What's the difference of Clear Out, Clear the Path and Clean sweep?

[dunehunter]

I tried all three abilities and they seems to be the same to me....

[Achilles]

They will seem exactly the same unless your in a situation where one of the “upgrades” is applicable (i.e. you have more than one enemy “stacked up” in front of you or you’re surrounded). Clean Sweep will behave no differently than Clear Out if you’re only being engaged by one enemy who is directly in front of you.

[Ichthyic]

I tried all three abilities and they seems to be the same to me....

to be a bit more specific than Achilles...

 

both still retain "clear out", but that only affects the enemies in front of you.

 

the upgrade "clear the path" will also affect enemies in a line moving away from you in the front.   so it's like a cross in front of you.

 

clean sweep affects enemies directly surrounding you, in 360 degrees.

 

clear the path will be most useful if you tend to funnel enemies into chokepoints in front of you.

 

clean sweep will be more useful if you tend to put yourself in the middle of groups, usually by using charge a lot.

 

so which is better depends on your playstyle.   for me, I tend to charge my fighter right into the middle of the biggest group, set his stance to mob rule, and use clean sweep when at least one enemy is near death.

 

 

[Achilles]

I assumed that the OP actually read the ability descriptions before posting, so repeating that information wouldn’t be necessary.

[Ichthyic]

then likely he wouldn't have asked to begin with, eh?

 

[QuiteGoneJin]

I assumed that the OP actually read the ability descriptions before posting, so repeating that information wouldn’t be necessary.

Then why even post a rude remark? /facepalm

[MedicineDan]

On 6/10/2018 at 6:55 AM, Achilles said:

I assumed that the OP actually read the ability descriptions before posting, so repeating that information wouldn’t be necessary.

I'm not offended.  Of course, I'm not the original poster.  However, I was also confused.  I had the idea that clean sweep would hit a wider area, but I just wasn't sure from the description.  I use positioning a lot, so getting people grouped up is much more to my liking.  At any rate, I ended up having my suspicions confirmed, but I have to admit I was a little confused also.

[Boeroer]

For anybody who's still curious what's this all about I made this quick illustration:

It's basically the same as the Barbarian's yell: first it's a cone and then you can decide to go for a broad, straight line (think of Iconic Projection or Rolling Flame and such) or a circle around you. Difference only is that the barb yells have an AoE indicator. Why does Clear Out et al. don't have one? I guess because this ability is executed with weapons. And weapons can have their own AoE indicator. So I think it's just not there to prevent interference of AoE indicators. The yells are no weapon attacks so it's easy to show an AoE indicator for them. 

By the way: Clear Out with AoE weapons means all AoE grazes/hits/crits from Clear Out will trigger an AoE attack roll from the weapon. So basically AoE² hits. You can also manage to hit targets that are not in the original Clear Out AoE if they are not too far away because the AoE of the weapon may reach them. This works with Whispers of the Endless Paths, Citzal's Spirit Lance, Keeper of the Flame and Karabörü (both sort of) and also hand mortars (unlock the use of Clear Out with a melee offhand weapon or a bashing shield - Clear Out will still use the main hand mortar).

If you use a jumping weapon like Fire in the Hole then you will have 2*AoE² hits. This can even mean you hit enemies that are totally out of the original AoE of Clear Out since the jump (with attached AoE) will reach them. If you even have Driving Flight AND Fire in the Hole you'll have 3*AoE² which usually totally annihilates everything. This last thing is only doable with basic Clear Out though (since the upgrades are PL8).

Edited October 17, 2019 by Boeroer

[Blunderboss]

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

 

If you use a jumping weapon like Fire in the Hole then you will have 2*AoE² hits. This can even mean you hit enemies that are totally out of the original AoE of Clear Out since the jump (with attached AoE) will reach them. If you even have Driving Flight AND Fire in the Hole you'll have 3*AoE² which usually totally annihilates everything. This last thing is only doable with basic Clear Out though (since the upgrades are PL8).

Looks like I finally found offensive shield build

thanks !

Edited October 17, 2019 by Blunderboss