Cyclone

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Fillmore wrote:

If you understood what I was saying you wouldn't have thrown in the second part, I am talking about an increase to a bonus you already have; if you have no bonus or the same bonus to both then both are the same, but this skill is geared towards characters that are more likely to have a larger attack speed bonus than damage bonus.

Having said that I did not notice the skill had a physical damage bonus component to levelling up, I had only noticed the attack speed bonus.

And yes, attack speed is about twice as good as physical damage which is the way it is with the skill nodes - and even that undervalues attack speed which is why on my builds I always favour attack speed over damage.

Indeed. I apologize. You are correct...I guess D3 was worse than I thought and didn't have actual real math in it, and that's why it baffled me when I was doing it expecting something else ^_^

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Lets say we have 100 dps weapon
i have 10 ias. I am do 110 dps
Lets say i get another 10 ias. Now i do 120 dps

Now pretend i get 10 increased damage node instead of second ias node.

my dps is 100 X 1.1X1.1 = 121 dps.

Happy now? the second lot of ias increased my dmg from 110 by 9.09%. The physical node increased by true 10%

Yup, I got it when I did the math. I was remembering math that was prob far simpler I guess. Thanks for the numbers :)



Either way, this skill seems sub-par. I would like to see what the GGG testers were using it for/with/how/who/wtf.

I didn't really try it too much (just entered Cruel with my shadow at level 36, tried a level 1 gem), so I won't post about how the damage isn't very high.



I only have 2 real concerns right now:

- mana cost: 30 is really too much for the damage. I can see why it's 30 though, you don't want it to be linked to high damage gems I guess.

- maniability: you can't move while you use the skill. it's a pro and con IMO, it has its own gameplay where you have to be careful when you use it, but at the same time it's clunky.



I would only change the way the mana cost works with this skill. I would increase the mana cost based on the distance travelled.
Something like that.
The mana cost starts low, but increase rapidly at low distance, and do'nt increase too much the farther you travel.
It would retain the same idea behind the gameplay, but without the outrageous mana cost.
The only problem with this would be to show how it works in a small tooltip, but it would still be far more useful if you list it at "10 mana cost".

The downside of not being able to do anything while using the skill is already quite enough.

I did some more testing in submerged passage and the desync is totally unreal and beyond anything I have seen with Whirling Blades (which is notorious for desync issues). I used both WB and Cyclone and had no desync issues with WB, but Cyclone was crazy.

Cyclone behaves like WB in that if you run into an obstacle it ends the effect even if you moved less than the minimum distance. Once I used Cyclone through a group of squids and started taking more damage than I wanted so I just kept going away with Cyclone and left them behind (I had some speedy boots on); but I noticed I was still taking hit after hit from my life pool even after I left them behind; I had no status effects so I let the Cyclone expire and sure enough as soon as it ended I was teleported back and down some stairs into a group of squid wailing on me.

How is it even possible that my client is updating my life pool in real time but doesn't update my position?! It seems like if you hold the key down and spam Cyclone the server will not update your position until after the last use of Cyclone expires. At least with WB if you lose control and whirl in the wrong direction or something it is so quick that you can correct the situation; with Cyclone you are just screwed.

Anyone who thinks this skill is anything but a joke has never used Whirling Blades.

Whirling Blades -> you go from A to B very quickly and damage everything at and between those points within weapon range.

Cyclone -> you go from A to B VERY SLOWLY and damage everything at and in between those points within weapon range.

Cyclone costs about twice the mana as WB, coupled with how slow it is I think it fair to compare one use of Cyclone to two uses of WB.

WB is better for defense because the mobs cannot track you as well, WB is better for offense because the hits are bigger and thus more effective (against armour for physical and for status effects on elemental), WB causes less desync issues, WB is available like 20 levels sooner for Shadow. WB is also better for defense because of its speed you can use it to GTFO which you cannot do with Cyclone.

If you read the feedback on WB it is unanimously agreed that it is a great utility skill for mobility, but its damage is too lame to use as primary AoE; now we have Cyclone which is slower and does less damage!? When they did their internal tests and determined its damage to be good, what were they comparing it to, the default attack!?

Theory crafted for an hour, planned an optimal duelist Cyclone build. Finally got the skill with crazy attack speed. I hate, hate the skill. So disappointing. WW is my favorite in Diablo. The damage nerf is broken (in the bad way) and not being able to hold down the skill...nope. hate it

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Fillmore wrote:

...When they did their internal tests and determined its damage to be good, what were they comparing it to, the default attack!?

I love GGG. However, I have a real problem with all game developers. They are simply garbage at internal tests the majority of the time. Developers might be great at game design, but across the board it seems that, no matter the game, they are rarely the caliber of player that is needed to fine-tune the game properly.

I mean no offense, but quite honestly, legions of gamers that play games A LOT are going to be better than people who code games, and play much much less. It makes sense...but even then I find myself wondering at times who is testing stuff for developers (I'm not just talking about GGG here).

I really hope we are just missing the whole point of the skill, cuz I honestly can't come up with a good one. You simply can't replace your main AoE with it or you mobility with it (WB, Leap Slam, Flicker Strike). So all this skill does is add another skill to the already small hotbar...what are you doing to drop for it?

Perhaps it was designed for claw/dagger solely because they have no real AoE attack...but even if that is true Fillmore points out why WB is better in most regards: and it still sucks.

Will people please not pay any attention to tooltips when talking about DPS. Forget about the tooltips; take a stopwatch or just count aloud as you play and use the skills against packs of mobs in the same area and see for yourself - use the eye test; this is much more real world and relevant than what it says in some tool tip.

If I can use WB back and forth and wipe out a group of mobs in about 10 seconds and still have plenty of mana left in my pool and full life, but when I try to do the same thing with Cyclone it takes 20 seconds and I am at 2/3 life I don't care what the tool tip says, nor should I.

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Fillmore wrote:

Will people please not pay any attention to tooltips when talking about DPS. Forget about the tooltips; take a stopwatch or just count aloud as you play and use the skills against packs of mobs in the same area and see for yourself - use the eye test; this is much more real world and relevant than what it says in some tool tip.

If I can use WB back and forth and wipe out a group of mobs in about 10 seconds and still have plenty of mana left in my pool and full life, but when I try to do the same thing with Cyclone it takes 20 seconds and I am at 2/3 life I don't care what the tool tip says, nor should I.

QFT. I'm not sure who does the code for tooltip DPS but he must be new ^_^

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Rory wrote:

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Lionguild wrote:

I would really like to ask the Devs one important question. When doing Internal tests with cyclone that you say showed that it was doing a lot of damage, was this with a physical or elemental build?

Both! Tested on characters based on popular melee builds, and new builds designed to work specifically with Cyclone. Both were very capable of using the skill effectively. Generally, Physical Damage had much more survivability, while elemental melee builds had higher damage.

Thanks for the answer, and this gives me hope that a physical cyclone build based on mana and life leech is not futile (despite what kripp says). I'll keep working on it.

Really fun move to use, but desycning is my largest problem.

Cool skill, except for the huge minimum cast distance.

People complaining about damage output probably haven't used a fully upgraded gem for their characters level.

Still, I nearly died due to desync with this skill. But, I nearly die to desync with most skills. :)