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

"

Fruz wrote:

Of course you do, you are so golden.
And you are going to keep talking about what you think other players have done when you actually have literally no idea about it, because it probably helps you feel better.
Golden.

But gogogo, keep playing your flameblaster elementalist that has likely spent 10+ levels in dried lake before mapping, making you think that you rock everything in this game, I told you, it's entertaining.
And you missed every single point that I made, not that you had anything to actually say.

Congrats, you've been called out for being an inexperienced player with zero knowledge of HC play, and have nothing else to say to me but personal insults and that I am a 'meta' player. In the words of David Sirlin, you're nothing but a 'scrub'.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

Consider a game state where all skills are fairly evenly balanced with usage/distribution statistics providing confirmation. Now consider a new skill being introduced which seems fun and might be slightly stronger/better than its peers.

Now consider what you might see reflected in the numbers initially.

Now consider how drastically things change if an entire archetype has been under-performing for 4 years and seems to have been "thrown a bone".

"Usage" does not tell you shit at this stage.

"

Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

Consider a game state where all skills are fairly evenly balanced with usage/distribution statistics providing confirmation. Now consider a new skill being introduced which seems fun and might be slightly stronger/better than its peers.

Now consider what you might see reflected in the numbers initially.

Now consider how drastically things change if an entire archetype has been under-performing for 4 years and seems to have been "thrown a bone".

"Usage" does not tell you shit at this stage.

I mean the thing is usage doesn't tell anybody anything either way. If 100/100 people in every league are all playing glacial hammer, does that make glacial hammer better than flameblast?

Right now there is 2 or 3 guys in HC top 50 playing BF and the overall selection of people playing BF from the numbers we have available look to be around 20%, if you believe the weapon stats from that website, and that would equate to there being at least 10 people in the top 50 playing BF. Clearly that isn't what we see.

In fact what we have is 3/50 at best, or around 6%, and that's if you count the dead guy.

I'm telling these people every objective number that exists shows BF being a bad skill, despite being very popular as well as overhyped, and nobody wants to hear the actual facts. It's incredible.

"

Turbodevil wrote:

1 stack - release is almost Earthquake + aftershock dps but without waiting for aftershock.

Yeah, but earth quake wasn't op for melee, ti was comparable with most non shit magic. Melee is inherently more risk than magic, but it somehow does less damage on the whole. I don't get it.

Armor doesn't work, health sucks to stack, and dps is bad, why would anyone play melee over totems or magic? It's way worse all round.

"

Attlus wrote:

"

Turbodevil wrote:

1 stack - release is almost Earthquake + aftershock dps but without waiting for aftershock.

Yeah, but earth quake wasn't op for melee, ti was comparable with most non shit magic. Melee is inherently more risk than magic, but it somehow does less damage on the whole. I don't get it.

Armor doesn't work, health sucks to stack, and dps is bad, why would anyone play melee over totems or magic? It's way worse all round.

EQ also hits the entire area circling your character while bf only hits in front of you in a cone, bf SHOULD do more damage than eq

EDIT: did some posts get changed/removed or something? I'm confused as to what happened to the posts it seems like something I was quoting is missing

I had not been here for a while, let's see quickly (soz for necro).

First of all, let's ignore the polluting guy that has not been bringing anything for pages with his misinformed .... whatever it is.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

In fact what we have is 3/50 at best, or around 6%, and that's if you count the dead guy.

Seriously, this has never been true in BHC so far, and it isn't right now either.

If we look at the top 50 (42 public character profiles, I didnt count the other 8 in there):

Feel free to correct me if I missed something.

If we remove the 5 support ( or the 7, most likely ), that makes 37(35) actualy damage dealing builds.
There are (at least, I ignored the private profiles, let's assume that they are not using BF) 5 blade flurry builds in the top 50, so 10% of all builds, 14% of the damage dealing builds, that makes it 1/7 of dmg builds being blade flurry, more than twice what you are saying.

Now we could remove flameblast from the equation as everybody knows (I guess) that it's flat out broken and it is no wonder why we see so many builds (inquisitor/elementalist being very strong really helps I guess), and that would make 1/5 or 1/4 of the remaining builds being blade flurry.
The skill is (in its current state : post-nerf) without any hesitation, strong, that is what has been the point for pages, and it still stands.

"

Attlus wrote:

"

Turbodevil wrote:

1 stack - release is almost Earthquake + aftershock dps but without waiting for aftershock.

Yeah, but earth quake wasn't op for melee, ti was comparable with most non shit magic. Melee is inherently more risk than magic, but it somehow does less damage on the whole. I don't get it.

Armor doesn't work, health sucks to stack, and dps is bad, why would anyone play melee over totems or magic? It's way worse all round.

For ladder purposes, melee sucks compared to the obvious OP casters that we have out there, it's just how the balance is right now ....
Why melees do not deal more damage is beyond me too.
But having a skill called "melee" and covering the whole screen will make (some) people complain, no mistake about this, the problem is elsewhere and just throwing things like this and calling them "melee" isn't exactly great :/.
Even Rory agreed with this, his words were (I think) "Earthquake kind of gets away with it because of the way it works", when he was explaining why they nerfed BF's range.
Basically, giving melees as much coverage as the spell casters because clearspeed isn't (I think) what should be happening, for the good of the game, but the direction that it has taken ..... well, we will see.


PS : I put a PoE stream in the background couple of days ago, and it ended up being Etup's ( I was curious of what he was doing ). A member of the chat did ask "What do you think is the best skill at the moment ?" and he actually answered "Probably blade flurry".
So the question wasn't "as a league starter", and I would not have considered BF as the "best" skill, but it was a possibility to him, so from there, very few people can actually call the skill "shit" or "crap" or whatever while still being able to back such claim, imho.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

"

Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

Consider a game state where all skills are fairly evenly balanced with usage/distribution statistics providing confirmation. Now consider a new skill being introduced which seems fun and might be slightly stronger/better than its peers.

Now consider what you might see reflected in the numbers initially.

Now consider how drastically things change if an entire archetype has been under-performing for 4 years and seems to have been "thrown a bone".

"Usage" does not tell you shit at this stage.

I mean the thing is usage doesn't tell anybody anything either way. If 100/100 people in every league are all playing glacial hammer, does that make glacial hammer better than flameblast?

If 100% of the players play glacial hammer it sure as shit would be a better skill than flameblast. Why? Because people like to take the easy way. We know the reality is different, barely anybody plays GH, many people play FB. Why? Because FB is superior.

If you're going to use "usage numbers" as a way to back up your position, it's strategically bad to argue that "usage numbers" don't mean shit all things considered.

The idea of a version of POE in which all gems are almost evenly balanced doesn't do anything in regards to this discussion. Everybody knows this isn't the case and it never was. You got your streamers with relatively many followers, they say something's good, people use it and are happy about it. Why? Because that "something" was/is good. And by good people mean pretty strong at the very least.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

Right now there is 2 or 3 guys in HC top 50 playing BF and the overall selection of people playing BF from the numbers we have available look to be around 20%, if you believe the weapon stats from that website, and that would equate to there being at least 10 people in the top 50 playing BF. Clearly that isn't what we see.

Thing is the top 50 are a very small and exclusive "club", which by no means is a decent base to extrapolate from. If 20% of the people outside of the top 50 use BFlurry it's safe to say that BFlurry is a meta-skill at this point. And believe it or not, I don't even mind it being meta, what I mind is how the meta shits on everything else. One may argue that next league only 15% of the players will run BFlurry, but even then 15% is quite a considerable number of people, when you look at how many skills actually exist that are also end-game viable.

If people complain about FB, BVortex, Vortex and whatnot being broken, while arguing BFlurry is not OP, eventhough BFlurry is used just as much, I have to wonder where and when logic ceased to function. If the skill does not deliver, people stop playing it. If it wasn't at least "good", it wouldn't even be used in the top 50. And that's all that really matters. These fictional scenarios and small subsets of players are makeshift backups for hollow arguments, which are used for the purpose of winning an argument rather than actually discussing things properly.

It may be wise to consider that this thread started prior to nerfing BFlurry's AOE and damage for a bit. At this point I think BFlurry is in a much better spot now. Before it was practically a Bladevortex that isn't centered around your character, but rather projected to an area in front of it.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

In fact what we have is 3/50 at best, or around 6%, and that's if you count the dead guy.

I'm telling these people every objective number that exists shows BF being a bad skill, despite being very popular as well as overhyped, and nobody wants to hear the actual facts. It's incredible.

The actual fact is that the top 50, especially in BHC, are the smallest group of people imaginable in POE. They're not representative. In fact, I would even argue that these people are the least representative group imaginable, they're the ones racing for lvl 100, naturally they stick to what they know and what works best for them since the dawn of time. Why wouldn't they?

At the moment it's safe to say that BFlurry is part of the meta. It's what a large number of players use successfully. Is it still OP? It might be. Should the usage of BFlurry go up next league, then it's a proven fact. And until then there's no actual point in further arguing wether or not the skill is too powerful or not and why and when and where.

"

Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

Consider a game state where all skills are fairly evenly balanced with usage/distribution statistics providing confirmation. Now consider a new skill being introduced which seems fun and might be slightly stronger/better than its peers.

Now consider what you might see reflected in the numbers initially.

Now consider how drastically things change if an entire archetype has been under-performing for 4 years and seems to have been "thrown a bone".

"Usage" does not tell you shit at this stage.

amen

my take on this mess:

1) you CANNOT fix broken things using broken tools. what some are suggesting ('wow, melee fixed with OP skill' or 'it is damn time melee has something broken as well') is attrocious

you want balanced (or semi-balanced at least) game or do you want YOUR toys to be the strongest?

reasoning that 'melee is shit -> melee deserves to be not shit -> lets give melee something trully broken -> broken, if melee, is not a problem' does not solve a single thing but introduces helluva problems

a) it creates a benchmark. some skills CANNOT reach this benchmark. we all know the skills. should we remove them if they are BY DESIGN worse than BF?
b) it destroys 'melee' as a style/archetype. BF is nothing but a AOE-of-Destruction that takes significant effort to not call a spell. design wise this skill is 'everything wrong in one package'

2) BF will not beat broken-as-f.. meta double dips (you know, the pizzas, the poisons, the CI-anything etc. and it is a good news. broken-as-f.. things should be killed with fire and never ever mentioned again. if thing is broken you do not turn it into a benchmark. even GGG knows that (barely)

3) BF is bonkers. ive created a testbed character (plain raider with no life, no stats, no finese, nothing).
sword ive used (wanted to FINALLY try it out in something non-meta - that is WITHOUT fake dual wield idiocy)

rest of the gear:

4.5k life, some defences but mostly irrelevant

ive been farming legacy T10 maps from ~73 till 85 (where this character is right now) and it was just a joke. AOE is enormous so nothing can hit me (chill, stun, damage), single target is incredible, it has a positive feedback loop with pack size (the more enemies the faster they die). LGOH (with a similar claw i happen to have) is CRAZY good.

i know T10 are nothing (nor they are supposed to be - i just burn my legacy maps for XP) but the speed this ghetto character can do it and absolute safety is nervewrecking

it beats EQ, lacerates and various other thrash with the fluidity (no wasted damage), responsiveness and the single/multi target capability pretty much nothing can match. pair it with good connection and whirling blades and you can literaly melt AI with 'stack'>'whirl to release'>'stack'>repeat.. boss has no chance to retaliate, it can be done this fast

there are TWO fundamental issues with this stuff (plus one design failure):

1) the small hits SHOULD not have AOE. it is 'double dip' AOE. and this thing SHOULD not benefit from Conc Effect. most double dip failures starts when your skill can slot Conc Effect for dumb damage increase

2) the AOE.. i know it got nerfed and Lacerate has further 'reach' but lacerate has a narrow cone and deals solid damage only with the overlap. Reave has to mainain these stacks that i bet noone likes to do. vaal reave + not so linear layout -> sad face. BF has wide AOE (reaching even behind the character) and far reaching AOE. not to mention it takes no time to rotate the beaten zone. it is just too good. mechanically better than everything else in the game AND dealing sick damage

extra) it is a spell. it looks like spell. it is cast like spell. it sounds like spell. it is a spell scaled not from gem level but from weapon damage. i bet this damn thing started its life as a spell but got changed to 'melee' to prove that 'ggg cares'. im not convinced.

in short, after trying it there is not a single reason to play any other 'melee' skill ATM. it is very strong on paper and while beaten by some other skills in neverland using mirrored stuff etc - with ghetto gear like mine there is nothing even remotely comparable. nothing.

it wont beat flameblasters and archers - sure it wont - but the rest? it already did.

If I were a HC league player I wouldn't touch this skill in favour of Reave.

BF is mechanically.......risky. The power of the stack release mechanic is one of its greatest weaknesses. That shit can get you killed vs Reflect, and will get you killed vs Volatile Blood.

That being said, one of the main reasons I prefer it to Reave in Standard League is because I have time to loot without worrying about dropping my aoe stacks. Combined with the automatic targeting the gameplay is actually rather enjoyable.


The high base damage is an huge step in the right direction for holistic melee balance. Unless we start seeing drastic changes to melee passives/entire passive tree melee skills need to start doing bonkers damage for melee builds to approach the capabilities of contemporary ranged builds. As an example; for me to consider my duelist and my ranger roughly equal in "power" my duelist would need a shitton more survivability - something he cannot currently get without immensely disproportionate sacrifices in offence. (Both chars are life-based but I should probably remake the BF Duelist as a CI Shadow)


@Sid, there are 61 previous pages of discussion here that I haven't read. What would you change about the skill?

If we slapped the "channelling" tag onto Cyclone would you not similarly consider it a "spell"?
I think you're right about the origins of BF, but is that actually so bad? I haven't played any melee skill except Reave for a lonnnng time and I tried out Wild Strike the other day. The gameplay is dogshit, having to namelock > run > make physical contact feels soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bad from a gameplay perspective. I could barely even get to the end of the Strand Map I was testing in without wanting to close the client for a few days.