Facebreaker Over-Nerfed?
|
only time i see it being used in default is when people cant yet afford maligaro's. I wonder how often its used in hardcore...actually im kinda certain no endgame build still used it.
|
|
|
Well, just like the 2h whaleborne rapier, you use it for leveling.
All the shazbot aside, I think melee animations for wands would go great with act 4.^^ Zaanus:
Global chat: Mechanics for A work one way, B for another, C for a third but also with A, B uses C but not A, and D uses A&B but not C ___ Isn't a "no" better than an ignore? |
|
|
As a long time user of Facebreaker, I'd like to chime in here.
I think OP was a little over zealous in his complaint of Facebreaker. I agree with Carl that it is an insanely strong item when properly utilized. I also think it is a very well designed item given how much you have to sacrifice to achieve that capability. Well done! However, I can understand where OP is coming from. I think if you replace his complaint of making the 'build' not viable with 'play style' he has the semblance of a valid argument. No doubt going around punching things to death is a fun play style, yet I can't help but feel OP's frustration that all these prohibitive mechanics are sapping the joy out of the play style. Let's look at some Pros and Cons: Pros: * Insane single target damage. * Fun to play. Cons: * Almost no skills work in conjunction with Facebreaker. * Getting the most out of Facebreaker requires significantly rare gear and often times defensive sacrifice. * No crits aside from Diamond Flasks. * There is practically no AoE (No, Infernal Blow is not AoE; I have tested it extensively with many different supports such as Black Gleam and Elemental Proliferation -- it is not a solution to AoE for Facebreaker). * Since there is no AoE, the bottle neck for clearing instances becomes attack speed, which is very low. * Other builds can be far more efficient since it is possible to one shot things with an AoE, whereas Facebreaker deals several times more than a mob's health in a single blow. Personally, I can live with just about all those cons because I think the play-style is just that fun. Sadly I cannot live with no crits. Having Critical Strike Multiplier on every pair of Facebreakers yet not being able to crit is a big let down. I see no reason why Increased Critical Strike Chance shouldn't effect unarmed combat (which supposedly has a 5% base crit chance, but it doesn't). A player should have the decision of either traversing the tree for Resolute Technique and forgoing crits in favor or stable damage output, or investing in lots of accuracy and critical chance. Even with significant focus on accuracy I only managed to achieve 85% hit chance and still miss vital swings very frequently. Let's make a deal, Carl? Allow critical chance to scale with unarmed, but don't allow Quivers to benefit unarmed. A fair trade, no? Lastly, I would love to see a few more skills work with unarmed (Flicker Strike). I don't necessarily want to see AoE skills like Shield Charge, since that would negate many of the cons and unhinge the balance, even though I think it would be cool. With that said, there are some good candidates (Flicker Strike) for unarmed combat; particularly Flicker Strike. Last edited by Dum#2125 on Nov 16, 2012, 9:14:52 PM
| |
|
(The squeaky wheel gets the grease).
| |
"You can crit while using Facebreaker, just not while unarmed. The crit multiplier gives the unique a niche use outside of only being for unarmed builds. | |
" why use facebreaker for crit mult if there are maligaros? |
|
|
Maybe because not everyone has Maligaro's. It's not the best option, but it's an option that exists.
|
|
" Like mentioned before, the people who can't afford mali's use fb. |
|
|
Regarding Shield Charge: while you can say that it's a charge with the shield to stun and then an attack with a melee weapon (per the description), the animation itself is just the first part from what I've seen. I've been using Shield Charge a lot lately (working on a high movement speed build), and I'm actually glad it doesn't waste time with a melee attack animation after the shield bash.
So there's that to take into account when someone says they feel Shield Charge should work with unarmed. Then there's the fact that a lot of other 'melee attack' skills now work with unarmed. Notably, the 'blows' (good distinction, this), but others such as Double Strike and Flicker Strike still don't work with unarmed. I'm not going to push that issue here, but at a broader level of remove, the moment you put on those Facebreaker gloves, your fists *are* melee weapons. And if that's true, then no matter how ineffectual, fists in this game may be considered melee weapons even without Facebreaker on. Because we have and have had unarmed attacks for as long as I've played. Elemental Hit, Frenzy...both worked with unarmed without the *augmentation* of Facebreaker. This is also important to remember: Facebreaker didn't enable unarmed builds, it just made them more than viable. Unarmed combat existed before Facebreaker -- with the right gear, it was doable. Slow, but very doable. In that light, I do view unarmed as armed, so to speak. I view a punch as a melee attack, and for the purpose of the game, think fists should be considered as melee weapons. Because in this game, you have always had two attack styles: melee, and ranged. Unarmed is currently in a sort of midway limbo between melee and its own thing. Even if shield charge says it utilises a melee weapon, I have a feeling that was mostly to get around the cumbersome issue of giving shields melee damage values. Easier just to tap the main hand's weapon and put 'strike with a melee weapon' in the description. I may be wrong and there was always an intention of adding a melee attack element to the skill's animation... But if I'm not wrong, then unarmed shield charging should be considered. And unarmed flicker striking. *mumble monks are awesome mumble.* If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between. I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period. Last edited by Foreverhappychan#4626 on Nov 19, 2012, 1:23:21 PM
|
|
"No, it's both at the same time, although the melee part is not clearly visible on certain characters (templar), it's much more noticeable on others. "Also because it doesn't work with ranged weapons. Since at the time it was impossible to make the skill usable with unarmed, the natural way to describe "not ranged weapons" was "melee weapons". The skill has always been intended to deal main-hand damage. "Surely you see why this is problematic? Can you use Whetstones to improve fist quality? You're saying this using weapon in a reasonable English definition meaning something which is used to inflict harm. But "weapon" already has a very solid, and no less reasonable definition used throughout the game, as an item used for this purpose. Mixing the two leads to confusion and inconsistency. It would also mean we'd then have to nerf facebreaker - it was a happy coincidence that fixing the long neglected case of 'weapon' modifiers applying when you're not using weapons also fixed the most major balance issues with facebreaker (the fix for quivers working is coming, but a little bit technically challenging and not a priority for open beta), but undoing that fix would mean the problem needs to be dealt with some other way, not that it can be ignored. "As pointed out it already has one - the templar doesn't have it as much (and I haven't checked the shadow) but the four classes which existed when the skill was implemented physically hit with the main-hand weapon and the shield at the same time (and there are different animations for different weapon-types - a claw hits differently to a sword). "I strongly disagree here. Flicker-strike thematically feels very much a weapon skill to me (and many of the other devs, based on discussions of which skills could be changed to work unarmed). Nearly as much as Heavy Strike. |
