Cleave

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Vipermagi wrote:

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heatzz wrote:

Did cleave change?
Is it used to be -40% total dmg, now it's physical dmg instead for dual wield.

It always had the Dual-Wield penalty as well.
The regular always-applied damage penalty was shifted to Damage Effectiveness.

So it would make more sense to make cleave build elemental than physical right.

The skill is inferior for a couple of reasons:

1) It has no additional effects as opposed to other AoE melee abilities.
2) The AoE is relatively low with 1) in mind.
3) No support gem to use on it besides AoE increase/concentration. Both INT ones.

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Vipermagi wrote:

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Unacceptable wrote:

3) No support gem to use on it besides AoE increase/concentration. Both INT ones.

Besides, you know, Melee Physical, Added Fire, Faster Attacks, Weapon Elemental Damage, Leech, Life Gain on Hit :/

None of these actually increase the AoE and the Added Damage ones are affected by 30% reduction due to 70% damage effectiveness.

Life On Hit and Lifeleech can be done with any ranged attack as well.

i got to about 220k dps on diamond last ladder with this skill, id say its pretty good :)

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Vipermagi wrote:

...I don't get it? Why is it a downside that the only AoE increase for any AoE skill is a downside specifically for Cleave?
(also, you worded that somewhat poorly, since you flat-out stated you could only use AoE/Conc :P )

Ground Slam also has 70% Damage Effectiveness and that's not a problem either.

GroundSlam has an arguably slightly larger area of effect. It can also stun.

The only supposed advantage of Cleave is meant to be that it takes both weapons into account with a 40% penalty. Something I find really crappy in comparison to a possible permastun.
To be on par with other attacks of the type, it needs either a slightly less penalty for dual wielding, a larger AoE or some additional effect.

As for the gems, I referred only to the fact that given Cleave's range is inferior to other melee counterparts and that Cleave has to actually compensate with gems what Ground Slam and other AoE's has roughly for free *with* additional effects.

The other part that it's only those gems that can help - this is some less Cleave issue, more of a melee skills vs ranged skills issue, that ranged skills can use chain/pierce/multiple projectiles/lesser projectiles/fork/AoE/Conc, while melee's can use only AoE/Conc to boost their AoE potential. Don't even get me started on spell totems and ranged totems. No melee counterpart here either.

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VictorDoom wrote:

i got to about 220k dps on diamond last ladder with this skill, id say its pretty good :)

I would like to know how you achieved that.