[2.4] How to smash Heads. Extremely detailed guide about the Facebreaker gloves and builds!

Oh well god dammit ... no more projected force -_-
With the quality bonus nerf of cyclone and the AoE nerf of Concentrated Effect we'll be getting worse cyclone AoE than what we have now.. and the mediocre values of the Martial Artistry unique jewel won't help at all.

There are essentially 2 ways to deal with the very low AoE radius of unarmed cyclone at the moment:
1. Having higher DPS and using HoA + Ele prolif to use the burning effect of HoA as a way to deal with the low AoE
2. Using Carcass Jack and in many cases inc AoE support gem

the first option is absolutely destroyed in the beta and with the said relevant aoe nerfs the not so mandatory inc AoE support gem seems much more needed now ... and using a different chest ( i was hoping that it would be possible ) is no way an option.
I can see a third option - not using conc effect and that way we won't be needing inc AoE ... but there is one problem ... without them we won't need any blue sockets .. and getting the needed colors on Carcass Jack would be impossible ... so we'll need to use a different chest. But that means that we'll loose the huge aoe boost of the Carcass ... and once again we'll face terrible AoE.

Of course who knows ... something new might come out ... we'll see

P.S.
It's funny how all cool facebreaker beneficial jewels were removed/changed during the beta
Survival Skills - no longer gives flat physical damage
Mantra of Force - no longer gives physical damage
Projected force - no longer exists
Martial Artistry - from 15%-25% inc unarmed AoE to 10%-15%

So you mean no to Carcass , yes to inc aoe gem and the jewel ? Well for me personally that would be a huge loss in AOE radius. Even now i use inc aoe support and carcass ... if i loose the carcass (-20%) the jewel will make up for that (+15%). So just by that i'm loosing 5% aoe ... now add the loss of another 10% from the cyclone quality nerf = -15% aoe, now add the huge conc effect nerf ... it's even worse ... if i still use Carcass i'll be close to what i have now ... but a bit worse.
And we should use Fortify ... where we'll put it in ? The only way is instead of Melee physical damage ... so we'll loose dps ...so we end up with

- AoE radius
- DPS
+ Fortify buff

Sounds like a good deal and well balanced
BUT
The Awakening introduces harder content and the difficulty is actually ramped up ... so having pretty much the same power level of your current character ( and i think that it might be even worse ) is NOT a good thing.
Overall it seems like a slight nerf to the current version of the game ... but the game will be more difficult and there is no way to get more powerful ...

I've played cyclone FB in the beta up to level 80. Cyclone had its mana cost greatly reduced but it's still very hard to sustain it even with good mana leech and Revelry on top of that ( and Revelry wastes passives tho it's in a better tree position right now ) due to the spammable nature of cyclone. It is possible tho not as pleasant as playing with blood magic. On top of that you can't really run no mana regen or -50% regen maps. And on top of that you need to loose an aura or the herald of ash. It is a possibility but given all that you are loosing i'd much rather loose ~20% increased physical damage by not using melee physical damage support gem instead of loosing 3-4 passives skill points + herald of ash ( which in the end is 15% increased damage ) + the comfort of knowing that you won't have any mana related issues ever + 1 flask slot because you won't be needing a mana flask + the comfort of knowing that you don't need to worry about mana leech on your gear ( on top of all other mods that you need to worry about )
My opinion is that it's not worth it at the moment.

As for that the difference won't be that big for you .. i must disagree ... it will be a very big difference for you.
1. You will loose 10% inc aoe from your cyclone
2. You will loose AoE due to the new concentrated effect

You think that you have a low aoe now? Just wait till the awakening is out ...


As for HoA + inc AoE + prolif + burning it IS a good way to combat the low aoe in the live realm. It is not a good way at all in the closed beta due to the absolutely HUGE AoE related nerfs to both prolif and HoA .. that combo is absolutely unusable in the beta.

I really hope that they give us some extra radius ... tho it seems that the jewel won't come back in any form .. at least the possibility of using its properties on a new item still exists.

Please don't get me wrong guys this is not a "sky is falling" vision of the changes! Everything will work out in the end and in most cases i'm ok with all changes that have been made in the past 2-3 years even when they directly affect my characters in a bad way.
But one thing is bothering me. You see it is my opinion that at the moment Cyclone is too good, you don't really have a very good reason NOT to use cyclone. Because of that i'm totally ok with nerfing cyclone a bit so that the other attack skills have a chance too. Well i might argue that buffing the other skills directly and indirectly is a better solution than nerfing approach but that's not my decision in the end. So yup i'm fine with tuning down cyclone a bit. But doing that by directly attacking the thing that is already the greatest weakness of the cyclone - its AoE radius is a strange decision and i'm not ok with it. Nerfing the damage a bit would've been more appropriate in my opinion. Now you might say "But hey many builds use cyclone not only Facebreaker ones... it is not balanced only because of the facebreakers." and you'll be right ! But the thing is that by balancing cyclone in this way the facebreaker builds suffer the most. Because of that Projected Force seemed to be a very good solution to this problem in my opinion. You nerf cyclone in general but you give something to compensate that to the build type that suffers most of the nerf. But now that's gone.
You might also say "Hey Facebreakers were too good anyway. Balancing them a bit is a good thing!" and again you are probably right! But with this nerf you don't nerf the facebreaker builds in genera ... you just nerf one of the skills that we use ... well ... we'll just use one of the other available ones ( tho Infernal blow was greatly nerfed too ) ... and the FB builds would still be very powerful for minimal currency investment.


I don't know guys ... i don't claim to be 100% right ... we can't see the whole picture yet... and i try not to judge something before i've actually tested it. But based on the current situation those are my thoughts on the matter.

P.S
Sorry about yet another wall of text but if you've been following this guide ( or some of my other stuff ) you probably already know that i can't really help it. I prefer to explain everything in details including my own thoughts and opinions without giving tl;drs... that way those of you who actually read my crap can better understand what i mean and more meaningful conversations can occur opposed to posts like "IB is bad now. That suck." or answering to complex question with only one sentence.
So yeah ... sorry about that guys. Hopefully i'm helpful to some of you ^^
Good luck!

Thanks for the kind words guys, i really appreciate it!

Well xaikman i was thinking that too. Sure we'll loose lots of DPS but it wouldn't be that bad if you ask me. There is one problem tho ... that changes the needed colors for the cyclone setup from GGRRBB to GGRRRR ( no conc effect means that inc aoe won't be needed and putting in added fire damage will be more beneficial and it will make up for some of the lost DPS by not using conc effect ) so that means that Carcass Jack won't be usable. And that's another -20% AoE so we are back at 0 so to speak. Tho i must admit that this option looks promising to me and i can't wait to test it