The REAL problem with melee vs. ranged

simple ways to start melee being balanced:


A.
Fold in more FREE defensive stats into Melee nodes; Like for example, lets take the Mace mastery wheel-- It has 2 "12% increased physical damage with maces; 2% increased attack speed with maces" nodes on the way to its bone breaker keystone. Change those nodes to say "Increases physical damage by 12% with maces; Increases attack speed by 2% with maces; Increases HP by 5 (Or increases Hp by 1% if a static +5 was deemed too small to really matter) "
A small free survivability buff folded into a melee centric skill node on the tree-- Do this to ALL melee skill nodes, folding in small static buffs to make melee more attractive.



This is not something new; Plenty of melee nodes already have "free" defensive stats-- This should be the BASELINE of how its done. For example, Blunt instruments up in the templar area and its wheel gives Bonus Armor increases as well as DPS increases for its nodes: All melee nodes should do similiar things.



B. the fortify support gem is removed. No cheesing it by putting it on some ranged melee skills, it is now intrinsic to certain melee skills. Which goes into C...

C.
Cleave now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.

Heavy strike now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.

Double strike now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.

Sweep now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.


Ect. basically, Melee skills of the actual Melee range get Fortify for FREE, with no other way to gain fortify except that its a skill effect.
Ranged "melee" skills would NOT get fortify folded in, so things like sunder and Frost blades would remain the same except with no way to get fortify.




D. Increase the damage on Single target skills like Heavy strike and other unused skills. (Infernal blow could use a buff for example despite having some aoe in it).
Do NOT do this with threshold gems, actually buff the baseline damage for these skills.

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aleksandor wrote:

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bionicg2040 wrote:

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suszterpatt wrote:

The REAL problem with melee is that there is absolutely no incentive to play it.


You sacrifice a lot of clearspeed and expose yourself to a lot of extra sources of danger, and have bugger all to show for it. Anything a melee char can do, a ranged char can do better.

If you want to play PoE, play ranged. If you want to play melee, play another game.

You also forgot shit targeting for the melee player.

Hence why Moves that you can't just click on a space to use are more or less abandoned now >.<
the game's just too past paced for most players to want to deal with having to click on a monster instead of a space.

the game is not too fast paced for that. they just did not know how to or want to fix targeting.

Attacking while moving. can't be done i have been told. Then I saw Lost Ark's Fighter and Warlord classes that are all in your face namelocking melee that can move and fight at the same time. Then i remembered I played a soldier/nightblade in grim dawn (melee to the max) and i was never frozen in place while in an attack animation. then i remembered D2 and how smooth it was to play melee. It was the same even in D3 (fuck that game).

Proper Targeting. can't be done I have been told. Then I remembered D2, D3, Grim Dawn, Torchlight 1, Torchlight 2, World of Warcraft, etc. all use some type of cone for their targeting so the player is not whiffing all the damn time whenever monsters move. Which is funny because in this game they started out with a straight line almost a needle then turned it into a rectangular block that extends slightly outward from before and the targeting is still the same. So to fix the issue GGG decided lets just make non target "melee" skills so they do not have to fix the targeting at all something that games way older than this one managed to do years ago, but perhaps you are right the game is too fast paced for proper targeting. yup too fast paced...

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aleksandor wrote:

simple ways to start melee being balanced:


A.
Fold in more FREE defensive stats into Melee nodes; Like for example, lets take the Mace mastery wheel-- It has 2 "12% increased physical damage with maces; 2% increased attack speed with maces" nodes on the way to its bone breaker keystone. Change those nodes to say "Increases physical damage by 12% with maces; Increases attack speed by 2% with maces; Increases HP by 5 (Or increases Hp by 1% if a static +5 was deemed too small to really matter) "
A small free survivability buff folded into a melee centric skill node on the tree-- Do this to ALL melee skill nodes, folding in small static buffs to make melee more attractive.



This is not something new; Plenty of melee nodes already have "free" defensive stats-- This should be the BASELINE of how its done. For example, Blunt instruments up in the templar area and its wheel gives Bonus Armor increases as well as DPS increases for its nodes: All melee nodes should do similiar things.



B. the fortify support gem is removed. No cheesing it by putting it on some ranged melee skills, it is now intrinsic to certain melee skills. Which goes into C...

C.
Cleave now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.

Heavy strike now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.

Double strike now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.

Sweep now has a 20% chance on melee hit at level 1 to produce fortify, increasing by 5% per level, so that at level 16 it has a 100% chance to produce fortify on hit.


Ect. basically, Melee skills of the actual Melee range get Fortify for FREE, with no other way to gain fortify except that its a skill effect.
Ranged "melee" skills would NOT get fortify folded in, so things like sunder and Frost blades would remain the same except with no way to get fortify.




D. Increase the damage on Single target skills like Heavy strike and other unused skills. (Infernal blow could use a buff for example despite having some aoe in it).
Do NOT do this with threshold gems, actually buff the baseline damage for these skills.

A. Doesnt help, because many skills that use "melee" tag or melee weapons, arent melee in fact (Ancestral Warchief, Spectral Throw, etc). You will just make those skills OP. Also, buffing certain nodes too much can make them mandatory.

B. I agree, you cant balance melee with something like Fortify, read A.

C. Well, that's nice idea of buffing close-range skills, though maybe implementatin is a bit wrong..

D.
You see, there ARE ARPG games, where melee VS ranged are quite balanced. Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, for example - they have both strong melee and strong ranged builds... It isnt even that hard to balance those two, IF game developers really want it.
But it seems, GGG want us to "watch TV while playing", oneshotting full screens of loot/XP pinjata enemies and running so fast that you can see everything blurred to shit on common LCD monitor... Obviously, in THAT meta they want to see, ranged always (DO remember it - ALWAYS!!!) will be superior to true melee, no matter how you'll try to buff true melee (without turning it into ranged), he will suck balls because gameplay design.

Raising the health will not be a solution, since this will also nerf melee characters (not every melee build has more damage then ranged, which lowers their clear time and let them even face more risks when going in since enemies survive longer).

My personal solution:

1. Implement a damage reduction the farther a projectile has traveled.
2. Implement a projectile speed reduction the farther a projectile has traveled.

It makes sense that a projectile loses impact power (or magic power for spells) and speed during flight time. This in turn makes it harder for ranged characters to hit fast enemies and also reduces their clear speed on far away enemies, since they will probably survive the shots when they were made from far away.

The question is: Would this nerf to projectiles also be given to enemies? I would say yes, since this would also help melee characters when they need to go in, but have to tank all the projectiles before they arrive. This is especially deadly for melee characters with low life reg (or vaal pact) who heavily depend on life leech, which you can only have when you hit something.

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PayneK wrote:

This doesn't fix the melee problem at all, only destroys ranged as well. The problem with melee is that you need to walk up to a target and click on it to hit it, and if you miss it you hit empty air even with 100% accuracy.

If you don't think the targeting is the problem just look at all the melee skills:

1. Skills that don't require a target

Blade Flurry
Cleave
Cyclone
Earthquake
Ground Slam
Ice Crash
Lacerate
Lightning Strike
Molten Strike
Reave (exception for initial hit)
Shield Charge
Sunder
Sweep

2. Skills that require a target

Dominating Blow
Dual Strike
Elemental Hit
Frenzy
Glacial Hammer
Heavy Strike
Infernal Blow
Puncture
Static Strike
Vigilant Strike
Viper Strike
Wild Strike

Why is the first melee category more popular and viable then the second one? Because all those skills have build in AOE and don't require to physically click on a target by chasing it with your cursor, you can just hit the ground and AOE happens.

You are quite right.

"

Solution is to make Melee Splash slam the ground instead of a target and give it a little more aoe or at least make Flicker Strike a support gem that works with skills that require a target.

Unfortunately I think both of these are wrong solutions.
The single target skills needs buff without changing usage.
If to change all skills to AoE, it is lost diversity of skills.

I have an idea.
That is to add "Single target" tag.
And it adds strong support that works only for that tag.
Of cause, that does not work with MeleeSplash.

Also, it should also changes existing support.
For example, Fortify should be changed to the "Single target" support.
This should be given in exchange for the risk of approaching enemies.

With support that buff only the single target skills, the value of those skills will go up.

A solution to the single target skill useage would be, that even if you dont click on the enemy, the game finds the closest enemy and attacks it with the single target skill. This way, you dont have to chase enemies and click on them anymore, you just have to be close.

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AceNightfire wrote:

A solution to the single target skill useage would be, that even if you dont click on the enemy, the game finds the closest enemy and attacks it with the single target skill. This way, you dont have to chase enemies and click on them anymore, you just have to be close.

What you would need is basically a much smarter targetting. You would have to target enemies at all and turn all skills into targetting a location, and in the case of those single target skills they would select the enemy closest to your point you aimed at that is still in range for the attack.

It would also require to get rid of shift because you would basically have to keep it pressed forever. If you put a single target melee skill on your bar you should have the option to just perform them and basically search for a target. Because right now even if you missclick a tiny bit your character might just move possibly resulting in a very dangerous situation.

If I use something like Tornado Shot and I missclick my character just performs the shot and in the worst case I lose damage due to not aiming correctly. If you perform a skill and you are too far away to hit that location people should have the option to make their character just aim it that direction as if it would be a ranged skill. And single target skills in this scenario could just aim for the closest enemy. Of course this would technically require less skill to play but I'm not sure if this kind of skill should be required in a game that is otherwise pretty lenient about your precision as long as you are using projectiles or big AoEs.

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The question is: Would this nerf to projectiles also be given to enemies? I would say yes, since this would also help melee characters when they need to go in, but have to tank all the projectiles before they arrive. This is especially deadly for melee characters with low life reg (or vaal pact) who heavily depend on life leech, which you can only have when you hit something.

This would still be a huge buff to ranged characters and it doesn't feel necessary. After all Melees and Ranged are the same thing in terms of defense, a ranged char isn't squisher so when he is punished for being ranged he always has the option to close that distance. Also there is never really a need to tank projectiles while closing in. With skills like Leap Slam or Shield Charge you hardly give enemies any time and even if you are just walking there are hardly any enemies that use their projectiles so massively and in an unpredictable fashion that they are hard to avoid. The only projectile that puts melees at a massiv disadvantage is Spark, because it is exactly this completly unpredictable, while at the same time hardly able to go though doorways.

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You see, there ARE ARPG games, where melee VS ranged are quite balanced. Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, for example - they have both strong melee and strong ranged builds... It isnt even that hard to balance those two, IF game developers really want it.

Well I wouldn't really call those that balanced. Titan Quest and Grim Dawn both have certain masteries that just make you so tanky that it is not that important what else you take. A lot of builds used Arcanist just because he got a good defensive ability which allowed them to survive pretty much anything and at this point it was entirely unimportant how you dealt damage. A major difference in Titan Quest is that it doesn't have purely weapon based abilities, even most abilities based on weapons have some flat damage boni you get just for leveling the ability which means you are not falling that far behind for using a bad weapon as you do in Path of Exile. Like I said before the imbalance is not so much melee vs. ranged it is attackers vs. spellcasters. Because getting a lvl20 spell is really cheap, getting an equally powerful weapon can be tough.

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Proper Targeting. can't be done I have been told. Then I remembered D2, D3, Grim Dawn, Torchlight 1, Torchlight 2, World of Warcraft, etc.

Wait... actually the only one that has good Targetting from these is Grim Dawn. And why is World of Warcraft even in this list... you aren't targetting in that game at all you are just pressing tab and select a target to autoperform your skills on. D2 din't had good targetting, it was cool for the time, but can't keep up and in Torchlight it also feels a lot worse to play that and D3 hardly has any single target abilities and again those that exist don't feel too smooth exspecially if you put them on the left button you often move instead of using the ability because you didn't highlight an enemy for some odd reason, so you basically have to play with shift all the time.

The only game that really stands out in terms of targetting and also has a lot of abilities that are single target is Grim Dawn. It improved the decent system from Titans Quest further and is the only one I would actually recommend as a true improvement, all the other ones have their own flaws. I assume the system is likely just more forgiving to players and you can attack just somewhere close to the enemy and still hit them, which does something make it hard to move instead of attack, but in PoE you have the easy option to put move on the left mouse button and just use your attack with the right button, which would be super easy. I think the targetting in PoE just needs to be a lot more generous, they did improve it but since your character still moves if you attack a bit too far out it hardly makes a difference.

But melee got a lot of movement mechanisms and ranged dont, right? Nope.
Blink Arrow, Lightning Warp, Phase Run and Flame Dash make the deal for ranged aswell.
As i figured out, both melee and ranged has lots of things to do.
And because you go melee weapon it dont mean you cant go ranged spell.
Thinking about dat marauder with leap slam and fireball...

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Moist wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

The real problem is that one has to be better, and no matter which it is, people will complain.

this.

that.






or not.. funny in d2 no one was bothered by this...

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kompaniet wrote:

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Moist wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

The real problem is that one has to be better, and no matter which it is, people will complain.

this.

that.






or not.. funny in d2 no one was bothered by this...

D2 was one of the first ARPG. D2 has many mistakes, but they can be forgiven for such an old game. For new modern games, like PoE, those mistakes are unforgiveable.