapon setups, I've come into conclusion that the skill is bugged or I've misunderstood something. Simply put, it doesn't take weapon restrictions into account.

If I equip appropriate weapon (dagger, 1h sword or claw) with non-appropriate weapon (axe or mace), the damage from non-appropriate weapon does count to overall damage, both in tooltip and in the game world, while it obviously shouldn't.

This is really easy to reproduce if you have high level character. Equip appropriate high DPS weapon on either hand, go to Act 1 Normal and buy a low level non-appropriate weapon to equip in other hand. Mind the attack speed so it doesn't change too much. DPS should go down considerably, while the expected result is that non-appropriate weapon shouldn't be used in a damage calculation.

Can we get a confirmation whether this is a bug or not? And if so, will it be fixed?

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Alhoon wrote:

Having tested Reave with multiple weapon setups, I've come into conclusion that the skill is bugged or I've misunderstood something. Simply put, it doesn't take weapon restrictions into account.

If I equip appropriate weapon (dagger, 1h sword or claw) with non-appropriate weapon (axe or mace), the damage from non-appropriate weapon does count to overall damage, both in tooltip and in the game world, while it obviously shouldn't.

This is really easy to reproduce if you have high level character. Equip appropriate high DPS weapon on either hand, go to Act 1 Normal and buy a low level non-appropriate weapon to equip in other hand. Mind the attack speed so it doesn't change too much. DPS should go down considerably, while the expected result is that non-appropriate weapon shouldn't be used in a damage calculation.

Can we get a confirmation whether this is a bug or not? And if so, will it be fixed?

It shouldn't work that way, probably doesn't calculate DPS right. Try it in higher levels and see how long it takes you to kill stuff with a level 1 weapon and an appropriately levelled one.

However, your base attack speed is averaged between two weapons and all the dual wield passives (attack rating, damage, attack speed) are working even if you have only one compatible weapon and use the skill with one hand only. Had a glacial hammer crit splash build that used a scepter and Ungil's in offhand for its 15% block and crit bonus, it worked fairly nice.

Trivia
Some gamers call that 'realistic dual wielding' style as the offhand weapon is used only for parrying like in most real-life applications.

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raics wrote:

It shouldn't work that way, probably doesn't calculate DPS right. Try it in higher levels and see how long it takes you to kill stuff with a level 1 weapon and an appropriately levelled one.

My Shadow is fairly low level, so I can't test it with really high contrasts, but I tried it the other way, with really low appropriate and high non-appropriate, and it definitely took far longer to kill monsters with only appropriate weapon.

If some high level player would test this out, I'd appreciate it.

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Alhoon wrote:

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raics wrote:

It shouldn't work that way, probably doesn't calculate DPS right. Try it in higher levels and see how long it takes you to kill stuff with a level 1 weapon and an appropriately levelled one.

My Shadow is fairly low level, so I can't test it with really high contrasts, but I tried it the other way, with really low appropriate and high non-appropriate, and it definitely took far longer to kill monsters with only appropriate weapon.

If some high level player would test this out, I'd appreciate it.

Sure, I'll try as soon as I get home if nobody else does in the meantime. However I can't believe nobody noticed such a thing in alpha testing.

Then again, I remember nobody noticed LMP doesn't reduce projectile damage on flame totem but still gives you extra projectiles. It was crazy good for a time :)

Question: when you have max stacks (8, if I remember correctly) is your AoE range multiplied by factor 2.6 or factor 4.30?

It is hard to see in videos since the angle in videos since the camera in videos is notstraight above their hand, but inclined.

(I do not want theoretical answers, I want of course answers that are certain from actual practical use no matter what the text says and how it should be XD)