Mace skills are incredibly bad

SO I just killed Jamanra on cruel with just auto attacks, because it's legit the best skill warrior archetype currently has for single target.

Let's browse our options.
All warrior skills will either have some weird delay that is unaffected by skill duration (you can't put duration support gems in them):

Example - Rolling slam

attack speed is 65% of base on top of that and for lvl 13 skill gem you get only 224% damage and 448% on second swing (mace strike of the same lvl has 211% damage value so it's the same damage with no mana cost, no unchangable 1 second delay and no 35% speed penality, I don't believe that tradeoff of getting double damage second swing is remotely worth it).

Other examples include:

Leap slam that is somewhat usable, because it at least moves you forward in that delay period, but I personally don't feel like 274% damage (so 30% more than mace strike) are all that exiting, but 74% stun and bonus vs broken armor probably make it somewhat better than auto attack, still incredibly clunky to use in bossfights.

Fissure that is actually a good skill, you have big aoe with multiple smaller explosions over a massive area and critical damage bonus. The initial hit does double damage (398%), this skill is incredible for dense enemy clear, but for single target it still sucks (god knows I tried to make it work - I collected 481% crit damage and a bunch of armor break and it was still outperformed by mace strike).

Or they have some sort of conversion that forces you into weird hybrid builds because broken armour does nothing for fire damage AND fire damage is bad for stun buildup . Do we really need perfect strike (aka the only advertised single target skill) to have 40% to 80% conversion?? At this point you get zero worth out of all you physical bonuses and have to spec into stuff like fire exposure. Don't get me wrong, I am not against the idea of having conversion but do we really need 60% on Volcanic Fissure? It isn't useful either way currently, Molten blast and Perfect strike both ocuppy the same niche in my opinion and force you into playing with fire (pun unintended). We don't really have a way to play physical damage as a warrior currently (especially with Hammer of Gods pretty much reduced to obscurity) which is a really bizarre statement to make. The only skill I that could theoretically work for this would be Supercharged Slam, but it starts at 111% attack damage and that is just pathetic - it needs two stages to AT LEAST do the marginally more damage as mace strike and it has only three stages. And it forces you to use Two-handed mace so no shield protection!

I know, all of the above doesn't seem like a big deal - "just use Giant's Blood" "just use Resolute Technique". I don't feel like being forced to use those passives with BIG drawbacks is a good design.

What if I want my mace to crit? What if I want to use a shield and unigue one-handed mace? What if I want to play as pure physical warrior? It's not some freaky suggestions, it's just your completely normal build that you can play in any other rpg, but somehow not poe 2.

Also important topic - something needs to be done about stun threshold, current situation is just insane! I don't see how am I supposed to use more than one skill supported with Unbreakable gem and not get stunned during those insane attack times mentioned above??? Like... your basic stun threshold doesn't let you do anything even against white mobs. Maybe you can give bonus to stun threshhold that scales with armour or something because currently anything with more than 1 second cast time is just unusable without Unbreakable support.

That concludes my feedback for playing with mace skills, I really hope something will change in the future, because currently it's the most miserable gameplay I've experienced so far.

First post btw, don't treat it too harshly I am just a bit passionate about this topic and hope to help make it better ^_^

At certain levels Rolling Slam can reach +1500% damage, around that amount, won't recall exact number.
With my gem/item/tree setup just one Rolling Slam attack with aftershocks and stuff was enough to oneshot some of the t15 bosses.
I didn't complain too much playing warrior.

It's around gem lvl 30, and the funny thing is that mace strike of the same lvl will do +508% damage and I bet you can make it pretty fast with attack speed buffs at this point, so it is still far better dps wise

Maces/hammers are low tier.
Two-handed axes will replace them, which will (hopefully!) improve the gameplay for warriors."

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Lambert46#8306 wrote:

It's around gem lvl 30, and the funny thing is that mace strike of the same lvl will do +508% damage and I bet you can make it pretty fast with attack speed buffs at this point, so it is still far better dps wise

Nice calcs. Try to finish the campaign first before making absurd assumptions. Do you at least understand what are the skill gem tags? Does it ring any bells?
If not then keep using your mace strike till you finally drop the game.

Standing still for 2 seconds would be fine, if not everything could one shot warriors through their armor.

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pollozik#7790 wrote:

Maces/hammers are low tier.
Two-handed axes will replace them, which will (hopefully!) improve the gameplay for warriors."

When they will reveal Axes you will say that the axes are low tier.
Melee is generally not for everyone in this game and people were always complaining about how bad melee are in POE1 too. Even though exactly melee builds were fastest, strongest and the most reliable in an entire game.
Just like mace builds right now, but it's not good enough for you...

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JEE_ZUZ#0982 wrote:

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pollozik#7790 wrote:

Maces/hammers are low tier.
Two-handed axes will replace them, which will (hopefully!) improve the gameplay for warriors."

When they will reveal Axes you will say that the axes are low tier.
Melee is generally not for everyone in this game and people were always complaining about how bad melee are in POE1 too. Even though exactly melee builds were fastest, strongest and the most reliable in an entire game.
Just like mace builds right now, but it's not good enough for you...

I’m literally a melee enjoyer, bro.
But to say maces are good… I’ve never used maces in PoE 1, and you can’t really claim melee classes shine in PoE 1 either.
Gotta stay at least somewhat objective, bro.

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JEE_ZUZ#0982 wrote:

"

Lambert46#8306 wrote:

It's around gem lvl 30, and the funny thing is that mace strike of the same lvl will do +508% damage and I bet you can make it pretty fast with attack speed buffs at this point, so it is still far better dps wise

Nice calcs. Try to finish the campaign first before making absurd assumptions. Do you at least understand what are the skill gem tags? Does it ring any bells?
If not then keep using your mace strike till you finally drop the game.

OOH how scary <3 you can look on damage values per skill gem level on poe 2 db, but such smart individual as yourself of course doesn't know that. Also do you know that attack speed does NOTHING to added attack duration? [Removed by Support]

Also for anyone wondering it's my third character, go cry about it