So... single target skills were viable in D2.

I wanted to open a discussion on specific reasons why that might be very untrue for PoE. What are your thoughts?

I've always had a single target skill for bosses/rares... they do quite a bit more damage than aoe's.

"

taekvideo a écrit :

I've always had a single target skill for bosses/rares... they do quite a bit more damage than aoe's.

Same...I like using Puncture with my arrow shooter and I use Ice Spear for my caster.

when playing duelist in CB i pretty much could kill everything faster than using melee aoe simply using dual strike with supports, map bosses didnt stand a chance with diamond flasks.

They seriously need to reduce mob life/damage, not A LOT but enough to allow some more variety

What single target skills were viable for PvE in D2?

I can think of some that were used, but none that were the focal point of any builds, with one exception being Smite... but that was only really efficient for killing uber bosses.

Smite, vengeance, frenzy, concentrate, and zeal all come to point.

I think the qualm here is between end game in D2 and end game in PoE, not with the viable skills themselves.

In D2, many character builds were focused on single target because you ran bosses to get loot for the most part. There were some exceptions to that of course - farming some particularly high level areas for highest ilvl loot - but in those areas you had the same issues you have in PoE. I don't think a smiteadin was the fastest clearing guy in the sewers in D2.

PoE is about killing lots of stuff fast - and having some small backup single target ability to kill elite mobs or bosses. Most of your time is spent rounding up tons of weak mobs and blowing them to kingdom come.

Also, useless tangent: rune words were awesome ;)

"

BRavich a écrit :

Smite, vengeance, frenzy, concentrate, and zeal all come to point.

Zeal was not single target. Frenzy/concentrate were heavily outshined by WW due to their single target nature. They were good for complementing a WW build, but not much else (outside of having fun). Vengeance could also be fun to mess around with, but compared to any of the actually good PvE builds it was crap due to being single target.

It is the same in PoE. Plenty of the single target skills are good, but typically you are much better off using them as a supplement to your aoe skills. It is simply too slow to click on every mob when you can just click twice and the whole group is dead.

If you consider frenzy/concentrate/smite/vengeance as viable for D2 farming then I would argue by that logic Dual Strike / Viper Srike / Infernal Blow / Glacial Hammer can all be viable for PoE farming. They will however be far from efficient.


Edit: Basically what he said ^^

"

Zeal was not single target. Frenzy/concentrate were heavily outshined by WW due to their single target nature. They were good for complementing a WW build, but not much else (outside of having fun). Vengeance could also be fun to mess around with, but compared to any of the actually good PvE builds it was crap due to being single target.

I would argue zeal is single target, because you are hitting the target directly with the weapon, and not an area band box.

Frenzy was just as good as WW (and in some places better) in the later patches. D2 was never an example of great game balancing, though.

However...
D2 Right-Click-Driving (Attack-Move) interface made single target skills more usable against groups of enemies. As good as AoE? No. But good enough not to be utterly frustrating. Go use heavy-strike against the monkeys in A2 for a hair pulling experience. Should that be viable? Maybe not. But how about double strike with very fast attack speed? On paper it could work very well. In practice, it just burns out your mouse button.

We could argue that PoE makes it much more viable to have multiple skills for different situations, and therefor single-target skills do not need to be very strong against groups. But, they should not be frustrating to use due to poor user-interface.