This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/pathofexile by /u/shupa2 on 2025-01-06 08:23:24+00:00.
After playing in endgame for almost 3 weeks, reached level 96 and cleared all content so i want to drop my 5 cents about that expirience.
I played Titan because i like slams and that ascendancy suppose to support slams (or at least on paper). I really enjoyed mace skills and Titan but there are so many problems with skills right now.
Some stats:
Xesht+4
TLDR:
Endgame requires movement speed and mobility. The less options we have the more mandatory existing options are become. Almost all mace slams requires stand still for a long time and you cannot mitigate it with attack speed or skill speed. The whole concept of unscalabe Total Attack Time (TAT) is a failure IF other skills can mitigate thier downsides with gems, gear or tree (for example cast speed for spells). This leads to very strict options for mace endgame builds. Slow swings and stationary requirement make most mace skills very tedious in endgame. You cannot pivot around the boss while attacking to dodge his front attacks. Monk (aka quarterstaff) can. Spark can. Bows can.
TAT should scale with attack speed and skill speed. Supercharge Slam channel should scale with attack speed and skill speed. Most attack speed penalties on mace skills should go because we already have slow weapon base.
Skills breakdown:
Right now Stampede and Mace Strike (aka basic attack) is most performing builds. The reason is obvious - speed. I tried t15+ maps with other skills and it is not even close to clear speed and QoL that this 2 builds provide.
As many already mentioned lack of mobility and insane monsters mobility (with amount of AoE you need to dodge) leads to very strict playstyle. You cannot allow yourself to stand in 1 place for more than 1-2 seconds and almost all mace damaging abilities will lock you in place for at least 1 seconds. And a lot of penalties on the skill gems and on the tree will only intensivies you to not use most of the skills
Earthquake: 75% base attack speed. You cannot use it while moving. I honestly do not understand design philosophy behind that skill. By default eruption will occur after 4 seconds and you can have up to 4 Jagged Grounds. You cannot stack it on top of each other. Even with 1 aps it is not possible to place all 4 Jagged Grounds because in real situation you will need to walk few steps to be able place another one Jagged Ground. Quality will increase maximum Jagged Grounds to a total of 6. If you want to speed up the eruption then quality is absolutely useless. If you want to delay the eruption even more then you will need to walk around a boss or a pack and wait a lot. And this is not even gives you any payoffs. Damage is average at best; there is no bleed/poison stacks. If developers wants us to solve big delay then gem quality should be different. If they want us to place a lot of Jagged Ground then attack speed penalty should go.
Rolling Slam: +1.5 seconds to Total Attack Time (TAT). After 0.1.0e i am using it for a stun buildup but basic attack still better because it is much easier to implement on boss fights. IF GGG want stick with total attack time as a concept this skill TAT should be decreased to 0.6-0.8 seconds. Also TAT should scale with attack speed and skill speed.
2,5 seconds for 1 use
Supercharged Slam: No attack speed penalties, no added total attack time. For some reason channeling time do not scale with anything. There is an attack time that can be improved with attack speed but this only affects time between pressing the button and the moment it can hit but if you want more than 1 stage then you will keep channeling. Supercharged Slam with 20% quality can have 5 stage (+40% more damage per stage and additional aftershock). That is very impressive and cool however you need 5 seconds to get that many stages. You cannot even stun bosses for 5 seconds and many of them will use some sort of escape after the stun. Clearing potential is very low since with 1 stage you wont have enought damage to shot even blues and 2 stages already requires 2 seconds to channel. Quality is mostly useless.
Sunder: +1.4 seconds to Total Attack Time. Numbers are great but often you will find yourself in situation where you will use Dodge Roll to cancel it for escape because you cannot afford to stand 2 seconds. High damage, big TAT almost always leads players to use Sunder with Hourglasses as a cooldown ability. In that cases wave distance is irrelevant because you will use it when target is stunned (mostly bosses). Because of that quality (reduce accuracy penalty based on distance) once again doing nothing.
Volcanic Fissure: 80% base attack speed. You cannot use it while moving. This is a combo skill. You need to place several fissures and then constantly detonate them with other slam. Once again great idea on paper. On practice tho almost unusable because the time you need to setup this combo always outweight potential payoff.
Earthshatter: 80% base attack speed. You cannot use it while moving. Overall is descent. Nice damage and flexible because of "range". The big downside once again is attack speed. In almost all cases you will use Upheaval support for faster spike stacking and it will give another 20% less attack speed.
Stampede: Even that this skill is safe to say "meta", clearing speed is still no near spark or quarterstaff skills. You will constantly ricochet from terrain, stack in monster pack and etc. Very clanky to use becuase of anime-like wind up animation. Skill should be channle. Hold to run maximum distance and slam or release to start slam animation (little leap). Also require dodge roll for animation cancel after slam. Because in anime you should take cool pose after the slam.
Leap Slam: up to 1.15 seconds to Total Attack time. I dont know why there is tag "travel" here. You will travel faster on your feet. Also require dodge roll after the leap (same reason as for Stampede).
Conclusion
Mace skills designed for campaign. The whole statment from GGG about how you can move while hitting with melee is missing for maces. Probably for immersive reason. The problem here that we are not playing immersive sim. Total attack time kills any skill where it exist. Some skills have useless quality and sometimes even missing identity (earthquake, sunder).
Spells moving pentaly can be mitigated with support gem, with movement speed and with insane cast speed. Why there is no attack speed on rings and amulets when you can roll 30% cast speed on them? Why i cannot solve "stay still and do your Sunder" when most of the spells can be cast on move?
Aftershock mechanic is great and i really like it but i want more synergy with it among the skills (like Supercharge).
PS: Fist of War support degraded from PoE1 to just 20% more damage/aoe without cool animation. Can we have animation back at least?
