Melee Support Skills Compendium

TLDR: Seriously you should read it. It is not that long. Whatever, cliff notes:

I think the ratio of Ranged only support gems (8) to Melee only support gems (2) helps to create the imbalance people have pointed out between Ranged and Melee characters.
==================================================

Okay, so as many people have pointed out there is a disparity between Ranged and Melee classes. I was thinking about this the other day and while watching my husband clear map after map with a Ranged character I came up with a hypothesis. Aside from the fact that Ranged can simply stay out of the fray and disregarding for the purposes of this discussion the difference in survivability, I realised that what truly seems to make them more powerful is the skills they can get. Not the main skills, but the support skills.

Thinking about the support skills I looked them up on the wiki. I counted a total of (ignoring totem skils, trap skills, spell only related skills, minion skills, and lightning strike) 38 support skills for Ranged and 32 support skills for Melee. Of those support skills for both Melee and Ranged 30 are potentially shared. Some may not be all that useful for either Ranged or Melee but they may both still use them. That leaves us with 8 Ranged only support skills and 2 Melee only support skills.

The 2 Melee only support skills are increased melee damage on full life and increased melee physical damage.

The 8 Ranged only support skills are iron grip, chain, faster projectiles, fork, greater multiple projectiles, lesser multiple projectiles, pierce, and point blank.

As I see it the Ranged only support skills do an excellent job at enhancing the ranged characters ability to be effective. They enhance the utility and feeling of power for Ranged skills. The current Melee only support skills do not really accomplish this as far as I am concerned.

I think to help bring Melee more into line with Ranged we need better Melee support gems. Or at the very least more Melee only options.

I couldn't come up with any suggestions for Melee only support skills but I saw some interesting suggestions yesterday so I'm going to link them here.

Useful both for melee and ranged attack skills but not spells
- Add a chance to stop enemy from attacking for some seconds
- It's not a stun nor knockback nor blind
- It doesn't work against spells
- Disarmed enemies are also slowed for some seconds
- Bigger duration for melee attack skills supported by this gem

- Useful both for melee and ranged attack skills but not spells
- Add a chance to stop enemy from casting any spell for some seconds
- It's not a stun nor knockback nor blind
- It doesn't work against attacks
- Silenced enemies are also slowed for some seconds
- Bigger duration for melee attack skills supported by this gem

Support gem
Attribute(s): Strength;Intelligence
Mana Cost Multiplier: 150%
Melee skills linked to this gem spend life instead of mana, and the skill is performed by a shadow copy of player character.
Cost Multiplier lowers as gem levels.
Per 1% Quality: +1.5% increased damage by shadow

allow movement while using skills support gem melee only

- Increase damage dealt by melee weapon based on how much distance has been traveled by character since start of cast until end of cast
- Usable by leam slam, flicker strike, whirling blades, shield charge, any flickering melee skill not mentioned yet
- Not usable by phase run nor melee skills which doesn't have caster self-movement component on it