Why Fortify isn't the answer

Melee has been the subject of discussion for a good time now, and it's clear to most everyone that it's just plain weak. However I've seen the argument for Fortify a few times, and how/why it's supposed to be the thing that makes Melee more viable.

Let's put the current CI meta aside and focus on how GGG initially implemented Fortify as a first-step method to fixing Melee--and why it failed, with a main focus on two points.

What does Fortify do?
Fortify is a buff that reduces damage of every source from a hit by 20%.

In theory it's a great countermeasure to Melee's forced 'in-your-face' play style that rewards a build for being close-ranged by mitigating a large portion of the incoming damage. However, it's very clearly not designed as a one-off 'answer' to the problems that Melee has. The main point to look at here is positioning, specifically in comparison to a ranged build.

Let's use the Shaper as an example. For those who don't know the fight, you will periodically be targeted by a 'ball' that will follow you slowly, and once it reaches you it will spawn an area of effect degen in a moderate sized circle that permanently alters the arena. That AoE must now be avoided for the rest of the fight. Of course, more experienced players will force these areas to be dropped on the edges of the screen, but if the fight continues longer than expected, the small space will quickly fill with these dangerous vortexes, leaving little room to fight. For a ranged character this isn't much of an issue; you're still forced to dodge things coming your way, but you can likely attack from nearly anywhere and still hit the Shaper, because you aren't limited to Melee range. For Melee characters, it's entirely possible (and some would argue 'easy') to lock yourself out of this fight entirely with a few misplaced vortexes that the Shaper spends most of his time standing in. Even worse? The damage is a degen, meaning that Fortify does you no good when standing in it, rendering it completely useless in these scenarios.

Point in a nutshell: Fortify mitigates damage from hits, but degens are equally as dangerous and both hits and degens can be avoided with good positioning, something Melee lacks in its nature.

How do you get Fortify?
Fortify can be obtained a small number of ways. The Fortify Support gem can be linked to any melee skill, granting you Fortify for a base of 4 seconds when that skill hits an enemy. The Vigilant Strike Melee skill gem can be used, which has a 100% chance to grant Fortify with a 50% increased duration for a total of 6 seconds unaltered. There are a couple of Ascendancy options, most notably the Duelist's Champion Ascendancy which has a node that grants Fortify indefinitely, and the Scion's version which has a 10% chance to grant Fortify on Melee hit. (There may be other options I've left out, let me know)

Putting aside the fact that its actual design is not quite enough to satisfy the need for defense, the second point to be raised is how Fortify is obtained. The easiest way to grant yourself Fortify is to link a Melee skill with the support gem, which grants a small chunk of %increased Melee Physical Damage as well as the Fortify buff on hit. While this seems like a simple solution, it's forcing a large number of builds to sacrifice DPS in order to gain Fortify, by giving up a valuable gem slot.

Any generic 5-linked Melee skill might look like this: Skill-Melee Physical Damage-Added Fire Damage-Faster Attacks-Multistrike. Obviously there are other options, but it's a good example of what something like Dual Strike or Heavy Strike might look like. Each of those options adds a significant amount of DPS and a general quality of life improvement, and might usually be substitued for Melee Splash to aid in clearing packs. So which gem do you get rid of if you want to get Fortify? How much damage do you sacrifice and where does it come from in order to supply the defenses that are quite necessary to sustain a Melee build--which can be drawn as a contrast to any ranged skill, which will generally stack offensive supports and rely on distance and positioning to keep them safe.

This doesn't even consider the vast number of elemental Melee options, or more specialized builds such as Earthquake or stun-based builds which require very specific gems to be efficient. The other option is to link it with a different skill, perhaps Whirling Blades or Leap Slam to generate Fortify, but you are still required to stop using your main skill on occasion to keep the buff up, which also requires you to displace yourself and hit a target.

With a limit of 4-5 support gems to base your build around, it's almost guaranteed that you will be sacrificing damage in some form or another to provide yourself the buff. Lower DPS means you're spending more time fighting the thing that may kill you, and keeping yourself in danger for longer than is necessary, even to the point that you run out of your defensive flask charges and are forced to retreat.

Point in a nutshell: DPS almost always has to be sacrificed in order to obtain Fortify (which can be viewed as necessary on Melee builds), which means spending longer in dangerous fights and exposing yourself to the risk of death.


I love the idea of Fortify, and I understand it's difficult to balance. I don't think that GGG did a bad thing by implementing it, and I would have been shocked if they got it right on the first try--but they didn't, and it's not an answer to the vast discrepancies between Melee and ranged survivability, and likely never will be.

Ähm, what? You don't use fortify in your main gemsetup, Use something like shield charge, faster attacks, fortify or wirling blades to apply the buff in a seperate 3l. ^^

"

666lol666 wrote:

Ähm, what? You don't use fortify in your main gemsetup, Use something like shield charge, faster attacks, fortify or wirling blades to apply the buff in a seperate 3l. ^^

Re-read his post, he already said that that requires you to disengage your main attack in order to apply the buff if you do have Fortify associated with a different skill. ie: Your DPS has to stop/drastically reduce periodically if it isn't as a part of your main attack setup.

"

"

Any generic 5-linked Melee skill might look like this: Skill-Melee Physical Damage-Added Fire Damage-Faster Attacks-Multistrike.

Added fire is weaker than Fortify, if we don't count the quality, Fortify increases the damage the same way as Added fire, but Fortify is pure physical damage, so it's better than any elemental damage without elemental resistance penetration.

Even with quality, Added fire is just tooltip dps, Fortify makes more sense for any physical melee build that has to choose between Fortify and Added fire.

But sadly, my elemental melee inquisitor does lose dps if I want to use fortify in his gem setup, I would use added cold instead if I would :/

It would be great if Fortify had (25-44)% increased Melee Damage instead of (25-44)% increased Melee Physical Damage, elemental and chaos melee builds have to take the same damage and retarded mechanics in the face than physical melee builds do.

I believe that's incorrect. %Increased [damage] is calculated separately from %[damage] added as [damage]. The latter is more like a More modifier, in that it applies to the end value and is then added on, rather than applying to initial (lower) values. Added Fire Damage Support is a better damage buff than Fortify.

A really simple change who would make the life of melee slightly better would be to change the fortify damage bonus to a more multiplier instead of an increase multiplier. It doesn't have to be massive and should be on par with support like pierce (19%) who also give you an utility effect while buffing the damages.

As said before, there is not much space into your main setup so it won't change much damage wise but will help a bit to survive the fight. Yes it would be mandatory but at least we'll see more melee builds played.

Of course that's just a small patch on the melee problem but that's something who can be done without development and won't affect the strength of ranger and caster.

I don't think any 1 solution is a complete answer to melee vs ranged. But fortify can be considered when looking ahead.

This league I've gotten to 55% Fort effect with Juggernaut, Fort Nodes, Essence Amulet. It's a sizeable buff and I find myself able to tank more things then I have before.

I always wondered why the only area is the bottom of the duelist tree for Fortify. GGG should consider adding 2-3 more sets around the tree. Marauder area, Ranger area, and maybe Temp/Scion Area. You could add other bonuses to fortify in these nodes as well as some effect. Probably have to cap how much effect you can get.

"

e1337donkey wrote:

I don't think any 1 solution is a complete answer to melee vs ranged. But fortify can be considered when looking ahead.

This league I've gotten to 55% Fort effect with Juggernaut, Fort Nodes, Essence Amulet. It's a sizeable buff and I find myself able to tank more things then I have before.

I always wondered why the only area is the bottom of the duelist tree for Fortify. GGG should consider adding 2-3 more sets around the tree. Marauder area, Ranger area, and maybe Temp/Scion Area. You could add other bonuses to fortify in these nodes as well as some effect. Probably have to cap how much effect you can get.

I agree whole-heartedly about there not being one particular answer. As I said, I do enjoy the idea behind Fortify, and if you can work it properly into your build it's actually a pretty nice buff; however with that said I feel as though it requires too much sacrifice to be seen as a fair trade to everything ranged characters have going for them.

Very well explained and on point.

I just don't understand why after you explained everything in detail all the guys come in and try to argue with false facts against the obvious. Is there really any need to let melee appear any better than it is or to fine its options?



1.
The major point is that you have to sac dps to get that bonus. In theory you could have that before as well if you just allocated your passives differently and e.g. gained 20% more life. Of course you have had to sac more than what you are losing now to get the 20% less damage.

Less damage however means less survivability in this game. It is often the best choice to just dps down the boss instead of trying to tank it longer.

E.g. the vaal oversoul 2nd act boss one hit mechanic anyway one-hits you. In this case having fortify in the setup is even detrimental as fortify will a) not prevent the one-hit on you and b) increase the chance you get hit as the fight takes longer.


2.
Another major downside to it is that it is kind of mandatory to use it. For most builds and on high level group play you need it in your 6L setup. Of course if you play solo and do enough dps to kill bosses quickly you can get rid of it if you know what you are doing.


3.
One point you forgot in relation to the shaper example is the meta thing. It is a bit off-topic when discussing fortify but still worth mentioning. The disadvantage of melee translates into less wealth and less efficiency. As ranged builds have an easier approach they can go and try earlier, succeed earlier & create currency and wealth earlier - then selling the drops on the market to melee users. After all the items might even get legacy and melee users haven't got them at all while ranged users already started hoarding them. In the long term this makes the biggest imbalance and ramps it up big time.

Some guys might enjoy to have different characters for different purposes. I cannot enjoy playing melee when I know as soon as it gets harsh I should rather switch to a range char or to the current op thing that right now is BV. Also this requires alot more time and efforts. Anyway there would not be a reason to continue the melee guy after you set up your ranged guy for e.g. shaper or atziri.




Solution on fortify:
Sooner or later GGG will acknowledge that adding fortify as a must have to most melee setups isn't the desired way to go and they will remove the gem and apply it automatically on any melee attacks. Duelist will then get a stronger/longer fortify thing or it will be replaced with anything else.



Addition or alternative:
Fortify could prevent any single hit on you to decimate your life/ES by more than 75% of your maximum life/ES. That however would require many bossfights to be redesigned to be still deadly. Also it could probably be abused on low HP/ES setups in one or another way.

Addition or alternative:
Any charackter could be designed around the mechanic that a single hit cannot deal more than 75% of your maximum life in combination with an instant leech change.

But I guess there would have to be exceptions for the latter two. One hit mechanics are fine if they can be outplayed such as with the named boss.



Edit: Sure I support the more multiplier for fortify to make it viable for elemental melee. Still if it just becomes or stays obligatory you could just remove the gem and give any melee attack fortify.

How about instead of a separate Fortify support gem, just apply the mod to the melee attack gems?

"

Nicholas_Steel wrote:

"

666lol666 wrote:

Ähm, what? You don't use fortify in your main gemsetup, Use something like shield charge, faster attacks, fortify or wirling blades to apply the buff in a seperate 3l. ^^

Re-read his post, he already said that that requires you to disengage your main attack in order to apply the buff if you do have Fortify associated with a different skill. ie: Your DPS has to stop/drastically reduce periodically if it isn't as a part of your main attack setup.

Every 5 seconds you loose about 0,2 seconds that's only 4% dmg loss you cannot compare that to linking this shit to your main attack. In fact if you use EQ or BV you will not even notice a difference in dmg.