Edit: Added another bullet point about a Lethal Current/Tempest Strike interaction.
If this has been discussed elsewhere already, I apologize, but otherwise on to it....
Liar's Handshake has been in need of fixing essentially since its original release. To start, the description doesn't make sense for what the exotic actually does. The description reads:
"Using your Arc melee ability or being hit by a melee attack will allow you to follow up with an extremely powerful melee counterpunch that will heal you."
This implies that using your charged Arc melee ability, not the neutral uncharged melee ability, procs the exotic in addition to being attacked first. What it should say is:
"Using a melee or being hit by a melee attack while on an Arc subclass will allow you to follow up with an extremely powerful melee counterpunch that will heal you."
Going further, now with the introduction of Arc 3.0, the interaction with Liar's Handshake and the new Arc kit is even more bugged and inconsistent. For clarity:
1) Cross Counter does not activate when meleed by an enemy if Gathering Storm is equipped as your super.
2) If the Lethal Current Aspect is equipped, Cross Counter will not activate after using your melee ability until several seconds after the Lethal Current buff has expired, which equates to punching an enemy 3 or 4 times before Cross Counter finally procs.
3) It may be intended, but a boss stomp does not count as a melee attack against you.
4) Cross Counter no longer procs on Tempest Strike
5) If Lethal Current is not equipped in the context you choose Tempest Strike instead, you also lose the ability to do additional damage in your Arc Staff super.
Because of the above issues, it creates very awkward build mechanics where you're essentially pigeon-holed into a very restricted loadout. You can't use Gathering Storm if you want to use Liar's Handshake to its full effectiveness because you can no longer counter attack when attacked first and you can't use Lethal Current if you want to use Cross Counter consistently. If you take off Lethal Current and use Tempest Strike instead, Cross Counter won't work after performing Tempest Strike in addition to losing the added damage that Lethal Current provides to the Arc Staff super.
I've loved the idea of this exotic from the very beginning. Combination blow has always been one of my favorite ways to play with fluidly dodging around opponents and following it up with an attack. This is made even better by the add clear potential of Lethal Current's aftershock. Lethal Current does confound one other part of this overall flow though in that if Lethal Current's aftershock kills the enemy instead of the actual melee, Combination Blow does not trigger or go up in stacks.
So again, just to reiterate, Liar's Handshake needs some love and the way Lethal Current works with Combination Blow also probably needs to be looked at.
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Absolutely. It's all over the place, especially since arc 3.0. It doesn't proc sometimes, when you use the new ability it doesn't count the combination blow x1 sometimes, and sometimes it just doesn't count as melee hit at all. You dodge and hit, you kill an enemy but it doesn't count as melee kill, and you don't get the dodge back. It's so weird and frustrating.