Melee Balance. With 600 upvotes, I think this deserves a little attention from GGG

I would very much like to see a manifesto post on the current state of Melee.
What are the perceived issues on both sides (player v dev). How relevant are those perspectives. What is being done. Were the 2.0.0 fixes considered a success. etc

Btw there are big differences among "melee skills".
F.e. earthquake or reave can´t call real melee. We should say "close range" instead of melee.
But those skills would be also discharge or melee coc...
The game needs overal rebalance to boost weak skills (cleave and such) and nerf OP skills (coc, some ranged etc).

And melee (close range) should be superior to any ranged chars (in terms of damage output, survivability).

Cpt Obvious here.

The solution to melee beeing underpowered is simple.

There needs to be real "competetive" reason to use true melee skills/builds.

This can be achived by many things mentioned in this thread. Like more surv while playing melee, more damage/faster clears running melee build. More then ranged. But this will never happen.

For me melee skill is Heavy Strike, Dual strike ect. Ground Slam, EQ is not melee. Its semi ranged.

Also I would like to mention Diablo 3. Melee has similar issues there.

Its just not worth it to play melee right now in PoE.

Unless You do it for reasons like me and that is having fun.

For me its not enought in a long run thou. Especially if u want to compete with others.

Melee is much better now than it has ever been though.

We finally have our own totem that can easily break 50k dps on a 4l with shitty gear
We have access to several viable aoe skills ,despite the fact that quite a few more are not viable
We have access to fortify
Arctic armor is now an option for us


I am currently doing a standard blah 2 hande build with this . its just a 415 dps 2 hander and i can output over 140k dps when buffed in aoe.

that is not bad at all considering im also packing 7k hp , can i off screen things. obviously not. and clearly 140k is nothing to your 300k+ spell caster builds or your coc or your summoners.

but i can say this.. i sure as hell have died a shitload less on this char than others.. that is for damn sure.

btw true melee skills will never ever be viable. mechanically not possible. being shackled to needing walk up to a target instead of shift aoe attacking is just too clunkly. it wont ever work well .

you want proper melee .. go play dark souls. but arpgs are about grinding armies of monsters to dust . and you wont be doing that by killing them 1 at a time

For me there are 2 very simple solutions:

1) give people DECENT base damage weapons, immensely more commons and cheaper than now. Not that super top players can get 800pDPS axes/maces, and poor guys must go on with Marohi. Everyone should have the possibility to found easily, or to buy cheaply, an 800/900pDPS weapon

2) make armor flat, like elemental resistances. I have my balls filled with those ridicolous endurance charges that you must stack up to 10 and protect for only 40%


Side note: those stupid LESS multipliers (Multistrike less damage one, concentrated effect less area one etc) must go away

Well to be fair, casters don't depend on weapon scaling and melee do.

That's really the huge distinction imo. I can use a level 20 wand (which i have) that has a total of 40% spell damage all the way through merciless if i want to.

If I took a level 20 mace to even cruel I would get my ass handed to me.

If spells took in account average damage ranges on wands/daggers...I'm sure we would see a LOT more players actually choosing between melee and caster.

As it stands, there is absolutely no benefit to melee.

It's harder and more expensive to gear.
Survivability becomes questionable after T11ish maps.
Scaling is horrible (except for EQ).
Support gems are horrible except for Melee Physical Damage.
Fortify is all but required either in a main link (wasted) or in a support skill like leap slam.
Requires elemental damage bonuses to scale effectively (i.e. Hatred/HoA)
^ causes you to have to be concerned about both Ele and Phys reflect

The list goes on an on...

I love melee in every game I play so I do play a blend of melee and caster. My caster always does everything with ease where my melee character struggles.

With recent power creep, melee is playable and viable in higher end content...but just requires WAAAY more work. In light of the recent "making the game easier" moves by GGG, playing melee has actually been kinda fun. Monsters actually hurt you which makes for interesting back and forth fights.

Regardless if melee sucks or not... I ususally have at least 1 caster and 1 melee per league. I can't offscreen shit all day and call that fun.

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Prisus написал:

Well to be fair, casters don't depend on weapon scaling and melee do.

To make up for that, casters have to invest a shitton into mana/regen, and end up squishy AF

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joachimbond написал:

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Prisus написал:

Well to be fair, casters don't depend on weapon scaling and melee do.

To make up for that, casters have to invest a shitton into mana/regen, and end up squishy AF

If you really believe casters end up squishy as fuck you have lost your mind.

Hell going CI alone is so tanky because of crazy scaling for ES.

Most casters take a lot of mana to reserve most of it to aura's (not incl LL builds). Int gives natural regen so over stacking regen is an issue with the player not casters in general.

Not to mention some casters still elect to take the champion ascendency and get perma fortify.

not sure man...all of my casters end up being very tanky.

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joachimbond написал:

To make up for that, casters have to invest a shitton into mana/regen, and end up squishy AF

Nobody does that, it isn't 2013 anymore.

Casters 2016:
12k+ ES
Insta-leech
One shot the entire screen
Can't die unless you take your hands off the keyboard and let Conversatory boss smash you

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Prisus написал:

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joachimbond написал:

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Prisus написал:

Well to be fair, casters don't depend on weapon scaling and melee do.

To make up for that, casters have to invest a shitton into mana/regen, and end up squishy AF

If you really believe casters end up squishy as fuck you have lost your mind.

Hell going CI alone is so tanky because of crazy scaling for ES.

tanky against big single hits, sure. but against the death of a thousand cuts? not so much. Unless you get ZO and MOM.

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Most casters take a lot of mana to reserve most of it to aura's (not incl LL builds). Int gives natural regen so over stacking regen is an issue with the player not casters in general.

To reach the good regen nodes you generally have to travel through %mana nodes. And purely int-based regen won't get you enough to sustain something like bladefall. Not even close.

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Not to mention some casters still elect to take the champion ascendency and get perma fortify.

not sure man...all of my casters end up being very tanky.

Yeah well I guess I'm old-fashioned. Most of my casters are witch, templar, or scion.