Two-handed melee weapons need a buff?

Hi there.

Something struck me when i was searching for interesting melee builds last night for the upcoming new leagues, one-handed and dual wield builds seems to not only match two-handed in dps but to my surprise also out dps two-handed?(at least dual wielding)

A bit confused i then asked a more experienced friend and he told me two-handed are often considered the worst kind of choice with the exception being staves, due to a higher crit base and block but since they roll caster stats most people won't bother. He also told me two-hander has a place in the early temp-leagues start when gear is bad or when having access to legacy Kaom's Heart, that's pretty much it according to him.

So analyzing this further, my conclusion is that two-handed weapons are good initially but because of a low crit base most will go for resolute technique. Consequently i have to ask myself if critial strike is the issue? Possible too strong compared to other dps stats and therefore one-handed melee builds with the full defensive benefit provided by a shield or dual wielding-block can still achieve potentially hundreds of thousands dps with good gear. What's your opinion, is two-handed melee underpowered or not?

Depends on your definition of strong I guess?

I saw a 2h build with some insane Exquisite Blade go all tooltip warrior and break 1 mil tooltip on cyclone.

So for highest damage possible a good Exquisite Blade should outdps any other weapon in the game because you can cap crit on it and still go upwards of 837 pdps on mirrored ones which is roughly 50-60% more damage compared to a mirrored dagger.
It also lets you use the good sword crit nodes and benefit from a implicit 60% global critical strike multiplier, making it a better choice than staffs imo.

RT 2h is also in a better spot now that Berserker is a thing, it allows it to stay competitive with crit builds without using a 600 dps weapon.

Two handed DPS is perfectly fine. However the survivability is the big problem.


RT 1h & 2h are comparable
but good dps with 1h crit is easier to achieve because of the daggers and crit maces.

To get 2h insane dps is very easy, similar to bow, with crit and not rt, the dps scales exactly the same than a 1h crit setup.


but it requires 2 hand crit weapons, there is only one axe, one sword and staffs.
So the choice is VERY limited. And the nodes are difficult to get ...



Then tere is the loss of the shield mods and block, life & res... eva/ar... or utility.

also, in this game, it's easy to get high dps, the balance between survivability and damage is more important, for this reason 2h is disliked

And reflect is a 2h killer.


to prove my point, here is my 2h poison build
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1654356
with a mirrored exquisite blade plus abyssus it's 10 700 000 dps O_o

Thoo 2 hand abyssus is a suicidal, lack of shield, reflect damage per strike will oneshot you. Even with converted damage, lightning coil toh and endurance charges.

I think in general, 2-handed weapons are fine.

With that said, I would like to see some kind of buff to resolute technique.

Eventually PoE might have full out 2 handed weapon block support.

Other than that they made earthquake which is kinda like a big, big ass slow weapon buff.

While I think 2 handed weapons are a bit weak I am sure GGG factored in a potential 2nd 6-link setup outside of chest... and clearly bows are outside this restriction, as the mods on bows scales just as high as 2 handed melee weapons while still allowing to have an offhand equipped in the form of quivers.

They're actually so fucking bad lol then again melee IS bad hahahahah ahhhh sorry Melee.

melee is bad for survivability / time spent to close the gap / time spent avoid boss mechanic.

but there is projectile/ long range skills with melee weapons ;)

and ST is good again :P lightning strike chaining far shot ranger is awesome!

Frost blade is somewhat decent but i cannot recommand it.

Sunder is META.

Earthquake ROCKS




Volta spark is cancer!

When bows can shoot millions of arrows without any setup/aim time and arnt required to carry any amunition/arrows ect and the game continues to add things that can 1 shot characters in melee range there really isnt much you can do to make melee look appealing by comparison.

Melee is the worst role in the game. Friends never let friends go full melee.

Only good melee is EQ Marohi where you one shot the whole screen before anything can reach you. Add blasphemy Enfeeble/TC to the mix and you are immortal.