Why Spectral Throw has a place in the game, unlike what many whiners say

Wander, Mjölner, Spectral, Lightning Arrow, Split Arrow. There are many massively wrecking god tier builds when you got uber gear. All of them share that they aren't limited by melees inability to hit large areas at once.

The reason everyone is mad at ST is that it's range with almost all of melees power, however, that's just the way it is. It is a fun as hell ability and on level with those mentioned above in clearing speed.

Range > Melee will be forever true, when there are builds able to clear screens in seconds. Spectral is not even the fastest clearer, i'd think a wander or a split arrow build is that due to projectile speed.

You should rejoice that there are ways to use a melee weapon that competes with range, rather than wanting it to be nerfed to melee level.

The most important message to those crying about spectral throw is that it is you who choose to play with melee, but in doing so you choose the less effective clearing method in a game like this, so deal with it, and stop crying about options existing for melee to not be useless @clearingspeed, it is yourself that has chosen to have melee playstyle which will always be inferior to a ranged AoE build.

What i am saying is, ST is indeed more powerful than regular melee attacks, but it's not broken in the game, it's just not a melee ability with it's limitations.
I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
Last edited by Crackmonster on Jul 12, 2014, 9:19:12 PM
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Crackmonster wrote:
Range > Melee will be forever true
The pragmatist in me agrees, which is why I've almost always built ranged characters in this game. Some experimentation with melee, but no serious dedication when it comes to endgame play.

The idealist in me despises what you said for its cynicism.

Considering the pragmatist in me has nothing to say about balance discussions — why bother, just take the most OP thing and run with it — I genuinely believe there's no reason at all to entertain such pragmatism in balance discussions. Ranged > melee should not be forever true. Whether it will or not is something which is still under GGG's power to alter.
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 on Jul 12, 2014, 9:32:40 PM
I agree scottie, ideally ranged > melee should not be true, but in reality it's impossible, or at least it won't happen in this game that things are so balanced that due to aoe's lower dmg and melee higher damage, clear speeds are equal due to monster health. Also given so many variable gear levels, that won't be possible without ruining low-geared experience and so a great part of the game, you'd need to balance monster hp around a rather slow top-geared killspeed.

I'm simply pointing out that the game those who cry about ST want is not realistic, and at least there is some way of using a melee weapon to compete. Yes, it's more powerful than limited melee clearspeeds, but at least it works.
I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
Last edited by Crackmonster on Jul 12, 2014, 9:45:03 PM
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Crackmonster wrote:
I agree scottie, ideally ranged > melee should not be true, but in reality it's impossible, or at least it won't happen in this game that things are so balanced that due to aoe's lower dmg and melee higher damage, clear speeds are equal due to monster health.
The latter is precisely what I'm advocating. It's really all one big math problem.

For example, let's assume a small clump of monsters. A ranged build might use Rain of Arrows on it, so how many Rain of Arrows should it take to kill the monsters? Well, let's look at melee. They'd have to Leap Slam (which has a base animation of 1.4 seconds, or about 2 bow attacks), and the Leap Slam is probably in a 4L, then they might use two Cleaves (or Melee Splash supported attacks), one for each half of the group. This is extra risk for the melee, but they have a shield, so that kind of balances out the risk. Point being, it's 4 "bow attacks of time" for the melee, so the balance assumption should be that it takes 4 Rain of Arrows to clear the group in the amount 1 Leap Slam + 1 Cleave clears the group, so you balance damage appropriately... by the looks of things, more than double RoA damage for the Cleave.

Note that single-target might be a different story. Against a boss or something, melee having more than double the damage of an archer might make the melee overpowered (or it might not, you have to play out the various scenarios). Then you want to make sure both melee and ranged are actually using singletarget, not multitarget, skills on the boss. All of this can be fixed by using the appropriate damage multipliers for all four skill types — melee singletarget, melee multitarget, ranged singletarget, and ranged multitarget — to ensure the appropriate ratios.

All I have to say for now is that melee damage is pathetic, and/or ranged deal far too much damage. It's also ridiculous that one-handed melee weapons and bows use mostly the same flat damage affixes — they should be completely different sets so they can scale differently.

Now we all know that, when it comes to farming — that is, annihilating mass numbers of underleveled monsters — that ranged will always have the advantage. Overlevel enough, and yes, you will be one-shotting things, or at least two-shotting them (which is still faster than melee could pull off). So you'd design knowing that, specifically making melee better at killspeed for content which it is underleveled for, since ranged will have the natural advantage for content it is overleveled for. (Melee surviving the more difficult content may still require some fancy footwork in its part — I'm just talking killspeed here.) When truly at level-appropriate content, it should be roughly even, as detailed in the earlier example.
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 on Jul 12, 2014, 10:20:06 PM
just cut the number of mobs by 75% and then stupid RMT AOE is no longer the king
If I make a game where you always fight 10 enemies with 100 life each that are coming forward you from far away, and may pretty much one shot you; and give you options to deal damage in;

A. single target damage that deals 50 damage in melee
B. single target damage that deals 40 damage in range
C. AoE melee with 35 damage
D. AoE range with 25 damage

You have to be dumb to use anything other than D.
Is that because AoE range systems are universally that super, or is it because the setup I created is just poorly balanced?
Last edited by symban on Jul 13, 2014, 3:07:03 AM
The problem, per usual in this game, is the ability to equip retarded uniques and combine ridiculous abilities. Spectral throw is fine. Binos + Shavs + Crown of Eyes + Pain Attunement + whatever the hell else people are using are the problem.

The skills and passive tree have never or rarely been the problem. Poorly balanced uniques have literally been at the heart of almost every single "overpowered" build I can possibly remember. The only exception is maybe dual spark totems. And even that required low-life (enabled by Shavs) and pain attunement to actually be top tier. Pain Attunement might be one of the only passives I'd consider overpowered, and only because of Shavs and COE.

Nevertheless, I have the sneaking suspicion that we'll see the base damage lowered on ST once again. Typically when items are causing a skill to really shine, the target is the lowest common denominator. Not the actual problem, the stupid items.

They really just need to remove Shavs from the game lol.
Team Won
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Crackmonster wrote:
Range > Melee will be forever true, when there are builds able to clear screens in seconds. Spectral is not even the fastest clearer, i'd think a wander or a split arrow build is that due to projectile speed.

It's not inherent, it's all a matter of how the damage functions are implemented. What if all ranged attacks had a built-in Point Blank effect that matched melee damage levels only at close range? If that's how ranged weapons had worked from the start, we'd all take it for granted that long-range archers can't ever compete with the amount of damage that melee fighters wield. Likewise with the debate over AOE versus single-target attacks, if GGG had scaled things more thoughtfully, we'd be having debates over optimal damage tactics rather than chronically lamenting the OP gamebreakers that make everything else seem lame.
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Crackmonster wrote:


The reason everyone is mad at ST is that it's range with almost all of melees power, however, that's just the way it is. It is a fun as hell ability and on level with those mentioned above in clearing speed.



td;dr :

ST is OP but its fun so leave it alone.
The assumption that ranged > melee is simply utterly hilarious and wrong.

It's all a matter of balance. It's incredibly easy to make it so melee > ranged (like making double strike do 500% weapon damage, see if anyone uses ranged then). It's incredibly easy to make it so ranged > melee, the situation we have now.

Ranged isn't inherently superior to melee. That's only true in the current balance situation. There's countless other ways this game could've been balanced to make melee > ranged.

Unfortunately the hard part is finding situation where melee ~= ranged. The solution to that however isn't to stop trying, it's to simply get as close as possible even if you won't ever reach it.
My vision for a better PoE: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/863780

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