What's "+2 melee gems" good for, ever?

Found a few of these and started thinking again: who would ever want this on any rare weapon?

What build would possibly benefit more from a +2 to melee gems mod,
than any other: %phys, flat phys, crit, crit multi, speed, res?

These base mods are always stronger than the effect which is gained from +2 to melee gems,
so why trade? I don't get it, what is this for?

Here's the thing: There are tons of bad mods for weapons. There has to be. If you're almost guaranteed to get a good weapon every time you ID or Alch one, then there's a) low value to even high-tier rare weapons as they become much more common and b) crafting items becomes relatively useless as you'll find a single rare drop early in maps that can carry you to endgame due to the high chance of having 4+ useful mods.
Having +2 melee gems, etc. possible makes finding items with that mod feel bad, yes, but it also makes finding a GG weapon feel sooooo good, or finding a weapon WITHOUT it that can be mastercrafted actually matter.
At least, that's how I feel about the subject, but I'm not always right ;D

It's a relic from back when Viper Strike scaled differently.

---

I hate the "there has to be bad mods!" argument for an affix system. There needs to be bad affixes... for a given build. Globally bad affixes is just shitty design.

+X melee skills should be useful to something but it's just not.

That's a far cry different than getting "+flat cold damage" on a sword when you have physical scaling, or getting "+life" on an energy shield chest intended to be used for CI. Both are useful affixes to someone, but just not to you at the time.

Also, we have affix tiers to generate gobs of bad affixes all by itself. Getting a low-tier life on an otherwise great armor piece is absolutely crushing, for example.

"

Quantume wrote:

Found a few of these and started thinking again: who would ever want this on any rare weapon?

Well, if you ran a 2H elemental hit build so the gem would be socketed in your weapon it might be an alternative to WED or another ele damage roll (though a lowish one), therefore raising your chance to get a good ele hit weapon.

But yeah, it's a terrible stretch, if we had a melee equivalent to explosive or caustic arrow it would be a useful mod, as it is - it's crap.

"

pneuma wrote:

I hate the "there has to be bad mods!" argument for an affix system. There needs to be bad affixes... for a given build. Globally bad affixes is just shitty design.

Besides, we already have the weighted chance system. Getting a good phys weapon is real easy in early game but later on phys mods hit rock bottom while elemental rolls stay the same weight so getting a good ele weapon becomes real easy and good phys weapons are hard as hell.

The situation is probably a result of multiplicative scaling of physical weapon mods which is required for god tier weapons. Shit design, yeah, but it's probably a necessary evil if you run an online game.

the only skill currently that gains more than just a tiny bit of damage is Elemental hit, but seriously, this skill is very far from being popular

it vendors for alch shards so there is that

And then there are the random life regeneration mod, that has values to low as to be meaningless after the first 3 or 4 less.

When T6 regenerated 1-2 life/second, and T1, which requires an item of level 78, regenerates 6.02 to 7 life/s (on body armour), you know that somebody has taken a bad joke one step too far.

Multiply the values by 10 and they might be valuable as is to some builds. Alternatively, divide the values by 5 and make them life PERCENTAGE per second, and they would become valuable to other builds.

So I guess one way to buff it would be to change the mod from +2 gem levels,
up to a flat dmg multiplier, like "50%/ 75%/ 100% more dmg with socketed melee gems".
That way it could compete with the other mods, right?
And players would finally have a new mod to look for in a weapon, other than the current GG mods.

We need some INT melee skills. There's a lot of potential for melee skills which use flat damage.

--------------------------------
eg: maybe one which needs a sceptre or staff, and which builds up charges that then apply to your next hit of another skill? etc... etc... lots of options I'm sure.