Lacerate is The Best Melee Skill in Path of Exile

Specifically on a Bleed Lacerate Gladiator.

But why? Why do I believe that Lacerate is arguably one of the best, if not the best, melee skill in the game? The reasons are quite simple.

It is a viable one-button skill.
It allows for great versatility in a build’s defenses.
And it functions as a semi-ranged skill that scales off of melee damage.

Taking into consideration that newer players generally have less fundamental knowledge of the game’s core mechanics, these are all reasons that I believe make Lacerate stand head and shoulders above all other melee skills.

So let’s take a look at the first reason as to why I think Lacerate is the best melee skill. (At least in the context that it is played on a Bleed Lacerate Gladiator.) Lacerate takes advantage of one of the most powerful damage over time effects in the game, which is the bleed mechanic. Because it deals damage over time, players are able to worry a little less about how many times they are hitting their enemies, and focus more on learning the enemy’s mechanics and avoiding potential one-shot scenarios.

And since it deals so much damage, it can potentially be used as a standalone, one-button build. Even though veteran players recommend pairing Lacerate with casting Vulnerability and Ancestral Warchief Totem for extra damage, this skill is strong enough to clear endgame content even without these extra accessories. Unsurprisingly, one-button builds are one of the most coveted types of builds in Path of Exile due to their simplicity and ease of gameplay. In a game that is so oriented towards complexity, discovery, and RNG, Lacerate stands to be one of the most consistently simplistic builds in the game. Jump around, throw out a couple wind slashes, and watch your enemies bleed out.

Unlike the Slam builds that are growing in popularity as of late, Lacerate does not depend on warcries to scale its damage. Even though Slam skills may have better damage output when it comes to progressing endgame content and obtaining endgame gear, their sheer clunkiness and the fact that their warcry combos render them stationary, can potentially put players into very dangerous situations. Whereas Lacerate builds, on the other hand, can simply throw out one or two slashes, dance around the enemy, and throw more slashes as they are left maimed, blinded, and bleeding.

But beyond the case that it deals tremendous amounts of damage and is a very viable one-button skill, Lacerate also opens up many options for defense when it comes to the passive skill tree. For reference, let’s take a look at the skill trees that I have made for my own Bleed Lacerate Gladiator.



In each of these trees, you’ll notice that I take advantage of many life nodes as well as armor scaling nodes in order to set up a couple base layers of defense. Now where it gets interesting is that once I have the base passive tree set up, I can choose either to path up for more life as well as chaos resistances, which are both huge for pushing endgame content. Or I can path to Sanctuary, Command of Steel, and Testudo in order to maximize my block chance, which gives 100% damage mitigation on block so long as I am not running Glancing Blows. Of course, in each respective skill tree, you will also need to change your Ascendancy passives accordingly to optimize the build’s functionality, but the point that I’m really trying to make is: you have options.



Now, for the final reason as to why I think Lacerate is the best melee skill in Path of Exile, is that its range is not quite like that of a conventional melee strike skill like Double Strike, Heavy Strike, and so on. Its attack animation functions quite like a projectile skill, but in fact, scales from melee damage. The fact that players can wreak havoc on their enemies from range while using a melee skill adds on yet another layer of pseudo-defense. Where instead of reducing the total amount of incoming damage taken, players simply find themselves in fewer dangerous situations as a result of not needing to run up in close proximity to enemies in order to fight them.

So these are the main reasons why I feel that Lacerate is one of the best, if not the best, melee skill in Path of Exile. Obviously, by no means am I suggesting that every other melee skill is inherently bad, but if you have reasons as to why you believe another melee skill is better than Lacerate, feel free to open a discussion with me in the comments. That being said, if you liked what you saw in this post, consider subscribing to my YouTube channel to support me. I generally engage in discussions like this one on there, and occasionally dabble in other types of Path of Exile content and events on there too. Also, check out my Twitch channel if you wanna hang out with me whenever I’m on.

And that’s all folks. Thanks for reading the post! And I’ll you next time.

bonks tho

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innervation wrote:

bonks tho

tru slam builds in general put out a lot more burst damage than Lacerate Bleed.

The downside is mainly in the fact that you'll have 4-5 buttons to press on top of managing flasks, which isn't super appealing to a lot of players.

You don't have to press anything other than the attack itself and call of steel when you map even against map bosses. That whole warcry rotation is for a8 conquerors and sirus.

Bonk builds still blow ass, they all suffer from the shit attack animation apeed that ggg thinks was a good idea.

Old news, i mean it's several months too late to point out, also you should post this on the guide forum.

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yamface wrote:

You don't have to press anything other than the attack itself and call of steel when you map even against map bosses. That whole warcry rotation is for a8 conquerors and sirus.

Bonk builds still blow ass, they all suffer from the shit attack animation apeed that ggg thinks was a good idea.

Duuuude. It was especially the animation speed for me. I was playing a Two-Hand Earthshatter in Zizaran's Gauntlet. Everytime i fought Doedre Act 4. The Temporal Chains circle would slow the animation so bad that you either had to choose between an animation cancel and deal no damage or tank a shotgun to the face.

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Ozxell wrote:

Old news, i mean it's several months too late to point out, also you should post this on the guide forum.

Figured it'd probably be old news for most. I mainly found it recently cuz i was previously a minion main lol. (Didn't really pay much attention to other classes) Still wanted to just share what i found in a post tho.

Bring back Reave!

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lolbreeze wrote:

Bring back Reave!

lol that takes me wayyy back. Sucks that Reave doesn't perform too well anymore. I tried putting together an Impale Reave Champ build this league. Had tons of cluster jewels and cost me quite a few Ex to put together. It could barely handle T11 maps. And without the Clusters, it was barely pushing mid yellow-tier maps.

If cyclone ceased to exist you'd have an argument....