Nothing wrong with Blade Flurry, it's not OP it just doesn't suck like typical melee

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Fruz wrote:

^
Dude, aren't you a bit too used to overpowered cheesing setups ?
By the way, it was OP, it has been nerfed since.
It's probably not OP anymore.

And if you have fucktons of currency, I guess top tier daggers with fucking crit will do better.

Because fucking crit, as ever.

And by the way from the sounds of it I agree with you on crit.

But regarding "op cheesing setups", again I will remind you that fb and eq did not get touched at all.

You can't expect us to sit here accepting the power level of non-fb skills when fb hasn't been touched.

The issue is WHERE DO YOU THINK THE POWER LEVEL SHOULD BE CENTERED AT? Fb is top and if that's the balance point, then tons of other gems need buffs.

If you think glacial hammer should be the balance point? Then all gems need nerfs.

Right now though, fb didn't get touched, and has been a meta gem for a long time. So that tells me ggg should have buffed other gems to be as good as fb. But they didn't do that.

I wouldn't call Frost Blades meta. The skill is pretty shitty for high tier stuff. There is no way you're taking down Shaper unless you have like 3 hours to spare lol.

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adghar wrote:

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Sheriff_K wrote:

Lacerate and Reave are WAY better aoe than BF, and aoe is all that matters unless you're farming Uber Atziri/Guardians/Shaper.

Yes, Bladeflurry has BONKERS dps; but that's all it has. It's utter dogshit like I_NO says for everything else. ESPECIALLY vs Breaches, you really notice how bad the AoE really is.. Hence why I rerolled Frost Blades, which is AMAZING for Breaches (you need a Skill that can hit the whole screen, and/or offscreen.)

Aha! You're the one I was looking for!

What logic and/or testing did you do to compare AOE of BF vs Reave vs Lacerate vs Frost Blades? In all my tests, subjectively speaking, BFlurry has been much faster crowd clearing (better Aoe) than Reave and Lacerate.

I haven't tried Frost Blades recently, but I would be pretty surprised if it outperformed BF, Reave, or Lacerate in Breaches. Breaches are screens packed chock full of enemies, and hitting a maximum of 8 at a time doesn't seem optimal.

ya people use vaal reave, u dont do reave without vaal reave. Hes right about frost blades, youll clear a map twice as fast with a proper frost blades char

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grepman wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

reave is a better skill. Yes lacerate feels pretty shit, heavy strike... lol

snorkle, running into a thread and saying skill x > y with zero reasoning, is akin to running into a room full of people discussing, opening a mouth only to (pardon my french) fart loudly. no offense, but you know that better than anybody. gimme that patented snorkle wall of text. and it better be better reasoning than something like 'wild strike is shit because you have to namelock'.

I dont remember life-based reavers trivializing shaper and guardians. reave's single target is crap. in a game where shit just dies when you stare at it, how can a skill that has excellent st as well as good aoe clear, be inferior to a skill that has crap st and great aoe clear ?

the game is clearing maps. Shaper and guardians? Double strike or frenzy will kill a single target like that, no one cares, shit melee skills, the game is about mapping fast. If you want to go do shaper or atziri you can swap to a heavy damage single target skill like that if you want to for that one encounter. Flurry doesnt have good aoe clear, its average at best, and reave doesnt have crap single target, its average. How does a skill with average st and great aoe beat a skill with great st and average aoe? Because it has great aoe and aoe is everything.

Damage becomes semi irrelevant when mapping, as you say shit dies when you stare at it, everyone with a half decent build instantly kills virtually everything and that means skills that hit WAYYY more targets are just straight up better. You can do apocalyptic damage with dual strike, and maybe for killing something like atziri you would legitimately use that skill as a swap on your reave or frost blades or spectral throw or lightning strike or :insert big range pack clearing skill that your build actually is: character. You can do dual strike splash, the deeps are bonkers, but when its taking you 6 minutes to clear a map reave can clear in 2 then your xp and currency gains per hour are going to also be 1/3 of the reave dude.

Damage is important for niche encounters, and flurry is strong there, so strong that if you have a 500pdps weapon that cost 250 exalts and only exists in standard its probably as good as blade vortex was when you simply leveled up the gem last league. We were just watching mathils flurry vid with a binos, hes got 4.5k av damage tooltip, so at 6 stacks its 9,900, with 4.5 aps thats 44,500 dps. Now hes poisoning too so thats a lot of damage on top, but compared to anywhere from 200k dps up to 1 million+ damage bladevortex was doing with gear you can get in leagues? Maybe still be doing for all I know, havent checked since patch. Fox in my guild had 600k dps lightning tendrils last league that ignored resists on crit. I have a flurry char on standard using a 540pdps mirrored sword that costs over 200ex, Im getting about 320k dps, half what Fox was getting on his tendris using 2 void batteries that cost him 3.5ex each in a league. Ya Bf has good single target but I think some perspective is needed, people are talking like its unheard of damage levels, it really isnt.

This is what Im using in breach atm...



fairly decent gear, I have about 64k dps, which is nice, but I could have that with a chin sol lightning arrow in a lioneyes chest and hit things 3x as far away as my flurry does, clear maps twice as fast, 1 shot map bosses with a puncture trap with far less risk than getting into flurry range. Thats a 1 chaos bow and a 1 chaos chest, vs a 10 chaos claw and... well, a chest thats worth more than 1 chaos but its irrelevant to the damage so its price is whatever. This is unbalanced vs what exactly? shit melee skills like heavy strike that no one plays? Well I dunno if this is news to people but the entire game that people do actually play is unbalanced against those skills, thats why no one plays them. It seems to me every time a popular melee skill actually works in any way shape or form people just call for nerfs, cyclone, earthquake, flurry, lets nerf them all because theyre still worth playing in a game with bow skills and spells like the ones we have in poe and then complain because melee is shit unless you have mirrored gear. Ya I wonder why that is? 64k dps in a 6L, Last time I put together an ek char with a 6 link, completely self found gears, I had over 200k dps and could hit off the sides of the screen, is ek overpowered? Who here is calling for the ek nerf?

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Emphasy wrote:

Because with Blade Flurry you might be a bit slower on spread out packs, but with Reave or Lacerate you will flat out die on a tough enemy.

with reave ull die on a tough enemy? I think its more like with flurry you will be significantly slower, like half the clear speed or less, and against a tough enemy if you have a shit build you die with any skill and if you have a decent build you kill it and move on. Reave and Lacerate have bigger range so you are safer than flurry.

"

But regarding "op cheesing setups", again I will remind you that fb and eq did not get touched at all.

Again I don't think they have to. FB is pretty much a mapping skill and while its fun and cool it has a few downsides that are actually impossible to overcome. You have no sustain and the skill costs a fuckton of mana, right now I have to use a reduced mana gem to even be able to keep up with the cost while using Flasks and Clarity (which is terrible). Later on you use elreon rings, because it is a cheap spell so they have great affect, but right now I can't afford one that is actually decently enough to put it on and loosing Firepen doesn't matter so much, because I have enough means to reduce fire res and the gem has the biggest impact on high res enemies, which are usually bosses, were I switch Fire Pen back in.

Over the time during the last league Flameblast gradually got replaced by other builds, because it was mainly used for leveling and gearing up. The exact same thing applies to Earthquake. About half way in there was I think 3 FB builds and 1 Earthquake build left. Early on those two builds made up about 2/3 or so.

The thing with those two is Earthquake works great with Slayer and Juggernaut, which makes it good even with a cheap weapon, and Earthquake has a good weapon selection and one of them will be cheap to get. And Flameblast can be used with a +1 Weapon in a 3l pretty much until endgame, and even in lower maps you still clear decently.

Those skills are not necessarily the best overall, Flameblast might be the best direct damage spell now, which is mostly due to a lack of competition, but Earthquake is definitly not the best Melee Attack, but one that is easy to build for. Crafting a Mace/Axe is already indefinitly cheaper than crafting a dagger just because you don't have to deal with caster mods. And there are a whole lot of decent Axes or Maces to start out with, you have Kaoms, Marohi, Kongors, Hezmanas, Uul-Netols, Kitavas Feast, Ngahamus Flame and technically Brain Rattler, but it is only cheap once the first one dropped^^. Now look at daggers... you have Binos, that's it, and this one is already more rare than Kaoms. Not sure how rare some of those new weapons are but most of the are not good enough to make them really expensive.

So Earthquake is good because it essentially doesn't behave like your normal weapon skill because it is so easy to get a good weapon for it, this means start with Eartquake is a good advice.

The only reason that Blade Flurry even gets by is that it simply deals twice as much damage as reave, this means you can use a pretty shitty weapon (many just pick up Mark of the Doubting Knight, which is a terrible weapon for anything, but good enough for Blade Flurry) and still deal enough damage. That is the only reason why people even level with Blade Flurry, otherwise you would propably just level as FB or Essence Drain and get your gear together later.


So overall they put Blade Flurry in a spot where it is competitive (otherwise it wouldn't be used), without just straight out removing Reave from the play field. And how many reave chars were around last league? None, because that basically already happened with Lacerate, which still can't be used with daggers, but is basically a better version of reave if you are using swords. With the huge AoE Blade Flurry would just have been a better version of lacerate, which already is a better version of reave. Now you might end up seeing basically the same thing Archers do (although they have it easier due to having 2 6ls, but reave and BF essentially use the same supports), you might have people using Reave for AoE and Blade Flurry for bosses.

Mark of the doubting knight isn't just a terrible weapon, it's total dogshit for BF because of its insanely slow attack speed. Mark MIGHT actually work for me as a starting flicker weapon because I don't care about that, for BF it's a useless pile of shit that you should never EVER go near it. Because BF scales its damage with attack speed so much. Honestly you're better getting a shitty yellow dagger for like 1c that has less dps but higher crit and attack speed.

Anyways back on topic, really, if you're going to say flameblast is fine the way it is you are just... not speaking realistically. I haven't seen anything suggesting FB ever "falls off later in the league". It starts OP and stays OP and remains OP for the entirety of the league, tops charts even with fucking BV pathfinder out there, and it does all of this WITH NO INVESTMENT NEEDED.

I mean at the very fucking least you should agree that more investment = more rewards, and that isn't what you have with BF vs FB. You have more investment BF = less investment FB. IF you even have that.

lacerate does a little more damage than reave down the middle, a fair bit less damage than reave at the sides and overall hits under half the area reave hits... on what planet is that considered a better version of reave? imo its crap compared to reave, it performs worse, it looks worse, it feels worse, it sounds worse, everything about it is inferior apart from the single target and even there the difference is small, in no way enough to make up for the rest of it.

the real difference between BF and other stuff is the 'middle ground'

players with typical gear (no, Bino is not typical! Allure is neither) have two choices: slog trough with Reave or zap with BF. Blade Flurry might have lower area - sure. but players that are not well geared (And these are the overwhelming majority) are not there yet to care about area - it is the damage. if they have enough damage to not get swarmed. BF gives that (esp the mob clearing part where each small hit has aoe helipng A LOT), Reave doesnt.

at top end there are differences - Reave might have the AOE but it also forces me to use Vaal Reave (and zap zap zap zap ignoring everything - it is stressful playstyle and it is not that all our maps are linear tubes with dense packs. in maps like Maze or Crema or whatnot it is VERY easy to loose 8 stacks and be again at not-so-impressive 1). Lacerate does not have this problem, neither does BF.

Blade Flury - in practical applications with non-mirrored non-guild-fed gear - beats all other 'melee' skills easily in clearing. and it is just monster vs bosses (doesnt it do like 2x single target damage of Dual/Double strike anyway?) and the damage it can dish with pretty crap gear is pretty damn difficult to challenge (in the 'melee' category ofc)

note: Earthquake GOT nerfed. the less duration gem also cuts poison/bleed duration you get. it is a noticeable damage output vs bosses

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Legatus1982 wrote:

[...]

pizza sticks as a balancing point is retarded, FB got nerfed in the past ( whatever you say about it, it will not change that fact ), but totems got buffs so ...

I heard Zizaran the other day, saying something like :
"Flameblast has always been fucking OP, it's been two years and it still is. There was one league were it wasn't very popular, post nerf.... and then people realized that it was still OP."
And I definitely think that he is right about that.

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_Tiem wrote:

I wouldn't call Frost Blades meta. The skill is pretty shitty for high tier stuff. There is no way you're taking down Shaper unless you have like 3 hours to spare lol.

I definitely agree with that.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

[...]

The skill has been nerfed already, it's not godlike anymore, it does still provide a pretty good dps and clearspeed for flow investment.
It's easier to leech compared to spell, you can use LGoH, and with high attack speed accuracy seem to become less important.
By the way, does the channeling keep increasing if it misses once ?

Now, you need gear to scale the spells too, without a good wand / shield jewelerry, you won't have those crazy dps to start with, plus you need to level up the gem to level 20 for optimal results, and then eventually corrupt it.
That brings the character to level maybe ... what .... ~91 ?

And we all know that melee isn't exactly in a great state, but we don't need moroe band aid skills imho, we need a melee overhaul.

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sidtherat wrote:

players with typical gear (no, Bino is not typical! Allure is neither)

the allure I have was 10 chaos on day 2 of the league, you can get one with less damage for 1 fusing now, stop being silly mate, you cna buy 3 of them from doing 1 docks run.

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sidtherat wrote:

Blade Flury - in practical applications with non-mirrored non-guild-fed gear - beats all other 'melee' skills easily in clearing.

I dont think thats true. Ive run reave self found in hc a number of times from start to finish, never died, killed everything even in leagues like beyond, was not a problem, reave has no problems with scrub gear.

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Fruz wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

[...]

The skill has been nerfed already, it's not godlike anymore, it does still provide a pretty good dps and clearspeed for flow investment.
It's easier to leech compared to spell, you can use LGoH, and with high attack speed accuracy seem to become less important.
By the way, does the channeling keep increasing if it misses once ?

Now, you need gear to scale the spells too, without a good wand / shield jewelerry, you won't have those crazy dps to start with, plus you need to level up the gem to level 20 for optimal results, and then eventually corrupt it.
That brings the character to level maybe ... what .... ~91 ?

And we all know that melee isn't exactly in a great state, but we don't need moroe band aid skills imho, we need a melee overhaul.

it was never godlike.

you need gear to scale spells? I could have taken my weapon off on my ek char and done more damage unarmed with ek than u get from a 250pdps crit weapon flurry.

band aid skills, no its a decent skill and they keep nerfing the decent melee skills because u lot cry about them and thats why melee is shit, you people with your ridiculous hysteria are the problem. Melee needs an overhaul, yeah, overhauled so that the skills are as good as this was before you lot got it nerfed with your bullshit.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

lacerate does a little more damage than reave down the middle, a fair bit less damage than reave at the sides and overall hits under half the area reave hits... on what planet is that considered a better version of reave? imo its crap compared to reave, it performs worse, it looks worse, it feels worse, it sounds worse, everything about it is inferior apart from the single target and even there the difference is small, in no way enough to make up for the rest of it.

I simply based that on the assumption that Lacerate is used and reave wasn't. The AoE isn't that bad. Actually Groundslam has a higher AoE than full stacked Reave and Sweep almost has the same AoE as Reave has with full stacks and that in 360°. And again Lacerate also has a bigger AoE than fully scaled Reave (it has a bit more than Groundslam).

So as a comparison:

Reave 17 - 31
Sweep 26
Groundslam 35
Lacerate 35+

Not sure about Blade Flurry but the targeting circle reaches as far as Groundslam, however since it is a circle only a small area can be targetted at max range but since you can rotate freely, it is hardly an issue.

So Lacerate and Blade Flurry both have a higher range than full stacked Reave. And skills like Sweep can be massively better since you essentially jump into a pack and press Sweep, due to having 360° AoE and thus covering a bigger area. The only advantage Reave has over Lacerate is a wider Arc, but Lacerate still covers a huge area, is good to single out rares with the overlapping area (while the slashs to the side kill all adds) and again it was actually used. And right now we have the same again. Blade Flurry is heavily used compared to Reave and Lacerate or actually any other Melee skill besides Earthquake.

"

players with typical gear (no, Bino is not typical! Allure is neither) have two choices: slog trough with Reave or zap with BF. Blade Flurry might have lower area - sure. but players that are not well geared (And these are the overwhelming majority) are not there yet to care about area - it is the damage. if they have enough damage to not get swarmed. BF gives that (esp the mob clearing part where each small hit has aoe helipng A LOT), Reave doesnt.

I agree... well except for the Allure thing, it is only not typical because people hate claws :P Even though it kept up in price a bit due to BF, it now reached 1fus again, so if you want Allure you can get it. And yeah that is the big thing about BF it gets a lot of damage so you can use it with less perfect gear. It is very similar to Earthquake which is also very efficient exspecially since it doesn't care about Attack Speed.

"

in maps like Maze or Crema or whatnot it is VERY easy to loose 8 stacks and be again at not-so-impressive 1). Lacerate does not have this problem, neither does BF.

Reave only has 4 Stacks since I think 2.0. 2.4 Changed the base AoE to 17 and the increase per Stack to 20% more, you still end up at 31.

"

Mark of the doubting knight isn't just a terrible weapon, it's total dogshit for BF because of its insanely slow attack speed. Mark MIGHT actually work for me as a starting flicker weapon because I don't care about that, for BF it's a useless pile of shit that you should never EVER go near it. Because BF scales its damage with attack speed so much. Honestly you're better getting a shitty yellow dagger for like 1c that has less dps but higher crit and attack speed.

Actually if you get 10% more Attack Speed with BF it is exactly the same as getting 10% more melee damage. If some skill has a mod that provides more attack speed people often assume it scales better with attack speed, it doesn't. From a damage perspective Mark is pretty much the same as a low crit binos, yes it scales a lot less with outside sources like Steel Rings or Abyssus due to the low attack speed, but if you just compare the weapons the difference is a lot lower than 2ex. And I can't find a 200 dps dagger, there are two 180dps daggers, but they aren't even crit daggers (they are the block ones) and they are worse than mark. So the cheapest 1c dagger with more than 180dps you can buy is Mark. It isn't good, but the thing with BF is you don't need a good one, you just need one.

"

I mean at the very fucking least you should agree that more investment = more rewards, and that isn't what you have with BF vs FB. You have more investment BF = less investment FB. IF you even have that.

That is pretty much true for any attack vs. spell. And I don't think anybody disagrees with that. But it is hard to nail that one on Blade Flurry. Blade Flurry actually is the attack which suffers the least from this issue.

"

hes got 4.5k av damage tooltip, so at 6 stacks its 9,900

Yeah that is not really a good calculation for BV DPS. Your average multiplier if you release at 6 Stacks is 85% more (6 Attacks to build up the multiplier and 6 released at full stacks). So he will deal an average of 8325 damage per hit. However his APS is essentially doubled, because each attack includes a hit while charging up and one on release, so you get 2 hits per action. Which means you have to multiply by 9, not 4,5.

So his DPS is actually about 75.000 again only including the base unbuffed damage, but you can assume that he always has Unholy Might so it is at least 30% more. With a Wither Totem he should be at around 200-300k including the poison.