Melee vs Ranged Balance: Damage Effectiveness

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Sodomee wrote:

Spoiler

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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.

But my idea has nothing to do with (further) buffing damage nodes; I'm talking about adjusting the "Damage Effectiveness" stat of melee and ranged skills (listed on the gems themselves), upward and downward respectively; this would make flat damage, such as fire damage from Anger or from rings, add more damage to melee skills than it would add to ranged skills.

Essentially what I'd like to see is:
sub-100% damage effectiveness (usually around 60%): all ranged multiprojectile or AoE skills; no melee skills should ever dip this low
at or near 100%: single-target ranged skills, AoE/projectile melee skills; no ranged skill should ever break 100%.
over 100% (usually near 150%): single-target melee skills should normally go here
Frenzy, Puncture: Both with 100% damage effectiveness and "50% more damage when using a Melee weapon."

I don't see how keystones that increase defenses and lower your ranged damage wouldn't be good for all melee, either. What we need are more defensive clusters in some very melee parts of the tree, not anything over-the-top fancy, just sensible and balanced values on nodes and notables for things like reduced damage from projectiles and reduced extra damage from critical strikes. This is in addition to the changes in damage effectiveness.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

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Sodomee wrote:

Spoiler

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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.

But my idea has nothing to do with (further) buffing damage nodes; I'm talking about adjusting the "Damage Effectiveness" stat of melee and ranged skills (listed on the gems themselves), upward and downward respectively; this would make flat damage, such as fire damage from Anger or from rings, add more damage to melee skills than it would add to ranged skills.

Essentially what I'd like to see is:
sub-100% damage effectiveness (usually around 60%): all ranged multiprojectile or AoE skills; no melee skills should ever dip this low
at or near 100%: single-target ranged skills, AoE/projectile melee skills; no ranged skill should ever break 100%.
over 100% (usually near 150%): single-target melee skills should normally go here
Frenzy, Puncture: Both with 100% damage effectiveness and "50% more damage when using a Melee weapon."

I don't see how keystones that increase defenses and lower your ranged damage wouldn't be good for all melee, either. What we need are more defensive clusters in some very melee parts of the tree, not anything over-the-top fancy, just sensible and balanced values on nodes and notables for things like reduced damage from projectiles and reduced extra damage from critical strikes. This is in addition to the changes in damage effectiveness.

I'm suggesting notables, not keystones. Keystones are meant to change the way your character works at the cost of something, but it isn't supposed to be required. I'm suggesting something like a 5 point life cluster like this:

8% life - 8% life - 18% life and 25% less ranged damage - 10% life - 10% life

You can have one cluster like this in the Marauder area and 2 similar clusters in the Templar and Duelist area that give some other defensive bonus other than life. This on top of damage effectiveness increases and damage cluster consolidations(6 point clusters turned into 3 point clusters) would insure that any 90 point melee build would get a decently large increase to their defenses and damage while ranged builds stay unaffected by such changes.

GGG can also get rid of most weapon-specific clusters and put in more defensive clusters that focus around melee needs such as the projectile defenses idea. I think that a few weapon-specific nodes should remain, but should be changed to be more beneficial and also be flavored around the weapon type.

I think the best way to adjust melee vs. ranged balance would be to make a change to armor.

It could work where melee hits receive greater mitigation from armor than do ranged hits. Another advantage is it makes the difference between armor and evasion more than just a numbers game. Do you fear melee? Then stack armor. Do you fear ranged? Then you want evasion instead. It wouldn't be a simple min-max problem where one provides the greater mitigation so everyone always picks that one. The one that provides better mitigation would depend on your playstyle.

GGG said they were looking into changes to armor a while back; I'm willing to bet they were considering something similar.

@Polaris: Now that is a great idea for a keystone: an armour/melee counterpart to Ondar's Guile (evasion/projectile). Who knows, you might even see hybrid builds going for both simultaneously for some serious non-spell mitigation.

And D&D had such an elegant way of doing the ranged-melee balance...
When you attack with a ranged weapon in melee threat range you get a fairly large penalty to attack chance and whenever you attack or cast a spell you provoke an attack of opportunity. In fact, as an archer you had a growing attack penalty even for shots longer than optimal range.

Aaah, the times when tanky was tanky and squishy was squishy. Now, this might astonish the younger players out there but did you know that a long time ago a melee fighter could have as much as three times more health than a caster, in addition to much higher armor, possible block chance and higher resistance to spells, monks in particular being almost immune to them.

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raics wrote:

And D&D had such an elegant way of doing the ranged-melee balance...
When you attack with a ranged weapon in melee threat range you get a fairly large penalty to attack chance and whenever you attack or cast a spell you provoke an attack of opportunity. In fact, as an archer you had a growing attack penalty even for shots longer than optimal range.

Aaah, the times when tanky was tanky and squishy was squishy. Now, this might astonish the younger players out there but did you know that a long time ago a melee fighter could have as much as three times more health than a caster, in addition to much higher armor, possible block chance and higher resistance to spells, monks in particular being almost immune to them.

This game does not have class types like D&D though. "Classes" in this game are just starting points on the passive tree. As a Marauder, you can make a caster or an archer and have no real penalty for doing so. In fact, a Marauder starts off in life territory which makes the starting point ideal for any life-based build.

You can't just take Marauders and give them 3 times the life and give Witches 3 times the ranged damage or ES. This completely destroys build diversity and forces people to pick certain "classes". If the game were like this, everyone would be cookie cutter. There would be no Archer Witches or Caster Marauders. There would be no Wander Rangers or Melee Rangers.

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Sodomee wrote:

This game does not have class types like D&D though. "Classes" in this game are just starting points on the passive tree. As a Marauder, you can make a caster or an archer and have no real penalty for doing so. In fact, a Marauder starts off in life territory which makes the starting point ideal for any life-based build.

You can't just take Marauders and give them 3 times the life and give Witches 3 times the ranged damage or ES. This completely destroys build diversity and forces people to pick certain "classes". If the game were like this, everyone would be cookie cutter. There would be no Archer Witches or Caster Marauders. There would be no Wander Rangers or Melee Rangers.

In fact, it isn't that different. You could have some serious building fun with d&d ruleset too, you could make melee and caster hybrids (in fact hybrids builds are arguably dead in this game), you could use bows very well as a fighter. Every class used a portion of general perk list, class just gave you access to a part of that list in addition to some inherent traits and multiclassing too much carried a certain penalty. It's really very similar to how picking a class here gives you easier access to a certain part of the passive tree while making other parts less accessible or practically inaccesible, while inherent traits of DnD classes like attack bonus or life might be compared to STR, INT and DEX regions of the tree.

Spending more points by mere traversing of mara section gives you more life and melee damage then ranger section by compulsory taking of STR nodes. The point is that difference is not enough, base stats should matter more and shouldn't be so easily accessible outside of passive tree. Sure, make a duelist or mara wander but go to witch area if you please, you still need int for wands anyway and surely you got interesting stuff to pick up on start and on the way, if you don't, than why choose a duelist for that in the first place, you should pick a character that makes at least a little sense.

Well, this is all besides the fairly obscure point of my post. And that is, to keep diversity and build freedom while fixing balance we need more playstyle-related mechanics. For example penalties to defense while casting a spell or using a ranged weapon, and it would actually make sense, how can you dodge or block effectively while concentrating on casting a spell. That would, of course, require another rebalance of monster damage and that would make melees worth the bother while keeping ranged roughly as vulnerable as now. Also, wearing heavy armor should penalize attack speed and cast speed aside from movement, but should be able to give you good protection even without much points spent and additional auras. Attack speed penalty could be offset by adding more attack speed to melee damage nodes and points in heavy armor really should just reduce penalties from wearing it instead of dumbly increasing armor value, and it would, again, make sense. I mean, you could learn to evade better while wearing light armor but learning to wear plate armor properly doesn't make it thicker (heh) but makes you less encumbered by it. Just common sense.

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Sodomee wrote:

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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.

Master of Arena does not affect Cleave. The radius of basic Cleave is 20.
Source: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/230356/page/1

You make a good point about Anarchy league not having access to Eye_of_Chayula. This forces FP users to get Unwavering Stance instead.

About FP builds: there is a massive difference between people when it comes to FP builds. What is of interest is to compare the best FP builds vs best Cleave builds.

You make a good point about a shotgun FP having lower affected area than a non shotgun FP.

Your defense does not speak for itself given that a player with very good mechanics can reach top levels with a suboptimal build.

I think a good idea would be if GGG started hosting tournaments for fastest non-RNG clears where everyone can participate with their main character.

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UnderOmerta wrote:

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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?

GGG representative doesn't need to say shit if ones does the testing and analyzes the client. Since I cannot teach you how to analyze client (too cumbersome), I provided a proof that at least one monster has exactly 0% cold resist.

You can follow the proof step by step and using self-evident modifications to test whether or not any monster has exactly 0% resist against certain elements.

The only thing you need to do to falsify the "Unless the updated monster information says "resists" or "vulnerable to" an element, they have 0% resist to that element", is to name one reproducable case (as in giving monster name and location) where it does not hold.

I would also like to remind you to think about how scientists discovered the nature laws without consulting to a God that told them if they were correct or not.

all that melee builds need is a Gem

Buff with 10-20Sec timer and huge req. 250Str for lvl1 and 350Str lvl20 (to cutoff most caster builds)

Buff Effect
lvl 1
Max Health - +50
Melee invul - 15%
Max Res - 5%
Block -10%
Endur Duration - 25%

lvl 20
Max Health - +250
Melee invul - 30%
Max res - 10%
Block - 20%
Endur Duration - 50%

Neg side - U cant have Power charges while u're under buff effect/ U cant have more than 3x Endur charges while u're under buff effect