There are several issues, that this weapon has, so I’ll split it like this:
1. Stats
First of all, the weapon has the lowest %AS bonus in 2H category. Yet, it designed as a weapon for auto attack.
Secondly - conversions. Cold to Phys is great, no doubts, however Vit to Phys is useless, because there is already a belt, specifically designed for 2H weapons, that grants 100% Vit to Phys conversion. In my mind, it would be great, if the weapon had 100% cold to phys conversion. (As in avenger’s crusher, for example)
And lastly, the most crucial - terrible damage spread. From ~200 up to ~900. I know, that’s a common thing in 2H maces with physical base (Gutsmasher is the same), however the weapon is designed for Cadence, skill, that’s already known for it’s inconsistant damage output. What’s so bad about it? Well, it directly influences your lifesteal, the only thing for melee, that prevents you from being dead. All aforementioned explains, why 2H melee is generally a bad choise for cadence (not the mention not-the-best-state of cadence as AA in general). And for this particular weapon it’s also true.
I didn’t mentioned here the strongest side of this weapon (the only good thing about it, tbh) - phys resistance. However, it’s not that unique stat, and cannot single handedly make this weapon viable.
2. Mods and skills
+2 to Soldier. UGH. How many 2H weapons do we have with this stat? Certainly a lot. It’s not bad, but it just doesn’t make anything unique. I propose to change it to +2 to Necro/Oathkeeper or even Nightblade, literally anything, so the weapon can be used outside the soldier mastery.
Cadence bonuses. I already described, why this weapon is bad option for cadence, but there’s also another reason - we already have 2H weapon for cadence, which is simply better.. Why not to give other AAs physical support? Or maybe even not AA, there are a lot of skills in the game. (Physical Bone Harvest would be awesome, imho)
Necrotic Edge bonuses. First of all - 100% vit to phys is redundant, 280 looks like a lot of damage, however we all know how flat physical damage works. Flat vital/cold would be nice, but I understand why it haven’t been done in the first place. What I find ironic is - medal gives better bonuses for NE than the whole weapon.
Granted Skill - It’s not bad, 220%WD and 145 DA shred looks cool, but… it’s just not enough. The CD is high, the animation, granted that weapon has 0%CS is slow, and half of the base is non-converted phys. So you’ll gain more simply auto-attacking nonstop.
Conclusion
Leviathan has been overshadowed by Gutsmasher in phys meta and it’s completely useless for cold builds. Bonuses for NE are too weak (Not to mention the fact, that on 2H cadence NE lowers your DPS), and proc is just mediocre. Bonuses to Soldier mastery are boring and repeating, the %AS is low, the only great thing, phys resistance, can’t save this weapon.
+1 to all that.
I also think it has very low AS bonus. Especially for a 2H weapon with 1.46 aps and it’s a Cadence weapon. It’s a fact that Cadence works best with high AS. I wanted to use it in my physical cadence warlord instead of gutsmasher to improve my phys resist but loss AS is so huge that I would lose more than 20k sheet dps and I have already low lifesteal with inconsistent hits(2 normal hit barely steals life.) so that phys resist won’t make me tankier enough to compensate the loss.
Make it a physical spam Bone Harvest weapon the way Amarastan Crusher mods ABB. It’s an unfilled niche and Necro combos well with other physical classes. Give it 100% pierce to phys on BH and keep the cold conversion, and it should work fine. Would probably need to keep the +2 to soldier so DK isn’t completely blown out by Oppressor though.
Gutsmasher witchblade is better than any physical Cadence build you could do with Leviathan, and it also performs noticeably better on Warlord. The only spec I haven’t tried it on is Death Knight, but I doubt those skill mods to a single WPS are going to close the distance.
Now, my subjective opinion, because in the post I’ve been trying to be as objective as possible. (One biased person trying to be objective, lul)
So, I’ve always thought, that Leviathan is closer to staff, rather than to a mace, with these dragon (?) heads and color. And franky, the whole weapon is simply not unique in terms of it’s function. It’s your regular big stick with low AS and extra tankiness. It’s not bad, but there are a plenty of such weapons in the game. But there is one empty niche in itemisation - 2H Phys caster weapon. So, it would be at the very least interesting, if the weapon supported skills like Bone Harvest, Hagarrad rune or even TSS. Of course, this change is far too radical from it’s current state. And some players don’t want to get rid of this big stick for punching, but same could be said about the change of conduits in few recent patches.
You need to get a very well rolled one to compensate that +2 soldier bonus on Gutsmasher, believe me I tried, for any 2H Cadence user build +2 soldier skill bonus is too good to give up. It cost you 20-24 skill points.
How does the weapon perform at endgame atm? I never tried timing it.
Necrotic Edge is like AQC in that it has slower animation? If so that sucks. The item mod would need to be pretty compelling to be worth it for physical damage. Significant %WD and/or IT to NE, would make more sense than the current mod.
The Granted Skill is cool and all, but it has the issue annihilation relic had in the past before it became %on attack; it competes with, and delays, cadence. Either give it better AoE, raise the values, or make it fast to cast. I didn’t like annihilation being changed to on attack, as I enjoyed casting the meteor myself, but the values were too insignificant that it had to be; I hope this doesn’t happen to this skill too.
Just throwing it out there but outclassed doesn’t mean much if the weapon still gets reasonable times. What specific times does Leviathan get on Death Knight (as the weapon is clearly built for it compared to Gutsmasher and Witchblade).
Fair point, I’ll check it out when GI is ready.
The only problem - I’ve never seen Gutsmasher in Cadence builds. Only BA. And 2H BA is significantly faster and more stable.
Oh, and yet again - NE lowers the dps on 2H Cadence.
Technically Gutsmasher is for Witchblades and Warders but Warlords also use it well enough, I have a build can do SR 75, the only thing the build lacks is consistent life steal because of Cadence, If I could improve the lifesteal it can go up to 85-90 I suppose. And there are lots of items that gives bonus for certain classes but some other class combos use them better. Like Sacred Harmony blades, they are for Saboteurs but I’m now testing them with a sorcerer and it looks much better in every way. That’s why this game is so good, the limits are not sharp, you can cross them with a bit of imagination and game knowledge. So now we have a 2H melee weapon for DK and I don’t see Leviathan DK builds around, also other classes don’t use it too.
True enough, I just jumped on Witchblade because of the +2 Soldier/Occultist, Chaos conversion and CoF but those combos would work well too.
It went through a revision a long time ago because now one used it then. It didn’t have the Vit->Physical conversion and supported Physical ABB back then if I remember right. I think there were 1 or 2 builds after it changed but yeah, it’s one of those weapons that faded away.
Off the top my head, this is the only Leviathan build I remember from v1.1.4.2. Might be a bit old/outdated now with some of the more recent feedback in this thread.
I never liked ABB skill and don’t use other than lethal assault buff but bringing back that modifier could be usefull for other players. I guess the other option is that lowering it’s physical resistance and increasing it’s attack speed but I don’t think devs would approve the idea. My crazy idea is hat we do not have 2H pierce-cold weapon other than Nadaan and it supported by bleeding damage not cold. Making Leviathan pierce damage and adding it to vitaly to cold and phys to cold conversion would be very good.
I dont agree at all with Leviathan as a staff or to be used for spam casting. Ive personally always thought of it as Samehada. Id personally love to see increasing its ADCtH, either on the weapon itself or buffing the value on Necrotic Edge, or both!
