Discovering Bladefall Mechanics in Path of Exile

Bladefall's additional volleys significantly reduce damage output, countering common assumptions about skill effectiveness.

### Understanding Bladefall Mechanics: Surprising Insights on Damage and Hit Counts
* 🗡️  Recently, I have been experimenting with a Bladefall character in Path of Exile, having previously created similar characters multiple times due to my **fondness for the skill**.
* 💥  I discovered that having a **100% poison chance** and using the **Golden Rule** to reflect poisons back to myself allowed me to accurately measure how many times I hit an enemy with **Bladefall**.
* 🔍  My key finding was that increasing the number of volleys in Bladefall actually **reduced the total hit count**, with the standard version yielding **four hits**, while the version with seven volleys resulted in **only three hits**.
* 📊  Furthermore, using a version with five volleys surprisingly gave me **seven hits**, indicating a **significant impact on damage output** that I had previously overlooked.
* 💡  This peculiar behavior seems to stem from how **additional volleys are coded**, potentially causing **more spacing between hits** and **reducing overlaps on the target**.
* ⚠️  I also learned that while many players believe **reducing area of effect (AOE) increases hit overlaps**, this was not the case for Bladefall, where adjustments in AOE did not yield the **expected increase in hits**.
* 🔄  Overall, my testing has shown that misconceptions about Bladefall's mechanics can lead to **substantial differences in damage output**, highlighting the **importance of continuous learning** in the game.
* 📅  As I continue to develop my character and explore new builds, I look forward to sharing **more insights and discoveries** with the community.

hello and welcome Exiles to a lesson in you can always learn something new in Path of Exile myself specifically recently. I am working on a bladefall character. In the past, I've made a bladefall character one, two, and technically three times because this spell, blade character, I played bladefall with a lot, liked it a lot. I put the skill in s tier when I was doing skills with this setup, and I have to say there's something I never realized about bladefall that is very important for how much damage the skill deals. So what did I find out? Well, I have a character in standard that I have with a 100% poison chance. You'll see if you look at the skills, it's 100% chance to poison. I also have on this character the um Golden Rule, which means every poison you inflict reflects back to you. And essentially, I use this character to tell me how many times I'm hitting an enemy. I cast a skill on the enemy, I will get a

number of poisons proved to myself, which will appear over here in my debuff bar area, and that will tell me how many times I hit the enemy. Now, the interesting discovery I made about bladefall is apparently more volleys is a bad thing in terms of hitting more times. Normal bladefall has six voles, with you having it 20 quality. Bladefall of volleys goes up to seven, and bladefall of impaling has five because its quality gives impale effect instead of additional volleys. Granted, I could also use a regular bladefall with five volleys itself. Now, what's the interesting thing that I'm going to show you here is how many hits we get with the seven volleys versus the five volleys versus the six voles. So right now, we have on our character bladefall regular six voles. I cast the skill, you'll notice we hit four times, and this is going to be pretty consistent. Something about the hits is depending on how far you are from the enemy, but

if I don't move at all, it's going to pretty much give me the same amount of hits every single time: four hits with a regular bladefall. Now, notice something interesting: if I add in bladefall of volleys, which has seven volleys, look how many hits I get: three hits. I got additional volleys, but my hit count went down. And then, interestingly enough, let's go to regular bladefall with no quality, so it has five volleys, and let's look at the hit count. I got seven hits, seven versus four. That's a really, really big difference. And as far as I can tell, this has to do with how they have coded additional volleys to be factored in. I'm guessing as they factor in more volleys, they give more spacing between the volleys while keeping the same area, so it's less likely that multiple volleys will hit the same target. Something like that. I don't know for sure, but the funny thing about this is I've made bladefall one, two, three other

times and every single time I made bladefall, I 20 quality it. I went for the additional volley, and little did I know I was losing what appears to be close to half my damage because if I have the 20 quality with these six volleys, the difference is seven versus four, which is, you know, 75% more damage. That's a big freaking deal. Now granted, this hit count can change a little bit depending on like how far you are from the enemy. Like if we space out a little bit more, maybe we can get like right now I'm getting three hits on regular bladefall. Let's try that again, see if he gets three hits again. Three hits. It's there's a little bit of a weird spacing depending on how far you are from the enemy. And then we'll try the five voles just for comparison here. Three hits versus and now we are getting six hits. So there's a bit of variance, and it's dependent, as far as I can tell, how far you are from

the uh boss you're targeting like that distance somehow affects the waves at which the volleys come down and affects how many overlaps you actually get. But hopefully, this is displaying a very interesting factor, which is apparently additional volleys is a very bad thing for your single target on Bladefall, especially if you're doing uh Cascade. Now, it doesn't matter as much if you're doing like no Cascade. For example, if I just have five volleys here, look, I get two hits. And if I go swap to Bladefall Vol with seven volleys, and boom, we get two hits. So, it doesn't really matter as much if you're just using Bladefall at a baseline. But as for um, once you go to Cascade and other stuff like that, the additional volleys actually hurt your DPS a lot for how many hits you get. And I think that's a very profoundly odd thing that you wouldn't expect, and something I didn't expect, and that's what I get forever testing it. Now that I have a character set up and I'm

testing these things. These are things that I'm going to know when I go to test how many hits I'm getting on a character, get an accurate idea of what kind of DPS a certain skill can deal. Now, another funny factor I would like to also add into this little preview is, you know how everybody tells you like, Oh, you're trying to overlap a bunch of hits. Maybe you should go conif effect and intensify and shrink it down as much as possible, or Don't invest into AOE because you're going to start breaking your overlaps. Well, for the most part, from what I can tell, that isn't necessarily very true. If I go ahead and I add in, um, intensify and the, um, let's just use the five volleys for example, start, we'll start here. If I go and add in, first off, we are at a baseline six hits. If I go and add in con effect and intensify, and let's say we go ramp over here, 1, 2, 3, 4, we're four.

intensity stacks. I reposition, so that's going to break the test a little bit, but you'll notice we get seven hits. Let me, we did reposition, so let me see if I get seven hits regardless of that real quick just to... I didn't, I didn't mean to cast and move. Okay, you see we just got eight hits. Are we going to get eight hits? Well, I'm already proving my point whether it's intentional or not, but let's go ahead and do this. So my character doesn't move this time. We'll stack up the intensity and then we'll go and hit this enemy, and you'll see seven hits. So you see we shrink down our AOE. We're trying to make it in a very condensed area, and we're not actually improving our overlapping hits like at all. From what I've so noticed is sometimes it gives you one extra hit, and apparently in this test right here, it's actually losing us a hit compared to the non-on effect. So that's another... I

guess I guess myth that I believed in and it's it's applicable for certain things and it's not applicable for other things and bladefall the example here the clock effect shrinking down the AOE doesn't really help. Let's go ahead and increase the AOE, see what that gets us. That gets us seven hits, so we lost a hit there versus this, the eight hits. This just, we're perfectly positioned for eight hits from my testing. Normally, we get around seven hits usually in most different positions, but it can vary a little bit. But the point I'm trying to make is there were two things I believed going into this character bladefall additional. I thought would be a good thing. It is not. It hurts your damage significantly. And number two, shrinking the AOE to get extra hits all in the same target doesn't really work unless you're talking insane reduction in AOE. Like I would assume if we did 99% reduced AOE in every single project was hitting on one location, that would work.

for extra shotgun hits, but that requires a large investment in reduction AOE, like a simplex, and then it bricks your ability to clear almost entirely. So hopefully, this is a cool little example of something that you wouldn't really think works a certain way, and it actually does. Bladefall fooled me significantly into thinking that blade plus one Vol was a good thing. As far as I can tell, it really only helps clear a little bit 'cause it gives you more AOE coverage, but it does in fact break your damage, weirdly enough. Anyways, that's all for today. I'm working on a cast and crit perfect Agony assassin, which I'll be making a video on hopefully tomorrow. And I just got to say, you know, you can always learn something in Poe no matter how many times you make a character, no matter how many times you do whatever it is. There's always stuff you don't know or work in ways that you maybe don't expect. So hopefully, this is a little fun video for you guys. As always, thanks for watching.

Take care, Exiles, and peace out. Have a good one.

Always Learning New Things in PoE

CaptainLance9

The speaker has been experimenting with a Bladefall character in Path of Exile and has made an interesting discovery about the skill's damage output.

They have a character with a 100% poison chance and the Golden Rule, using it to track the number of hits on enemies.

The speaker found that more volleys from Bladefall actually result in fewer hits, challenging the common perception of maximizing volleys for damage.

Adding volleys to Bladefall can decrease the hit count, as seen with seven volleys resulting in three hits.

Regular Bladefall with no quality, offering five volleys, surprisingly gives seven hits.

The spacing between volleys and the player's distance from the enemy seem to influence the hit count, leading to variability in damage.

The Impact of Additional Volleys on Bladefall's DPS

Additional volleys negatively affect the DPS of Bladefall, especially when using Cascade.

The number of hits remains consistent regardless of the volleys when not using Cascade.

Overlapping hits and investing in AOE may not significantly break overlaps, contrary to common advice.

The Impact of AOE and Intensity Stacks in Bladefall

Repositioning and stacking intensity in Bladefall does not consistently increase overlapping hits, often resulting in the same or fewer hits.

Shrinking the AOE does not effectively improve the number of hits on a single target.

Increasing the AOE also fails to provide additional hits, with the optimal positioning yielding around seven to eight hits.

The Surprising Mechanics of Bladefall and AOE Reduction

Bladefall's interaction with a Vol skill may seem beneficial, but it actually breaks damage output.

Investing in AOE reduction for extra shotgun hits can hinder overall clearing ability.

The speaker emphasizes the continuous learning experience in Path of Exile, regardless of character iterations.