Cleave

Cleave is now the best main race skill for 4/6* classes. This is particularly problematic in descent, as only one of those classes receives it as a guaranteed drop. Theres also not much room for build diversity in a competitive environment when one skill deals double the damage of everything else.

Please rebalance the skill to be more in line with other aoe skills- change the 40% physical damage reduction while dual wielding to also affect elemental damage, or something similar that allows other aoe skills to compete.

Your overall data might not back this up for ranger yet, but her new melee paths and notables are roughly equal to shadows, so even if there hasnt been a spike in dualstrike/cleave rangers in standard races (and im pretty sure there has), its only a matter of time.

*Duelist, Templar, Shadow, Ranger. A case could be easily be made for witch in descent as well, assuming it drops early enough with gear to match.

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KoTao wrote:

change the 40% physical damage reduction while dual wielding to also affect elemental damage

This.

Additionally, I'd shrink the base area of Cleave to 75% of its current radius and have Cleave gain +x% Increased Area of Effect per level, just like Rain of Arrows. This would cause an unsupported Cleave to be just as large an area at level 20 (for endgame play), but make it not nearly as big of an area at gem level 1.

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KoTao wrote:

Cleave is now the best main race skill for 4/6* classes. This is particularly problematic in descent, as only one of those classes receives it as a guaranteed drop. Theres also not much room for build diversity in a competitive environment when one skill deals double the damage of everything else.

Please rebalance the skill to be more in line with other aoe skills- change the 40% physical damage reduction while dual wielding to also affect elemental damage, or something similar that allows other aoe skills to compete.

Your overall data might not back this up for ranger yet, but her new melee paths and notables are roughly equal to shadows, so even if there hasnt been a spike in dualstrike/cleave rangers in standard races (and im pretty sure there has), its only a matter of time.

*Duelist, Templar, Shadow, Ranger. A case could be easily be made for witch in descent as well, assuming it drops early enough with gear to match.

Add to that that Cleave can be pretty good for Marauder as well depending on the weapons you get; and Marauder actually gets it guaranteed as well.

Agreed.

Were it not for leap slam, 5 out of 6 classes would all play exactly the same at this point.

Turning the ranger into yet another cleaver really rubbed me the wrong way.

The reason cleave is so good now is that the hp of monsters was increased because of melee physical damage buffs. Reave might be viable, but spells remain bad if their damage is not increased. Might be time to revert that poison arrow nerf too.

I don't think it's Cleave that is overpowered- everything else is underpowered.

Most of the low level gems were designed to showcase support gems. They need LMP or Fork or the like before the skill becomes useful. That's why they are not useful in races.

Cleave is unique in that the core effect of the skill is entirely encompassed in the skill itself and not distributed across a litany of support gems. There should be more skills like this, particularly Req Lv1-4. Hopefully Reave will be another.

We need more skill gems like Cleave that do stuff on their own in the low levels. Cleave appears OP because it is the only low gem that follows this philosophy, but it should not be degraded to match others just because poorly-designed gems (vastly) outnumber well-designed gems. They should all be well-designed gems.

What skills are you comparing Cleave to, PolarisOrbit?
Cleave is an AoE melee skill. The other two low-level AoE Melee skills (Sweep and Ground Slam) also follow this 'philosophy' as you call it. The problem is that Sweep and Ground Slam suck compared to Cleave. I thought that was basically the point of this thread - buff sweep and ground slam so that they are good competition for cleave.

Of course single-target melee skills need supports to be good AoE skills.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

What skills are you comparing Cleave to, PolarisOrbit?
Cleave is an AoE melee skill. The other two low-level AoE Melee skills (Sweep and Ground Slam) also follow this 'philosophy' as you call it. The problem is that Sweep and Ground Slam suck compared to Cleave. I thought that was basically the point of this thread - buff sweep and ground slam so that they are good competition for cleave.

Of course single-target melee skills need supports to be good AoE skills.

You forgot Leapslam which imo is far better than cleave in every race excluding descent.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

What skills are you comparing Cleave to, PolarisOrbit?
Cleave is an AoE melee skill. The other two low-level AoE Melee skills (Sweep and Ground Slam) also follow this 'philosophy' as you call it. The problem is that Sweep and Ground Slam suck compared to Cleave. I thought that was basically the point of this thread - buff sweep and ground slam so that they are good competition for cleave.

Of course single-target melee skills need supports to be good AoE skills.

Sweep's a good counter-example but it's more versatile than Cleave (wider radius) so it can't be expected to be as efficient. Although the versatility doesn't matter much in races, it's still a feature of the skill and GGG can't ignore that when it comes to the skill's balance. This skill is fairly decent, but Cleave is better.

Ground Slam is a different situation. It is very useful in a normal game situation where you can kite things as long as it takes to kill them, but in races that strategy can't work because it's not efficient to kite in circles before you kill anything. The narrow AOE close to the caster causes the skill not to work in race environment.

Cleave is minimal- it just does what it needs to do. AOE attack in an arc. But it also does everything that it needs to do. Sweep does more than what it needs to do, Groundslam doesn't quite do everything it needs to (AOE at very close range). We need more skills that fill their role as well as Cleave does.

Actually it's the best skill for a mara too.

In one race I found ondars clasp and 2 elemental sword and I progressed much faster than with other skills.