Flurry of Steel

[Aphexii]

Hi guys,

was toying around with Slayers lately and ended up with only hybrid builds. As the majority in the forum dislikes pure Slayer builds (0/100/0) and me too for one reason, to many activated abilities. I never had a Slayer with "Flurry of Steel" and only few use that skill in BG's and only with fast 1H weapons. I don't know what that skill does, all i observed was weak damage and a 2 turn cooldown (every 3th turn activation). The damage is to weak for a final skill and and the frequency is to low for that damage output.

The only information in the forum i found was a short mention from Kreegan that "Flurry of Steel" gives you some additional attacks/attack power? There was a huge drop in Slayer population after the trixster update earlier this year. There are only 1 or 2 currently in BG's that use it, but don't last long enough for propper observation.

Can anyone tell me what exactly this skill does, or what the idea behind it is? I don't think there are any bad final skill in this game, even "Down and Dangerous" is viable, at least in my opinion. (have one fresh war in BG's with it and eager to test it in the endgame)

Maybe it has a true purpose other than damage like "Shank", it does low damage even with 2H weapons but it's main purpose is to create injuries.
Maybe consecutiv use of "Flurry..." does stack something?

[Dainoji]

In my experience it prevents your opponent from using defensive skills while the flurry of attacks is underway. Useful against defensive glads, not as useful against offensive glads.

[weaw]

In my experience it prevents your opponent from using defensive skills while the flurry of attacks is underway.
Something like that in my experience too.

Some thoghts:
One of the worst skills in the game. It doing [about] nothing (Because Blood Bath do more vs defensives, much more).

[weaw]

I don't think there are any bad final skill in this game, even "Down and Dangerous" is viable, at least in my opinion.
Think, You are wrong. But You have a space for experiments. Let's see!

[Dainoji]

Some thoghts:
One of the worst skills in the game. It doing [about] nothing (Because Blood Bath do more vs defensives, much more).

I disagree. This isn't a one or the other sort of discussion. Training Blood Bath doesn't preclude you from also taking Flurry of Steel. One can also make the argument that Blood Bath isn't that useful against offensive glads since those fights rarely last more than a round or two making Blood Bath fairly ineffectual. The usefulness or uselessness of a skill varies on a glad's build. Some builds will benefit more from certain skills and less from others.

I'm of the opinion that managers have just scratched the surface of the new school. There were a number of complaints on the boards regarding Shadow glads being weak, and now I see two in the top 10 of BG because someone decided to put some effort into creating competitive ones. I suspect Slayers are in the same boat. Time will tell.

[weaw]

There were a number of complaints on the boards regarding Shadow glads being weak, and now I see two in the top 10 of BG because someone decided to put some effort into creating competitive ones. I suspect Slayers are in the same boat. But i suspect the game is changing. Now i have a plan to eat "everyone" (including these two) using Shadow. But it's not equal to eat them a few years ago...
Same skills. Same illusions.

[Aphexii]

Thanks for the answers!

May i ask if someone used the skill with a dualwield build or maybe a 2h build? It kinda sounds usefull vs trixsters, at least on paper ;)

I agree with Dainoji, there is hidden potential. The low supply of indepth information in regards of shadow/Slayer builds/skills is somewhat to blame for less developed glads of that kind.
Never saw a "guide" for them...and here are some really gifted writers on this forum with huge pools of knowledge. (and a sense for well placed humor)

[Kreegan]

I'm of the opinion that managers have just scratched the surface of the new school. There were a number of complaints on the boards regarding Shadow glads being weak, and now I see two in the top 10 of BG because someone decided to put some effort into creating competitive ones. I suspect Slayers are in the same boat. Time will tell.Shadows got a buff at some point and Shadow Dance actually started working - before that it was just a mean to get the two high tier activated defensive skills trigger more often. Usually such big shifts on some build's efficiency have more to do with Nate's stealth updates than with some manager's sudden stroke of genius. Let's not forget that all Shadows in BG are also HoL Mk2 slaves.
As for Flurry of Steel - its problem is that it sits at the top of the Slayer tree so you need to take at least 4 activated skills to get it. Which means that your gladiator will act in a pseudo-random fashion way too often. Personally I don't like having no control over what the gladiator does and usually that's what you get with 100/100 Slayers.

[weaw]

May i ask if someone used the skill with a dualwield build or maybe a 2h build?
It seems, good Slayers [if they are exists] are "one shot, one kill" builds. It means the heviest dual or twohanded. The results -- You can't "control" more than 2 offensives. In my opinion.
Hidden potential... Yes, some skills have it. Nate is "right" man. But we can't use this potential before BG "environment" changed. So, this potential so abstract...

[weaw]

About activates "controlling".
The good point to observe it is the way to watch the best Wars fights. While You're War (half-defensive, there is no BG-point today to build a pure tank), You need to switch attack/defense.
It's hard. Really. Because the best builds use one-row-strategy, or something like that -- the game will punish for "random" switch to second [,third etc] strategy row. It may punish even for "correct" switches...
So, let's look at the Wars. They have one offensive skill -- Death From Above, and one (the best) defensive -- Create Distance. You need then switch between Tank/Parry or Parry/"Bash" in order to allow a good work of these skills.

The Slayers strategies are extremaly "hard". Because they has no choice: You need a hard hit or You will die.
(Your sentence about "... to many activated abilities ..." is only half of diagnosis: Slayers hasn't an effective defensives at all! Slayer must be offensive, more even than Rages. Slayer will die whithout First Strike, for example -- i think).

So, let's think. You need [really] few offensives while You're a Slayer and You wish reach that Flurry. This is impossible...

Sometimes its possible to use some skill's rank to control the activates usage frequency. For example, my Eirikr has only 2 points in the Signature Movies and only 3 in the Feint. It's enought, at least it enought to have exactly what i need.
But You can't use this method on 5th tiers skill. Especially for Slayers. Because You'll lose ability to move in the other Sadows&Myst skills.

Good Slayer today ("today", -- the word for You, Dainoji) and if a good Slayer exists -- exactly hybrid.

[weaw]

P.S.
Even Your Dual Strike ability on Fatalii (or FatalII? , for correctness) may have a side effect: For what he's trying to do damage, while his goal is Endurance? It's happy thing -- it works... Today.

[Aphexii]

There are few slayer remaining in BG after the update, which buffed shadows or the howl shadow&myth school. And like the old pre update shadows with full equipment in BG, they lack something and i dont talk about new HoL glads with buffed stats. (Fatalii has slightly above average stats for a new HoL glad, was a bit over 1100 gold)

Most "old" shadows and slayers are not managed frequent enough or are just abandoned, it seems they do what they did months ago without any change.

Shadows sneaked silently into the upper ranks (far from solid top 3 ranks, but stil top 10 worthy) and there is stil no half decent equiped new slayer.

Long story short ;) there are some unknown changes to the "shadow&myst" school ready to be discovered.


P.S.
I build him as a hybrid, no direct goal towards endurance drain. From time to time he wins the "honorable" way, but most are indeed exhaust wins.

[weaw]

Long story short ;) there are some unknown changes to the "shadow&myst" school ready to be discovered.
Yeah, exactly.

P.S. I mean not only what i say exactly, You know: Fatalii loses some fights, tyring to do damage... ;)

[Kreegan]

So, let's look at the Wars. They have one offensive skill -- Death From Above, and one (the best) defensive -- Create Distance. You need then switch between Tank/Parry or Parry/"Bash" in order to allow a good work of these skills.But that's what makes Wars so fun to play with - you need to set up a flexible strategy (which admittedly is harder now with the wider variety of available builds) but if you do it properly, they can handle pretty much anything. With the Slayer you get a Rage with better armour and worse offense and one way or another you'll come down to the 2-3 lines strategy typical for the Waaaaagh!!! builds. Not my cup of tea but somebody may like it enough to have the patience to find a way to control all these activated skills and ultimately produce a competitive gladiator.

[Just J]

In my opinion, the only way to build a slayer is hybrid/shadow with the 3 passive shadow skills. As discussed, flurry of steel sucks, and I also tried the other one for heavy armor usage. This also sucks, because advantage of a slayer is the speed of attacks, and you could only get 1 or 2 pieces of heavy armor anyway before going over 50% encumbrance. Disarm and sweep are hardly reliable, and if you avoid weak spot to take first strike, you can get only 3 activeated off skills: eviscerate, blood bath and vital strike, all of which have pretty nice effects. Snivler exotics or blades make the best slayers because of the bleed bonus. Even if fight only lasted few rounds, if you get blood bath in first round that's 500+ bleed dmg per round.
I never tried 2H slayer because you want to get the most attacks in as possible to try and get blood bath going. So a speed build is necessary for this, and, as weaw says, there are no def. skills available. Anyway, it's working for me as I was 26-29 in only my first full bg season. Not great, but not awful either.

[weaw]

But that's what makes Wars so fun to play with ... No doubts!


In my opinion, the only way to build a slayer is hybrid/rage with the 3 passive rage skills. It's impossible because of different schools. Or i'm wrong?

By the way. Shadow&Myst school has a strange architecture which makes hard to use it for hybrids: we need take at least one offensive acivate to deep into Slayer's or Trixter's branch.
For comparison, all the branches of the Arms&Armour school contains very useful passives in 1st tier which can be used by any build, almost any...
There is the opinion (http://forum.pitofwar.com/showthread.php?2912-Grim-Determination) that Grim Determination is the best skill in the game, for example. It's hard to say something like that about Sweep or about Shank...
// Note also, the Grim Determination is not something "overpowered", but just very good and unique...

[Just J]

oops i meant hybrid slayer/shadow

[Tyrst]

Not only are top slayers of necessity hybrids, but in all reality they are incredibly one dimensional slayer/shadow hybrids like Just J and Weaw said. Sure, someone could do a slayer/trixter hybrid...but to what avail? A manager would have to go through at least 3 activated skills on the trixter tree to gain access to an activated defensive skill, thus furthering the "too many activated offensive skills" problem.

I'm no slayer expert (or game expert for that matter, this is my first ever post), but slayers are extremely limited, and flurry of steel at this point deserves consideration as one of the worst tier 5 skills in the game. As many others have pointed out...the game is under constant development and Nate is constantly tweaking things (as evidenced by shadow dance now being a viable fight strategy for shadow glads), but I'm not confident that diversifying slayer glads from the hybrid builds they currently seem to be pigeon-holed into will be an easy task at all.

The Shadow and Mist school definitely does not allow for the same level of gladiator customization as Arms and Armour, but I'm sure that eventually someone will come along and figure out a killer new trixter build....maybe.

[Aphexii]

Well after first hand experience with "flurry of steel", lets see what we got.
That skill, like some smart guys before me have written, gives you some bonus attacks and prevents any attack and defensive skills during the flurry. Faster weapons have mostly 2 extra attacks after the trigger. Slower weapons only 1 bonus attack. All bonus attacks are counted with 8-10 activity, lower activity results in less or even ZERO bonus attacks.
Bonus attacks dont count toward your attack limit each round, they are literally bonus attacks (they can trigger skills) on top of your normal ones.

It kinda sounds very promising.

-Pros
-free attacks without any way to interfere (besides armor deflection, never saw a bonus attack miss yet) ! Update ! bonus attacks can miss !
-very good as a pseudo 2h rage 1shot kill build with a heavy weapon
-very good in dumping all your skill in one go without the infamous unpredictable skill overload (why predict a certain skill, if you just trigger all of them in one go :O )

-Cons
-if "flurry of steel" misses or is somehow blocked/parried/dodged.....you look kinda stupid :(
-only useful as a first attack/second attack in the round
-weak damage without any additional triggered skills
-due to the infamous unpredictable skill overload, hard to always trigger it first


My guess for a successful 0/100/0 slayer build

2h hail mary build; "first strike" trigger into "flurry of steel" --> "eviscerate"
1h max speed chaos build; you dont really need defensive skills if you cripple your opponent with every negative effect the game has to offer (maybe stack some "crit" armor skill)
2h agi build; "first strike" trigger into "flurry of steel" --> "eviscerate" --> "weak spot"


I will test the 2h agi build with selected skills.
You dont have to use 4 activated skills if you just dont take them :O , just skill "pole arms", "2h weapons" and maybe a third weapon skill and avoid weaker skills. I know some will cough at this, but I did it more than one time and never had any issues with performance. The goal is to have only "eviscerate", "weak spot", "flurry of steel" and "sweep" for a bit of random luck to stall the fight until flurry is up again.

All data is a rough observation and may be not 100% accurate, feel free to crush my hopes with real data :(

[Aphexii]

! Proof of Concept !
Thats what Im looking for in a nutshell. Lucky fight, but imagine it with a full orange beast vs some cloth glad.


The Enforcer smiles at the crowd as they begin a 'blood' chant!
R O U N D 1
>> VISHTHEKILLER SWITCHES TO STRATEGY 1
>> MOJITO SWITCHES TO STRATEGY 1
MOJITO pelts right at his opponent.
MOJITO makes an executioner style strike with his bloody WYRMWOOD WAR STAFF.
MOJITO unleashes a cyclone of death! (-Flurry of Steel-)
Monsterous shot creates an explosion of blood, bone, and loud screams! (+332 Damage)

MOJITO bounces and springs around the arena.
MOJITO seeks to pulverize VISHTHEKILLER.
MOJITO makes a vicious attack! (-Eviscerate-)
With a devastating blast VISHTHEKILLER is knocked back several feet from the massive blow to the chest! (+862 Damage)

VISHTHEKILLER tries to give up!!!
MOJITO moves with unbridled energy.
MOJITO whirls his WYRMWOOD WAR STAFF at VISHTHEKILLER with awesome might.
MOJITO tries to knock VISHTHEKILLER's legs out from underneath him! (-Sweep-)
Resisted Knock Down Effect!
Screaming in agony VISHTHEKILLER's skull is smashed open rewarding the crowd with a shower of bone and brains! (+322 Damage)

VISHTHEKILLER cringes as his weapon drops to the ground after the strike!
MOJITO grabs a handful of the remains of the gladiator who was once VISHTHEKILLER!

The crowd stomps their feet and claps their hands as the victor leaves the arena!
The fight lasted 5 seconds!

[Smallz]

interesting. My next investment is in slayer, which should be very soon. Been messing with Trixters Wall of Steel builds. So far its pretty interesting. give me a couple months and ill add my thoughts on Slayers

[Aphexii]

OK, after some more trial and error...

Bonus attacks from "flurry of steel" are linked to activity and more or less to Agi. If you run 1 activity with a 2h weapon don't expect to get a second swing after "flurry of steel".
Same is true for the last attack in each round, you get rarely any bonus attack if "flurry of steel" happens to be the "last" natural attack.
Maybe "flurry of steel" gives a temporary Agi/initiative bonus after triggering, which could explain the somewhat inconsistent amount of attacks. (If you can't break through the "additional attack is granted" threshold with a Agi/initiative bonus from "flurry of steel", nothing happens of course).
You have to adjust your gear/stats to get the most out of it without wasting unnecessary activity/Agi points.
Still very promising skill with lots of benefits even for slower Str builds.


Some things in the pros /cons section are also changed, slightly for worse xD

-Pros
-mostly free attacks without any way to interfere (besides armor deflection, natural dodges/misses all defensive skills can trigger. "flurry of steel" just suppresses the likelihood. Some skills like "create distance" are far less effected. It's like the weaker brother to "crippling might" + some possible bonus attacks attached to it.)
-very good as a pseudo 2h rage 1shot kill build with a heavy weapon
-niche use if a serious injury is hit multiple times (don't count on that to happen frequently though)

-Cons
-if "flurry of steel" misses or is somehow blocked/parried/dodged..... you still look kinda stupid
-only useful as a first attack/second attack in the round
-weak damage without any additional triggered skills
-due to the infamous unpredictable skill overload, hard to always trigger it first.


Verdict so far:

2h builds benefit the most from "flurry of steel", and even more with a slower hard hitting variant. The two most promising builds look like this.
-2h Str hail mary build; "first strike" trigger into "flurry of steel" --> "eviscerate" (may be the strongest 0/100/0 build)
-2h Agi build; "first strike" trigger into "flurry of steel" --> "eviscerate" --> "weak spot"