I tried Cleave Warlock today.

Hi, All.
Since Cleave looks so nice in skill description, I decided to try it. I did it all offline starting from scratch.
I was actually leveling with it from the beginning and it went pretty smooth.
I also found nice Cursed + Conviction demon in Nightmare A4 who travelled with me till end of the Hell A5. He died only because I started jumping right in the middle of the pack of P8 Hell Bovines.

My test gear: Full Horazon set (non socketed) with so-so rolls , no anni or torch. 28 resist Mara, 4% Bull Kathos ring. Other ring I was changing back and forth digging through my stash.
Belt: String of Ears /Thundergod/ Immortal King

I made this to try different weapon and find best one to kill cows offline.
With badly rolled Oath in Balrog Blade he is actually doing his best. Sword sweeps fast and cows are in hit recovery most of times. I use Hex:purge for the speed.
Other weapon tested :
1. Obedience in Mancatcher : nice and has added range 4 reaching so many cows at once! Slow though. And need to repair quite often (or carry Ort rune in the cube)
2: Immortal King crusher: small range, slow despite 2* Shael in sockets.
3: Tomb Reaver : nice to farm Chaos Sanctuary but too slow to hold wall of approaching p8 cows.
4: Obedience in War Pike: by feeling little bit slower than Mancatcher. Damage difference not noticeable
5: Oath in feral and Silver Axe. Both slower than Balrog Blade .
6: CTA in a Flail : fastest swinging speed among all (it is if I forgot to switch after a buff) .

All weapon I later tested again replacing Mara amulet with Highlord. No difference as for me.

To do: find 4OS Eth Scourge to make Oath and give it a try. This should work is switching from Purge to Bane.


Overall impression:
1- strong character for next ladder. Goes with cheap gear very well . Just don't do P8 cows solo.
2 Still has range capability via ES
3 Travelling with Harmony in hand and been able to multi shoot Mobs without switching is nice too
4. Disappointed by seeing that my Fully synergized Cleave with 13 hard points does only half damage compared to 1 point invested ES.


Have anyone else tried Cleave?
If by any chance you have BOTD in a sword, thunder mall and War Pike please give it a try and tell me speed observation results. One day I'll get that Zod.

Other weapon tested:
Non-upped Non Ethereal Hone Sundan: slow even with 3 Shael in it.
I have nice Eth one online. Next time one of my Warlocks will die I'll give it a try and respec. Will go into testing together with the Executioner Justice i found on one of my mules off ladder.

Horazon Tornado: fast, really fast. Swooshes like nothing else. Need frequent repairs because of this . Can do 1/2 to 2/3 of P7 cow level then it need maintenance.

Overall impression: either Cleave have some hardcoded break points for eash weapon or I was unable to reach them by adding Shaels to weapons in my test.
Hope one day it will be datamined

ShadowHeart wrote: 3 months ago

dionisy_cn wrote: 3 months ago

Overall impression: either Cleave have some hardcoded break points for eash weapon or I was unable to reach them by adding Shaels to weapons in my test.
Hope one day it will be datamined

According to Warren (the guy who made the most accurate / up-to-date IAS calculator for D2R, which the one here at diablo2.io is a fork of):

Cleave and Mirrored Blades use hardcoded sequence skills, so until someone datamines this out of the code or bruteforces every single EIAS breakpoint, those skills won't be included.

Source: https://warren1001.github.io/IAS_Calculator/

(“won’t be included” refers to that he’s deliberately left them out of the IAS calculator for now)

Yes. this is first place I actually went to find what weapon will best suite my Sweeper. I am not good at bruteforcing and recording or datamining. Just did what I could and shared my own impression. Hope one day there will be more accurate results and tables.
I still have many weapons to try (once I will get runes or find that weapon). Sweeper will just stand there waiting for new nice stuff.
I believe I will try online one on next ladder for sure.

ShadowHeart wrote: 3 months ago

[..]
According to Warren (the guy who made the most accurate / up-to-date IAS calculator for D2R, which the one here at diablo2.io is a fork of):

Cleave and Mirrored Blades use hardcoded sequence skills, so until someone datamines this out of the code or bruteforces every single EIAS breakpoint, those skills won't be included.

[..]

Has that since been done?
Or is maxroll just pulling their speed numbers out of thin air again?
(Certainly possible, seeing how their entire display for mirrored is still iffy at best and doesn't even include DPS)

Thank you for opening this thread. I am currently playing a Cleave Warlock and he is in hell midway through act 3. Finally I found the shield of the Horazon set and the set now complete. It is an awesome set imo. No worries about resistances and attack rating.

The weapon I currently use is a Dreadfang. I also tried a Bonehew and an Ethereal Windhammer. The Windhammer basically crushes everything on players one but with the Dreadfang Cleave is way faster and it plays a bit better imo. Up to now the durability of the weapon is not realy an issue.

Concering attack speed I noticed that it seems that for Cleave the speed of the base weapon is more important to reach higher IAS breakpoints. For Mirrored Blades the ias on the weapon itself is more important. The Windhammer is very fast for Mirrored Blades but kind of slow for Cleave.

I assume that you will also use Mirrored Blades in some instances, so it seems like a kind of a trade off concerning the attack speed of both skills.

Now I have succesfully completed the game as a Cleave Warlock. The cursed Council Member became my companion in hell act 3 and this was obviously a big boost. Though I did have two close calls with my hardcore character due to quill rats and Succubus. The lethargy siegel is just excellent in hardcore.

The Horazon set is very powerful. You only need a decent weapon but nothing spectacular and you will crush everything on players one. Depending on the weapon you can easily do players 3-5 content imo. I am convinced that an etheral Dreadfang would fit very well, especially if the proc rate of the amp damge curse from the binded demon might be reduced to 5% in the future.

My Fury druid collected all the set pieces and boy, it was really a grind to get my Fury druid to a decent level ( Zod and Cham rune).

On the other hand, the Warlock, this new homes on the block, the dude with those fancy pants and who is fighting with a book in his offhand for crying out loud. Without great gear he beats out my Fury druid easily and even kills Diablo faster with Mirrored Blades with only 10% crushing blow from the gloves. And I did not even prioritize the highest damage output, for example I have an Act 2 merc with Holy Freeze aura.

Now I have a cursed Hephasto with Fanaticism aura. Actually I wanted the Holy Freeze aura with cursed so I could test out the Act 5 Merc in this setup with Lawbringer for more survivability. But since I got the Fanaticism aura first I had to check it out.

Bonehew and Tomb Reaver are good, but Cleave is still not as fast as other weapons. The weapon I now use is The Grandfather which I got for 5 Ral runes The Grandfather benefits very much from the Fanaticism aura, is indestructable and crushes everything on players one. A very budget friendly option.

In case of interest, here is the link to my build on Maxroll: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/oac4h0o7

Grief will probably be one of the best options in view of attack speed and damage. But personally I don't like Grief very much, I don't even know why. Nevertheless I intend to test it out once the character is non-ladder, in case he is still alive in a few weeks...

Time to say good-bye in the coming days to my Cleave Warlock. I assume he will not be same after the new updates. Currently he has a cursed Pit Lord with Holy Freeze aura as a binded Demon. With the Enchant buff from the set his attack rating goes up from 7,000 to over 30,000. Now I am using an act 5 Merc with Cure, Lawbringer and azurwrath for max survivability. The build plays very nice Of course the build feels kind of overpowered with relatively little investment (but Death is always imminent in hardcore).

As a Cleave warlock you do not have too many skill points available to spend in the Demon tree. However, with the horazon's set, a Mang Song staff, an Arachnid Mesh, a plus two skill amulet and either a Demon tree skill charm or a ring with plus one to skills you have 20 points in binded Demon. If I understand it correctly the binded Demon will then have an aura. So you could get a demon in a cursed Terror zone with a Holy Freeze aura. It then depends on the survivability of the binded Demon.

I will likely miss the damage boost from the lethargy sigil...

DKBam wrote: 3 months ago

Time to say good-bye in the coming days to my Cleave Warlock. I assume he will not be same after the new updates. Currently he has a cursed Pit Lord with Holy Freeze aura as a binded Demon. With the Enchant buff from the set his attack rating goes up from 7,000 to over 30,000. Now I am using an act 5 Merc with Cure, Lawbringer and azurwrath for max survivability. The build plays very nice Of course the build feels kind of overpowered with relatively little investment (but Death is always imminent in hardcore).

As a Cleave warlock you do not have too many skill points available to spend in the Demon tree. However, with the horazon's set, a Mang Song staff, an Arachnid Mesh, a plus two skill amulet and either a Demon tree skill charm or a ring with plus one to skills you have 20 points in binded Demon. If I understand it correctly the binded Demon will then have an aura. So you could get a demon in a cursed Terror zone with a Holy Freeze aura. It then depends on the survivability of the binded Demon.

I will likely miss the damage boost from the lethargy sigil...

I don't think it is goodbye. I will definitely try it again after the patch . When I will get enough of token at least.
Cleave will have changes
"Fixed an issue where the skill would appear to cast slower than it actually was."

Changes to Lethargy and Coven runeword are really bad. This I do agree.

This character is still very strong post patch. Today I finally got a Protector's Stone for my Dreadfang. This weapon is now on another level. Together with the horazon set it crushes everything on players one. You simply use Cleave for mobs and Mirrored Blades for single targets or monsters with high health pool.

As a demon a now have a Vile Mother with amp damage and Holy Freeze aura. The amp does not proc as often but certainly good enough. The 5 minions are great for my hardcore character and make life a bit safer.

The Sigil Lethargy I still use quite frequently since I play hardcore and it feels much safer.

Up to now I could kill every Herald that came my way.

I like the Cleave Warlock build.