So Kripparian says melee "sucks" in late game...

Melee skills generally do more damage than Ranged skills or spells from my experience.


EDIT:
Also melee scales the best with the quality of gear you have so the longer you play and the more items/wealth you acquire the better melee characters will get.

Spell casters on the other hand get their base damage from the spell gem (as opposed to weapon) so the only way they can get higher base damage is through +1/+2 gems in sockets gear (these will be very valuable). Furthermore, spellcasters don't get insane "more" modifier support gems such as: Melee Physical Damage. Melee Damage on full Life, Weapon Elemental Damage.

One of the very few things D3 did right was to give melee classes an inherent 30% global damage reduction. They were still wildly underpowered, especially in the beginning (and still to this day are worse than ranged except for one barb build) but it was the right idea: melee needs some kind of native bonus that counters the inherent disadvantage of being melee.

Obviously 30% damage reduction wouldn't work in PoE because classes are not bound to any role, but they could place a keystone like this in the bottom left corner of the passive tree: +25% movement speed while a melee weapon is equipped.

This, coupled with their generally higher DPS, would give melee builds a much-needed boost and make them candidates for strong farming builds while ranged remains safer and better suited to difficult content that is progressed through rather than farmed repeatedly.


Edit: and I think armor mitigation needs to be tweaked a little. Its unconventional reverse scaling mechanic in this game is a huge blow to tanky builds.

Kripparian says this, said that. Ha ha ha. Damn wannabes... I think when OB starts Kripp will start playing for you... and maybe he will eat your meals instead of you too.

I also think that in D3 melee was done quite nicely, in the boundaries of that bad game.

What I have most issues with are the big hits and controlling the battle flow. Melee is viable and I think the most challenging in this game, but it also faces issues that make it hard in a stupid fashion.

Shields and evasion are pseudo random, so when you got hit chance to get hit a 2nd time has dropped or the chance to block has gone up. With mobility from skills such as whirling blades this allows you to exert some control over the battle by going in and out.

There are a few issues though with one being desynch, which is more likely to occur with whirling blades and leap slam. Or the fact that leap slam is a bit slow on the cast/ animation cycle which makes faster attacks in my opinion mandatory.

I watch the streams of devmoon a lot and he uses firetraps in his build which partially is adding a range element to the melee just as lightning strike is semi ranged (kripp's videos).

I would like to see more spells and passive gems that support tankyness or allows you to make the great escape. Allow people to be smart and play the game. Heavy armor/ health melee should be possible, but there is too much that can easily one shot you. I rather would have it that maybe you're dropped to 10 health and if you get hit again it is over, but hey you got time to act and do something (whirl away, leap away, quick totem down/ potion).

And one big thing that I would like to see and happen: visually display affixes well on enemy mobs. Sometimes you got to read an entire list, which really slows down the gameplay. Either give room for error to find out, telling you to go handle things differently or have a graphic warning not to miss. The grocery list is a bit outdated ;)

EDIT:

So died of desynch in the race 2nd death. Did 2 leap slams towards necro, was amazingly geared. Than I failed to notice I wasn't doing any dmg and I died full potions etc.

The point is, krip is NOT the end all, be all of racers, players, hell, he REALLY isn't that remarkable, gaming wise. He is simply above average, and has a large amount of time. (Hence the NoLifeKrip that stuck to him after he began streaming)

Krip is NOT a top contender in races, alone. He has several people funneling him items and such in the longer races, combined with his large amount of available play time, and the fact that basically all of the REAL top contenders for anything, quit before he picked PoE back up.

While I am not saying he's a scrub, he simply isn't the god of gaming everyone makes him out to be, and take his words as truth without doing the adequate research to understand why and how he came to these conclusions.

He follows the paths of least resistance, and rolls the "FotM" builds, others have made success with, and makes them popular.

Melee DOES have quite a bit of "Inherent" resistance; (End cry is a melee-centric build, giving 15-30-40% damage resistance, for 1 .7 or less second cast, every 10-14 seconds).

Krip is a good gamer, his opinion is what you would expect of a "Good" gamer playing a game, except having no real experience with said game, which he kinda doesn't.

Melee is viable, people just want melee to be equal to range, instead of the differing strengths and weakness' that exist for a reason.

Melee in D3 in my opinion is the only way to go. There are times where I watch my DH friend constantly proc'ing his invincibility (gloom) abilities just to deal with the constant trash swarm. Whereas my Monk literally just teleports into the center of the pack (MP5) with nothing but 225k dps (buffed) and 2.8% life steal can survive damn near anything. I've been able to pull the entire Duhlguar Oasis or The Battlefields into a giant mob that contains 3+ elites with all the nasty affixes and burn it down with little trouble. The only thing I'm required to do is move a little when I get a 3 stack of desecrator under me. While I'll admit it was fun achieving that level of power, it seems incredibly broken.

I learned that life steal is a heal over time in PoE, which I personally thought was a good change after coming from the melee scene in D3. Being infinitely sustained by your life steal or life on hit seems like the only way to effectively survive as melee at the moment. I know that there is a passive that allows your life steal to heal instantly instead. Which makes me think that I might be forced to do that on OB to effectively play melee. Unless somebody else has ideas to share...

Also, we all know that D3 was bad in many ways, please don't further the cancer by flaming it more.

The issue with melee at the moment, as many of the actual higher tiers of the community, have commented and touched on, is the fact that none of the passive defenses work as intended, which makes classes like duelist, and armor-based maras, obscenely hard. At the moment, it is degenerating into a D3-Esque deal of survivability=HP + Liquidity. The issue being the balance behind this quasi-form is actually very well done, by accident or other.

"

EpsiIon wrote:

Krip is a good gamer, his opinion is what you would expect of a "Good" gamer playing a game, except having no real experience with said game, which he kinda doesn't.

This +1

He may play PoE a lot but there is still so much more we can achieve with this game. Honestly, the title of this thread is what really does it. I'm more or less here for discussion about melee. Also, trolls, don't feed em.

fail..

clicking buttons too fast, triple posted -.-