so, about that 3.25 melee rework - how to not kill melee entirely in few steps:

so, first of all - please, please, do not do a melee REWORK. chance you do it correctly the first time are nil (Call to Arms.. just ponder on it for a moment)

to the point.

what melee needs is numbers not gargantuan reworks. ReplicaAlberonSTRstacker dual strike is a great build. Dual Strike suddenly is fine as a skill but you cannot make it good without some weird gotcha scaling. phys weapons just cannot compete and are absurdly hard to craft at the same time (excluding graveprinting but that insanity will 1000% going to die next patch)

why Boneshatter is good? numbers. trauma support with Frosbreath? numbers. bleed is fine - but on a bow, because it deals tripple damage. numbers

so:

just add flat damage to ALL skills and increase ALL bases (the slow ones and 2handers - more). you had no problems doing that with bows (that didnt need it in the first place) i cannot see a valid reason to not do it here. if Voidforge is a problem - deal with Voidforge. it cannot hold entire archetype hostage.

that alone would do wonders. (less resources spent on damage -> more resources spent on fun stuff)

and then, the 'unf.. this' part (no particular order):

- unf.. the Seismic Cry. this gem is such a meme
- unf.. the Call to Arms. the gem was a net loss to melee and net buff to everyone else. please, take this seriously. you wont 'fix' melee if you pretend it is otherwise.
- unf.. the melee supports. in particular: Fist of War (+make its cooldown modifiable!), Brutality, BloodLust, Damage on Full Life
- unf.. the Fortify. big change: bake it into all melee skills with very short duration + change passives to provide increased duration. cannot be (cheaply) abused by casters/CoCS, solves Fortify problems for melee. it should be ALMOST free to get and use for a melee build. several passives or a garbage support is NOT free!
- unf.. the Gladiator. give him the spell block back. it STILL wont make it compete with Necromancers (they have 75/75 block anyway, lol) but it would at least make it a class you pick for SOMETHING (like Pious Path on Inquisitor)


now the small buffs:

- warcries. the paper stuff they give is already meh but most players do not know that most of the time warcries give them nothing. the duration on them is VERY short and the bonus they give in real scenario is rarely 30% of the potential maximum. also the warcry passives are very, very point inefficient. condense the passives by 1/3, increase base warcry buff duration by 50%

- exerted %damage. way, way too low. maybe make these values scalable with Warcry Buff Effect or something? right now 20% is not enough to build around. %increase in general is a weak stat

- stun. melee's alternative to freeze. but unlike freeze it is expensive to get and fails when most needed. it is one of the very few systems with caps: hard cap on boss stun and soft-cap on stun threshold reduction. freeze has neither. why? perma freezing is cool but stunning is not? why?

- stun. stun should prevent stuff like essences from casting spells. currently it doesnt so it is actually pointless because nobody cares if it moves, it is all about the novas of death. stunned essences are fully operational for some dumb reason

- ancestral totems. if they are mandatory (and I wish they stay as i know any rework will end with net nerf) they should have a fading % damage reduction after spawning - or be outright Mirage Archers, aka untouchable. 50% damage down the drain because boss area is one giant degen puddle? great

- melee reservations. currently baseline melee reservation (herald, b&s, f&s etc) give ~9-12% more damage. and most players try to get all of them (to shore up damage). make it ~15% so we can keep the same damage and have some spare sockets for once

- fix that damn Leap Slam bug!

- warcries. Leap Slam should not use exerts/proc Tawhoa's Chosen. Leap Slam doing so is sole reason why both feel like shit. revert the mastery, if you insist keep if for Trans Leap Slam that actually is made to deal damage.

- nova spells on mobs should NOT shotgun, under no circumstances.

- add 'movement speed' and some form of ailment protection to bottom-left part of the tree. there is nothing. and no, getting +max res is not equivalent (esp when +max res is the WEAKEST of all form of defences nowadays)

- add +LGOH and FLAT regen to bottom-left part of the tree. add them to EXISTING passives. no need to create passive bloat

- fix/remove some terribad clusters: Inexorable, Cauterisation (the notable is 100% garbage), Fending (knocback is good, this cluster isnt), Dance of Blades, Assured Strike and all the block stuff around Versatile Combatant


i sure would like to see an actuall high effort and successful melee rework but after literal string of collateral nerfs melee got i do not believe it is possible

so just fix easy stuff. numbers++ do work. you use numbers-- to nerf stuff, right?



and the big stuff:


- Determination and Grace. are utter disgrace. getting AR/EV on items feel pointless. have no idea what to do with it but it is very wrong that people pick 'phys taken as fire' over T1 AR roll on an AR chest. these two auras are MANDATORY to reach AR/EV values that make an impact. this is very wrong.

- Spell Suppression. cheeze, lazy stat introduced to make certain endgame parts doable. since most end-endgame spells have penetration, +max res is mostly pointless, suppression covers it all. lower the respectable pen AND/OR lower the damage output + reduce suppression base reduction from 50 to 30%. 'if something is mandatory, look at it' - suppression is busted strong and everyone who can - maxes it. it is unhealthy and limits design space

+1

Also remove Fortify threshold and revert it to function on hit full 20 stacks like old Fortify. Because of this right now melee bleed and poison can't use Fortify at all.

+ 100

Melee at present is a mess. Make melee great again.

The changes I would like to see to melee attack skills

Animation fixes
When a swing starts it will connect even if a monster walks away.

Removing negative attack speed from gems

Removing the need for 30-50% of your damage coming from totem buffs and warcries.

Changing some monster attacks so melee can be close at all without taking guaranteed damage. A lot of stuff puts up a die if you stand near me zone which melee range people have 0 dos in until it goes away.

Longer leech instances for melee damage.

all good suggestions but we lets be real this is going to be 3.7 all over again.

They have been staring at the problem for years and have done very little.

Then again melee is fine...as long as you don't play it...


Strange how other ARPG's don't have this problem...I wonder why...



Honestly if they can give back the attack speed it will be a start.

I bet more transfigured melee gems are coming instead. or maybe they will give it the ole 5% percent and +2...

The eagles are coming...

The Call to Arms change on the passive tree was not a happy one for me. I get that it helps the large number of people who play in groups... who really didn't need the help.

I was hoping it would be more of a shout out to melee, but it isn't horrible with the new auto-cast warcry support in place.

hi ,do you think melee skills, for example strike skills should have a natural melee splash or + targets?

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suriuken wrote:

hi ,do you think melee skills, for example strike skills should have a natural melee splash or + targets?

in current iteration +target is MANDATORY due to how bad natural targeting is. if you want to hit stuff you HAVE to have +strikes

but that is due to garbage targeting mechanic, not gameplay itself

as for splash - surprisingly, i think once your build 'clicks' you can do fine without. my last strike build (DS of Ambidexterity) leveled from 92 to 93 WITHOUT any source of splash/explody. and while it was slower (needed 2-3 hits per magic pack in t16 alva temples instead of 1) it was perfectly capable of all pre-T17 content

(note: ive been using auto-cast Ancestral Call for +targets and lots of Armour, it worked surprisingly well given that 9 exerts is a lot once your swing can kill an entire pack. it is an useful Warcry, sadly Enduring Cry is better for all builds that are still in need of recovery/tankiness upgrade)

so once GGG fixes the targeting (enables what already is in the game for multistrike/ancestral) the +targets is.. an option. same with splash. and i think it is ~fine.

what is not fine is default strike range. this is not cool esp on claws. playing viper strike (without natural access to strike range nearby) was REVOLTING. it was most probably the WORST time i had in POE ever.. and ive tried lots of sh.. builds in the past

"

sidtherat wrote:

"

suriuken wrote:

hi ,do you think melee skills, for example strike skills should have a natural melee splash or + targets?

in current iteration +target is MANDATORY due to how bad natural targeting is. if you want to hit stuff you HAVE to have +strikes

but that is due to garbage targeting mechanic, not gameplay itself

as for splash - surprisingly, i think once your build 'clicks' you can do fine without. my last strike build (DS of Ambidexterity) leveled from 92 to 93 WITHOUT any source of splash/explody. and while it was slower (needed 2-3 hits per magic pack in t16 alva temples instead of 1) it was perfectly capable of all pre-T17 content

(note: ive been using auto-cast Ancestral Call for +targets and lots of Armour, it worked surprisingly well given that 9 exerts is a lot once your swing can kill an entire pack. it is an useful Warcry, sadly Enduring Cry is better for all builds that are still in need of recovery/tankiness upgrade)

so once GGG fixes the targeting (enables what already is in the game for multistrike/ancestral) the +targets is.. an option. same with splash. and i think it is ~fine.

what is not fine is default strike range. this is not cool esp on claws. playing viper strike (without natural access to strike range nearby) was REVOLTING. it was most probably the WORST time i had in POE ever.. and ive tried lots of sh.. builds in the past

ty for the responsed, yeah, base strike range is very bad, as someone who play mostly unnarmed builds or when i use weapons claws builds as you said, have very poor range

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suriuken wrote:

ty for the responsed, yeah, base strike range is very bad, as someone who play mostly unnarmed builds or when i use weapons claws builds as you said, have very poor range

during affliction i used a tincture that gave me 0.6 m weapon range.

with no other flasks, that went up to 2.1 m

it felt like cheating but i finally had crazy range. but as strike skills go, it was feeling more like a whip rather than doing huge ass cleaves.

it still felt bad. GGG's old rework let us hit multiple enemies with strikes but its virtually non existant.