Whirling Blades
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Ambrose's experiments and posts look like they explain a lot of the iffyness of this skill.
While (if?) the devs are working on a solution, I'll be facing the mobs before using this skill :) Basics of how to play (by Malice): tinyurl.com/72wrafn
Walkthrough for Act I and II (by KrapnoV) : tinyurl.com/7w3a3gd Mechanics - how the game works (by Malice) : tinyurl.com/6p4zbl5 Crafting Guide (by Invalesco) : bit.ly/craftpoe Mechanics videos (by Eztheal) : bit.ly/UTwFAV | |
"The facing of your character is an entirely graphical thing which has no effect on the execution of Whirling Blades. | |
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Hello...
When i spam this skill, it's getting kinda bugged.. Sometimes monster aren't getting hit.. Also i think the Damage is way to low, mana cost to high =) Just a thought :P | |
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Does anyone know if you can block while using whirling blades?
also, this could be part of the desync issue if the game is trying to register blocks during the animation, but the animation cannot be interrupted. just a thought. *edit* also, i've been using this skill for a solid 2 months now. I don't see any mana cost issues. It's expensive, but it has high utility. It's faster than phase run. the addition of phase run to the shadow quest rewards is a laugh, imo. Once you're used to the mana cost of the skill and you plan around it just a bit, it becomes extremely useful... or it would be... if it didn't desync. I know Mark. It's all you're hearing about. I'm sure you guys are doing what you can to remedy the problem. Last edited by Scruff260 on Sep 11, 2012, 12:52:57 PM
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Hello guys,
I just started with the stress-test weekend, so I don't have any long-term experiences but here are the ones I made the last days. My main char is a Lvl 28 Duelist, concentrating on Sword-Dual-Wielding, to do as much damage as possible before getting hurt and leaving the fight. I play a hit and run style for not letting the monsters hit me if possible. For this style the skill Whirling Blades just fits in perfectly (I used Phase Run before, but it was replaced, due to the cast time at the beginning and because it's no instant movement). I use it exclusively as a mobility skill. Its damage is too low (I think only main-hand damage) for the mana cost to use it as a damage skill. I think it would be better to let it be a mobility skill, which gives maybe a buff for yourself (attack-speed, movement-speed) or a debuff for the enemies hit (armour-reduction, movement-reduction smth. like that), so it becomes pure utility. Regards | |
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This skill has potential, but it doesn't live up to what I want it to be.
After hearing the name and reading the description I was really excited. I made a rash decision and with a couple of respecs and a small investment in gear I changed my ground slam marauder into an infinite whirler. Cool? Well I am level 34 and started testing it out. I have always hits/never crits and blood magic. Tons of life/strength, life on hit, and life steal. My strategy is to phase run through the map until I get a solid following of a ton of mobs, then smash back and forth through them almost dying and then healing quickly. I have a buffed up one handed sword/shield and for speed and agility I have armor/evasion gear. I am using life on hit and melee damage support gems. My problem is that it is very very difficult to get enough damage out of this skill. Encounters go on for what feels like too long, with each monster requiring 5-6 hits on average. Throw in the pauses, desyncs, and frequent misses and it can become painful. I think with some more damage this could be a great main skill and a lot of fun to use. My only question is why does a skill that requires you to use low damage weapons have such steep damage reduction to start out with? Maybe this isn't balanced enough. At least I can kind of feel that D2 passion again about making new and interesting builds. I will keep posting as I continue testing... | |
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I was playing my WB shadow last night when the server shutdown happened. I jumped back on as quickly as possible. For about 5 minutes, perhaps a bit less, there were no desync issues. As time went by the desync issue slowly increased... (and WB rocks when there are no desync issues)
If the direction your character is facing is purely graphical, then how does the combat predictor work? If I have mobs in front of me and behind me, how can it predict, with any sort of reliablity, which ones I am going to attack. Paraphrasing here, but a GGG member said with combat prediction was easy with melee since it would be the mob standing in front of your character. That doesn't imply that your directionality is purely graphical. I do have several questions on Whirling blades mechanics... 1. How are critial/hits calulated? Is it one check for every mob that might be hit? Often times I will hit or miss every mob, or critical every mob from an attack. At times it seems there is one check for each WB attack. Not a different check for every mob that might get hit by a WB attack. (this could just be a desync issue.) 2. How is damage calculated? On my shadow, the dps of WB is higher than the dps venom strike. WB can often take 3 to 5 hits (I look to see the mob actually took damage and it wasn't a miss) to kill a mob, yet venom strike will often kill the mob instantly. When I check the character screen for the damage each skill does it is nearly identical. |
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"It doesn't predict which one's you're "going to attack". It predicts which ones will be hit by the attack you're performing, and that attack is always in a direction (which is not necessarily the same or related to the direction your character happens to be facing). ""In front" in this context means "in the direction the attack is being performed". Since the character rotates to match the direction you attacked, this will be in front of the character by the time you hit, but it's the character's facing changing to match where they attacked, not the other way around. "Exactly the same as all other skills. One crit roll is made for the skill, and that crit roll is compared against your chance to score a critical on each enemy hit. Unless there is something causing you to score more criticals on particular monsters, you'll crit all or none together because they all check the same roll. "DPS display cannot factor whirling blade's duration to get the correct value *(yet - this is coming). Whirling blades deals damage from your weapon, modified by the modifiers shown on the gem, to each monster you hit. | |
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Thanks for the reply, althought I'm not crazy about all of your answers. You guys are awesome about answering.
First: So there isn't a "prediction" until I make the attack? The point of the prediction is to reduce lag.. I guess I am not understanding the mechanic here. So I make an attack in direction "X" my computer sends that info to the server, which makes a "prediction" as to which mobs are going to be hit. Then sends that information back to my computer? Then at some point makes the actual calculations? How is this different from calculating an attack? I make an attack in direction "X" and the information would be sent to the server, which determines which mobs are hit, then sends that information back to my computer. How does this prediction reduce lag? Or differ from actually calculating the hit/miss/damage from an attack when it happens? Why is there only one crit roll? If I understand you correctly, there is a hit/miss roll for each mob that "might" be hit, but then only one crit roll for every mob hit? No offense, but that seems a bit... lazy. Might that change in the future. I realize this is beta and a lot of thing might be "good enoug for now, we will change it later." Sorry, if I am being a pain in the arse. I realy like PoE, and the shadow is my favorite class. To me, this ability is the epitome of what the shadow class is, hit and run tactics. I guess I just want to make sure turns out as well as possible. Perhaps one of my dumb questions will even help you guys figure out the desync problems that seem to plague this ability. Last edited by Ambrose151 on Sep 20, 2012, 12:24:28 PM
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"Prediction means we calculate in advance the damage that would be dealt with the attack before the point it would be applied. When you start the attack, the server rolls the damage for the attack on each monster then, and sends it to the client. The client recieves these damages and stores them, then the damage is applied, both on the server and client, at the point of impact. If something happens that would prevent the hit landing (enemy moved out of range, you were stunned, etc), the damage which was calculated and sent is discarded and not applied. Doing this means that we can avoid lag which would happen if we didn't calculate damage until we knew you actually dealt it, at the point of impact, as then we'd have to send it at that point from the server, and it would take time to reach the client. By the time you connect, the client (probably, depending on latency) already has the damage calculated for that attack. As a counterexample, in a certain other game that's popular right now, once an attack is started on an enemy in range, no amount of moving out-of-range will prevent it landing on that enemy when it contacts. Our system is more complicated but allows us to calculate damage in advance but then not apply it if something happens between calculating it and when it would be applied that causes the attack to fail. "Because that's how it was decided critical hits work in this game. It's unlikely to change. It used to work differently but was changed for multiple reasons, and we're more happy with the impact of crits now - when you crit with Ice Nova, you freeze everything around you, which makes the event more impactful. It also reduces the frequency of crits while not reducing the frequency of critically striking a particular monster, which is desirable for balance. I don't understand how picking a specific way for crits to work is "lazy". This system takes slightly more work to implement than just rolling separately for each monster. Last edited by Mark_GGG on Sep 20, 2012, 8:54:25 PM
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