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

more ele damage does way more then added fire damage atm hands down due to how static strike converts 60% physical to lightning.

i was actually running herald of fire on my staff char but had to switch it around titty tentacles were ripping me waay to much anything that does fire damage in act 3 for that matter is difficult to deal with for a melee char. since they are all relatively close range and have insane burst artic armor runs out too quickly for so that's not really feasible either.

"

goetzjam wrote:

Which fire mobs are you having a problem with?

In terms of damage your more then likely going to get more damage from added fire then you will with weapon ele, unless of course your playing in a party with someone providing auras. You also aren't using a rustic stash on that character, but you are on your bow character.

You are also using ele things (heralds for staff) but using hatred for bow. Hatred scales off of your weapon, where the heralds scale off of levels.

Your comparing the differences of these characters without them being setup similarly.

He's comparing differences of characters that are different, who would have thought. o.O

So when I was proposing changes for improving melee survivability I got shut up by nobs for doing it.
GGG improve mele by:
- improving its defences
- improving its dodging abilities
- improving its mobility

Do it please.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

"

goetzjam wrote:

Which fire mobs are you having a problem with?

In terms of damage your more then likely going to get more damage from added fire then you will with weapon ele, unless of course your playing in a party with someone providing auras. You also aren't using a rustic stash on that character, but you are on your bow character.

You are also using ele things (heralds for staff) but using hatred for bow. Hatred scales off of your weapon, where the heralds scale off of levels.

Your comparing the differences of these characters without them being setup similarly.

He's comparing differences of characters that are different, who would have thought. o.O

Hes using gear and gems that are strictly better for both builds on one character. The rustic stash could be used on his staff build, hatred instead of those 2 heralds would also be better for the staff.

Yes the builds are different, but he isn't even making it fair for the melee to compete with the same gear level.

But I guess thats fine for you legatus never looking at the whole picture just at one thing like always.

They added new gems in 1.3 that arguably improved defenses, they also improved armor values on the tree, but armor sucks in PoE.

What do you mean by dodging abilities?

Melee has leap slam, cyclone, whirling blades (if enough int can use lightning warp), shield charge, smoke mine, flicker strike. Did I miss any? I guess they could always add phase run again, allow only 2 handers to use it, sure some 2 handed spell casters, but those are less common then before. What more can GGG add to give mobility to melee? Maybe add a gem that leaves a copy of your character at current location and moves you XX units ahead, similar to blink arrow?

"

goetzjam wrote:

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

"

goetzjam wrote:

Which fire mobs are you having a problem with?

In terms of damage your more then likely going to get more damage from added fire then you will with weapon ele, unless of course your playing in a party with someone providing auras. You also aren't using a rustic stash on that character, but you are on your bow character.

You are also using ele things (heralds for staff) but using hatred for bow. Hatred scales off of your weapon, where the heralds scale off of levels.

Your comparing the differences of these characters without them being setup similarly.

He's comparing differences of characters that are different, who would have thought. o.O

Hes using gear and gems that are strictly better for both builds on one character. The rustic stash could be used on his staff build, hatred instead of those 2 heralds would also be better for the staff.

Yes the builds are different, but he isn't even making it fair for the melee to compete with the same gear level.

But I guess thats fine for you legatus never looking at the whole picture just at one thing like always.

They added new gems in 1.3 that arguably improved defenses, they also improved armor values on the tree, but armor sucks in PoE.

What do you mean by dodging abilities?

Melee has leap slam, cyclone, whirling blades (if enough int can use lightning warp), shield charge, smoke mine, flicker strike. Did I miss any? I guess they could always add phase run again, allow only 2 handers to use it, sure some 2 handed spell casters, but those are less common then before. What more can GGG add to give mobility to melee? Maybe add a gem that leaves a copy of your character at current location and moves you XX units ahead, similar to blink arrow?

ehm what? the reason i have 2 heralds (3rd one when i dont need purity of fire) is because killing mobs on my staff wielder is not the problem i can kill single/ small packs fine the kill effect from the herald skills upp my clear speeds much more then having only hatred + 1 more herald 3x herald's increases my clear speeds tremendously i dont need the clear speed on the bow char cuz im already hitting at least half a screen of packs with it.


"edit"
both builds also follow different tought patterns.

yes im not using a rustic on the staff wielder i needed health.

the archer has ice shot + hatred + herald of ice aka all ice damage.

the staff wielder uses or is going to use multiple elements for damage. right now its mostly lightning.

"

ehm what? the reason i have 2 heralds (3rd one when i dont need purity of fire) is because killing mobs on my staff wielder is not the problem i can kill single/ small packs fine the kill effect from the herald skills upp my clear speeds much more then having only hatred + 1 more herald 3x herald's increases my clear speeds tremendously i dont need the clear speed on the bow char cuz im already hitting at least half a screen of packs with it.

Are you one shotting mobs with your staff character?

"

yes im not using a rustic on the staff wielder i needed health.

Common misconception here is you need to 1 shot packs>having health. That very little bit of health that belt provides you is much less then a rustic in terms of EHP. You take less damage if you kill, therefore you need less life.

"

the archer has ice shot + hatred + herald of ice aka all ice damage.

Understand the concept, however hatred scales the best of all auras on high physical damage, BOTH of your weapons are rolled slow and hard. BOTH would be better with hatred because of the reason I mentioned before.

"

goetzjam wrote:

Are you one shotting mobs with your staff character?

in general yes im using multistrike with my static so i proc the aoe effect more often it usually takes me 1-2 cycles for white packs

"

yes im not using a rustic on the staff wielder i needed health.

Common misconception here is you need to 1 shot packs>having health. That very little bit of health that belt provides you is much less then a rustic in terms of EHP. You take less damage if you kill, therefore you need less life.

Understand the concept, however hatred scales the best of all auras on high physical damage, BOTH of your weapons are rolled slow and hard. BOTH would be better with hatred because of the reason I mentioned before.

in general yes im using multistrike with my static so i proc the aoe effect more often it usually takes me 1-2 cycles for white packs

what you are saying about the rustic yes i agree just that i haven't found the right one yet.
can't buy anything either dont have much in currency or saving it for something better.

i get what you are saying about hatred just that i haven't focused yet on getting aura nodes/reduced mana isn't high enough.

with my current setup if i go for static/added fire/more element/more melee and run all three heralds i hit for around 1600 total per hit. keep in mind i don't have aura nodes just yet. so exchanging lets say herald of ice for hatred isn't somehting i can do atm later on i can.

"

goetzjam wrote:

"

ehm what? the reason i have 2 heralds (3rd one when i dont need purity of fire) is because killing mobs on my staff wielder is not the problem i can kill single/ small packs fine the kill effect from the herald skills upp my clear speeds much more then having only hatred + 1 more herald 3x herald's increases my clear speeds tremendously i dont need the clear speed on the bow char cuz im already hitting at least half a screen of packs with it.

Are you one shotting mobs with your staff character?

"

yes im not using a rustic on the staff wielder i needed health.

Common misconception here is you need to 1 shot packs>having health. That very little bit of health that belt provides you is much less then a rustic in terms of EHP. You take less damage if you kill, therefore you need less life.

"

the archer has ice shot + hatred + herald of ice aka all ice damage.

Understand the concept, however hatred scales the best of all auras on high physical damage, BOTH of your weapons are rolled slow and hard. BOTH would be better with hatred because of the reason I mentioned before.

This is very incorrect information especially in hardcore. There are too many bosses, rare mobs, and P-link/necrovigil/etc type of mobs that won't die immediately that base life and % life are the absolute kings of all in POE (because you WILL take damage eventually). Damage is extremely secondary to life in HC, so it depends greatly on where he is playing.

You are obviously correct on hatred though, any phys build should be running hatred if they can fit it in.

So decided yesterday (after finding out HOTS was "released" for preorders) I was going to just do maps and Piety until i died and then quit the game. I didn't have to wait long. Ripped today on an ordinary merc piety run against what I think was chaos bond floor-spawning blood things. Can't tell for certain because I hit my mouse's logout macro and didn't get to see what killed me, just know my health was degening stupid fast before the logout and spammed my pots, and I know there was some chaos bond around.
Funny thing is I've made it a priority to stack chaos resist items in as many slots as possible, was probably close to being positive on chaos res and most ranged/caster players don't even take any (saw a thread from a guy saying he runs maps with -60 and never even came close to dying to it and was whining about how chaos damage mobs do nothing in POE).

Goetzjam, you wanted to see my gear last time I died, so here you go:


And the tree, which takes exactly THIRTEEN damage nodes out of 103 (at the time of death, I had invested in ONLY SIX damage nodes) and is comprised mostly of acro, ondars, and 189% life with duration for EC/IC:


RIP to random shit surprise chaos bond mob pack with no desync and logout macro + 1k instant flask spam WITH no-curse chaos flask.

This gear is probably the BEST gear I have ever had in POE. The build was probably the tankiest I've had in POE also, and I've never had as much chaos resist as I did there. Most of it was farmed leveling and then deleting various boring ass ranged builds. I've got log out macros and oos macros on my MMO mouse (plus a few other utility, like /itemlevel on one button etc). Used every "whaa this is opop" meta bullshit that everyone runs like cwdt-ec-ic. I even had EK and bear trap on swap/in the build to cheat a little bit when I ran across a nasty mod or boss (because lets face it, GGG has some real bullshit mods that melee just CAN'T DO). It was even a CRIT BUILD (because crit so OPIEOP!).

Was clearing shit at a SNAILS PACE and still alt-f4 once or twice a map, usually due to P-link, necrovigil, or otherworldly packs on an already-dangerous mob base type such as devourers blocking a path through the absolutely SHIT map pathing that exists in nearly every map type (dungeon, orchard, lunaris, the list goes on, in a game with such terrible desync you'd think GGG would learn how to design open fucking areas). Sometimes it was due other really obvious bullshit, like congealed blood in the orchard boss room. If I had gone more DPS and less tank in the passive tree, the character would have died to P-link devourers AGES ago.

I had taken LITERALLY ONE DAMAGE NODE (20% crit on the path to assassination) aside from the 5 in the beginner path that you can't avoid. Everything else was defense. The build was going to be "finished" with 13 damage nodes out of 103. Bottom line I don't know what the fuck shadow assassinates with his daggers, it sure as hell isn't POE random trash mobs.

So no, melee is NOT EVEN CLOSE to being fucking viable. And this is the last time I'm going to waste my time (and money that I should never have given GGG) playing this terribly balanced path of ranged game. I could literally throw dice at a wall for 10 minutes to create the game's meta and have it end up more balanced than it is now. I simply decided I'm not spending another dime on anything GGG makes, ever. And this is not a rage post, I was actually trudging through the game at such a slow pace that I was literally hoping I would die to end the fucking nonsense and finally move on to a game that is actually balanced. It makes me kind of sad because I really wanted POE to be so much more than it has become. I started a build OVER A YEAR AGO, based on a design that is ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE, and it wasn't viable then and it still isn't viable now.

You goetzjam, can continue spamming your misinformation about how viable melee is to your heart's content. Like I said earlier I recently discovered HOTS is available for preorder play and I'm out. Enjoy your daily forum trolling.

Played since beta, always melee. Dual strike, double, ground slam, cyclone, molten, I've tried it all. Had a pretty lucky streak in torment. Wound up with a 6L hege staff, doin the static strike action with 150k deeps. Had a chance to get a 6L windripper. Figured why not give a ranged build a try for once.
Been playing ele windripper for 2 weeks now. 50k tornado shot. I refuse to ever go back to a melee character until either melee or the game gets a complete redesign. Melee is simply pure shit in comparison to what I'm doing now. Pop in a room, shoot once or twice, everything's dead. No need to put myself in danger, no need to step in bad stuff. Anything coming near me gets frozen and knocked back. 4k life who cares. Atziri runs, deathless, 5 min clears.
If you wanna enjoy the game fully, slap on a wand/bow or a dagger for spectral throwage. All the melee bros with crazy damage numbers, omg 200k, 500k, 800kdps!! Horey sheet! Who cares. A lvl 68 who just slapped on his 5l harbinger is gonna double your clear speed and prob die a whole lot less.
Only way melees gonna compete is if their defenses somehow get doubled and they can hit the entire screen with 1 button.