Cadence in 2026

[_maverick]

@ape123

Deadly Momentum giving 220 flat damage, which is very good when alternatives like Lethal Assault and Soul harvest tax your item slot for conversion since the damage is split. A late game 1 hander deals 160 damage without aug/component for comparison.

Deadly Momentum is not used as a global buff like LA or SH.

[mi023]

@x1x1x1x2

Wanna ask though, how much have you guys tried phys cadence?

Quite disappointed. Actually, I agree with most of the content in this topic. Elemental cadence is an exception. It has received a lot of powerful equipment support from FoA, making it competitive. Elemental cadence with Awakened Nar’s Arcane Destroyer is also good. Like Ceno lists, elemental cadence has tdm, high weapon damage, high flat damage, and fast attack speed, almost all things cadence needs. Maybe crit damage is the only lacking thing.
But other damage types are not as lucky. They have not got such a big buff and performs much worse.

[x1x1x1x2]

Took me until this link to realize you were also using unli arcane will. Yeah seems like it’s just so much mods stuffed into ele cadence which it probably deserves since it’s been the meme ever since the start of gd

[ape123]

It is used in Cadence builds. Probably pure coincidence though.

[_maverick]

But not in a way like LA or SH that boost other skills. It is just used to boost Cadence and WPS.

[x1x1x1x2]

@ape123

Deadly Momentum giving 220 flat damage, which is very good when alternatives like Lethal Assault and Soul harvest tax your item slot for conversion since the damage is split. A late game 1 hander deals 160 damage without aug/component for comparison.

It is, but I think we need some proper comparison of final weapon damage values of builds so we can properly talk about it.

@ape123

It’s not really fair to disregard the comparison to non-WPS compatible skills.

Don’t really know what you mean by this so I can’t address this

@ape123

Cadence has the fast charge hidden mechanic

Even if it does, another aa build using the same wps that fast charges cadence still hits 3x at the same rate. So dps comparisons are still the same.

[Tarille]

@marfig

I honestly don’t know what’s the value in this discussion on categorizing and comparing Cadence to other skills. And the fact there are diverging opinions only makes me want to believe it is its own thing and we should instead be discussing what can be done to it.

The core nature of how Cadence functions and its place in a build (Being mutually exclusive to other no cooldown abilities) means that it directly competes with other similar abilities, as you’re either using Cadence OR these other abilities.

Thus, like with anything else, these will be compared to each other. Especially by these forum goers who look very closely at end-game performances.

Since, it’s a case of “Why use X, when Y is just better?”

Even more so when Cadence doesn’t bring anything particularly unique to the table (Unlike, say Feral Claws that comes with Rip and Tear, so even if FC isn’t as good as other AA options, it makes up for it by having this entire second other skill with it)

Like, cleave/pass through is cool but not unique (Especially now with Onslaught having item modifiers that provide both). DM is cool, but not unique (And unlike other global buffs like LA/SH you can’t use it alongside the skills that benefit most from it as they are the skills Cadence is directly competing with in the first place)

[x1x1x1x2]

Dunno if it got mentioned already but I just remembered Cadence is also very RNG dependent because it needs to hit the OA lottery more often than other autoattacks. If you got 20% crit then it doesn’t matter when you hit the 2 crits in 10 attacks. With Cadence you better pray it hits on the Cadence hits.

[Ceno]

@x1x1x1x2

Dunno if it got mentioned already but I just remembered Cadence is also very RNG dependent because it needs to hit the OA lottery more often than other autoattacks. If you got 20% crit then it doesn’t matter when you hit the 2 crits in 10 attacks. With Cadence you better pray it hits on the Cadence hits.

Brother.

@Ceno

Crit/OA

When Cadence triggers, it needs to be a hit 100% of the time. And when Cadence triggers, it really should be a crit as often as humanly possible. And if it is a crit, we want that crit to punch. Hard.

All this is to say that OA matters more than ever on a Cadence build. All builds (other than debuff builds (if they exist?) and pet builds) love OA, but Cadence loves it the most. Most builds have a consistent enough flow of damage that having 20% of your hits be crits is fine. But if 20% of your Cadence hits are crits, that means only 1/15 (~6.667%) of your meaningful hits are crits.

It always surprised me that Cadence did not have an innate Crit Damage bonus, and that there are literally no Skill Modifiers that provide this stat either.

When Cadence Crits, it has to be more impactful than most other skills in the game by a wide margin. We’re talking juicy Doom Bolt or Grenado crits over here - we’ve doubled up on the crit chance RNG by only seeing it once every three attacks, after all!

So, to this end, Cadence loves high OA and % OA sources and modifiers, and it is deeply hungry for Crit Damage modifiers. Crit Damage could come in big chunks directly to Cadence itself, and OA/%OA could land in more moderated quantities on Deadly Momentum to keep the damage flowing. But presently, we see neither.

/10chars

[x1x1x1x2]

Now I know if it did