Reave

Iam divided with this skill. Did start a new char and leveled it from 1-67 focusing on using this skill.Its fun and less spammy then some skills. Leveling is very powerful and fast as long as i dont engage to many enemies.
No idea if its because of the desync noted earlier, or if there is a max amount of mobs this skill can hit. Ie does it pierce through blocking mobs and hit the once behind or are they protected even if it looks like they are getting hit, they take no damage.

Had to give up in the weavers chamber with this skill, couldnt get the mobs behind the first rows of spiders hurt at all. So grabbed an old lightning strike gem and did go back and clean up that room without problems.

I really like that it is a 1h aoe-skill, and that it aint so spammy for the eyes as LS is.
The desync is annoying, no idea if its because of multistrike or this skill. But i desync alot with 0.13s attack time. If i hold down shift-attack for 4-5seconds i almost timeout and get logged out. now its very rare that mobs live that long but when they do :-)

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Hierokliff wrote:

No idea if its because of the desync noted earlier, or if there is a max amount of mobs this skill can hit. Ie does it pierce through blocking mobs and hit the once behind or are they protected even if it looks like they are getting hit, they take no damage.

I have to agree with you on this part. Have been using this for awhile, and the reason why i go back to dual strike + splash is that i seem to miss alot when using Reave + multistrike, even though im above 90% hitrate.
Its simply not a gogo when you strike like crazy with multistrike and the mobs are still standing there unharmed...

They won't happen to be near the edges of the aoe, would they? I tend to notice that Reave doesn't hit things at the edges properly.

Another theory I have is, perhaps the server-side copy has different stage value than the client, e.g Client says you're at Stage 8 but server-side you only has 5~6. Would explain why mobs looks like they got hit but takes no damage.

After making a build dedicated for Reave, there was so many weird stuff happening with the hit detection here...

OK, I wouldn't mind if some of the mobs are not hit since desync could be an issue here.
But, like 50% of the time, especially with mobs stacked in a big group, even on the same monster who got reaved on the previous hit, got no damage for a few time in a row.

Good example here would be with slow moving mobs like zombies, skeletons or those prophet. They are so slow that I'm sure the next reaving would hit them, but NO.

Thing got worse especially for mobs with energy shield, again prophet as example. I kept hitting them, reducing their energy shield. But somehow, even if they were standing on the same place, raising corpse, I'd continuously miss the attack on them long enough that their ES could regen back to full. This happened mostly when there are some mobs in front of them... and I'm sure they were not either too near or too far. They were clearly at the middle of the cone's AoE....

Let see how would it be if I could put more AoE nodes.... now +18% from the witch area, and maybe after try taking the resolute technique. :\

all these issues are because of desync

do /oos before each fight (yes, i know, boring) and these issues go away. really, just try that. desync is that bad..

I leveled up a ranger for dw claw reaving before the skill came out, now it's at 78. I wanted to try full evasion, DW block, and dodge with melee, since the last time I tried it was way back in closed beta and I didn't know shit back then. It's not bad.

DW isn't as bad as people think, the multiplicative bonuses from "attack speed while dual wielding" passives are very potent, and with reave-meleephys-addedfire-fasterattacks I'm at 3600dps with thoroughly mediocre gear. The build is balanced around a Koam's which I don't have in anarchy (let's be real, life-based evasion requires Kaom's, period) and The Blood Dance boots. The combined claw leech and high % regen should provide great survivability, and so far is proving the concept. The 34% movement speed from the boots is nice too.
Passive tree thus far

The biggest problem with reave is it makes you keenly aware of how badly desynced you are at all times. First you are FORCED to left-click attack mobs before your stacks are built, which causes massive desync, and once you have stacks you will constantly lose them by shift-attacking desynced enemies. I can't tell you the number of times I've successfully attacked an enemy to preserve my stacks (the mob's hp drops and everything), and yet I lose my stacks anyway because my ping exceeds my reave timer.

Overall I really enjoy the mechanic of building stacks and the flow of transitioning from melee to medium range. The problem with reave is, sorry to say it again, desync. Fighting against desync while fighting mobs is just something PoE players have to learn to deal with, but when reave requires fast action and care to gain and keep stacks, it becomes a very uphill battle.

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splitsticks wrote:

-multiplicative bonuses from "attack speed while dual wielding" passives-

the ONLY multiplicative speed boost from dw is the 10% for just dw'ing in the first place. the passives are all "increased" type and add to normal speed boosts. the only other multiplicative speed boost is from multi strike support.
i like dw but i don't want to be shoved into two dual strikes, one for single target and one for AoEing (splash support). i'd rather simply run 1h-shield for reave so i don't divide my "chances" of respective weapon type crits in half.

This gem is just not good enough.

Expires too fast, stuff dies before its finished ramping up, aoe is too low to justify using it when you cannot keep it ramped up.

Just this skill is inferior by design because by the time its becoming relevant with stacks stuff should already be dead and you should have moved on. Also it expires in absolutely no time meaning it will forever be stuck trying to ramp up while other builds have already killed the packs.

It has a very low mana cost so i guess if base aoe was greater and scaling lesser, duration a bit longer it would be excellent for leveling.

Also due to its low duration it's frustrating in team games unless you play with people that cannot kill things fast, because they may cause you to lose stacks often.

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soul4hdwn wrote:

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splitsticks wrote:

-multiplicative bonuses from "attack speed while dual wielding" passives-

the ONLY multiplicative speed boost from dw is the 10% for just dw'ing in the first place. the passives are all "increased" type and add to normal speed boosts. the only other multiplicative speed boost is from multi strike support.
i like dw but i don't want to be shoved into two dual strikes, one for single target and one for AoEing (splash support). i'd rather simply run 1h-shield for reave so i don't divide my "chances" of respective weapon type crits in half.

You could be right about the multiplicative vs additive thing since most passives are additive with eachother, but the wording in the wiki suggests asd-while-dw passives add to the multiplicative bonus.

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DW automatcally grants 10% more aspd and 15% block chance... These two bonuses to DW can be increased via passives.

The pessimist in me says you're probably right, but I want to believe!

I'll add my 2 wisdom scrolls to this thread.

Having used Reave since scratch on a new melee evasion ranger, I more or less agree with most points people are making about the skill. It seems to be heavily affected by desync, which is exacerbated by the very low timer on the stacks.

I'll say this though, when it does work, I think it's great. But even at it's best, free of desync, I think the major issue with the skill is the timer.

The timer is simply too low. Maybe it shouldn't be so long that you have time to reposition with Whirling Blades, and essentially keep 8 stacks up indefinitely, but it should be long enough that you can move around and reposition a few steps away. I think this would also alleviate the desync issues with this skill.