Is this the meta? All Rogue builds are about attack speed. Mage and Sentinel are also focused on attack/cast speed. It seems that all the characters play the same way.
What about the minion builds? or DoTs?
There are many builds in this game.
i think opâs point is, where are the slow hitting builds?
poe has warcry/slam or even channeled spells that do huge damage.
one reason why i dont like modern d-likes is because theres very little reason to have deliberate game play. spammable skills are simply superior to slow attacking ones. mentioning minion builds is actually proving his point. minions take away from player agency. and further cements how the game doesnt reward deliberate gameplay when you can do so much by standing around doing ânothingâ.
poe at least has some slow hitting builds, admittedly they feel bad to play as you need to play a piano of warcries before hitting one time. or you have to stop and cast for half a second to charge up a huge spell. why do all that when you could just use a skill that spams the entire screen with projectiles and move on.
One of the reasons I left Poe2 was because I waited 12 years for them to make the marauder smoother, nicer and better than Poe1 but they didnât lol. Rolling slam is just straight up terrible haha.
Anyway I know what you are getting at but I literally canât think of any builds that donât benefit from attack speed, even channelling spells/warpath etc scale from it. I know a slower weapon can yield bigger hits but you end up scaling that with attack speed as well, lol.
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the sad reality is that in order to make slow attacks feel impactful is to introduce speed caps or just disable speed buffs entirely. my âunpopular opinionâ is that anytime you introduce speed buffs, it just feels so good that it becomes necessary.
we also have stuff like procs. more speed = more chance you trigger a proc.
more speed means more survivability where you can quickly sneak a hit in and run away.
more speed also (mostly) translates to faster kills. faster kills means you get more loot. more loot puts you at an economic advantage if playing in a trade league.
as for poe2, they ALMOST did it. in my opinion, melee felt GREAT and impactful if you were only looking at the game as a 2 handed mace user playing thru the campaign. it takes a lot of farming to get gear and etc but it felt impactful.
this then suddenly becomes shit when you see how EVERYTHING ELSE is clearing content at a mere fraction of your speed and with significantly less risk. GGG could have pulled everything back down to âmake melee good againâ but instead decided to cater to the majority. i really wished so badly that poe2 would be a more slower and deliberate game, but it ended up become just another POE
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And dot builds are all focussed on attack/cast speed unless the dot has a very low cap like the various brands (cap= 1) or doom (cap = 4?).
From memory D3 had proc chance (or something) scaling inversely with hit rate.
Why is that a bad thing?
I mean then you have never liked diablo likes, if you think diablo 2 has âdeliberate gameplayâ you are insane.
The entire genre is âmow down monsters with your very limited skill setâ so of course it boils down to âhow do I do this efficientlyâ well its either not breaking your fingers mashing a key, or using automated systems like procs/minions etc.
this isnt to say you cant have slow builds that feel good, but its a meme to think anyone plays diablo games for rich interesting branching combat.
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it is bad for me and for what i want. for the rest it is ultimately a good thing.
to me its a shame. because ggg actually separated poe1 from 2 with the intention of making them very different. if you watch the interviews from the devs leading to the EA launch, the devs were enthusiastically mentioning how the game is more deliberate and intentionally designed around melee combat.
this is actually true. with sufficient gear, i can out skill bosses thru out the campaign. carefully avoiding attacks and sneaking in hits, even using basic attacks even.
but in comparison. why would any one want that when almost every other build in the game can breeze thru the campaign content with much more speed/ease? theres no way to make that deliberate melee combat feel good while everything else is objectively better by magnitudes.
youâre actually right. the original diablo doesnt have meaningful combat and i didnt know what i liked. i used to think i like ânumbers go up, kill shit or die tryingâ was the type of game i liked.
but now iâve fully realized that i prefer more deliberate combat such as NRFTW, TQ2 and in fact to the point i play more rogue like/lites nowadays.
not to say i dont enjoy zoomer/blasting content. i still do but i prefer more deliberate stuff nowadays.
for poe2 especially. whats the point of splitting poe1 and 2 if the end result is the same?
but that said i m so glad that poe1 wasnt forced to adopt poe2âs end game/atlas.
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Upheavel/Earthbreaker builds ditch AS. Might be one or two others but I canât think of any of the top of my head. Not very many though.
Though technically that might be considered more a minion build as I think itâs proced by something else. Sabertooth, maybe?
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Crazy - not kidding was just having a shave thinking bout trying an upheaval build today for fun. I know it got a nerf a few releases ago as it had a skill that didnt have a cap on scaling or something lol, still looks fun and Iâve never tried one 
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Earthquake felt more deliberate for me. One well-placed attack every few seconds, screen cleared.
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Smelters wraith attack speed will do nothing for it
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i play meteor/black hole
They just added cast speed to raven rise because minions need attack or cast speed.
Dots are applied via stacks which need massive attack or cast speed as someone else said. Only exception I can think of is consecrated aura.
Itâs a problem in a lot of modern ARPGs. In PoE 2 everything is a crit build. Want to play Dots you need crit. Itâs annoying.
With that said my season starter is an Auradin aka RF like in PoE. I do have a build guide that is from a few seasons ago on the forums. (still valid) It doesnât use attack or cast speed at all. Since your Dot from your Aura is based on Mana stacking, spell, fire and healing effectiveness. So you buff up your Aura cast Judgement and run around melting everything.
Mana stacking is in next season so Iâll be starting with this. Itâs an S++ tier build. I was testing it today with some new tech and doing 12 million Dot tick damage. Again next season itâs buffed with Spirit of Xylem buff.
what do you mean mana stacking is in next season?
my meteor/black hole sorc with 1200 mana would like a buff
Spirit of Xylem is getting a buff from 2-4 Health and Mana per attunement too 3-6. Also lowering the LP so you can get more. So massive mana and health from attunement. Super crazy for Auradin pally or attunement builds.
While the above might not be ideal for a Sorc lots of new mods and corruption shinnanegans. One corrupted mod is +1 skills and mana. Then there are corrupted idols. Gonna be some interesting stuff next season we donât even fully grasp yet for synergies.
However think Mana stackers will eat very well. My pally will have over 2k mana with the staff without any of the new stuff. I might hit 2.5k mana fully geared.
Disintegrate, black hole, frost wall, chthonic fissure, ghostflame.
These skills donât need cast speed.
Over the years I played several very successful builds that didnât invest anything or just a little bit into attack/cast speed.
Erasing Strike with Event Horizon, Eternal Eclipse Void Cleave, Upheaval with Event Horizon, Dancing Strikes, Wandering Spirits, Gaspars Set + sacirifcal Embrace + Lament of the Last Refuge Meteor Volcanic Orb.
Some of these had a few passives for attack/cast speed to make filler skills smoother and animations slightly faster even though they didnât âspamâ their main damage source.
They also donât do any damage with their Dots. You need cast/attack speed with other skills to ramp up Dots. To get 1,000âs of stacks.
Dot builds (in general) are just reliant on this with some rare exceptions like Auradin pally. We could add Aura of Decay to that list of not needing speed but whatever attack you are using does. So âThe buildâ needs attack/cast speed in the end.
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