Cleave

"Wielders of the axe and sword often find themselves beset by multiple foes. Expecting this, a trained armsman will employ the deadly Cleave. With a single practiced stroke, a Cleave sweeps sideways to inflict grievous harm to anyone standing nearby, lopping off heads and limbs with ease. As a player gains skill with Cleave, they strike harder, and hit more enemies with each swing of their blade."

— Description on the official Path of Exile website

Cleave deals damage with all equipped weapons to enemies in a 180 degree arc in front of the player. When dual wielding, equipment requirement applies to both weapons, and each weapon does reduced damage. Requires an axe, sword, two-handed axe, or two-handed sword.

Skill Functions and Interactions

Accuracy: This skill is affected by accuracy, and therefore can miss.

Attack Speed: When Dual Wielding attack speed is averaged between the two weapons.

AoE: Increases to AoE will increase the radius of the affected area, but the current animation for Cleave doesn't accurately reflect this increase.

Dual Wielding: If the player's weapons have different critical strike chance values, it is possible to critical with one weapon, but not the other. It is also possible to miss with only one of the weapons swung. The decrease to dual wielding damage is additive (not multiplicative). The character tab DPS display is inaccurate for this skill because it doesn't currently account properly for dual wielding attacks.

Gem level progression

Template:GemLevelTable |- ! 1 | 1 || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || 6 || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || 70 |- ! 2 | 2 || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || 6 || 4% || 308 |- ! 3 | 4 || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || 6 || 8% || 2,560 |- ! 4 | 8 || 15 || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A || 6 || 12% || 8,813 |- ! 5 | 12 || 21 || 14 || 6 || 16% || 22,895 |- ! 6 | 16 || 26 || 18 || 7 || 20% || 68,427 |- ! 7 | 21 || 33 || 23 || 7 || 24% || 150,439 |- ! 8 | 26 || 39 || 27 || 7 || 28% || 581,328 |- ! 9 | 32 || 47 || 33 || 7 || 32% || 566,989 |- ! 10 | 38 || 55 || 38 || 7 || 36% || 1,143,783 |- ! 11 | 42 || 61 || 42 || 8 || 40% || 1,426,490 |- ! 12 | 46 || 66 || 46 || 8 || 44% || 2,737,323 |- ! 13 | 49 || 70 || 48 || 8 || 48% || 3,289,072 |- ! 14 | 52 || 74 || 51 || 9 || 52% || 3,351,223 |- ! 15 | 55 || 78 || 54 || 8 || 56% || 9,936,267 |- ! 16 | 58 || 82 || 57 || 9 || 60% || 21,346,397 |- ! 17 | 61 || 86 || 60 || 9 || 64% || 50,694,186 |- ! 18 | 64 || 90 || 62 || 9 || 68% || 90,050,815 |- ! 19 | 66 || 92 || 64 || 9 || 72% || 147,034,823 |- ! 20 | 68 || 95 || 66 || 9 || 76% || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A |- ! 21 | 68 || 95 || 66 || 10 || 80% || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A |- ! 22 | 68 || 95 || 66 || 10 || 84% || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A |- ! 23 | 68 || 95 || 66 || 10 || 88% || class="table-na" style="text-align: center; " | N/A |}

Alternate skill effects

Name	Cost	Description
	95	Replaces the standard effect on a gem with a swiping, demonic claw. Preview

Version history

Version	Changes
1.2.0	The mana cost of all skills has been revised. Removed damage effectiveness penalty and reduced dual wield penalty from 40% to 35%.
1.1.2	Reduced Cleave penalty from -30% to -20%.
1.0.2b	Fixed a bug introduced in 1.0.2 where the skill tooltip damage per second stats displayed incorrect values for Dual Strike, Double Strike and Cleave.
1.0.0	The dual wielding penalty for Cleave is now multiplicative and includes elemental damage.
0.10.2	Cleave's physical damage now increases by 4% per level rather than 3%.
0.9.12qq	Damage modifiers are now factored into Damage Effectiveness rather than being listed as separate stats. From 1% attack speed per quality point to 0.35%
0.9.12f	Fixed a newly introduced bug where Cleave would always get critical strikes.
0.9.7b	Cleave now averages the attack speed of your two weapons if you are dual wielding. Reduced the mana cost of level 1 Cleave.
0.9.7	Normalised the balance of Cleave slightly so that there isn't such a large disparity. Removed Cleave's bonus against the selected target. The damage against non-targeted enemies is now higher.
0.9.3	Cleave now does its augmented damage to one target and half of that damage to other enemies caught within its swing. The penalty for hitting with two weapons in a Cleave is now -40% total damage. Fixed a bug where Cleave dealt damage with the wrong timing.
0.9.2	Cleave now has less of a penalty when dual wielding.
0.9.1	Increased damage and attack range of Cleave.