Melee vs Ranged Balance: Damage Effectiveness

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mazul wrote:

Rigorous testing with purity, conversion trap and elemental weakness as well as analysis of the client itself.

That's 55k dps due to shotgun effect prior to projectile distance negative bonus. Not to mention the very high chance to freeze target.

At http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/314832/page/1 we have a LMP pre-nerf RF FP at 59k shotgun dps.

AoE range on that 44k dps cleave? It is also of interest to compare your effective physical hp and magical hp compared to the one of the RF Shavronne FP, because to match the survivability one of you needs to reduce your dps by switching nodes.

Keep also in mind that RF Shavronne FP can and should use Vaal Pact which adds a hell lot to their survivability.

Yeah 55k and 59k prenerf pure Elemental DPS before the long-ranged dps loss. Also the person you linked does not even show their true defenses with that dps. They show the dps of the pure damage build and the defenses of the tanky build with granite up.

Comparing Life vs. ES build defenses are not accurate even if the guy did show his actual stats in the lab with no granite. With life you can stack more regen and armour and use health flasks. With ES builds you can go vaal pact and get unique items(one of which is not even in the Anarchy league that I play) to prevent stun/frozen. My defense speaks for itself considering the fact that I am the highest level melee build(Rank 19) on Anarchy at level 93.

Either way, I've seen many FP builds(pre-nerf) clear relatively slow when comparing to my cleave marauder. My AoE range is pretty huge with "Master of the Arena" and it extends past the graphic of cleave. Also with FP, you can either shotgun or AoE. If you AoE, you are cutting your dps down by more than half.

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mazul wrote:

As for proof that at least one monster has exactly 0% cold resist:


Get lv22 Purity (Alpha's Howl for +2 levels) to be able to give a converted target 29% all resist. Also get lv1 elemental weakness so you can reduce the "resists" of the target by 30%.

Go to merciless docks and find the enemy "Battle Corsair" which is a melee skeleton that says "resistant to fire" (unless newer patched changed it, may have got the exact name wrong :D).

Given that you would consider Corsair's cold resist to be unknown, we can call that number X.

Now, first curse the target with ele weakness which means that its cold resist will be X-30.

This will show (remember to remove focus and readd focus on target so that the message won't get bugged) that the Corsair is now vulnerable to cold.

Now, quickly before the curse ends, convert it to your side using Conversion Trap. This will still show "vulnerable to cold". Then activate your purity aura and it will still show "vulnerable to cold". (Of course the curse shouldn't end before you check the stats after casting purity)

This means following:

X >= 0,
X - 30 < 0 and
X - 30 + 29 < 0 <=> X-1 < 0 <=> X < 1

For both X >= 0 and X < 1 to hold, X must be equal to 0.
Q.E.D.

Yes, SOME enemies have 0% elemental resists to certain elements. How does this prove that unless it specifically states "resists X" that it has 0% resist of that element? When has any GGG representative stated that this is the case?

hey how about back to topic?!


how i feel about melee vs. ranged balance - or better the state melee is in?

well the title:
Melee vs Ranged Balance: Damage Effectiveness
should better be something like:
Melee vs Ranged Balance: Damage Taken!!!

this aspect of the game (and we talk about PvE which is not that hard to balance, because one can simply balance every single aspect (every skill, every usage of a skill, every niche) of the game individually*) is in such a disastrous state, that i can hardly believe that any GGG member has - and in the current game state - will ever play through their own game with a melee in HC or Onslaught. I honestly think they never tried to, i simply cant imaging why else melee vs. ranged defense is so crazy unbalanced.


the only way to play melee is to outdps everything with the recently added imbalanced uniques (no mana needed+uber rolls for dps on a weapon says everything - never saw a more laughable and awkward bandaidfix), that destroys everything.


*) there are plenty of good suggestions in the forums.... high defensive buffs while wielding meleeweapons, combined off+def nodes for meleenodes, or just reducing spikedmg. charge generating on meleehit etc...

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Khastro wrote:

well the title:
Melee vs Ranged Balance: Damage Effectiveness
should better be something like:
Melee vs Ranged Balance: Damage Taken!!!

No, that was just a rather long, somewhat interesting derail.

I've been thinking about it and I still think increasing melee skill damage effectiveness is the proper solution; however, the logic is, since offense is already mostly covered, you'll be able to commit more resources to defense. So I think giving more defensive clusters to the bottom left part of the tree (between Marauder and Duelist) would also be a good idea; that sea of weapon nodes isn't very useful.

Once more, no one is talking at all about the actual problem.

Its not damage taken. Its not damage dealt.

Its clear speed.


Melee have to run upt o an enemy to hit them, at which point they take more damage yes
Melee have to kill the thing they ran up to faster than the ranged character can from a distance yes

But the problem is, that ranged character has that distance. And they always will. And until a melee clear speed is the same despite having to run up to each mob, melee will always be sub par due to clear speeds

I have always agreed that it's clear speed, my suggestion to give melee more damage. I'm just pointing out how more melee damage would give more opportunity to focus passives/affixes on defense.

Also, a melee with a clearspeed that matches ranged is pretty near impossible with the current damage reflection mechanics; even with melee's need for added defense, a good melee clearspeeder would have a higher damage-to-EHP ratio than its ranged counterpart.

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Once more, no one is talking at all about the actual problem.

Its not damage taken. Its not damage dealt.

Its clear speed.


Melee have to run upt o an enemy to hit them, at which point they take more damage yes
Melee have to kill the thing they ran up to faster than the ranged character can from a distance yes

But the problem is, that ranged character has that distance. And they always will. And until a melee clear speed is the same despite having to run up to each mob, melee will always be sub par due to clear speeds

With enough attack speed, Leap Slam closes the distance almost instantly. It isn't clear speed, because my(Crit-Based Phys Cleaver) clear speed is equal to my brother's(CI phys wander) clear speed. The only difference is that while I use leap slam, he is casting projectile weakness.

The big difference between us is that he can do Shrine Piety and Crematorium Boss(Magaera) and I cannot.

I can see Scrotie's idea working now that I think about what he is trying to say. If GGG increases the damage effectiveness of melee skills and tweaks the passive tree, melee vs. ranged can be balanced. If damage nodes were consolidated into insane 3-point clusters and spread far apart, melee would not need to go and stack much of these nodes. GGG can also add a ton more defensive 6-point clusters that are somewhat closer together as well. The Melee damage nodes could also have small defensive bonuses such as 2-3% life or 1% block added into them. The main idea would have to be on creating passive nodes that are only worth picking up if you are a melee build, while also holding onto build diversity.

This is doable, but it is a tricky task. I would like to see some projectile defense nodes though. I don't think that ranged builds would be inclined to pick these up seeing as they can avoid projectiles quite easily.

I'm not a fan of adding small defensive bonuses to offense nodes (why add 2% life to a node when you could just make the offense better than take a 10% life node later?), but in general Sodomee is getting the idea. And GGG already had the right idea by buffing almost all of the IMPD nodes, it's just that there's too damn many of them and not enough defense in that area of the tree.

Also really liking the projectile defense idea.

You bring up a very interesting and good point Sod.

The fact that almost all offensive physical weapon nodes are big 6 point clusters, with the 'buff' at the end, yet all the ele dmg based clusters, crit, etc, are almost all small. Even the big 6 clusters like the crit directly above shadow/to the right of witch, the 'power node' is only 2 nodes in.

Why is it so easy to stack spell dmg/ele weapon dmg/crit from these nodes compared with physical dps nodes for weapons?

Also I find it interesting your clear speed is as fast as a wander, and am curious as to why? My experience with my wander was it had dps significant enough to clear all mobs easily, and because of my equal walk/run speed, I could get somewhere, and kill the group before the melee was even in range.

Then again i haven't tried leap slam with a super high aspd, mostly only used it on 2hers. So if this was fast enough, it might work, but its still not as easy as just using one attack

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'm not a fan of adding small defensive bonuses to offense nodes (why add 2% life to a node when you could just make the offense better than take a 10% life node later?), but in general Sodomee is getting the idea. And GGG already had the right idea by buffing almost all of the IMPD nodes, it's just that there's too damn many of them and not enough defense in that area of the tree.

Also really liking the projectile defense idea.

Well the main reason behind adding small defenses to the melee damage nodes is so that ranged builds will not benefit. Your idea of buffing the damage nodes and increasing the amount of defensive nodes in the area will also help, but I feel that there will need to be a strong deterrent to prevent ranged from getting these nodes.

Some people have suggested keystones that give a flat % damage reduction while either massively reducing or eliminating ranged damage, but this is against the idea of what keystones are supposed to be. This idea would make the keystones required for all melee. I was thinking maybe an alternative to this would be better, such as a notables that give good defenses and lower your character's ranged damage by a percentage.