A Brief history of Claws (Their prime, their death, and why they are still bad atm)

Please keep LGoH on some high-end claws. Physical life leech is useless for elemental claw builds (even converted from phys), whereas LGoH is basically a free gem slot.
Either keep LGoH, or at least make claws leech all attack damage.

Note that wild slash and frost blades both do lots of hits, so LGoH is pretty nice. With high attack speed and multistrike, LGoH takes the place of leech *and* Vaal Pact, without losing regen.
With dual Touch of Anguish, frost blades becomes a hit-monster. I think that claw in particular would be considerably worse with phys life leech.

Claws were supposedly meant as a defensive option compared to daggers, but their defense is somewhat hard to use. The changes to leech mean those implicits have lesser value, plus pure physical scaling can be a bit of a problem depending on the skill so the pure physical leech is a bit more annoying to use.

There's also less crit support on the tree for claws compared to daggers. 6 claw crit nodes totaling 145% crit chance and 24% crit multiplier compared to 11 crit nodes for daggers totaling 215% crit chance, 114% crit multi, and then the Adder's Touch 30% chance on crit to poison the enemy. Hell, swords only have 5 crit nodes and the total of those is 135% crit chance and 80% crit multi.

Claws supposedly have flavor thanks to the Claws of the Magpie node, but that rarely ever comes up in PVE which leaves leech as the only thing to really make claws interesting. If there were claw nodes that let 25-50% of leech continue at full life or ES and/or let all attack damage be able to leech then its niche could work out better. Have some % of leech be instant when using a claw. Maybe a chance to bleed and then leech even more against bleeding enemies would work well for claws. Or increased chance to crit against bleeding enemies. A chance to cause bleeding on crit like daggers can poison on crit. Maybe just toss the bleed stuff out and have some sort of DoT be based on leech damage like the unique belt The Retch.

"

Jackinthegreen wrote:

...
Have some % of leech be instant when using a claw. ...

That's a good suggestion imho and could be a balanced solution,ofc depending on the numbers. Has to be an implicit though, or Varunastra could do it aswell, and I don't think it should.

Or rework claws' implicit and make (some) Claws cause bleeding - I really never logically understood why claws don't make enemies bleed and can leech instead...

"

zSavage wrote:

Here's the basics of why claws are still pretty much useless or an inferior choice right now:
1) Claws lost their niche (leeching). Other weapons can pretty much leech exactly like a build with a claw could (or their leech is a tad lower, and since claws don't leech as much the difference is not significant).
2) Claws do less damage than other one hand weapon types (both from the base item, and scaling available from the tree).
3) Good phys claws are hard to find. This is because about half of the base types are useless for a phys build (since LGoH doesn't scale anywhere near as well into endgame DPS as leech does), and you're not going to any decent damage with a claw build without going crit (for the reasons described in 2). Also, pretty much all of the unique claws aside from Bloodseeker are pretty much useless for most claw builds.
4) The state of melee (Let's not discuss this here, please).

1. Claws lost their INITIAL niche, but gained another niche instead - they have life gained on hit implicits, and mana/hit if needed.

2. Claws dont do much less damage, unless you're comparing to 2-handers, of course.

3. LGoH CAN scale well even for endgame (with proper build), but argument is still relevant - a lot of bases are kinda junk, and there is no powerful FOTM unique like Bino.

You can overlook my guide in sig, to understand how to utilize LGOH from claws.

"

zSavage wrote:

Anyway, to give claws a better place in the game, I would suggest:
1) Increasing the implicit leech of claws to give them a niche again. Make all or almost all of the high level claw bases have life leech instead of LGoH. This would make more bases usable for phys claw builds and allow them to fit their intended purpose in the game.
2) An extra notable wheel or two (or improved nodes in the tree) that support claw users. Right now there aren't really that many that are practical or located in good places.
3) Consider allowing claw leech/LGoH to be global again (rewards using a claw in a DW build for leech, and allows better leeching for a pure claw DW build). This would give them another use other than for claw builds.

1. So, you want to KILL LGoH playstyle with claws? Bases with LL could use a buff, but LGoH bases should remain too.

2. There are enough notables for claws & 1-handed weapons, melee, "with shield/DW", etc. A proper build will spend most of its points for life nodes anyway, not for extra DPS nodes (there are tons of those around for every build).

3. That's a valid argument, cause ATM LGoH/LL implicits on claws have too small DW benefits...

Just generally confirming that I ignore claws entirely.

There´s literally NOTHING in this game that makes claws appealing, at all.

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

1. So, you want to KILL LGoH playstyle with claws? Bases with LL could use a buff, but LGoH bases should remain too.

No, there are just too many LGoH claws in the top endgame bases. Either change a few of them to LL or buffing the LL claws would be fine. Right now for a phys crit build 6 of the top 7 bases are LGoH, the top one being the only LL claw (Vaal Claw) among the group.

As for LGoH being effective for large numbers of hits, yes, this is true. But there comes a point where even a little life leech is superior to LGoH (usually compared with instant leech).

Lets say we have 2% LL, vs, say 50 LGoH:
0.02*Avg Dmg > 50

Solving for average damage, we get 50/0.02 = 2500.

Of course, this scales better with higher life leech values.

niche that claws have - and niche that is pretty much universally ignored and regarded as 'meh' is life/ES sustain

leech + GR for leech to ES
LGoH for leech to life

ive toyed with builds like this and this is something that can be done only with claws (or getting insane pieces with +LGoH + LGOH Support) and works pretty well

it isnt popular because most players disregard life/ES builds without really understanding what they are doing so i suppose maybe few dozen players tops gave it a fair try

I'm not sure. If I compare the claw uniques to the sword or axe uniques there isn't much difference. Maybe when Varanustra and Rigwalds weapons become more avaible it might change, but right now swords are even worse than claws and axes... well Soultaker that's it. Jack the Axe is decent... but not any better than Touch of Anguish (which actually is better due to the flat phys it gets which works better with quality). So in terms of uniques 1h weapons in general are a lot worse than 2h weapons.

For the Leech values... they actually got buffed. From 6% to 2% (which would have been 10% before the change). Having LGoH on the fastest claw also makes a lot of sense and with Multistrike it isn't too bad. Also those mods are local since a very long time now. Also the Bloodseeker mod always was a local mod unless you use a skill that attacks with both weapons (like Dual Strike). Sadly Essentia Sanguis is not local otherwise it would be nice to use a hybrid build to leech life with one Claw and ES with the other, although Essentia Sanguis would do this alone, since it is oddly enough on a base that doesn't even give leech (they should have changed the base, since it used to give 3% Leech^^).

I also question that Leech would be that beneficial. 25 LGoH is a pretty good value. A hit would have to deal an average of 1250 physical damage to beat that, exspecially before having endgame equip it isn't that bad and with claws having a lot of leech avaible anyway. I'm also not sure why you are so unhappy with the Terror Claw... yes it doesn't have 1.6 aps, only 1.5, but the damage is really good, only some foils can compete with them, since only the ambusher combines such high APS and Crit Chance, and due to claws not rolling a lot of caster mods (only mana), they are much easier to craft.

I agree that the mods for them are a bit lacking. The Charge Steal is a nice thing, but honestly it doesn't come into play very often and isn't really compareable with the high crit mult and poison daggers get.

A few more likely and better changes to claws would be:

a) If you want the LGoH gone all mods on claws would have to be turned into Attack damage Leech from pure Physical Leech, that way some claw/dagger made skills like Viperstrike or Frostblades would actually made sense with claws, right now they struggle with leech only working with physical damage.

b) A look at claw nodes is surely a good thing, they don't offer reliable benefits. Again too much physical leech with only works for specific builds (even Viper Strike, a skill made for shadows doesn't work with the shadows leech nodes... not sure why the duelist got straight attack damage leech).

"

Lets say we have 2% LL, vs, say 50 LGoH:
0.02*Avg Dmg > 50

Solving for average damage, we get 50/0.02 = 2500.

Of course, this scales better with higher life leech values.

Even a physical crit build might use Hatred, Herald of Ashe, maybe Flasks that give elemental damage or even use Physical to Lightning for reliable shocks. All of this is pretty much killing leech claws. So unless you are dealing straight physical damage LGoH is a really great option. Also something to consider, you need to pass around 15k dps with high aps (which is likely with claws) and at this point a few other leech sources will already instantly fill you up anyway.

I'm also not sure why elemental builds have to be killed just for physical builds to be a tiny bit better. Again the two skills basically associated to the shadow due to its Dex/Int and what they do requirement are Reave and Viperstrike and while reave clearly fits a physical build (although it can be elemental) Viperstrike doesn't deal a lot of physical damage and needs a way to sustain. Frostblades is arguably another skill that would fit here (there actually is a unique claw for it), which again is more about elemental damage than physical. So if a change, it can't be at the cost of elemental skills.

"

Emphasy wrote:

(even Viper Strike, a skill made for shadows doesn't work with the shadows leech nodes... not sure why the duelist got straight attack damage leech).

because they had to put it in the reach of 'bow' builds and make it expensive to get for 'wand' builds

making it expensive for bow builds was ofc out of the question because that would mean that bow users were actually expected to make sacrifices in their builds

these general leech nodes were as stupid of an idea as Scion's Berserker node. sadly only one got nerfed

note: shadow has TOO MANY nodes already. his nodes are the best on the tree. the 'power density' is amazing. the phys/chaos nodes are just bonkers. no other class can be a caster, archer, wander, melee and traper. shadow can do all that and his only real passive-tree-related issue is lack of pure STR nearby

"

sidtherat wrote:

"

Emphasy wrote:

(even Viper Strike, a skill made for shadows doesn't work with the shadows leech nodes... not sure why the duelist got straight attack damage leech).

because they had to put it in the reach of 'bow' builds and make it expensive to get for 'wand' builds

making it expensive for bow builds was ofc out of the question because that would mean that bow users were actually expected to make sacrifices in their builds

these general leech nodes were as stupid of an idea as Scion's Berserker node. sadly only one got nerfed

note: shadow has TOO MANY nodes already. his nodes are the best on the tree. the 'power density' is amazing. the phys/chaos nodes are just bonkers. no other class can be a caster, archer, wander, melee and traper. shadow can do all that and his only real passive-tree-related issue is lack of pure STR nearby

How would a bow or wand build benefit from a claw node that gives him attack damage leeched with claws. Also the shadow doesn't have any good leech nodes for bows/wands and I highly doubt that turning Blood Drinker into an Attack Damage Leech node would change much. An Elemental Claw build doesn't really get anything out of those shadow nodes either. The thing is while some of his nodes are strong, it is mostly the generic nodes. The claw specific ones are terrible and I'm not sure how the shadow gets stronger if those nodes get buffed up, also I'm not even sure if shadow is the necessary choice for a claw build, raider is also pretty good, but again the claw nodes are terrible, right now you are better of doing a Duelist or Ranger and getting general 1h or dualwield nodes than actually going for the claw nodes.