[Suggestion] Make Cleave, and dual wield, usable. Real talk inside

Cleave is my most favorite skill of the game - not from efficiency stand point obviously but rather for the nostalgia and style. I played it a lot many years ago back when there weren't many better options and dual wielding was at far better state. I also love Demonic cleave mtx, it might be the first mtx I ever purchased.

I played a lot of different melee builds and most of them did great. Last season I sweeped through the whole game (except uber ubers) with Ground Slam zerk.

Anyway so I decided I'll try cleave once again, how bad could it be. It has low damage and aoe, right? Well, let me tell you the truth is far grimmer than just that. Let's list all the things going against your way (worst things at the bottom)...


-Sword cluster signature mods are outdated by 10 years: 20% chance to get Frenzy charge on block - Present on both Brutal blade and Swagger. For today's standards these are a crude way of generating charges. Especially Frenzy charge when this one is the easiest to get for duelist.

-Sword clusters are spread far apart, at least the good ones. It's not the worst but you're basically forced to go by the Duelist bottom highway which mostly has meh clusters attached to it so it feels inefficient.

-Sword mastery stats are terrible. How is 50% reduced Enemy Chance to Block your Sword Attacks meaningful when there's this Attack mastery: Monsters cannot Block your Attacks. Another one is Offhand Accuracy is equal to Main Hand Accuracy while wielding a sword. Not sure how is this one useful.

-Lot of sword and dual wielding clusters stats are themed around block so they bait you into thinking you could actually cap block but in the end the investment feels just little too much.

-Dual wielding passives that do give you good stats often split the stats to Main hand and off hand. Making it awkward to cap your crit rate for both weapons for example.

-Vaal Cleave seems like a solid duck tape fix for cleave's problems, right? Yeah if it didn't come with antisynergy with Cleave itself - having to last hit the mob with Vaal Cleave. Cleave rewards you from dual wielding, dualwielding gives you a lot of attack speed. Even though you have more dps, attack speed actually makes it harder for you to land last hit with Vaal Cleave. So now you're negatively rewarded for scaling attack speed.

-Even if you go slower, bigger hitting 2h, you have to be constantly on the lookout for rare mobs and having to stop attacking them with regular Cleave to then try last hit them with Vaal Cleave, makes it a clunky playstyle.

-Threshold jewel that granted Cleave free Fortify and some AoE is gone now. But maybe it will be slapped onto the new Transfigured version.

-New Transfigured Cleave apparently scales AoE with rage and you have to use Axe + Sword dual wielding. Cool, let me get the good Axe nodes near duelist, oh wait, getting them is inefficient because Axe clusters don't scale swords and vice versa. Oops now I lost my 2 good Sword clusters as well. It's ok, I just have to use cluster jewels.

-Whirling Blades' mobility is one of the biggest advantages of the build because of dual wielding and high attack speed. Wait, why is Whirling Blades not working anymore with Sword + Axe? For some reason it was changed in 3.22 to swing with both weapons with 75% efficiency. Thanks for the damage buff I guess.

-Finally there's the low damage and AoE, while also being one of the most melee skills in the game. I'd actually be fine with the AoE being small but instead having big boost in damage to reward you for exposing yourself so close to the monsters, having to stand still to attack too.


These aren't just some nitpicked things that happen to not work, these are the staple things that you would expect to work for a given archetype.


Suggestions
-Revert Whirling blades to work with Sword + Axe.

-Increase Cleave dual wielding combined damage from 60% to like 100%. Would that really be so broken? If you're afraid of early campaign abuse, rescale the damage gain towards late game. Many other skills could recieve this treatment. The dual wielding dps bonus is so small that you can easily outscale it with some shield, and shields are supposed to be defensive.

-Change Vaal Cleave condition from having to last hit to 1 second window for example, where the first rare monster killed in that 1 second grants you the buff.


EDIT: Apparently the whirling blade change was done in 3.5.0 already.

I love cleave. I use it while leveling for mobs and pair it with Heavy strike for bosses. It is quite sad that GGG has neglected it for so long. It would be nice to have a mastery or two that gave it some boss killing mods. For now I just use it until I can get boneshatter.