Reave Feedback

I have a few questions about Reave, hopefully it will bring up good points for GGG to consider.

- GGG gives Reave an Area of Effect bonus that stacks
- GGG then makes any skill other than Reave break the stack, which implies the AoE bonus is global
- The duration of this bonus is very short, which implies they want you to use Reave relatively frequently to maintain the bonus

My questions:
1 - Why such a low duration if you have the restriction?
2 - Why didn't you just make the AoE bonus a skill-specific effect like Incinerate's increased damage/radius?
2a - Or why not make the AoE affect Melee Attacks only?
3 - Why can't utility (bear trap, enduring cry) and movement (Whirlwind Blades or Leap Slam) skills be used without breaking the stacks, even if you make it so that only Reave benefits from the AoE bonus?
4 - What would be the problem even if other Melee Skills benefit from Reave's bonus?
4a - I assume you can limit this Area of Effect bonus to Melee Attacks.
4b - Reave bonus has a low duration, and you'd still need to use Reave periodically to maintain it.

This leaves Cleave, Whirling Blades as well as Melee Splash supported attacks the only skills affected by it.
Cyclone and Leap Slam easily take a little too long, causing you to lose the stacks.
Furthermore, one-handed Leap Slam and Whirling Blades aren't exactly dangerously powerful.

Even the "potentially" most dangerous combos are not that good...
Cleave/Reave combo restricts you to Swords, and requires you to support 2 skills, and since only the chest can be a 6L, you will either:
a) give both skills 4 supports
b) Give Cleave 5 supports and Reave a maximum of 3, but that means you're going to be reaching 8 stacks of Reave with a weak Reave, when you could simply be spamming Cleave during that time, and get rid of the enemies considerably faster.
And giving Reave 5 supports defeats the purpose of using Cleave.

Reave/Splash combo again would have similar issues, as you either:
a) give the Splash skill 5 supports and Reave a maximum of 3
b) give both skills 4 supports, but in this scenario, since one of the Supports is Splash, and Splash doesn't affect Reave, you'd be gimping the Splash skill while only giving Reave 3 supports - just go with a).

Even if for some reason it was powerful to "stack Reave -> spam other ability -> use Reave to maintain stack -> spam other ability -> etc", is that a bad thing?
I think it's way better than "spam Reave until your eyes fall off"...

I really don't understand what I believe to be a meaningless restriction on Reave - preventing the one thing PoE is meant to be all about - customizability.

Conclusion
I hope Reave's restriction is temporary and that just like GGG split Mine and Trap passive bonuses in the latest patch, perhaps they're working on introducing different types of "Increased Area of Effect" bonuses (melee, attack, ranged, spell, etc) to better balance skills.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Nurvus wrote:

1 - Why such a low duration if you have the restriction?

These

These?

Mark_GGG, my assumptions were mostly due to the way the skill is implemented.

The whole visible stacks buff felt odd, but now that you explained your intent for the skill, the buff seems to be completely redundant information.
1 - Incinerate doesn't show stacks, and was never needed.
2 - Both Incinerate and Reave provide accurate visual information as to the area of effect.

So what are the stacks for?
What would be useful to know - remaining duration - isn't shown.

I truly hope you're not moving towards a UI-heavy gameplay, where you spend more time looking at buffs and stacks than looking at the fight.

As for Reave giving other skills a bonus to AoE, I don't think that would be broken in the slightest - accounting for the need to use Reave periodically, as well as properly supporting all skills involved.
But alas, it's a potential you chose not to explore.

However, inability to use anything else under the penalty of losing all Reave stacks feels rather poor design.

I suppose you want a sense of commitment when using Reave, but it's not really that fun to be forced to spam a single skill mindlessly.
I mean, Reave looks awesome, but not THAT awesome...

That being said, thanks for the reply.

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Wooser69 wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Nurvus wrote:

1 - Why such a low duration if you have the restriction?

These

These?

Seriously? Some people nitpick at everything...

You can use two different reaves if you need to pull a support effect without losing stacks. Consider this as new uniques and supports are released.

I'm personally very pleased with the way skill behaves, it is not a substitute for cleave and it won't work if you just swap it into your existing build and expect miracles. It has very powerful advantages on the right setup and I think the drawbacks it has are much more fun then boring damage penalties.

It really does influence your combat choices and that doesn't mean you are supposed to spam it non-stop, you can use summons for example, they do something while you are reaving and soak some missiles which covers for your lack of mobility. You can use shockwave totem to give yourself some space and still be able to reach your foes. You can put increased duration on viper strike so you don't have to break reave to refresh it. You can turn it into a ranged attack which easily reaches edges of the screen with enough AoE nodes.

Reave is everything but boring, hell, we need more skills like it, not the other way around.

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Nurvus wrote:

What would be useful to know - remaining duration - isn't shown.

...

Have you tried the skill? By the time you locate the buff icon all you will see is the number 1 and before you could react it the icon would be gone. You should be able to count off 2 seconds without looking at a timer.

I think the skill is pretty good the way it is. I just wish mine did more damage.

I personally have found reave to be great fun, and am really glad they made it not use a default attack when on no mana, I lost my reave stack so many times due to that one attack while I hit the mana potion.