Melee bad - Feels good and bad to have devs confirm it

If I could remove one melee skill from the game, it would be Cyclone.

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Izrakhan wrote:

You're not talking about maps here. It's A10 campaign. The Jugg in question had his ascendancy, 3.5k life, had six endurance charges, 81% phys and 81% ele res. I built him to not die seeing his melee attack speed was so slow. That was the entire point. He died in one cleave attack.

That's impossible. His Cleave deals ~4971 Physical Damage with max roll + crit. I facetanked this guy with a 2.9k HP Champion and he barely scratched me. He's a lvl 65 boss.

Merciless Izaro deals much more damage with his mace slam. His mace slam could potentially hit you for ~13278 Physical Damage (without buffs) when hit while in the center + max roll + crit. That's crazy high for a lvl 68 boss. That's basically what surprise one-shot my Champion for the first time in years, until I did the math afterwards. Then it was clear as day; my Armour wasn't high enough at the time.

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Aynix wrote:

If I could remove one melee skill from the game, it would be Cyclone.

I would remove boneshatter. That stuff keeps holding any meaningful changes behind.

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ChanBalam wrote:

@Baharoth You don't appear to be playing this league and your profile and characters are set to private. How long since you last played? Why don't you show us your builds?

I am mostly playing standard but i try to keep my builds up to date and not use legacy gear. The last league i played was crucible. I don't really mind showing my builds, i offert to post a POB last page, the person in question didn't even respond because he doesn't care.
The people here that complain all the time aren't interested in learning, that would mean they'd have to blame themselves rather than the game. No matter how many youtube videos, POBs or profiles I show them they'll just ignore all of it so what's the point?
I've been participating in these kind of debates for years now and the people complaining didn't really change over the years, i've had my profile open for most of those years, nobody ever even cared.
Because of that i've stopped trying to help and stick to just calling them out on their bullshit when it gets out of hand, it doesn't really help but it's somewhat entertaining at least.

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Sameen_Shaw wrote:

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Aynix wrote:

If I could remove one melee skill from the game, it would be Cyclone.

I would remove boneshatter. That stuff keeps holding any meaningful changes behind.

Only thing its holding is metaslaves who try to play melee so they ofc gonna play Boneshatter.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

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ChanBalam wrote:

@Baharoth You don't appear to be playing this league and your profile and characters are set to private. How long since you last played? Why don't you show us your builds?

I am mostly playing standard but i try to keep my builds up to date and not use legacy gear. The last league i played was crucible. I don't really mind showing my builds, i offert to post a POB last page, the person in question didn't even respond because he doesn't care.
The people here that complain all the time aren't interested in learning, that would mean they'd have to blame themselves rather than the game. No matter how many youtube videos, POBs or profiles I show them they'll just ignore all of it so what's the point?
I've been participating in these kind of debates for years now and the people complaining didn't really change over the years, i've had my profile open for most of those years, nobody ever even cared.
Because of that i've stopped trying to help and stick to just calling them out on their bullshit when it gets out of hand, it doesn't really help but it's somewhat entertaining at least.

i like how the devs have said that Melee is bad and this guy is still blaming the playerbase for "not learning"

It depends almost entirely on how you define bad I guess, he seems to define bad as unworkable at any level of skill, game knowledge and investment. I define bad as horribly inefficient, unfun and possessed of no real advantage over any other option. By his incredibly narrow definition of bad melee is not bad because top end super expensive builds like armour stacker and endurance stack exist and invulnerability makes up for horribly lacking dps. By my and probably everyone elses standards melee is in a terrible position, basically the only skill where you can stack enough ehp to survive and still deal decent damage without outrageous investment is boneshatter, and even then you're usually better off playing something else given boneshatter's poor aoe and being caught in the same weapon trap as ranged attack builds that are vastly stronger for less investment.

I think melee has a few issues:

Like all characters you need skitterbots + 2 curses to get real damage

Pride sucks as an aura for pure phys, it has a large number, but ramps up and falls off while dodging in fights

Melee strike range is too rare of a stat, especially for daggers and claws.

Rolling melee weapons has more trash mods than caster ones. the base type matters more for melee players. A caster or bow user can use almost any base and be fine.

Leech is a bad form of sustain.

Most melee skills don't shotgun, the ones that do are underwhelming

Almost all melee skills can't be automated or triggered in any form :: this means that every melee build needs an inordinate amount of attack speed when compared to any cast on crit/cast while channeling/cast while stunned.

Melee doesn't get inherit tankiness or sustain for being closer to a boss.

Attack animations are really wonky, makes attack speed breakpoints harder to determine.

Accuracy is a stat for melee but not for spells, why?

phys overhwelm is just not a good stat when compared to elemental penetration

Impale and warcries need about as much investment as a minion build to do very minimal damage.

melee ascendancies are all super old at this point and are just inherently weak like assassin.

Repeated attacks can't hit the same target.

Stun is too unreliable to build around.

the list could go on forever.

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CarbotZergling123 wrote:

It depends almost entirely on how you define bad I guess, he seems to define bad as unworkable at any level of skill, game knowledge and investment. I define bad as horribly inefficient, unfun and possessed of no real advantage over any other option. By his incredibly narrow definition of bad melee is not bad because top end super expensive builds like armour stacker and endurance stack exist and invulnerability makes up for horribly lacking dps. By my and probably everyone elses standards melee is in a terrible position, basically the only skill where you can stack enough ehp to survive and still deal decent damage without outrageous investment is boneshatter, and even then you're usually better off playing something else given boneshatter's poor aoe and being caught in the same weapon trap as ranged attack builds that are vastly stronger for less investment.

I don't think it's bad because i know for a fact that it doesn't take a 100 divines to make a build with good survivability and damage. That 3 mio dps tank of your's is just another prime example of what i am talking about here.

I do think that melee has a bunch of issues (totems, clunky in early acts and weapon progression in SSF), and it's also a fact that range has an inherent advantage over it and is therefor "better". But one thing being better than another doesn't make the inferior one "bad" 8/10 is worse than 10/10 but is it bad because of that?
For me melee is "fine" as long as i can take a melee build from twighlight strand to ubers on a reasonable budget (~20-30 div depending on league prices) and i can do just that.

If someone thinks melee is "bad" because totems are annoying, or because gem scaling is so much more convienient, or because range is easier to build since it can just dodge stuff rather than needing defense, i won't say a thing or disagree, those are valid points. But that's not something i read often. Instead i see lines like:

"Even with a 600 pdps weapon melee caps out at 5 mio dps" or "You need 20+ div weapons to do red maps with melee" or "melee is unplayable because you can't go close to shit/stand still without dying" and the likes.
Statements that, regardless of what you think about the state of melee, are objectively wrong and so incredibly stupid it gives me goosebumps. And the people who spout that nonsense aren't even aware of it. It's dunning kruger effect on max level.

/edit to illustrate the point this is the budget version of my shield crush jugg

https://pobb.in/4D0LI1JyDgvI

similar EHP and max hits for everything except phys, 6 times the damage and a build cost of around 20 div. If you opt for a 1 mod watchers eye and spend a bit of time sniping you might be able to do it with 10 div. Now look at those 100 div of yours, nevermind all the legacy gear in your buid. The build can outright facetank most ubers and afk in average tier 17 maps.

There is a MASSIVE gap between what you people think melee can do and what it can do in reality.

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Khallis wrote:

i like how the devs have said that Melee is bad and this guy is still blaming the playerbase for "not learning"

Not "devs". ONE person. Guess what. Devs usually are pretty bad at their own game. There is one guy at GGG who is very good at the game and he is not one who said melee is bad. Instead the dude who is good at the game is constantly playing melee in SSFHC and reaching lvl100.