Melee Issues

Large number of melee skills are namelocked making them unfun and deadly to play. You have to spend 70+ percent of your passive points searching for armor, life, and regen just to have some kind of chance to survive boss fights. This doesn't even take into account the spell/elemental damage which is just as deadly to melee if not more. Where there is NO way to reduce this damage practically. Notice I say practically because trying to go any of the FEW options available either don't work for melee or gimp your damage so much, and options mind you, that the game becomes stupid.

Then if you really want to take your character to the highest level of content, you are stuck with one chest piece, lightning coil, which then either greatly reduces your armor node efficiency or you have to spend another 20 points going for armor/evasion nodes which then you might as well go for Iron reflexes so you can get your armor back. Now you have zero points left for offense. So then you look for ways to multiply your damage and you say oh look berserker has a good multiplier. But then realize you need to run Vaal pact or Acuities. Either option puts your defenses into the gutter. Because its 13 points for the marauder to travel all the way over to vaal pact grabbing more useless evasion nodes. Then if you go Vaal gauntlets, you have to get crit chance WITH accuracy. Umm...you don't have to points to effectively do this. You can certainly do it, but your gimped in area's that can't be gimped in. Not for malee. For a ranged person. Absolutely possible. Melee. Nope.

So then all of your life regen nodes are useless. So you need to respec out of those and now are you not only taking 10% more damage, but you also have spent all of your points for survivablity. You needed armor, you needed life, then you needed vaal pact because leech heals way too slowly. Your cloaked in Savagry is a good name, because it's a cloaked node meaning you are decieved into thinking it's usefull. Screw the tool tip under it explaining to me what "recent" means. It should have a tool tip under it saying,

"vaal pact necessary or 25 exalt gloves with 20 skill points needed for this node to be effective" under it.

Even RED gems like empower do zero for you. I thought Empower with Disfavour was going to be a good idea, having not played the game in a while and not ever using empower before. I thought surely this RED gem was going to be amazing in a Disfavour axe. So laughable. Plus you already need to run fortify taking one of your links further reducing, not only options, but multiplier damage. Such as a blood lust gem or hypothermia gem. Why does Disfavour have +2 to support gems again? This isn't even a buff for melee. +level for gems with melee is asinine.

The path to trying to get a really strong melee character is just a joke. I've even went to the extreme and tried to do 2 6 links. Disfavour and chest. Thinking I can just have one skill for aoe clear. And one skill for bosses. Again, something casters don't have to deal with. So here I am, berskering around. Doing just enough damage to compare to casters, with roughly 40+ exalts worth of gear. Still unable to withstand damage from tier 13/14 bosses. I can't even use my single target double strike 6 linked 20 exalt skill because getting that close for a melee is a recipe for -10% experience.

Then lets talk about the elemental damage issues. There is zero to little elemental/spell damage deduction in this game. I was happy to see some of the ascendancy classes having this in their tree, but of course not in the tree's that need it the most. Does Juggernaut really need it? Would have better suited berserker. The 6% damage reduction node for berserker is all but useless because it does nothing for you against bosses. Which is were it's needed. Even the ones that spawn adds don't spawn them 100% of the time. So your 6% less damage is useless. It's fucking useless. I mean you can go Juggernaut, but then your damage is going to pale in comparison to all spell casters. Which already have the default defense of being far away from damage. Oh and lets not mention the 14k ES pool compared to a 5-6k Life based pool. With their RED empower gem that does nothing for melee but wonders for spells.

So go jug, and be tanky but do no damage. Or go berserker, do damage, but not live through anything to actually do that damage. You no longer become a melee character, but a bleed/poison sunder KITE build lol. I mean...what is this???? WTF GGG.

Or spend 90% of your passive points looking for survivability, meaning going berseker was just pointless, because now your damage multiplier isn't multiplying hardly any damage. And top that off with no regen and you've got yourself a gimped character with no regen, a passive that needs you to take a big hit to even proc your major defense, then you scan your passive tree and notice all of your points are in armor, life, RT, and IR. And again, you get stuck into one chest piece because you need the physical damage reduction. Which has evasion on it, useless for melee. Further reducing your node efficiency. Something melee cannot do. Impossible.

And how about that useless area of the tree called blood magic. The life behind it isn't even a multiplier. CI gets a nice multiplier behind it, plus the ability to use auras, plus the ability to ignore all Chaos damage. What does life based melee get? You get a little bit more life, no aura's, and still have to get Chaos resist. Plus you have to spend double the points in surviablity. Not only do I need to get life nodes, I also need armor nodes. And then all my gear has to have life too lol! Near max rolled mind you.

I haven't even addressed all the issues. These are just a few...Sadly.

How is this still not fixed after years?

What's the deal GGG?

GGG defines "good" differently than you do. They don't think characters should be clearing screens full of enemies as fast as some builds do... they don't use that metric.


Is it fun to play? Can melee be played up to the end game? Yep. That's what matters... not that it is slower at clearing maps than some other options might be.


The heart of the problem is these differences in the metrics that players use to define success and the metrics used by the developers.

Melee DOES have some issues, but you ARE exaggerating quite a bit. The buffs/tweaks needed, aren't that big. Make life nodes a little bit [Removed by Support] and make them hybrid (life+global defenses (and a little bit dmg?)).

I'm still playing around with my dual wielder on Standard, and run T15 just fine (and safe), with 2-3 mediocre pieces.

There are two problems:

1) Melee is a little bit under powered.
2) People is starting to view 5-700k dmg as "normal" and "not OP at all".

I know some melee skills feel bad, nothing new there. Realy suck its like that but with so nerfed statistic you realy dont have mach to worck with in tearms of build deversity.

On other news, Minde over Matter is still strong mechanic, people just sims to forgot abouth it. If you are life based build and need extra defences MoM is best thing ther is.

This Meta concering auras and elemental damage is totaly unecesery and in end game reflect make it even more so clear destract people from whats actualy beneficial, to have balanced build.
Thers plenty of crap skills and Op items but distinguish what actualy worck and its beneficial WS all other crap is also what make build choices in frst place.

But lest say for moment you use Hezmana's Bloodlust insted of Atziri's Disfavour. All of suden you got resorces to spend on like MoM or reserve all mana. Bleed is shit if you dont scale it, ele damage is shit if you dont scale it and reflect will still destroy you.

Undersatanding how far to push and how beneficial thigs are for you and in what situation is important. Learning something is bad dont mean its broken, not all of people can pull of same resoults becouse PC/skill performance like Mathil can do crazy stuf but even he admit when to mach is to mach.

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Phrazz wrote:

Melee DOES have some issues, but you ARE exaggerating quite a bit. The buffs/tweaks needed, aren't that big. Make life nodes a little bit [Removed by Support] and make them hybrid (life+global defenses (and a little bit dmg?)).

I'm still playing around with my dual wielder on Standard, and run T15 just fine (and safe), with 2-3 mediocre pieces.

There are two problems:

1) Melee is a little bit under powered.
2) People is starting to view 5-700k dmg as "normal" and "not OP at all".

He is NOT exaggerating anything. Get your experience in Eseense HC, and show the result...

This is not funny any more...

The whole design behind melee is F*cked up seriously - from support gems to DPS scaling, How is even possible tank second attack in close range with all melee layers of defence to only make one attack with multistrike, when half of your life pool already empty by ranged mobs from a pack in T10+.

new "melee" skills like lacerate, EQ are an another joke from GGG's balance team. I'll never return to any melee skill, there are just no reason to do that.

"

nEVER_BoRN wrote:

I know some melee skills feel bad, nothing new there.

Almost all melee skills are shit!!! Only Shield Charge, Reave and Flicker are good exceptions.

I have 72% physical damage reduction. Then you add in fortify. And I still get slammed by physical damage? Not only do I have to find a way to mitigate this problem, but there is another side of the equation. The elemental/spell damage issues. Say what? A ranged character will have zero to little physical reduction. And be absolutely safe in almost every scenario. My cheap lvl 70 fireball witch With only ES nodes puts to shame my lvl 90 marauder that has 80+% of its' skill points in defense. Armor, life, regen, leech. Couple that with amazing gear and the melee pales in comparison to the defense of a lvl 70 witch with no defense nodes and not even great gear???? And she only has like 8k ES lol. Can't imagine what it would be like with the 12-14k that's easily obtainable.

My maruader has 93/113 points in defense. 93! And damage is still a problem? I don't want to be invincible, but 93 points and 72% physical dmg reduction with capped resists and still cant actually melee bosses???? What exactly does a melee need to be able to face tank a boss? It is melee isn't it?

"

Phrazz wrote:

Make life nodes a little bit [Removed by Support]

*Insert a meme here*

Damn and I thought playing dual wield melee on the right side of the tree with:


1. Evasion: "fails not so random but totally fails randomly and is totally crap without evading or going IR (HA HA!! because Armor works so great right now. well it functions better than the fly by wire evasion ha ha ha Evasion is so MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDAx100)

2. Evading: "mostly useless without odnar's guile (arrow dancing now) before the nerf (because fuck evasion/evading being useful..."someone might hurt Atziri while dodging all her attacks we need to protect her gut the right side of tree's defense and while your are at it give her immunity because reasons")

3. Spell dodge: "because why not use something that also barely works" unless you have atziri's boots (hey look you have to trade (HA HA!!) or fight Atziri again (HA HA HA!!)) or have multiple Vaal Graces ready to go

4. Block: "you will never have enough if you dual wield or use a "decent melee skill" ((that was a thing at some point) (there is always totems. melee players like totems right?))"

5. Armor: like you can use this anyway even with IR hell you can get rid of Evading and still get bodied by white mobs gingerly tossing rocks.

6. Life: "Really? like Really? 5k-6k life pool? ha! good luck causing damage. you better run 3.5K-4K life if you plan on causing any damage. also while you are at it pray and sacrifice something to R.N.GSUS that your evasion/evading/spell dodge/armor/block does not randomly fail as you namelock some random tree as you miss a moving monster yet again with your clunky ass melee skill.

And I use claws that is even more silly.

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

GGG defines "good" differently than you do. They don't think characters should be clearing screens full of enemies as fast as some builds do... they don't use that metric.


Is it fun to play? Can melee be played up to the end game? Yep. That's what matters... not that it is slower at clearing maps than some other options might be.


The heart of the problem is these differences in the metrics that players use to define success and the metrics used by the developers.

Single Target melee cannot be played effectively in the end game even with mirrored gear. Anyway, the point is that Melee builds do not have Role in this game. They just do EVERYTHING way worse. Far less survivability, rediculously lower clear speed, but also less single target damage/slower boss killing.

At the very least, i think melee(especially single target) should be able to kill bosses at least 5 times faster than casters or bow users. This is not the case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPgxX_x7sFk

Melee even with a loath bane cannot do that. Moreover, it will be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for melee to do even close to this damage, and even survive a minotaur hit with vuln+-max+extra as cold.

"

Cobrauh wrote:

I have 72% physical damage reduction. Then you add in fortify. And I still get slammed by physical damage?

Um. The character sheet screen only provides estimated Physical damage reduction. The more I see posts like this, the more I think GGG should just remove that estimate because it's horribly inaccurate.

It is really, really difficult to get 72% PDR against a big hit. You definitely need 90% estimated physical damage reduction to get 72% physical damage reduction against the big hits. And if you are getting 72% physical damage reduction against, say, Core Malachai, then it would basically just tickle you.

The Armour formula scales down PDR% in proportion to the size of the enemy's Hit. Essentially, slower, bigger Hits will have more "Armour Penetration" than faster, smaller Hits with the same DPS.

In order to get 72% damage reduction against a Hit of, say, 8,000 physical damage, you'd need one of the following:

10 endurance charges plus 40,000 Armour
5 endurance charges plus 80,000 Armour
0 Endurance Charges plus 285,714 Armour

It gets even worse at 10,000 physical.

There are some mental gymnastics in mental mathing the above numbers, but basically you take 10 times the Hit damage, add that to your Armour Rating, and set that as the denominator. Then the numerator is your Armour Rating. That's how much your PDR% from Armour is - then you add Endurance Charges, Soul of Steel, Chaos Golem, and possibly more.