Claw Skills, Its About Time We Get A New One / Two

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

For one thing, I think increased leech rate should be available in some claw clusters on the tree. Everyone else can go Vaal Pact if they want instant leech and that's fine, but if leech is going to be a claw specialty, they should be able to not be held back too much by the high attack speed they're also good at.

I'd also like the LGoH and leech claws to split into two full streams like accuracy and crit multiplier swords are, or at least have the LGoH implicits not stop completely at a certain point in the progression.

I like the charge-steal notable as it is - thematically, at least; maybe the numbers could use a tweak, I don't know. Free charges from everything feels like generation more than stealing; doesn't fit the theme as well to me. If you were going to make it able to create charges from any mob, I'd at least split it up into different, themed nodes for each kind of charge.

the 25%chance to steal charges is fine IMO, it steals all charges on the mob, and high APS with claws is basically a given. It's not a build maker, but its fun utility in charge-generating maps (and you get chargest more frequently than you'd think) Everything else in this comment is absolutely spot on.

Inc LL rate in a claw notable should basically be a no-brainer. (Come on, GGG, wtf?)

No high level LGOH claws is a little odd, to be honest.

Not sure if elemental leech with claws would be a good idea, because then cybils Paw would become shavs teir shit OVERNIGHT, but I'm all for experimenting. (maybe more claw notables for ele leech? Low %'s obviously, or attack only)

Frankly - anything that helps the state of claws in the skill tree is good. That's where most of their weakness is. The weapon base stats are in an okay, if slightly undertuned spot because of their defensive implicit, but their skill tree stuff is weak-sauce gimmicks at best.

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TikoXi wrote:

Not sure if elemental leech with claws would be a good idea, because then cybils Paw would become shavs teir shit OVERNIGHT, but I'm all for experimenting. (maybe more claw notables for ele leech? Low %'s obviously, or attack only)

Frankly - anything that helps the state of claws in the skill tree is good. That's where most of their weakness is. The weapon base stats are in an okay, if slightly undertuned spot because of their defensive implicit, but their skill tree stuff is weak-sauce gimmicks at best.

Have to agree with your logic and thinking, everything about claws ATM is "undertuned" the skilltree and weapons them-self.

When one compare them God forbid to "daggers, wands and bows", they pale in comparison for utilization or build/skilltree utilization.

To be able to do end game "75 and up maps" one needs to have an OP claw, I've tried to do reave with a 250 dps claw and it falls to the wayside. It's just a waste of time and effort. Now when I use a 200 dps wand with kinetic blast, you just wipe things out without even really trying. And being a ranged attack one can be safely in the distance when killing monsters at speed and ease.

IMHO claws and the skilltree have to be redesigned from the ground up, and hopefully in ACT 4 this would be the case.

Maybe if Claws of the Magpie were changed to:

5% chance to generate a Power Charge on Hit with Claws
5% chance to generate a Frenzy Charge on Hit with Claws
5% chance to generate an Endurance Charge on Hit with Claws

And then if there were a few skills that used charges to bypass cooldowns or gain additional effects:

Triple Ice Strike:
Consumes a Frenzy Charge in order to perform a swift and powerful three hit attack against a target. Each hit deals increasing damage and converts more of the strike to Cold Damage.

First hit deals 30% Base Damage, converting 25% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
Second hit deals 60% Base Damage, converting 50% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
Third hit deals 90% Base Damage, converting 75% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
+4% Increased Physical Damage per level


Enduring Blast:
Consumes an Endurance Charge to cause an explosion, igniting the ground around the caster. Allies take less damage while standing in it. Enemies take more damage while standing in it.

Base Duration: 3.00s
Deals 100% Base Damage.
Converts 100% of Physical Damage to Fire Damage.
Deals X-X Fire Damage per second.
Allies take X% less damage.
Enemies take X% more damage.


Charged Straight
Consumes a Power Charge to unleash, after a short charge time (kinda like with Barrage), a lightning infused strike upon an enemy. The attack deals more damage to enemies on low life. If an enemy is killed by this attack, it explodes, dealing lightning damage to enemies around it and leaving patches of shocking ground in its wake.

Deals 150% Base Damage
50% of Physical Damage converted to Lightning Damage
Explosion Deals 50% Less Area Damage
Deals 25% more Damage to Enemies on Low Life.
Enemies killed by this skill explode, dealing damage and leaving shocking ground.
Base Duration is 3.00s


I suppose you should always consider whether or not skills should be locked to claws only or to let all weapon types use them, but something this might create a different play style for Claws.

I want my Assassin back from Diablo 2.
Hit fast, charge up, kick the mobs in the face while unloading in a big explosion (DTail, Phoenix etc).

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GrumpyBear5043 wrote:

To be able to do end game "75 and up maps" one needs to have an OP claw, I've tried to do reave with a 250 dps claw and it falls to the wayside. It's just a waste of time and effort. Now when I use a 200 dps wand with kinetic blast, you just wipe things out without even really trying. And being a ranged attack one can be safely in the distance when killing monsters at speed and ease.

There's been a number of mentions of OP claw but I'd like to be clear on what's being talked about... I personally wouldn't compare a 250 pdps claw to a 200 pdps wand because the latter is far more rare/difficult to get and the price reflects that.

Are these OP?



Yeah I know the second one is kinda gimping my APS... But they're enough to get me 40k dual strike with better survivability than most of my characters due to vaal pact and room for those numbers to move (gem levels). Haven't tried reave on that guy but might give it a go at some stage.

Or are you talking about the insane new 522 dps mirrorable claw? I just want to be clear.

I'd say claws aren't amazeballs but not terrible. I'd agree with calls to open up LGoH to the highest levels so ele claws become a bit more of a thing.

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davidnn5 wrote:

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GrumpyBear5043 wrote:

To be able to do end game "75 and up maps" one needs to have an OP claw, I've tried to do reave with a 250 dps claw and it falls to the wayside. It's just a waste of time and effort. Now when I use a 200 dps wand with kinetic blast, you just wipe things out without even really trying. And being a ranged attack one can be safely in the distance when killing monsters at speed and ease.

There's been a number of mentions of OP claw but I'd like to be clear on what's being talked about... I personally wouldn't compare a 250 pdps claw to a 200 pdps wand because the latter is far more rare/difficult to get and the price reflects that.

Are these OP?

Yeah I know the second one is kinda gimping my APS... But they're enough to get me 40k dual strike with better survivability than most of my characters due to vaal pact and room for those numbers to move (gem levels). Haven't tried reave on that guy but might give it a go at some stage.

Or are you talking about the insane new 522 dps mirrorable claw? I just want to be clear.

I'd say claws aren't amazeballs but not terrible. I'd agree with calls to open up LGoH to the highest levels so ele claws become a bit more of a thing.

@davidnn5 Those are really awesome claws you have there, but dual welding is different to one and a shield. Never tried Dual Strike before with claws and yes any 500+ dps weapons is way OP. For your info this is my claw.

Reave is still an awesome skill but with the nerf to Vaal Pack and life leech it hit Reave very hard. Besides the fact that sometime you'll be attacking a monster right in front of you and nothing happens even if you have OOS'ed before the attack. So Reave still needs to be refined a little.

@darkwolf7786 Wow dude you should be a developer, you have surly made some awesome suggestions, and I so much like your Idea of :

Triple Ice Strike:
Consumes a Frenzy Charge in order to perform a swift and powerful three hit attack against a target. Each hit deals increasing damage and converts more of the strike to Cold Damage.

First hit deals 30% Base Damage, converting 25% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
Second hit deals 60% Base Damage, converting 50% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
Third hit deals 90% Base Damage, converting 75% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
+4% Increased Physical Damage per level

This is an excellent new skill they could very ease introduce into the game, together with your other suggestions. Stunning and thx for the positive and constructive feedback.

Dunno what the complaints about claws are. They're OP as fuck. The % implicit on the claws is better than LGoH at high levels, because most claw builds will have taken Vaal Pact. With the extra claw leech in the tree, plus the implicit, I'm running about 16% leech, which is enough that the 40% effectiveness of VP doesn't really matter. Because of all of that leech in the tree I don't need a life leech or LGoH gem like most other builds do. That means that I can have all 6 gems dedicated to damage. APS claws are a waste of time compared to crit claws IMO (both would be nice, but I ain't rich). I have a 61% base crit chance, and can achieve 95% with PCs and AssMark.

At 50 - 70k dps (depending on power charges) the damage I'm dealing is high enough that no amount of implicit LGoH would come anywhere near close to % leech. Daggers might be easier to build crit on, but you're going to need a life leech gem in your setup for that. Maybe LGoH would come close if I hadn't gone crit, but as I said, good crit on claws > good APS. The only thing I need to be careful of is phys reflect. I eat everything else for breakfast.

Level 91 shadow, can run 77 and 78 maps pretty safely with these little beauts:



They weren't even expensive. 5 chaos each. Can do more or less any map mod with the exception of blood magic and phys reflect.

I'm still a bit choosy about which ones I do, hate temp chains and monsters immune to curses. Don't like 50% reduced leech rate or players cursed with enfeeble. But the truth is that I can do any of those mods, or even all of them at once, without any major problems. Just takes longer.

I did die a lot to get there though. I don't think it's a good hardcore build.

{Edit}Also, the guy suggesting a claw skill with a base 12.5% crit chance - that's not going to happen. Crit chance for all attack based skills scales off the base crit chance of the weapon. Claws, like every other weapon, have a base crit chance in the item. I can't see them making an exception just for a special skill for claws on that one. The closest thing I can think of is something like Dual Strike or Flicker Strike which each give 80% increased crit chance (scaling of the weapon's base chance) when the gem has 20%q.{/Edit}

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GrumpyBear5043 wrote:

@darkwolf7786 Wow dude you should be a developer, you have surly made some awesome suggestions, and I so much like your Idea of :

Triple Ice Strike:
Consumes a Frenzy Charge in order to perform a swift and powerful three hit attack against a target. Each hit deals increasing damage and converts more of the strike to Cold Damage.

First hit deals 30% Base Damage, converting 25% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
Second hit deals 60% Base Damage, converting 50% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
Third hit deals 90% Base Damage, converting 75% of Physical Damage as Cold Damage.
+4% Increased Physical Damage per level

This is an excellent new skill they could very ease introduce into the game, together with your other suggestions. Stunning and thx for the positive and constructive feedback.

Thanks. I do feel that Melee builds all really feel the same in this game, regardless of weapon. Since there are only so many Melee Skills in the game and are pretty much shared between most Melee Weapon types, I think its really up to the notables on the tree to help dictate what a certain weapon type can do over other weapon types.

Hopefully 1.4 takes a look at not only making some interesting new Skill Gems, but also adjusting the Weapon Notables to make different weapon types stand out more.

Whirling Barrier's Power Charge on Block is really unreliable. A percentage of a percentage leads to a really low chance of it happening. Claws' Magpie also fails to work in most cases since nothing notable uses charges. Definitely not any bosses. Axes' Slaughter is nice if it were a "10% chance on HIT" rather than "On Kill". On Kill effects do not help on bosses.

I'd say they're on the right track, but there needs to be more of them, and they need to be more reliable.

Aloha!-)

As an longtime ClawcharPlayer i suggest something is not right adjusted in the Core of the ClawDesign. Anyway what u choose to go, it needs so much Points from Tree that anythere will be a Hole that must be fitted with Mods on Items.
Wanna go Crit? Look at Tree how much Points to waste for Crit and look at the Results playing that. Going Crit means also u will need AccRating as well and at that Point Claws sucks for me. Or the BaseCritChance should be a bit higher? I am no Designer but adjusting AttackSpeed-ACC Rating-BaseCritChance on Claws would be the best Way to fix this.

Just a SideNode on here, i posted already most of my Expirience with Claws and put it in Spoiler here. There are also Items included and so on!-)

Sorry for the slow response...

IMO reave is actually a bit better than dual strike for not 'whiffing' on hit, but that said in my experience so far, once you hit .15 seconds per hit or less you seem to whiff no matter what skill you're using. It's a bit disheartening to be constantly out of mana as a result.

I get the perspective that claws have been balanced for middling dmg/crit on the basis that they have 'great' leech, but they're not the only weapon that can sustain a full 6link of dmg gems. A dagger, sword, mace or pretty much anything can do it. Once your phys dmg and hp scale up enough, the leech is great just from 2-4%, with no vaal pact and some careful play on reflect maps.

As an aside, I'm impressed you got 61% base crit with claws but I can imagine all the sacrifices/minmaxing to achieve that...