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A Thorough Analysis Into Blade Vortex Of The Scythe Transfigured Gem In POE 3.23

Feb 02, 2024

Our topic for today is Blade Vortex and its transformed version - Blade Vortex of the Scythe in Path of Exile 3.23. However, with the new gem being bugged at launch, many who decided to start by trying it out were forced to move onto something else before too long. 3 weeks into Affliction League, a large patch including many bug fixes was released, and in this patch, Blade Vortex of the Scythe received 2 bug fixes.

To maximize the potential of these 2 gems, it's essential to ensure you have an sufficient supply of POE Currency.

Introduction

This gem, as compared to normal Blade Vortex, has much higher base damage and added damage effectiveness. It loses the more damage and increased hit rate per blade. It also has a higher cast time and a very short duration, just 0.6 seconds base duration compared to the 4 seconds on normal Blade Vortex. Of note is the larger Mana cost and a much larger Area of Effect (AOE). Importantly, notice the 10-blade limit on normal Blade Vortex and seemingly no blade limit on Blade Vortex of the Scythe.

A Thorough Analysis Into Blade Vortex Of The Scythe Transfigured Gem In POE 3.23

My immediate impression of this gem on first reading was that the idea here is that you’re able to scale the skill by investing in skill effect duration and car speed so that you can have several blades up at once, similar to normal Blade Vortex. And that made sense. You need to heavily invest in those stats to make efficient use of the skill, and at that point, it may outperform normal Blade Vortex or at least have a unique appeal to normal Blade Vortex with the larger base Area of Effect.

Bugs & Fixes

The people that had tried to league start it had quickly moved off and rolled into something else because there were two bugs associated with this skill. Firstly, the ability wasn’t hitting enemies immediately upon cast. You need to spend 0.8 seconds casting the skill, and you then need to wait 0.6 seconds for the ability to actually deal any damage. That’s obviously an immediate problem, and it’s going to put anyone off playing it. But that’s not the only thing wrong because, besides that, using the skill again while the blade was already active would seemingly just refresh the duration of the existing blade rather than spawning a new blade with its own duration like normal Blade Vortex.

So, I thought maybe something for next League after it gets fixed. But a week after that, a large patch was released which contained a huge amount of bug fixes. And in this patch, 2 fixes for Blade Vortex of the Scythe has lauched:

  • Fixed a bug where Blade Vortex of the Scythe was not always hitting directly after being cast. That was a good start.
  • Fixed a bug where Blade Vortex of the Scythe did not describe its blade limit. Blade Vortex of the Scythe has a maximum blade limit of 1. So, the refreshing of a blade stack was actually the intended behavior here because the skill is limited to having only one stack compared to the 10 stacks on normal Blade Vortex.

POE 3.23 Blade Vortex Of The Scythe Fixes

Gem Comparison

Let’s actually compare the 2 abilities. So, both normal Blade Vortex and Blade Vortex of the Scythe hit approximately 1.67 times per second, given a long enough duration. But normal Blade Vortex gains a more damage multiplier and a faster hit rate per blade stack.

Blade Vortex Of The Scythe: So, first, let’s look at Blade Vortex of the Scythe. With a Level 20 gem and 20% quality, the skill has an average hit of 902 damage with 1.67 hits per second. This translates to 1,154 DPS. Now, gem quality on Blade Vortex of the Scythe adds some extra duration, bringing it up to 0.8 seconds with 20% quality.

If you had a gem with less than 20% quality, the duration would be lower than the car speed, so if you stand in place and only cast Blade Vortex of the Scythe, you’d actually hit more than 1.6 times per second because you’d be hitting twice per cast of Blade Vortex of the Scythe - once immediately upon cast and again 0.6 seconds into the duration. And with a base 0.8 seconds cast time, you’d be hitting 2.5 times per second for a DPS of 2,255.

POE 3.23 Blade Vortex Of The Scythe

Blade Vortex: Next, let's talk about the normal Blade Vortex. At gem Level 20 with 20% quality, normal Blade Vortex has an average hit of 175. But it gains 35% more damage per blade stack and 40% increased hit rate per blade stack as well.

So, with 1 blade stack, the ability will hit 2.25 times per second with an average hit of 237 damage for a DPS of 533. With 3 blade stacks, the ability hits 3.41 times per second for an average hit of 360 damage, resulting in 1,227 DPS. And at 5 blade stacks, normal Blade Vortex deals the same DPS as just standing in place doing nothing but casting Blade Vortex of the Scythe.

At 10 blade stacks, the DPS absolutely eclipses that of Blade Vortex of the Scythe.

Mana Cost & Uptime

In the mana cost and uptime comparison between normal Blade Vortex and Blade Vortex of the Scythe, I didn’t even discuss the mana cost and the uptime of these abilities. Normal Blade Vortex spends half a second casting to have a stack up for 4 seconds. But Blade Vortex of the Scythe would need to spend all of its time casting the ability because of how low the duration is, essentially forcing you into scaling duration. Not to mention the giant difference in base mana cost - 16 on normal Blade Vortex compared to the 26 of Blade Vortex of the Scythe.

Final Thought

So, why would you ever use Blade Vortex of the Scythe? The one thing that the transfigured version of Blade Vortex has going for it is the far superior AOE. But the playstyle of normal Blade Vortex is typically in a mapping build paired with explode modifiers, which make these small area effects much less of a problem. But it’s nevertheless something that should be considered when comparing the 2 abilities.

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Next: Key Tips For Magic Find Build To Pay Attention To In Path Of Exile 3.23
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