Melee Thread #97865
" I'm not really asking for them to make melee more melee. That ship has sailed, and will probably keep on sailing. What I'm asking, is for them to make their 'definition' of melee viable/competitive/good. Shouldn't it actually be easier for them to balance melee, when they define it as they see fit? And no, plaguefear is not right. First of all, they didn't remove the splash damage from the Dual Strike threshold jewel - they just made it Maces only, as far as I know. He's also wrong when claiming spells do not need non-damage supports, because there are several spells that 'need' non-damage supports like Multiple Projectiles, Spell Cascade etc. But he may be right in the fact that they (GGG) do not want melee to be good, for some strange reason. I would use a much more hostile word than "strange" here, but my post would just disappear - with an over-generic message appearing in my inbox. Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile. Last edited by Phrazz#3529 on Oct 2, 2022, 1:10:19 AM
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"You just said what i said, they removed the melee splash, you just added the fact that the ZERO characters that use 1h maces to melee can still splash. No spell needs gmp or spell cascade. Last edited by plaguefear#7132 on Oct 2, 2022, 1:29:55 AM
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I am still of the belief that the way GGG sees things, melee has been in the balance spot they want everything else to be in, so the other archetypes being better is the problem.
The cleave buff is kind of a proof of that - it's a does-nothing buff, apparently put in to make content creators make a cleave melee build, show how it clears the game, so GGG can point a finger at that, say 'see, melee is fine, now stfu about it' and do nothing about melee. And the first part has just happened, so I'd be surprised if melee got any changes anytime soon. Tough luck... for me too, because I love playing melee (wild strike raider was my favourite build of all time), but it's just so bad in comparison to everything else. | |
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If they wanted everything else to be as bad as melee, wouldnt they be cutting damage across the board for spells and bows by... 75%?
I feel like they probably run internal tests on melee in ideal conditions, with mirror gear, and say "huh, not too bad". I dont think the people in charge of design actually play the game. I dont mean to be hyperbolic, but how could you do a playthrough of the game playing melee, ranged, and spells, and then not make any changes? Seriously, how would that be possible? Only explanation I see, some at GGG play the game, lead devs do not. |
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Simply put GGG wants melee to be as bad as it is otherwise it would have already been fixed melee has been in this state for quite sometime.
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" But melee, on paper, doesn't do any lower damage than the other archetypes. On paper, it often even does way more damage. And yes, I also believe GGG doesn't play the game naturally, but run simulations, edit-in items, and if they don't directly use PoB, then they use something similar. It's not even something that's fixable, because playing the game naturally takes too much time + has huge variance due to all involved rng. It hides the progression problems though. I mean, a typical melee build video/showcase is made by this process: 1) Play a meta build, finish that. 2) Farm a ton of extra currency on that build. 3) Use the excess currency to uber-gear the melee character. 4) Make a video about the melee character, "hey, this ain't bad, right?" GGG sees the video, says "okay, there's melee content on yt, all is fine" and moves on to nerf something else. | |
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melee doesn't do comparable damage until high investment and if you include uptime it takes even longer.
Its never going to be perfect but they can do better, we've had a patch that buffed all the spells by 50% recently when the performance difference wasn't that big prior lol don't make excuses for them. Melee sucks because they won't devote any time to it, no other reason and I don't think most players care if they get it right they want to see an attempt to get it right. |
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" This is the exact same thing for spells tho. The difference is that people referring to "melee" often times rule out the good melee skills, leaving them only with meme "melee" skills with no inate range or coverage to speak off and then compare those to the most powerful combo they can find with a "spell" tag. Which usually ends up being some sort of proxy dmg (totems, minions, brands etc) or insane burst dmg (traps, mines) or DoT spells. All of those enable a high mobility playstyle plus excellent dmg uptime and especially in a leaguestart scenario mobility is about the best and cheapest form of defense you can get. Noone is comparing the meme "melee" skills to meme "spells" - usually referred to as selfcast. Both come with high opportunity costs, whether its range/AoE for melee or castspeed/mana for selfcast doesnt matter. Those opportunity costs are driving up the costs for gearing and thats why nobody starts with those skills. You simply cant afford those costs in a leaguestart scenario. The real difference is that melee doesnt have anything available to compete with high burst dmg, proxy dmg and not even good DoT dmg resulting in a lack of mobility and terrible dps uptime. If it wasnt for that, spells would be about as bad as melee is. |
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" Two things can be true at the same time - both that melee is in a rough shape, and that selfcasting spells aren't all that much better. Spells, in general, do have the advantage of not scaling from weapon damage - it's infinitely easier to grab a +1 amulet, +3 staff/cold iron point/2x +1/2 wand, skin of the lords, socket in lvl3 empower, get a lvl21 gem and have a lvl31 spell, which has about 150 - 200 % more damage than a lvl20 spell, than getting 150 - 200 % more damage from upgrading one's weapon. As demonstrated by lightning conduit, damage solves everything, because LC is kind of clunky and mechanically awkward, but it hits like a truck, so the other stuff doesn't matter at all. And people league-started with it without problems too, so there's that. Last edited by Xyel#0284 on Oct 2, 2022, 6:54:40 AM
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" While all of that is true, attack based builds including melee do have another option - stat stacking. For god knows whatever reason this is far superior to upgrading your weapon. Im not even talking about Omni-builds. Just generally stacking a stat of your choice, adding the appopriate gearpieces providing flat ele dmg based of that stat and also using all the available synergies depending on your tree layout will do. If you do that, you will get pretty much the exact same result as spells do. Your weapon doesnt matter nearly as much anymore and you will reach a plateau depending on your budget at some point. Getting past mentioned plateau is going to be increasingly expensive but also increasingly rewarding all the way to absurdity, if you are able to afford it. Unless you wanted to play a pure build that is. In this case you are shit out of luck, regardless whether its spell or atk based. Pure phys doesnt have anything going for it and cant compete at all with any of the stacking methods but like I said, thats a general issue and not limited to melee. |
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