An analysis on multistrike and why I think it's terrible.

EDIT : I made a video to illustrate this TL;DR.
It doesn't go as much in depth though.




So today i finally found multistrike, and I was very excited to try it for the first time !
I replaced my faster attacks gem in my standard cleave + blood magic + life leech + weapon ele setup.

After trying it in docks for a bit, I can definitely see an increase in damage and although it feels pretty weird to use I enjoy the cheesiness of my dps going up by this much while it's only lvl 1.

However when I started doing harder content, I realized how clunky its usage was and how it felt unaccomplished. I have feared to have this feeling in Path of Exile,
but here I am feeling like this gem was added in a rush to satisfy players too eager to see their beloved melee classes buffed.

I have already had this feeling when I first tried cyclone, since I felt it was not letting me have any control over my character but since then, parts of it have been
fixed and other people probably found ways to adapt around this.

Now with multistrike, it's different. Multistrike is so cheesy it relies completely on you killing the mobs by basically closing your eyes and right clicking.
Multistrike removes all and any skill that was previously involved in terms of kiting mobs and controlling your character.

The reason I feel this way is the fact that once you hit your cleave button, you are basically stunning yourself for the time of 3 attacks, and losing control over your
character. Sure, you are doing more damage overall than you would with only one hit, but at the cost of your full character control !

This removes all possibilities of kiting, hit and run, orb walking, you name it. There's absolutely no way to rely on this strategy once you equip this gem. You will simply
be too slow because of the self stunning.

But it doesn't stop there ! There's another downside and it's the fact that your character attacks RANDOMLY chosen targets near you to perform the three attacks. This
is absolutely outrageous. It then comes down to a "spray and pray" strategy where you run in the middle and hope for the best, or forces you to play overly safe making
your skill even less performing than before. It also kills many combat strategies :

For instance, in a scenario where you are getting surrounded by mobs, you cannot chose to hit in one particular direction to hit the most targets so that you can
heal yourself the most. You also can't chose to focus down that necro/totem that's causing mobs to overflow. The loss in effectiveness becomes so huge there's absolutely
no reason to use the gem at this point and this is where I started feeling only frustration.


Now the easy answer to all this rant is probably "yes, but such a powerful gem needs a tradeoff...".
While I perfectly agree with the fact that all (or most) powerful gems have a tradeoff in path of exile, and am not here to discuss this particular mechanics choice,
Multistrike already has a tradeoff and it's the 40% decreased damage. There's no reason to add another one, especially one that is particularly frustrating and makes
the gem really unpleasant to use.

Initially, multistrike and melee splash were introduced in the game to mimic the effects of multiproj and chain gems for the melee classes. While this is awesome,
neither multiproj nor chain have a tradeoff other than the damage reduction. Chain hits 2 additionnal targets with 50% effectiveness, making for a total of 150%
effectiveness per hit, while LMP has 210% and GMP 250%. While the 180% effectiveness from multistrike is higher than chain's effectiveness, it seems only fair since it's
consistent with all other dps disparities between melee and ranged abilities.

As a matter of fact, multistrike seems pretty balanced with the effectiveness component as its only tradeoff. Making you vulnerable and more likely to die, while
removing the remaining parts of your brain that allowed you to eventually kite when you didn't feel like facetank-killing mobs is just too big.


Now since ranting doesn't bring much, I would also like to ask a real question.
Why isn't multistrike simply designed to let you move whenever you want, cast whenever you want in between attacks, all the while attacking the target you chose ?
After all, why can't the player decide for himself if he desires to not make use of all three attacks?

Multistrike is just invented to let us use terminus est flicker builds with slightly more effectiveness.

agreed.

in kripp's video, you can see the multistrike performance is awkward. The movement is so fast and unnatural that downright kills the immersion of the game. I personally prefer a melee version of chain - attack once and the hit bounce through several target, with smaller range ofc.

Melee Splash is where it's at.

Kripp's analysis wasn't very good, because Multistrike is even more narrow than preferring non-physical damage (although it does prefer nonphysical damage). It's actually only good for certain niche skills that have a special on-hit effect that isn't based off of damage. Flicker Strike (teleport), Frenzy (Frenzy charge), Glacial Hammer (freeze, still a little damage-based), Viper Strike (poison), Infernal Blow (death explosion debuff). Of those, Infernal is the most damage-based (you still need to kill the targets to make them explode), Flicker still has serious sustainability problems that make it a weak contender, and Viper Strike misses out on the Splash love. I think MS is still a great choice for Glacial Hammer and Frenzy, but that's about it; I'd have to test Viper to know for sure on that one.

I guess you can always add your own on-hit effects (quality Added Lightning Damage + Static Blows), but it's a stretch, especially since such a skill would have to outperform Frenzy.

It's worth noting that Flicker is much better in PvP than PvE and will still see some Multistrike linkage there in elemental melee builds.

It's not terrible but it ain't that good either.

Kinda gives it some perspective when a physical melee build can get more DPS from the Added Fire Damage support than from Multistrike.

I'm still waiting for GGG to boost physical damage. So far none of the recent additions benefited it. Although I guess it would work a lot better if they made armor's damage reduction flatter for both players and enemies.

I made a quick video on the subject.

You can find it here.

@moozooh: This is off topic but I guess you are right.

@BazzV5: Maybe the skill is not designed to be a 100% go-to like weapon elemental damage already is, but the issues here are mostly the clunkiness ones.

@ScrotieMcB: I guess MS is good with on-hit proccing skills, although you still suffer from getting less attack speed and having to stand in place. I don't feel MS was designed to be only used with on-hit skills either.

@mull: Yes, the clunkiness is obvious. Another solution to make it feel less stupid (since let's face it, attacking this fast really makes you look stupid) would be to combine all three hits in once. That would also fix the other issues. I'm not a fan of mimicking chain since this is already what melee splash kinda does.

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Danteleet a écrit :

@BazzV5: Maybe the skill is not designed to be a 100% go-to like weapon elemental damage already is, but the issues here are mostly the clunkiness ones.

But that's my problem with the latest gems. None are must haves. There's no FP in the recent gems. There's no added melee, chain, LMP/GMP, WED, etc. Gems that are required. Most builds end up looking so similar even if they are different in concept because we don't have enough powerful gems. We have niche gems that are OK at best and shine in very limited situations.

If there were too many IPD gems the thought of using added melee damage over another might come into question. At this point, if you are using a 2h weapon regardless of skill it will include added melee, added fire and faster attacks. We need more gems that compete with those, not replace them but something that actually makes us think which works better in certain builds.

I really am sick of niche gems.

I need to start playing again, havent even tried the new gems out. And I really wanted to try multistrike but now I feel like it might not be worth it and I should stick with splash and probably lame old added fire damage D:

"

Moosifer a écrit :

"

Danteleet a écrit :

@BazzV5: Maybe the skill is not designed to be a 100% go-to like weapon elemental damage already is, but the issues here are mostly the clunkiness ones.

But that's my problem with the latest gems. None are must haves. There's no FP in the recent gems. There's no added melee, chain, LMP/GMP, WED, etc. Gems that are required. Most builds end up looking so similar even if they are different in concept because we don't have enough powerful gems. We have niche gems that are OK at best and shine in very limited situations.

If there were too many IPD gems the thought of using added melee damage over another might come into question. At this point, if you are using a 2h weapon regardless of skill it will include added melee, added fire and faster attacks. We need more gems that compete with those, not replace them but something that actually makes us think which works better in certain builds.

I really am sick of niche gems.

Wa wa wa! I'm getting tired of reading all of these crybaby posts. If you were paying attention, Chris said people are just starting to discover ways to use the new gems. Maybe you should actually go play the game and try some combos instead of QQing on the forums.