How's melee going?

I'm not happy with the current state of the game, nerfing loot by at least 100%, stripping base rewards out of stuff and tying it all to scarabs, but ya...

I'm enjoying the heck out of Shield Crush Slayer. Just got my Weapon Master Flesh and Flame and switched to Varunastra. GG mode, tanky fast boi. 8 frenzy /endurance charges, 20% instant leech, over leech, about 60/40 Glancing blows, 20k armour without flasks, suppress capped, 5APS with Shield Crush. 12-20 mill dps depending on stance ( pinnacle boss). Last time I played Shield Crush was Jugg and I wasnt all that thrilled with it. This is goooood.

I started as bleed Glad. It's as bad as it ever was and Lacerate is terrible. Noped out after getting 4 watch stones with him.

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Xyel wrote:

I'm curious how melee is going for those who went for it.


Myself, I started with wild strike warden, dual wield swords.

I toyed around with retaliation skills, and they were great until I started reliably freezing enemies, and well, frozen enemies don't trigger retaliation + some bosses almost don't attack, so while I had a lot of fun with swordstorm, it got axed at right about white maps.

The build still progressed fine to red-maps, at which point I had to face the reality that with warden, no tinctures = no damage, so I had to go full tinctures, and thus Avatar of the Wilds went in the trash bin (it was a lot of fun until then though).

The build hit kind of a wall at t16s though, where too many map mods brick the survival aspect (-block? death. -spell suppression? death. -aura effect? death. -max resists? death. -enemies resist ailments? death. -enemies cannot be slowed? death.).

I would have probably survived that alone, but what got me was how bad being actually melee was in fights against multiple bosses (I love using Maven's extra boss summoning), where it's nearly impossible to dodge everything when there're 3-4 bosses spamming stuff all at once.

So, wild strike went into the trash bin, and I respecced into 'melee' - lightning strike, with pretty much the same build.

That one is working great so far.

I decided on boneshatter. Honestly, it hits harder. But as a Jugg, it feels squishier than previous seasons. Can't put my finger on it, I used a similar build to one I used a few seasons ago when they juiced boneshatter, raising it from the ashes. I tried using the transfigured boneshatter, I forget it's name, but it took too much life away, made t16 scary at times. So the standard boneshatter seems to be the sweet spot for me.

Still, in seasons past with similar decent gear, suppression at 75%, along with ailments defence at 75%, I was a walking tank in previous seasons, compared to this seasons feeling... I'm not as beefy as I thought it would be. Phys def capped, and all. I must be missing something...

Check poe ninja builds and see for yourself how is it going.
Currently its either ice trap or hexblast. Not even tornado shot or other stuff anymore. Just these two are top 1 skills used

Amazing state.

Running around with a 1 div axe and already farming t17s.

Cant wait to see how fast things can get with some investment in the character.

what melee build to do with this budget? everyone always tell me molten strike zenith or something? is it good?

Started as Sunder Zerker, pivoted into Groundslam of Earthshaking which turned out to be kinda meta it seems.

It was one of the smoothest league starts I had so far and I almost didn't upgrade my gear at all from starting white maps to clearing T16s, which is crazy.
Got 3 Void Stones and working on Uber Elder Fragments now, still running a 5Link main setup and 4link autoexertion. The potential is still huge and the defenses are pretty solid aswell. I feel that I'm more reliant on flasks right now, because the steady armor bonus from Determination is missing, but it's getting better with well rolled items on the new bases.

Overall really enjoying melee this league. Also the rage rework feels amazing on zerker.

yesterday someone was giving out a free maven carry.

after getting her orb.

i decided to get the other 2 orbs myself. i had already got the invite for the eater, farmed a little bit to get the exarch.

i had been putting them off to wait till i got stronger

surprisingly i took them down fast.

not super fast but noticeably faster than before.

for starters my dps was much higher now compared to previous leagues.

one major change is i also focused on getting expeditions end early (all damage can freeze).

in the current patch freeze has been buffed against pinnacles/bosses, where their effect has been increased.

i believe this helped me a great deal as the boss attacks were much slower. i was dodging attacks with better ease and consistency. previously i would eat 1-2 exarch melee swipes every 3-6 attacks. this time i evaded then ALL.

i m outperforming all my past leagues melee experiences by a good margin.

i am ENJOYING melee earlier and thus enjoying the game a great deal more.

in contrast, i had to push my gear/level etc to a very high standard before i started to actually "enjoy melee experience".

right now i m achieving so much/having so much with 5 links.

previously the way i felt was "damn i cant wait to get my 6th link so that i can get my dps at a decent/better state".

now the vibe is "fuck melee feels so good, once i get my 6th slot, i m going to have even more fun".

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exsea wrote:

but the way things are, its still better if you can oblitarate all opposition before they become a problem rather than dealing with defences which dont matter when the enemie's mods align a certain way.

That depends on what content you are running.

Sure, T16 maps have always been like that. That's one of the reasons why so many people are complaining about "one shots", because with enough DPS, you don't need good defenses. But when you actually meet situations where defenses are needed, you don't have them - and you're dead.

But there IS content in the game that requires defenses.

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Phrazz wrote:

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exsea wrote:

but the way things are, its still better if you can oblitarate all opposition before they become a problem rather than dealing with defences which dont matter when the enemie's mods align a certain way.

That depends on what content you are running.

Sure, T16 maps have always been like that. That's one of the reasons why so many people are complaining about "one shots", because with enough DPS, you don't need good defenses. But when you actually meet situations where defenses are needed, you don't have them - and you're dead.

But there IS content in the game that requires defenses.

yeap. typically i block such content or never run em.

ultimatum comes to mind.

Improved a lot for me.

I never really used totems because of the clunkiness to cast them + they weren't "thematically correct" for my build anyway.

So I gained a lot of dps + more tankiness from endurance charges.

Had to adjust a bit to fix the mana cost, but it's nothing dramatic.

Still, I didn't like the buff to end charges. I don't like when so much tankiness is behind an "optional" build mechanic like end charges of fortify.

What if I want to make a melee build that doesn't use end charges?

Ofc it would be "wrong" according to the min/max philosophy, but arpgs are also about experimenting something new, rerolling, trying different things while also not feeling very weak.

Even baking more tankyness into the small ascendancy points of marauder, templar, duelist and shadow would have been better and more consistent.

Something along the lines of: New Keystone at the bottom left corner of the passive tree with "You take 30% less damage -- 40% less attack speed with bows and 40% less spell damage" would also have been better.