They don’t get lifesteal which I guess is an intended consequence of them not scaling off of weapons. But they’re also not regaining health with the regainable health mechanic. The only thing that I found that works is gain health on fatality which is useless on boss fights. Since gain health on fatality works, you would think they are classified as runes. However their damage doesn’t scale with the rune ring or increased rune damage enchant on the weapon. In fact, their damage is unaffected by the other damage increasing rings too - the ring of broken promises and the fierce ring. The only enchant that works is the physical damage increase on the glove.
Since they are stamina based, you would think they would benefit from the jade ring which gives 6% stamina on damage dealt. Nope. For some reason, instead of gaining stamina on damage dealt, they gain stamina on fatality which is not what the ring is supposed to do. Stamina cost lowering enchantments also doesn’t work. The stamina ring and decreased stamina cost on low focus which is an enchant found on pants both doesn’t do anything. Also, if they don’t scale off of the weapon, why do their damage type change based on the elemental attribute of the weapon equipped?
It’s ok that they were nerfed since they tend to be overpowered before especially when equipped on heavy two handed weapons. But to nerf them to this extent where they are impractical to use is such a downer because I love the dropkick rune. Please change this. At least make them be able to use the regainable health mechanic.
Edit: Another suggestion would be to maybe just create a foot type secondary weapon with similar mechanics to a bow.
my unpopular opinion is that kicks should always be a flat number and should be treated like a spell.
my reason is we should always have the fantasy of “my weapon gives me power”. unarmed combat it d-likes tend to be fists paired with fist weapons. it makes sense that fist weapons make punches stronger, but zero sense that kicks become stronger because of these weapons.
i am aware that in poe, there are multiple ways to go unarmed, but its silly as unarmed builds can do a buttload of damage, which kinda breaks the “weapon power” immersion.
It’s not just that, it’s that most kick attacks don’t even have any enemy tracking while having wind up animations.
Try Flying Dragon kick. The first swipe might land, but then you do this wind up spin to kick down and 99% of the time the enemy has long moved off that secondary strike.
All the martial arts rune attack need their tracking fixed, they need to track moving enemies.
So true man. the enemy doesnt even have to move at all and it still misses. the front flip kick has a very quick attack animation and it takes you forward a bit. if you spam it real quick, it attacks the ground around the target missing every time draining your stamina.
Yeah, I agree especially with this game where combat is heavily centered on your weapon’s abilities and move sets. However, kicks are legitimate fighting techniques. I wouldn’t necessarily call it unarmed as you still have to slot them on a weapon to execute their moves, which is weird in a lot of ways. A good solution would be to make a weapon specifically for kicks. In that way, it still follows the game’s weapon focus immersion and it gives us a variety of playstyles that we can build around.