Think this is the only ARPG that melee is shit in.

"

鬼殺し написал:

"

j33bus написал:

The main reason for that is that those games have defined classes, while PoE doesn't. This lets them make melee classes tankier than range classes and it gives a balance, and it's much harder in PoE. Now I've only played Torchlight and Diablo but in torchlight everything's awesome and you're always a badass, and Diablo 3 is so over constrained none of your choices matter and both of those are easy to balance, in diablo 2 melee was mostly worse but you needed to single target a boss, people still mostly played melee classes and used the range skills in them.

The shitty thing is we really should have seen it coming. There's a reason virtually every other ARPG has skill and class tied: it's much easier to balance. I mean, I'm still playing Titan Quest on my tablet months after quitting PoE and it's ridiculously constrained in comparison. But PoE has shown that absolute freedom (or something close to it) is in itself a constraint, both for players with analysis paralysis and devs who are faced with the impossible task of pre-empting a player base literally tens of thousands of times larger than their balance team. I've always espoused that it is with limitation that we get creative and perform optimally; whether it's a deadline, a word count or a limited skill/gear set, defined finitude is what we need, not a vast illusion of choice. More importantly, it's what GGG should have imposed on themselves back when we loved and supported the game...back when it actually was a much more compact, tight product.

Did we praise the freedom of choice, the skill gem system and the skilldrasil? Of course. But it was always implicit, wasn't it, that we could trust GGG not to let it get away from them? Not to keep adding more and more mechanical complexity when the game even in a beta state was so far ahead of the field in mechanical complexity but far, far behind on polish and user friendliness. Not to turn PoE into a hydra when a dragon was enough...

Yeah, well...here we are. So...back to my dual-class melee monsters in Titty Quest...

That's wrong. It's not easier to balance nor is PoE more difficult to. The devs simply don't want to. You only have three levers in PoE. The gem, very specific keystones and a manageable amount of uniques. Frostwall is a prime example that took forever. Or the "recent" BV / Pathfinder. The devs had the foresight to add damage effectiveness to spells, because they knew fast hitting abilities with flat damage / effects can scale out of control. Yet they made this exact mistake while at the same time weakened the effect on other abilities (CoC). Pure negligence. Don't forget these are the guys who work (probably) fulltime on their project. PoE is not complicated. Worst case scenario they could just browse reddit and get some starting ideas from there.
The reason other games feel better is because they don't care about some weird fringe balance. Torchlight 2 / Titan Quest for example just made (almost) everything good. PoE on the other hand tries to make everything shit. Explosive Mirror Arrow Clones was a great build. It was innovative, had really great passive and gear combinations. It wasn't top on clear speed / budget / DDPS, yet it was nerfed into the ground of being barely playable, because it apparently didn't fit into this game's spirit of monotonous uniform grinding.

The first thing that needs rework is the devs' mindset. Just look at Blade Flurry. Nothing about that skill is melee.
Everything in this game is fixable. There have been numerous solutions or at least approaches for all kinds of problems / balance. Even Elemental Hit or Heavy Strike. Yet it will never happen, because they don't want to. We are more likely to see "Wild Elemental Strike" and "Even Heavier Hit".

100% sure the balence is team is scared of buffing melee and if they DO buff it's usually medicore like 6% more buff to glacial hammer? LOL cmon and their survivability is shit with juggernaut only being ''decent''

The things that matter in PoE are speed and safety.
There's nothing that makes melee inherently more safe except fortify which can still be used with whirling blades/shield charge. And defenses except insta leech and EHP are shit in general. Which means that speed and safety are very intertwined.
If you kill the mobs before they can even hit you, that's the best defense you have. Melees have to get up close and go from pack to pack so they're inherently less safe but also slower, even if they'd deal much more dmg. Dmg values are so overtuned that even a 50% dmg bonus to all melee skills would change nothing. So the slider for speed is not actually dmg, but range and aoe. There's a pattern with the best/worst melee skills, the best have the biggest aoe.
Now the problem with PoE compared to other ARPGS is that you can theoretically use every skill/talent/item with every character in every combination. There's the often suggested solution that melee dmg skillpoints should also grant defenses, but then we have a problem with skills like Earthquake that clearly aren't melee. One of the best solutions i've heard is to move Vaal Pact, make it for melee only - and for true melee only, this would kill two birds with one stone.

gotta have to agree that melee in this game is generally shit.
The only 'melee' build I have ever enjoyed in any amount in poe is oro flicker elementalist with rampage gloves because it was really good at creating this feeling of increasing power and momentum as you plow through a map.

ggg fails to understand there is this thing called 'game feel' that is severely lacking in playing most of the melee skills in their game. Raider fails to live up to the hype and gives poor player feedback because your character doesnt visually phase with quartz infusion etc.

d3 isnt perfect but man I really love playing a monk in that game because the game play feel and control feels really tight and satisfying.

please make melee suck less ggg.
I feel like the only reason I play this game is for spellcasting and bow builds.

this one will be long, youve been warned

1) this is the situation WE as a playerbase ASKED for. by playing meta only. by accepting buffs only. by demanding power creep. 'why nerf, buff instead'. this is where we landed. a place of no return (because nerfs NOW - unlike early on - will make several players CONDITIONED to doing stupid stuff leave due to 'lost power')

each and every one here who asked for following buffs should feel guilty for what we have now: buffs to ES rolls. buffs to mana sustain (lowering costs and investments needed to cast spells). buffs to VP (it is too far from CI! plz bf!). buffs to mob density ('more pack size MOAR!'). by religiously and ruthlessly calling items CRAP or 'mhm, ok, ill take this OPIEOP'. by looking for any abuse point and exploiting it and pretending it is intended. building around top content (can this build do atziri - asked by players who stop at T4 maps. but no, he will not play any other build (despite it being more than enough for him) - he has to have a ferrari to do the grocery shopping..)

people who did that - you are to blame for we have now.


2) melee is semi-ok (wait with the pitchforks). most players out there couldnt build a well structured melee build if their life was at stake. constant whines about 'pure XX' not working. terrible understanding of flasks. overusing meta-shit without understanding why it is meta. copy-pasting concepts from a year ago. pretending that 2 armour nodes and one good chest is 'enough defence' etc. etc. the list is really long and when i see some characters from players that have issues or make outrageous claims i can just laugh..

look at how snorkle_uk builds his chars. well though out hybrids with various defensive mechanics. i build builds the same way. ive been playing life/ES hybrids for over a year now when people around here will tell me immediately it is impossible...

it really works - at the levels most of the whiners are - barely few .0% reach shaper/guardians but ALL of them have a strong opinion about melee/life sucking hard. not that theyve tried it but they KNOW it sucks. making statements without any responsibility nor shame - our times.


3) melee is TERRIBLE at bursts (and only at T14+) and they mostly cannot deliver bursts themselves. this is what makes melee really non-competitive - it cannot rotflfarm shaper/uber/whatver. this is a fact. and it sucks terribly because i cannot believe that GGG ever TRIED their end-game with melee characters AT ALL. it is so f.. obvious that this is a no-go zone it hurts. it CAN be done. people have done that even in HC. but the gap is monstrous and really shows where the focus is.


4) buffs to melee wont fix a thing. we are faaaar past this point. ranged/spells have to take a HARD hit to make melee a viable and SENSIBLE choice. currently it is a fun choice (really fun before T15 with hard rolls), it is peeeerfectly fine for most players (these types that consider T10 an end-game). however noone ever will take melee character to race to 100, to race for prizes or to farm end-game. because this is just a stupid idea.

ggg is at least partially aware that melee sucks. they identified one of the core reasons (ABSURD mob density). D3 developers were smarter than that and they carefully balanced D3 in pre-RoS era with mob density slider. it really makes a HUGE difference. current mob density with a good base rng + pack size mods is ABSURD. infernal blow/contaigion/prolif can clear entire map sections. not rooms nor screens. sections. it is unhealthy to compare Lightning Arrow with Cleave for these situations..

to make playing melee a SENSIBLE choice (as in competitive with a weighted pros/cons) changes has to be made. changes that will many people - including some in this very thread VERY upset.

stuff of the calibre of 'leech only applies vs NEARBY enemies', 'VP is removed', 'mana management for casters is now harder (currently there is none)', 'mob density cut by 50%'

without changes like these (meaning - groundbreaking changes) making melee do 10x damage will make it just as good as it is now. because vs light content (early maps, campaign etc) melee is already more than good enough - but vs end-game it wont matter much

but is the community ready for this kind of hits to ranged/casters? ranged/casters that most new players play (because it is cool to pew pew stuff)? ranged/casters that most low-skill players play because these builds simply carry them?

i think not. and thats why we can just as well remove bottom-left part of the tree, most red gems and call it a day because it wont get any better. and ggg knows that (look at the CoCS nerf - they nerfed it, not even that hard of a nerf it was, but to compensate to people that would not play anything except broken-OP they introduced Cospris. it gives more power than CoCS but it is rarer so it does not ruin their bills yet power-hungry players are satisfied)

so - yes, melee is a leftover and a concept that noone is giving a damn because it is too late. they cannot fix it without making significant portion of the playerbase upset (because it is too late for buffs and SERIOUS nerfs are needed) - and loss of playerbase -> loss of money. melee can be sacrificed for that, thats one has been certain for over a year now

@topic: Yeah, probably.

"

I_NO написал:

Grimdawn: Yeah there good
D3 shamefully: Yeah there good too
D2: Flawless
Torchlight I and II: Broken af

I'm just saying.

TQ: Melee builds are best
Sacred: Dunno

D1: Melee was pretty meh in PvM but far from being shit

"

sidtherat написал:

this one will be long, youve been warned

+1

But i still have hope and gonna believe in GGG, at least until 2.5 came out

"

sidtherat написал:

this is the situation WE as a playerbase ASKED for

C'mon Sidth, ggg has been nerfing shit hard since 1.3
What they buff is only the meta as they define it. That's not what we asked for, but the way they want it.
They just strictly define what the season meta will be, and shove it down our throats. Then sell the related MTX. That simple.

So i should just stop playing POE if I ever want to play melee?

what kind of mickey mouse shit is this?

I swear it is like I am being run up on by the zerg/borg/necrons/phalanx/flood/chimera/other random sci-fi assimilation hive mind fuckery.

Then again, I can't use:
Life
Armor
Evasion
Melee
Low life mass crit (unless I am using a spell or a bow. However I want to fight shit. why can't i create a fast moving, fast attacking, fast dodging, high damaging, rouge that can be bodied if he gets over extended. they keep telling me about build diversity but when i try to play what i want they won't let me and i have to play spamming ranger, spamming caster, spamming summoner, spamming trapper, or spamming (insert some build that fights by staying out of the fight) Am I not allowed to kill shit? What is this a mobile game? I need a drink...matter of fact i need all the drinks yes even the low carb lite beer. because why not? I too want drink like a man who wears skinny jeans. that is exciting to me now. I am exciting to be apart of that...all of it.)
Evading
Claws
Swords
2h Swords
Rubber Chicken (did not see that coming did you)
Armor (again? yes again that armor bug just made me sad. On a side note at least Armor works...ish I mean it works against small rocks...oh it does not work against small rocks gingerly tossed by white mobs? well perfect i feel like the guy from Gallipoli who ran out from the trench with no weapon and got murked wholesale but machine gun fire. (old movie about WW1 not bad had Mel Gibson in it. Thank you history class)
Evasion (again? yes again because why not have a defense that fails randomly but that does not really fail randomly only for it to actually fail randomly. i like having inefficient defenses it makes me feel great about my choice to drink Pepsi over Coke)
Claws (again? because why not?)


ok i am done being silly.
Also: FOR THE SWARM!!!

"

I_NO написал:

100% sure the balence is team is scared of buffing melee and if they DO buff it's usually medicore like 6% more buff to glacial hammer? LOL cmon and their survivability is shit with juggernaut only being ''decent''

That was also to create some kind of memes on purpose ("this is a buff") to "give" players something to talk about and "wait" for the targeting or whatever rework that they have in the pipes at the moment.
imho, of course.

Also agree with Sid overall.