Playing as a slow hitting melee

Hi Forums & GGG,

I´m just leveling a glacial hammer staff templar and here is a thing ive noticed:
Playing with a 2 handed slow attackspeed weapon is extremely unsatisfying mostly due to desyncing issues.

The scenario:
I´m facing 5 enemies which appear to be right next to me.
Thats Client side.
Really there are only 3 next to me the others are running around serverside.
I attack one that is actually not close to me but I do not know about it.
I swing at the air.
I think its a miss from accuracy.
I swing at the air again.
Now I´m taking serious damage because:
a) I´m not leeching
b) I´m not freezing or chilling anything.
c) It takes some time between attacks and before I can alter my attack behaviour or even type /oos.

So basically the client and server beeing unsynced about the PC'S and Mosnter's position directly contradicts my playstyle...

Usually players go for fast attacking builds (scaling... 'rolling my eyes') and use multistrike. Using MS effectively hides the above mentioned behavior and is a crude workaround as it auto aims for the next target after one swing at air.
Also Casting characters have way less issues with what I wrote above. This leads to a lot of players not even noticing the issue unless they are affected directly by resynching their own prosition etc.

Now I know that desync exists and is hard to minimize. I also know that positioning, collision and all that stuff is part of the game and its good and I do not want to change that. It makes the game somewhat unqiue and flavourfull.

So I was thinking of ways to make the game more enjoyable for slow attacking characters without just crying:"Fix the damn desync for fux sake!"

Here are suggestions (mind though that I´m not the most experienced player and can not fully estimate if changes like these are either easy to implement or even work with the current game without breaking certain aspects):

1. Increase the base weapon range of all melee weapons.
- Playing with a large 2handed pole I noticed that my char stands really on the toes of foes... He could be about 1-2 meters further away without it looking awkward.
- This would make facebreaker builds more enjoybale especially when leveling and not having picked up the +2 melee range node... FB leveling is absolutely tedious for me because of the minimal range.

2. Increase the tolerance of wether something is in or out of range.
- basically giving monsters larger hitboxes
- I dont know if this works because it might have too many strange side effects for shotgunning spell builds etc.

3. Decrease the amount of senseless running around and strange passing
- For melee builds and most obvious for slow melee builds there are a lot of monsters that strain my brain by just running around aimlessly.
- These monsters also create massive amounts of desynched positioning
- I feel like this is kind of another discussion but I just freaking hate these unpredictable monsters - they create no difficulty instead just slow you down when you want to actually play...

4. When I have a melee skill bound to my left mous button and I click on a monster, I run towards it until I`m in range. But the descision that I am in range seems to be made client side... make it server sided so I only attack when actually in range not seemingly in range So i do not swing at air.

5. Different animations for misses due to acc and misses because i swung at air.
- more of a work around and very workl intensive but if I could tell wether I´m hitting air or just had bad luck would be nice.


So as you see I do not want to generally complain about the state of the synch mechanics but rather wanted to give feedback and suggestions based on a specific playstyle/game scenario.
So maybe we can discuss if these are probably conceivable changes or not, maybe the community comes up with additional suggestions.
In any case, Ive been wanting to build this char for 2 years now, now I got the weapon for it now I´m doing it, even though its a pain in the ass and I´m going to die in maps constantly because I do not hit anything...

regards

You tried the gems double strike + multi-strike on the gem? ALso you tried shift clicking? I heard it's better than right clicking in a fight. Well I don' t know what you mean since I'm a axe user with multistrike on all my attacks.

I like this thread as well

this is Glacial Hammer issue over anything else

GGG prediction model they use goes absolutely crazy when you apply: stuns chills and freezes at the same time (esp with ele prolif)

prediction models are flimsy already with human input but this combo makes this very system go crazy

i realli liked GH build and suffered with it up to 81 or so but after that i decided that desync is simply unbearable. get a macro software. youll need it

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You tried the gems double strike + multi-strike on the gem? ALso you tried shift clicking? I heard it's better than right clicking in a fight. Well I don' t know what you mean since I'm a axe user with multistrike on all my attacks.

Thats exactly what I´m saying: You cannot rely on single targeting!
Shift clicking helps to an extend. You have to hit in the right direction, when the monster is standing somewhere else or is out of range, you will still miss.

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There should be a better way to scale for slower attacks. In the past, I've suggested a support gem that rewards slower attack speed with extra damage or perhaps some sort of status effect.

To me, it feels wrong that the only way to scale melee damage is attack speed.

Thats a thing that bugs me for a long time now. You get tremendously punished for attacking slow, especially with the desyncing issues and fast moving mobs. But also from poor scaling.
While 2handed weapons deal more damage per hit the scaling prefers one handed fast builds allowing for even more dps AND survivability.
Crit for example favours 1handed use too, there are 1handed and 2 handed crit nodes on the templar/marauder side of the tree: 260% for one handed, 190% for 2 handed. I dont understand this as crit is even favoured on the bases of one handers when we look at daggers for example. And the base Crit on staves doesnt make up for the loss of % here.

Also beeing 2-handed does not only give you a disadvantage damage wise, it leaves you without shield and in the case of a staff with subpar block compared to dualwielding or shield builds.

I would suggest (and many before me did this) to have nodes and or support gems and active gems (or maybe even an aura) that buffs your defenses (whatever options fit here) while attacking with a 2 hander in MELEE - So Spectral throw should be excluded.

The delicate point here is to make these options exclusively for 2handed melee use as most other defense options can be exploited by every build and allow for totally broken unkillable characters.

+1 to OP

The problem I addressed, and was alluded to above, is that a really helpful gem for melee, multistrike, is not awarded until late merciless.

Sure, you can slowly grind until then, but it makes things drag on so slow that it greatly diminishes any feel of strength that your character should seemingly have.

Melee Splash should be implemented into single target melee skills by default (out of the box)

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Melee Splash should be implemented into single target melee skills by default (out of the box)

I dont realy agree withthis. I think skills shoudl be more destinguishable between single and multitarget application. Melee Splash and Multistrike kind of wash these differences away.

But thats also totally not the point of my post ^^

Also note: melee splash has in no way a positive effect on what I posted earlier. You stil have to hit a monster initially for the splash to apply. Otherwise Melee Splash would be the savior of all slow hitting melee builds...