Strike skills need a lot more help to be competitive

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ciel289 wrote:

i find it very difficult to see value in changes like the suggested "take less damage" or "add more damage"

they often dont solve the problems,they just hide it behind big numbers and often end up beeing abused by other builds
we saw this with fortify on spell casters etc

problem is - GGG never really tried that.

recent self-cast buff (50% across the board) is the FIRST attempt of that nature. previous buffs were akin to '6% increased Glacial Bummer damage' rather than 'lets double it and see what happens' OR 'large % buff to compensate for large % nerf elsewhere'. net changes were very, very small and the relative power between skills and archetypes is static since at least 3 years. GGG loves this status quo and is very much afraid of changing it.


several skills out there are NUMERICALLY inferior to their counterparts, some skills are just f.. busted (Spectral Helix deals like TWICE the damage of any strike skill using the same weapon. it is NOT just the Nightblade/Step! it is the skill itself that is stupidly strong)

Forbidden Rite is one of such busted skills. the drawback is irrelevant, solving that - at most - costs 3 suffixes (because you get your chaos res to at least 0% anyway, right?), the damage is just stupid and - the biggest meme - it scales damage from defences! scaling life/ES gives you damage. just like that, no fancy moves needed - just cap your chaos res and you are set

for comparison: attacks have Bloodthirst Support - 2% life as phys if on low life. it sucks. it asks for way too much and gives way too little. even on Voidforge/Doomfletch that added phys is.. mediocre unless you have 7k+ HP (and that is not that easy, mostly requires STR stacking and if you are STR stacking then you go all in and have 3-4times more damage)

besides numbers, there is also 'shallow scaling pool' for strike skills. their tag list is short, you cannot cherry pick supports and you end up with Behead Support as the 6th link (that support is garbage btw) because there is literally no other better option

STR/DEX/INT stacking VASTLY outscales 'classic' damage building via weapon. in fact, the only 'buffs' melee got in recent years were buffs to STR/DEX stacking. in the days of BLS release - 1000 was A LOT. right now you can get 2000. BLS with 2000 STR cannot be beaten by any existing weapon.. but this makes build making process rather dumb: you either stat stack (esp with Omni that is just idiotic) or you deal zdps

again - it is all hard math, numbers matter here and GGG tries their hardest to admit that

My problems with strike skills are
1. hard to get relevant weapon. I suck at crafting and for me it seems that there is absurd amount of mod tiers.
2. playing it requires too much clicking (mostly limited amount of targets, no pierce / chain combo for coverage, big aoe etc)
3. There's usually better skill choice for the exact same weapon setup , be it spectral throw, steel skills, poison attacks, skills with range component)

But those are just shallow reasons, I gave up on melee around the time they nerfed leech.

i was gonna make a behead support thread because i really enjoy melee even though i get stuck in yellow maps but yeah, i make a slam character it can do stacked Essence monsters, and all 4 tries of Archnemesis but when i do melee strike i instant die because im putting myself in front of serious danger with high chances of being stunned or one shotted instead of being safe from a distance.

it would be really nice GGG to help out melee, i am an inquistor melee guy and i love the strikes but i do admit that the tribal fury node is really far away and for the lulz i did a spellcaster and got to the same yellow map content with like 70% less the investment. it could nothing but laugh at the situation .

its clear that streamers like Darkee do all the new content from the beach to endgame in 9 hours of playtime, ( as a non striker )

or people doing Gauntlet and there are no one playing strike. it would be nice to make strike able to get some represenation in these challenges.

also behead support is amazing but i wanted to say that sometimes my character moves too slow to get to the boss in 20 seconds to refresh the buff is their a way it can just retain or stay. i dunno but thank you for the gem its fun

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wizardlulz wrote:

also behead support is amazing but i wanted to say that sometimes my character moves too slow to get to the boss in 20 seconds to refresh the buff is their a way it can just retain or stay. i dunno but thank you for the gem its fun

behead is really underrated but understandably so.

if your damage is pitiful, it does nothing for 50% of the fight.

so now players are stuck in a situation where if they cant kill fast, behead will take too long to be of use

on the flipside, if they can kill fast it means they can take enemies below 50% reasonably fast. and if thats the case, behead is only good for it's "headhunter" effect.

Behead Support is a trap, trap in a shiny wrap

it says 50% more damage to targets on low life. 'napkin mental math' translates that into 25% 'on average' which is already meh.

but it isnt 25%. first - you have cull, and if you dont - you should definitely get one - on totem, golem, gear. just get cull.

that means the damage bonus is active for 40% of the fight. it does nothing of value during more than half of endgame encounters (and some bosses heal to ~full between phases)

for more than half of each fight you use 5Link. it means that the initial burst when all the flasks are available, vaal skills are loaded - you are on a 5 Link.


then there is the 'mini-HH'. for most endgame fights you wont get any rare. the only encounter with reliable source of rares is Legion 4/5way. but who farms that without AOE-explody and HH? Strike skills have no place there.

the only value of Behead is the +strike range it provides. It makes the difference and is very, very useful. but the price is - you have to use a mostly useless support gem to get the effect. it is cool when you have 500pdps 1h, otherwise, get a more reliable damage source. because strike skills' problem IS damage in the end.