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

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Crackmonster wrote:

Because that would make it inefficient in true-endgame, at least now something with a melee weapon works well. I'd say that's a good thing.

Well unless true endgame you mean uber atziri,thankfully ST is not the only thing that works in true endgame,it is just the best,melee weapon or not.
However,if it WAS indeed the only thing that worked in true endgame with a melee weapon,no,it would not be a good thing.It would be the worst possible thing.

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Crackmonster wrote:

Because that would make it inefficient in true-endgame, at least now something with a melee weapon works well. I'd say that's a good thing.

Aren't almost all other skills inefficient now? But ST being inefficient is a bad thing, according to you. Objectivity is where?
Something with a melee weapon works well, by being ranged, and that's a good thing to you?
How about making melee skills with melee weapons working well? Wouldn't that be a reasonable thing?

Oh well... Please don't become a part of balance team of any game.

Well as i started OP with, we have at least, off the top of my head, Wander, Mjölner, Spectral Throw, Lightning Arrow and Split Arrow that are all monsterly wrecking.

Where is my objectivity? If you read a couple of posts back, i'm explaining why aoe ranged will always be superior to melee. Keep acting naive about it, it's not gonna change for good reasons.

I'm just trying to make the best of that situation, and spectral happens to be a very fun ability. I've even suggested direct nerfs to spectral, crit damage and bloodrage.

To clarify a point which I stated much earlier in the thread...

Let's say you're a game designer, and you expect players to have a certain degree of gear/leveling when they approach certain content. If you balance ranged vs melee evenly for that level, and afterwards you increase the player's gear and/or leveling, then the ranged build will always be more powerful than the melee build, ever time.

Once again, this is just math. Once ranged gets to the point where it's, say, two-shotting things, there's simply no way for melee to catch up, even if it's some kind of theoretical infinite-damage melee. That's because moving to a target and one-shotting it will always take more time than simply two-shotting it at range.

And if ranged is one-shotting things, even white things, well then just forget it. Melee catching up is impossible.

Now let's go back to the original situation: you're a game designer, trying to balance ranged vs melee at the expected level/gear vs specific content. The only decision which makes a lick of sense, in a game like PoE anyway, is to make melee noticeably stronger in that specific situation. You need to create a situation where people say "you want to do content which is actually at your level? melee is flat-out better." You need them to say this because you know, inevitably, that people will say "you want to farm content which you're overgeared for? ranged is flat-out better," and there is nothing you can do to prevent the latter.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

To clarify a point which I stated much earlier in the thread...

Let's say you're a game designer, and you expect players to have a certain degree of gear/leveling when they approach certain content. If you balance ranged vs melee evenly for that level, and afterwards you increase the player's gear and/or leveling, then the ranged build will always be more powerful than the melee build, ever time.

Once again, this is just math. Once ranged gets to the point where it's, say, two-shotting things, there's simply no way for melee to catch up, even if it's some kind of theoretical infinite-damage melee. That's because moving to a target and one-shotting it will always take more time than simply two-shotting it at range.

And if ranged is one-shotting things, even white things, well then just forget it. Melee catching up is impossible.

Now let's go back to the original situation: you're a game designer, trying to balance ranged vs melee at the expected level/gear vs specific content. The only decision which makes a lick of sense, in a game like PoE anyway, is to make melee noticeably stronger in that specific situation. You need to create a situation where people say "you want to do content which is actually at your level? melee is flat-out better." You need them to say this because you know, inevitably, that people will say "you want to farm content which you're overgeared for? ranged is flat-out better," and there is nothing you can do to prevent the latter.

That's just downright wrong.

It's all based on the assumption that launching any ranged attack at any enemy is faster than launching any melee attack at any enemy.

Imagine a game where Leap Slam can jump to any area on the screen in half a second and Rain of Arrows takes, regardless of attack speed modifiers always at the very least a full second to fire.

In such a game melee would be superior for clearing overgeared/overleveled content.

Hell, imagine PoE where Flicker Strike has no cooldown and no charge cost.

The trick, purely for offense, lies in one simple thing.

Melee needs the tools to close the distance as fast as any ranged attack or faster. This means ranged needs to be substantially slower in attacking than melee, increasing as they hit more targets.

An attack capable of hitting every enemy on the screen needs to be SLOW. Insanely slow.

LMP, GMP, Chain etc. need to have noticeable less attack and cast speed modifiers instead of damage modifiers. To note, the modifier should apply to all linked skills, even if not projectile, to keep CoC in check.

@scrotie

Okay, so let's say you boosted melee dps a bit and gave them better defenses. What then? They'd handle themselves better undergeared, they'd be better boss fighters, that they will, but near-endgame they will still get steamrolled in exactly the same way they do now.

That is because GGG has adjusted balance for the gameplay they think is good, adjusted it around aoe killing builds, and so they are happy with that speed and won't change it drastically, so we are back to melee still can't clear the screen fast enough.

Still, i wouldn't be opposed to increasing melee damage and survivability further to help them I made some suggestion here about how defenses can be increased without giving the same defense to ranged.

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Panini_aux_olives wrote:

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Gobla wrote:

I'd personally go for a different, even more realistic solution.

Bows are currently among the fastest weapons available, which really makes absolutely no sense considering the amount of extra movement involved in firing an arrow from a quiver with a bow.

I'd rather go with making bows, wands and spells slow. Really, really slow. So slow that no amount of attack speed with ever make them compare to melee weapons. Additionally, add a large amount of less attack speed to ranged melee skill gems (Spectral Throw, Lightning Strike, Ground Slam and such).

Where do you get that?
End game unique bows are fast or very fast but your average rare bow is not. A regular Harbinger has 1.2 att/s. That's slow. And you need a 6L to put in Faster Attack in most setups, if you don't play blood magic.
Not everything revolve around low life, blood rage and atziri's acuity which allow you to toss ll and lgoh out of the equation for more damage or attack speed. You must also think about people that just use average gear. I have to use LgoH on my LA setup to deal with reflect, it's a 5L so no faster attack and it's 1.76 att/s only, or 2.12 with 6 frenzy charges, WAY behind the 5-7 att/s (or even 8-10) a melee char can have with multistrike.

I'm talking about base attack-speeds.

Rapiers ramge from 1.2 to 1.7
Swords from 1.2 to 1.65
Daggers from 1.2 to 1.6
Bows range from 1.1 to 1.55
Axes, Claws and Wands from 1.1 to 1.5
Sceptres from 1.1 to 1.45
Two-handed Swords from 1.1 to 1.35
Maces from 1.05 to 1.3
Two-handed Axes and Staves from 1 to 1.25
Two-handed Maces from 0.95 to 1.25

Bows and wands are in the top half of that list, they should not be in my opinion. They should be in the bottom half.

But since changing that would create thousands of legacies one could also change the skill gems (or as I later suggested projectile supports).

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No real nerf to damage would be needed, they could keep mostly the same DPS but it would be dealt in many fewer but bigger hits.

And this will make bow builds even more sensible to reflect. It's super easy to oneshot yourself to reflect with a bow because you have very little mean to avoid the reflected damage (yes, even with ondar's guile and acrobatic).
Ho and btw, the major bow single target attacks are also melee (frenzy, puncture, elemental hit), how would you balance their damage?

Simply put weapon-specific downsides on said gems, alternatively change projectile supports instead of the skills themselves.

As for reflect, it's a stupid mechanic in it's current implementation and needs to be redesigned altogether.

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This would do several things.

- Weakness to interrupts, get stunned and you lose your current attack and have to try again. This would actually make ranged attacks do a lot worse in melee range, as it should be.

That's already the case at least for slow cast skill, totem for instance.

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- A much more equal challenge in positioning for ranged attacks that's much more on par with melee. You can't just wildly attack, you have to take care where you're standing or be stuck in an attack animation, just like melee has to take care not to get surrounded.

A bow user already have to very careful about that because he doesn't have an easy way to get out of situation. It's very tedious to switch to leap slam/whirle outisde of pack when you get surrounded (and yes, this happens).
You can argue that we can still use lightning wharp, but contrary to most melee/caster builds, it's hard to do a bow build with an AOE only. You have to setup a single target too, so there's little room for a mobility skill if you also want your cwdt setups (which are much needed for reflect).

There's these things called Quicksilver Flasks. They're pretty cool and mighty useful all-around. There's also Quartz Flasks if you truly get surrounded.

My point is, currently getting surrounded is as deadly to melee as it is to ranged. You can have every single defence a melee character has. A wand + shield character can be just as tough as a 1h melee + shield. Bow can even be slightly tougher than a 2hander due to a few extra defensive stats possible on your quiver. All of them have access to exactly the same nodes.

Ranged skills should suffer from melee range just like melee skills suffer from range.

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- Less advantage against trash, they'd be dealing with a lot of overkill damage meaning melee has a much greater window for walking up and picking targets.

True, trashs can be disposed in a matter of split seconds. At least one thing I agree with you :p.

Personally I don't have a problem with 2h ST builds, they just do well. But 1h ST has just too many things that combines too well together. One of them is Whirling Blade which give them outstanding mobility.

As for global balance. I don't see any good solution except drastically reduce the number of mobs and make them tougher and more dangerous. Someone already mentioned that. And that would promote more tactical gameplay btw.

Changing the number of mobs would be good, I do fully agree with that.

But you have to take GGG's size and work-load into account. They're not going to be able to redo all enemies and spawning algorithms to adjust for a quality over quantity enemy setup. That's just not happening any time soon.

Putting some less attack/cast speed modifiers on the most mindless ranged skills and/or supports is a much easier and quicker solution that will also help, in some amount, with balancing ranged vs melee.

Personally, having put some more thought in it, I'd prefer targeting the major ranged support gems to have less attack/cast speed modifiers rather than the skills themselves. Single-projectile ranged is, in my experience, not problematic when compared to melee at all. That part seem fine.

The problem occurs when you turn that into multiple projectiles that all chain and consequently hit just about everything on and off your screen. Adding less attack/cast speed modifiers to LMP, GMP, Chain, Fork etc. instead of the damage reductions would I think help. Make those modifiers apply to any linked skill to keep CoC in check and I think you're much closer to a healthy balance.

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Crackmonster wrote:

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

That's actually an argument against ST.

ST is not in line with melee, ST is a ranged skill but yet almost any melee build will benefit from ST.

ST should be removed and implemented later with throwing weapons instead.

Your argument is really weak because this game is designed around an economy. Games that are designed that way have to be balanced and be fair.
If there is a skill thats unbalanced it's really stupid to tell people not to use it, have fun and accept it.

Your problem is that melee sucks in comparison to aoe skills, and so when a skill using melee weapons but still aoeing is introduced, you think it should be reduced to ash to not upset melee users.

Some small nerf to it and some nerfs to lowlife builds are fine, but don't ruin a good skill because it doesnt share the useless of other skills using melee weapons, just because you think it is unfair.

As i said, it's you who chose to play melee, you really want to play melee that's why you are upset about it, it reminds you how useless melee is, but removing it isn't gonna do a damn thing for your beloved melee, it's only gonna remove something someone else loves. Keep following that pattern and soon there is nothing left for anyone to love.