Reave

Oddly, I've found that the "add knockback to melee attacks" potion mod is pretty useful for the reave build when it comes to dealing with packs of fast-moving melee mobs.

Any opinions on that?

In the same usage, I had pair Reave with Knockback gem before, and it did quite well. Too bad we don't have any "knock back on critical" like bows or wands. But with Fending nodes and Knockback gem, maybe we can get like 50% chance to knockback?

Though... knocking back too much, and they'd go out of AoE length.... so Flask with knockback, and increase flask duration might be a better option. But again, the flask recovering would also go slower, making the life a bit more on the edge of a cliff.

In another way, Stun should be good also. Reaving mobs who got stunned a screen away was fun. Too bad, again, we don't have any stun threshold with sword/claw/dagger.... neither implicit "reduce stun threshold" on those weapon themselves...

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Thristian wrote:

It's too easy to lose Reave levels. After a couple of seconds of inactivity? Sure. When switching to a different skill? Certainly. When accidentally attacking thin air because the mob you were attacking has just died? Not so fun, especially when there's a whole bunch of other mobs just about to take the place of their fallen comrade and a charged up Reave would be really handy.

Can you be more specific as to what you're describing here? As written this doesn't quite make sense to me - either you clicked a different skill, in which case an enemy being dead makes no difference to losingt he charges as you would have anyway, or you clicked Reave, in which case either a) you're shift attacking and will probably hit something else anyway with the AoE unless the whole pack is already dead, or b) you're not shift attacking and this simply causes you to start walking, which is freely interruptable and you can re-click on a new enemy within the 2 second timer to keep the stacks up - movement doesn't lock you to moving until you get where you clicked.

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Thristian wrote:

It's too easy to lose Reave levels, part II: the no-mana case where I hit the Reave button and it switches to the default attack and cancels all my Reave levels. Honestly, I've got enough mana-regen that I'd rather my character sit there and do nothing, letting me keep my Reave levels, than use the default attack and let me start over.

I'll look into what can be done here - the specific case of Reave defaulting to the basic attack does seem like a bad interaction.

Fixing it defaulting to the regular attack would make a very large difference, I was using reave and ended up using blood magic just to avoid this, even though the skill can usually be used on mana. Still I think this ability needs a little tweaking to be a bit better.

It's a fun skill with knockback I noticed people talking about this. I was using with knockback gem and a very large aoe increase, skill scales very well with the extra aoe. I still think it could use some tweaks, I stopped using it as other skills are a better option for me, but I do see some strong crit builds that pick up extra aoe doing well with it.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Thristian wrote:

It's too easy to lose Reave levels. After a couple of seconds of inactivity? Sure. When switching to a different skill? Certainly. When accidentally attacking thin air because the mob you were attacking has just died? Not so fun, especially when there's a whole bunch of other mobs just about to take the place of their fallen comrade and a charged up Reave would be really handy.

Can you be more specific as to what you're describing here? As written this doesn't quite make sense to me - either you clicked a different skill, in which case an enemy being dead makes no difference to losingt he charges as you would have anyway, or you clicked Reave, in which case either a) you're shift attacking and will probably hit something else anyway with the AoE unless the whole pack is already dead, or b) you're not shift attacking and this simply causes you to start walking, which is freely interruptable and you can re-click on a new enemy within the 2 second timer to keep the stacks up - movement doesn't lock you to moving until you get where you clicked.

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Thristian wrote:

It's too easy to lose Reave levels, part II: the no-mana case where I hit the Reave button and it switches to the default attack and cancels all my Reave levels. Honestly, I've got enough mana-regen that I'd rather my character sit there and do nothing, letting me keep my Reave levels, than use the default attack and let me start over.

I'll look into what can be done here - the specific case of Reave defaulting to the basic attack does seem like a bad interaction.

I think what he is trying to describe is the fact that once you start reaving, if you continue holding the RMB, the character will continue attacking with reave, even though your mouse pointer doesn't point to a mob, as long as there are mobs in reaves AOE. With multistrike, what happens is that you hold RMB, the character is constantly attacking, you kill the last mob and the skill continues attacking for a second or 2. Sometimes even longer, but I can't deduce if this is because of multistrike or if the skill has some 'delay' in a way that since you are holding RMB and attacking even though you are not targeting a mob (and this is without holding shift), it continues attacking for a while even though all the mobs are dead.

I feel obligated at this point to ask GGG: Is it intended that this ability have better combat effectiveness for users wielding one dagger/claw and a shield than users dual wielding daggers/claws? I feel I need clarification on what the intention is here because I still don't understand how this got past the design phase as-is.

As for the ability and how it is balanced I'd say it is in a great spot, a good ability with drawbacks and a unique play style. I think in the instance of a default attack occuring due to lack of mana the stacks should not reset, but regardless I feel it is a great skill.

I will however be making a very in-depth analysis explaining why I think reave needs better bonuses for dual wielding regardless of intention (even if it resulted in some nerfs to reave), so be prepared for the wall of text that is coming in the next couple days and I really hope my constructive feedback will make a difference here.

Hey Mark, thanks for responding to all the questions here!

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Mark_GGG wrote:

It doesn't. Having a shield literally give no bonus to the use of Reave, while dual wielding gives a multiplicative attack speed bonus, where attack speed is one of the most important factors to using the skill.

I meant in the sense that it is clearly better to have one dagger and a shield since the other dagger doesn't add anything besides the attack speed increase, losing a large portion of the offhand's (or mainhand, if the offand is on queue) stats in the form of unused attack damage and supporting modifiers.

IE, you put on a dagger and shield, you're always using all the stats on both items. You put on 2 daggers and use reave, you're losing the main stat (IE, attack damage) and a good amount of "most important" local modifiers (local damage %, local +phys) of the weapon not being used, gaining 10% attack speed instead (which is equivalent to 50% one single attack speed suffix, grandmastery, at level 76).

This is what I mean when I say that reave clearly has better combat effectiveness with a shield than with dual wielding. I'm asking if this is was the intended design for clarification before I write up my big essay, which good or bad I hope will change some minds about how reave works or should work, even if it results in a reave nerf.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Hey Mark, thanks for responding to all the questions here!

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Mark_GGG wrote:

It doesn't. Having a shield literally give no bonus to the use of Reave, while dual wielding gives a multiplicative attack speed bonus, where attack speed is one of the most important factors to using the skill.

I meant in the sense that it is clearly better to have one dagger and a shield since the other dagger doesn't add anything besides the attack speed increase, losing a large portion of the offhand's (or mainhand, if the offand is on queue) stats in the form of unused attack damage and supporting modifiers.

IE, you put on a dagger and shield, you're always using all the stats on both items. You put on 2 daggers and use reave, you're losing the main stat (IE, attack damage) and a good amount of "most important" local modifiers (local damage %, local +phys) of the weapon not being used, gaining 10% attack speed instead (which is equivalent to 50% one single attack speed suffix, grandmastery, at level 76).

This is what I mean when I say that reave clearly has better combat effectiveness with a shield than with dual wielding. I'm asking if this is was the intended design for clarification before I write up my big essay, which good or bad I hope will change some minds about how reave works or should work, even if it results in a reave nerf.

You still gain the global critical strike chance.

@Legatus1982

Correct me if I'm wrong here.

Don't you think it's the same for some of the one handed skills on dual wields? Lightning Strike, Infernal Blow, Etc. They all get the same bonus from dual wielding, increase attack speed and some other global effect from both hands, but alternate attack every other time, resulting in damage going up and down. Don't you think it's from the game mechanism itself?

I think it's not about "Reave clearly has better combat effectiveness with a shield than with dual wielding". This thing itself is inherit directly from the core of the game mechanism. In general, we alway to choose either:

1 Handed + Shield
- has more protection
- has more bonus from shield to boost yourself.
- normal damage

Dual wields
- still some protection, less than shield.
- still has some extra bonus from off hand, alternating between attack on somes.
- higher attack speed
- has more passive nodes to boost damage and attack speed.

If GGG changes the thing here, without affecting skill like Cleave or Dual strike which already use both hands, they'd have to make Reave be able to use both hands also.... Don't you think that would make Reave overpower than the other two skills there?

Imagine a semi-melee attack, with higher damage than Cleave, possibly having higher damage than Dual Strike, but cover atleast 2/3 of the screen easily within 1-2 seconds, attacking at the same speed as Dual strike. ..

I feel pity for Piety and Vaal if that ever happened. x_X

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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twintales wrote:

@Mark_GGG

Is it intended for Reave AoE to be able to attack mobs on a different height / platform? Like in the Battle Field or the Dock, with some stacks, or, better, full stacks, I could attack mobs standing on the higher / lower ground.

xxx ____mobs____
xxx|
xxx|
me | -- Reave AoE -->


Something like that.

If it's a bug, better got it fixed before people think it's a feature, and jump into Reave wagon, then crying when it got fixed :D

This is a bug, which exists for all AoE skills. It'll be fixed for Reave at the same time as Cleave and Ground Slam, etc. Not sure whent hat'll be, but this one is considered low priority.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

I feel obligated at this point to ask GGG: Is it intended that this ability have better combat effectiveness for users wielding one dagger/claw and a shield than users dual wielding daggers/claws?

It doesn't. Having a shield literally give no bonus to the use of Reave, while dual wielding gives a multiplicative attack speed bonus, where attack speed is one of the most important factors to using the skill.

That dual wield bonus became trivial when multistrike got added to the game. Hence the shield variant is far superior. Also the dual wield attack speed bonus from passive tree is weaker than some odd flung around attack speed nodes and again pale in comparison too getting multistrike. The whole attack speed and dual wielding should be looked at and reworked.

I also liked a suggestion made in the early reave feedback where aoe increase would be lowered and far more stacks are possible, hence ats beyond multistrike would play a role and diminishing the role of increased aoe, which already has skills such as cleave, ground slam and any combo with melee splash. Currently increased aoe and multistrike are what define reave, while ats from the passive tree does not so much, I find this a very bad design decision.