Difference between melee and range builds.

One thing that is bothering me right now is how easy it is to achieve 100% damage conversion for any element with ranged attacks compared to how difficult it is for melee attacks.

With the exception of lightning, it is impossible to achieve 100% phys to cold, and it is also impossible to achieve 100% phys to fire without exceptional building.

By contrast, rangers get several means of achieving both 100% lightning and 100% fire damage from phys. They max out as, as far as I am aware 85% for phys to cold without exceptional circumstances (with the exception of secondary effects which are 100% cold). This is 10% above melee, however.

Ranged also gets single item 100% chaos damage conversion (Albeit from one element to chaos)

Melee can only do "better" for conversion than ranged with moonbenders wing (a waste of a weapon slot unless you are playing a non-axe skill) and maybe CotB.

The way I see it, as long as there exist mobs that either pop up from nowhere; flicker strikes; deal instant damage from fast projectiles (especially from offscreen); charges; teleports, proximity shields etc ....you are essentially playing in melee range irregardless of your preferred playstyle when those thing happens. And most "melee" builds do AOE damage with significant reach/range that rivals "range" builds. Passive-tree wise, most builds need life/life regen/life leech nodes. In short any distinction between melee or range is ultimately lost.

I would like to see spell damage scaling changed.
It's quite shallow that spells doesn't scale that much from wands/scepters/daggers as physical weapons do. What they should change is reduce or remove increase damage mods on wands/scepters/daggers and increase flat elemental damage to spells on them (wands/../..), and maybe reduce spell gem's damage by a bit; balance it in numbers that spell damage potential would remain the same.
These changes would make spell damage more dependent from wands/scepters/daggers and so it would be more similar to physical weapons.

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Andrius319 wrote:

I would like to see spell damage scaling changed.
It's quite shallow that spells doesn't scale that much from wands/scepters/daggers as physical weapons do. What they should change is reduce or remove increase damage mods on wands/scepters/daggers and increase flat elemental damage to spells on them (wands/../..), and maybe reduce spell gem's damage by a bit; balance it in numbers that spell damage potential would remain the same.
These changes would make spell damage more dependent from wands/scepters/daggers and so it would be more similar to physical weapons.

The issue with making spells much more reliant on flat damage is basically unique items that were designed around a time where flat damage was rare or wasn't a thing for spells at all. Stuff like pledge of hands or searing touch get significantly nerfed in the process.

Hell even newer things get nerfed:



I think that is the only one of those staffs that have flat added lightning damage.


In terms of efficiency I really hate that is what it boils down to. People should have the ability to level with the playstyle and character that they plan on playing endgame, I THINK ascendancy will help improve this for people getting bonuses before doing act 4 content.

Lets also not forget that GGG nerfed the phys belt recipe, so making weapons while leveling is a bit more painful. At the same time after you have the uniques or decent leveling 2 handed rares its actually or was in 2.0 fine to level as melee, the issue was not having a way to get the weapons when leveling to progress and people actually not realizing they should be upgrading at key threasholds for weapons, regardless of how good you think that level 24 weapon is, finding something at level 34 or whatever is a significant difference.

Its clear bladefall is too powerful when leveling, that being said having access to lifesprig or reverb at the start of the league is neigh but impossible, personally haven't leveled without those so not entirely sure its powerlevel when its level 28 compared to other options.



In terms of spells in general, keep in mind self cast spell casters weren't really popular before this patch, after 2.0 for a good reason, lets not all jump on the bandwagon to throw them into the dumpster so quickly.

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Andrius319 wrote:

I would like to see spell damage scaling changed.
It's quite shallow that spells doesn't scale that much from wands/scepters/daggers as physical weapons do. What they should change is reduce or remove increase damage mods on wands/scepters/daggers and increase flat elemental damage to spells on them (wands/../..), and maybe reduce spell gem's damage by a bit; balance it in numbers that spell damage potential would remain the same.
These changes would make spell damage more dependent from wands/scepters/daggers and so it would be more similar to physical weapons.

The issue here again is how different spells work. Those suggestions would be fine, but then Spells that don't deal direct damage might have issues like Essence Drain or Contagion. Technically thats quite similar to how those skills work right now but instead of making them more gear dependend it would do quite the opposite and they would be even less gear dependend then they are.


There are two things I feel important for Attack based builds and both kinda are more based on overall feel than power level. Since technically it is impossible to balance everything out equally and people will say melee is OP when it is just 2% better or melee is crap if its 2% worse than other playstyles. The important thing is that melee feels good and plausible to play.

1. Playstyle

Warcries were a nice thought to improve Melee however they have one terrible flaw, they are awful to use. When I imagine a warrior in the heat of battle I guess he is able to shout while swinging his weapon. Yeah he should be cabable of that, they are often not the brightest but if men are cabable of something it is shouting while doing something else and woman are cabable of multitasking anyway. I would even limit this to attacks, since silence hurts casters it is obvious they need their voice for casting and you cannot cast a spell and shout at the same time. This would mean that whenever you press the button for your shout it is cast instant and does not interrupt your movement or attack. That would make Enduring Cry or all the others feel so much better.

2. Itemization

GGG did one good thing already and made a few more weapons good for crit based builds by pushing some basecrit values up. However I feel the need to do the same in the opposite direction. Push base crit down and give some weapons better base damage in compensation. Those weapons would be what you want to use with RT. I also feel like it is important that there are plenty of weapons like Kaoms Primacy that people can easily afford to enter a certain build. GGG improved on this front as well and even though these weapons like Marohi Erqi, Kaoms Primacy or Doomsower aren't all that powerful for a regular 2h build they are all a good way to farm some currency for a better weapon. I feel though that there aren't that good 1h options and some of them like Binos are two expensive (and maybe even a bit too good) for that purpose.


I'm also not entirely sure why controlled destruction is spell only it could be used for attacks as well, since lately spells got a lot of new support options while attacks are kinda lacking.

Having gone to the endgame with several characters on both sides... Yeah, there's a huge disparity there. It boils down to a few key problems:

• Melee mandates tankiness, but you STILL die more than ranged. My safest character by far is still my horrifically-squishy (3.8k life, 18k eva, no CWDT, no EC, etc) archer. Meanwhile, going 150-200% increased life, 300-500% or more armour, multi-exalt gear for melee? I can be able to flask/aura my way to 70k on pure armour, (>100k for IR) have 6k+ life, and STILL get randomly spiked to death more often than the squishy. It's something that simple stating alone doesn't fix: the game's own mechanics favor staying at range.
• Ranged has better AoE AND single-target clear. This is a glaring shortsight here. I've been playing with Cleave, which, pre-mapping, has worked OKAY, but I'm noting that the clears are not as great as I could get with most ranged skills. Bow and spell skills always have great multi-target capability: Arc is a guaranteed 8-hit, and the AoEs are generally much bigger; if they're smaller, they're projectiles, and GMP fixes everything; Projectiles in specific get VASTLY better at covering big areas once you stack GMP with either pierce, chain, or fork. And single-target DPS is aided too, thanks to the miracle of pseudo-shotgunning. By contrast, genuine melee strikes simply can't even come close to matching it; GMP never works because it's only +4 projectiles, while the projectile-launching melee skills (molten, ice blades, lightning strike) already HAVE extra projectiles, neutering its effectiveness.
• Non-crit is a huge handicap, and decent crit is virtually impossible for a Marauder or Duelist. I've tried it several ways; taking RT, while in THEORY makes specing easier, is always taken out of NECESSITY, not preference; for damage output, it's either "build crit, or go RT;" there is no in-between. And the melee crit options are just a plain joke. Crit DPS is *always* higher than RT DPS, even when both trees assign the same number of points to offense. It's simple math: getting +500% damage and RT can be equalled by a crit build with 50% chance and 400% multi... Simply by having a mere +140% damage; and you can easily get that 50%/400% crit without sacrificing even 360% worth of damage nodes.

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goetzjam wrote:

Lets also not forget that GGG nerfed the phys belt recipe, so making weapons while leveling is a bit more painful.

THIS nerf, when I discovered it while beta-testing 2.0, was a HUGE head-scratcher for me. I mean, what, specifically, was the issue they hoped to address? Aside from making leveling with weapon skills far more painful, (and automatic transmute+rustic+new weapon always gave a good +80% fallback) it ALSO made racing a bit less of a level ground for everyone. Now higher-scale races often depend more on RNG... Or getting donations from the followers of your stream.

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goetzjam wrote:

In terms of spells in general, keep in mind self cast spell casters weren't really popular before this patch, after 2.0 for a good reason, lets not all jump on the bandwagon to throw them into the dumpster so quickly.

They were decently popular in the 2.0 era... Just that all the hype went to totems. Also, it's not just about self-cast spell users... But bow-users as well. Every patch my Tornado Shot archer (the least creative character I've ever made) is by far vastly more powerful than any of my melee characters, in spite of countless hours of theorycrafting and skilldrasil tweaking.

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They were decently popular in the 2.0 era... Just that all the hype went to totems. Also, it's not just about self-cast spell users... But bow-users as well. Every patch my Tornado Shot archer (the least creative character I've ever made) is by far vastly more powerful than any of my melee characters, in spite of countless hours of theorycrafting and skilldrasil tweaking.

Not really you mean Incinerate... that was basically it and that was ridicolous broken (even though not as much as the nerf it got might make it look like).

There are actually a few very simply things I thought that could be done, because what they did was good, they introduced new defensive means for melees, however they are basically all used for casters now.

There would be quite simply changes that could actually help a lot. they could change RT to work like Kongors, even though maybe with another buff like E-Charges on Crit. There are a lot of very simple options GGG already starts to make ranged feel less ranged, the new tiny arenas punish ranged chars a lot but then again they always come up with nice ideas like revenants that heavily punish melees.

I think the Leeching mechanic may in part play a role in the dominance of ranged builds. I don't recall the details, but back when melee was the meta, and all casters complained about how inferior they are, only melee skills and builds had efficient, powerful leech. Then again, that was also before Spell Echo, so only melee had a Multistrike ability.

Perhaps someone else remembers more accurately than I do: What was the reason melee dominated the meta around the time of the start of the open beta?

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Mivo wrote:

Perhaps someone else remembers more accurately than I do: What was the reason melee dominated the meta around the time of the start of the open beta?

Melee had a pseudo 7 link with Bringer of Rain.

Well, when it comes to spells, ranged attacks, and melee, a few things ought to happen. I'll start with spells

-They need to lose base damage, and require proper weapons and affixes for their damage. How this happens is up to GGG, but I'm thinking local %spell damage and cast speed affixes (but not implicits) on weapons should apply in a similar manner to how %physical damage and attack speed affixes apply to attacks... effectively multiplicatively with non-local sources, and additive with other local sources (although values would need to be tweaked). %Lightning/cold/fire damage would still be the same as it is now, as would implicits.

-Spell Echo needs to be completely reworked. It's a horribly-designed support, and in no way is 'the spell version of multistrike'. It's nothing but a 'more cast speed' support, with basically none of the drawbacks of multistrike; it roots you in place for less time (and even the nature of being rooted is less severe since you're almost certainly at range), it's a much better dps amp, it doesn't force target switching, it doesn't hurt your damage-per-hit nearly as much (which is important for stuns and status ailments)... it's just plain overpowered.

I would make Spell Echo legitimately make spells echo... I mean, after you cast a (non-minion) spell as usual (except there'd be a %less damage penalty), a second or so later the spell passively fires off of your character (towards the original target point or in that direction at max range if the target point is out of reach now) dealing a fraction of the original cast's damage. Then, another second or so later, it passively fires off a third time for an even smaller fraction of the original cast's damage. Like, the second 'cast' would deal half the original damage, the third would deal a quarter, and the original spell would have deal '20% less damage' at level 1 that diminishes by like .5% per level (meaning at level 1 you could potentially land 40% more damage if all 3 casts hit, scaling up to ~56 more damage at level 21). THAT would be an interesting support that you'd have to actively work to take advantage of, rather than just being some ubiquitous cast speed amp.


-Rework Controlled Destruction too. The supposed 'non-crit spell support' barely punishes its use with crit at all. Not to mention it'd be a good way to buff non-crit attackers, who could use at least one mechanic crit can't use. So, make Controlled Destruction:

"25-44% more spell and attack damage. Cannot critically strike."



As for bows:

-First of all, get rid of 'projectile damage' scaling bleed and poison and ignite. Same thing goes for all the other bogus scalings like 'trap' or 'minion' that melees have no way to use. That takes care of poison/bleed/ignite being blatantly (and effortlessly) superior for ranged builds compared to melee.

-put a cap on projectile range, regardless of how much projectile speed you've got, and make that range just barely off-screen. Offscreening is ludicrously cheesy and safe, and is a huge contributing factor to bows being so overpowered.

-Tone down bow (and wand, I guess) affixes. More specifically, flat-damage affixes, especially when bows also have quivers to boost their dps while 2handers get nothing. Bows naturally have about 1/3 less base dps than 2h melee weapons, there's absolutely no excuse for them getting the same magnitude flat bonuses as 2h melees.

-Lower base crit damage with projectile attacks, even from melee weapons, down to 120%. Same goes for crit damage with spells.


And finally, melee:

-Add a new equipment type that melees can equip in their offhand, even if they're using a 2hander. Something that just gives them a degree of a dps statstick like quivers and offhand weapons or can potentially provide them some of the defensive affixes they miss out on by not having a shield.

-Recovery from leech from melee hits should be increased. Like, when you're leeching from a true 'melee' hit, you should recover 75% more life/mana from the leech, without this '75% more' counting against your leech rate cap. There's no reason casters and especially bows should be able to leech nearly as effectively as melees when they suffer so much less risk.

-Sprinkle some more defenses/life into melee-weapon-type nodes, especially notables, possibly even tying them to only being active while that type of weapon is wielded to prevent people from just grabbing them for the defense as they pass by.

-For the love of god, put some damn movespeed in the bottom/left side of the tree. There's a pathetically low amount there, and if anything melees need movespeed the most to gtfo out dangerous jams or avoid the telegraphed one-shot mechs they can't just stay out-of-range of all the time.

-This one is a bit iffy, but consider making it easier to 5L/6L a 2handed axe, sword, or mace (not staves though, sorry phys staff-users). One of the only advantages to using a 2hander is gated behind a cost too high (on average) for the vast majority to pay... it's just silly and unreasonable.