Splitting Steel

I am running lancing steel and splitting steel in a 5L and a 4L respectively at the moment utilizing a 2H sword (terminus est).

I have zero complaints, according to you guys there was a bug where projectile modifiers were not correctly working... but as a player it was not perceptible.

There are still quite a few things I want to tinker around with in terms of projectile manipulation (forking, chaining, and the like) so I may have more feedback in a week or so. thus far the skills have been pretty straight forward, they indicate clearly what they want from the player to actually perform well. I do have one point of clarification that i would like to request of you you folks at GGG though.

Particularly the "Call of Steel" or shard recall button. from the phrasing of the skills description 2 things are unclear to me. there is a line that states, "Reflects physical damage around each enemy equal to the damage of removed impales" this part makes sense, but begs a question. the skill goes on to state that that figure, the "damage of removed impales..." is then multiplied by the "Number of hits they have left", the wording is clumsy but my assumption is that the multiplier is determined by the number of remaining possible stacks of impale that can still be applied to those targets.

so here is the real question.

Splitting Steel has an AoE component separate from its additional projectiles. the initial, as well as the subsequent projectiles all deal area damage which can apply an impale.

When I press that call of steel... is the reflected damage dealt calculated as the sum of that initial strike (i know its not a strike skill) i.e. whatever the "reflected" figure is multiplied by the number of targets affected THEN multiplied by the maximum number of possible impales minus the applied impales.

lets assume 20 enemies hit with 1000 damage by a champion with 8 possible impale applications...

so that would be something like 100 reflected damage times the 20 affected enemies times the remaining 7 potential applications...

or am I wrong to assume the # of affected targets comes into play at all.

I know this is super wordy feedback, but the wording of the skill is pretty straight forward, but in practice the skill occasionally just completely exceeds expectation especially in very dense pack size maps... I love it but i don't understand it on a mechanical level and therefore do not know how to maximize its potential from where I am now

So where to begin... You guys keep trying to bring these "steel" skills once in a while by changing mechanics/names etc. This time you almost made them considered good. So I've been playing around with splitting steel and lancing steel since the league start. Maybe I should've re-rolled my build 10 times by now but I am stubborn and still trying to improve it while I can.

For clear splitting steel is okey. Kinda feels like less powerful tornado shot.
But for single clear, it almost doesn't exist. This is where lancing steel comes to play for this and I am kinda okey with swapping gems between bosses for this situation.

But the MOST IMPORTANT part where these "new" STEEL SKILLS miserably hard is that you are forced to use "Call of Steel". Yes it is an awful mechanic you guys presented to us. I've been playing for almost 7 years by far and for the first time I am experiencing major pains in my left hand.

It feels so bad being forced to reload your limited (12) ammo (shards) to fight.
This type of limitations should not exist in this game. Imagine playing a bow character where you have limited arrows to fire. This does not make any sense.

I understand you guys tried to create some kind of 2 button play-style and this was your way of implementing some new mechanics to the game for a while.

But this is not acceptable in any sense, just feels so wrong. And I am also using the 30% chance to not consume shard eternal labrynth enchant.

To wrap up my feedback about "Splitting Steel" it is a worse tornado-shot like skill for melee characters. Bad single target/okeyish clear. But it is always fixable with better gear. Damage is not the reason that I am writing this feedback. It is "Call of Steel" mechanic.

So Here is my real feedback/ideas to improve Call of Steel for you guys.

A) Make it all steel skills passively regenerate shards without having to press call of steel. And when you press call of steel you gain up to maximum instantly if you are not on maximum limit.

B) If you are not okey with "A". Increase 12 stack limit greatly. And make it to give max stacks instantly when you use it.

C) If you are still not okey with "A" and "B". Make it an instant skill. So we can mindlessly spam it.

D) And lastly of course. Scrap the whole "having to reload your ammo" mechanic and thing of something else for call of steel. Focus on more on making it a shard explosion skill like you made with "knives" skill.


This skill has a potential to become a good skill but gutted behind the limited amount of shard limit mechanics.

And please don't let us wait another 3 months to see the fail of steel skills again. I think you can improve it between this leagues' time frame.

Thanks.

I'm currently playing a lv84 Champion with Splitting Steel on 2H axes. Was using Lancing steel too but I dropped it recently. And just for build explaining, I have no problem with the damage and I don't have a single projectile node on my passive tree. So people saying that you need to heavily invest in projectile nodes and even that steel skills only work on deadeye, are absolutely wrong.

Splitting Steel is a great skill for clear speed, the damage is pretty ok and the in-built projectile behavior is simply brilliant. With enough attack damage (and I said attack damage, not dps), it can easily 1-shot or at worst 2-shot the whole screen... without even one extra projectile. That's the first point where I see people is failing to build Splitting Steel, I've seen a lot of build attempts where they sacrifice the damage they need in exchange for some extra projectiles they don't.

For the single target, I agree that it could be better, of course it can always be better. But dropping the extra projectiles support of choice for slower projectiles it's good enough to kill bosses. You're not gonna melt them, but you'll do them without much suffering.

As for Call of Steel... I truly think people didn't understand that skill, or they build solely around the steel skill itself and don't even count Call of Steel as part of the build but just a "reload weapon" button. As an user of steel skills, Call of Steel is part of your dps. If you've built it rightfully, Call of Steel is the most part of your dps. And, as a big part of your dps, people shouldn't use it as a reload weapon button, merely when they lack steel shards.

I'll try to explain. Call of Steel deals on an area burst the same damage those impale stacks would have done by attacking the impaled enemy hit by hit, no more no less. Literally, the stacked damage multiplied by the number of uses it's left. That's exactly what impale does, so there's nothing new here. The difference is that it deals the whole damage in a burst, and that you can still use the impale stacks of corpses. So there's no reason to use it as a reload button, it's a 2-button synergy that should be used in combination at every moment, just like ED+Contagion. It massively improves your overall dps, and I mean MASSIVELY. And since you're constantly spamming it, you'll never run out of steel shards. If you're using The Impaler keystone, just impale the screen once, then call your impales back and everything's dead.

Just as side note, Call of Steel isn't an attack nor a spell or any other tag. It's not affected by any passive node or item mod, since it's reflected damage and even global damage modifiers are applied to you and reflected damage isn't you. What that mean is that, the Lord of Steel jewel mod that adds #% increased damage to Call of Steel is a real #% more final damage. Think of a +50% more effect of impales (more, not increased). It's HUGE.

People who's having problems with building around this skill doesn't have problems because it's a bad skill, or it doesn't scale well, or anything. They're having problems because they haven't undertood how to build around steel skills to begin with.

So IMO (and I've tried and failed to build around steel skills many times), now steel skills and particularly Splitting Steel, is working great. Great clear speed at the cost of being a 2-skill synergy (it will always be slower than one-button builds), and not an amazing single target skill but still enough for those of us that don't like to swap gems for bosses. It's very well-rounded as it is and doesn't need any rework.

BUT, sorry GGG but not everything's okay with steel skills. It definitely works way better with 2H weapons, building around the damage of each impale stack rather than the stacking speed. But for those who still prefer to build around attack speed and dual wielding, Call of Steel is so slow to use. It slows their speed a lot, and they even need it more than 2H users since they're spending steel shards at a much higher rate, so they suffer the same problem twice. So there's my solution for both problems, since I understand that 2H shouldn't be the only way to make steel skills work:

1. Make that modifiers to attack speed also affects Call of Steel cast speed, so dual-wielding users can have a smoother playstile without it becoming overpowered for 2H users. 2H users can still benefit from a faster use via Lord of Steel jewel if they want, so that item modifier has its niche without being mandatory.

2. Make steel shards to stack "per weapon", maybe lowering a little the maximum stack size. So the max stack size of steel shards could be, for example, 10 for 2H users/ shield users, and 20 for dual wielders. The wording might look something like "Maximum steel shards' stack is doubled while dual wielding". Not sure about the shield thing thought. Since they spend shards much faster, they'd benefit from having a larger stack. Again, without it becoming overpowered for 2H users.

Thx for the good work and bringing steel skills to life, better late than never. Let's pray for Steelskin.

So its been a week and i see complaining about what for me has been the best, smoothest, and strongest league start of my PoE career.

To Start off... I am running a double 6 link (as of this morning yay) a Terminus est, flat physical to attacks on rings and amulets, and the new steel jewel in my passive tree (the "Overwhelm" one). I also Stack "Overwhelm" all over my passive tree, This effectively deletes any enemy armor value. Splitting Steel is supported by, Vicious Projectiles, Fork, Chain, Maim, and Brutality. The initial projectile impacts, then naturally splits into 4, those four then hit and split again (Via fork) Then hit 3 more enemies each (Via Chain, 1 for the final hit from fork and the +2 chains) this results in approximately 30 enemies hit per swing... 30 applications of a single impale being that I have around a 130% chance to impale (the base gem has too much impale chance but I assume this is for leveling purposes and should not be changed).

The next bit is a somewhat unintuitive, and new mechanic from the "Call of Steel" component of the Reworked Steel Skills. Stated as simply as I can, the impales that were applied to these 30 or so enemies are removed from the enemies in a small explosion. That explosion deals damage equal to the impale value multiplied by the number of remaining impale stacks.

**My math may be incorrect but based on my understanding of the skill I think this is happening**

A champion spec'd into Master of Steel has a max potential of 8 impale "Stacks" that they can apply. in the aformentioned scenario there are 30 impaled enemies who can still have 7 more impales applied to them. lets assume the reflected damage from that singular impale is 1000 dmg. assuming my math is correct (which it probably isn't) then the AoE damage of call of steel in this scenario would be 7000 (1000 X 7 per detonation or 210,000 for the entire pack assuming total overlap) "reflected" damage per detonation. assuming some overlap of these explosions the resulting recall will absolutely devastate the area those enemies occupied. this scenario only requires a tool tip DPS of 10,000 (assuming 1 attack per second) I currently have a tool tip of 63,000DPS and around 2.8 attacks per second (roughly 20,000 damage per swing) so it is not unreasonable to assume in very tightly packed scenarios i am dishing out around 500,000 damage per detonation... or potentially even more. This claim is supported by the unique mobs that I one tap all throughout my heists currently.

There are some Quality of life elements that come from the gem and supports. When the initial projectile splits (base skill gem) the 4 split projectiles target nearby enemies very effectively, the fork and chain continue this effect macking the character feel as though its launching heat-seeking grenades all over my maps/heists, my aim is often of little consequence to my DPS.

moving on to lancing steel, which admittedly is more complex but in my opinion a the more powerful of the two skills. Currently my Active skill set up for Lancing Steel is, the active gem, Maim, Brutality, Greater Multiple Projectiles, Vicious Projectiles, and Culling Strike. I think it is important to note that reasonably both Maim, and Vicious projectiles might not be the optimal choice for maximum DPS output (Damage on Full Life exists).

Lancing Steel consumes a great number of Steel Shards to be empowered and therefore the player must choose wisely when and how to attack with this skill, but also, this makes lancing steel fit very comfortably into the, "Hit and run" play style. Lancing Steel is empowered by consuming up to 4 steel shards and for each shard consumed the skill fires 50% "more projectiles" (200% more when consuming the full 4 shards). the skill starts with 4 projectiles, and through consuming 4 shards the base number is tripled up to 12. This mechanic indicates that Lancing Steel benefits a great deal from adding more and more projectiles to the base attack, hence the Greater Multiple Projectile Support. GMP brings the base number of projectiles to 8, and thus the empowered number to 24. The individual projectiles may not exactly devastate any target by themselves though and this is why I did not opt to fork or chain with this skill as it would Presumably result in an impotent "meme" of a skill. At the moment, I personally think that the tool tip dps of the skill should more or less be completely ignored due to the nature of impale stacking (every subsequent hit after the first hits harder... and harder... and harder than the last). In execution, Lancing Steel seems to be intended to virtually instantly stack up full value impales causing a very satisfying "ramping" of your damage. in the best of scenarios you can leap right next to your target and unleash 3 very quick and fully empowered Lancing Steels and absolutely MELT nearly anything in the game. At the highest level I have no doubt that lancing steel will eventually become one of the very best "Boss Killers" in the game. Consider this, with only 3 attacks per second, Lancing Steel can hit over 70 times. That's a lot of damage... very quickly. Call of steel seems to act differently in this scenario though, detonating is a smaller area obviously, but seeming to do substantially more damage within that area (which is why i think my math is wrong or at least my understanding of the nuances of the mechanic).

I now feel compelled to make a Build Guide Thread for this skill being that it would seem most people who have tried it do not share my success with it. I have played this game for thousands of hours and this very easily wound up being my strongest and most successful league starter with honestly very little investment. I would recomend this skill to literally everyone... it is tremendous... and GGG must have known it would be because it performing as well as it does for me is justification enough for the removal of "Deep Cuts" from the game (which would have made this character absolutely broken). I am also working on a video to showcase the skill but I am not a very good editor at all so maybe that wont make an appearance.

In general terms I agree with you (haven't tested Lancing Steel seriously enough to have a well-informed opinion about it).

The only concern about Lancing Steel is that subsequent projectiles to the same target deal substantially less damage, resulting in lower stored damage per impale. The damage penalty for projectiles after the first one is so big that I'm not really sure if spendind a support gem for the extra projectiles is worthy. I mean, you're adding double projectiles but not double damage, plus the negative damage multiplier from the support of choice (GMP or Greater Volley), against the damage bonus you'd get if you add, let's see, Damage on Full Life instead. It's hard to figure on the tooltip or PoB since any of them considers the damage loss of subsequent projectiles, but to be honest I'd be surprised if GMP or Greater Volley are worth the gem slot for Lancing Steel (in a "let's shotgun the boss" scenario).

For Splitting Steel, both the initial projectile and the splitted sub-projectiles explode on impact (you'll know better than me if forked and chained projectiles explode too), and all affected enemies will get impaled. So in most scenarios if not all, 30 hits from your gem setup mean way more than 30 impale stacks. In dense maps it can easily double that number.

Assuming full overlapping is maybe going too far, since both Lancing and Splitting Steel share the same projectile behavior (even if Splitting Steel doesn't specifically say it, sub-projectiles always ignore the enemies affected by the initial explosion, so enemies that hasn't been hit by the skill take preference, just as Lancing Steel says). That's why Splitting Steel works so well even without extra projectiles. But even without full overlapping, the damage is more than enough.

Just for the fun, if the build is well rounded, you can simply leap into enemy groups and use Call of Steel, and they'll die anyway, because of the lower damage but guaranteed overlapping.

My assumption with the secondary projectiles is that they follow the Arc/Chaining rules where the projectiles will never hit a target more than once and always choose either a target not already hit by the attack or simply fly off into nothingness if no valid targets remain. My assumption seems to be supported in actually playing the build too meaning for me, splitting steel only applies one impale to each enemy per swing... one swing, one impale.

you are not wrong to question the validity of GMP in conjunction with Lancing steel, in execution, the damage feels very nearly the same. If there is a damage increase, it is nominal at best. the skill may be bugged though because slower projectiles also does not seem to increase the damage.

After all of this disscussion and gameplay though I genuinely feel like i need a point of clarification from GGG regarding the equation used to figure the general Impale mechanic.

my current assumption assuming a 1000 damage hit with 0 increase to impale effect IE 10% damage stored would look like this per hit
1000dmg
1000+100
1100+110
1210+121
1331+133
1464+146
and so on.
I am often wrong about these kinds of things.

I used to think impale works the way you describe, but sadly it doesn't. It's a bit confusing since the hit damage and the impale damage occur at the same time, but they're actually separate stances. The impale damage is considered reflected damage, and the source of the damage is the impale itself, not the hit that causes it to trigger. So following your example and assuming impales last 5 hits, the result would be this:

1000
1000+100
1000+200
1000+300
1000+400
1000+500
Any hit beyond the 6th will also deal 1000+500.

In the concrete case of Lancing Steel (considering just the skill behavior without any further modifier), it'd be:

1000
400+100
400+140
400+180
400+220
400+260
Any hit beyond the 6th will deal 400+200 (since you spent the last use of the 100-dmg impale and placed a 40-dmg one instead).

On an ideal situation where all projectiles hit the same target, the GMP setup should still deal a little more damage, but so little and on an ideal situation. It's matter of preference I guess.

Just a question. I assume that Lancing Steel projectile "barrage-like" behavior overrides the behavior of extra projectile supports, as it is with Splitting Steel. I might be wrong, but if that's correct, why GMP? Greater Volley gives the same amount of extra projectiles with a lower damage penalty.

I think you're over valuing "the impailer". I also think you forgot that you can only apply the 4 additional impales once every 4 seconds at best. i think it gimps my build substantially because although it applies 5 impales all at once, it nullifies the multiplicative factor of the call of steel.

the figure with impaler would always be 1000+500X1... no mater what.

as for the GMP on lancing steel. It indeed does Fan out the projectiles in a cone, however, for some strange reason if you name lock an enemy and then press the attack it lazer beams them even from a considerable distance most of the time... and even more interestingly it will continue to aim at them even if they move as long as they dont move through it and then behind the point of origin.

As you said, the Impaler would always be 1000+500, so let's compare on a Lancing Steel theory:

Without The Impaler:
1000
400+100=500
400+140=540
400+180=580
and so on

With The Impaler:
1000
400+500=900
400+500=900
400+500=900
and so on

So yes, with enough projectiles you can eventually surpass the damage The Impaler provides, but that also means that you have to invest in extra projectiles or sacrifice a gem slot. So, to begin with, wasn't even correct to set both examples at the same base damage, since the Impaler version will most probably have an extra damage support. Even with the same base damage, the damage loss of The Impaler goes around a 15%, so the real scenario would put both options on a very similar state.

What makes the Impaler great is not it's interaction with Lancing Steel, is the fact that you store those impales without actually taking the time or the steel shard cost of stacking it. Of course you can stack 5 impales on a group of enemies without The Impaler and then detonate them... but you have to attack them 5 times in a row, making it slow and clunky; you have to pay 5 times the shard cost, making it a lot less sustainable and making you more dependant of Call of Steel (and even slower because of that dependency), and most probably 5 times its mana cost. So in the end, you need a lot more time and resources to do just the same. The benefit is that you can store more than 5 impales, but Yet again you have to spend even more time and resources to do it. And only useful (maybe) for bosses, since all you'll get while mapping is a higher wasted overkill damage.

I agree that The Impaler doesn't give you anything that you can't do yourself, but the QoL it provides is just stunning. Single target damage barely suffers it (in fact, only fast-hitting skills and builds suffer it, that's why I dropped Lancing Steel), and the mapping is much faster and the shards management much much easier.

Just as side note, The Impaler not only doesn't nullify the multiplicative factor of call of steel, it enhances it. You're spending uses of every impale stack on an enemy each time you add a new stack. Simple maths, you'll never reach the same multiplier that The Impaler. If your impales last 8 hits for example:
- The Impaler gets 8x5=40 times your stored damage, on a single hit and always in area.
- The most you can get is 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8=36 times your stored damage, and you need 8 hits to do it.

So actually, I'm sorry I have to contradict myself, The Impaler actually gives you something you can't do yourself: you will never ever get a better Call of Steel multiplier, no matter how many Attacks you perform, how many steel shards you spend or how many times you have to drink that mana flask. The Impaler will always give you a better and bigger Call of Steel effect.

As for the GMP behavior on Lancing Steel, I confess I'm surprised. I'd expect one behavior over the other, not switching between them depending on where you click. Interesting, at leas.