Melee is the worst bullshit ever in poe

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

why would u start a dual wield melee as a shadow? Any melee tbh outside of a glass cannon ci crit. Its a rly bad start for that imo. Ive found shadow a good start for 3 things, cast on crit, elemental life based attacks like wanding and ek, Ive yet to find another type of build Id use it for.

First 5 nodes of shadow are pretty crap imo if you are a physical attacker, youd want the first 5 of the ranger or the first 5 of the duelist way more, well, imo.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBuR0V7Irw6UbEgsqQhNnEuEd-1fi9NmVNvqdgQWNwEdVXl0MxG8i2Qb_VhO9OKlO7RJ507WEhW6-wcyfVeu8S4eCV3Q0hYGBLBS2y3PzFwYsISVb6Z6B464FB26dW6HfXh3YKmzXvCVh_K-Of5wo67dP8MHzWikp973pRR419036NvyP2AF4knX117-MFtd3nTZIZjmJa_roDh-jWXovtgxutlWabJud0g70ILjIBbWyyGTY9tUjPep2qpn9h62KsbIztQXpTsbMWvyaVYeJVS4w2

Oh believe me, I'm aware and agree fully. I still remember the days when shadow had dual wield nodes in the starter tree and was considered a 2W class. Those days are long gone but MisterKnife will not be using a fucking shield, I tried that once and not doing it again. Ev/ES sheilds are fucking stupid and shields on a character that is supposed to be an "assassin" in general is dumb.

As for the first 5 nodes, I don't think you fully understand the damage potential of plain "Phys damage" nodes. I am one-shotting bosses in a2 merc with 2x wicked golden kris. And I've only got like 15 or so points in damage.

I deeply thank GGG for giving me these nodes.

"

Oh believe me, I'm aware and agree fully.

So you are aware the starting as shadow is subpar as melee dual weilding, but do it anyway, then complain that melee is so bad because you start at a class where its no longer viable to get the EZ acro+phase+block build that was overpowered in the past?

"

I still remember the days when shadow had dual wield nodes in the starter tree and was considered a 2W class.

Was this before ranger?

"

Those days are long gone but MisterKnife will not be using a fucking shield, I tried that once and not doing it again. Ev/ES sheilds are fucking stupid and shields on a character that is supposed to be an "assassin" in general is dumb.

You don't have to use a shield if you don't want, some people do others don't. Simply because you think its not lore friendly to use a shield doesn't mean you shouldn't or cant.

"

As for the first 5 nodes, I don't think you fully understand the damage potential of plain "Phys damage" nodes. I am one-shotting bosses in a2 merc with 2x wicked golden kris.

And I've only got like 15 or so points in damage.

Can we see your planned tree?

"

goetzjam wrote:

snip

This is my tree:



Plenty of places to go beyond level 80, probably going to grab more life though. This build is intended to be used with CoD and AA (I was using CoD/AA in this same build in 1.1 back before it apparently became a 4ex item). It was also much easier to get life nodes then, and I was able to reach ondars but not dual curses.

And uh, no, the 2W in shadow starter tree thing was not before ranger, it was in 1.1.0 (March/April 2014). There were three dual wield nodes, one being a notable (blinding speed), in the 2nd part of the far bottom path.
I think GGG removed these nodes to cover up the fact they gave a bunch of 1-hander gems to a 2W class, but that's just my tinfoil hat theory. Now they want you to use the ever-awesome THORNS SHIELD. Behold the power of the thorns mod on an EV/ES item.

You can also go back to the shadow page and ACTUALLY SEE the concept art of shadow with 2 daggers even today (as well as dual strike being listed as a key gem for the class, which is still a starter gem for the class today. Used to be hillock reward, now is a mercy mission reward):


So it's historically always been a 2W class in the past. Yes I know my shit when it comes to shadows.

As for acro-phase-block, it literally has nothing to do with melee. With or without that change ranged would still have been better than melee. That change did nothing but nerf melee and leave the cluster OP for ranged in the first place. I'm really finding it hard to take you seriously.

"

This is my tree:

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgYAYeImlRa_sNhVS2yMnao2PWKsSVHw1ZUuBx4Rlg5I44RJsdfP-TfviJMnHNx_xsDjS1fxs2-egwlGcbQM9W9qjMgUotm1SHBSKgvz6n3jLOGsZrk-2HZHBvb8wJynNNvUkBtwVpoT7UGxs6Z_t9lhBqk0SwrDOspKcNVd8onTY0OCU8_p0NCT_C4I645qQ8BUvOprFwj0OlhVxoPbBAdMsy0flSBYB3zlGGp4L5uh99esmNsLgh7B8-NqFm_60h0Uj0Y26SSqoqM=

Tree looks interesting I don't really know anything about the shadow area as I don't tend to make builds that go into the area very often. One thing I did notice from that tree is no passive HP regen, which for me is a big turn off, one would think especially for melee.

"

Plenty of places to go beyond level 80, probably going to grab more life though. This build is intended to be used with CoD and AA (I was using CoD/AA in this same build in 1.1 back before it apparently became a 4ex item). It was also much easier to get life nodes then, and I was able to reach ondars but not dual curses.

So you use the good old cod/aa combo to mitigate fire\phys while also allowing for damage mitigation from MoM, seems solid. Why dual curses for this build?

"

And uh, no, the 2W in shadow starter tree thing was not before ranger, it was in 1.1.0 (March/April 2014). There were three dual wield nodes, one being a notable (blinding speed), in the 2nd part of the far bottom path.
I think GGG removed these nodes to cover up the fact they gave a bunch of 1-hander gems to a 2W class, but that's just my tinfoil hat theory. Now they want you to use the ever-awesome THORNS SHIELD. Behold the power of the thorns mod on an EV/ES item.

I see, you aren't limited to using an ev/es shield when being shadow, I can understand the nodes in the area support them, but I don't think ev/es shield favor melee, especially if you aren't going CI.

"

You can also go back to the shadow page and ACTUALLY SEE the concept art of shadow with 2 daggers even today (as well as dual strike being listed as a key gem for the class, which is still a starter gem for the class today. Used to be hillock reward, now is a mercy mission reward):

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/classes/shadow

Yeah I think GGG buffed the area around the shadow to be more trapper or general crit oriented, i don't think that shadow is better then duelist for a melee start. No passive regen, no increased weapon area, less 1 handed nodes and dual wield nodes . I haven't made up a tree in duelist, but would love to see what you would think is most comparable.

Lol that has phase run on it.....if they add phase run back into the game, melee might become a thing again. Of course ranged characters will still find a way to use it. Unless they make it unusable with bows and wands.

"

So it's historically always been a 2W class in the past. Yes I know my shit when it comes to shadows.

Only thing I really know about shadows is back before 1.0 it was an option if you wanted to be a sporker (i never did it though)

"

As for acro-phase-block, it literally has nothing to do with melee. With or without that change ranged would still have been better than melee. That change did nothing but nerf melee and leave the cluster OP for ranged in the first place. I'm really finding it hard to take you seriously.

There were quite a few non bow builds, non melee (or at least melee attacks) that took advantage of stacking block and acro. I understand this nerf affected melee harder most likely, but builds like max block incinerate and other pseudo melee or just block builds stacked them. Block in this game was and still is very powerful, so is acro/phase, getting both was broken. Now you get one or the other.

And while you may disagree with some things I say, which is completely understandable, being able to see where you are coming from (the tree, previous builds/concepts) might enlighten me on the type of melee builds you have done in the past.

I've done ele cleave duelist back when damage auras were flat mana, facebreaker cyclone (might try this again), currently doing mjolner (i know its probably not technically melee because of the chain) and probably a couple of others I can't think of right now.

"

Morgoth2356 wrote:

That's a fair point but I think that ranged suffer from that content difficulty curve too, but yes, maybe not as hard as melee. Crematorium boss is in my eyes a bad example since the firestorm can reach every player in the room (ranged or melee) that is on top of that pretty small. But that maybe not wisely chosen example doesn't invalidate your point, I think we can all identify some harder content that is harder for melee than for ranged (Palace Dominus with his slam for example).

Palace dom touch of god is survivable as melee.

His Stream of Souls WHICH HE IS FKING SPAMMING is not, even with enfeeble / topaz. That shit is so boring, bc all you do is run around and hope he calls totems. Because thats the only time you can get in 2-3 hits and then run around for 3000000 hours again, him spaming his shit.

"

Vincendra wrote:

"

Morgoth2356 wrote:

That's a fair point but I think that ranged suffer from that content difficulty curve too, but yes, maybe not as hard as melee. Crematorium boss is in my eyes a bad example since the firestorm can reach every player in the room (ranged or melee) that is on top of that pretty small. But that maybe not wisely chosen example doesn't invalidate your point, I think we can all identify some harder content that is harder for melee than for ranged (Palace Dominus with his slam for example).

Palace dom touch of god is survivable as melee.

His Stream of Souls WHICH HE IS FKING SPAMMING is not, even with enfeeble / topaz. That shit is so boring, bc all you do is run around and hope he calls totems. Because thats the only time you can get in 2-3 hits and then run around for 3000000 hours again, him spaming his shit.

his lighthing stream is indeed a gear check for melees

"

goetzjam wrote:

snip

HP regen I've always seen as a luxury I don't need. It's never going to be fast enough to keep up with the fights compared to leech and flasks and is points I can put into actual life nodes.

Dual curses, because it is extremely flexible and much more dmg/mitigation per point than anything else on the tree. It can either massively increase my damage output (sin mark + vuln for puncturing bosses) or completely bring attackers to non-relevance (endcry + enfeeble + tempchains + cwdt). Most of the time, I keep enfeeble on cwdt and manually cast assassins mark. It's not like totems where it takes eternity to cast, curses are pretty fast casts and don't disrupt me at all, and the extra damage helps permafreeze mobs with hatred while granting power charges or being a massive damage multiplier.

Build is still very much in reworking though since a lot has changed from 1.1.0, when I created the build.

Back on topic though, the types of melee builds I play isn't really the issue. The issue is that while 99% of the game may be faceroll for most optimized builds melee or otherwise, melee is inherently always more at risk of the sudden bullshit desync or combo that will lead to instant death. The performance of both types of builds may be similar as well as the tankiness, but when melee encounters the elusive bullshit mod combos they are far more likely to actually DIE which is a big issue for HC melee players like myself.

Something I take from Diablo 3 is that...

There needs to be more mobs, and they need to swarm more or/and move faster. Of course, that doesn't mean we keep the damage same, or no sane person is gonna try melee. Maybe they can have some innate point blank defense against projectile attacks or something...

Anyway, the melee mobs need to come much faster, but the ranged mobs need not be changed. This will put pressure on ranged builds while having less on melee builds (unless you can't handle melee mobs. Then er.....). This also reduces the need to run around so much against the melee mobs.

I think the ability of ranged builds to have such a wide coverage of damage is a bit out of hand. There needs to be a damage penalty based on the number of mobs the projectile has hit already. Not too much to make it unviable, but it would at make ranged builds weaker than melee builds in clearing extremely dense mob balls.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

HP regen I've always seen as a luxury I don't need. It's never going to be fast enough to keep up with the fights compared to leech and flasks and is points I can put into actual life nodes.

This is only true for the right side of the tree though. My Mara is rocking 700 Health/ sec with 7 End charges and Vita on. That is a perma flask.

There is one artifact from olde that I think might be easy to overlook after so much time.

Waaaay back in CB, we said that monster AI was sometimes annoying, and it'd be nice if they were more aggressive. GGG replied that, if they tended towards taking a more direct route to the player, or didn't flee as often, then AoE would be too powerful.

That was all fine and dandy, once upon a time, when there might have still been hope for balancing single target versus AoE, but we've since had the advent of fork, chain, even bigger AoE spells (e.g., Flameblast), etc.. and the likes of melee splash are left somewhat wanting. The reality of the matter is, AI does not achieve what GGG intended, but is instead yet another encumbering factor which favors ranged over melee.

I think the melee experience would be somewhat different if our adversaries tended to be more direct. If both ranged and melee were susceptible to an aggressive rush of mobs, but melee were better equipped to handle them up close, then the whole ranged versus melee dynamic would be considerably different. (Edit: excepting the whole one-shot meta, which hopefully can still be changed)

IMHO, monster AI is one of the few non-linear (scaling) methods to balance game-play styles and archetypes, and I would like to see some work done to target AI specifically (so at the very least melee wouldn't have to spend so much more time hunting down stragglers), and then follow whatever progression of new balance as would be necessary following more threatening (and presumably, beefier) adversaries.