Leap Slam

I've had a lot of troubles with leap slam. I use it on an axe marauder as a way to initiate fights and close the distance to ranged attackers / necros.

What happens is this. When I'm walking around and I spot a new group of enemies coming on screen, I'll leap slam from far away into the middle of the enemy group and BAM, nothing happens. Not a single one of the 4-6 critters get hit. Subsequent leap slams usually work fine.

I understand that my chance to hit is around 85%, so I'll miss some (I don't have resolute technique). But in the situation described above, I consistently miss, and I miss on ALL enemies in the AoE. Since I think hit chance is rolled individually, such occurances should be very rare.

It seems to not happen after I interact with the enemies before I leap slam, such as by casting Warlord's Mark on them, or leap slaming after I do other attacks to them.

This situation is similar to what I and others described in the Split Arrow forum, or what other testers have reported as "first shot often miss" problems, which is more noticable when you use a skill like Leap Slam that can target lot's of foes at once.

Has anyone else had that experience ? I think you may not encounter it if you have Resolute Technique.

It can be hard to reproduce this you don't have the specific play style. The best way to reproduce this is to leap slam on groups of very far enemies just as they appear on screen, after you've not attacked for a while. Groups of bandits, merveil spawns, monkeys and skeletons work well for this.

After the first leap fails, everything usually works fine. I can cleave, or leap slam again or what not. I thought of desync too, but desync is usually accompanied by random teleporting of myself or enemies, and that's not the case.

You know what, I'll make a video capture showcasing all of this, including similar problems with other skills. Got some good experience with a nifty piece of free software. I just don't know where I could upload it.

Update [3 days later]: I've finally made progress with this bug, I know almost exactly what happens and can now reliably make the bug trigger. Since it affects many skills with similar mechanics, I'll post it in the bugs forum after I do some additional testing.

I was having a go at building a "traveling" build (just for fun, I don't think it would work all that well at high levels)

So I was playing dual wield for that extra 10% attack speed
But I noticed my listed attack time on the hotkey was changing depending on what weapon I had in my offhand.

After playing with this for some time I think I've come to the conclusion that the local attack speed from both hands effects this skill. I was able to get the attack speed and hp steal from my off hand as well as my attack speed boosts on my main hand.

I've not had the equipment to guarantee that it isn't a display problem (the difference between 1.12 and 1.06 not being enough for me to really measure) but it felt a little faster with the two quick weapons (bonus to attack speed not base speed).

I'm not sure this is broken or anything (I can't seem to achieve more than about 2.5 attacks per second on paper) but I'm not sure it is how it is supposed to be working.

Now I really want a character that can jump across a map at 2 screens a second or so.

I have an impression that leap slam has evolved from mobility/distance shortening/escape skill into primary damage dealing/AoE skill. Although I've build a bloodmagic/life-leech (I know, how unique ;]) around it, it felt like an exploit a bit. Also, it felt like a waster of time to cast an curse or change for a different skill since I can slam just a few times more for the same effect (and even quite dangerous, since I'm less likely to get targeted properly when I'm slamming).

I would strongly suggest nerfing it to make it more of a specialised mobility skill allowing to get those pesky summoners and rangers without the need of going through the whole mob (or a quick and easy escape tool). Cooldown is the most obvious solution, but not the most popular approach. How about giving it:

- minimum distance travelled, so you can't leap slam a meter away (which looks silly anyway), which would make you leap slam of at least a distance of 'a few monsters away' (OR smaller BUT only in the case of jumping UP a wall or level of different height).

- damage increase as a function of distance leaped, so you do less damage if you slam for lesser distance.

Bunny hopping builds are the most ridiculously looking builds ever! :)

Yes, the skill is definitely bugged. It seems to behave something like this:

- If you target a specific enemy with it and hit, it applies your chance to hit on surrounding foes.

- If you target an enemy and miss, you automatically miss everyone in aoe.

- If you target ground, it applies your chance to hit on everyone in aoe normally.


Suggestion for balance:
The skill should have a damage bonus for targeted enemy, something like 25% and do only half damage to others in aoe. If you target ground it does only 50% damage to everyone in aoe. This is a much more logical way for it to behave and a fair bit more balanced compared to other skills, too.

1. Its got a Desync problem in large parties if you jump too far.
2. When you do long distance leaps it almost seems gauranteed to miss.
3. Its still pretty strong when it behaves

Oh guys, I forgot to update this thread about the bug... I made a bug report in the support sub-forum explaining all this and how it also affect other skills with similar mechanics. It even has a video of all that weirdness in action. It got some dev attention, but no real acknowledgement...
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/52981/highlight/

Oooohh, now I'm happy :-D