[SUGG] What if Fortify had stacks?

Just had a minor epiphany (or stroke not sure yet).

Melee needs a rework. The rework has to be beneficial for melee more than for ranged (oh hello fortify being used by every caster!)

What if fortify had stacks that would provide additional damage reduction (and possibly damage effectiveness to kill 2 birds with 1 stone) which would reset if a damage spell was used (ie. not curses).

This means in the thick of battle as melee, you're getting stronger and stronger. Instead of having to run away from every thing and/or use "melee skills" that hit 3/4 of the screen away.

Stacks could either have a hard cap or a duration so that you lose previous stacks while still maintaining the newer ones. Reduce the initial effects to further remove incentive for caster builds. Let's say it's 5% effect base and goes up 5% every hit. Melee on average has for example 5-10 stacks for 25-50% effects.

Yes and why? No and why? Pie/cake and why?

I like it as it's a creative way to make it more melee focused and not something you can stick on whirling blades and go.

It's more beneficial to multistrike support melee, but if the stacks were low, then I could see it not being as big an issue.

Hmm that's a good point. Maybe they can do like Frenzy/Power Siphon where you only get 1 charge per attack no matter the number of hits.

Ideally there should be a way to have it beneficial for both the slow hitting EQ and the ultra fast hitting Reave. Not sure if it could be tied to your attack speed though. I know other games have internal cool downs based on your attack speed. Not sure I want this in PoE though, too many mechanics that are not obvious if you don't research it all.

Doesn't that just make it too similar to endurance charges? Get some stacks of %mitigation? Only difference would be fortify works on elemental damage but endurance charges only work on physical damage.

sounds remarkably like endurance charges.

If Fortify had stacks, ranged would still be safer, still clear faster, and still require content to have difficulty tuned to its level.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

If Fortify had stacks, ranged would still be safer, still clear faster, and still require content to have difficulty tuned to its level.

Yeah I agree that's why I came up with the suggestion above. Theoretically, what should be done is a complete rework of how armor works, the passive tree, all skills not just melee, % modifiers, % affix on gear, and the speed clearing we have gotten used to.

My bandaid solution allows melee to not get 1 shot randomly and could even be tied to more power and therefore faster clear than right now. Unless they make every melee skill into a turbo chicken, it will never really have the clearing speed of ranged in the current game. But we're not going to go back to 2013 when kill rares took 6 seconds and bosses could take a minute.

@mark1030 and AndIMustAsk
Yeah it is similar to endurance charges. Except fortify requires you to use the skill gem in your main attack (if you want the benefit) and can't be obtained from other sources (lots of ways to get end charges). Other than the theoretical solution above of complete rework, I don't think we'll see a fix to melee other than similar mechanics to the ones in place (even my increased damage per fortify stack is basically frenzy charges) or hidden mechanics to compensate (ie. melee takes an arbitrary amount of undisclosed less damage compared to ranged like other games have).

Unfortunately it's not melee that's the problem it's the basic mechanical advantages ranged/spell skills have over melee that's the issue and needs the rework.

They need to bring all this ranged screen clearing speed meta back down to earth but that means breaking a lot of builds and pissing a lot of people off.

I am more of the idea of remove fortify suport and make it an inate of melee skill with diferent values.

With the value bring based on the skill:
Movement skill: 5-10%
Semi ranged melee: 10-15%
Melee: 25-30%

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Namcap wrote:

My bandaid solution allows melee to not get 1 shot randomly

Not saying melee gets 1-shot randomly, but your solution wouldn't really help if you don't have the stacks on (for example, moving from one pack of mobs to other).