Faster Attacks against Multistrike pro/con questions

I used duel strike with faster attack and melee splash then switched to faster attacks with multi and took away the melee splash.

300 more DPS!

I just don't like that I cannot attack one enemy at a time but the increased DPS was sweet!

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Dmillz wrote:

The "downside" of standing still for 3 attacks isn't much of a downside when you have 6+ APS. Multistrike is flat out much better for DPS than Faster Attacks in a melee build.

It can be a fairly significant downside, especially if you're a fairly lousy player, like me :-) I lost a 66 to a Vaal Slam because I got "locked" into multistrike. Was hold-and-clicking on the Oversoul, saw his arm going up, clicked somewhere else. Multistrike completed, another multistrike attack must have been queued, because I didn't start moving until after, and by then it was too late. Level 66 mara, HP and armor stacked out the wazoo, one shot, RIP :-)

Again, it matters more if you're a lousy player. But it is definitely something to consider.

When it comes to pure DPS, Multistrike is almost always better (armor is pretty negligible).

The less attack damage from the gem does negatively affect a couple things however:

Stuns are weaker. If nearly all your damage dealt is physical, you're going to want to capitalize on stun. With Multistrike, you're probably only going to be stunning trash mobs.

Elemental status effects are weaker. If you're not heavy into one elemental damage type, you're less likely to deal the minimum amount of damage to have a status effect take place. So while multistrike sounds awesome when you're using lightning damage because you can stack shock much quicker, if you crit a boss and your shock is below the minimum duration (1/10th of a second I think?), it won't even apply. Oh, and multistrike is downright bad with burn no matter how you cut it.

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Melkrow wrote:

Bottom line, if u have good attack speed, go with multistrike, it scales off of attack speed as much if not more than it does off raw dmg. If u have slow attack speed to begin with, go with faster attacks.

I dunno man, my marohi is slow as hell, but with MS its a beast. I tries FA (20/20 gem no less) and MS was waaayyy faster and higher DPS. Soon as I get a 6L, I'm adding FA as well though.

MS is way better, especially for close melee like me. The auto-hit is godsend, I don't have to always click on enemies between all the drops piled on the floor.
helps more with reflect too as I get smaller hits rather than big chunk.

Bring the Rain, get both, get all