The stance-specific animations for Blood & Sand Cyclone look phenomenal
Blood spin. “Look at my perfect stance and skill and deadly precision!”
Sand spin. “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~”
The lack of helmet really enhances the silliness. Can’t wait to see the witch going at it
My first thought was “omg what is gemling gonna be like with this?”
Nerfed
Ya but first they gotta nerf warrior a few times
Honestly can we have like some ascendancies buffed instead of just nerfing the overturned ones, I think it would make the game healthier tbh
Blood, life regen obviously . Sand, guard maybe.
I mean so far the alts are (often) quite solid amplifiers, so if sand is more aoe and less damage while blood is more damage and less aoe, like PoE1, I could see sand getting something like modifiers to reduce or remove negatives or unique modifiers like increased armour and evasion in sand with increased ailment chance, bleed chance, or dot damage in blood.
It is interesting that they made different animations for the stances.
Can anyone at Gamescom confirm if Blood and Sand stance are granted just by using a Sword skill or is a separate reservation skill that enhances Sword skills and has no compatibility with other skills?
I hope its just a melee modifier like PoE 1, more area and less damage in sand, less area and more damage in blood….
But knowing their track record it’ll be something absurd and overblown like explicitly modifying sword skills so each sword skill has 3 functional variants that do different things with no stance, sand stance, and blood stance all being different because GGG likes making things hard to balance and tripling their required amount of work, while also limiting a skills ability to be used across different weapons.
absurd and overblown
The ambition to always make things absurd and overblown is what brought you the game you play, instead of another bland ass Diablo to yawn at for 50 hours and leave.
Have you ever heard of the term “over-engineered” complexity does not always equal mechanical depth and complexity in PoE2 has often made builds have less cross weapon functionality making many skills, supports, and auras fundamentally if not directly weapon locked reducing the overall feeling of finding or making a build and creating more of a feeling of building what the devs intended.
Oh no I can’t believe they wanted to make it an actual mechanic instead of a 99% passive skill you set on sand stance and then never touch again
[Someone on the floor at Gamescom posted the tooltip for Cyclone. Sand Stance makes you shoot out sand rings and blood stance makes you shoot out blood waves for the first few seconds of the channel. I assume, they each do damage and apply blind and bleed respectively
https://preview.redd.it/nq65lk6merlh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=caceefbf1f93c52e57534652584d8622c142bae8
I am now incredibly worried (rather than pessimisticly worried) that 100% of sword builds will require blood and sand stance and blood and sand will have no affect on any build outside of swords.
the poe2 special
Three new types of charges (boons) that you generate with other types of melee abilities. You have to spend them to activate cyclone, which is a glory skill be default that also consumes 3 boons. Each type of charge gives it different buffs.
From the screenshot of Cyclone, they do have a function.
Blood Stance causes blood waves and Stand Stance causes sand disks to fly out of the attack for the first few seconds of using it.
Someone did a breakdown of the trailer too, and it looks like there is a swap from Blood to Sand to change some function of the other skills.
Blood spin is balanced Str, Dex, Int.
Sand spin is Str stacker 8 dex 8 int.
Lot it :-)
Sand spin: “I’m going to put some dirt in your eye.”
The blood stance one looks so badass, almost HEMA inspired with how the blade is twirled in the hands
They really weren’t joking when they said they needed more time to “work on animation”, because holly shit they indeed cooked on this one.
Just about all of the animations currently in the game are top notch.
Top of the industry period, I haven’t seen cleaner animations in almost any comparable game
And this is part of why I’m all for them holding back the pacing of the game. Animations and effects starts to become a hindrance when you get to the zooming levels of PoE1. Not against snappy and fast gameplay, but make the slower styles viable too so we can appreciate how gorgeous this game is.
Exactly! I’d love for the pace to be much slower than poe1, could even have it be an opt in thing where a keystone makes mobs have more rarity / quantity / tankiness but there are way less mobs in maps..
I like the idea, because I definitely don’t want to take anything away from those who want the poe1-esque gameplay, I enjoy that too, but let me parry and combo when I feel like it.
Probably hard to balance as a keystone but even if it was worse overall Id still take it, maybe a boss rush “arena” league would go hard as well, where you just fight map boss after map boss!
Yeah. As someone said on other thread, the character power level gets kind of out of hand by act 3 and later, then the game becomes much zoomier, and those beautiful animations end up getting swallowed.
That is inevitable as we get access to more tools to make the build come together. That said, I wish that huge power spike came later, maybe post-campaign.
However, that really is hard to balance, especially considering people already complain about the campaign being too slow as it is right now.
Peak POE1 was when all you could see of your character was a rapidly jiggling giant boot.
I mean, it also allows other builds to actually feel different. If everyone is a zooming screen annihilator, its not really special is it? Just ends up feeling like doing the same thing with slightly different particle effects
Daymn i just noticed that angling motion, cool
If I remember correctly they do actually have a “HEMA guy”, he was at the first exilecon and works with animations and stuff.
Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. I’ve noticed it with maces already, but with swords it’s even more pronounced. All the animations look realistic.
Without almost! The second cut is a zwerchau, a regular technique in longsword, and then there is a cross step for the third cut chaining back into the first.
The third spinning cut is more for shows than anything, especially going forward like this, but I’d say that whoever curated the animation had at least some knowledge of either hema or fencing biomechanics
I always liked the idea that you’re some warrior taking on hordes of monsters and all you’re doing is casually twirling.
I’ve always thought cyclone and whirlwind in diablo looked silly because of this. Love whirling assault because it actually looks like a martial art, and I love the blood stance cyclone shown here because it actually looks like a swordmaster at work.
Thing is, zweihander was actually used like that. Spin2win irl
Yeah a big advantage of a two-hander was using momentum like this to just overwhelm people.
…people weren’t just beyblading across battlefields.
“Hey guys, I’m really dizzy, but I killed like 15 dudes.”
“At least 5 of them were the enemy, I’m pretty sure.”
“Yeah, but you twirled the wrong way! You killed our men, you dolt!”
They probably also weren’t sending out lightning and stuff. Just saying spinning was at least a little real
Factually incorrect, George Washington took down most enemies with his size, a 6 link whirlwind and blood stance
No but there are twirls like this as youre advancing.
Zweihanders were specifically used to cut down peasants with shit or no armour or unarmoured horses and so using momentum lets you cleave way deeper, in addition it helps with edge alignment.
Thank you for your profound knowledge sensei
Zweihanders were an anti-cavalry weapon. They’re so big because they’re for chopping down charging horses.
It was fr
It maybe tied to different attack speeds tho, we can’t say for sure
If you get your skill speed high enough that one feels pretty good. Not a proper cyclone, but def better than its default.
Red goes brrrrrrrrr?
No, different attacks speeds have different animations, de devs Said that a long time ago (back when people were afraid that the game would be slow) the animators put that in the game already
Hollow form is getting butchered before they release this
100% I’m betting they gut the speed and make it QS skills only or something
Hollow form already does not work with channeling skills, they dont have to do anything
Oh yeah, channelling tag, still getting gutted for whirling assault though
Not gonna lie, the first one is the way
I pray cyclone doesnt suck ass by itself
There was a picture of the lvl 13 gem on the subreddit. Consensus is that the numbers look good and they are making you solve it for mana cost, which is fine by me
Blood Magic go BRR is honestly the answer.
Also opens the possibility of Chonk/Amazon mana leeching off of Chaos/Ele damage. If the numbers are good we should have the tools to solve it
Amazon mana leeching off of Chaos/Ele damage
Amazons Mystic Harvest is life leech only.
Yeah, Oisin’s could work though.
Leech barely sustains anything after the nerf
If you want to sustain blood magic you need a heavy source of life regen
Or Constricting Command +Defy II
Sounds kinda similar to ice strike monk which has been solid since launch. I’m hopeful.
As someone that’s done a sword based martial art for over a decade the first one looks badass and the second looks dumb as fuck.
Blood: I’ve spent a lifetime mastering the blade.
Sand: Holding on for dear life!
I agree it looks stupid but i think that one is more for people who like the more simplistic animations of the past.
yea the first one looks sick.
Yeah first one is pretty much montante/zweihander form gamified.
I mean you can look dumb as fuck in 2 ways, in a bad way and in a really really funny way. This is clearly the second one
I don’t know if anyone has ever used the sand stance in the history of cyclone. So chances are nobody will see it, or if they do it will immediately clue them in they’re in the wrong stance.
Sand stance is 19% less damage taken, it’s one of the best defensive layers in PoE 1 right now.
Maybe it’s just me then, I’ve never never even once considered using sand stance with cyclone. I’ve been running cyclone for the majority of my builds for the better part of 10 years.
Is it me or does it seem like with the blood spin the character actually tries to keep his eyes on where he’s going, same as what some gymnasts do when spinning to prevent dizziness.
But in the sand spin he doesn’t even bother lol
https://i.redd.it/6wmr8oxupqlh1.gif
Sand spin just goes yolo like he’s blinded himself
I just hope it feels good and isn’t like that awful quarterstaff skill that is basically cyclone but feels so incredibly slow.
We saw the gem at gamescom, 40% less speed and 25 mana per second is rough baseline but apart from that its just normal cyclone, 8 second duration for the stance buffs is also long enough to not be too annoying
I wonder if pathfinder slow immunity can apply to it. So you can stay zooming
Slow immunity does nothing for skill penalty, the next node afterbthat though reduces it by 50%
Holy shit now we’re cooking. F1 cyclone build
Huh for sure i thought they were going to make it be a glory spender. Glad it isnt
yeah thats fine. there’ll be ways to makr it zoom
It is incredibly slow but screen clearing powerful. Don’t think I’d play it again just because of how long maps take to clear already in poe2.
Marital artest fixes that with the clones
Hollow form doesn’t work on channeling skills so it probably wont work on cyclone
I was talking specifically about hollow form whirling assault already. It was a lot slower than I liked, but the power was amazing. The other problem that I really disliked with the build is that pob was pretty much useless, so comparing items was a lot more difficult than other builds I’ve played. This was my build: https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Huseby-2008/runesofaldur/character/Husebonk
Put mobility on hollow form your mostly phys so I’d swap out rakiatas flow probably won’t even notice the difference. If you want any gear of my char just let me know I blew up most of it when I quit doing double corrupts but otherwise what’s left is good 🤣 if it looks random it’s probably just something I equiped after blowing up the original. Ps anything that says quarterstaff attack doesn’t work on hollow form noticed a gems had that https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Bankable-2647/runesofaldur/character/fisticuffsa
I’ve never used that skill but I hate the look of it. I feel like it shows up constantly in gameplay demos. Just the weird repeated forward moving animation over and over with a stop in between. And the effects of it look so weird and disjointed when people have a ton of AoE or whatever else.
Assuming you’re talking about https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Whirling_Assault
It was a really good looking skill in its original form, but it felt awful to use. Now it feels great but yeah it looks like a meme with how much area it covers.
Outstanding
He’s actually outspinning
Get out.
I cannot wait til I can do a proper melee bleed build
ggg animators take every keyframe personally
They achieved their goal of making the best looking combat in any arpg. It seemed to be a real pain point for Jonathan. It’s fucking insane how good this game looks
The blood one looks so much more practical and I love that so much. It wont matter eventually because youre gonna have so much speed by endgame but while its slow and methodical im gonna love watching the animations lol
Jesus christ that looks fuckin sick
Holy FUCK that is cool
The footwork :‘)
Blood stance looks so good.
Blood is great!
Sand looks like 8 year old me doing my “special attack” while playing with wooden swords.
The animations in POE 2 are what makes the game feel awesome. Skills actually feel different.
Time to nerf warrior
Why tf is everyone amaze by this it’s just whirling assault with a sword…?
Mind blowing
Dynasty warriors here we come
yep - devs are cooking!
the blood stance ver. reminds me of Witcher 3
LE LELELE, LELELE, LELELE
Blizzard could never
I think my favorite thing about swords is most of the people who are upset about maces will go play swords because that’s what they always wanted in the first place.
Me when I’m running dual maces
I hope that cyclone doesn’t shoot out stuff by default. I want it to be a pure ability.
We have a screenshot from the floor, and it appears to send out stuff by default depending on your stance.
based on the wording it shoots stuff only when “empowered” by sand or blood for 8 seconds
GGG got some of the best animators in the Industry. The whole game has an insane amount of attention to detail
Wow the blood animation looks great. He is properly spinning the sword. I always thought cyclone looks silly. This might be the first time for me to actually play it, because it looks great.
Never liked how WW builds looked. It always seem so silly the spinning like a top. I will say that blood stance actually looks decent and how I imagine it would be done in an anime or in real life is someone was skilled. Spinning like a child always struck me as silly. I might actually make a spin2win for the first time since the OG d2.
It’s Beyblaaaaaade. Let it rip!
Ain’t he gonna be hella dizzy by the time he gets to the boss?
Bro will get so dizzy
Spin spin spin
I think you made a mistake in the title, only one of those stances has animations
Fing sick
All right. Let me just pull the cord and get this lawnmower running.
He looks like a ballerina. Or a figure skater. Nothing wrong with that, just an observation.
How it’ll feel during the first week or two
The blood swing is amazing. He breaks his wrists like a baseball swing and is constantly looking forward while recocking the sword on the back swing.
Also the blood waves look like I always imagined the dude hitting the propeller in Raiders of the Lost ark.
Can’t believe I have to wait until December for all this.
The blood stance swipe and twirl the back half makes him look like a skilled swordsman I love it.
More one button smashing
Looking forward to the spin2win league.
Can’t wait to try to make a chronomancer with swords!!
spinny boi gotta spin
Push back effort?
Spin to Spleen!
200% they nerfing Hallow form with this release.
tbf Hallow form wasnt that strong when you take it in comparision with like normal whirling assault or shit mainly cause you cant stack trinity and some other stuff with it
Hollow form and cyclone don’t work together.
They might, but even if they do it has nothing to do with cyclone. The two are incompatible to begin with (since hollow form can’t be used with channelling skills).
They’ll probably just nerf the gloves that give you effectively unlimited charges
new version of twister? nice count me in
i prefer the blood one because it is more eloquent however the sand one is pretty silly and that is pretty cool too
Sand is PoE 1 cyclone, while Blood is whole ass PoE 2 goodness.
And the effects though… Man it looks awesome.
The true spin to win.
SPEEEEEEEEEN
I miss cyclone. It better be good
That are stances?
Is it just me or why i had just for a second Battle of the Heroes theme singing in my head. It looks beautifull!
Sand Stance looks like it is sending small cyclones in random directions, sort of like salvo on Twisters. I believe Blood Stance is alternating damage from phys to bleeding. God it looks cool as hell.
I NEED IT
you should include dual wield animation, those look pretty sick as well
Amazing
I love that GGG care enough to properly animate cyclone even though most of the time we wouldn’t even zoom in to care so much
So, he’s basically a whirlwind barbarian?
The problem is the dps
Whirlwind assault in shambles
So dumb question but I have 1000s of hours in this game and all I know is I know nothing about this game. My question is this just the base mechanics for this skill and then like a support skill or some other interaction with skills will make it so things blow up around you and chain and stuff?
Generally speaking yes - for example, if it has some way to bleed enemies, Herald of Blood to cause enemies to explode (this will, somewhat, depend on what’s easily available, and what’s in the Ascendencies).
do you guys ever wonder if a monster ducks the whirling sword and just bite you in the nuts
That’s what happens when you suddenly get 1 shot in a map.
I havent played for a while, did they just add swords???
Not yet. Most likely December 11th with 1.0 and all 6 Acts.
Wonder if the sword and board cyclone would have different animation.
Whirling Assualt 2.0
NGL if they don’t nerf monk MA I’m doing hollow form with this all next season 😀
Hollow form doesn’t work with channeling skills.
Brace for you need 3 different charges and five nearby frozen enemies for spin 3 seconds
What is this mtx quarterstaff+WA? /s
How many frenzy charges do you need to spend for one spin?
:OP when he sees blur on animation
ya sadly they are going to make it cost some resource and have a long cd and noone will use it.
The problem is it’s gonna be fun for a day. Then you realize how slow you are doing these whirly things etc. So you change your build to some zoomy one so you traverse shit endless atlas faster chasing city nodes. Man this game is so fun and at the same time so trash. You cant expect people to choose slower weaker build over zoomy one when there is live economy going on. Fomo will be too strong, people will bitch about it day 3. Just look at most popular builds since start of early access. All these builds are fast and zoomy or clear whole screen in one button click.
I’d rather have them delete all the fast meta builds and go in with slower combat style. So all the nice looking skills have a place in the game.
Can’t wait to use it for 4 seconds after switching stances, and I can only switch stances after a parry and consume a power charge
You can relax with your dooming, no one’s impressed with your pessimism
https://preview.redd.it/wf7to7b6aqlh1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f78600ada12e073f52e5e6c7beae7e2aa4f3a8b3
This joke is really getting old
Would agree if Incinerate didn’t exists in the current form since 0.3 with no hope of improvement.
The screenshot someone shared was a ~300% attack speed, ~80% base damage at lv 13 and just throws those projectiles for the first 8 sec of channeling based on stance but then you keep channeling.
