Suggestions on cleave and whirlwind feats

[imblo99]

General consensus on these feats is that they are turkey, as they lower your DPS in almost all circumstances due to activation and animation times. Cleave is a FB pre-req, other than that there is no real reason to take it.

Here are my suggestions for rework of cleave feats
Cleave
Passive:
When you strike a killing blow, you enter a cleave 'stance' and gain an additional +2 to hit and damage (stacking) for 10 seconds.
If you strike another killing blow within that time frame, the timer simply resets to 10 seconds (still +2, damage and to hit won't stack on each other)

Sub-suggestions
-To give it more utility for long drawn out fights, possibly have it activate as a clicky as well (like madstone boots). Say 60 sec cooldown.
-Have it scale with level, extra dmg for two handed fighting (vs twf or s&b)

Supreme Cleave (FB)
Passive:
Adds 4% doublestrike chance when in 'cleave' stance

Great Cleave
Passive:
Increases cleave bonuses by 50% (i.e. duration, to-hit & dmg, and double strike if FB for SC)

The pnp version of the feats allowed you to take down multiple enemies fast - this was the rationale behind my suggested changes, getting combat bonuses on striking killing blows.

Whirlwind
Active: cooldown 60 sec
For 20 secs your chance to doublestrike increases by 5%. Each two additional mobs within 25' (haste radius) of you at the time of activation increases the doublestrike chance by 20% (to a max 85% - this would require you to be 'surrounded by 8 mobs).

As in pnp, the feat should increase in power the more mobs you are surrounded by. 85% doublestrike chance may seem imba, but keep in mind the duration is limited, requires specific conditions regarding mobs to be met and the pre-req feat cost. I think the feat as I've wrote it has some nice tanking synergies.

any comments or other suggestions?

[waterboytkd]

not bad ideas. I like even just making cleave a double strike chance. One idea I saw before (this isn't the first time someone commented at least on cleave) was this:

Cleave
Passive
If you strike the killing blow on an enemy, your next attack has a +100% double strike chance. This ability will not activate again for 3 seconds.

Great Cleave
Passive
As cleave, but no "cooldown".

Can't remember if they did anything with supreme cleave, though...

But I think there's something there to the double strike idea. One thought, tweaking existing ideas, I had was this:

Cleave
Passive
If you kill an enemy, for the next 2 seconds, you gain a +100% chance to double strike.

Great Cleave
Passive
If you kill an enemy, for the next 6 seconds, you gain a +100% chance to double strike.

Supreme Cleave
Passive
If you kill an enemy, for the next 15 seconds, you gain a +100% chance to double strike.

Supreme cleave would be sick, but you have to take a PrE to get it. Other characters other than FB might be tempted to take Cleave and Great Cleave this way, too. I know my monk would take Cleave in a heartbeat for the Shintao PrE if it worked this way (kill an enemy, and immediately use Smite Tainted on your next strike so as to guarantee the second strike).

[redspecter23]

There are many different ways these feats could be "fixed" but the simplest, easiest way is to just take out the special animation associated with each and just make them abilities that you just insert into your attack chain, similar to how monk attacks work.

[waterboytkd]

I'm doing this as a separate post so as not to intimidate with length. :P

One possible change for Whirlwind Attack, playing off the suggestions I gave to Cleave above and the OP, is this:

Whirlwind Attack
Passive
For each enemy within X distance of you (the Haste radius is probably a good distance; maybe it could be a little closer), you gain a +2% to your double strike. For example, if there were 10 enemies within X distance of you, you would gain a +20% double strike.

Again, this would make the character more deadly when surrounded, which the old Whirldwind Attack did. Granted, if there was only one enemy near you, this feat would still be giving you some kind of bonus, but I'm okay with that. It does have 4 feats as a prereq, after all, with 3 of those feats being useless for anyone but a Tempest (and only for Tempest because they are prereqs again...)

[Seb]

Good ideas. Added to rep.

[MarkusWolfe]

While I see that cleave and great cleave have their purposes as active moves (though I do agree that they'd be better off as redspecter23 described), it would be nice if they had more passive effects. For example, if we go back to core, the Cleave feat lets you get an attack against an enemy when you drop an enemy that is adjacent to them. This could be done once per turn, while the Great Cleave feat let it be done countless times per turn. Supreme Cleave let you do the same, taking a 5 foot step in between cleave attempts once per round.

Cleave might translate over well; kill an enemy, 1 free attack on adjacent enemy. It would have a cooldown timer, while Great Cleave would not. Also, Great Cleave and Supreme should give small chances of getting more than 1 extra attack on adjacent enemies.

[AZgreentea]

There are many different ways these feats could be "fixed" but the simplest, easiest way is to just take out the special animation associated with each and just make them abilities that you just insert into your attack chain, similar to how monk attacks work.

That was my thought. It might still need to take a little longer than a regular attack, but this would be the simplest method.

[Aelonwy]

/signed.

I agree with OP's suggestions, seems to me making them passive abilities would be best. Leave out the extra animations too, they are unnecessary.

[eonfreon]

While I like the ideas, I just see too many problems with people complaining about "kill stealing".
People already care too much about kill count. Put a mechanic in that rewards getting the last blow in and it'll just escalate the whining, I believe.

The best way to improve it is the simplest. Just remove the animation and make it an attack that you cycle in like all the rest of your attacks.

Same for Whirlwind Attack. Just take out the animation or speed it up considerably.

[macubrae]

Seeing my toons spin and hit 3 or 4 baddies is kinda cool for me. Taking out the animations takes some of the art out of it. I feel there should be more. If you start taking out some of the animations, then your just adding to the grind of power leveling. I like the suggestions made about cleave, great cleave, and whirlwind, but I'd like to see it happening. I want my toons to hit 20th level like everyone else, but I want it to look good too. If all fighting looks the same, it gets boring to watch. I'd like to shield bash like the skeleton warriors, trip with a bugbear reach in move, and do the ogre skipping sunder. Let me knock down a baddie by planting a foot in his chest and give me a reason to high-five someone. Power levelers and zergers are taking the fun out of the game. Its not about doing Chronoscope in under 10 minutes, its about jumping off a bridge and taking out the last of the flying abashai, in flight, in a blaze of glory. Grind if you want, I've got moments I can brag about.

[chodelord]

better fix

1. a. make cleave, gcleave, whirlwind, and sup cleave feats that you are on or off like metamagic
1. b. make the game check to see if there is an enemy in range of one of your cleave abilities, if yes use a cleave ability and put it on cooldown instead of one of your current attack animations

in other words cleave would be automatic if you were surrounded, it wouldn't interrupt your chain

2. a. give cleave attacks the ability to generate glacing blows to a formula roughly 25% for cleave, 50% for gcleave, 75% for whirlwind, and 100% for sup cleave
2. b. allow whichever attack in the chain that used the cleave animation to still generate its own glancing blow

cleave would be worth getting, it would be a damage increase but only on multiple mobs, it would add flavor to combat because you would see the different animations

alternative fix:

cleave would have a percent chance to turn glancing blows into full hits 5% for cleave +5% for gcleave +7-10% for whirlwind +5% for supreme cleave, no hp cost

obviously whirlwind would just give the base amount if you didn't already have cleave

[Angelus_dead]

I'd rather Cleave effects keep doing what they're doing, except accelerate the animation so that they raise DPS when you have multiple targets in reach, and not suppress Doublestrike, Glancing, or offhand during the Cleave. (Also treat attack-speed buffs as stacked to Doublestrike+offhand during the action).

The current reason Cleave is bad is because it's slow and it doesn't scale when characters gain bonuses to attack speed, so Cleave becomes relatively worse as you progress.

[TheKaige]

I rather like the idea of making cleave and great cleave like they are in the PhB.

Cleave: Whenever you kill an enemy with a melee attack, you get an automatic attack versus the nearest enemy to the one you have just killed that is ALSO in weapon range (Wouldn't be an animation, just an automatic invisible attack, and make glancing blows apply since the main weapon group associated with cleave is THF) Anyone you kill with a cleave attack does not trigger an additional cleave.

Great Cleave: When you kill an enemy with a cleave attack, you get another automatic cleave attack; there is no limit to the number of cleaves that could be triggered off of 1 attack. In addition, your cleave attacks can hit anyone within 2x weapon range.