Cleave + weapon range?

I'm trying to understand if +weapon range from the skill tree and from items are going to affect the AOE of Cleave. Does it scale of them?

Or does it scale only from 'increased AOE' modifiers?

Is there any source info on the internet where I can confirm this?

Range does nothing for attacks that create an AoE centered around you unless they explicitly say so, such as with Cyclone. Thus, it doesn't do anything for Cleave. You need increased AoE or + radius (but not sure if there's any way to improve radius for it anymore outside of the jewel on Standard).

I'm finding a lot of conflicting information on reddit, for example this claims Cleave/Reave range is based on the weapon used. Which means it's actually affected. So you think those posts are wrong?

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/bx8w6a/does_melee_range_affect_skills_like_cleave_reave/

I'm positive it doesn't work here, as I played it for a while early in 3.19 just for the memes since they added +2 radius to it. Increases to AoE, or being on Standard and having access to Overwhelming Odds, are quite noticeable. Adding + range doesn't do a thing.

But Cleave has a highly visible AoE effect when used, so you can sit in HO and add/remove strike range on the passive tree to compare and confirm it for yourself. Or build out a very simple Cleave char in PoB, and just switch between a 1h and 2h weapon. The difference in weapon range will have no effect on the AoE value that it shows you for Cleave.

The wiki entry also agrees.

I've been curious, what exactly does weapon range do these days? Seems hard to find info on. The new Disfavour looks amazing with +10 weapon range so what exactly can I exploit that on?

It primarily just increases the main hit range for strike skills, with very few exceptions.

That's a poor design honestly.

With skills like Cleave, Sweep, etc you literally hit enemies by swinging your weapon. It's very intuitive the longer your weapon, the futher you should hit them.

Also if weapon range doesn't affect anything but strikes, existing of Melee Strike Range stat feels redundant. Their functions almost fully overlap. Either they should be merged into one stat or weapon range should expand its functions.

Cyclone that have "8% increased Area of Effect per 1 additional Melee Strike Range" scales with additional weapon range as well. Does this mean that "weapon" range is a bigger category that includes "melee strike" range like say "projectile" speed includes "arrow" speed? I don't know.

Another wierd example: Blade Trap radius depends on base range of your weapons. Additional weapon range though doesn't scale the radius.

We mostly have the whole screen coverage, and sometimes offscreen, that people were able to achieve with Cyclone during Legion to thank for the half-baked state of melee "range". They allowed people to push it to extremes for a league, which many of us absolutely did, and then they blew the whole thing up.