2HF Feats: Junk with Legendary Dreadnought?

[HalfORCastrator]

With the new abilities and the changes to Cleave and Great Cleave I'm finding my Barb is not enabling glancing blows much at all. My attack sequence goes something like "Lay Waste-Momentum Swing(resets LW cooldown)-Great/Supreme/Cleave(resets MS cooldown)-Lay Waste-Momentum Swing-etc" or some variation of this. Along with the flow of combat, not being able to stand still due to having to maneuver around mobs or reposition myself for one reason or another, I don't really utilize the two handed fighting feats.

What does everyone think? Are the 2HF feats bad if you plan on using LD as your main destiny?

[HatsuharuZ]

How about improved power attack? Oh, and you can take the action boosts if your character doesn't already have them. Other than that.... not much for THF specifically, no.

[Meowin]

How about improved power attack? Oh, and you can take the action boosts if your character doesn't already have them. Other than that.... not much for THF specifically, no.

I think he´s talking about the normal feats (THF, ITHF, GTHF) not being useful if one has LD as epic destiny, because with three cleave abilities you will only be using these and the special attacks (Momentum Swing & Lay Waste). These abilities do not produce glancing blows at all, making the THF line as well as THF enhancements (WF, horc) useless.

I have never played a THF barb or kensai at high levels and have no idea how much damage glancing blows produce with a top geared multi-past life character, but you might want to be a little less effective damage-wise during leveling if you´re planning to grab LD, and get some other feats instead.

[raveman1000]

I was under the impression that cleave/gcleave/scleave all produced glancing blows even if you were moving... has that changed? If not, the THF feats are still worth it.

[karl_k0ch]

I was under the impression that cleave/gcleave/scleave all produced glancing blows even if you were moving... has that changed? If not, the THF feats are still worth it.

They don't produce glancing blows, they just attack all mobs within a given arc.

Glancing Blows do not allow SA damage, and only apply special weapon effects with a given chance to targets who are not your main target.

On the other hand, (G/S)Cleave makes a full attack on every mob in its attack range, in particular allowing SA damage against every mob in its arc. This has been this way for a while.
Glancing Blows are produced by 'normal' THF attacks. The point of the OP is that LD allows a broad range of attacks which are not a regular swing, and thus marginalizing the use of the THF line.

Re: OP. They are not bad as such, but if you are tight on feats and have a better use for these (I am thinking of a barbarian with a huge tactical focus here), then skipping the THF feats might be an option. This advice should be taken with a grain of salt, as I haven't played a THF dreadnought yet. I can't say how much downtime is there to be filled with normal swings.

[HalfORCastrator]

I think he´s talking about the normal feats (THF, ITHF, GTHF) not being useful if one has LD as epic destiny, because with three cleave abilities you will only be using these and the special attacks (Momentum Swing & Lay Waste). These abilities do not produce glancing blows at all, making the THF line as well as THF enhancements (WF, horc) useless.

I have never played a THF barb or kensai at high levels and have no idea how much damage glancing blows produce with a top geared multi-past life character, but you might want to be a little less effective damage-wise during leveling if you´re planning to grab LD, and get some other feats instead.

This is what I meant.

Re: OP. They are not bad as such, but if you are tight on feats and have a better use for these (I am thinking of a barbarian with a huge tactical focus here), then skipping the THF feats might be an option. This advice should be taken with a grain of salt, as I haven't played a THF dreadnought yet. I can't say how much downtime is there to be filled with normal swings.

Yeah, looking to add Improved Sunder and Stunning Blow. Though I've recently found out LD abilities are bugged, and won't be letting me(or anyone) reset countdowns during the first 3 seconds of the cooldown like it has been now(and you have to activate it within a second or the cooldown comes back).

Another issue is that with the changes to to-hit, when you miss you actually perform a grazing blow, and since you can't get 95% to-hit like before I'm not sure how much it affects my dps now. I'm also not sure how that affects special attacks like Cleave or Great Cleave. This is further complicated if I go with Improved Sunder and Stunning Blow.

Downtime from special attacks shifts from 2% to 15%(statistic pulled from nowhere, just my feeling ), leaning towards the former.

[Kmnh]

The THF feats are mostly for single-target DPS, cleaving like crazy isn't the usual MO on the back of a raid boss. Is it possible to twitch or abuse the animation so you get more damage from the cleave effects or from moving around? If it is, then yes, the feats are dead.

[HatsuharuZ]

I think he´s talking about the normal feats (THF, ITHF, GTHF) not being useful if one has LD as epic destiny, because with three cleave abilities you will only be using these and the special attacks (Momentum Swing & Lay Waste). These abilities do not produce glancing blows at all, making the THF line as well as THF enhancements (WF, horc) useless.

I have never played a THF barb or kensai at high levels and have no idea how much damage glancing blows produce with a top geared multi-past life character, but you might want to be a little less effective damage-wise during leveling if you´re planning to grab LD, and get some other feats instead.

Improved power attack increases your weapon dice by .5 when using power attack. Wouldn't that increase the damage of glancing blows a bit indirectly when using power attack?

[Diyon]

The THF feats are mostly for single-target DPS, cleaving like crazy isn't the usual MO on the back of a raid boss. Is it possible to twitch or abuse the animation so you get more damage from the cleave effects or from moving around? If it is, then yes, the feats are dead.

Right, but using the cleaves allows for use of the LD abilities that would up damage (and the cleaves get a bonus to +[w] too).

[unbongwah]

On a pure non-human 2H barb, I figure you have 3 main options for featage:

Option 1 (max DPS): Power Atk, THF, Cleave, IC:Slash, ITHF, GTHF, Great Cleave, WF:S, OC:Slash
Option 2 (max crits + survivability + tactics): PA, Toughness, Cleave, IC:S, Imp Sunder or Stunning Blow, GC, WF:S, OC:S, epic Toughness (reqs CON 21)
Option 3 (max crits + tactics): PA, Toughness, Stunning Blow, IC:S, Imp Sunder, GC, WF:S, OC:S, Precision (reqs DEX 13)

Any alternatives people would suggest?

[Qezuzu]

With Overwhelming critical, I found it too difficult to fit in all the THF feats on my bard, so I dropped it.

I then found out Overwhelming critical doesn't work. The LD criticals do, though. I'm loving the big crits, which will only get bigger when OC works.

[Meowin]

The THF feats are mostly for single-target DPS, cleaving like crazy isn't the usual MO on the back of a raid boss. Is it possible to twitch or abuse the animation so you get more damage from the cleave effects or from moving around? If it is, then yes, the feats are dead.

Improved power attack increases your weapon dice by .5 when using power attack. Wouldn't that increase the damage of glancing blows a bit indirectly when using power attack?

Please look at the 3rd quote:

Right, but using the cleaves allows for use of the LD abilities that would up damage (and the cleaves get a bonus to +[w] too).

Cleave & great cleave have been changed to do more damage through the +1[W] increase for cleave & +2[W] for great cleave. For Legendary Dreadnought, the cleaves can reset the cooldown timers of your special attacks which are
Momentum Swing (maxed out): +5[W], +3 crit threat range, 50% chance to reset upon a cleave
Lay Waste: +5[W], +1 crit multiplier, 25% chance to reset upon Lay Waste.

So yes, you will probably be cleaving all the time you are not using your specials (even at bosses) to be able to use them again, and glancing blows will not matter a lot to you at all. I´m not sure about the other LDs, but I do so on my fighter.

The only other thing I will use in between the cleaves is (atm) improved sunder & when I´ll get it volcano´s edge or another of these special elemental attacks.

Right now I´m thinking about what feat I can get rid of to get back great cleave, which I traded for smth else some time ago.

[Cold_Stele]

Option 2 (max crits + survivability + tactics): PA, Toughness, Cleave, IC:S, Imp Sunder or Stunning Blow, GC, WF:S, OC:S, epic Toughness (reqs CON 21)

+1, this definitely looks the way to go.