rework or remove Spectral Helix skill (and Cleave and others..)

so, there are weak and strong skills

but there are also skills that flat-out are frustrating to use and/or mechanically cursed

Spectral Helix, Chain Hook are prime examples, lets focus on Spectral Helix leaving the numbers last as they are not the biggest issue


Spectral Helix creates a copy of your weapon that spins around you few times and *can bounce. 3 features and each one is problematic

'creates copy'. it creates a copy of your weapon NOT where you aim, but where your main hand weapon is on the model. thus any precise positioning is impossible as any your or your target movement changes that position. this is a problem, because..

.. the skill assumes you hit your enemy with first and second rotation (if not - it deals no damage). but the spiral is not very dense. so if a target is small (and several of them are) and you missed the first spin, the second might miss as well

and if you think bounces will save you - dont, nobody understand why some walls are 'ok' to bounce and why some will eat the projectile, so dont bother trying to utilise on purpose.


in the past Spectral helix had 250% damage effectiveness (500% if you managed to hit twice) - that was THE strongest numerically skill in the game at that time. now it has much less AND all other options got buffed. people played it ONLY because the numbers were nuts, everyone complained that the gameplay was revolting

now the numbers are gone and we are left with something that is just awkward

please - remove it OR rework it SIGNIFICANTLY - starting with the projectile spawn point being IN font of you (or IN the target if close enough) + add that bounces actually 'slightly target' nearby enemies

then, maybe, there will be a single reason to use that skill


Other cases:

Chain Hook - the aiming is pure garbage. It should scale with attack speed (the animation that is). It needs something else than - no longer valuable - rage generation

Cleave - skill with all its power gated behind Vaal triggers. it plays like worse auto attack without it, and clears entire screens with it. It is terrible gameplay mechanic, feast or famine, and triggering it (culling a rare mob) in modern POE is pure lottery. loosen the trigger scenario, buff the plain stats, nerf the vaal bonus to meet in the middle

Spitting Steel (or Shattering?) - the one that can no longer proj return. does it work as it should at all? the damage without returning projectiles is so low that it actually looks bugged


i know POE2 is all the love and POE is on life support, but deleting Helix from the game actually wont take much time and will save some players hours of frustration

Tell me you never played hammerdin without telling me you never played hammerdin.

Aynway, nothing wrong with buffing those skills a bit but there is no reason to delete them. I honestly don't think deleting does anything positive for skills. Everybody can choose what skills they want to use, who are you to tell people they are no longer allowed to use those skills just because you think they are bad?

Helix is so bad it kinda isnt played by anyone, so no harm no faul

and hammerdin in d2 works because the mob density, speed and general pace is kinda.. different? so you can do the precision positioning and actually hit reliably

in POE? there are so many (fast) moving parts that it is pure luck if you do hit. and for this skill to make ANY sense you have to hit twice as the numbers are balanced around that

been trying for last couple of days - it is unbelievably bad mechanically (and I actually LIKE Chain Hook, so i am not easily swayed)

winter orb please

winter orb works, it might not be as auto-win as before, but it is perfectly fine skill with several options to play. you might not like the power-level it is at, but you click, you deal damage in a predictable way

try Spectral Helix and tell me that it feels 'fine' (ignoring damage - it is bad, but again - you can live with bad damage, you kinda cannot with a skill that 'maybe works mechanically or maybe not')