Until melee is fixed, a lot of people will not comeback.

If you think melee marauder is viable I'd argue you are the one who doesn't understand the word viable.

It depends on what you expect to be able to do in this game. Do you expect to do the top dps and still have the best survivability? Expect to do uber atziri? May not be reasonable, but from that perspective MOST builds are not viable.

A more reasonable person would expect to not do top dps all the time and facetank all of the most difficult content, but at least clear within a certain percentage of the time it takes another build to do typical endgame content without risk of constant death at the drop of a hat against the average mobs.

In that respect I would say no, for a reasonable person melee is not viable at all as most ranged and caster builds are clearing content at many times the speed of most melee for significantly less risk in your normal average circumstances.

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If you think melee marauder is viable I'd argue you are the one who doesn't understand the word viable.

First of all he mentioned melee, THEN mentioned marauder. I was specifically responding to marauder being viable.

But in case you forgot what the word means, here is the definition:



Successfully means can you do endgame content (doesn't have to be all endgame content) as a melee character or marauder, the answer is yes, we saw a sub 3 min gorge clear the other day as a 2 handed cyclone build. Could it make all content in the game as easy as that map, probably not, but can it kill monsters in an ARPG yes. So in otherwords its viable, maybe not as much in bloodlines, idk those mobs in general suck.

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It depends on what you expect to be able to do in this game. Do you expect to do the top dps and still have the best survivability? Expect to do uber atziri? May not be reasonable, but from that perspective MOST builds are not viable.

So what exactly is the formula for viable because people just drop it like the meaning is the same for everyone, when everyone's goals may be different, viable apparently has a sliding scale, which by definition it technically doesn't.

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A more reasonable person would expect to not do top dps all the time and facetank all of the most difficult content, but at least clear within a certain percentage of the time it takes another build to do typical endgame content without risk of constant death at the drop of a hat against the average mobs.

You don't compare apples to oranges in ARPG it isn't really fair as the whole playstyle, skill set, defenses, ect are much different. If you want to compare 2 bow builds to eachother or two spellcasters sure, but comparing ranged vs melee, you will never find a situation where the vast majority of people prefer melee, sorry you won't. At least not in PoE, maybe back when perm allocation wasn't a thing.

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In that respect I would say no, for a reasonable person melee is not viable at all as most ranged and caster builds are clearing content at many times the speed of most melee for significantly less risk in your normal average circumstances.

So cleartime is what your definition of viable is? I don't have the gorge clearing thread on my list, but IIRC sub 3 min for quite a few builds, including that 2 handed cyclone build is pretty good. I understand its 1 of MANY melee builds and all are different in regards to defenses\skills\ect which is why to say ALL melee builds aren't viable when quite a few have been seen to be working isn't the correct way to approach these discussions.

If you mean that build where most of the damage and clear speed is provided by herald of ice, well sure it is melee in the most liberal sense of the word but the damage is not provided by melee skills.

It's kind of like saying herald of Thunder builds are melee because you have to hit one mob to activate it in a build where the herald is primarily activated by molten strike or something. You could literally replace the weapon with a Caster staff and use ice nova for the exact same result.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

If you mean that build where most of the damage and clear speed is provided by herald of ice, well sure it is melee in the most liberal sense of the word but the damage is not provided by melee skills.

Here is the link to the thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/2swo74/gorge_speedrun_250_2h_cyclone/

He appears to be using haste, hatred and HoA. Granted the lack of defenses in this build would mean some adjustment would be needed in HC.

That only addresses 1 of the many points I made in that thread.

Are you saying a 1 handed cyclone build that uses attackspeed and HoI isn't melee? I don't even know what build you are referring to.

I could probably clear that map in five minutes using a cast on death build with portal gem if the portals weren't limited.

It's not in hc = not relevant

Raiz did a similar build but again 90% of the clear speed is provided by hoi in either case. With hoi you basically just need any aoe skill and kill one mob for a screen clear, it's absurd. I'm not really sure how I feel about the gem honestly.

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I could probably clear that map in five minutes using a cast on death build with portal gem if the portals weren't limited.

But they are limited, saying you can do something you know you cannot due to restrictions in the game is asinine.

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It's not in hc = not relevant

That build would probably work in any non bloodlines league, again bloodlines further restricts melee builds due to the nature of the challenges they present.

Raiz did a similar builds without using the same skills? I am so confused on this statement. The build I shown was pretty much a standard 2 handed cyclone character.

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goetzjam wrote:

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I could probably clear that map in five minutes using a cast on death build with portal gem if the portals weren't limited.

But they are limited, saying you can do something you know you cannot due to restrictions in the game is asinine.

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It's not in hc = not relevant

That build would probably work in any non bloodlines league, again bloodlines further restricts melee builds due to the nature of the challenges they present.

Raiz did a similar builds without using the same skills? I am so confused on this statement. The build I shown was pretty much a standard 2 handed cyclone character.

It's not asinine at all, you're completely missing the point. My comment is about as valid as you posting a link to a softcore video when we are discussing class balance.

As for the raiz build he used cyclone with HoI to clear packs in the aforementioned manner. I would hesitate to call this a melee build despite the fact that he is using cyclone, we're really stretching the definition of melee here. HoI is doing most of the clearing.

If the overwhelming majority of your damage is coming from something that isn't a melee skill, I'd say you aren't melee. The fact that people are making melee builds using HoI in the first place is mostly a testament to how bad melee is, not to how good it is. You don't see people posting up videos of arc + added cold damage + HoI wiping packs and saying "see! casters are viable because of this herald of ice build", because it isn't necessary to do so.

Also, you're linking a video to a character that has since DIED.

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It's not asinine at all, you're completely missing the point. My comment is about as valid as you posting a link to a softcore video when we are discussing class balance.

Or as relavant as you discussing melee as a whole by pointing to a different class then you play ^_^. When discussing things like viable, clearpseed, ect those apply to both builds in SC\HC, unless you have forgotten and just assume everyone plays in bloodlines.

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As for the raiz build he used cyclone with HoI to clear packs in the aforementioned manner. I would hesitate to call this a melee build despite the fact that he is using cyclone, we're really stretching the definition of melee here. HoI is doing most of the clearing.

So what exactly qualifies as melee to you, because even melee skills have some aoe and with enough nodes pretty high range.

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If the overwhelming majority of your damage is coming from something that isn't a melee skill, I'd say you aren't melee. The fact that people are making melee builds using HoI in the first place is mostly a testament to how bad melee is, not to how good it is. You don't see people posting up videos of arc + added cold damage + HoI wiping packs and saying "see! casters are viable because of this herald of ice build", because it isn't necessary to do so.

Your back to comparing apples to oranges again, if manual casters aren't "viable" why do we see so many of them?

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Also, you're linking a video to a character that has since DIED.

Yes characters die in this game....Perhaps he was doing content not suitable for that build, idk. But its ok your definition of melee isn't apparently the same as any skill that uses melee, but some double dagger build on the other side of the tree.

il give you my 2 cents i just deleted every char i had and started all over again

1 two hander/static strike at lvl 46
1 ice shot/barrage at lvl 37

the ice shot barrage i made a 3 link LmP and fork and i clear my entire screen with 3 shots walk around in total GARBAGE tier and still feel more powerfull then my static strike melee char that has much better resists and had tripple the health as that archer/ranged character.

its beyond retarded how much AoE dps a ranged character pulls out of their asss and with barrage/point blank melt any boss away.

granted my melee character is better at taking down bosses due to higher damage on 2 handed weapons and whatnot but in no way does it compare. to get the same feeling of efficiency of clearing packs i think i would need a 5 link to compare to that ice shot / fork/ LmP.

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granted my melee character is better at taking down bosses due to higher damage on 2 handed weapons and whatnot but in no way does it compare. to get the same feeling of efficiency of clearing packs i think i would need a 5 link to compare to that ice shot / fork/ LmP.

Characters WAY too low level to give an honest opinion. First of all we don't know how many more dps nodes you have on the ranged character vs the melee character, we don't know if you lucked into an awesome leveling bow and are still using a subpar melee weapon, too many factors AT THAT LOW OF LEVEL in order to determine why you are experiencing what you are.

But please level a few more characters like spell casters or summoners to that level and compare. I'd be interested to hear what you come up with.