Claws any good yet??

So i've been away from PoE for s while and I am spending time to read some patch logs I don't want to spend all the time I have on it so I'm trying to find out if claws have been changed already in to decent weapons.

They used to be quite slow and low on damage so not viable at all.

I've tested a Claw build in Merciless, and while I definitely could have used more health for survival, the damage output was low.

And not necessarily because of the claws themselves, you can always boost them up with orbs but mainly cause dex based claw builds don't really have a good aoe skill gem. Whirling Blades is nice but it's more of a travel / escape power since it's dps is far to low to really be effective, same goes for ethereal knives unless you really spec it in a large socketed item with a ton of damage mods (even then it's not so great).

So while I did good damage against a single target, even with tons of attack speed, there just wasn't a way to really kill / crowd control the large pacts of things that would swarm me.

Claws really need some kind of aoe, something similar to Cleave or Sweep maybe.

I'm in cruel (not merciless yet so don't know much this counts) ..

i've been using freezing pulse for AoE with my claw build. which might sound weird I guess... but I have some cold damage buffs -- I try to work groups into a line, and blast a couple times with freezing pulse, then I whirling blades thru them (added cold dmg). I turn around and repeat. So I'm like constantly moving thru the pack and herding them into a line, freezing them randomly with both abilities. With mana leech, I only need 4-5 mobs to give me enough mana to do this until everything is dead, lots of fun when I round up 15-20 mobs! :)

so I guess I"m using 2 AE abilities, technically. Though Whirling blades is more of a mobility thing for me. the cold dmg adds a little CC to it. Hoping to grab "blind" for it as well.

Also I use flicker strike when I get myself in trouble with this tactic, I flicker to a far away mob, and give my ES a chance to reset. flicker is awesome for single mob dmg too of course.