Melee Serpent strike Swarmblade, just bad, bugged or not building right?

[GoldenExperience]

Melee crit Werebear is in a pretty good state right now with the reworked swipe tree. So naturally I had to try out Melee swarmblade to be edgy, Results were pretty bad…

Pre 0.9 Serpent strike tree had much more attack speed and crit chance allowing for flexibility in weapon choice to focus on crit multi and damage. It also had the node with upto 75% increased dmg to blinded enemies which was the main dmg node. All this got hit pretty hard in 0.9 with the skill losing like 20% attack speed and the crit chance and more dmg from tree. These were replaced with 75% crit multi (basically the same as swapping a crit multi mod on weapon to crit chance) and 5% more melee dmg per poison upto 60%. All in all a substantial nerf as 15% more dmg lost and a bunch of Qol as you need to ramp up poisons for your full damage.

Now, I’ve been testing a couple of setups with fairly decent phys weapons Druid, Level 94 (LE Beta 0.9.0g) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Druid, Level 94 (LE Beta 0.9.0g) - Last Epoch Build Planner

400-600% crit multi(not including 75 from tree), 12 stacks of poison for the full effect around 60 stacks of armor shred, 95-99% crit chance, 60% increased phys from maelstroms and damage doesn’t go over 20-30k hits on the basic dummy. Feels like hitting bosses with a wet noodle. To make the perspective worse, swarm strike which doesn’t even have a skill tree hits for around 40k…

Also I ditched Serpent venom for armor shred nodes as it was doing no dmg.
Anyone else got melee swarmblade working? Tips would be helpful.

[azmodael]

Serpent strike is a 100% base added damage with access to only one conditional 60% more multiplier node.

Open every other skill in the game and type “more” in the search function. That will give an idea how horrible that is.

The same kind of applies to all of Swarmform innate skills.

[GoldenExperience]

As a direct comparison to Swipe, lets say (both skills are used by forms)
Swipe gets 60% more dmg against slowed, 30% more dmg wengarian reach(usually maxed), 10% way of the hunt, on top of the below:

Lightning version(meta rn) gets 30% more dmg, 2% pen per attunement (let us assume 50% for 25 attunement), and 2% more dmg per shock = upto 30%.

Physical version(possible) would probably take Panther nodes for either:
A. 7 stacks with 35% more damage, 12% attack speed and 14 flat damage
B. (with +2 relic) 5 stacks and 25% more damage, 12% attack speed and 60% crit multi(120 if dw).
Main pro of phys version would be the panther buffs are global so will boost maul/other skills.

While Serpent strike gets 15% attack speed, 75% crit multi and 60% more dmg at 12 stacks of poison…

I really don’t wanna play DoT Swarmblade as the rage sustain issues drive me crazy while theorycrafting as it is. (Not to mention sweeping DoT nerfs make me question its viability)