Neon asked for a brief summery of melee's biggest problems w/ simple suggetions

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alhazred70 wrote:

it does kill me that Unleash support is a spell support, this happened at the same time that they buffed spells base damage from around double to in some cases nearly triple the base dmg of a melee weapon.

Unleash would be a mechanically huge support for a melee style.

But so would bleed and ignite. Or built in DOT's like so many Spells have.

Melee has almost no DOT skills. Static strike is 3s of limpness, Bladersotrm is okayish if you've never played cold DOT. Rage Vortex's T-gem should be the default behavour IMO.

There's SO MUCH ROOM for T-gems that have DOT like behavours or Ailment synergies and so few of them do or are usable. Delayed EQ is powerful but a pure meme build to try and actually play.

Speaking of T-gems... Melee has dramatically fewer of them than Spells or ranged and they just completely ignored melee (as is tradition) with this new handful. Even going out of their way to remove melee from Ele hit's tags for honestly no possible explanation I can imagine except someone just forgot it has a melee tag.

unleash the way it currently works is very good with spells as it's leaning towards the entire "unload everything nuke" fantasy.

it does have a downside where unleash does nothing for the supported skill if theres no stacks. which is acceptable since the entire premise is huge ass hits taking time to build up.

for melee unleash to work, it works best if its an inherent melee benefit.

why? if it is a support gem, there is the downside of the skill providing no bonus if there are no stacks. if this downside is somehow removed and this support gem gives 20-30 more damage even without stacks, then the gem becomes a must have.

but from what i feel, GGG is very reluctant to give free power to melee, also they're worried that melee-ers do some 1 hit kill shenanigans.

want quick and dirty:

melees biggest and imho only issue is DAMAGE

STR stack, 2000 STR (not even that much) with all the clown fiesta of armour/warcry/passive + a weapon with JUST ONE mod: 2-4/10STR deals several times more damage than full mirror setup

STR stacking melee has little problems. it can pick what buffs to use, can focus on utlity/defences - aka enjoys all the QoL casters enjoy

if the baseline is STR stack (or any other stacking but STR happens to be the cheapest by far) - then melee is perfectly fine

problem is: you cannot, absolutely cannot, match this performance using rare phys weapon.



this is a mace most playerbease never seen and never will. this mace cannot clean boots to Brutus Lead Sprinkler

this is the problem. STR stacking melee, with all defences solved by MB is a cool, fine archetype

pick a rare weapon, drop the MB and it is just pile of shit

Some of you guys are forgetting fist of war exists. That is melee's version of unleash. At least for slams. That type of stuff can't exist for strikes because you want at a minimum of 10 aps for the build to feel ok. An unleash mechanic is just useless.

First they messed up impale and seismic cry, then they added omni, took away mantra of flames, made it harder to suppress cap from bottom left side, decided they didn't want people actually playing lightning strike. Deleted that from being good. Then losing phant. ancestral protector and divergent trauma they decided to delete our last good build that wasn't generals cry, generals cry may need the entire less damage multiplier removed from the gem for it to be good, then the very next patch they DELETE GENERALS CRY BUILD FROM WORKING, No I do not think boneshatter is a good build unless you meme with duration and phys invincibility which you cant do on very many ascendancies. It just the best build for melee atm. Anyone that has league started it knows its a lot more painful to do voidstones on than pretty much any gem level scaling skill. How many of you have crafted a 800+ pdps 2her without buying a fracture? Str stacking is paper thin even with 6500 hp and you will die all the time without mb. The spell block is unlucky is a dagger to the heart of these builds imo.

I'm sure there were other negative melee changes these are just the ones that effected the builds i played the most.

They appear to just not care boys. At this point its just over. Do it for fun but you will never compete anymore. The new keystone is an absolute joke. Whoever made that replaced cta with that should be ashamed of themselves. In the same patch they add a unique that appears to be psynergestic with berserker for.... you guessed it SPELLS.

Oh and echoes of creation is uber shaper only now. So if you're ssf and love melee. then you're shafted because uber farming isn't really viable on melee in ssf for most players. Its going to be harder this league with sapphire flask being way worse against bullet hell.

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sidtherat wrote:

my biggest issue with melee is that GGG pretends that they care while in reality they dont give a


this alone makes all our feedback moot.

delete melee from the game already, stop pretending

Call to Arms situation is perfect example of what GGG does:

they 'know' melee is shit. they know casters are better. what they do? give the 'melee only' bonus to melee and TAKE IT AWAY from melee

like.. seriously, it is just outrageous at this point and can no longer be explained by lack of foresight or whatever. it is deliberate and malicious. i just wonder why they do it instead of simply deleting what is already dead

Finally, someone who sees through the bullshit.
But I have another explanation, or at least an additional one: The game designers/director just aren't very good.

I'm sure they are very focused and spend a lot of time and energy on their work, I ain't denying nor trying to take that away from them. Doesn't mean they are good, nor that the chosen decisions are. As a long time observer, that conclusion is forced on me, as common sense.

Sorry to say but Affliction was absolute and utter garbage (let's multiply the drop rates by x1000 in a loot-rarity-based-game, yeah what a great idea). The people who decided to introduce that mechanic alone, shouldn't be allowed to be game designers in the first place...
And Necropolis really doesn't look fun whatsoever, hell actually it even looks tedious.

And the lead game director saying he is pro world drops... lol what
The lead game director saying they are reluctant/refuse to do numerical balance changes... lol what
Meanwhile they introduce never-ending reliquary keys, valdo maps, divination cards ; which in turn leads to players either obtaining their item through trade, or through a box/key interface. Ridiculously stupid game design.

All the while game balance is in an atrocious state, etc

Just spitting out objective truth here.

ps: go play DD everyone... yay, great game design

I have an idea that probably help melee quite a bit. Making Fortify damage reduction more effective while using melee skill or during melee attack animation (and exception or less effective for movement skill)

For melee bleed, I think allow melee able to acess Rupture that Deadeye has would be nice.

Melee's four biggest problems, as I see them, and suggestions:

Problem 1 - Lack of damage projection

Solution: Remove melee splash support and fold the functionality of Cleave into every single melee skill on top of what those skills do already.

Explanation: Melee, by its very definition, is going to be worse at projecting its damage onto distant targets than bows, spells, etc. But that doesn't mean it can't be competitive or even superior when it comes to the number of targets hit per attack. If you swing a big 2h weapon around, it should hit SEVERAL targets in an area around you.


Problem 2 - Lack of raw offensive damage output

Solution: Make all of the numbers on weapons bigger, especially those on 2h weapons.

Explanation: In what universe is a single arrow from a longbow going to do the same damage as a greataxe overhead smash? The numbers for 1h weapons should be equal to the numbers for bows, and the numbers for 2h weapons should be 50-60% higher than that.


Problem 3 - Nothing is special about melee (i.e., there's no reason to actually pick it)

Solution: Remove accuracy entirely as a factor for non-projectile melee attacks (essentially, make enemies unable to evade melee damage)

Explanation: The idea of Ground Slam missing is stupid. The idea of Cyclone missing is stupid. The idea of Earthquake missing is stupid. Forcing melee players to work dex or accuracy into their builds - something literally every bow build already does for no opportunity cost whatsoever - is bad for game balance AND makes zero sense.


Problem 4 - Melee usually has to be stationary to deal damage, making it by far the least safe playstyle

Solution: Work motion into melee skills by default. Basically, look at any DMC-type game and then just do that.

Explanation: Nobody is going to stand in one place while swinging a giant club, they're going to shift their weight, step forward, and follow through. So why are our feet ROOTED IN PLACE while we fight in this game? It looks bad, it feels bad, it plays bad; ergo, it IS bad. At least you guys are clearly aware of this problem because you're fixing it in PoE2, but there's no reason why you couldn't have worked it out in PoE1 literally 9 years ago. Here's your equation:

Just take the half of the movement speed of the character in units per second, multiply by the attack time of the character in seconds, and you're done: you now have the units of distance that a character should move forward during that attack. This also solves the knockback problem melee players face, just as a minor side effect.

Personally I would be happy if they do away with ancestral totems (seriously, fuck that) and revert the dual wield nerf from 3.11.0. (No longer grants 20% more physical attack damage. It still grants 10% more attack speed and 15% chance to block attack hits.)

Gladiator could also use a rework or straight up rework it to be the block ascendancy again.

I think you can solve some of the issues with new gems but ultimately lots of melee related gems feel awful to play

I wanted a melee skill that ragdolled the enemy and if you aimed them at the next pack it would explode like DD, sort of like bowling.

A skill that created copies of yourself so targeting packs would be easier

I wanted knockback to have an alt gem/toggle function that sucked mobs in instead of pushing them away, annoying!

Leap slam alt to have the nearest pack of mobs leap/pulled to you, cool!

You could rework the ascendencies and create weapon inherence, so dual axes creates rage, sword and board creates fortify and the ascendencies augment that in better ways such as having rage with dual axes creates projectile block as if you are swinging your axes around like a mad man while progressing towards the next mobs.

The game has obviously been designed and balanced around streamers and top players with their 1 button of doom to clear the screen and so melee has never had the love it needs, slams and some extra tankiness isn't cutting it and I have no solutions other than POE2 looks to solve some of these issues, but its in danger of doing the same thing as POE1

What I think melee needs are immutable characteristics baked into weapons and skills exclusively.

Make attack skills grant significant damage reduction, fortify, give buffs that greatly reduce boss slam damage. Give melee some massive tank benefits that can't be obtained by any other archetype.

They have to literally jump into the thick of danger, they should be given the strongest defensive buffs in the game.

Let melee facetank.

OP explained it pretty well, but it boils down to the above. If I have to stand next to an enemy to attack it, then I should get extra protection that allows me to do so.

The luxury of ranged builds is that they can keep dealing damage from the safest spot on screen, and that luxury should come at the cost of having to constantly move to the safest spot on screen in order to survive.

Spoiler alert: this is going to be real tough in a game where "melee" skills can still clear enemies offscreen, and where you can deal ranged damage based on your shield's defenses.



The big problem with PoE1 is that there's absolutely zero correlation between what your range is and how tanky you are. There's no reason to play melee when you could just as well play ranged without sacrificing anything. And frankly, I don't see how you fix that without tearing down the active skills and rebuilding them from scratch.