How many skills get little-to-no usage

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sidtherat wrote:

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Rakushi wrote:

I'd argue that 90% of the skills that we have, used as your main skill, are completly viable, and useable, to make a build with, but they won't outshine the top end due to various reasons, and that is not a LACK of damage, but a lack of convenience or quality of life.

Let me explain by comparing skills that function similiarly, but one would see a lot more play than the other.

Viper Strike and Heavy Strike: One locks you in place and applies a degen that ramps up over time, the other can be used to stunlock enemies. Even if we would put both on similiar level of strength, you'd see the other use more.

Firestorm and Winterorb: You channel your skill up and walk away, as stuff rains down on your enemy. But Winter orb is played more often, because it can chill, freeze, and takes less charge up time for potential. Also, less visual clutter.

Lacerate and Cleave: Fightingstyle wise they are identical, you go towards an enemy, and a close-mid range, you swipe at them. But cleave sort of fell out of favour, while Lacerate still see's play. Why? Small bit of extra range. No, really, that's the only thing I can think of.

i cut the rest, but:

it is about the damage. Blade Flurry deals like thrice the damage of alternatives - oh look, it gets usage. Earthshatter deals thrice the damage of Sunder? oh look, it gets usage.

your examples.. Viper Strike has a damage built in, deals the most potent damage type (dot) and in general has great numbers. Heavy Strike 'can stun' and thats it. Heavy Strike deals comparable damage to Ground Slam or Earth Shatter yet it is a strike skill without any extra damage scaling unlike slams.

Firestorm.. have you actually played it? this skill has been changed and you no longer 'channel it in place'. like a year ago or something

Lacerate/Cleave - have you actually played them? you see no other reason why Lacerate is used? read the gem description. ill give you a hint:
90% MORE damage with bleeding

the list goes on and on. it is mostly about the damage and/or area.

- lightning tendrils? good damage, very small starting AOE
- cleave? bad damage, bad aoe
- sunder? ok damage, terrible area (missing moving enemies)
- heavy strike? bad area you fix by making your damage bad. it should have 300% effectiveness to be usefull, not 250%
- spectral throw? bad damage or bad area. forced gem swap
- venom gyre? bad damage (the only chaos/dot skill that has no flat damage, requires completely different and much more expensive weapon type)
- dual strike? bad damage, bad area (with a TERRIBLE threshold jewel, skill identity and pretty much everything about this skill is bad)


skills that have biggest mechanical problem/qol:
- chain hook.
- any skill you can cancel out of (barraged galvanic arrow with 12 arrows plays like shit 'thanks' to animation cancelling)


and then there are skills that have bonkers damage and bonkers area and auto-aim, and scale from gem levels etc. that last group you can see on the ninja because these are the best (recently new power category has been added: 'scaling compatibility with explody chest')


there are always going to be 'best' choices, noone expects otherwise

but it is simply a lie to say that current power disparities are 'cool' and cannot be fixed. another lie is that 'number changes are not enough'. while in practice it is exactly the other way around: most skills require simple damage updates and recent ones simply werent enough. you wont fix a skill dealing 50% damage of an alternative by increasing the damage by 6%. you buff it by 80% and see what happens. there is no mystic sh.. going around here, you have single target damage and you have area coverage. in most cases unused skills are those that lack in endgame damage area (or require sick investment to reach satisfying levels of it)

note: this ignores the 'fun' aspect. i like playing Cleave, i find it entertaining mechanically. ive done all content with various Cleave builds. but sorry, it deals HALF the damage skill with its AREA and playstyle should deal. it is simple as that. it deals HALF the damage it needs. it has no slam scaling, it has terrible aps penalty, tiny area and requires up and personal combat. and yet deals less damage than significantly better Ground Slam

so stop with 'it cannot be fixed' bollocks. it is untrue and the argumentation boils down to 'muh complex' when in fact is is (in most cases) very, very simple

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sidtherat wrote:

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Rakushi wrote:

Of course it is about the damage, and we know both that but let's be real, even if Viper strike would deal 3x damage than it does now, it wouldn't see more play on the higher ends.

Firestorm never was a channeling skill, but the playstyle can be played fairly similiarly. You "cast it" and it creates an area where it gets shot at. And the more you cast the skill, the better it is.

lol wut?

viper strike is the highest damage potential attack poison skill in the game. any pestilent strike build can swap it for bosses (and most mid-geared builds DO swap it. the damage it gives is well worth the swap)

and firestorm does not 'stack' anymore. it has a limit of 3 and you play it just like any other skill - with cast speed to spam big meteors or scaling the big hit

im not sure if you are aware that both these statements of yours kinda make everything else youve said bit.. questionable

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raics wrote:

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Rakushi wrote:

To everything else, GGG has been working on active skill gem balance. But there are simplly too many to all take into account for. Ideally every melee skill would reach the same power level as cyclone does, but I don't see that happening, simplly because that's too much to ask, personally speaking.

They aren't two guys in a garage for quite a while now so I'm pretty confident they have someone on hand that could be tasked with that, all they need is a guy who plays the game a lot to tell them what needs fixing and where. I'll be realistic and assume that very few on their staff seriously play it anymore, after all these years most of them are probably in "I'll puke if I see another rhoa" mode. But, that's an excuse that works for two guys in a garage that can't afford a burger to split, not a 100-strong company that obviously has no problem keeping out of the red.

That said, some of the numbers in there are so wrong you don't even have to play the game to see it.

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kole wrote:

Lightning Tendrils. The other day I literally had to check if it's still in the game, I thought perhaps they gave it the same treatment Arctic Breath received aka rework and name change.

Nope, it's still in the game, still called Lightning Tendrils, and it's still not played by anyone lmao.

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benjaminbona wrote:

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kole wrote:

Lightning Tendrils. The other day I literally had to check if it's still in the game, I thought perhaps they gave it the same treatment Arctic Breath received aka rework and name change.

Nope, it's still in the game, still called Lightning Tendrils, and it's still not played by anyone lmao.

One of many many skills that NONE touches..

Even more that are considered TERRIBLE skills

There are so many skills just waiting for number tweaks to become usable once more

Or perhaps just some added mechanics to breathe new life into them

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raics wrote:

They aren't two guys in a garage for quite a while now so I'm pretty confident they have someone on hand that could be tasked with that, all they need is a guy who plays the game a lot to tell them what needs fixing and where. I'll be realistic and assume that very few on their staff seriously play it anymore, after all these years most of them are probably in "I'll puke if I see another rhoa" mode. But, that's an excuse that works for two guys in a garage that can't afford a burger to split, not a 100-strong company that obviously has no problem keeping out of the red.

That said, some of the numbers in there are so wrong you don't even have to play the game to see it.