The Litany of reasons that Melee sucks

"

RogueMage написал:

Most elegant way to balance melee vs ranged skills, with just a few simple steps:

* Spells cannot crit.

* Projectiles have a built-in Point Blank effect (along with 1/3 less base damage).

* Movement skills require a melee or unarmed weapon.

lulz. I mean, I think the core solution is "nerf ranged" too, but those particular nerfs aren't focused on the core problems at all.

"

ScrotieMcB написал:

I think the core solution is "nerf ranged" too, but those particular nerfs aren't focused on the core problems at all.

OK, if those fundamental changes don't address the core problems, then do suggest something more effective.

"

RogueMage написал:

"

ScrotieMcB написал:

I think the core solution is "nerf ranged" too, but those particular nerfs aren't focused on the core problems at all.

OK, if those fundamental changes don't address the core problems, then do suggest something more effective.

Proximity shields are more common and is an affix that can roll on maps to increase amount.

Fixing? Easy use the same solutions that games that have better melee vs ranged balance use. Now I realize this would have to be slowly moved towards, and not done all at once without essentially giving POE a figurative table flip. But these are some ways other games keep melee an essential part of their available playstyles:

Strive for ranged DPS to be about 1/3rd that of single target melee
Keep AOE ranged/spell damage about 1/4 that of single target melee
Give bosses the same ability to one shot a ranged player as a point blank player right now it's almost all "you're screwed if you're next to the boss" which just means: "right now you're screwed if you're stubborn and insist on playing melee"
Give bosses the ability to suck in, grapple, or "root" a kiter
Give bosses the ability to put up a D&D style "globe of invulnerability" that requires getting inside of (getting closer) to do ranged/spell damage or the ability to wall out distant ranged attackers while those inside of the wall (think Vaal Frsotwall) can still do damage.
Make Armor more effective against bosses than it is, make fortify go away when a ranged skill is used, put some sort of melee advantaged "brace for impact" or "gird yourself" mechanic. For example "when pressing the don't move key (as one Might do when using namelock and not wanting to wander all over the screen) and having used a melee skill very recently (2s non movement skill) you have "braced for impact" (perhaps gives large crit multi reduction) if a shield is equipped you also have "shield blocking" (say +15% block and max block, +10% max resists cannot be poisoned, bleed, or get status ailments while shield blocking) basically this somewhat simulates the ranged advantages of avoiding by running away while still being able to do high DPS from distance.

Probably also need to reduce ES from it's current ratio of being about 150% more plentiful than life with 10k ES being far less effort than 5k life while gaining the massive advantage of 5 unique flask slots (or at least more of them than a Life build or a hybrid).

Another thing they could do would be to put some Unique Life flasks in the game that have distinct melee utility, and maybe close the gap a little between these low life 14k ES builds that can run 5 OP utility flasks.

For example a Unique Life flask that gives a huge amount of life over a very long duration takes the peak "one shot" boss crits down a notch but costs movement speed, and has 50% "less" ranged/AOE (but not melee splash) damage. Or an instant recovery life flask that heals 8000 life, but only refills as long as you don't move too much (threshold so you can move for a few seconds at a time to adjust to the boss but kiting would = never recharge), and as long as you are not moving you gain -50% crit multi on hits taken during flask recharge.

Ofc the question is, does GGG recognize a need for melee to be significantly better than it is, or do they envision Melee as the games "hard mode" playstyle. As I said at the outset, I am not opposed to the game having a playstyle that is a sort of extra Ironman or challenge mode. So maybe melee doesn't need the more drastic measures I've outlined (I should say again, that those are things OTHER GAMES have done to somewhat balance the Ranged vs Melee issue in their games, I am not suggesting all of them would be palatable or workable or desired in POE)

I think title should be changed to why melee as Life sucks. There are ES melee builds too.

I think defensive buff as a "reward" for hitting enemies at melee range with melee attacks is the way (someone mentioned it in this thread). Remember why fortify was created? But it wasn't enough. Maybe some temporary proximity shield-like built-in short duration hidden buff would be a cool way to make melee great again. Although, was it ever?

I do not think changing the boss fights and throwing shit at ranged characters is a good idea. There are many things hard for ranged characters, it's just that melee heroes cannot dance out of these nowhere as easy as the rest of poe population (the 99.9%).

How about ... giving fortify a more melee damage multiplier and give it a maximum range in which the linked attack has to hit in order to proc (or remove the melee tag from skills like lightning strike, which everyone ignores anyways). Also maybe exclude movement skills except cyclone ... A bit convoluted, but I don't see easy solutions in a complex game like this.

"

wiggin написал:

I think defensive buff as a "reward" for hitting enemies at melee range with melee attacks is the way (someone mentioned it in this thread). Remember why fortify was created? But it wasn't enough. Maybe some temporary proximity shield-like built-in short duration hidden buff would be a cool way to make melee great

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

That fix was implemented. It didn't solve things. It won't solve anything if we say "it wasn't enough" and try to repeat it.

The problem is in clear speed imbalance. Obviously if you clear the screen slower, enemies have more time to damage you - often zero chance vs ranged and significant change vs melee. The only multiplicative equalizer which takes "some damage" to "zero damage" is invulnerability.

Ranged AoE and/or Attack/Cast Speed must be nerfed so melee has room to develop relative clearspeed advantages. Currently, there is no design space; ranged has every clearspeed benefit imaginable.

"

alhazred70 написал:

...

ES stronger than life? Of course it will be, because it scales with gear well! Life items have only 1 mod, that adds life (ranging 70-126), while ES items can have up to 1k ES on them. Furthermore, ES scales batter with int (due to % scaling), than life - with str.
Solution? At least, add more life mods to mod pool, so it would be possible to get life scaling from items.

"

ScrotieMcB написал:

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

That fix was implemented. It didn't solve things. It won't solve anything if we say "it wasn't enough" and try to repeat it.

The problem is in clear speed imbalance. Obviously if you clear the screen slower, enemies have more time to damage you - often zero chance vs ranged and significant change vs melee. The only multiplicative equalizer which takes "some damage" to "zero damage" is invulnerability.

Ranged AoE and/or Attack/Cast Speed must be nerfed so melee has room to develop relative clearspeed advantages. Currently, there is no design space; ranged has every clearspeed benefit imaginable.

I liked the quote but it doesn`t exactly fit this case, does it? I know it is off topic but it's really only about defining the different result. You could say that walking for 5 minutes didn't take you to your destination so doing it again would be insane, but if you check the map and find yourself half-way there... Or using for example a fusing orb would be insane... wait, it is, nvm.

When comparing ranged to melee, maybe we could simply accept that melee will be better at something else than ranged and its clear speed will always suffer by design. Creating more eq-like skills and pushing melee to be petty much the same spot as ranged might help the balance but everyone is ranged then.

Maybe just making melee great at killing bosses would be cool, hence this proximity shield suggestion. When fighing in melee fight, if you would recieve some stacking defense against anything that tries to damage you from afar even if it went all the way up to invulnerability (at certain range) would be OK, not OP, because to keep this, you need to get close to the enemy where you do not benefit from such buff anyway.

People hate nerfs :'(