Reave

"

twintales wrote:

I has borrowed the ring from a friend, to test it with reave since onslaught effect seems to be interesting.

Somehow, the ring seems to go along well with Reave. That +20% attack, attack speed and move speed did have synergy with Reave a lot. The life leech is also nice there. The only problem is that if I want to use concentrated effect, I'd have to find some mana leech...

currently using that belt, and maybe so for while. A nice glove with leeches sis hard to find D:

If you are doing normal daggers build damage, mind drinker is great mana regen. It does depend on your damage output, but daggers players usually like to go all dps and mind drinker for dpsers is all the mana regen we need.

Survivability on the other hand... stupid dps and ghost reaver with warlords mark and blood rage don't quite seem to cut it. Still working on that.

Anyways, been busy at work but I'm planning to write my big essay on reave tomorrow when I'm finally getting some time off. Hope I can get some reads and maybe change some minds.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

"

twintales wrote:

D:

If you are doing normal daggers build damage, mind drinker is great mana regen. It does depend on your damage output, but daggers players usually like to go all dps and mind drinker for dpsers is all the mana regen we need.

Survivability on the other hand... stupid dps and ghost reaver with warlords mark and blood rage don't quite seem to cut it. Still working on that.

Anyways, been busy at work but I'm planning to write my big essay on reave tomorrow when I'm finally getting some time off. Hope I can get some reads and maybe change some minds.

I too am working on survivability, I am working getting up to 2.5k life and 60% chance to block, and it works well for the most part, just have trouble in 70+ maps.

So, I've been in here (mostly complaining I guess) talking about how reave as a skill that only uses one weapon at a time is bad design. This wall of text is going to explain as clearly and concisely as possible why it should be a dual wield skill. This will be done in a mostly q/a type of post.

Q: Reave already works with dual wield, you get a 10% speed boost. Why change it?
A: This isn't the case at all.
Alternating weapons means that any damage mods (including base weapon damage, ele damage, %phys, and flat phys, aka the mods you want on a weapon) are negated during the turn where the other weapon is used. In exchange, you get a 10% IAS boost which is equivalent to 2/3 of one IAS mod on a ring. In other words, if you have an item somewhere on your character with only 5 mods, you can exalt an IAS mod onto it and unequip your offhand for the same result (actually at level 74+ you can get BETTER IAS).
You do retain stat bonuses, but that's not why you equip a weapon. You can get stat bonuses anywhere on your gear, weapons are where you need damage mods, and they're going to have those mods and you will lose them.
Honestly whenever I see this response it looks to me like a cheap attempt to pull the wool over everyone's eyes to avoid dealing with the real issue.

Q: So reave sucks with 2 weapons. It's still really good even with a shield so why mess with it?
A: This is a design issue and is wrong on multiple levels.
First, daggers are not a weapon you use with a shield, neither are claws. They are dual wield weapons. Go try to find a picture of someone (a designed character or person, not a player character) using a dagger/knife with a shield. It just doesn't make any sense.
Second, shadows (the intended daggers class as you can see from the character select screen) are a dual wield class. It is one of two classes (duelist being the other) with a dual wield cluster in the starter tree. Duelists, of course, get cleave AND cyclone.

Q: Ok well let's say we made reave use both weapons, it would deal twice the 100% weapon damage it already does. This would be OP as hell!
A: It needs a rebalance after the redesign, probably something similar to 30% damage reduction while dual wielding, like cleave. Dual strike already does 86% aoe with level 16 melee splash anyways so it's not like it isn't within the realm of reason. Many daggers builds are already doing this due to lack of a real dual daggers aoe, and reave doing 70% damage with two weapons is already less damage than dual strike/splash and dual strike doesn't have the drawback of the reave buff. In other words, even if reave only lost 20% damage while dual wielding it still wouldn't be as good as dual strike with splash.

Q: You've already got cyclone and whirling blades!
A: Technically, both cyclone and whirling blades are useable for daggers aoe. Problem is, whirling blades is a movement skill, not a damage skill, AND it does the same thing reave does: picks one weapon per attack (not dual wield). Cyclone is a str/dex gem (another duelist ability, so they get 2 dual wield aoe's and we get 0) that an int/dex shadow won't have access to without spending points on str or getting str on gear that should be stacking int/dex.

Q: You're being too picky it's fine!
A: I could say the same about anyone who says this: you're being too close-minded. People want to dual wield daggers and still enjoy the game and feel they are being treated fairly. If the game hopes to make money, it's going to need to cover its bases. The expectation here is not unreasonable, we just want an aoe that an int/dex daggers character can actually use while dual wielding. Reave, as a skill that was clearly designed to be used with daggers, a dual wield weapon, should have done this and it didn't deliver. They missed the mark.

Q: You forgot something!
A: I'll edit it into this post as needed.

If someone can give me a valid reason why reave shouldn't have been a dual wield skill I would gladly concede my point, but there isn't one, just a lot of comments that I've already addressed in the above post which mostly is a compilation of earlier posts that went unread.

"

Vipermagi wrote:

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

In exchange, you get a 10% IAS boost which is equivalent to 2/3 of one IAS mod on a ring.

Except the ring is Increased Attack Speed, which is added to that whole crapload of IAS you already have. The dual-wield bonus is More Attack Speed: it is an entirely separate 10% boost, making it far more powerful than 10% IAS.

That whole Exalt for IAS thing? Yeah, no. Unless you have zero IAS, the dual-wield bonus is stronger. In fact, the more IAS you already have, the weaker the item becomes compared to the dual-wield bonus.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

Go try to find a picture of someone (a designed character or person, not a player character) using a dagger/knife with a shield. It just doesn't make any sense.

Because it makes more sense to bring another fucking knife when you're expecting to fight armoured bandits and freaking boulders on legs. What's the second knife going to do against a bastard sword heading for your chest cavity?
Dual-wielding regular weapons is dumb and that's why neither footsoldiers, nor cavalry, nor fencers do that. It looks cool as heck though so it happens in media.

A shield can be used in a similar fashion to a parrying dagger, ie. to push aside the enemy's weapon. I imagine it's much easier to jab someone where it hurts if their sword-arm isn't in the way, all things considered.
A knife? Yeah, no. Your hand is just going to be fucked up if you try that with a knife.

(fun fact: Ungil's Gauche is a parrying dagger)

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

[The Shadow] is one of two classes (duelist being the other) with a dual wield cluster in the starter tree. Duelists, of course, get cleave AND cyclone.

Cyclone alternates weapons as well, but that's not an issue I guess.

IAS can go up to 16% in one mod. The MORE attack speed you're talking about may be slightly better because it's a third multiplier, but it's still a multiplier. IAS is also a multiplier, and 16% increased is in many cases going to be better than the 10% more. I don't have the exact formula, but if, for example, you're attacking once per second with no other speed modifiers, the 16% is going to be superior by a large margin. It would take a certain combination of modifiers to make the 10% more better than 16% ias, and even when it does surpass increased you're still talking about ONE MODIFIER against a WHOLE WEAPON SLOT.
You can dance around this issue all you'd like but the tradeoff is NEVER going to be worth it. EVER. I don't know why you're here trying to lobby for the dual wield buff, but spreading misinformation and trying to discredit facts with opinions isn't going to work.
FUN FACT: if you take every daggers/IAS node in the immediate area around the shadow tree (as I have) you're at 41% ias from the tree. Assuming it just multiplies, I'm really getting 14.1 ias when I get 10% more attack speed. It's still less than a single IAS mod, and I took ALL the dps nodes and very few defensive nodes.

Also, you seem to be confusing the assassin type of character (you know, the job the shadow says he was doing) with a warrior type character. Assassins don't take damage, they hide and attack when the opportune moment presents itself then run off and hide/escape. Carrying a shield in that kind of work? Laughable.

As for cyclone alternating weapons, that just further supports my case that there are no aoe options for dual daggers characters and the only dual wield aoe skill is for duelists, the other of the two dual-wield classes. I'm not sure what you were hoping to prove there.

You really could have avoided wasting all this time by simply reading the essay I made and not inexplicably lobbying for one-handed reave without having an ounce of evidence to support your case.

My goal is to get a viable dual-daggers aoe skill into the game. What exactly are you hoping to gain from this even if you had succeeded? Making the game less good? Making sure cleave is the only dual wield aoe in the game?

"

Vipermagi wrote:

10% More AS gets us:
1,61 * (1 + (10/100)) = 1.77 attacks per second

An additional 16% IAS (which is the top-end roll, and not easy to get as such):
1 * (1 + ((61+16)/100)) = 1.77 attacks per second

So, to sum up my entire point in one sentence: You are incorrect when you say 10% IAS on a ring is as powerful as the dual-wield bonus.

Lol wut? And you even added frenzy charges to literally every ias node in the shadow/daggers area and still ended up at EQUAL TO ONE MOD. It's totally worth losing an entire offhand for that bro. Yes it is POSSIBLE to get it higher but you really need to sacrifice a lot to get IAS beyond that, as you've already included a full stack of frenzy charges and every ias node in the area. What planet are you on?

And as for the daggers shield thing, my challenge still stands. Find a picture of an actual design of a character using a dagger and a shield, even if you did find one (doubtful) I can probably find at least a hundred more of someone with 2 knives/daggers. Bottom line here is nobody wants to do that shit. Even if you think 2 daggers doesn't make sense, it makes way more sense than a dagger AND A SHIELD. Players do shields with daggers because game mechanics force them to, not because they want to. Again what planet are you even living on.

For cyclone, my entire point is that one duel wield class has designed access to duel wield aoe and the other doesn't. I had originally thought cyclone worked with dual wield, you actually disproved that and made my point for me, which is that dual daggers and dual claws shadows have NO viable aoe options. We are forced to basically not use our daggers, or use some combination of STR gems on a dex/int class to get aoe.

My question still stands: what are you hoping to gain by arguing with me? Not only does the evidence look to me like you're way wrong anyways, what would you gain by being right? Would the game somehow be better by not having viable aoe options for dual daggers and dual claws characters? What is your objective here?

I get the feeling that if cleave didn't exist and break the rules in the way it does, you wouldn't be insisting we make its rhyming Intellect counterpart break the rules the same way.

I also can't believe your defense for making exceptions to fundamental game systems is "because it looks cool".

Edit: if you say that I've "Proved a point for you", I will internet tough guy you into the next state. Of existence.

Edit2: I should actually be helpful to this thread though, not just annoyed at something I find off-topic.

So far I've enjoyed reave as a natural AoE skill. Since it's a Dex/Int skill, it pairs quite naturally with the Concentrated and Increased Area of Effect supports (either or both, depending on playstyle) as well as faster attacks. So it can be well supported without resorting to strength support gems / nodes / mods.

I find that using it with Frenzy creates a pleasant rhythm to gameplay: reave spam for a bit, renew frenzy charges, then reave spam more. Restarting the charges really isn't a big deal. (I'm not a huge fan of blood frenzy in Merciless, but it's a more than viable alternative with Chaos Innoculation)

My only complaint is that there seems to be a dead zone immediately on either side of you. I sort of wish reave hit a small region around you in addition to the wave, just so that an enemy walking up beside you would still take damage if you're at max stacks. I'd gladly give up some of the width on the cone / wedge in exchange for this. Part of this is born from visual confusion personally, but it also seems like the attack is (too) easily dodged by some of your AoE targets brushing past you.

* skipping all the argument, opinions cannot be right nor wrong :3

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

If you are doing normal daggers build damage, mind drinker is great mana regen. It does depend on your damage output, but daggers players usually like to go all dps and mind drinker for dpsers is all the mana regen we need.

Since I'm a weirdo, using a weird skill on a weird build, with a weird character combination, I'm routing for A witch using sword with shield, Reaving stuff and tank them on her tiny HP. So I cannot get the mind drinker so soon since I had to head for the HP nodes in marauder - templar - duelist, and took some one hand nodes along the way.

I have to see how far I could push the build, currently at the end of Merc. act 2 with 2200 HP, 2.2K DPS (no concentration buff)

Still having fun, especially in the weaver nest where all the little spidy spawn all the time, and more fun Reaving range mobs at the other side of the screen :D~

Though, the initial plan was playing a burning Reaver with the Goddess scorned... but since the price is still on the roof, I've to stick with this setting, until the end of the league when I could make one in Hardcore.

The reason for no knife + shield combo is very logical, because a shield such as in PoE would hinder movements needed for effective combat with knifes. You have less body motion available to you and shields work great at arms length but make you very immobile at very close ranges. AT tops you would see gauntlets/ armored gloves, which are also used by hand combatants to fight vs opponents with weapons.

The attack speed is averaged out between main and offhand. Because main and offhand are alternating attacks you quickly lose dps. If you get the best mainhand weapon in the game, than the offhand should be within the 10% margin from more ats or you lose dmg compared to wearing a shield, with skills such as these. This is plain ridiculous, in fact one could also say the difference between A and B is a mirror, to maximize damage.

Due to the changes since CB, dual wield and 2 handed have suffered compared to any shield combo, simply because defense is far too important in PoE. The only playstyles getting into the late game are cleave with large aoe and groundslam (leapslam only gets you killed sooner). If I compare a 2 handed weapon with a bow I see soem difference between damage, but 1 is ranged the other is not. Than a quiver can close that damage gap and give defense that the 2 hander does not get.

There are quite a few things off... still got this long thing about ats saved up, but before this discussion continues I suggest at least some should try to play with a 10+ ats build and find out some of the limitations PoE has.