Melee dex AoE gem would be a nice addition

STR characters get a choice between cleave, sweep, leap slam, ground slam.

After playing around with a melee shadow, the only real AoE option pure dex melee characters have is whirling blades, which in addition to being slow as hell causes desyncs and doesn't do enough damage to be anything like a shield-charge type mobility skill. Flicker works well, but it requires charges, necessitating Frenzy. Eth Knives would fill the gap if it wasn't a spell, instead of an attack.

High dps, melee range semi-circle dps would fill a nice gap, or a long-range cone dps like ground slam.

+1

Whirling blades is currently some sort of mobility skill - best described as slow-ish, short ranged teleport. Using it to deal actual damage is both frustrating and inefficient. Not to mention the constant desyncs it causes.

My suggestion is allowing Cleave to be used with all weapons which have sharp edges(as in are not maces/blunt). Then modifying its range depending on the type of weapon: claws/dagger - short range, 1h swords/axes - medium, 2h sword/axe - long range. Oh well, probably not going to happen. :)

There's always more skills in the works but I strongly agree. As an attack skill, I really dislike whirling blades. As an escape/mobility/healing skill? It's godlike.

(healing being a life on hit support gem)

I think I've seen it somewhere that they plan to add weapon reach one day. It might allow to let cleave (and similar skills that will be invented meanwhile wink wink) be used with more kinds of weapons.

I've been griping about this a while. Frankly it's one of the reasons melee shadow doesn't feel right to me, and why I gave up on that class for now. Melee ranger has a bit of the same problem, I guess.

Sure, you CAN use any attack in the game. But to get a good AoE melee attack you need to carry lots of str. It's pretty build stifling.

So melee shadow/ranger has to somehow work with fire trap for AoE, and a single target attack. Or go hybrid for EK, and good luck with that. It's problematic.

I don't understand why Whirling Blades has a 40% less damage effect. It could do 100% weapon damage (still only one hand at a time) and still be weaker than the str gems, yet be able to be used for something other than movement.

One point why i don´t like to play my shadow anymore.
But mostly because of the generall lack (there is none) of pure melee dagger/claw skills.

Yeah, my first character was a 1h/Shield Templar and after rolling a melee shadow the benefit of having a solid mid-level AoE became pretty clear.

Right now, my shadow uses Frenzy->5 Charges->Flicker as a primary all-purpose set-up, Dual Strike for single target DPS, and Whirling as an escape. It's fun to play, but not nearly as solid as it could be; any significant number of mobs on the screen, or a pack of frenzied rares (I'm looking at you, monkeys) and it turns a pack of mobs my undergeared Temp would shred through with a few Ground Slams into something my decently geared Shadow spends 3 or 4 minutes kiting around, slowly whittling down.

Not to mention that I'm trying to work with Acrobatics, a notoriously shitty keystone that I think would be a lot more solid if I didn't feel the need for 4 attack skills.

I'd like to mention something...

Pure dexterity melee weapons are rapiers. They can cleave already. There is not many more real aoes (sweep, groundslam and some weirdos) out there. The only limitation is the STR requirement for the gem which is not as hard to get.
Claws can't use many aoes because they are hybrid weapons intended to be used with spells. And there is many aoe spells. Same goes for daggers. And as we move around the stat circle we go to wands, another spell based weapon, staffs (spells, sweep, groundslam) and finally to the pure melee weapons (maces, swords, axes).

Now even if we get soem nice dexterity based melee aoe, why would they allow it to be used with claws or daggers? Different weapons have different roles. I love claws and all but I think weapon choice should matter and to be honest, using the pure melee weapons does and should allow you to use better melee aoes since they don't give you the advanatage of being hybrid ...however bad and almost non-existant the advantage currently is. But that's a problem of hybrids, not lack of skills.

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wiggin wrote:

Claws can't use many aoes because they are hybrid weapons intended to be used with spells.

Explain pls why you think Claws are hybrid weapons and explain pls what are hybrid weapons.