Vaal Cleave

I like the way vaal cleave feels, since it creates a sense of becoming excited when you see a rare monster. The problem I ran into is that due to having so much added usage time, often the monster would die from another source of damage, such as an ancestral totem. Since it doesn't deal much more damage than regular cleave/the totem, timing the kill was very difficult to do even with it's inbuilt cull, since being early is punishing due to being stuck attacking for so long, and then losing out on your vaal souls for a pittance more damage. Of course, being late doesn't threaten taking a ton of damage, but it does mean loss of souls and loss of super cleave uptime, which is when cleave feels fun to use. Additionally, when you have super cleave it's easy to accidentally cull the monster on accident where you wanted a refresh in buff duration and more headhunter mods. I like adding cull to super cleave thematically since it's like a mini vaal cleave for 20 seconds, but mechanically it feels frustrating at times.

i am a berserk, i have voidforge and i have INC duration sources. my dps is insanely high and so is my average hit. i am capped with crit chance so in other words i did everything i can to one shot things with vaal cleave.

my tankiness is average "a bit above average i'd even say"

here is everything you need to know about vaal cleave from a player perspective.

1- cleave sucks, unless you get vaal cleave buff then it feels really good.

2- melee skills in general and cleave in particular needs multistrike. NOT because of the dps but because of the auto targeting. it is melee skills are most of the times unplayable without it. problem is, multistrike on same link as vaal cleave means vaal cleave is 5 links. and so the other best optimal way to do this is to 6 link vaal cleave in one item and non-vaal cleave in another which i'd assume not what you guys want.

3- monstes won't wait you to execute them with vaal cleave. and ever since archnemesis and until now rares are made RARES. they are not gonna die in one hit no in 2 or in 3. unless your char is strong enough to one shot SOME OF THEM not all of them. the problem is, you need to clear the screen as fast as you enter it other wise there is no point. and if i am not tanky enough you would die trying to steal buffs which is counter-productive

4-what's really important about vaal cleave is not rare mods being stolen. it is cleave empowerment. while many players might disagree but this is spoken as a melee not as someone who is looking for "flashy" buffs.
what i am implying here, better focus on allowing the cleave buffs to work rather than the rare monsters mods be stolen.


remember monsters cicle around you instantly nowadays too. your character takes a lot of damage performing a slow frontal attack while being stabbed in the back.

suggestions,

this skill can be easily changed into a really cool skill as follows.

1- if stealing mods is in the way of balancing it. remove the mods stealing!
2- change the way the buff is granted. the way it should be, killing a monster or hitting a unique enemy grants a buff for cleave for 5-10 seconds. which means we can use our vaal cleave wisely on boss fights too.
3= increase he angle a little bit. not the aoe radius, the angle!


if you want the buffs-stealing as a cool feature for vaal cleave and don't want it removed. execute range for vaal leave should be increased to 30% ONLY vs rare monsters not 10%.

Occulist Heatshiver Cold Conversion Cleave lvl 89

Cleave seems to feel better the more area of effect I have available, so if I can actually get the Vaal Cleave buff up it feels good. I have ~40 radius without buff ~55 with buff

It is really hard to get the buff up due to multiple reasons.

1 - added .8 attack time makes it dangerous to use in hectic encounters where there might be multiple rares to possibly land a killing blow on

2 - added .8 attack time often means the rare dies to ignite or bleed before I can get the killing blow

3 - Multistrike is needed for my build to get reasonable attack rate, causing 2 problems. 1)Its a dead link for Vaal Cleave 2) Pressing Vaal Cleave will not interrupt regular cleave meaning I have to awkwardly move to cancel multistrike to try and land the killing blow with Vaal Cleave

4 - duration is not long enough for how hard it is to get the buff up, I often will only get the buff for 2 times a map if I try on ~10 encounters


I feel it needs to be easier to get consistent upsides to using vaal cleave

possible changes
-Only require a hit on rare/unique to get some beneficial buff
-Make Vaal Cleave instant with a cooldown based on attack rate to front load damage so that the killing blow mini game still exists but its not as awkward and prone to failure due to dots/animation locking
-Built in large cull range (30%) to Vaal Cleave

To re-iterate and add to what has already been said, Vaal Cleave could be fixed in the following ways:

1) Remove "Headhunter" buff. Instead, Vaal Cleave grants other buffs on hitting a rare or unique monster.

2) Cleave buff refreshes, or has chance to refresh upon hitting a rare or unique monster.

3) Vaal Cleave's reaper slash attacks independently of the player. It is simply an extra attack with no cast time that happens while the player's character continues to attack/move.

Currently Vaal Reave decimates this skill in usability.

this skill sucks ass. The excessive delay feels horrible--but even if it didn't exist, it's still asinine to guess which blow will cull a rare with the mods you want. Instead, you guys should have made the skill apply a debuff to rares like dominating blow. When the rare dies within a certain number of seconds after the debuff is applied, you get the mods.

Cleave also feels awful to begin with. With an attack speed penalty as bad it's got, it should at least start with more base radius. Don't take my word for it though, just try for yourself or have a look at poe.ninja

I have bad experience for this skill.

Use vaal cleave to deal yellow mobs' killing blow to enable its buff is awful. It's barely able to do this in practice.

My suggestion: give a short duration to buff cleave, such as 4 sec, if cleave deal yellow mobs' killing blow in the buff duration, enable its 2nd buff for 20 sec.