Difference between melee and range builds.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The reason for the "melee is shit" threads is because short-range is shit in this game.

That, and by "melee" what they mean is short-ranged. Hence "melee vs ranged," what they really mean is "ranged vs not." I personally wouldn't say skills like Ground Slam, Reave, or Ice Crash are shit, but the reason these skills are usable is precisely because they are not short-range skills, and retain the ability to murder entire screens of monsters without really getting close. They are not "true melee," at least not in the sense of "melee vs ranged;" they're ranged melee.

And that's what a skill needs to be viable in this meta: murdering whole screens without getting close. Because if you do need to get close, then you're putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to if you were ranged.

Which they've added various things to interrupt that flow for more ranged of character, which people basically ignore those facts completely.

You mean, this game is now difficulty-tuned for ranged characters such that it's no longer a walk in the park for them, and ranged characters can die if they're not careful?

Well, yes. That's true. GGG would be bad if they didn't tune the game for the ranged meta.

Not that this makes playing nonranged any easier. If anything, it makes things all the more difficult for users of nonranged skills.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The reason for the "melee is shit" threads is because short-range is shit in this game.

Plain and simple, yes.

And with the 2.x mob density I got no hope left that it will change someday. You "need" huge AoE skills and "not ranged" doesn't have it by definition.

My prediction is that we will see more lame skills like earthquake as melee.

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Sa_Re wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The reason for the "melee is shit" threads is because short-range is shit in this game.

Plain and simple, yes.

And with the 2.x mob density I got no hope left that it will change someday. You "need" huge AoE skills and "not ranged" doesn't have it by definition.

My prediction is that we will see more lame skills like earthquake as melee.

You take that back right now earthquake looks sick as fuck.

Gentlemen, I truly appreciate all the opinion and i enjoyed reading all of them. But the topic is a little derailed at this point so please allow me to clarify something.

I was emphasising on true melee vs range when it comes to leveling, endgame content is a vastly different experience depending on the playstyle. Act bosses are the perfect example for this argument. Brutus has hard hitting melee damage, melee has to avoid the geysers for Merveil, Vaal' deadly slam, Dom's shock ground + how he loves to touch you etc.

I never say there are no downsides to range builds. Matter of fact, I am no stranger to range builds because I played a lot of CI/Low life range builds in the past and they can be very squishy during certain situations.

However, range builds are much safer now after the nerf to leap slam, well, after GGG changed the mechanics for croaking chimeras in general. Same goes to devoureres and a good cwdt setup can help deal with pork-qupine spikes (kudos if you know where the joke comes from). Any other mob mechanics can be easily avoided or dodged if you pay enough attention to your surroundings.

One can also argue that melee builds are also safer now with fortify and spells no longer shortgun. So there isn't really much to say or to compare when it comes to endgame contents because range and melee builds have different playstyles. well cept for those molotov tossing cannibals cause, f them.


Anyways a small update on the build. Bladefall pretty much carried me all the way to Merciless without any major problems (Again emphasising on the range aspect of bladefall regardless of how op the skill is.. Firestorm/flame totem/bow builds can pretty much do the same). Not to mention I was running dual curse with enfeeble + temp chains so mobs that managed to get past the bladefall curtain pose no threats.

Here's the funny thing though. I respeced back to melee after having enough stat points and gears to use a Mjolner, supported with arc and storm call. (400 str and 30p int is pretty insane). Never played a Coc style build before so it was really refreshing seeing multiple skills appear on screen at the same time. Clear speed was more than decent and I am more than willing to sacrifice some dps for a more engaging gameplay.

Then I got curious about discharge (hated the skill) so I bought a Romira's Banquet so I can try a baby discharge build and see what the fuss is all about.

Discharge is op.

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Sa_Re wrote:

And with the 2.x mob density I got no hope left that it will change someday. You "need" huge AoE skills and "not ranged" doesn't have it by definition.

This boils down a lot of the issues here for clear speed. Since a typical map appears to have around 800-1,000 monsters in it, hitting multiple of them at once is key to getting them down in the quickest time.

Fixing this will basically require rebalancing/reworking virtually every single melee gem; Cyclone (with its big AoE and movement) is the only exception, given it already can hit many targets per use.

While a different sort of game, one that comes to mind of an example of how to PROPERLY balance things is Terraria; while a side-scrolling 2D game, combat-wise it follows a lot of aRPG conventions; big packs of mobs, a need for faster clear, and a split between melee, magic, and ranged. As it happens, MELEE is the type that has the best AoE, to make up for the added danger of having to be up and close; when magic or ranged attacks there have "pierce" ability, the game tends to hard-cap the number of pass-throughs it's allowed, so it doesn't become an easy, safe way to maximize total DPS output.

While the exact mechanics wouldn't quite work here, (especially given non-projectile spells and attacks like Bladefall and Blast Rain) a lot of the core concept could be followed; melee needs to at least be able to be CLOSE to ranged's AoE capacity. A lot of this could be solved by simply extending the AoE reach of most skills; sure, they won't match the visible reach of the weapon, but that already fails to happen with Cyclone. (again, the only popularly-seen-as-viable "melee" skill... A pattern emerges!)

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goetzjam wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Don't you watch havoc, Kappa.

:D


I tried, but I got so jelly about his ability to speed clear lvl75 canyon maps for 5 hours straight without picking up any loot that I had to rage quit my entire net browser.

Epic, was that him just leveling and not giving a fuck? Or was that one of those times where he had a "support" character loot for him and share part of the drops.

hehe, yeah he had a loot support i think for maps and chaos+ currency the few times I tuned in.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The reason for the "melee is shit" threads is because short-range is shit in this game.

That, and by "melee" what they mean is short-ranged. Hence "melee vs ranged," what they really mean is "ranged vs not." I personally wouldn't say skills like Ground Slam, Reave, or Ice Crash are shit, but the reason these skills are usable is precisely because they are not short-range skills, and retain the ability to murder entire screens of monsters without really getting close. They are not "true melee," at least not in the sense of "melee vs ranged;" they're ranged melee.

And that's what a skill needs to be viable in this meta: murdering whole screens without getting close. Because if you do need to get close, then you're putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to if you were ranged.

this is true. If this was the argument I would have a lot less to disagree with in whats been said.

I die on spell casters, this is the thing, they actually die in combat sometimes. The melee characters dont, they just dont die. People were complaining that Carnage in Colonnade could 1 shot a 20k armour character, so I went in there on a melee character and recorded it for everyone to actually see what the reality is. The char had 16,600 armour and Carnage couldnt kill it, no fortify, no flasks, just stood there with endurance up and it was impossible for him to kill the ranger, he couldnt out damage the life regen through her mitigation, could have stood there literally for weeks letting him hit her.

This is carnage in colonnade with a melee char who had 100% rare gear. Simply life, defense, life regen on tree, no defense keystones, no max block legacy aegis kaoms heart lol perm immortal call gimmick build, as basic as it gets rare gear defense %, build done. So ya, I obviously agree you are in more danger being a short range build, thats simply a fact. But what exactly are we scared of getting close to? All my spell builds would have died in front of carnage, very quickly. Is everyone expressing this concern exclusively playing 140% quant core maps all day? I dont feel like they are, for the most its my impression they very rarely play those sort of maps with any build if at all. My personal experience of the game is completely at odds with the idea that being in melee range as a melee is of much concern at all outside of a very select few red tier map bosses with certain mods. If people are talking about those specific encounters with specific melee builds maybe I agree completely, but thats not "most parts of the game" thats a completely different statement, and so is the issue in the original post that seems to have been lost in the ongoing melee concerns.





I actually agree that spell damage is a little beefy early game. Maybe not right out of the gate but by the time you get added light + cold and can run double heralds the scaling there makes a lot of spells feel like you are leveling with twink unique melee powerleveling weapons. Its a sort of early to mid game issue. Ive been using a lot of freeze pulse + flame totem shadow specs for racing and leveling to merciless docks in order to mf them early league etc, you can seriously truck with those spells through mid game. Playing bladefall/vortex leveling in this league seemed to be even stronger.

Late game though I feel like spell builds deserve the extra damage they now have. Theyre so squishy and when you push them to the extreme they were doing about 1/2 to 1/4 of the damage attack builds were doing at the same gear levels, while getting gibbed by monsters that couldnt even damage a basic melee spec.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The reason for the "melee is shit" threads is because short-range is shit in this game.

That, and by "melee" what they mean is short-ranged. Hence "melee vs ranged," what they really mean is "ranged vs not." I personally wouldn't say skills like Ground Slam, Reave, or Ice Crash are shit, but the reason these skills are usable is precisely because they are not short-range skills, and retain the ability to murder entire screens of monsters without really getting close. They are not "true melee," at least not in the sense of "melee vs ranged;" they're ranged melee.

And that's what a skill needs to be viable in this meta: murdering whole screens without getting close. Because if you do need to get close, then you're putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to if you were ranged.

this is true. If this was the argument I would have a lot less to disagree with in whats been said.

This has always been the argument. At least the popular one. It's just that most motherfuckers can't articulate their point well. But if you were paying attention that's what they're trying to say. And it's also what OP articulated in the OP. Well.

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POE202 wrote:

But that doesn't stop me from playing a melee build (like in your face melee build) so I am not talking about skills like Reave or Frost blades.

See?

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sidtherat wrote:

most arpg games at least try to somehow close the gap between ranged and melee - be it more survivability to melee or less damage to ranged. there are ways better or worse but there are ways

poe does not try. at all.

completely false statement.




the amount of nonsense in this thread is comical, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

so many facts posted, let me deal with them one by one


what you do in pretty much all threads about this issue is you wave your 1% gear around and repeat ad nauseam the charges/armor stuff and then you bring the Kole/Carnage and how you can facetank him.

cool. very cool. i bet you can also facetank some higher level phys attack bosses.

now take that character to the bosses that are actually dangerous: death and taxes maybe? you know, ones that deal elemental spell damage that your precious charges/evasion/armor do nothing against. and ones you have to facetank as a melee because well.. you have no choice

this is the problem (or you can just like you do despite claiming that melee is fine - take spectral throw and attack them from range, because melee is fine)\

ranged characters maybe cannot facetank Carnage (in fact they can because there is little stopping them from doing so) but they DO NOT HAVE TO. they can kite (or just offscreen him 'oh, that was a boss? cool' kind of way) and ignore all the dangerous stuff. IGNORE it.

fun fact: ggg really did nothing to fix melee/ranged disparity. fortify is universal. counterattacks are.. well.. hard to notice. mob affixes are still there (volatile/obelisk/bearers crap that ranged do not really notice). even vaal pact is now out of the reach of non-crit-dagger builds. warcries changed nothing and are also universal. so what ggg did to even the playing field a little?


you can twist and spin but:

top players (where gear is no problem) are ignoring melee as it is not efficient and risky. despite paper potential damage being the highest - it is not needed AND it is barely enough to do Uber - yet you can still die when stars align (shock ground/added as every element/crit/fleet/-max..). ranged can dance around and just dgaf

mid players struggle for gear - melee with bad gear is nigh-unplayable and despite your outrageous claims good weapon (300pdps 1h) is a tall order for most players (who have a life and do not want to slave in poe-mines). the same mid-players can pick any bow build and experience pretty much everything



so in summary: melee is fine but just spectral throw the dangerous stuff?

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sidtherat wrote:

so in summary: melee is fine but just spectral throw the dangerous stuff?

aaaaaaaand yeah, that's pretty much exactly what i do, at least for 2handers. Even on stunlockers I still take along spectral throw (I hate how groundslam feels, dunno why). It's kinda annoying always having to reserve a 4L (or back weapon set) for ST, but that's the way it generally goes. I mean, admittedly I like using neutral-speed ST and maintaining proper range to hit 4-5 times per attack, but it'd be nice if it wasn't as much of a necessity.