great video! but barge is definetly the most important melee abilty, not fury, and you use barge a ton of times throught any fight, specially now that u can use mobile with barge, remember to use gloves of passage and havoc before doing the roar for ezk, enhanced gloves of pssage give +25% bleed damage so is very important, also switching to spear for every single bleed is a ton of damage (specially combined with gloves of passage havoc switch), should start doing so if only switching for ezk, thats why you put spear at the end of your priorities when its actually a very very important melee weapon. depending on the boss, bringing wand/orb and crossbow for tsunami, grico and range bleed for ezk could be very very useful, not always, but it truly shines at solak for example lovely to see so many people using melee with these new updates, new sub here =)
What I would say is that barge *can* offer more damage than fury if you are fighting a boss that naturally forces you to stop attacking. The issue is that not every boss forces you to stop attacking. So, if I have to choose between gfury 4 times a minute guaranteed or barge once an entire fight in shorter fights, I'm picking gfury every time. But, I do agree that harder bosses tend to have more instances of downtime, so barge ends up being better the harder content you are doing. Worded differently, Barge has more upside at less places, so that's why I'd say gfury is better, but I don't think we disagree that they're both very good lol.
It's not bad, the point of saying to pick it up last is that delaying some of your more important upgrades is probably not worth it for masterwork spear. Since you can skip most of the upgrade path anyway, it is totally valid to pick it up after vestments and wait on eof ezk. Also, the revo bar that I had on during the Raksha kill was exactly the bar you are talking about lol.
For barge if done properly you can do it lossless and won't have to wait for it during zerk when yourbove 100% (divert into 2h weapon for free auto so no dmg loss, zerk, barge this is without losing any ticks) can use bladed dive if you have to get away from boss or not click under yourself to not keep using auto's on boss.
Is greater fury not a core part of melee rotations? I'm not even necessarily disagreeing with you, but I'm just curious what your justification is for this.
@@raphtheboygenius I'm not saying greater fury isn't important. I'm saying if I had to choose just one, it would be greater barge every time. Greater fury is more of a nice later upgrade that makes what you already have better. Greater barge changes the way melee plays and makes it a competitive style. I was just responding to your claim early on in the video that greater fury is the best of the melee codices. I think greater barge is much more important, but of course greater fury is also really good.
I typically use Enhanced Replenishment Potions. They're the cheapest in terms of GP per adrenaline and typically give you about the same DPS. It's pretty rare that the extra 10 adrenaline gives you access to something super powerful.
It's definitely something that you could do, I just feel like for people learning high-end melee it's a bit too much input for relatively low gains compared to chaos roar ezk and chaos roar claws. 40-50k claw spec once a minute is pretty bonkers lol. With that being said, if you don't have eofs, it's probably one of the better uses of it since you would want to gfury your other strong moves.
Overall, it was quite solid advice, but a few things worth noting that maybe could be improved? If you're using zerk to initiate the 15% adrenaline over 30 ticks buff, then using overpower right away actually ends this when it restores the 20% instantly. You're losing about 10% free adrenaline by doing this. Nothing significant, but worth noting. Now, getting overpower on cd quickly so it can be used again is good, particularly at Raksha, but its worth noting that you are sacrificing that buff. Ideally you actually do something like meteor at a dummy and start the 15% adren buff, go into the instance, then zerk which refunds 20% then when you overpower you start a new 15% adren buff which makes it good to use asap rather than punishing. Of course, situational as you're using zerk at the crystsl in your example so its off cd to pool skip, but thats a rsther niche timing. Another thing is that destroy and hurricane share a cd and its 20s. So if you bleed destroy with barge early enough then channel assault, you have the potential to hurricane at the end of zerk which adds another powerful threshold. Its all situational of course, but if you're trying to optimize damage, getting both destroy and hurricane in 1 zerk is huge. Assault has a 30s cd so you cant get 2 of those in anyway, so its placement isnt important. Assault does more damage, but takes the same channel time. Since youre chsnneling destroy anyway, you might as well bleed destroy then channel assault which opens the possibility of using cane if the timing is right. You can bleed destroy right after barge then fury > OP and this makes the timing fine, plus this extends the buff i mentioned above longer. So long as delaying OP by 1 gcd isnt a dral breaker.
I don't disagree with anything that you've said, the big issue is that you have to decide whether or not you want more adrenaline or if you want more damage upfront. At Raksha, we basically have to start the fight with gbarge. You can't really use gfury until the bleed is done since your bleed can eat the crit buff, so you have to do something like, barge, bleed, 2 abilities, then gfury omnipower. That's not bad by any means, but 6 abilities to make sure you're optimizing damage is 1) a long time, especially at a place like Raksha and 2) you could actually lose out on the adren buff since you need to walk into Raksha and watch the spawn animation. Consequently, you basically have to build on a dummy and that just is beyond the scope of this video. The destroy/hurricane tech is good, it seems like it is best during your ezk rotation since you have to switch to 2h anyway, but I'd have to do more testing.
@raphtheboygenius I totally agree that the way you're doing this by zerking at the crystal makes it so you want to OP before using the barge bleed. Also, with raksha, you want OP up before P3 to go for the pool skip. If you use OP before bleeding the Channel, then you lose the ability to use cane/destroy twice in zerk as it needs to be one of the first 3 abilities used. Especially in the zerk from the crystal method you're using, you need to OP right away to consume the buff, and that's totally a good call. I was under the impression this was more general as a guide? If it's more meant specifically for Raksha and this method, then what I said won't apply, and my bad for adding this. It's also worth mentioning that currently, there's 1 bit of tech that's a bit of a hassle, but technically quite good, and that's lunging scourge. If you use dismember when it's off cd with scourge, or within I believe 2 gcd of it coming off cd, you will build parasite stacks constantly and have 1 bleed active constantly with dismember having 60-65% up time for 3 bleeds. This makes champions ring much better, and jaws synergy is active until you need or will build above 100% adrenaline where Havoc Hood is better and essentially becomes a vigor swap with extra steps. This is a little sweaty, though, and highlights an issue with melee that it's a constantly juggling act to make the most of. Everyone draws the line somewhere, but a swap every 15s isn't horrible. Also leng passive won't proc off a bleed hit so you don't want to use dismember with lengs, spear is fine, but scourge is ideal. It also adds on average 2 poison procs if you're wearing cinderbanes which is quite nice. It's basically the same damage as spear on the first use, but the 2nd use it becomes a lot stronger. I'd definitely recommend meteor at a dummy and dashing to the crystals and rushing the instance to zerk with that instant 20% influx so that you can Zerk > barge > fury > OP > channel bleed. Just not with the method you used in the clip. There's also adding in natural instinct, which, when done with meteor, basically unlocks melee like an anime character. You can just spam claws, and with ~37% crit chance, you're only losing about 20 adrenaline on average, and if rnjesus is with you, it's ludicrous damage with b2b2b2b claws sometimes. However, if you want to take it casual, which I absolutely think is fine and I often do myself, using fury > OP after the channel bleed is super ideal to make the most of that buff. Zerk > apot > barge > destory > assault > then when the timer on the adren buff is under about to hit 4, use fury and OP. If you're staying casual, then if you fury and OP again when OP is off cd, you set up the buff from vestments to consume it with zerk. When using this casual stuff for sustained damage that is. A place like AG is very applicable for this. Or if you're not going for a pool skip at Raksha. Or ambassador. Just a lot of little tips and stuff I picked up from years of melee. What I really hate and like is as I said, it's a juggle. It's annoying to juggle a lot, but the good thing is that you don't need to juggle it all. Juggle 3 balls, then when you're comfy, add a 4th, then a 5th, and so on. It's very builder friendly, and each part just adds more.
Yeah, you've posted a lot of really good stuff here and I agree with a lot of it. I would personally categorize a lot of it is as like, expert-level fine tuning rather than necessities to building an understanding of how all of the high-end gear works together. Scourging every dismember is something that you can option select rather than it being a mandatory buff. Also, fwiw, my first few melee Raksha's were melee with wand and orb for tsunami crit buff lol, so I'm definitely down to sweat it up if necessary. Worded differently, I think a lot of these tips fall closer to "how do I get my kill times at raksha 2:30 to 1:45" rather than "how do I use melee at all." So it is incredibly useful, but it is a little bit beyond the scope of what is typically on my channel. Again, this is super valuable information and I'm going to incorporate a lot of it into my own rotations when I want to sweat, but I think it's a little bit too much for people who have never used lengs, spear, or vestments before. I appreciate the comments!
@raphtheboygenius Can't disagree with any of that besides seeing what I'm saying called expert level. Lol. Feels weird. I always see experts level stuff like stalling cane to release with lengs to cloud release with lengs to doube dip some 1 tick buff. If you're willing to prebuild, a deployable dummy is the way to go. Natty into meteor and build to 120, then zerk for the instance, barge, fury, OP , bleed channel.... at Raksha this can be done and if you bleed flurry and use it again off cd you can have zerk back up for the pool skip, but it's also a case where you can fuck yourself over if the hits really land and tou phase it too quickly.
ZGS is good, but not necessary. It's pretty nice in that there are not many scenarios where using a ZGS is worth your adren since Berserk/EZK spec usually has you covered. If you are willing to do significantly more switching, you can get the adrenaline to use it with Jaws of the Abyss and Abyssal Scourge, but this is more of a "how to use melee at a high level" rather than "how to become the best meleer that's ever existed"
Reddit level take. I'm collecting every car ever made, I'm about 20% done, but God damn, they haven't made very many new cars this year. How can anyone enjoy this hobby without anything new coming out. The audacity of the manufacturers.
