Melee rework needed badly.

Pretty much what davidnn5 said.

In order to make melee competitive against ranged, you need to give it something ranged doesn't have - because ranged already has, well, range as an advantage.

In a clearspeed meta, only clearspeed advantages matter.

As long as loot and XP come from kills (as opposed to some other source), it will be a clearspeed meta.

The gearing nature of ARPGs makes damage capping unfeasible.

Therefore, assuming loot and XP come from kills, the only way to balance melee and ranged is to deny AoE and/or movement skills to ranged.

Ranged in PoE has GMP and Chain. Therefore melee in PoE is fucked.

Note: Some kind of Steal skill a la Final Fantasy would be an example of non-kill looting.

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Fruz wrote:

To re-balance melee, GGG would need to... butchered range so that melee could have an advantage.

I think that melee is too far gone in this game to do it right... at least in the traditional sense. I'd argue that GGG shouldn't butcher current ranged skills, but increase the range of melee skills (and increase their damage in some cases). Dual wield Cleave, for example, would be a sensible build type if it wasn't for its ridiculously small AoE. Is anyone using Melee Splash these days when the AoE isn't exciting and there's a damage penalty for linking it to already mediocre skills?

changing fortify to a 'more' damage from an 'increased' damage (even at a reduced amount) would go a long way towards bringing damage up to par with ranged skills for more conventional melee skills (earthquake is already stellar because it can benefit from aoe and duration gems like a spell does), while still providing the basic survivability from fortify (as it stands currently, it's more of a gem tax to survive in melee range, which ranged characters don't need to bother with and can fill with more damage. melee splash is a similar gem tax that even comes with a penalty)

the tree is in a similar position: melees pay a hefty tax on the tree to simply survive in their only effective range, while ranged characters can replace that with even more damage and run largely on just effective hp. this could be remedied by adding some defensive stats onto the offensive nodes (such as improved armor or improved evasion onto types of weapon-specific damage nodes).

this is only made worse by most endgame content being designed to oneshot you regardless of how tanky you are (barring extreme specialization to the exclusion of all else), which shifts ones mentality from survival to damage output (kill it before it kills you)--because if you're going to be killed in one hit anyway, why worry about mitigation, and why put yourself close to the boss (and within easy instantkill range) when you could be across the screen from it in relative safety, while also giving more time to react to their attacks and relative immunity to the kinds of whammies that bosses tend to have (big windup smashes, aoe debuffs from the boss, damage reflect, enemies exploding on death, etc etc)

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

In order to make melee competitive against ranged, you need to give it something ranged doesn't have - because ranged already has, well, range as an advantage.

Yes, not the other way around. The latest Melee skills that have been released have all had either large AoE or more "Ranged" Melee Skills. Example, Earthquake, Lacerate, Reave, Frost Blades (after buff, more like a bow skill now, seriously wtf?), Sunder (is actually more in line with melee, but still feels like a medium ranged spell).

A lot of people bag out the older Melee skills but I honestly think they are more inline with what "melee" actually is rather than all the new shit that has come out. Do the old skills feel clunky? Yeah a little, until you pair multistrike with it then its more enjoyable, but we should be able to auto-target without the need for multistrike.

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Skronos wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

In order to make melee competitive against ranged, you need to give it something ranged doesn't have - because ranged already has, well, range as an advantage.

Yes, not the other way around. The latest Melee skills that have been released have all had either large AoE or more "Ranged" Melee Skills. Example, Earthquake, Lacerate, Reave, Frost Blades (after buff, more like a bow skill now, seriously wtf?), Sunder (is actually more in line with melee, but still feels like a medium ranged spell).

A lot of people bag out the older Melee skills but I honestly think they are more inline with what "melee" actually is rather than all the new shit that has come out. Do the old skills feel clunky? Yeah a little, until you pair multistrike with it then its more enjoyable, but we should be able to auto-target without the need for multistrike.

The problem is there's NOTHING you could give a "true" melee skill which ranged can't do better in this game. That's why the new GGG design ethos is "ranged skill with Melee tag." Designed themselves into a corner.

Even then, I'm kinda against "single-target melee" on principle. Melee should get good AoE. Ranged skills should be the ones where single target is the concern.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

That's why the new GGG design ethos is "ranged skill with Melee tag." Designed themselves into a corner.

At least people are noticing what's going on with Melee. Even if we voice our opinions and thoughts about what melee should be, there's no way of getting what either of us want, as the game has developed too much now and is stuck in its current state. Melee, Ranged, Caster will all blend into one with the only difference being the appearance of our weapons.

So flashback leagues...I would like to see them only allow skills pre-release or something. Haha, that would be interesting. Would see a lot of people play ranged...

Here's how you design melee/ranged balance in a new ARPG in 3 easy steps.

1. Maximize melee offensive coolness - movement skills and short-range AoE. Because ranged is going to have to be balanced off this and if you don't make melee FUCKING AWESOME you won't be able to give ranged any cool toys at all. If your melee skills remind people of Nightcrawler from the X-Men you're probably close.

2. Set up a map of enemies with 1 HP each and which deal no damage. Design ranged skills such that melee and ranged have EQUAL clearspeed under such conditions. This establishes balance for when players are ridiculously stronger than the comment and power-farming... which would be utterly naive for a dev not to fear would happen, even if every effort was made to prevent it. Having your balance fail because players figured out how to power-farm is failing balance security 101.

Note that Step 2 here greatly limits the amount of gnarly shit you can do with ranged while maintaining balance. Stuff like multiple projectiles is right out. I guess stuff like Pierce is still fine.

3. Have melee do slightly more damage and test "challenging" content until it feels balanced. I'd say "add some dangers which melee will experience while ranged won't" but every developer does this automatically and no conscious thought process is required to ensure such melee-specific dangers are present. In Step 2 these dangers are irrelevant because enemy damage is irrelevant, but in Step 3 we're balancing for "hard" content. Melee needs a little more DPS to get the risk-reward right and compensate for the additional time spent on manual dodges. Damage mitigation is irrelevant because ranged takes 0% damage from melee-specific dangers; you're simply compensating for time spent positioning/maneuvering with a faster kill.

It's not really just melee, PoE really needs reblanaced, top-down.

1 Armor needs to mean more. Even at high values, you'll barely notice it vs. bosses. Evasion is good, it does what it's supposed to, you evade, the attack does not hit you. ES you can build for by itself. Armor, you need to stack high levels of life for the armor effect to even be noticable.

2 Single target attacks should ALWAYS do more damage than AoE, by at least 30%. AoE's benefit is it hits multiple targets at once.

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Rafein wrote:

1 Armor needs to mean more. Even at high values, you'll barely notice it vs. bosses. Evasion is good, it does what it's supposed to, you evade, the attack does not hit you. ES you can build for by itself. Armor, you need to stack high levels of life for the armor effect to even be noticable.

I am sorry but that is wrong.
Pop a well rolled granite of Iron skin, and if you already have enough speced in armour and enough from the skill tree, you get tremendously hight amount of it, which makes a big difference.

And you need to stack high level of buffer for any build anyway, otherwise elemental damage will end up killing you.



Another thing that could be done regarding melee ... would be granting many mobs a high resistance / evasion or powerful mechanics against ranged.

Like, minions with a shield get 50% block chance against ranged, or take 50% less damage against ranges.
And that 50% would not be enough anyway.

If a projectile has traveled quite some distance, mobs could have either a chance to resist it completely, or just a increased reduction modifier against it.
Such mechanics could start shifting the balance a bit but .... I hardly see GGG doing it.

( And proximity shield is not enough at all, mines and totems bypass it anyway ).

melee is an afterthought. subpar choice. a fools build.

entire game is developed and tested with ranged crit fotm bs characters. melee.. looks cool but it is so gimped that it REQUIRES certain patches (like outlandish dps, instant leech to cover reflect and sick EHP) to even be relevant

compare ultimate melee drop and ultimate bow drop. first one is a lacklustre 2h mace that has nothing that makes it good and the other oprn several options on a most flexible item type (crit phys bow).

would likw to see a melee non-EQ build do this hydra guy with mods.


it is ofc playable and going full dps solves some issues but it makes melee building one dimensional and limits players to 2 skills. and even then it is laughable compared with mid range fotm ranged build.

after seeing these ultimate uniques ive lost all hope and have no future plans regarding playing melee. it is just pointless. it is safer to play 3.5k hp srs witch than 5k 10k ar/50% ev/ 40% block melee.. so why bother?