The Litany of reasons that Melee sucks

#1 Unavoidable enemy damage

Ranged can be built glassy, manually avoiding sources of damage, or tanky, allowing it to withstand stone hits. This is good; melee shouldn't have a monopoly on tankiness.

However, melee cannot be built glass cannon in this game, only tanky. It could, if the design accommodated it, with telegraphed enemy melee (and melee-ish) attacks which can be manually avoided with repositioning. Glassy melee would find a good time to get in, get in a few hits, then move out of the way before the hammer falls, all without taking a scratch.

GGG has utterly abandoned this design approach (except for boss fight "OHKO" slams). The very act of getting close to monsters subjects one not to a risk of being damaged, but a certainty of it. This tankiness is a prerequisite for melee to do any damage at all.

Manually avoiding hits is an ARPG's implementation of piloting skill in regards to terrain. With no avenue to pursue positioning skill with short-ranged builds, short-ranged gameplay devolves into skill-less gearchecks. Seasoned PoE players who understand enemy mechanics will inevitably gravitate to ranged builds, as it gives them an avenue to use that knowledge in clever ways which melee can not afford, due to enemy damage design.

A skill-intensive ARPG with melee balance takes a more "Dark Souls approach" to enemy design. This doesn't necessarily mean less mob density - although that can ease telegraph overload - but does mean a dedicated, consistent design of telegraphing ALL damage to make every hit received one which someone, somewhere, has the piloting skill to avoid with melee alone - even if you yourself aren't necessarily in possession of such piloting skill, and have to rely on tankiness (lost clearspeed investment) instead.

#2 Ranged AoE dominance

When it comes to speed-farming relatively easy content, nothing holds a candle to ranged in this game, because ranged has all the best AoE tools. You can fire 8 Lightning Arrows simultaneously which each chain 3 times, scoring up to 96 hits with a single attack which takes a fraction of a second to execute... and that's likely not even the strongest example.

There's no design space remaining to buff short-ranged AoE to an extent where it overtakes long-range AoE to a sufficient degree to compensate for its inherent range disadvantage. Damage per hit is also nearly-irrelevant here, as are defenses; we're assuming massively over-leveled/geared for content when speed-farming. Thus, clear speed balance between between melee and ranged is not possible by buffing alone. Ranged must be nerfed to achieve this goal.

Avoiding this situation is possible, but it takes the discipline to avoid giving any skill the trifecta of big AoE, long range, and fast attack/cast speed. Two of three is fine; some melee skills which hit fast and hit a relatively big area, or single-target fast-shooting arrows, or a spell which wipes the screen but takes a while to charge up, creating a period of vulnerability. Or any balance in between those extremes.

#1 + #2: The Pincer

Because both of these situations are simultaneously true, melee cannot develop a competitive niche. If it was somehow better at difficult content because #1 wasn't true, then ranged would MF speed-farm gear for melee players and supply the "serious" builds. If #2 wasn't true and melee could compete against easy speed-farm content, melee could at least be viable for MF and supply the "serious" ranged builds.

The best policy is to solve both issues. From a design standpoint, it's very difficult to predict whether tackling the game's toughest content slowly, or efficiently speed-running easier content with decent rewards, becomes the dominant progression method. Even deliberately favoring one or the other in intent might fail in practice. Because one can't really predict which path players will choose - and perhaps both should be accommodated simultaneously - allowing for melee balance on both levels is optimal.

TLDR version:


I must not melee.
Melee is the fun-killer.
Melee is the oneshot-death that brings total ragequit.
I will play melee.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the melee has gone there will be nothing. Only ranged will remain.

a) do not bring CI + instant leech (the sponge) into it. it has nothing to do with melee

b) unavoidable damage (DD, volatile) is bull. this should go and never return

c) melee - has steeper learning curve. it is what Chris meant by saying that life builds have hidden potential. he wasnt talking about top players but about mid range players. mid range players (even vocal one like streamers) know jack sh.. about how to build melee character so he has comfortable time in end game naps. but at the top ranged is ofc better because it is ranged..

d) reason dor AOE domunance is mob density. it is absurd in places like atziri or highly rolled maps. cut mob density and make each fight matrer and suddenly noone cares about AOE. GGG sees this issue correctly. will they have the balls and brains to fix it?

e) except for some extremely unfair mechanics (and few broken things like blade vortex or double dip poision on anything BUT melee) melee is - for me - very satisfying to play and way safer.

f) the clear speed is an issue tho. open merc ledge and compare (so the dps is not the problem). ranged can offscreen. melee cannot. the only solution to that is nerf ranged but.. oh the tears.

I'd be happy if I could just stop slapping air.

i lol at 200%-250% dmg part. ggg seems fine with 5% 'this is a buff' oh man someone is troll in ggg
and as usual this post is just going to be /ignore like the hundreds of threads on lab/xp gimp/map drops

"

sidtherat написал:

c) melee - has steeper learning curve. it is what Chris meant by saying that life builds have hidden potential. he wasnt talking about top players but about mid range players. mid range players (even vocal one like streamers) know jack sh.. about how to build melee character so he has comfortable time in end game naps. but at the top ranged is ofc better because it is ranged..

Yeah this is an issue as you need a good understanding of all the various mechanics and mob damage to make a well planned mitigation and recovery scheme for a melee build.

It's a lot easier to build a character based on avoidance/vp and stacking es high enough to only worry about getting caught by the biggest hits.

Not sure much can be done about that at this point though.

Edit: Actually they could be a lot more clear by putting descriptions about how various mechanics actually work and relate to one another in game.

"

alhazred70 написал:

... give Two handed melee weapons an off hand scabbard, ...

While I agree with only some of your suggestions, this still baffles me everytime I think about it! Why it's not in the game yet - and will it ever?
Just this item alone, with the right mods, peculiar to it only (just think the possibilities: it could grant some sort of fortify, 1 perm end charge, you name 'em) - could really help melee.
Not the targeting issue ofc, but still...

"

Wazz72 написал:

"

alhazred70 написал:

... give Two handed melee weapons an off hand scabbard, ...

While I agree with only some of your suggestions, this still baffles me everytime I think about it! Why it's not in the game yet - and will it ever?
Just this item alone, with the right mods, peculiar to it only (just think the possibilities: it could grant some sort of fortify, 1 perm end charge, you name 'em) - could really help melee.
Not the targeting issue ofc, but still...

No need to restrict yourself to a scabbard. Any back attachment would work, like a banner. Or the scrolls from Elreon. Or the totem from Haku.

"

sidtherat написал:

a) do not bring CI + instant leech (the sponge) into it. it has nothing to do with melee

b) unavoidable damage (DD, volatile) is bull. this should go and never return

c) melee - has steeper learning curve. it is what Chris meant by saying that life builds have hidden potential. he wasnt talking about top players but about mid range players. mid range players (even vocal one like streamers) know jack sh.. about how to build melee character so he has comfortable time in end game naps. but at the top ranged is ofc better because it is ranged..

d) reason dor AOE domunance is mob density. it is absurd in places like atziri or highly rolled maps. cut mob density and make each fight matrer and suddenly noone cares about AOE. GGG sees this issue correctly. will they have the balls and brains to fix it?

e) except for some extremely unfair mechanics (and few broken things like blade vortex or double dip poision on anything BUT melee) melee is - for me - very satisfying to play and way safer.

f) the clear speed is an issue tho. open merc ledge and compare (so the dps is not the problem). ranged can offscreen. melee cannot. the only solution to that is nerf ranged but.. oh the tears.

a) I didn't. It does kind of effect the design of telegraphed damage, but it's not a MvR balance issue, really. Just a general issue type issue.

b) They are bull, but I'm going beyond that to relatively small amounts of damage. Virtually all monsters have fast melee attacks which are unavoidable assuming proximity.

c) As far as build design goes, I could see that. With ranged offense is desirable and defense is mostly optional, so it's super easy to build and do okay. For melee, a certain degree of defense is mandatory (due to unavoidable proximity damage) and offense is still desirable, so there's a much more difficult balance. However, when it comes to piloting skill, ranged still better rewards smart decisions, while melee is more about testing your previous build decisions than it's about how you're playing at the moment.

d) I partially disagree. Even in ARPGs with lower mob density, AoE builds can "herd" monsters across several screens before cleaning them up, effectively increasing mob density through play choices. If you expand your concept to "lower mob density + low/no enemy movement speed," then okay, clearspeed evens out a bit... but content becomes absurdly easy for ranged builds on the "difficult content" end of the spectrum. I feel moderate mob density and especially respectable enemy movement speed is necessary to create content sufficiently challenging to ranged builds, so it's still an issue. As I said earlier, excessive mob density also creates telegraph overload, so you want a balance - enough for a good ranged challenge, enough for AoE to be relevant, not so much that combat becomes unintelligible. Lastly, we really could use a little more density through higher enemy life and a little less density through lower enemy quantity.

e) Some people like playing Priest in Hearthstone. Good for them. Priest still needs buffing.

f) One of the main reasons I think game just needs to be sequeled at this point. If the "additional arrow" corruption was legacy, RotC completely redesigned, GMP no longer existed... yeah, too many tears to handle. Better to just start fresh.

Which is easier. T15 maps with melee or ranged. I am positive the answer is melee. You tout ranged survivability as if its good. Ranged has no survivability other than "dont get hit". I can just jump in melee range and wreck things as melee, a ranged cant survive more than 2 good hits in a T15 map. In many cases they are likely to get 1 shot unless they can off screen instantly kill everything. This is where they get screwed by bosses who force themselves into melee range or negate ranged damage entirely (proximity shield).

Melee needs improvements and those are comming, but ranged characters are not vastly superior to melee characters. Especially when melee has so many top tier 5L skills that can use 6L with fortify in their main attack. Few ranged characters can do that at all.