Quote from Cryosite;277206:
Considering that the current best ways to use blaze solo is the 2 wandslaps + blaze combo, adding leap attack will let you get a lot more knockdown multiplier. That probably offsets the damage nerf through more ease of use.
Lol. 850% melee damage is not quite as impressive even with a ~90 damage combat wand ego, when you're losing a roughly ~100 damage weapon #2 for dual wielding swords and ~90 damage for a bast sword ego instead of combat wand. You'd do more damage with actual melee weapons doing smash+leap attack than you would with blaze. The point of blaze now, and still will be the explosion damage.
That's because Blaze was meant for a magic-melee hybrid, with both high Int and Str. I can easily get ~200 damage with enough lvl ups and some damage enchants using a combat wand. And most of my melee skills are rF. Now imagine an actual warrior with maxed out Str and end-game damage enchants. Combat wands have a really high crit and balance so they are really good melee weapons -expensive, but good-. Also, they have a huge splash radius (like a two hander), so that leap attack tactic would stun monsters nearby as well for AoE damage.
A combat wand is meant to be used with a shield. An actual Wizard Knight would wield a wand and a pair of swords (maybe a two hander). I don't believe the explosion is the most important part of the skill, looking at the big picture; maybe it is for pure mages, but not for high lvl hybrids.
Since damage from the skill itself comes from Int and Str, neither should have higher damage output than the other (in this combo, at least). 850% of 200 is 1700 non crit; plus Int damage, that's more than 3k damage in a single combo.