This skill is the poster-child for how skill reworks should be handled, at least in my opinion. I believe the reworks to this skill were the biggest success GGG had in Legion. GGG saw it had glaring issues and made it viable for your average player to enjoy. That is what the average player wants.īefore the buffs in Legion, Cyclone was a niche skill with poor damage and badly scaling AoE, on top of being a non-channeling-channeling skill. It is something that can complete the game's content as a whole and feels satisfying. It has fairly low single target damage, but provides high AoE, good scaling, fantastic maneuverability, and gives you the ability to keep moving while you are fighting. Where is Cyclone right now? Barring Headhunter builds or ridiculous builds only possible on Standard, this skill is a jack of all trades. Only buffing damage on these skills isn't going to fix that, either. Will many of these skills let you do that? No. Most people playing Path of Exile are casual players that want to try out as much of the content as they can. Each one has specific situations they excel in, but look at your average player. Significant issues exist for a majority of the skills out there today.Īll the above skills have a niche, to be sure. Spectral Shield Throw is clunky, has poor AoE/targeting scaling, and requires SIGNIFICANT investment to be equal in clear-speed to other skills. Tectonic Slam had its numbers buffed, but is inconsistent and can mess with your survivability. Glacial Hammer? High damage but is slow, has bad AoE, and is impractical in most situations. The above is only *one* skill, but a VAST majority of skills (not just melee) have the same issue. In addition, these gems can actively inhibit your damage output. Why would you try to focus down small enemies with big damage, rather than have a moderate amount of damage spread over all enemies in the pack? In this situation, you could try 'Ancestral Call' or 'Melee Splash' to spread things out, but you are wasting a gem slot compared to other skills. In maps, you could say you have '700k dps with zero currency investment whatsoever,' but running into a pack of monsters means stopping and nearly-instantly killing enemies one or two at a time. Why isn't it meta? Viper Strike has basically zero AoE, crappy targeting, and a slow initial 'wind-up' to get the poison damage rolling. Take for example Viper Strike - The scaling damage on this skill can get absolutely absurd, but it isn't meta. A vast majority of skills in the game are missing QoL, AoE, and other important factors instead. Many of those changes were great, but ultimately these skills didn't need damage to be more viable. Many of the changes to melee in Legion (and spells in the previous league, for that matter) worked to address issues with DPS/ raw damage of certain builds.

Sunken strongbox