Rake feedback (and spear bleed amazon in general)

The skill feels clunky to use and doesn't really have a niche where it shines.

Here's why:
- it tries to be both single target and AoE while being really bad at both - not enough damage, or even attack speed to work as a good single target Strike, and while it can hit multiple enemies, it's range is basically melee at best. So until late game, when you can turn it into semi-decent boss attack (requires multiple tier 3 supports first), it's only somewhat useful early game if you can get a sufficient level of strength to justify using it with Stomping Ground for trash clear. But since that only scales with STR (which is hard to get) and mob HP goes up way faster than your STR, by mid-act 2 it's already so weak you can't justify using it.

Now there are multiple components to the bleed Rake gameplay, but for the sake of simplicity I'm gonna ignore Herald of Blood, cause while it's added damage, it's UNSCALED damage which means no matter the stuff on your end, the damage only scales off mob HP, so it will never "chain pop" like elemental heralds did..

Which means that without the Herald effectively extending the range of your Rake, you're only really killing the mobs your Rake hits by itself. Which is a TINY PORTION of the screen. This somewhat works while Stomping Ground is still effective, but that falls off sharply after some ~lvl 20. This makes the miniscule range of Rake an issue.

Touching Stomping Ground support, while tempting to just ask for a buff, would probably just make other abilities using it extremely OP (like, for builds that actually CAN afford to stack obnoxious amounts of STR and nothing else, unlike Huntress which needs a lot of dex and decent amounts of both str and int).

Giving Rake radius expected of a polearm instead of a dagger (like it is currently) would make things somewhat easier (in Surrounded situations, hitting 2-3 rows of enemies instead of ONE would be great) would probably generally work better. Along with hitting all enemies along the path instead of just the few at the end of the motion.

The next problem is the clunkiness. What the F is that pause at the end of the skill? Are we playing Path of Exile or Sword Art Online? Why is there a half a second pause at the end of the skill? Just to make you vulnerable to all the enemies you just raked? I mean, it wouldn't be quite as bad if it was a damage skill expected to kill mobs instantly. But it's a BLEED skill, so all the mobs you just hit are alive and ready to hit you back! It looks like you're expecting people to just come out of Rake holding PARRY button (or dodge roll, or disengage), to literally animation-cancel the pause out of existence? But that means the entire point of THE PAUSE is just to annoy people into never using Rake twice in a row. For me that's a very definition of clunky.

The next problem is the lack of Projectile skill that would compliment the bleed style. Cause apparently the class was designed as a HYBRID of melee and ranged. But there are only 2 skills (technically 3 but the last one is basically an ultimate skill you can only really use if you invest HEAVILY into frezy charge count/generation) - Spear Throw and Whirlwind Lance. Lance sounds nice on paper, but actually deals basically zero damage. You're lucky if it hits a mob once or twice for miniscule damage. Spear Throw is kinda lackluster and if you don't use buckler in the first place (Dance with Death is hard to deny), you won't have the frenzy charges to use it for anything other than activating a buff anyway.

So here are some suggestions.
1) AoE - EITHER make Herald of Blood propagate Bleed via the explosion, OR make Rake hit all mobs along the path (Stomping Ground style) with an added, larger radius flourish at the end of the travel (hitting a circular area around 3 times the radius it has currently, so it may hit ~3 rows of packed enemies instead of only those within effin kissing range)

2) Single Target - make frenzy charged Disengage also Aggravate Bleeding

3) Frenzy charges - Blood Hunt that kills a bleeding enemy awards a frenzy charge (alternative to the spear culling strike GGG plans to roll out in the next patch)

4) Clunkiness - remove the pause at the end of Rake. It doesn't matter for boss fights as you WILL immediately dodge roll/disengage out of harm's way, but it would remove the clunk from clearing trash mobs, as you can just dash towards a next pack instead of stinging like a bee and retreating, killing mobs basically one by one.






Cause you know the average PoE player just shouts at you USE SPEARFIELD FOR CLEAR INSTEAD as if you wanted to cosplay a freaking magician, summoning spear tips out of the earth for no reason. It's an absurd skill I just refuse to use.

Agree 100%

On my herald I put a support gem, think it's called Rip. It leaves some additional exploding stuff on the ground.

Rake + The new dash for a charge + Exploding spear.

Rinse and repeat.

Feels amazing to me. If enough monsters are present it explodes blues and rares too as if they are white. And first 2 abilities are also mobility, so I just dash around blowing things up.

Agree with most of your points, though one of my main issues remains unsolved:

Currently there is just no real support to play hybrid hence big parts of the tree regarding the huntress starting location seem useless.

We desperately need either suitable projectile attacks or support gem/tree changes to support a melee heavy bleed play style.

"

eXcuilor#0323 wrote:

Agree with most of your points, though one of my main issues remains unsolved:

Currently there is just no real support to play hybrid hence big parts of the tree regarding the huntress starting location seem useless.

We desperately need either suitable projectile attacks or support gem/tree changes to support a melee heavy bleed play style.

a notable in tree that gives hits of projectiles into bleeding enemies increase the bleed by 50%.

Spear Throw should explode.... IF you have a frenzy charge. That could potentially give you a bit of damage (and a base for Bleed it might cause with Lacerate) so it doesn't feel completely useless.

The other projectile skills just don't seem to fit the build, visually or even mechanically. Exploding is an option on low level while you can still reasonably use Satha's (for those aggravated ignites), but afterwards it's just awkwardly out of style.

"

Peregrine1#0225 wrote:

Spear Throw should explode.... IF you have a frenzy charge. That could potentially give you a bit of damage (and a base for Bleed it might cause with Lacerate) so it doesn't feel completely useless.

The other projectile skills just don't seem to fit the build, visually or even mechanically. Exploding is an option on low level while you can still reasonably use Satha's (for those aggravated ignites), but afterwards it's just awkwardly out of style.

They already do...

Is it that bad though compared to almost every other skill? The way Rake feels now seems to be more of a general problem. Using one skill alone is not meant to be strong enough to kill a white mob. The way I see this skill right now is it being a tool to bully mobs around along your spearfield utilizing the knockback passive skill point. I mean it works in maps somewhat fine (with increased hazard duration and rearm chance) but everytime I do this and see the stupidity I just cannot believe that this is PoE right now.

Looks like GGG is actually making it possible to apply Bleed to energy shielded targets. Which, I can only say, FINALLY.
Because as soon as you transition to full Bleed build (a3- a1c), you have a hard time getting that shield off anything (with basically only Disengage doing more than 10% of it's potential damage), let alone bosses.


I'm just hoping there ain't any rogue exiles running CI that will be completely immune to bleed :D

"

cavexs#4102 wrote:

Is it that bad though compared to almost every other skill? The way Rake feels now seems to be more of a general problem. Using one skill alone is not meant to be strong enough to kill a white mob. The way I see this skill right now is it being a tool to bully mobs around along your spearfield utilizing the knockback passive skill point. I mean it works in maps somewhat fine (with increased hazard duration and rearm chance) but everytime I do this and see the stupidity I just cannot believe that this is PoE right now.

oh yes.
I mean, the damage is low, ofc, but so is the damage of a hundred other skills. That can be overcome with build and gear.

But you can't overcome are design limitations and general clunkiness of skill. The main problems is the pause at the end, and that it hits basically 1% of your screen. Which is okay in first area but not when you generally have 30+ mobs on your screen and you have to take them out 2-3 at a time. Rake's only saving grace is the guaranteed bleeding, and even that is mostly just a flavor (mainly to allow you to put Bloodlust support on Disengage or Blood Hunt for more dmg early), because by the time you get any actual damage out of bleed ailment, you'll have multiple bleed talents anyway (tho I guess it saves you a few points you'd otherwise waste chasing bleed chance nodes)

Which is why I suggested either Rake gets a lot more area, or Herald of Blood's death pops spread bleed.Because let's face it, Herald of Blood might look badass, but it's still the worst Herald in the game. It does so little damage that even 4 mobs exploding in range of a 5th one won't kill it. Which means it's useless in both terms of damage, and range extension. Heck it doesn't even give you some minor life on kill - which would obviously be on theme, and extremely needed, since bleed builds generally have abysmal sustain - you're basically just left with potions.
The only thing Herald of Blood currently does, is being VERY DISTRACTING with big, loud explosions that make you dread the actual on death explosive mobs, because you're guaranteed you won't see them among your own ones...