The skill is looked at this patch. I tried regular cooldown vitality one, a spam BK and offbeat chaos one with huge flat (like 450k). There is still a major problem in playing the skill in the environment of current monster behavior - it’s a cone skill. A lot of mobs end up dodging your skill cause they surround you, and slow on the skill doesn’t really solve it.
Even FoI that also had and has this cone problem doesn’t suffer nearly as much of this aspect because it’s a channeling skill that can be redirected. With a cooldown Bone Harvest if you miss - you lost. Very frustrating gameplay, no buffs to the base skill will help with that. The cone needs some adjustments in a way that it would at least clip the targets in a 180 angle of your melee range.
Another very bad thing about the skill is that basically EVERY cd build that wants to main it has to take Ghol gloves, a pet item with no speeds, because the huge cdr mod is mandatory. It’s bad enough with just a cast, but when you need some attack as a filler too, you can end up with smth like this: 140% attack and cast speed. How do you think this is gonna play out? This situation where a pet item is basically a build enabler for the direct dmg skill is bizarre.
My suggestion is to move this cdr mod to formerly popular but now rarely used Iceskorn Talons. The gloves have a very gimmicky, unreliable %12 to reset cd mod, i have never seen anyone use them for BH.
Also the BH 2H transmutor range reduction is too punishing. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that a 2H weapon that swings mightly somehow gets lower range on the bones it raises from the ground.
Would be welcome indeed. Iceskorn talons are to be scorned indeed. And ghol gloves’ lack of any speed makes me sick. Plus spider pet proc is visually annoying and thematically incorrect for a BH build.
will losing the +2m and adcth mod be bad?
i’m wondering how much meaningful benefit those provide to stuff like the minus tdm/spam and semi spam boneharvest on vit/acid/cold and if they would be missed “in general”
otherwise it seems like a decent solution
edit
roundabout way of asking, “if those mods are good too”, why not just add cast speed to the ghol gloves
would fit with the ghol theme and pet them
I guess you could say the same thing about CD Forcewave and CD PB. I believe there could be widespread “charge” mechanics in FoA. Where if you miss, you have a second charge to fall back on. That might help.
kinda felt like, not 100% sure, the transmuter was there as an “equalizer”, (older days magick dmg 2h weaps had base phys dmg)
a conspiracy theory be so like you couldn’t use it on 2h phys and get freebie dmg boost back when phys conversion was “op” via armour bypass, that way there was no potential exploiting BH on phys (not that i recall a 2h phys BH build ever really being a thing other than for soul harvest weave?)
edit, soulrend before
so with avg 55% conversion you’d basically lose almost half your 2h’s base dmg, on single RR class.
I honestly wouldn’t mind a new cold-based bonescythe MI (with built in dual-wield ability so we don’t have to waste the relic slot), or better yet a 2h with 3s cooldown to synergize with the Harvester of Death node. A cold BH spam without needing the Ghol’s gloves would be more fun than I could handle.
Unfortunately, like many other skills, BH just isn’t a great skill unless it’s built for spamming. And right now, our options in vanilla for a legitimate BH build are VERY limited.
can we also get rid of that phys>cold conversion on transmuter? it feels useless since there are literally no 2h with phys base left, at least legendary ones.
That’s pretty much what I said. Only Alkamos Scythe/Warsword do phys damage while having cold synergy. And neither are well suited for BH. (Maybe you can make some blits/BH hybrid if you try really hard?)
But it’s worse, there’s not even any 2H with any kind of necromancer bonus (apart from Soulrend) that does cold damage.
Fun fact, Leviathan used to be a valid option before it got the unfortunate damage conversion of cold > physical. Leviathan had great support for both cold and phys at the time. Such a frustrating change.
Hard disagree. You’re only looking at legendaries but have you thought about necro leveling? This conversion is awesome early game. And this makes more sense now with Necro getting Cold RR.
Green affix “of Soulwarding” has cold damage and +4 to bone harvest. Also, the green alkamos scythes are pretty good. And lastly, the devs are adding cold support items for Necro (finally!). Check their misadventures for new cold 2H legendary and green MIs.
Charge mechanics would help, but my feeling after using it for the past few weeks is that the “attack arc” within melee range of the player might be the bigger issue. I’ve whiffed with it at point blank range more times than I can count.
If it doesnt sound too wacky, i’d suggest removing that conversion and the TDM and replacing it with +2 seconds cd and +5 projectiles so it hits in a star shape.
This is generally how Bone Harvest works. There is no other skill in the game quite like it, that sometimes makes you completely whiff your cooldown dmg due to monster behavior. The closest thing to that is TSS and even then it’s not really close.
