A Review of Spear Skills

I've tried pretty hard to make many of the spear skills work in 0.3, I didn't play at al in 0.2, so I wanted to try the huntress on for size. Figured I'd post some thoughts / feedback on specific skills.

Parry: I'm including this since so much of spear is dependent on it. Currently, with mob densities the way they are, using this in maps is a death sentence without a very specific build around it which makes you super survivable. On bosses, it's super easy to get stunned, even to auto attacks, so you have to invest in stun threshold to prevent that from happening, but the returns are ultimately sub-par, even if it's kinda fun (the playstyle). Many bosses also don't really do much in the way of auto-attacks, so it can be a weird waiting game. Long story short, I like the mechanic, but it's way too much investment, for little return, so why bother?

Disengage: A fun skill, the hop back is quite nice, though it feels pretty underwhelming late game when attack speed (and general speed) are higher (due to the cooldown). That said, the hop back isn't really larger than a dodge roll, and it's not high enough that you could use it to selectively evade attacks from bosses / enemies. It's just not clear to me what the identity / point of the skill is. If it's intended to capitalize on a parried debuff to deal decent chunks of damage and generate frenzy charges, then I think the only thing it's achieving is the frenzy charge generation, and in this way it's outclassed by the support gem.

Edit: Apparently, disengage has i-frames, which I think makes it a niche, but overall usefull skill.

Explosive Spear: Almost exclusively has utility as a detonator, you can increase the limit of spears (theoretically up to 6, but that's committing insanely hard). Short fuse is quite important for its use as a detonator, which brings its DPS down to simply moderate (short fuse is a 0.7X multiplier on damage, and combined with the opportunity cost associated with using up a gem slot, lets throw another 0.8X multiplier on there).

Some math:
- Explosion + spear = 645% damage, 0.8X multiplier on attack speed.
- Short fuse + gem slot opportunity cost, 0.7X and 0.8X limit respectively.
- This works out to 361% damage on 0.8X speed, which puts it lower than auto-attack.

Basically, unless you're a deadeye with +1 proj, where you use the increased limit gem, the spear has an identity solely as a detonator, which, while hardly the end of the world just feels kind of bad.

Cull the Weak: Not a particularly bad skill, however at higher mob densities and with general enemy speed, I found myself running into some major issues, where mobs would run between me and the enemy I'm trying to cull, or the enemy I'm trying to cull ends up deep in a pack. At this point, the skill becomes unusable for its intended purpose, and just becomes a dash. I'd find myself strafing around hunting for angles to get a cull the weak off, which obviously makes the skill wildly inefficient. The base attack speed could also be lowered a bit so people don't have to prioritize attack speed to make the skill feel good / snappy.

Fangs of Frost: The skill is entirely dependent on parry to be worth using (obviously). The increased freeze buildup is nice, but hardly enough to sell anyone on the skill when glacial lance exists. Even when you consider parrying, the only major upside is the freeze buildup, and considering it consumes the parried debuff, it creates this awkward tradeoff surrounding consuming the parried debuff (and losing out on the additional damage), and getting your freeze buildup.

Lightning Spear: I feel like this skill is in a decent place right now, though it might require some tuning if the ability to acquire frenzy charges gets improved. It's a great combo vector with elemental sundering / primal strikes as a shock builder.

Rake: Skill seems kind of awful for clear right now / feels clunky where you target an mob and something walks between you, blocking the skill. While this is useful against bosses / single target, there's this awkward trying to get the spacing right, which I don't love. At present the best use for the skill is capitalizing off impales and getting massive bleed magnitudes.

Rapid Assault: This skill is actually very neat, and has some serious utility for two purposes - generating massive bleeds / impales, and generating combo for payoff skills.

Now there are some problems:
1) Nowhere does it mention that the damage of the spears stuck in the target combines into a large hit. This is critical for its utility as a bleed applicator, and only major nerds like me are going to figure out that it works this way. Fix the description.
2) There is nothing in the enemy tooltip to indicate how many spears are stuck in the target, AND the buff from quality is a random application of an additional spear - how are we supposed to know if the extra spear was applied?

I just figured this out, so I've not run the math, but you can use impale or the skill directly to generate some massive bleeds, so that's cool.

Spearfield: I'm not sure about this skill, it's seemingly passable for clear, and decent against bosses, works quite well when you combo it with knockback. That said, the game in general doesn't really lend itself well to setting up traps at present, many bosses are almost entirely knockback immune, which makes things a mess when they don't move around, which happens more often than you'd think.

Storm Lance: Not a great skill, has some utility for single target damage, ties with lightning spear for shock ability, while requiring the enemy to stay in a single location. On paper it does 600% weapon damage per second, but you're limited to 3 in the ground, so it's not actually going to do much to improve your top end DPS. I think this skill would feel fine if frenzy charges weren't so arduous to get.

Edit: Apparently, the skill creates shocked ground when it is detonated irrespective of whether or not there is a frenzy charge consumed. I was also doing some theorycrafting, and getting quality to +20, with overabundance III, while also anointing Warding Fetish is a sick build. As it stands, I'd say it's a decent skill, BUT you must use another a detonator with it, which makes it rather restrictive, as we only have two of those, and explosive spear isn't good enough on its own IMO.

Blood Hunt: Since this can no longer crit, it's no longer really necessary or even particularly helpful for single target damage. I think it's largely fine, though with how low enemy health is, it's kind of hard to use it for clear.

Glacial Lance: This is pretty solid, if frenzy charges were more readily available, it would be pretty much perfect.

Primal Strikes: Very solid single target damage, the fact that the third strike consumes the shock is a big pain though.

Edit: People are talking about having a hard time applying shock in the thread, but using a weapon swap to grab 3-5 shock chance nodes and putting the skill gem "shock" can have auto-attack easily applying shock to pinnacle bosses. There are also wake of destruction boots, shocking leap + crit, and a whole host of other guaranteed ways of applying shock.

Thunderous Leap: If there were more skills to detonate, perhaps there would be justification for using the skill, and justification for its extended wind up time. As things stand, the skill does paltry damage, and has extended windup time, and if most spear build users were serious about detonating abilities frequently, they'd probably weapon swap explosive shot. Either the skills +1.1s to attack time needs to be significantly reduced, or there needs to be some actual payoff for detonating things (not some 30% chance to create shocked ground).

Elemental Sundering: Skill is perfect as is, it can be a bit clunky to use at time when you're getting swarmed, but that's not a problem of the skill, and can be solved by ramping up attack speed.

Spear of Solaris: Is just kind of underwhelming, there are ways to stun enemies quickly to get decent uptime on this, but the ignited ground doesn't end up being that useful (but this is more just an issue of ignite at the moment). The biggest issue I've found is getting enemies to stay near the spear. I guess if you were using a build that focused on pin / stun, the skill would be decent. Just increasing the base radius would go a long way towards making the skill viable, as well as providing another mechanism in addition to stun to build glory.

Wind Serpent's Fury: Is technically usable, if you make it the central point of your build. If frenzy charges were more readily available, I guess it would be fine, but as it stands, the knockback component of the skill should be dropped in favour of something like more damage from the serpents. It's a worse version of falling thunder right now.

If anyone wants to correct me on these, or point out something obvious I'm missing, I'm happy to be corrected.

Great post, thank you.

I played spear in 0.2 and while I agree with most of your assessment, there are points where I disagree and I would like to bring these up.


Rapid Assault: The Bleed attached to this skill is meant to be comboed with Bloodhound's Mark which represents the core element of most Spear Builds. The idea is to try to burst down the stun meter of a boss and force a stun.

With 0.3's changes to how support gems work, this skill has the potential to be a dual ailment builder such as the popular bleed+poison used on physical damage centric builds with support gems such as Corrosion and Poison or Bleed + Shocked to help set up the boss for some Primal Strikes.

Primal Strikes: Which leads me to this. In 0.2, many agreed that the damage from this was not good enough in the absence of the shocked debuff, because not being able to launch the "birds" was seen as a dps loss that can be overcame by spamming Lighting Spear and never using this.

This is also the only source of native elemental exposure for the spear weapon, but it requiring to make two attacks which don't apply elemental exposure make this skill to slow to reliably debuff a boss or burst the screen.

And to add insult to injury, it's not possible to rework this into a combo based skill because Rapid Assault has the potential to trivialize combo point gain.

Fangs of Frost: I feel you undersold just how quickly this skill fades into irrelevancy. But I feel you neglected an important regarding a support skill gem called Frost Nexus.

Frost Nexus creates a patch of chilled ground after freezing a targeting, basically negating the need to parry attacks in the first place. And with the addition of Encroaching Ground and Persistent Ground in 0.3, this skill can be used without a buckler, while remaining irrelevant for general gameplay thanks to...Glacial Lance being better at freezing enemies!

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Rapid Assault: The Bleed attached to this skill is meant to be comboed with Bloodhound's Mark which represents the core element of most Spear Builds. The idea is to try to burst down the stun meter of a boss and force a stun.

With 0.3's changes to how support gems work, this skill has the potential to be a dual ailment builder such as the popular bleed+poison used on physical damage centric builds with support gems such as Corrosion and Poison or Bleed + Shocked to help set up the boss for some Primal Strikes.

I understand, and even appreciate the thematic component of rapid assault applying bleed. My comment was around the associated numbers (mostly):
- The bleed off the final hit is pitiful, full stop. If your goal is to apply bleeding to the enemy, you're better off using auto-attack and the bleed support gem, as it doesn't have a 0.45X multiplier on its speed.
- The detonation is equally pointless, sure I can spend 4 seconds building up spearheads in the target that will explode and apply bleeding when detonated, but the bleeding from 4 sources doesn't stack, and neither the direct damage, nor the AOE are worth mentioning.

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Primal Strikes: Which leads me to this. In 0.2, many agreed that the damage from this was not good enough in the absence of the shocked debuff, because not being able to launch the "birds" was seen as a dps loss that can be overcame by spamming Lighting Spear and never using this.

This is also the only source of native elemental exposure for the spear weapon, but it requiring to make two attacks which don't apply elemental exposure make this skill to slow to reliably debuff a boss or burst the screen.

And to add insult to injury, it's not possible to rework this into a combo based skill because Rapid Assault has the potential to trivialize combo point gain.

I don't disagree with what you've written here, but why would the skill be balanced around attacking enemies without shock? If there's a problem it's with the duration of the debuff that prevents the re-application of shock after consuming it. As it stands, I'd rather the clunky elemental exposure get removed, along with the shock consumption. I think the refreshing of shock duration would have to go along with that, but hey.

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Fangs of Frost: I feel you undersold just how quickly this skill fades into irrelevancy. But I feel you neglected an important regarding a support skill gem called Frost Nexus.

I guess I don't view the ability to create chilled ground as the primary identity / purpose of the skill, though I do agree there's not much point to it. I'm more focused on the X4.4 multiplier on the freeze buildup of the explosion, which puts it in a (somewhat) unique category for freeze buildup. Technically, if you built combo, and used this to capitalize on it, it has a unique purpose. But as you mentioned, unless you're going this niche route, you're better off getting 2-2.5X frenzy charges from the parry and capitalizing using glacial lance.

Thank you for your understanding and feedback. I admit you seem to have tested more attentively than me and I feel I can only offer mostly theories rather than findings at this point.

Primal Strikes: I think the problem with this skill is that it is designed around co-op play with a player that has a better shock build.

I think you are meant to apply the electrocute support gem on this and reapply the allies shocked status while also increasing his damage by applying Elemental Exposure.

Just to backtrack here, by ally I mean either a Specter, Tamed Beast or Player.

I don't fully comprehend the meta around Electrocute Builds as I don't play those, but many of GGG's abilities are centered around MMO like rotations that can be circumvented with Co-Op gameplay or...use of NPC companions to weaponize monster modifiers in your favor such as "all attacks shock."

Fangs of Frost: Chilled Ground felt like it's only purpose when compared with launching Glacial Lance at point blank range. GGG could change this into Fangs of Flames and suddenly it would trump Rapid Strikes as the staple for Dual Ailment Build up because you could stack Ignite and Shock.

And I really hope GGG does this before deciding to make Sword the only source for Burning Damage accessible to Dex based characters! I like my swords to spin to win while retaining the freedom to build for any ailment of my choosing.

Rapid Assault: I fully agree and feel like I have nothing to add because I didn't test this much when fighting rares. All I can say about both this and Fangs of Frost is that the best use for these is a niche centered around applying Dual Ailemnts, while leaving your Auto Attack options free for better options.

- Disengage: pretty decent, still useful on mapping with knockback to make some distance; useful vs prox. tangerine. It has built-in invincibility frames. Never use for frenzy charges.

- Explosive Spear: works well with storm lance. e.g. barrage (2nd wind), storm lance, explosive spear (short fuse), barrage, storm lance, explosive spear.

- Glacial Lance: frenzy charge builder (freeze), it's a solid skill on its own right

- Storm Lance: main boss killer (+explosive spear) along with...

- The default attack is quite strong single target as it can attack over 5 times a second. Used along on frozen/shocked targets (bosses) for the extra cold (ice bite) while shocked/exposed. It does not consume shock! I have it with elemental armament III as I've got gain extra fire damage on a jewel. Builds rage very quickly.


One downside of spear is that it requires somewhat +projectile amulet, +melee (vaal gloves), +attack on the weapon. It's a difficult setup.

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Disengage: pretty decent, still useful on mapping with knockback to make some distance; useful vs prox. tangerine. It has built-in invincibility frames. Never use for frenzy charges.

Was not aware of the i-frames, that's very cool actually. The comboing of the tech with knockback is another great use for it that I hadn't thought of.

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- Explosive Spear: works well with storm lance. e.g. barrage (2nd wind), storm lance, explosive spear (short fuse), barrage, storm lance, explosive spear.

I guess I overlooked the detonator tag. Would multishot on storm lance not work here? The math is favourable to barrage, and then you're not limiting yourself with barrage, no? Also, where is the damage coming from in this configuration? Storm lance is maybe doing 612% base weapon damage X2 (barrage), or am I failing to understand something?

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One downside of spear is that it requires somewhat +projectile amulet, +melee (vaal gloves), +attack on the weapon. It's a difficult setup.

Meant to include that in my main post, but forgot, will have to do an update.

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Primal Strikes: I think the problem with this skill is that it is designed around co-op play with a player that has a better shock build.

If you build shock chance on your weapon swap, you can very easily apply shock as a lone player. Here's my PoB, if you want an example:
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/pob/v38wx0ga

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Mank7#6701 schrieb:

I guess I overlooked the detonator tag. Would multishot on storm lance not work here? The math is favourable to barrage, and then you're not limiting yourself with barrage, no? Also, where is the damage coming from in this configuration? Storm lance is maybe doing 612% base weapon damage X2 (barrage), or am I failing to understand something?

I do use it along with multishot the explosion creates shocked ground. It's a guaranteed shock (+expose too; I have execute), the limit is 4 lodged spears (with quality, so they are placed at once). They can be placed earlier to start off with the explosive spear on boss fights. Then proceed with glacial to freeze and usually that's the fight, using standard attack for rage, and then finishing with storm lance. This let me one tap Zarokh w/ relatively mediocre gear (manage to stun as well). Amazon's expose weakness I guess carried too.

A benefit is the relatively large area, hence easier to aim.

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bestsss#7863 schrieb:

I do use it along with multishot the explosion creates shocked ground. It's a guaranteed shock (+expose too; I have execute), the limit is 4 lodged spears (with quality, so they are placed at once). They can be placed earlier to start off with the explosive spear on boss fights. Then proceed with glacial to freeze and usually that's the fight, using standard attack for rage, and then finishing with storm lance. This let me one tap Zarokh w/ relatively mediocre gear (manage to stun as well). Amazon's expose weakness I guess carried too.

A benefit is the relatively large area, hence easier to aim.

Right, looking in PoB, I can see that this would be decent damage (alternating storm lance and explosive spear), a little less than primal strikes, but seeing as you don't have to be melee range or deal with the annoyance of keeping shock up on the enemy it seems decent.

I guess my problem with storm lance, and explosive spear, and the reason I'm not jumping up and down and saying the combo is great, is that weapon swapping shockburst rounds would probably get you much higher DPS with minimal effort.