Cleave

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kadrek91 wrote:

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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

This is the problem with cleave vs groundslam. The privilege of aoe'ing from mid-range with groundslam as opposed to more or less straight up melee with cleave is huuuge. Not only in terms of risk, but in terms of killing speed as well.

I'm a level 73 dual strike/cleave duelist, and this is what I've noticed. Cleave only shines when you have very fast mobs that surround you, like monkeys. But more often than not, you're fighting slow mobs like golems and zombies, where there's 3-5 zombies on the screen, and they are fairly spread apart, so cleave isn't viable at all, because the reach is so low, but with groundslam you can just aoe all of them easily. I have to run around a bit and "round them up" before i can cleave them, or just use dual strike on each one, which often times is faster...

The same applies for archers - with ground slam you can aoe all or most of them, but with cleave you're better off just picking them off 1 by 1 with dual strike.

This, I imagine, is one of the reasons marauders dominate on the ladder - because they can aoe very very easily and constantly kill very large packs of mobs. This is not the case with cleave.

I wanted to point this problem out, because the true melee (cleave) vs ranged melee (ground slam) has already been beaten to death.

I would like to see improvements to cleave. Things like, a built in life leech or life on hit, to compensate for the risk. Maybe an interesting mechanic, like the more mobs you're hitting at once, the more damage you do to each.

I think this would make a lot of duelists happy...

I'd be curious to know if anyone is running Cleave with max possible +AOE increase? I'm planning a witch build that will look like this. And I'm wondering how big my cleave AOE will get:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMAAM5rSAM5K8wHJsqWB4wTLAh6wpwKqDEdC7z2zgvqr3ManVm0IXnaeiYCROMnr18DMNo5cDLquew1hPLeNtIc6j2hNr0_nl9NQkzWvElHOJxKxdMKSwYla0yv9UNNM76rV2DFvVqo2SFbPAaMW6lBsVzZ3xRdVbLmYLjxCGM6v8hmxzXbZ2J6umfCl6d3ABYJfMAh3pYcZWri9gc99Tm6j_2YbdO9IbtWzcpmY9szIri8gbjmqb8HYvTkamaJLEgPsYq4eo-7lnXIOTABnCM8rNkJHdmcxUTN95J9zefx0F6TeKvwypGQXIfeJZOMWT7vzZ9SmZr5EKW_R5ecyo6YiOcJ6irImb0C48G0B7Szwc6h5oQ13UeLzbu68n6phOJL5K_cDvhfsjPrYAuN2GapJb0pmYCysMcx4uPL_-AiIh_lY9BU_ovirvNf7VaqBTpWgMkz1cJjtpC8R97gpBGAxQ==

My planned build set up will be: Cleave + More Melee Damage + More Melee Damage While Full Life + More AOE

My last supports I'm considering are:
Concentrated Effect (this would multiply Cleave's damage by about 50% but bring it back to be about the same size as it is normally, if a little larger)
Faster Attacks or Mana Leech (not sure which one I'll need more)

This build should potentially give more damage than simply grabbing a lot of +sword damage nodes, because of my support gem set up

(1.3~ are low rank increased physical melee damage/melee damage while on full life; which are both "more damage" which means they are multiplicative with each other and 'more area damage')

1.3*1.3*1.5*1.28 = *3.2448

1.28 comes from my +28% increased damage with swords

And then, when you consider my critical multiplier, and diamond flasks... well, this build could be potentially devastating in PVP.

works well with a number of builds. balanced.

I seem to keep missing some mobs that I should be hitting. I read somewhere from a GGG member, that accuracy and crit is rolled ONE TIME for each aoe attack. Which means if I hit one mob, I should hit all of them (unless they block).

But sometimes when I'm fighting mbos that I imagine don't block, monkeys, archers, etc. I cleave and hit 2+ in melee range, they die. But one or more that are in between and mixed in with the other mobs, seem to go unscathed.

Possibly de-sync or lag... but it seems strange that they can go untouched to me.

Ah, okay thanks for the response. I was getting a little upset. But if its designed that way then I have 0 problem with it. I'm used to accuracy working that way in other games anyways, thanks again Mark!

Cleave dosen't seem to be strong enough. I was 71 duelist, brother was 62 marauder, playing maps together he would take out mobs faster with GS compared to my cleave. He was running a4link with faster attacks +amd+ald. I was 5l with fa+amd+acd+afd(280phy+23cd and 220phy+ 33fd)

I thought i would clear stuff fast, but a 4l gs was able to take more mobs out based on the aoe i guess?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Minor nitpick: Cleave is not melee range.
Cleave's range is longer than melee range by the same amount that ground slam's range is longer than cleave.

I like this effect of cleave. It's seems to me particularly effective against slow mobs. As someone mentioned, also very effective against against the monkeys, especially those in the second rank that turn tail when one mob dies.

Edit: Found out the hard way that the range of Cleave is equal or shorter than the blast radius of Molten Shell. RIP.