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

first of all for OP - make a bingo card since they said they dont look at anything else.

Slams should not need accuracy. You already have to invest into warcries, which feels pathetic atm.

Totem buffs - need to be gone. We already have other stuff to press like curses/focus/berserk/bloodrage etc

Fortify - make base duration 15s and buff dmg on the support gem and add more fortify clusters to scale(solely on left side of the tree!!!) - duration, maximum stacks, stacks gained per hit and consider moving in some dmg as it used to be back in the days. Casters will never have it because it will be sourced only from the fortify gem and can be even made weaker without investment and way stronger with investment. Consider adding PREFIX modifier to scale fortify/stacks on pure armor bases, so the meta isnt hybrid suppress gear anymore.

Maces - maybe make maces always hit? like resolute technique, but without downside since they are altready way worse than axes? or maybe more thematically fair would be - attacks from maces cant be blocked?

Warcries - rework echoes of creation(uber drop to enable one of the most basic archetypes???) and give %more multi back on seismic cry. Warcry base speed and duration should be SIGNIFICANTLY improved, so we can remove at least 1 of those warcry clusters and make them fortify related instead.

Tawhoa chosen - exerts attacks, works with FoW, works with shockwave - if all of these interaction work, we can increase its cooldwon or reduce its damage since it would be the most OP ascendancy node in the game(raw dmg wise)

Leap slam - basic behavior CANNOT BE EXERTED. Trans leap slam basic behivor - CAN BE EXERTED

Mana cost - reduce base mana cost of melee skills and warcries across the board by ~30% or reduce the "manacost increase" on melee support gems

"

tw3tye wrote:

Maybe make a better melee build.

Just getting phys melee weapon and getting some inc damage on tree get's you so far.
It's same with bows, but like 2x worse.
it's same with spells but 2x worse.

Melee actually has it quite good, all nodes are 50% stronger damage vise, Weapon bases have higher base damage to scale off, and better attack rates.
melee gems have 50%-100% better added damage scaling then bows/wands.

There are still warcry builds that 1 tap uber bosses with earthquake.
Generals cry(insert any melee skill) is BUSTED AF
New conc path of endurance hits like 2 screens big AoE, and does FAR better damage then mirror tornado shot builds, and costs few hundred chaos orbs to assemble.
Cleave of rage... again it's busted

Melee is fine, it's beyond fine, it needs nerfing. And GGG nerfed it. Maybe, it's not THEM that are out of touch... maybe it's you!

Not sure what game you're talking about I think you logged into the POE forums when you're intending to log into the Lost Ark or Last Epoch forum.

Yeah anyone remember all those crazy conc path build that were farming ultra juiced affliction maps? Oh... wait those were literally all TS builds.

Anyway all sarcasm aside I'm interesting in what lens you view the game through to come to what I can only call the most immensely contrarian view about the general state of not just melee but the game in general.


Assuming your take isn't just completely made up narrative, I'm guessing some combination of having used the best melee skills and never having ever played a bow or spell build competently? OR someone who somehow thinks spells are underpowered because of some really weird edge case thats been their only experience with them? Maybe your view is formed from a particularly narrow focus on a specific content and the best way of solving for that content just happens to be Conc path or something?

"

tw3tye wrote:

Maybe make a better melee build.

Just getting phys melee weapon and getting some inc damage on tree get's you so far.
It's same with bows, but like 2x worse.
it's same with spells but 2x worse.

Melee actually has it quite good, all nodes are 50% stronger damage vise, Weapon bases have higher base damage to scale off, and better attack rates.
melee gems have 50%-100% better added damage scaling then bows/wands.

There are still warcry builds that 1 tap uber bosses with earthquake.
Generals cry(insert any melee skill) is BUSTED AF
New conc path of endurance hits like 2 screens big AoE, and does FAR better damage then mirror tornado shot builds, and costs few hundred chaos orbs to assemble.
Cleave of rage... again it's busted

Melee is fine, it's beyond fine, it needs nerfing. And GGG nerfed it. Maybe, it's not THEM that are out of touch... maybe it's you!

Award for the most incorrect statement on these forums in the last 5(+?) years!

No I think that tw3tye here is genuinely sincere with his comment. It shows well how the community and GGG are both disconnected with how horrible (both offensively and defensively) melee endgame gameplay is for the average player.

The near absence of melee build guides and commentary videos by the POE community these days shows exactly the great current state of endgame melee!

The first step in not killing melee would be to get GGG to care about melee not being dead.

10 years and counting.

"

alhazred70 wrote:

Anyway all sarcasm aside I'm interesting in what lens you view the game through to come to what I can only call the most immensely contrarian view about the general state of not just melee but the game in general.


Assuming your take isn't just completely made up narrative, I'm guessing some combination of having used the best melee skills and never having ever played a bow or spell build competently? OR someone who somehow thinks spells are underpowered because of some really weird edge case thats been their only experience with them? Maybe your view is formed from a particularly narrow focus on a specific content and the best way of solving for that content just happens to be Conc path or something?

Maybe he isn't judging the archetype based on horrible builds where all good items/setups are excluded beforehand as "exceptions"?

"

alhazred70 wrote:

Assuming your take isn't just completely made up narrative

I mean its obvious there always is at least one person denying reality in the sense of trolling attempt. Check out his mana stacker spell based build in league. Wonder why he isnt playing melee if everything is so good and busted.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

"

alhazred70 wrote:

Anyway all sarcasm aside I'm interesting in what lens you view the game through to come to what I can only call the most immensely contrarian view about the general state of not just melee but the game in general.


Assuming your take isn't just completely made up narrative, I'm guessing some combination of having used the best melee skills and never having ever played a bow or spell build competently? OR someone who somehow thinks spells are underpowered because of some really weird edge case thats been their only experience with them? Maybe your view is formed from a particularly narrow focus on a specific content and the best way of solving for that content just happens to be Conc path or something?

Maybe he isn't judging the archetype based on horrible builds where all good items/setups are excluded beforehand as "exceptions"?

Judging the health or worth of investing in a wide slew of skills (in a game about "build diversity") by the performance of replica alberons boneshatter LS and MS would be exceptions. Exceptions test the rule.

The exceptions clearly show in the general body of melee skills that we have:

a derth of available flat dmg
poor mechanical advantage
poor scaling potential
too much opportunity cost required (especially defensively) to make the "juice worth the squeeze"

We can also simply ask expert players like Ben_ what they think. If you'd like some enlightenment I have a couple clips of him talking about this issue.

I mean assuming you aren't more informed about the game than Ben is?

Guys, we were all wrong.

According to Jonathan, the biggest problem with melee is that the rigs make it hard to create new melee skills. -_-

Did anyone even mention new skills in this thread? Would making new skills fix the existing ones? :|