Cyclone

Make sure you concisely state your character build, level, and other complimenting abilities you have when you talk about a skill - The more we know about your character, the better we can understand your feedback.

Congratulations to topeight, who managed to beat me to the thread depite me being notified by Rory as soon as it was up.


Basic info about cyclone, to answer the more common questions:

Cyclone moves to where you clicked, at your move speed. This means you'll go further for one skill use (and thus mana cost payment) if you click further - but there's more chance that something goes bad along the way and you can't interrupt it until you finish. It needs a very small minimum amount of free space to move in to start the skill, and has a longer, but still moderately short minimum distance to which you'll move if you click closer than that.

Cyclone spins at your attack speed, and deals AoE damage twice per spin - so deals weapon damage twice as often compared to the a regular attack (and to an area rather than a single target).

So a high attack speed, low movement speed is the best cast for stacking multiple hits per cyclone on a single target. But with a higher move speed you can of course just start the cyclone again sooner should you desire, and if you can afford paying the mana more often.

The AoE range of cyclone is determined from the weapon range (including the new +2 passive) but is an area of effect, so is then increased by AoE radius increases.

Cyclone, like almost all weapon skills, alternates weapons when dual wielding. So each weapon will hit once per spin. It benefits from the 10% more attack speed while dual wielding - this is a multiplicative bonus, so always multiplies DPS by 1.1

While Cycloning, you are immune to stun and knockback. Basically, almost nothing short of death can interrupt the movement. This includes you - cycloning blindly will not let you change your mind when you see the strong rare in the room you're entering.
You can be stopped by things that remove your move speed - freezing and beartrap will stop you.

Just like any other skill, you pay the mana cost once, when you start the skill. Thus longer Cyclones are more mana efficient - but also more risky, as there's more chance something happens to make it dangerous while you're moving.

Cyclone's DPS display is wrong. It does not account for the fact cyclone hit's twice per attack duraiton rather than once like a regular skill. Thus it willb e displaying half the actual DPS value. I am not aware of any other issues with DPS display for this skill.

EDIT: Updated since some people were misinterpreting the post

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Lionguild wrote:

I would really like to ask the Devs one important question. When doing Internal tests with cyclone that you say showed that it was doing a lot of damage, was this with a physical or elemental build?

Both! Tested on characters based on popular melee builds, and new builds designed to work specifically with Cyclone. Both were very capable of using the skill effectively. Generally, Physical Damage had much more survivability, while elemental melee builds had higher damage.

We are reading this feedback, I've mentioned the major points raised to Chris & Carl, and we're considering some changes to the skill.
Please dont' take a lack of reply as us not reading - I usually don't reply in the skill forum until I've read all the thread - and this one's been growing faster than I have time to read, as I'm very busy on improving the game at the moment.

I've updated my post on page one to make the mechanics more clear, since I see several people misinterpreted it.

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cocomoloco wrote:

still no response from GGG?

I responded several pages ago

further updates to the early post: Cyclone's DPS display is wrong. It does not account for the fact cyclone hit's twice per attack duraiton rather than once like a regular skill. Thus it willb e displaying half the actual DPS value. I am not aware of any other issues with DPS display for this skill.

Quoting relevant part of my post on the first page.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Cyclone moves to where you clicked, at your move speed. This means you'll go further for one skill use (and thus mana cost payment) if you click further - but there's more chance that something goes bad along the way and you can't interrupt it until you finish.

...

Just like any other skill, you pay the mana cost once, when you start the skill. Thus longer Cyclones are more mana efficient - but also more risky, as there's more chance something happens to make it dangerous while you're moving.

It is specifically intended that the mana cost make it prohibitive to constantly make small cyclones. You can gain more mana efficiency as a trade-off for ability to bail out by making longer movements each skill use.

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Whoaness wrote:

So the description "hits twice per spin", the spin doesn't mean the duration of the skill?

No, it means two hits each time your character spins around fully (360 degrees), which happens at your attack speed, for reference, regardless of how far you travel.

Not technically, but you'd have to have quite slow attack speed/high movement speed to not manage it.

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moozooh wrote:

1. It appears that Cyclone, "measuring weapon range from the edge of the character" (quoting Mark from the mechanics thread), effectively has a base range of 2+n, where n is the weapon range and 2 is the base radius of character model.

As such, for instance, the unarmed range to apply AoE increases to is actually 2+4=6, rather than 4.

Is this correct?

I believe so.

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moozooh wrote:

2. Also, because the quality bonus (+10% AoE at 20% quality) always rounds down, it will do nothing at all except under very specific circumstances, such as:

• upon attaining 10+ base weapon range (currently impossible when unarmed): 10×1.1=11;
• upon equipping Carcass Jack, and/or picking up AoE node(s), and/or using Increased AoE support;
• partially negating the downside of Concentrated Effect (by at most 1 under most favorable circumstances).

Is this correct?

It is correct that you need to either gain more weapon range or other area increases to see a benefit from this currently. The classification of any area bonus as "very specific circumstances" is perhaps arguable, and the source of such bonus does not matter and is not limited to the ones you list.

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moozooh wrote:

If so, are you considering reinstating some of its quality bonus back, so that it does do something without extra hoops? (+0.75% per 1% quality seems like it would do the trick for any kind of weapon.)

This isn't my area, but the designers are aware of this and examining the available options to make the quality more impactful on it's own.

Please post new feedback for this skill gem here - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2524024