Give One-handed melee single target skills a small built in AOE

I've looked at the ranger, shadow, marauder, witch, templar and duelist builds list and guess what? I fail to find any single target skill that doesn't have a built in AOE or projectile component other than 1 or 2 viper strike builds in the shadow tree and flicker.

The reason is it simply isn't effective. Knowing you would have to give up an entire link for melee splash and not even get that much of a value out of it isn't really appealing. Single target isn't too bad by itself with decent damage, but when you get the "Allies cannot die" mod, single target completely fails. You somehow have to make your way to the rare or unique monster that is causing this and slay it. Ranger characters usually have some built in aoe from either spells or bows. Even 2-handers don't really have this issue with the way their skills are designed.

I think all single target melee skills should get a built in AOE component. It doesn't have to be very large, but it does need to exist in some way to restore viability to those builds so skills like double strike or puncture can work out as a main skill.

Heh, that would be the optimal way, to give splash damage to every single target skill without AoE, even with the aid of mandatory threshold jewels and give melee splash also a small increased/more multiplier to AoE and/or damage.

Another way would be to give certain effects to skills used in tandem, which would increase diversity too - have Lightning Strike deal double projectile damage to enemies recently hit by Static Strike and Static Strike to have a reversed knockback effect on enemies recently hit by Lightning Strike, for example, or go even more bonkers regarding interaction.

At the moment you have at maximum 2 skills that are used on the 6L items, and a few pseudo 5L for helmets, boots or gloves, with only a handful of one handed items that reach the pseudo 4L status. You also have certain auras, defensive CWDT or conditional skills that you have to socket so there is no wonder that you'll at most rely on one main damage providing skill, one trash killing skill and the rest focused on defensive or utility mechanics.

Some more intricate interactions would open more diversity options while preserving a high degree of efficiency if implemented right...

Hopefully, they'll further improve single target skills, and also the skills interactions...

The difference between lacerate and viper strike was amazing when I swapped from using a dagger to using Varunastra. I could actually clear enemies and bypass the "enemies cannot die" mod because I could immediately strike at the monster causing the status. I also didn't have to worry about fighting at point blank range.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Heh, that would be the optimal way, to give splash damage to every single target skill without AoE, even with the aid of mandatory threshold jewels and give melee splash also a small increased/more multiplier to AoE and/or damage.

Or, they could take a page from Torchlight 2, and give every melee weapon an inherent 'swing arc' (your actual target takes the full damage; the other enemies within that arc take a fraction of it). For ease of reference, consider the following depiction of T2 weapon arcs:



Daggers and claws, in return for their innate benefits, would remain single-target weapons.


There are two skill gems this would immediately effect:

*melee splash - sort of. It remains centered on the specific target, of course, and as you level it up its AoE can reach enemies outside of the base swing arc.
*cleave - as is, would be obsoleted. A possible rework would say 'increases swing arc by 20%; secondary targets take X% increased damage', with X scaling with the level of the gem. Example: two enemies are close enough together to be within the arc of a 1H sword swong; the one actually targeted takes (for example) 100 points of damage; the other, just 25. It is that derived value (25) which is being modified by the cleave gem's seondary-damage bonus.

Reave and blade flurry would remain useful, especially for claws and daggers.

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Another way would be to give certain effects to skills used in tandem, which would increase diversity too - have Lightning Strike deal double projectile damage to enemies recently hit by Static Strike and Static Strike to have a reversed knockback effect on enemies recently hit by Lightning Strike, for example, or go even more bonkers regarding interaction.

This, sir, is a good concept. It would be interesting to see what other examples of this sort of tandem effect could be out there.