What makes melee bad

"

Catchafire2000 wrote:

Weapons

Melee weapons are a little atrocious as well. If I want to run Marauder, I need a lot of dex for decent 1H/2H weapons. If I go 2H, I get a bit more DPS, but at the cost of life and everything else that I might pick up on a shield.

Only worthwhile melee 2 handers are str based only.

I.E. maces.

Yeah, I can agree on melee weapons being unbalanced, but only if you are pure-phy. Ele melee just worries about ats/acc, and the shadow types worry about crit and the claw effects, but a pure damage melee weapon is pretty pointless, other than the BIS unique atm.

"

Eternallight wrote:

Yeah, I can agree on melee weapons being unbalanced, but only if you are pure-phy. Ele melee just worries about ats/acc, and the shadow types worry about crit and the claw effects, but a pure damage melee weapon is pretty pointless, other than the BIS unique atm.

You act as if anyone worth their salt uses claws.

My Dual strike Physical Rapiers is actually my most successful character so far, been soloing 66-67 maps so far, some difficult areas but not too bad.

My only comparably successful character was a RoA duelist that used a RoA totem with blind, this guy was broken after the duelist rework though.

So all in all i think melee is a bit underwhelming as of right now and I cant wait to see what is going to happen in this melee balance patch coming up, but i dont think melee is to bad off right now and surely isnt as bad as everyone here on the forums is making it out to be.

Been playing only one class&build since CB and it was Sweep&HeavyStrike Mara mixed with either Enduring Cry&Immortal Call or Double Auras, i found it one of the weakest build in the game after i decided to give up on it due to many deaths and difficulties in maps.

They have to fix the aiming system and make it like D2... as i call it the''Encounter'' system, which makes your caracter perform the attack/skill on the next monster your player encounter while holding the click or on its way to where you clicked

"

Eternallight wrote:

Yeah, I can agree on melee weapons being unbalanced, but only if you are pure-phy. Ele melee just worries about ats/acc, and the shadow types worry about crit and the claw effects, but a pure damage melee weapon is pretty pointless, other than the BIS unique atm.

this is one of the reason why phyz are less powerful

For me personally it's the desync and unresponsive controls. I hate having to hold shift anytime I want to attack. As ranged I can get away with not doing it and not desync. Not so much as melee. When I do play melee, the shift modifier is always really slow to react. Forcing me to press shift a split second before my skill. It's just clunky as hell right now.

Well honestly...

Playing melee in this game as a marauder tank actually made me quit playing.

The targeting is a pain in the ass.
And as a related issue. the controls also sometimes act funny in messy fights.

I can easily imagine someone dying one of those time your character seems to go wherever he wants for a short while and look like he just laugh at the clicks you are doing on the screen.

It just does seem that the only way to really play a melee tank in PoE is to either back off dangerous fights and let the ranged do the work or to largely out gear the place.

From a hardcore playing perspective it's that or you won't live long really.

At level 74 my build is aimed toward defense with a shield and overall descent gear,
I have over 5k hp, 80 all res, loads of life regen, 4 orb of Endurance and 14k armor.

And, I still often need to run away in the docks while fighting void bearers...

It just actually kills the will to play really.
Because I m weak in places where I just hardly can hope for anything to improve.

I m fine with doing less dps as I chose a tanky build,
I m ok to take longer than other people to kill stuff.
But I'm not ok to be completely gimped overall.

You might criticize my build and say I could go for more dps or use more shield nodes, or more orb or Endurance however, I don't think my build is all that wrong. There might be few improvements but it also quite follow the backbone of most marauder builds.

It's not like I have spent my skill points to be a caster and now try to tank...

...

Today after about a week not playing I went for a map while patching another game.
I nearly got one shot by the lvl 66 map boss there, I kinda alt-f4 with ~15% HP.

Another annoying thing is the extensive resources consumed by the game, it often stutter on multi-player when new mobs pop or when there is a lot of stuff on the screen.

I have it set to lowest options and had to go down to 1024*768 but it is still not always smooth. I m playing on a latest gen minimac with windows 7, I reckon it's not a high end system but PoE is actually the only game I play that gives me this kind of issues...

Well, honestly I might come back from time to time to check if there is any improvement for my play style as I reckon that non melee builds like EK, GS or even bow based doesn't quite appeal to me.

I believe that this game is losing a lot of other players who like me enjoy playing melee.

Melee takes a great deal of knowledge to make it work. It's actually really really good at tanking. Physical damage is really really good too. I'm able to tank and kill mobs that are +10 level above me in large group. The only time I have trouble killing bosses that are +10 level above me is when they have life regen. I can kill them but it takes forever.

Tanking +10 mobs with around 40 and three bosses in merciless.
http://youtu.be/sfOQ3exbkgA
http://youtu.be/Hg6rf5OrtOE

Here +5 mob on Docks in Cruel.
Part 1: http://youtu.be/roCpdXODQYE
Part 2: http://youtu.be/pt7nlnjXo0M

I got videos of me tanking Brutus in Merciless without any threat to my life. I also got a video that I did not upload where I took Mervil alpha strike without getting damage. The only time she did noticeable damage is when I forgot to refresh my endurance charges.

I got videos of me that I haven't load up where I tank a crap load of +7 lvl mob on act 2 Old field. +10 lvl above me in the Cave fighting the white beast.

My build can max physical (90%) and elemental (92% if I use purity). Currently I have 58% blocking and 33% blocking spells.