Does Melee Kind of or Totally Suck?

I realize every melee build I've ever attempted (including highly recommended, beginners, and "atziri viable" ones) has totally sucked in comparison to ranged characters, but my question is, is there any melee build that doesn't get blown up regularly?

I'm a little bored playing flame totem build.

Cyclone.

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SamChowders wrote:

Cyclone.

In my experience, gets hella blown up. However, none of my characters have had 50,000 defence + 10,000 hp + max all res + 30,000 dps so maybe I was just doing it wrong.

Considering the first 100 in this round of leagues (with no real competition) was 2h cyclone in HC, melee isn't in such a bad spot.

Melee doesn't have to mean that you can expect to eat every single chunk of damage ever thrown at you either. Sometimes you have to know when to back off.

So a follow up question, any other than cyclone?

As I recall, there used to be a number of builds (ground slam, flicker strike, lightning strike). Right now I'm trying a glacial cascade but my build a little too fragile. I have another few characters with total respecs that I could afford to spec into a good build, but I would like to know what a safe build would be (or if I need to go higher crit/tank with GC).

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YariChinMaiNichi wrote:

So a follow up question, any other than cyclone?

Ice Crash Facebreaker, check out my level-73 Scion.

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YariChinMaiNichi wrote:

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SamChowders wrote:

Cyclone.

In my experience, gets hella blown up. However, none of my characters have had 50,000 defence + 10,000 hp + max all res + 30,000 dps so maybe I was just doing it wrong.

It doesn't, actually.
You can go for pretty suicide~y mods and perform decent, sitting at 4k~ hp and no issues until (including) 78 maps - village ruin bosses are a bit of a pain and require somewhat of a dance, outside of that it's a comfy ride.
running facebreaker w/ 50% block though

my melee chars are currently running reave, frost blades and cyclone. The cyclones would struggle to keep up with the reave and frost blades characters tbh, I cant see it keeping up with a well built ice crash either in terms of speed. Still a good skill but people over hyped it, over complained about it and then GGG over nerfed it. Sweep will clear maps faster now, if you are talking clear speeds cyclone is way down the list now, it just doesnt have the aoe to compete.


If youre talking defenses and not getting squished that has nothing to do with what skill you use, its your defensive build, just need to spec strong levels of life and defense, get good life and defense on gear etc. Rare gear is dirt cheap and so easy to get now days, if youre in standard league you can fit an entire character minus a good weapon for like 4 chaos per slot.

Melee is great, melee was always great, physical based melee has been one of the strongest possible options in this game since the start of open beta and that has never changed. Nor has peoples inability to build it right most of the time but I guess that goes for all kinds of builds no doubt. Jah is right though, you got to know when its a bad idea to just stand there and face tank the entire world. My melee chars die about once a year and all they do is play the hardest rolled 76+ maps I can chaos day in day out.

Good advice. I guess I need to build my characters more solidly. The weird thing is that I collected more life and armor nodes on my ice crash templar than my flame totem marauder, and they have comparable life on their gear, yet my marauder has 2k more health. I really don't understand how that happens.

Additionally, going after more life, my already low dps (7k) would take an even greater hit. I could spec out of LL, but then I don't know how I would handle corrupted blood turdlings....


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUNKKK.

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RogueMage wrote:

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YariChinMaiNichi wrote:

So a follow up question, any other than cyclone?

Ice Crash Facebreaker, check out my level-73 Scion.

I must admit, I'm somewhat incredulous that this build with this gear would not get chewed up in even some of the lower maps. What's the def/res/dps and stuff?