The REAL problem with melee vs. ranged

The only way to fix melee in this game is to make it ranged.

You will never be able to facetank bosses, you will always need to kite them despite being melee. So give melee more base AOE to make it viable to kite from a safer distance.

Keep the AOE diminishing returns changes but give more basic AOE to all melee skills, and make melee splash slam the ground with the linked skills instead of chasing enemies with your cursor while missing and hitting empty air. And give Melee Splash more base AOE too.

You already have a safety net for it with the AOE diminishing returns changes so giving melee more AOE won't make anyone super OP, it would just make players better at kiting and dodging hits.

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Fruz wrote:

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Block has had so many changes in this game, every year I swear there is some nerf to block, and STILL we have problems. But don't worry, I'm sure GGG will come to understand the real issue any day now.

Well, Rumi + Necro, those things .... are clearly messing up the balance.
Rumi has been nerfed, but it's still freaking strong, too strong still.

Too strong for builds playing at range? Yes. Everyone knows it's a no brainer to just pick a skill that can play at range and has good damage, and put blocks, CI and VP - no brainer.

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PayneK wrote:

The only way to fix melee in this game is to make it ranged.

Not really, if melee had better survivability options than ranged builds or better damage scaling - it would be "fixed".

You can't tell me the only way to fix melee is to make it ranged when Blade Vortex was one of the most popular and OP builds for quite some time.

Why is it so hard to allow cyclone and other melee skills to have damage scaling to be on par with BV?

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Ceryneian wrote:

Not really, if melee had better survivability options than ranged builds or better damage scaling - it would be "fixed".

You can't tell me the only way to fix melee is to make it ranged when Blade Vortex was one of the most popular and OP builds for quite some time.

Why is it so hard to allow cyclone and other melee skills to have damage scaling to be on par with BV?

Because that would make sense. and besides they have to make other playstyles attractive and the only way they know how to do that is too make other playstyles worse. their entire design choices revolve around: "they have to play this so most if not all other options need to be shit. Not sure if you played back when Whirling Blades was first introduced but back then the skill caused desync and their solution was to keep buffing the skill and make leap slam and L. Warp worse. Why you ask? because nobody wanted to play Whirling Blades due to a mechanical issue and the response was not: "lets investigate and fix the damn skill" it was: "fuck it give it more power and make everything else crap so they have no choice but to use it"


it is not like Proper Targeting, Survival Options, and Damage Options, are hard. Melee players have been asking for this since 1.2 (and some before that even). so far we have gotten:

1. Fortify:
a gem that is better for casters and rangers (how much sense did that make)

When instead it could have been:

Fortify:
added on to all name locking skills starting at level 12 and increases as gem levels/gains quality (the tag line being you want the bonuses from fortify? you have to take them if you not going to take them then you can't have them)

2. Increased Damage:
take these 5% and 6% increases and like it and we also raised monster health so the damage increases mean shit fuck you melee players "this is a buff"

When instead it could have been:

Increased Damage:
we have increased across the board for melee by 30% to 40% (so it is you and the boss then? get in there all nice and deep like and kick their ass...all of it) and we made defensive nodes actually worth getting, and we made sure that armor bug never happened and we never gutted evasion and we have switched out V. Blood for Bearers so everybody can get tripped up for not paying attention.

3. Better Targeting:
so targeting was a needle a thin straight line so we extended it and made it a ruler so it now has this hard edged block shape which pretty much leaves you melee people in the same position as before but with a little bit of an extension on your "reach" but at least we tried targeting is hard.

When instead it could have been:

Better Targeting:
so we changed it to a cone shape and the player attacks the monster closest to the cursor within the same cone space if you just so happen to whiff. (yeah we decided to implement something that other games in the same genre have implemented to great effect...)

4. Non melee melee skills:
because hey why not just not play melee. instead you can be a spell caster, totem player, or a ranger that uses a melee tag skill that for some reason does not have to target anything and hits harder and can scale off of anything. seems legit.


When instead it could have been:


New Melee skills: some grant offensive bonus some grant defensive bonus, some just look cool. but we are not trying to force you to be a spamming spell caster, spamming ranger, or spamming totem player. We actually want to keep that promise of build diversity. you can do whatever the fuck you want we won't stop you we want to see what you can do with the shit we give you just like it was back then when we had players who can turn some skills out like those crazy ass leap slam builds. goomba stomping for days that was classic. anyway thanks for playing exile...

I am going back to drinking because i have lost my mind and I am still waiting on those damn eagles. I bet GGG will throw threshold jewels at the issue and call it a day.

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Fruz wrote:

Abaxoth .... well those flameblasts are obvious enough to be clearly seen.

Obvious because he spams a million of them. Good luck actually fighting him in melee when he's spamming 5 of them at his feet so you have to run the second you get near him. This is why there should be "deadzones" near enemies so they can't cast certain spells in a certain range of themselves. As melee he basically surrounds himself with a "Get out" zone the second you and him get close to each other.

The only effective way I've seen to fight him as true melee is to kite him through his adds and wittle him down with AOE explosion damage from Herald of fire or other skills (I.E., playing ghetto ranged), or to chug ruby flasks to tank the flameblasts while slugging it out with him, or have max spell block to tank the blasts.
He's beatable but its going to take FOREVER compared to fighting him as Ranged, and is just a pain in the ass.

You pull him out of it obviously.
And you backup when you get overwhelm, and repeat.

It does not take forever, it takes longer, but if your build is solid, your dps should allow you to down him as melee.
Some fights are obviously much harder on melees, and too few fight are harder on ranged chars.

But it isn't the point I was making, it was : you can dodge them manually, it isn't very difficult, those spells are pretty obvious and people are not supposed to just tank them brainlessely.

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Fruz wrote:

You pull him out of it obviously.
And you backup when you get overwhelm, and repeat.

It does not take forever, it takes longer, but if your build is solid, your dps should allow you to down him as melee.

I'm eagerly awaiting your duel strike, hvy strike or double strike youtube of your victory.

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kalbright wrote:

I'm eagerly awaiting your duel strike, hvy strike or double strike youtube of your victory.

No need.
You can look for close combat Abaxoth kills on youtube, and I'm not going to waste my time because you don't want to look for it, can't be bothered here, and I could not care less.

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Fruz wrote:

You pull him out of it obviously.
And you backup when you get overwhelm, and repeat.

The problem is he casts them near non-stop. You are literally running away constantly to get him out of his Fireblasts, and he's in no rush to run out of his Fireblasts-- he prefers to just stand there and spam them, then Flicker strike to you and continue to spam fireblasts.


Dragging him out or backing off would be fine if he had a cooldown period after casting a few of them (Like if he had 3 charges, and when he used all 3 he had to wait till he regenerated all 3 charges before he was able to cast again), so you'd bait him and then move in, which would feel rich and rewarding.
but as things are, trying to pull him out of fireblasts is basically you wasting 20 minutes trying to fight him as true melee. He's not worth the hassle, even if you win you'll end up feeling pissed off at wasting an absurd amount of time with him.

Hint : the flameblasts are no threats when they are small, and most of the time, they don't pop when they are small anyway.
Just practise with Tzteosh.

I came up with some more stupid ideas (Insomnia + Caffeine are cool aren't they?)

Fortify Support - Reworked:
Supported Melee Attacks grant an additional 10% chance to block Attacks and Spells for 1 second
25-44% increased melee physical damage

Melee Splash Support - Buffed:
25% less damage to other targets
10-19% more melee physical damage
Single target melee attacks deal splash damage to surrounding targets
0-57% more melee splash area of effect

Dual Strike - Reworked into a Support:
Supported single target melee attacks will also use up to 1 additional linked melee attack
30-15% less attack speed
25-16% less melee physical damage

Essentially, trying to give melee defence that can't be abused by Ranged (Like how Fortify can just be stuck on a mobility skill and used once every so often...) by making it predicated on constant melee attack usage.

Melee splash is a necessity for the ST skills to really function. So, give it some damage so you're not wasting a link on already weaker skills. Also, some "More" damage because melee just don't have access to that outside the niche that is Bloodlust (Meanwhile projectiles get 2x More damage supports...)

Then just for funzies, a support that allows double ST attack usage. My general thought process was that it might allow people to link Vigilant Strike to their preferred skill to get that easy Fortify, while non single target attack users would have to put a bit more effort into using VS to gain Fortify.