Reave

I too leveled with reave as my AOE. I too dropped it in favor of dual strike with melee splash.

Reave is just too finicky for the reward at this level and onward.

You just can't afford to let those 5+ charges die when you are trying to clear rooms. So there goes any manual cursing or buffing.

Add in synch issues and the propensity of many mobs (not just ranged)to run away, and we're left with a lackluster skill.

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Its a shame cause I really like reave with elemental proliferation.

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Periphery wrote:

So I have been using Reave for 69 levels in nemesis. I can Dish out way more Damage with Dual Strike Melee Splash and kill Faster with a large AoE. Reave needs a damage boost.

Dual strike is double-wield. Reave is meant to be single-wield + shield. So yeah can't really compare XD.

Reave is so insular it works against the mix-and-match feel that other gems have. If you use Reave you have to commit all the way to it, but if you do that then a lot of the restrictions that make the skill "interesting" don't apply.

When Dual Wielding, that stacking restriction (from using another skill) doesn't hurt much, especially when getting to high levels with lots of stacked attack speed. At low levels it depends on whether racing or not, but in race situation the inability to use alternate skills is a fatal flaw of the skill. Non-race low levels and 1H+shield are the only times when the stacking restriction is an interesting choice. That's a pretty narrow subset of the overall scope of the skill's capabilities.

Reave would be much improved without the stacking restriction from using other skills. That only makes the skill more interesting on paper. In practice it either doesn't apply or it makes the skill unusable, depending on the situation. Only rarely is it a decision.

Reave serves 2 masters which are at odds with each other:
1) Skill by itself which punishes players for using more stuff
2) Skill in context of overall game where gems reward players for finding useful combinations

GGG needs to decide which of those 2 masters Reave should serve, and abandon the other one. Skills can't be pulled in opposite directions like that.

I find Reave to be fairly buggy.

1) When used on left click, it stops attacking when I run out of mana, even though it should just normal attack and maintain stacks.

2) Targeting on left click often overestimates Reave's range and I "air swing" (too far to actually hit) often on mobs with difficult hit boxes (snakes, small apes and the like). This gimps the actual DPS and should be fixed.

3) Targets inside the "arc" animation of Reave are sometimes actually not hit by Reave (tested on boxes) this seems to be related to how Reave can only seem to target set angles.

4) Reave un-intuitively uses set angles (probably the 8 directions) and makes it hard to aim in addition to the poor display issue.

5) Reave also seems to suffer from de-synch issues alot compared to other melee skills, probably because of the auto-targeting not working and hitting air issue.

I think Reaves should have a flat 2 seconds of not loosing stacks. Especially with the recent change to CODT. Not doing a normal attack when you are out of mana with Reaves force players to have a second melee stacks on their bar. Loosing stack when casting endurying cry or molten shell seems discourage players to use other supporting skills with reave.

Given the new changes to CwDT, reave seriously needs a buff. Through previous version of CwDT we could get a lot of utiliy (but not all utility, such as movement skill) while not losing stacks, now we lose a hell lot of utility.

The CwDT nerf hits reave very hard, you should counter-balance it by buffing Reave's survivability in some way.

What the skill needs is an implemented melee range increase.

The AoE is pretty laughable when considering desynch as an issue. Going to try to make an elemental reaver work on Nemesis which I think has incredible potential. The skill it self isnt broken, even the time is fine. After all it basically asks you to get a lot of attack speed to counter stack loss or rather to make up for it as fast as possible.

The main problem are, as I stated already, the AoE behaviour and desynch. Something needs to be done. Either the amount of AoE per charge needs to be increased, the skill should get a +2 melee range by default or change the quality bonus from attack speed to AoE.

Its viable right now but the games alltime favourite problem makes it a bit of a pain to use.

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gbones wrote:

I too leveled with reave as my AOE. I too dropped it in favor of dual strike with melee splash.

Reave is just too finicky for the reward at this level and onward.

You just can't afford to let those 5+ charges die when you are trying to clear rooms. So there goes any manual cursing or buffing.

Add in synch issues and the propensity of many mobs (not just ranged)to run away, and we're left with a lackluster skill.

--

Its a shame cause I really like reave with elemental proliferation.

You cant use a shield with Dual Strike. For life-based players that isnt an issue, but for ES-based melees (like me) losing a shield means a huge HP loss (ES is my hitpoints), so reave retains its power. Though, i still dont like its interaction with desync

IMHO Reave is meant for elemental damage tanky builds while Dual is meant for more DPS-seeking physical builds ... you just can't compare them, unless you somehow include everything that a shield can give you (24% resist for example, which eases up the other equipment resistance requirements).

You also have to remember that not everyone will have a perfect setup. Some skills are designed with that in mind - some will shine when you have sucky gear, some will be better when you have a near-perfect one.

I'm in violent agreement that Reave needs some love.

Losing stacks just because you flicker into a mob is ridiculous in my view, makes the game less fun. It's not like Reave would be suddenly OP if this restriction was relaxed.

I would propose to make the stack reset if you "use another skill (other than an attack)".