Sweep

Is it correct that the -35% physical damage doesnt count when I use avatar of fire? Or does it count before Avatar of Fire is applied?

Also, how big is the circle? 300 degrees?

Used Sweep as main right-click AoE on my lvl 48 Marauder
on open Beta Weekend.
Carried me all the way to merciless A1.
(traded for a ~390 dmg mace in late ruthless, so gaming experience with this skill is a bit spoiled)


Dps development: 4 out of 5 stars.

Very much fun in herding mobs and sweeping them till merciless.
In merciless mobs got hard, but in a way where it was obvious that i had to start tweaking, wich is a fine thing and there are enough possibilities, thanks to passive skills, equip etc.
Still it was possible in merciless to get a bunch of soft mobs together and chop them.


Useability/dynamic: 3 out of 5 stars.

The skill feels pretty static. i often thought it would be much nicer if it was closer to whirlwind (d2).
I'd love to run around mob groups, herding them, and have a fluid transition to Sweep.
As of now you're herding mobs and on skill activation the character abruptly stops and sweeps. This takes a lot of dynamic out of the whole smashing part.


Ressource cost: 2 out of 5

The high mana cost pretty much forced me to go for blood magic. I found myself popping flasks every 10 seconds in crowded areas. Imho this makes no sense, it's an action game, ain't it? Skills should be spammable, my 5 Cents.
If i want to manage my Mana Bauble i go play WoW...


Fun factor: 3,5 out of 5

See above.

In my opinion sweep should either have more of a fending effect (possibly even 100% chance to knock back), or it should deal more damage.

why?

Because is it a melee skill, but in order for it to be effective at damage dealing, one must be surrounded by enemies, which is taking a huge risk to one's life.

So often when my current character dies it's because I'm using sweep when I'm surrounded. If I just was using a skill like flicker strike or ground slam (or even cleave), that would not happen. It's an annoying problem that makes the skill kinda valueless to me.


If not increase it's damage, make it useful for fending monsters when you're in a dangerous situation of being surrounded by buffing it's fending chance (like 40% base chance, and 1-2% gained per level)

"

Struyk wrote:

Is it correct that the -35% physical damage doesnt count when I use avatar of fire? Or does it count before Avatar of Fire is applied?

Also, how big is the circle? 300 degrees?

I think sweep is the one [only] remaining skill that will not be reduced in damage with avatar of fire. This may not be the case, but it certainly appears that it still AoF isn't affected by the reduction.

The current AoE is a full 360°. It was changed in 0.97 from 320º I think.

Feedback from a new player (level 11 marauder so far)

1. Tooltip says two contradictory things about damage -- can't these be combined into one line? (or are they different somehow?)

12% increased physical damage
25% less physical damage


2. Why not include the effective arc in the tooltip? The previous post here was very handy in helping me understand slam vs cleave vs sweep, why hide that info?


3. I've been using this mainly because I have a good 2H mace but not a 2H sword, so I can't use Cleave. Overall I think the game is forcing me too early into certain weapon and skill specializations when I don't know enough yet and/or am reacting to luck. Does it really add to gameplay to make Cleave work for swords and Sweep for axes? Why does my weapon have to force me into a specific skill?


4. I feel like this skill is telling me the right way to play my class is to get surrounded by mobs, but I don't feel that strategy is otherwise supported by common sense and/or any other skills, passives, etc I've discovered so far. Yet this remains my only usable AoE so far. Intended? Good?

Playing Ruthless Act 2. I do have a unique 2Her (Voll's Hammer, 200-300 per hit), but it's about 20 levels outdated :)

I'm using +Physical and Life on Hit with this. I'll run / leapslam in, sweep a couple of times then heavy strike the stragglers down. Very effective, occasionally I have to use a granite flask as I have low armour. It more than pays for itself (blood magic) and the listed DPS at level 5 is equal to groundslam at level 10.


@Briala - melee AOE is very fast, IFF you can pull it off. You have to balance the risk vs reward.

honestly even though i love it this skill does seem a little strong

i have a 35 duelist, mostly str based specializing in two handed weapons.

this skill has been my bread and butter to get through just about every act. i knew from the moment i tried it out that THIS was the skill for me

right now i have three red slot connected gloves with

sweep+life gain on hit+10-20 cold damage.

what this means is i can let enemies just crowd completely around me and just constantly sweep, gaining life and slowing their attacks down until there is nothing left but a pile of bones.

i do have some mana problems with it sometimes, but im thinking thats just due to lack of %mana gain on hit items and that ive spent 0 points in intelligence

the 2h aoe skill... it's starts out great, is good mid tear and gets weaker the closer your get to merciless. my biggest grouch with this skill is how static it feels. again you are trapped in your own animation and ripe for the killing while you try to balance dying with a decent life leech. the comparable low damage is mitigated by the fact that it hits almost EVERYTHING. so 2+ enemies and you're doing very good dps... if you can survive. enemies tend to hit REALLY FUCKING hard in merciless and this skill requires you to be in the middle of the fray. i suppose some added survivability during the animation would be a good thing...i'm thinking of some scaling armor modifier to make up for the insane damage on higher difficulties.

I love using this skill, but I hate how it suddenly becomes useless in Chaos, since I used it as my main attack through the whole game up till then.

The problem is that Sweep demands a somewhat tanky build in order to gather a cluster of monsters and take their blows as you pummel them. But tanky builds become impossible without a shield in Chaos, so it kind of becomes useless in Chaos because it doesn't work no matter what build youhave. Maybe quality on this gem could cast a 2-3 second self-buff that gives some armor.

Do increase aoe passives affect the range of sweep? My bad i see that it does on the first page.

I LOVE sweep. By far one of the most usable skills I've used so far. I use on my marauder with 2h axes and maces and it works like a charm. I round up all enemies, put on molten armor and do 1 sweep, DONE. All enemies of my level get killed just like that. So I'll have a few dozen enemies laying nicely stacked around me. LOVE IT! Wish I could use it with swords... but swords have cleave, so I guess it's not too horrible.

What I would like to see is maybe a whirlwind type of skill too. Continuously sweeping would be amazing. Or at least having an ability to move and sweep at the same time.