Lancing Steel

I wanted to test Lancing Steel if it's any good, but it isn't.

It feels even worst than original EK Marauder from the old days when you had no cast speed. Negative attack speed hurts.
It is probably supposed to "hit hard", but there is no ailment support, there is no rising amount of projectiles, there is no barrage like the Greust A7/Fields skill.

I don't get the design of this skill.
Is it supposed to be used with 2H to hit hard?
Is it supposed to be used with slow 1H/DW to hit hard?
It does alternate, so DW is not intuitive, probably better just 1H&Shield, but at that point, projectile attack for that - Shield Throw - it has better scaling and now easily accessible utility.
Or is it supposed to be used with fast 1H and build around additive dmg? But at that point it is probably better to just go Ele conversion and the whole point of the skill - Impale - is completely meaningless.

I haven't played character that felt this bad for a while.
Any phys bow build is better with just the existence of Mirage Archer. And that is even despite the fact that Mirage archer does not proc ailments.

Without shotgunning, this skill is just bad. And the way PoE scales dmg with conversion it makes this skill horribly wrong as it is not good in any aspect.

I love lancing steel. But i have to agree on some of those things mentioned before.

I really, really love it. So Here are my suggestions after i played
-Lancing Steel Slayer
-Lancing Steel Deadeye
-Lancing Steel Berserker

Things that i think suit lancing steel really, really good are the new amulet "fury valve" combined with chain. This feels really, really good. But it lacks a lot (±1,5mil shaper dps) of damage compared to a Lioneyes Chest (lvl 15 Pierce), and this is kinda sad because i don't like to build lancing steel with pierce. Its just boring.

First of all, it's REALLY hard to see. Maybe make the projectiles gain the mtx effect of a weapon?

On lvl 20 lancing steel could use 3-5 extra projectiles and maybe 20-40% more projectile speed

Would be really cool if Lancing Steel would get Sand/Blood Stance switch.
In Sand Stance you could have all those projectiles pierce 2 targets. (maybe 25% chance to Blind and farshot added?)

In Blood Stance you have the fury Valve effect Built in and projectiles chain 2 times. (maybe 25% chance to bleed and point blank added?)


being realistic: added visibility and ± 30% projectile speed would be cool. and a reason to NOT use lioneye with +15 gem pierce support, like a built in "chain" effect and/or the fury valve effect

Shattering Steel, as far as I could tell, is just a strictly better skill doing something similar. I don't really understand what they were trying to do with lancing steel. It's sort of like arctic breath is to cold snap - just a wannabe skill that, if swapped with its superior counterpart, makes you instantly better.

My feedback is mostly concered with the Call of Steel skill for which i couldnt find a thread.

Being forced to pause and do nothing while steel charges generate in a single target situation feels terrible.
The generation shouldnt stop when you use a skill.
A good solution would be to make Call of Steel a buff with a duration generating 12 Steel Shards over its duration of .5 seconds.

Hey there, just two quick questions for GGG:

What is the fire rate of the projectiles created by lancing steel?!

Are the accuracy and crit rolls performed for each projectile individually or just once for the whole cloud of shards?

(In the anouncement it was mentioned that lancing steel has a fixed fire rate but I found no further details. I would love to know it for optimizing my build! From my personal testing I assume something like one projectile every 0.07 seconds?)

Hopefully this is the right forum. Thanks in advance.

General/About me
Hi everyone! Since a certain page of the internet that starts with r is not reslly my cup of tea anymore, i figured i would leave some feedback here. Since english isn't myfirst language i do hope i can give some rather readable thoughts anyways :D
I played since at least Sacrifice of the Vaal and definietly above a casual level (at the beginning of the league several hours a day) - students and their free time ^^


Class choice
I played lancing steel as more or less 2nd charakter this league and chose deadeye for the physical projectile scaling synergy. I have to amid i didn't play much deadeye beforehand, but overall the class feels rather good for it.

Two things i would like to point out here: Some form of either chain, fork or pierce did seems necessary for me, "Powerful Precision" solved that rather nicely. Second is "Rupture" giving very nice sustain of life. I have not tested Ricochet so far, but plan on doing so.


Early leveling to end of story/A bit about the othe steels skills
I exclusively leveled with the new steel skills and also switched regulary between the 3 (splittiting, shattering, lancing) till about level 50. All of these posed the impression, that they want to fullfill a certain role. During leveling i tried both 2h and 1h versions.

Splitting mostly for clearing packs and having the strongest "autoaim" component. Felt rather nice to rush through the levels with, good introduction to the new steel shard system. Felt of noticably for single target damage.

Shattering Steel felt immediatly good upon takeing it up. While for me the skill failed to communicate clearly through visual effects where you are supposed to stand/aim for the best results (close combat range? Just at the edge of the shattering?), it does seem to have the best all around package for my taste in terms of single target vs. clear. Here Call of Steel also felt the best to use.

Lancing Steel for me personally felt kind of underwelming upon first picking it up. In hindsight i believe this has 2 reasons:

- the playstyle is rather different!
In the next 20 or so levels i figured out, that lancing steel is more fitted for a semi ranged to ranged playstyle. This might have been irretating coming from shattering steel, but after many hours of playtime i still feel like lancing steel feels then most unique of the new steel skills. Note: i wouldn't want this changed

- it's damage initially felt quite a bit worse than it's cousins
For me it was one of those cases where i felt while leveling with a tabula rasa and currency to craft decent weapons on demand felt kinda necessary, since the damage really wouldnt feel good without extra links/gear at this stage.

After a time, towards the end of the story i was rather content with the skill overall. I had gotten a hang of the palystyle and damage was starting to pick up. Hypothesis: Shattering Steel feels better on little damage investment than Lancing Steel, which kinda seems to need a bit "extra" (more projectiles, attack speed to smooth out, general damage, etc.).

Noticably the call of the steels skill and shard system also felt rather different. Where with shattering steel it really felt like a 1-2 punch combo, it here felt more like a necessary fire-reload system. Which at this stage still felt rather good, but the call of steel damage was already underwealming compared to shattering steel.

Overall i would give it a bit more early power. If i wouldn't have had the plan in mind to create a character around the lancing steel skill, i would have disregarded it upon first try for shattering.


Gearing
After finishing the story i thought about gearing and went with a crit and projectile stakcing aproche. Here i noticed again, that the skill does seem to need quite a bit of gear to feel competetive in damage especially. The playstile itself had become rather smooth with enough attack speed, the call of steel use time jewel and pierce from my deadeye class.


Endgame
Especially clearing maps (either liniar or open layouts) are still a blast to paly with the skill. In terms of playstyle it does actually remind me of spectral throw in leagues past, since you kind of tend to travel with a mass of projectiles in your wake. The clear for maze-type maps like Dungeon still feels alright, the skill does seem to have a clear identity for general mapping. Very satisfactory!

My one gripe with the skill is actually the single target damage. Please not that this is not a pure thing of "it does not also zoom zoom on bosses" thing. My thoughts boil down to a few points:

- call of steel here feels inconsistent
with only one monster/boss around you don't always get to 12 shards immediatly, worst sometimes even 0. On average i seem to get about 9ish shards. It is especaially this unreliablity that feels weird and not powerful. Sometimes i just have to press my "reload" button once, sometimes twice

- call of steel/shard system feels very mandatory to be used often
In the endgame call of steel/shard system feels completely like a pure "reload button". On a sidenote i still feel like the shard system is a VERY nice design idea and do like it a lot. But it does not feel powerful in the sense it does with shattering steel. It feels mandatory. I personally think that this due to the shards acting like a damage multiplier for lancing steel and like a second component/combo with shattering steel. Note: Intended or not, i really like this idea and identity difference. I feel like it really is mostly here that point one (call of steel feeling inconsistent) is most importan and would do a lot for the feeling of the skill

- still high ratio of gear to resulting damage
It does still feel like it needs a lot of "help" from gear to get of the ground. The scaling also does feel kind of off to me. With my current equipment and level (which is way past casual) i am able to annihilate maps but still kind of struggle with endgame bosses. It feels like lancing steel was designed to either be a midway between shattering and splitting steel or a mapping/speed clear alternative to single target focused shattering steel. However it struggles to get there without significant investment into gear, since even the clear didn't feel good for a good time and the single target on endgame bosses is still lackluster for the amount of gear

Final thoughts
Overall i do love the rework and the skill. Though i am also happy that it was not my first character of the league, which is a shame. I really would like to start into a new league with a new skill, however often these aren't reliably powerful enough. With the funds (and time) however very nice skill with incredabliy cool design! Awesome build, really loved it!

My hot take on the skill?
It doesn't need much. Just a nudge or two in the right direction
- improve overall damage for character levels 28 to about 50 by something like 20% ish to bring it more in line with shattering steel
- make call of steel in terms of shard generation more reliable
. give it a higher cap of steel shard stored to perhaps 16, one full use more (to make it a 1-2 punch, but in a different way than shattering steel) OR improve the damage part of call of steel to make it again comparable to shattering steel (not on the level of the rdicolus ground slam stuff, but normal shattering steel)

i hope this gives you devs some insight! Open to any further questions. Cheers!

Hi, recently I playing Lancing Steel build for 2nd time, I notice when I "Call of Steel", the impale only deal a small amount of damage to enemies, sometimes even deal no damage at all, was that a bug?

My impale chance is more than 100%

Assasin Lvl 58 plaing Lancing Steel Coc Arc/Ball lightning.
Lancing steel works surprisingly good for Coc but with one small problem.
It seams that check for if the attack is critical or not seams to be done before launching the burst of projectiles. That causes to all projectiles to "be" critical or not. In my setup (around 75% crit with full power charges) it gives me good chances for crit. But becouse roll for crtitical hits is done for attack and not for each individual projectile it couses my attack, and whole burst of projectiles that comes with it, to eather be hit or miss(i mean here as trigerring my linked coc skills). It feels great to hit a crit because all projectiles will be critical. But rolls of non crit are horrible. Because of attack rolls non crit all projectiles are non crit.
Simply all projectiles will crit or none of them. There is nothing in between.
It would be great for Coc setups to make crit roll for each projectile individually instead of one roll for whole attack.
Just a suggestion to make this skill feel more smooth while playing with crit chance lower than 100%.

The skill is fun and strong, but it fires just way too many projectiles, which causes a lot of freezes.

I have a good PC (i7-4790K and GTX 980), but playing this skill in particular will make grind it to a halt in single target fights.

Currently a level 90 Deadeye playing Lancing Steel (first time w/ a Steel skill) but this feedback is actually for a QoL improvement for Call of Steel.

There should be a way to display the current number of Steel Shards you have on top of the Call of Steel icon in the skill bar (similar to Exerted Attacks for Warcries)

Having it only at the top of the screen beside the buffs makes it hard to keep track of when things get very chaotic (especially since buffs always come and go, moving all the other icons around).

EDIT: I've encountered another problem that would be solved by this: when there are timers on top (e.g. Delirium about to end/Monolith encounters) or Boss HP+names and the Steel Shard counter is being blocked by such things. I literally cannot see how many I have left so I might be expending 4 shards or just 1 and that makes a huge difference.