Melee is the worst bullshit ever in poe

"

When This game was advertised, they where so proud of the diversity of builds, But nowadays how much people play Ranged instead of Melee?

GGG killed diversity when they introduced easy dps skills and nerfed core melee defenses (life,regen,armor,block).

"

lolozori wrote:

I too agree with op
With average gears a ranged will perform 100% better with 100% less investment in tree or items.

When This game was advertised, they where so proud of the diversity of builds, But nowadays how much people play Ranged instead of Melee?

GGG killed diversity when they introduced easy dps skills and nerfed core melee defenses (life,regen,armor,block).

It is easier to play a scion or a witch melee, using ES or ST than playing the stereotype life based warrior in this game unless you have a legacy Kaom or hybrid melee+rf.

"

Quantume wrote:

I'd play melee if every offensive melee/weapon dmg node had half the percentage gain in life too,
and determination aura had also the armor percentage buff dmg and life,
default melee range set to +3,
and the entire hitbox bumping reduced by 99%,
or if the game changed that whole design into something like teamfortress2,
where you can't overlap each other, so enemies kinda bump off you, but won't block your movement.

Melee sucks.

"

Do_odle wrote:

The block nerf restricted melee more than it was already.

"but they gave back"

Counter Gems were carrots on a stick, as represented by the first person to respond to this post with his hilarious use of the counter gems to describe a pointless point that points nowhere specifically pointlessly... kind of like a carrot actually.....hmm.

They raised the block investment to a point where you would lose more damage than ever as a melee character than the counter gems could ever possibly compensate for; then after that they nerfed the counter gems so that not all of them could work with Facebreakers -> the only true melee build that doesn't get punished /too hard/ damage wise for attempting to make the defensive character required to go into the content that ranged characters one shot or prolif 2 screens away (i don't want to hear reflect counter-arguments, it's bullshit.)

There's too many things wrong with melee, There's nothing being delivered that fixes it, In fact; here's a brief history of Path of Exile's recent update agenda...

Nerf->Mirror Arrow
(cuz of it's use with minion passives.)

Nerf->Flame Blast
(I mean "pretend" to nerf flame blast. It was a 20% dmg reduction v _ v)

Nerf Melee-> Bloodlines and Torment
(these leagues turned many of the few "melee" diehards into meta-wagon try-outs)

Nerf Melee-> Way to shaft block
(I don't need to recount how negatively this affected melee; the damage boost that came with it did not compensate a thing. There was simply no reason to nerf this, rip bringer of rain *salute*)

Nerf Melee-> Acrobatics..
(This kinda ties in with the block nerf... It's not like archers were getting much block to begin with...)

Nerf Melee-> Bringer of Rain
(3rd? 4th? 5th? Nerf)

Nerf Melee-> Stun Threshold
(melee stun builds just got rocked HEAVILY out of nowhere. It's not like stun builds didn't already have the hard counter of "unwavering" mobs like Atziri and 30% of the rares you encounter. . . I suppose it was just too efficient in the meta to go unchecked. Crit Multi was already a better/badder version of Stun Threshold anyways; (and those numbers (while crit multi also received a recent nerf, the amount of nodes and the numbers on those nodes are also much higher now than the stun numbers or the abundance of stun nodes were...) why...? seriously...? why.......it's also important to note that this nerf also came around the time of the release of the Crag Head Quiver http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Craghead WHICH is essentially two and half maces worth of stun stats ... yeah.. it's an underrated quiver.)

Nerf-> Crit Multi
(Oh, well thank god the Abyssus helmet is still good enough offensively that melee can actually kill themselves just by using it)

Buff Melee?-> Cyclone becomes exploitable
(you can no longer name lock, but you can now cast cyclone at your feet and if you have the distance to travel and frame perfect clicking you can actually exploit cyclone now to do more attacks per second than it should normally be capable of doing...? atleast it fixed a little desync..? Before you get me wrong this is not as exploitable as it seems, it's extremely difficult to find and stay in that sweet spot where cyclone "resets" faster than it normally attacks simply because you're constantly moving no matter what and this truth is even more apparent when you realize your targets do also, even more so when you're also constantly moving... so.. buff? nah.. not the way people make it seem lol.)

Nerf Melee-> Frenzy
(Frenzy was nerfed by more than 50% if no one noticed)

Buff Spells-> THE ERA OF THE ECHO
(alot of previously underutilized and crap damage spells (aside from Ethereal Knives and Shock Nova) got big boosts in their base damages. Shockwave totems and Ice Spear being amongs the most effected. Freeze pulse was up there, too. Freeze Pulse was already strong; having really high casts per second aswell as moderately high critical strike chance along with decent base damage and extremely good synergy with shock and LMP. All the buffs came to a head with the release of spell echo which drove self-casting back into a seat in the hall of metas.

Buff Ranged-> Global Archer buff
(Huge Rebalance, including ranged items, uniques of said items, and nearly every passive point associated to making archer characters legitimately strong as fuck offensively)

Nerf Melee-> Life Specialization
(This nerf to life specs completely destroyed armor specs; life became vastly abundant with levels rather than with passives and thus this made it so all classes just got the same EHP...Don't get me wrong, it's still possible to allocate 80+ passives into life; but all you're left with is a Spell Caster at that point -> Righteous Fire. That is.. if you want to do any sort of dps.)

Buff Dual-Wielding-> wow
(a melee specific buff... the damage went up a little bit... more attack speed, and with the huge nerf to block, it became more apparent that this should be the way every melee character goes... screw doing less damage with a much larger and slower weapon, screw taking more damage with a much larger and useless shield, just do more damage and sustain the damage you take by off-handing a blood seeker or blocking more damage than shields with an ungil's, cuz that's how things should work right?)

Nerf Melee-> Bringer of Rain
(stop nerfing the bringer of rain...)

BUFF FIRE SPELLS-> THE DAY ELEMENTAL PROLIFERATION BECAME META
Elemental damage and fire damage was now buffed not only to increase the base damage of fire abilities but it also increased the amount the target burned for if ignited by those fire abilities. This wasn't limited to spells, melee and range could and can pull it off, too, however it was and is just much easier and rewarding to use spells to proliferate ignites. and.. ranged is closer to spell's ignite efficiency than melee is... Comparing Burning Arrow Chin Sol Traps to Face Breaker Infernal Blow Explosion Prolif and Quill Rain EE Explosive Arrow to Dual Strike Herald of Ash Crit Prolif. Also, another reason why spells are an optimal choice is because weapon elemental damage doesn't increase ignite damage in the same way that elemental damage does.

Nerf Minions->

Nerf Melee->

Nerf Minions.

Nerf Melee.

Nerf Melee-> Spectral Throw
(Spectral Throw became super abused through the use of scumbag builds: Low Life builds...so it got checked.. now it's still /alright/ for scumbag builds but it's even worse to an actual melee character who isn't stacking aps and ele damage than it was before)

Buff Melee-> Spectral Throw
(Alright... so.. yeah.. Spectral Throw isn't a melee ability, it's very very ranged, more ranged than a lot of spells in the game with an appropriate amount of faster projectile increases... not really a melee buff... but it could be used with melee weapons..)

Nerf Minions.

Nerf Melee.

and a long, long time ago...
back when melee needed something to bring it up to par...
this one unquestionable buff happened to them....

Buff Melee -> Multistrike..
(in the before time there was an actual melee buff that was never revoked...count your lucky star..)


Why Do_odle? Why is melee shoved back while ranged is hoisted up?

The answer might just be simpler than you think.

Allow me to present this two part simile; Melee is to poor as Ranged is to rich.

Ranged has more value... More Customization options.. but most importantly less desync notability..

Melee is ugly for the game's appearance, like a stinking hobo, in many videos you can instantly notice when desync happens, and when playing the game, desync is very apparent..

My personal opinion is that GGG purposefully push melee into the background so that the game seems more presentable. Less people will stream melee... thus making it harder to advertise the obvious engine flaws. This seems like the most logical reason to continue nerfing melee as hard as they do.

I can't really say it's a bad idea.. although if it is true then transparency would make it more understandable... Hopefully with upcoming netcode changes GGG will be able to bring melee into the picture with reasons of balance, rather than reasons of representation.

There's no other reason to me to expect that melee was or is strong enough to be receiving these one-sided sweeps. Unless, the game has just become far too easy for ranged or spell casters.. this is another theory that could very well be true.. Maybe GGG are keeping melee down just to give the truly hardcore players a hardcore or rather more difficult experience...

In conclusion... Melee's not bad, it's just mediocre, and the reason why it remains mediocre is obscure and we can only make educated guesses.

"

Do_odle wrote:

The block nerf restricted melee more than it was already.

"but they gave back"

Counter Gems were carrots on a stick, as represented by the first person to respond to this post with his hilarious use of the counter gems to describe a pointless point that points nowhere specifically pointlessly... kind of like a carrot actually.....hmm.

They raised the block investment to a point where you would lose more damage than ever as a melee character than the counter gems could ever possibly compensate for; then after that they nerfed the counter gems so that not all of them could work with Facebreakers -> the only true melee build that doesn't get punished /too hard/ damage wise for attempting to make the defensive character required to go into the content that ranged characters one shot or prolif 2 screens away (i don't want to hear reflect counter-arguments, it's bullshit.)

There's too many things wrong with melee, There's nothing being delivered that fixes it, In fact; here's a brief history of Path of Exile's recent update agenda...

Nerf->Mirror Arrow
(cuz of it's use with minion passives.)

Nerf->Flame Blast
(I mean "pretend" to nerf flame blast. It was a 20% dmg reduction v _ v)

Nerf Melee-> Bloodlines and Torment
(these leagues turned many of the few "melee" diehards into meta-wagon try-outs)

Nerf Melee-> Way to shaft block
(I don't need to recount how negatively this affected melee; the damage boost that came with it did not compensate a thing. There was simply no reason to nerf this, rip bringer of rain *salute*)

Nerf Melee-> Acrobatics..
(This kinda ties in with the block nerf... It's not like archers were getting much block to begin with...)

Nerf Melee-> Bringer of Rain
(3rd? 4th? 5th? Nerf)

Nerf Melee-> Stun Threshold
(melee stun builds just got rocked HEAVILY out of nowhere. It's not like stun builds didn't already have the hard counter of "unwavering" mobs like Atziri and 30% of the rares you encounter. . . I suppose it was just too efficient in the meta to go unchecked. Crit Multi was already a better/badder version of Stun Threshold anyways; (and those numbers (while crit multi also received a recent nerf, the amount of nodes and the numbers on those nodes are also much higher now than the stun numbers or the abundance of stun nodes were...) why...? seriously...? why.......it's also important to note that this nerf also came around the time of the release of the Crag Head Quiver http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Craghead WHICH is essentially two and half maces worth of stun stats ... yeah.. it's an underrated quiver.)

Nerf-> Crit Multi
(Oh, well thank god the Abyssus helmet is still good enough offensively that melee can actually kill themselves just by using it)

Buff Melee?-> Cyclone becomes exploitable
(you can no longer name lock, but you can now cast cyclone at your feet and if you have the distance to travel and frame perfect clicking you can actually exploit cyclone now to do more attacks per second than it should normally be capable of doing...? atleast it fixed a little desync..? Before you get me wrong this is not as exploitable as it seems, it's extremely difficult to find and stay in that sweet spot where cyclone "resets" faster than it normally attacks simply because you're constantly moving no matter what and this truth is even more apparent when you realize your targets do also, even more so when you're also constantly moving... so.. buff? nah.. not the way people make it seem lol.)

Nerf Melee-> Frenzy
(Frenzy was nerfed by more than 50% if no one noticed)

Buff Spells-> THE ERA OF THE ECHO
(alot of previously underutilized and crap damage spells (aside from Ethereal Knives and Shock Nova) got big boosts in their base damages. Shockwave totems and Ice Spear being amongs the most effected. Freeze pulse was up there, too. Freeze Pulse was already strong; having really high casts per second aswell as moderately high critical strike chance along with decent base damage and extremely good synergy with shock and LMP. All the buffs came to a head with the release of spell echo which drove self-casting back into a seat in the hall of metas.

Buff Ranged-> Global Archer buff
(Huge Rebalance, including ranged items, uniques of said items, and nearly every passive point associated to making archer characters legitimately strong as fuck offensively)

Nerf Melee-> Life Specialization
(This nerf to life specs completely destroyed armor specs; life became vastly abundant with levels rather than with passives and thus this made it so all classes just got the same EHP...Don't get me wrong, it's still possible to allocate 80+ passives into life; but all you're left with is a Spell Caster at that point -> Righteous Fire. That is.. if you want to do any sort of dps.)

Buff Dual-Wielding-> wow
(a melee specific buff... the damage went up a little bit... more attack speed, and with the huge nerf to block, it became more apparent that this should be the way every melee character goes... screw doing less damage with a much larger and slower weapon, screw taking more damage with a much larger and useless shield, just do more damage and sustain the damage you take by off-handing a blood seeker or blocking more damage than shields with an ungil's, cuz that's how things should work right?)

Nerf Melee-> Bringer of Rain
(stop nerfing the bringer of rain...)

BUFF FIRE SPELLS-> THE DAY ELEMENTAL PROLIFERATION BECAME META
Elemental damage and fire damage was now buffed not only to increase the base damage of fire abilities but it also increased the amount the target burned for if ignited by those fire abilities. This wasn't limited to spells, melee and range could and can pull it off, too, however it was and is just much easier and rewarding to use spells to proliferate ignites. and.. ranged is closer to spell's ignite efficiency than melee is... Comparing Burning Arrow Chin Sol Traps to Face Breaker Infernal Blow Explosion Prolif and Quill Rain EE Explosive Arrow to Dual Strike Herald of Ash Crit Prolif. Also, another reason why spells are an optimal choice is because weapon elemental damage doesn't increase ignite damage in the same way that elemental damage does.

Nerf Minions->

Nerf Melee->

Nerf Minions.

Nerf Melee.

Nerf Melee-> Spectral Throw
(Spectral Throw became super abused through the use of scumbag builds: Low Life builds...so it got checked.. now it's still /alright/ for scumbag builds but it's even worse to an actual melee character who isn't stacking aps and ele damage than it was before)

Buff Melee-> Spectral Throw
(Alright... so.. yeah.. Spectral Throw isn't a melee ability, it's very very ranged, more ranged than a lot of spells in the game with an appropriate amount of faster projectile increases... not really a melee buff... but it could be used with melee weapons..)

Nerf Minions.

Nerf Melee.

and a long, long time ago...
back when melee needed something to bring it up to par...
this one unquestionable buff happened to them....

Buff Melee -> Multistrike..
(in the before time there was an actual melee buff that was never revoked...count your lucky star..)


Why Do_odle? Why is melee shoved back while ranged is hoisted up?

The answer might just be simpler than you think.

Allow me to present this two part simile; Melee is to poor as Ranged is to rich.

Ranged has more value... More Customization options.. but most importantly less desync notability..

Melee is ugly for the game's appearance, like a stinking hobo, in many videos you can instantly notice when desync happens, and when playing the game, desync is very apparent..

My personal opinion is that GGG purposefully push melee into the background so that the game seems more presentable. Less people will stream melee... thus making it harder to advertise the obvious engine flaws. This seems like the most logical reason to continue nerfing melee as hard as they do.

I can't really say it's a bad idea.. although if it is true then transparency would make it more understandable... Hopefully with upcoming netcode changes GGG will be able to bring melee into the picture with reasons of balance, rather than reasons of representation.

There's no other reason to me to expect that melee was or is strong enough to be receiving these one-sided sweeps. Unless, the game has just become far too easy for ranged or spell casters.. this is another theory that could very well be true.. Maybe GGG are keeping melee down just to give the truly hardcore players a hardcore or rather more difficult experience...

In conclusion... Melee's not bad, it's just mediocre, and the reason why it remains mediocre is obscure and we can only make educated guesses.

"

lolozori wrote:

I too agree with op. With average gears a ranged will perform 100% better with 100% less investment in tree or items.

When This game was advertised, they where so proud of the diversity of builds, But nowadays how much people play Ranged instead of Melee?

GGG killed diversity when they introduced easy dps skills and nerfed core melee defenses (life,regen,armor,block).

It is easier to play a scion or a witch melee, using ES or ST than playing the stereotype life based warrior in this game unless you have a legacy Kaom or hybrid melee+rf.