A comprehensive thread about Wild Strike mechanics and its viability

I've been playing around with Wild Strike (hereafter, "WS") since 2.0 launched and I thought I'd write
a bit about it: about how the skill works, and my feelings about its competitive viability relative to other melee skills.

First, let's take a look at the skill's description:

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"Your melee weapon strikes an enemy, converting some of the damage to a random element. Then, depending on the element chosen, it releases an explosion, an arcing bolt of lightning, or an icy wave."

From this you can extrapolate there are two parts to this skill, a melee range swing that is similar to a normal attack, that is followed by a secondary effect.

The skill has many tags ("Projectile, Attack, Melee, Lightning, Cold, Fire, AoE, Chaining"), but each tag only works with its respective facet of the skill.
Many people link the Melee Physical gem to WS, which does increase its tooltip DPS, but this gem does nothing for the other parts of the skill, so generally it's not a good idea to use it with WS.
(On a sidenote, I read that "Melee" gems work with the fire explosion of WS currently, but a GGG member has mentioned that this was unintended, so I wouldn't rely on it as it may be fixed.)

Similarly, other support gems that only affect one part of the skill are not advisable either, because you're simply spreading yourself thin.
On the other hand, choosing support gems that scale both parts of the attack will yield better returns in overall damage.


Moving on, some other facts about the skill:

1) Dual Wielding
In the 2.0 teaser page, I was hoping the skill would be a dual wielding skill, because in the picture it appeared that the character was swinging both weapons at the same time.
Unfortunately, WS alternates the weapons on swing rather than using both. This does not mean it's pointless to DW with WS though, because you still get the DW bonuses (more AS and DMG modifiers) and you can gain other offensive bonuses from your offhand weapon and DW nodes, at the cost of a shield.
Of course, the downside to this is that you need to procure two weapons, opposed to one.

2) Damage type and conversion
As the description mentions, your melee attack converts 60% of your damage to a random element. The second point is that the secondary effect also has the same damage values as the melee attack, there is no less damage modifier such as Molten Strike has, for example.
Thus, if you have 50 fire damage on your weapon, the spell effects from WS will also deal that 50 fire damage.

Proof: I tested this by using a weapon with one flat elemental damage roll plus Elemental Equilibrium, by hitting a main target and checking the "Resistant to" and "Vulnerable to" tags on secondary monsters that were struck by the secondary effects. A monster struck only by the ice or lightning effect, would still get the "Resistant to Fire" tag, which indicates those secondary effects carried the fire damage from my weapon.
Testing again with a non-magical weapon, the same ice and lightning procs did not make the main nor secondary targets resistant to fire.
The secondary effects may have their own damage effectiveness values though, but this is near impossible to test manually, and would have to be clarified by someone in the know.

3) Attacks or spells?
The secondary effects from WS count as attacks, this means they can be used to proc CoC effects, or to gain Life and Mana on hit.

Proof: I used CoC with WS linked with Frost Wall, swinging once and triggering CoC against a pack of monsters, it would spawn multiple walls from that one swing, so it was triggering more "attacks" (thus not "spells") from that one swing.

4) Target selection
Another point of interest about this skill is whether the secondary effects hit the main melee target or not. Visually, it appears that all three effects hit the main target as well: the enemy is inside the AoE of the fire explosion, the arc chains from that target and the icy wave flies through said target.
But none of the three effects actually hit the main target.

Proof: To test this, I tried linking some spells with obvious visual effects to CoC, such as Ball Lightning and Storm Call, but I could not draw any conclusive answers from this, as the melee hit and the secondary effect are dealt at the same time, it's too fast to see if it deals damage once or twice. Similarly, for the CoC spells I couldn't be sure whether the effects were simply overlapping (and appearing as one spell) or not.

This took a bit of thinking outside the box, and I came up with linking Summon Skeletons to CoC. This skill is limited to five units at a time, and each cast gives you two skeletons. I tested it by hitting Hillock slowly and waiting for CoC to proc, and looking at the amount of skeletons I had at the top left corner, because this number never lies nor is it obscure.
I tested on him for about a full 15 minutes (unsummoning after each proc), and I never got more than two skeletons with one swing against him, which means only the melee hit was "hitting" him, the secondary effects never did any damage to him, not even the explosion, even though he was directly in its AoE.
Conversely, against multiple units, you can get the full five units in one attack when CoC procs.

5) Viability with Elemental Equilibrium
Many people think EE is bad with WS and similar skills, because you can't control which element is used, so you might get the same element twice in a row. In practical use, EE isn't bad at all with WS, because it gives you a large damage boost against resistant enemies, which are the ones you need it the most against.
The downside is that you put a few restrictions on your gear selection, as you can't have any flat elemental damage on your items, nor can you use elemental damage gems such as Added Fire, or Hatred.

So using EE with WS requires a carefully planned build, but it can have good returns, as EE is a large boost of damage, and not using elemental auras means you can use your Mana for defensive options such as Grace instead.


Impressions
I really do like this skill, it's evident the creators have put a lot of thought and care behind it. The skill is visually pleasing (It's what Elemental Hit should've been!), and it's also fun to use, and it has relatively good reach for a melee skill.
But there are two crippling issues with this skill that make it very hard for an average user to have an effective build with it:

A) Mana cost
Most melee "swing" type skills start around 6 Mana and have a final cost of 9 or 10 at level 20. A few outliers such as Elemental Hit and Frenzy have higher Mana costs, and I strongly believe this is one of the main reasons why those skills are so unpopular: they are too difficult to sustain.

Wild Strike is similar, it starts at 10 Mana, which is more expensive than many skills that are level 20, and ends at 14 Mana.
A second reason why WS is harder to sustain than other melee skills, is because it converts a majority of the damage to elemental, which doesn't leech without the Mana Leech gem (which pretty much no one uses over Blood Magic).
Another notoriously expensive skill is Cyclone, which is why most people use the Blood Magic gem with that skill. As WS is almost as expensive, you are almost forced to use BM with it as well, because it's near impossible to utilize it without, once you have a 5 or 6 link.

A typical physical melee fighter uses two auras, a 50% one and Herald of Ash, which reserve 75% of their Mana pool. Depending on how much they invest in their Mana, they typically have between 100 and 250 Mana unreserved. A 5-6L WS will cost around 40 to 80 Mana depending on what you link to it, and once you pass a certain amount of attacks per second, it is impossible to sustain WS on Mana
reasonably, even if you're spamming a Divine Mana Flask during every attack.
The flask simply can't keep up and there will be stops during your barrage of attacks, which severely hampers your overall DPS and gives enemies an opening to attack you.
I had a Gemini Claw (14 Mana on hit), the claw leech notable, plus I was spamming said flask on each attack, and against a single target my sustainability could not keep up with the Mana consumption of this skill.

In the end you're forced to use BM with it, because it takes a constant effort to use a flask during every second, and it's mentally unpleasant to see your attack constantly stop during an assault.

B) Weakness vs. single targets
As mentioned in point #4 above, the skill does not hit its main target with the secondary effects, even though they appear to do so visually. This is misleading to the player, and it makes the skill very weak against single targets.
This is the exact same problem as Lightning Strike has, another skill that is very rarely used nowadays, because the weakness it has is a fatal one. And even compared to LS, WS is even worse off, because it costs around 50% more Mana than that skill.



Verdict
The skill is fun, but relatively weak. It's outclassed by the popular skills such as Cyclone and Reave, because of the combination of its high cost and low damage against solo targets, making it an unappealing choice both as a leveling and as an endgame option. This does not mean you can't make a working build with it, but any build will simply be outright less effective than aforementioned popular skills.

Another reason why Wild Strike's single target effectiveness is outclassed by Cyclone, Reave and even Molten Strike, is because you can link certain gems such as Concentrated Effect to them, which greatly boosts their damage in those scenarios.
As mentioned early in the post, for WS, each part of the skill has its own tag(s), which makes it hard to use specific support gems with it, and pretty much closes off many options for the skill, as you're boosting only one or two parts of the skill at best.

For these reasons, I feel it wouldn't be outrageous to allow both parts of WS to hit the main target. This would not increase its damage against packs, which is already passable, but would make it usable against single targets as well.
Compare it to Tornado Shot for example, this skill can hit a single target many times with one attack, and it has a range advantage on top of that.

And/or lowering its cost to be more in line with other skills, would increase its accessibility as well.
Another idea would be to rework the skill, and allow it to swing both weapons at the same time (possibly at reduced damage). This would fit a gap in the shortage of new dual wield skills as well.
Yet another idea would be to make the secondary fire and cold effects scale as the lightning one does, by increasing their AoE and amount of projectiles launched.

As a new skill, it's simply too unattractive and doesn't give the player an incentive to actually use it, which is a shame, since the skill does have potential. So it would be great if the numbers or features were rethought and tweaked a bit to give it the appeal it deserves.

P.S: if there are any mistakes with my info, it would be greatly helpful having it clarified by a GGG member so I can fix it.

Thanks! Very informative. I've been thinking of creating a WS character, but haven't had the time lately. I may hold off a bit longer since it seems it has some issues. The fact that it is bad against single targets worries me the most since I normally play solo and wouldn't have any backup to help with bosses.

Great work!

I've been running a Wild Striker myself.

It's a bit okay versus Bossing/Mobbing but treat it as such as a Melee Skill with a second hit of "Arc","Flame Surge" and "Freezing Pulse". So far the only trouble I've had with is with Kole who can 1-shot you if you don't have enough Life & Armor.

Multistrike is almost mandatory and from my current experience you could go either Blood Magic + LGoH/Life Leech Gem or go Reduced Mana with high Mana Regen & Mana Leech.

At least as a Scion you'll be hard-pressed on getting enough Life Passives early on to make it too risky to run a Blood Magic Setup.

My hopes for using dual bloodseekers has a chance....maybe.

They're more akin to Spell-Like Effects. They act similarly to Arc,Flame Surge & Freezing Pulse (Minus the Range Penalty) but instead use your Melee Attack to calculate the damage than Spell

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Rjkd12 wrote:

I may hold off a bit longer since it seems it has some issues. The fact that it is bad against single targets worries me the most since I normally play solo and wouldn't have any backup to help with bosses.

Great work!

If you play solo and have a good build, the skill is usable at the very least. It's more in party play where the increased monster HP comes into play, or seeing allies do significantly more damage (which is a factor for many people) which drives people away from the skill.

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Vipermagi wrote:

Calling the Elemental effects "Spells" when they are clearly Attacks is needlessly confusing.

Good call, I changed the wording around a bit in the OP.

really?? conc effect cyclone is sooo much more mana intense than wildstrike multi..


30kdps and rising... wildstrike is far from weak.

Skill is not terrible but there at leat 4 melee skills that are better. For skill that requires you to melee target but doesn't scale with melee damage , hardly can scale its coverage, is elemental converting but can't use penetration gem, has high mana cost - you would relly expect something in return.

Making the effects benefit from melee damage would be the thing for me , being both able to use the MPD support and benefit from strength is huge. Atm you probably need to build it akin buzzsaw