Cleave

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

It has shorter range, but wider spread, making it much better than ground slam when you're surrounded.

Yes, but the fact is that with GS you dont even have to go melee tange to use it, so with a smart playing you will NEVER get surrounded!
You can play with something like a "ranged melee"wtf, we have already full hp archers being more competitive than the more fragile and dps ones, now we want melee marauders with ranged style combat?:\
I think GS should have a "point blank" style effect; it deals more damage the closer the target is, and vice versa.
So people will stop using it as a "ahah!I got 4000 hp and you can't even touch me!" skill

Except when I play with cleave on my shadow, I can essentially do the same thing. Sure the "ranged melee" window isn't as wide, but I honestly attack fast enough and hit hard enough that I can somewhat reliably stunlock things that are in the range of my cleave (at least that's what appears to be happening)and I have no passives or supports that should be increasing the AoE of cleave, so, while I'm all for buffing cleave. I don't think it's a good call to basically make it a reskinned Ground Slam.
Perhaps I'm a niche case with my use of cleave.

"

haitu wrote:

"

SerBasterd wrote:

Most of the community seems to feel that Ground Slam is far and away the best melee attack in this game

That is definitely a big problem for players unless GGG intends the game to be like this. However, with the whole "build of the week," I think GGG should have more tricks up their sleeves.

There's also the part where Cleave is the premiere Dual Wield AoE attack. Ele damage nerfs have certainly changed things a lot, but in 9.8 cleave completely outperformed Groundslam in the DPS department.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

ongZ wrote:

Hey, I am playing with my dual wielding duelist atm, and I found 2x claws. I am wondering: Why doesn't they work with cleave? It would make sense from a graphical view, as it would be like scratching 2 claws in the face of the enemies.

Claws are not long enough weapons to actually cleave a person.

Wouldn't such logic also dictate that the Thrusting Swords class of weapons are incapable of cleaving, due to the lack of a sharp edge with which to cut and generally more flexible nature of such swords?

I don't need an actual answer, as I understand that some measure of suspension of disbelief is required in all games. I ask this mostly out of desire for some form of AoE for claws (and daggers) that's more reliable than whirling blades, especially for dual-wielding. And this is a video game, the impossible is more than possible, maybe a person can swing their claw with such force that a shockwave is created to cleave the target.



P.S Try taking a real claw and a thrusting sword and whack them against a dummy then tell me which creates more of a cleaving effect. ^_^

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

Weapon restrictions don't distinguish between regular and thrusting swords. They're all swords. Otherwise thrusting swords would probably not work with Cleave.

Do you intend to make this distinction later ?

I use cleave as main attack on right click because i like the area of damage better than the one of GS.
Although, the animation is not as accurate as i'd like it to be, because sometimes i hit mobs which are a little away and don't hit mobs which are very close (also it doesn't feel like an accuracy vs evasion thing, but more like a problem real character location and mob location). I don't really know about how to describe it, it just feels a little off.
Anyways, thats a minor thing because when learn how to use it, the problem is gone, and it's a very good skill.

My only problem with this skill is that it does not feel as visceral as some of the other ones. It is called 'Cleave' but when I perform the attack it sounds more like 'Swipe'. Basically a more full and 'gut-wrenching' sound effect could go a long way.

Thanks for the great game :)

The advantage of cleave over ground slam is in its dual wield support and the fun fact that when dual-wielding it doesn't reduce weapon elemental damage compared to normal attack as it does with physical part. Elemental part is actually boosted by 40% in case of hit with both weapons which can be pretty significant if you run elemental-heavy build with lots of auras and added elemental damage supports on cleave and use fast weapons.