I’m aware Slayer doesn’t use Crushing Combo anymore. However like I said the forced SD proc is great on CS casts as a driver to give Slayer something unique over Colossus in AoE situations, but the influx of Sudden Death procs from Slaying strike’s increasing in frequency is a problem where it forces the gameplay we had where we would be pressing different abilities every GCD to one where it’s very Casino like in essence as plenty off moments now you’ve just changed the ability that’s being pressed 2-3 times in a row from Cleave to Execute as soon as you hit that CS window as you’re very likely to almost overflow on SD procs at any given moment especially if you already enter a CS window with one SD proc banked up.
Mind you Crushing Combo’s gameplay was fine, never did I mention I that Cleave should have less weight in AoE. The problems I have with it effectively replacing rend is the ability flow change between these two patches.
God forbid anyone has a differing opinion and isn’t happy when adjustments aren’t well thought out and lead to a drop in skill expression within the spec.
If they wanted to make Rend passive entirely they should’ve gone the whole hog rather than leave it half baked.
So you don’t understand something written and say it’s not a thing so which it it? I didn’t say “Slam isn’t keybound” but that’s what you assumed, nor did I say that it was a priority ability either which was once again your assumption. You could’ve asked “what did you mean by this?” and I would’ve answered the following.
Keybind Allocation, the process in which one allocates their abilities to specific keys on their keyboard. Now logically keybinding follows a similar pattern based on personal preferences however it’s usually done in a systematic manner keeping abilities that function similarly close to each other (ST vs AoE).
Say for example your keybinding set-up is as follows all in a row all utilising your left hand.
MS 1, OP 2, Slam 3, Execute 4, Cleave 5, Rend `
Given Rend’s function no longer matters the main keys pressed in AoE will devolve into 2, 4 and 5 with 4 and 5 being the most pressed buttons with 2 breaking them up inbetween when we’re focusing in priority funnel damage within a M+ keystone as opposed to overall padding. Prior to this consolidation I would have more of an even flow between abilities and breaks inbetween them as Colossus prioritised MS as well so outside of a CS window gameplay was variable in which abilities were pressed every GCD.
As mentioned earlier, the frequency of Sudden Deaths for Slayer becomes a problem from a gameplay perspective as it overtakes GCDs that you would otherwise fill in with another ability and pushes out abilities like MS from the rotation in AoE where it would be pressed for funnel/focused damage when other abilities aren’t available therefore reducing the range of motion of abilities pressed within a given period of time leading to an entirely different gameplay experience no matter where you’ve keybound your abilities things are going to feel heavy handed in one direction.
Mind you I’ve already fixed my own issues with this by placing a second keybind of Cleave over my original Rend bind in all builds to keep things in line with muscle memory and feel in ST situations. But that still doesn’t stop me from noticing that Rend as an ability being useless to apply it’s own debuff as nothing short of degenerate.
Pray tell me how? Yes if you account for the DoT portion you get weighting towards Rend however if look at direct dmg only which I mentioned earlier in this thread and we cancel out the dot effect on both as it would be silly to leave that in as it’s a secondary effect on both that gives you a false impression when you’re looking at how much dmg you’re squeezing out of every GCD.
So with me outlining my thought process on the matter we’re left with the following.
Rend 124.581% + 190.465% / 10 = 12.4581
Cleave 232.481*1.1(Barbaric Training)*1.1(Sharpened Blades) = 281.30201
281.30201 / 20 = 14.0651
So this means that Cleave’s direct dmg DPR (once you’ve picked up talents) at a baseline is better than Rend’s. You can call it DPET if it’s from other effects not present at a baseline but the fact that baseline is higher means that it’s direct dmg DPR is still higher on Cleave.
I’m not even accounting for anything that’s a variable after the fact of additional crit dmg% that effects Cleave but doesn’t effect Rend on BT and SB while also not even accounting for the variable of the Apex talent increasing Cleave’s direct dmg by a further 5/10/15/20% etc at times pending how high your apex talent is stacked.
So realistically we’ve come to the exact same conclusions regarding Cleave vs Rend but we’re calling it different things. Direct Dmg DPR / DPET w/e it’s all semantics.