Counter-attack gems - have they solved any problem?

This thread was not a 'cry'. I was looking for views different than mine and for uses for these gems that i havent found myself.

I like their addition, there is nothing wrong about free damage/utility.

I was just wondering if these were designed to solve melee problems (survivability) or just designed as a nice 'perk' melee users have that ranged do not.

I havent yet played crit build this patch but i bet that my crit dagger lightning strike (yes, i like this skill) will benefit most from these. PCoC utility is much higher than ECoMS (the latter can be substituted by 2L CWDT+EC, former - cannot) and crit damage + ele prolif might be phenomenal defense mechanic

CounterAttack gem + (Hatred Aura) + crit + ele prolif.. might be worth trying

IMHO, Vengeance looks like a fine dual CoH alternative for RT builds that cannot shock/proc HoT via either crit or chance to.

Riposte "favoring" DW with on block mechanics smells like someone had a very wet brain fart.

Vengeance, meh. Haven't looked at it yet.

Out of all of those, Vengeance looks like it did solve a bit of utility problems for certain builds that might have a difficult time speccing said utility otherwise. Mind you, CWDT requires one to take damage, and by its wording Vengeance should still proc while IC is up.

All 3 counter attack gems help tanky armor builds. You can run a tanky 1h/shield armor/life mara/duelist and not feel like you're watching paint dry. With all the shield damage nodes you can get pretty damn good damage from the tree on a tanky build too. Its like GGG wants to bring armor out of the trashbin it has been in. I'm loving it so far on my duelist. Best leveling experience I've had in the game since I quit the game 2-3 years ago.

For those who don't use BoR (since that's when every socket counts), no, the gems don't solve anything. At best, they're an extra source of damage that procs every so often, linked to other skills or LL/LoH.

Hasn't solved anything in making melee a more manageable experience without having to stack massive eHP and STILL LOSE in effectiveness to their RANGED counterparts. (Mirror weapons or daggers notwithstanding.)

Counter attack gems greatly improve survivability while staying afk.

These gems and the configuration of the new tree have made it so I'm feeling more powerful than I've ever felt before in melee (during the leveling process anyway). I've played two 1H & shield templars using static strike in Bloodline one elemental the other conversion based.

Both have felt really powerful while leveling, sadly the elemental one died to some nasty box desyncs. He however wasn't using any of the counter attack gems because he had more important stuff to pick when they were available. After getting all three with my new guy I can now say that I would never have died to that box if I had these gems on me.

They provide alternate ways of dealing with groups of monsters that weren't available before, the amount of possible utility you can gain with them is really massive. It feels like I've only scratched the surface so far. They seem to favour hard, slow-hitting weapons (2H!) to a large degree.

It makes sense that they've made Reckoning available to only shield users to make special differentiation. At least the other two can be used with dual wield and 2H (Staves, BoR, Anvil).

High elemental spell damage remains a problem however and while I see that 2H users actually get the largest benefit against this particular group, (Vengeance works against spells by default) I am not sure that it will sufficiently deal with their problems. I will probably try out some 2H build later on to see what difference it makes.

I use the following setup on my 78 templar in torment:

Leap slam - Vengeance - Endurance Charge on Melee Stun - Stun

To keep my endurance charges up, i can keep all of them up without even using enduring cry like this and can dedicate the CWDT setup to something else.

The probably best use of the gems is to curse something or generate charges.
Also 2h isn't the one who profited the most from these gems, facebreaker builds are (15k vengeance hits np).

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Mannoth wrote:

Leap slam - Vengeance - Endurance Charge on Melee Stun - Stun

Really fucking cool 4L.

Vengeance + culling strike + cast on melee kill + detonate dead