Melee vs Ranged Balance: Damage Effectiveness
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I don't think a buff to melee should be at the expense of ranged, and most of you know me as a melee enthusiast and Spork-hater. "buff A, nerf B" really brings Diablo (1) to mind, where my personal impression was you needed real skill to successfully play Rogue to higher difficulties, while you only needed Mana Shield as Sorcerer, or a good shield + fast sword as a Warrior. the game should be balanced for everybody, and let the LA Rangers and Spork Witches keep clearing screens like they do now. melee should be buffed in terms of close combat defence. DPS doesn't really matter (unless it's pretty bad) - but your ability to take hits sure does. if the Sporker Witch can take 5 hits from a monster that got close (because she has tons of ES), while the big-hammer Marauder can only take 4 - well, Huston we have a problem. and no, it doesn't mean "nerf the Witch so she can only take 3 hits". it means buff the Marauder so he can take 7. without using a crazy super-unique like Kaom's Heart, which most people don't have. right now, being melee and getting in stuff's faces means a lot more gear-checks - and I don't like that. Alva: I'm sweating like a hog in heat
Shadow: That was fun |
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To all those who say that what melee needs is more survivability:
You can't directly control defensive parameters. All classes have access to the same defensive gear, and to the same passive nodes. You could make complex abilities that trigger defenses, but those aren't elegant; they're wordy and look unpolished. The better way to control the situation is with damage. Give the player less base damage, and to match his old DPS he'll have to take more offense passive nodes/affixes, and thus have less to allocate to defense. The corollary is also true: give the player more base damage, and to match his old DPS he'll have to take less offense passive nodes/affixes, and thus have more to allocate to defense. It gets the exact same job done without looking a hot mess. Damage is much easier to control, as the OP indicates; you can modify active skills, or modify the weapons which certain builds use. In this case, I'm focusing mostly on gear/auras, trying to make it so that a minimum of flat damage is required to boost melee DPS, leaving more room for stuff like +Life, resists, defensive auras, etc. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Aug 4, 2013, 5:31:33 AM
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Yeah, but a ranged character needs the same survival as a melee, any way.
You can't use the range card, in PoE as survival, unless sporker. The safe amount of ranged DPS that is sure to not kill you on reflect is low enough DPS that you will encounter close combat, at some point, thus ranged needs the survival of melee but will always have the ace card that clear speed will be better without closing for the most part. The ranged character still needs to take the burst from ranged monsters, a melee character might desync more, but a ranged character needs to survive that one desync, too. Casually casual. Last edited by TheAnuhart#4741 on Aug 4, 2013, 6:06:19 AM
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" Compare that to Shavroness-RF Freeze Pulser and you can laugh at your cleave damage. The thing is that matters is damage*survivability and cleavers are inferior to the best ranged builds in that aspect. Damage alone is not of interest, the multiplication of the both is. This message was delivered by GGG defence force.
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"Or Skeleton totem user. Or Decoy Totem user. Or Frost Wall totem. Actually pretty much any totem whatsoever. Pretty much any crowd control trick ever, which you'd be stupid not to include one of in your ranged build. And that's just for mobs white mobs. Bosses and non-Swift rares never really close on ranged, so things like Kole gear-check don't happen. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Aug 4, 2013, 6:37:58 AM
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" All of which will not give surety of a ranged character never entering close combat. " But we have swift rares, so it's moot. We also have bosses gaining their auras. As for Kole, that's the worst example ever, I've never known a boss in PoE have such sinc and AI issues as the Kole clone group. You can never, on any class or build, hell not even sporker, be immune to Kole appearing on top of you. Casually casual. Last edited by TheAnuhart#4741 on Aug 4, 2013, 6:40:56 AM
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"This actually isn't true. I've had problems with it in the past, but I figured out that it's his harpoon drag which causes the desync: on the server, it hit you and dragged you toward him, on your screen the harpoon missed. The trick is to simply avoid getting hit by his harpoon, and since the AI for Brutus/Kole is actually very basic, this isn't that hard; you just need to develop a rhythm. Practice it a little, and you'll be kiting even invisible harpoons. Although I personally can only pull that off when it's 1-on-1, so while there are more monsters than just Brutus/Kole I'm still in significant trouble. Regarding rares and big mobs, the point is that only a very small handful are Swift, even then they sometimes get caught in your crowd control, and even when they get to you they're down an affix (wasted on Swift). Your point is kind of like saying a 95% chance to avoid projectiles with Ondar's Guile isn't any good because you'll still get hit that 5% of the time... and yes, ranged avoids 95% of melee combats without much effort. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Aug 4, 2013, 6:51:13 AM
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" Indeed, it's strange, though, that a harpoon that hits but doesn't drag is still not clear whether you dragged on server or not. However, where it get's problematic with the whole 'avoid his harpoon' thing, is his sync. Especially with Kole, that area couldn't have been designed better to cause monster desync. You can't avoid a harpoon, if Kole is on a different spot on the server when he actually casts it to where you see him. He can be to the north of me, then suddenly he grabs me from the east. Have a play around with him, it's ridiculous what you can get to happen. " It doesn't matter, even if it is 0.5%, you need to survive that. If a projectile is death, then yes it is worthless. It isn't death though. But we are talking about surviving close combat that will kill you just as it will melee. For this, ranged need to have melee survival even if it is only 0.005% of the time. Casually casual. Last edited by TheAnuhart#4741 on Aug 4, 2013, 7:00:01 AM
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"Melee survival is considerably more than surviving one-shots. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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" Yes, they need to sustain. Just as a ranged character needs to be able to survive in situations that melee sustain. Even though not constantly, long enough that the defence they require is on par, if not, then pretty damned close. The melee v range difference is just that, range. That's it, nothing more, range. Make a ranged character less effective at range than they are and they by default end up in close combat even more due to monsters entering melee before they are killed. The difference lies purely in kill speed without closing. Try to give melee better closing and we get a desyncfest. I just don't see how we can 'fix' melee v range when the only way to fix it is address the range part, which doesn't result in a balanced melee v ranged, just less ranged-ranged -_- Edit; I probably should add an apology for shitting all over your thread, Scrotie, it's not my intention to dismiss your proposals the way it seems I did, I've no doubt they are decent. I just can't get past what I see as a problem which will forever plague PoE and no amount of further balance will change it much, if at all. Casually casual. Last edited by TheAnuhart#4741 on Aug 4, 2013, 9:20:33 AM
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