Andor's Trail

Tulkas wrote:I also actively seek battles with more than one opponent, upping my kills per minute. And the increased damage you get us not truly wasted, IMO.

Tulkas has the right idea. Higher kills per minute is my goal as well and Cleave really does a good job of helping me get there by allowing me to run into crowds of several monsters and walk away unscathed. I will almost always aim for the bunch of monsters that are together rather than taking on a lone monster.

Ehhhrrrmm... Lodar's cave and those nastily charging Hirathil are slowly beginning to change my mind about cleave. Once you've encountered 2 of them fighting you and another 4 running for you with dripping teeth and blood stained, raging eyes... they gave me the creeps. They always found that empty spot around me until I was once surrounded by 4, after I had just killed two, still on the same spot, fighting the same battle.
And down there this happens regularly... scary stuff.

Link wrote:Ehhhrrrmm... Lodar's cave and those nastily charging Hirathil are slowly beginning to change my mind about cleave. Once you've encountered 2 of them fighting you and another 4 running for you with dripping teeth and blood stained, raging eyes... they gave me the creeps. They always found that empty spot around me until I was once surrounded by 4, after I had just killed two, still on the same spot, fighting the same battle.
And down there this happens regularly... scary stuff.

Yes, and expect more where that came from in the future, with nastier baddies and nastier actor conditions. My goal was to future proof my character against all future updates.

Link wrote:...... Once you've encountered 2 of them fighting you and another 4 running for you with dripping teeth and blood stained, raging eyes... they give me the creeps.

+1 Great description of those ghastly creatures!

They can be quite scary with their seriously harmful status effects and large damage potential. If there was ever a place to convince me to get cleave.... that is the place.

No wonder poor old Lodar is acting so crazy.

Eerrrmmm, take a look at my skills and... weeeeell: CL +1... I did it, and I actually enjoy it a lot. After all it's FUN and considering the ultimate reason for playing a game??? Right, it's to have fun.

Therefore, decision making process for "Cleave, or not to cleave"-made simple:
If you're in for fun, take it, it's well worth the points.
If you're more the serious type of player (yeah, I know, that's pretty contradicting), leave cleave (HA!) and spend your point on... aahhh, a bigger sword or the like. ...but you cannot spent skill points on swords... ...yeah, whatever!

Cheers from the eager cleaver front!

Glad you are joining the cleave fun! I've got cleave 2 - and I love it!

Is it worth putting a point in Cleave? Or should I focus on other skills earlier on?

Right now (lvl 28) I have 1 in WA, 1 in HH, 1 in CE, 2 in IF, 1 in Regen. I've mostly been running Sword/Shield... but am also thinking dual wield.

My AC is 181%m my AD is 18-28, Crit 24, block is 70%

Thoughts?

It's a great debate, and since you've got 2/3 of the prerequisites, you may lean that way...but I'd think about getting two levels of combat speed first, which will allow you another attack per round.

Get combat speed. Both levels. Without 2 levels of CS you have 10AP, so you get 3 hits per round with Flagstones Pride. With 2 levels you have 12AP, so you get 4 hits. With your current AD that's an additional 18-28 damage per round.