Abyssal Cry

Abyssal cry was one of my favorite builds this last season, and it's not like it's a top tier build - it struggles hard against endgame content, it's quite fragile, and it relies both on hard-to-find unique items and on a secondary skill - and the go-to skill is also getting nerfed pretty hard.

So maybe it would be a good idea to address this? :/

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Abyssal cry was one of my favorite builds this last season, and it's not like it's a top tier build - it struggles hard against endgame content, it's quite fragile, and it relies both on hard-to-find unique items and on a secondary skill - and the go-to skill is also getting nerfed pretty hard.

So maybe it would be a good idea to address this? :/

I actually sent Bex a PM asking her to forward our concern to whomever is responsible for the new skill AoE, but I can imagine she (and other GGG employees) are superbusy preparing for the new league. Also it seems like all warcries have been left out in the rain - not just Abyssal Cry.

Yeah, but Rallying and Enduring are still fine with lower AOE. You won't get quite as long of a buff, or quite as many endurance charges, but most of my builds that ran Enduring Cry did so with no extra AOE needed - it was just fine as-is, and still will be.

Cutting the AOE off Abyssal Cry completely neuters any build based on it, because you need that AOE to get the screen-busting explosions that characterize the build. Nerf the AOE, and not only will monsters not explode far enough to affect anything beyond the next monster over, but you won't be able to catch even one or two packs. I've seen how much harder it is to clear maps with the 20% less AOE mod. Making increased AOE less effective just kills abyssal cry. :/

On the plus side, if you can get a hold of the new redblade shield, we can warcry more often (every 1.6 seconds instead of 2 seconds if berserker, or once every 2.67 seconds instead of 4 as non berserker).

However my berserker is also using
for the aoe, life and attack speed (shield charge/leap slam faster)!

Loses a lot of aoe but probably more warcrying is essentially more aoe and more damage.

Lets you heal more often too with warcry!

Playing a pretty standard Abyssal Cry build post-patch... It's gimped. It's really, really gimped. This skill is very hard to use now. It used to be able to clear much of the screen with a cry or two; now you have to pretty much do it pack by pack, which is kinda... crap, given that you can only use the skill once every two seconds at best. Thank goodness for the full respec, huh?

Maybe we can look into fixing this? Maybe? It was already the case that you pretty much needed a unqiue chest and off-hand to get decent enough AOE. It was always kind of a glass cannon build. But this is just awful now. :/

Yep, pretty terrible. I didn't mind a nerf honestly though since I think this skill was so broken before, super budget (cheap) for most build variety of abyssal cry too and flexible with map mods, I was offscreening mobs before with the explosion... But the aoe nerf hit this skill a lot since it relied on aoe stacking.

I've got 139% inc aoe on my character and the range for mobs ...

warcry: mobs with slightly purple effect on them are debuffed

Can sort of tell by corpses of who died to explosion and who exploded for radius size


Another screenshot of more dense pack


The explosion size not terrible, considering I got that mob way at top of the screen behind the rock in the first/second image, and in the third image I cleared most of the mobs, but the warcry size is miniscule. No melee player would use this to hinder mobs, especially considering 4 second cd by default, and the huge mana cost still.

Still playable but I think it clears very slow (by today's standards) now, and harder to hit bosses.

I tried Abyssal Cry on my blade flurry zerker with both aoe clusters and inc aoe gem, and it's fine for builds that don't specialize into it, but it is no longer a main-clearing skill. Last league I hit most of the screen with Abyssal Cry (had Carcass and +20% radius from my weapons/shield). It's the aoe from items that pushes AC over the top, and that got totally gimped this league.

And the explosion radius this league feels MUCH smaller. It is very hard to stack AC poisons on bosses with the new AOE scaling.

Yeah, I hope the skill can get some compensation base radius buff. As it is the clear speed isn't too great and you have to get a right into the middle of a pack, which is pretty dangerous in higher tier maps.

Is there a better way to handle corpses than this for melee? I don't play an abyssal cry build; I just put it in for a defense against corpses blowing me up. I don't care about the explosion AoE but the skill's radius is very poor. Often I can't even get an entire pack due to stragglers. And then with the cooldown I clear another pack before I can even use it again. This leaves too many corpses.
I play a gladiator but would very much like to avoid the blood explosion ascendancy.

Man, blood explosion is awesome.
Anyways, alternatives could be haemophilia gloves, Pyre, or more gem sockets.
Increased AOE, Herald of Ice, CoMK Corpse Explosion...
Utility requires investment. Not the purpose of this thread, however.