Armor is bad, and it should feel bad.

Got my marauder up to 67 so far and I agree phys damage is FAR more dangerous to me than elemental damage.

I just did the first Piety fight in a3 merciless and she did less damage to me than a pack of white archer mobs in fellshrine.

This is with 80 resist all and 79% phys damage reduction on my sheet with 7 endurance charges and molten shell up.

I somewhat agree OP that armour is not as effective as it could be, but melee are not the only ones who use armour, this would also be a buff to anyone else that uses armour.

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Ivpiv wrote:

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fortispectus wrote:

I think the problem is resistance not armor..
im a pure eva, dual wield dagger shadow 58, been soloing everything and now im in merciless act 2. Be honest with :
- 6.2k evasion
- blind
- enfeeble
- arrow dodging
- acrobat
I have no problem 1 v 1 against boss, physical mobs or archer in merciless, but casters on the other hand they could kill me easily.. at cruel i was able to reach around 70 % resist on all element ( except chaos )
and once i got to merciless the 60 % reduction kills it for me. I don't think i hit a wall because i can get some resistance gear or respec my point to get some resistance, and that is a big downside that melee class get.

Melee are forced to take more life and resistance points or gears while casters can get dps gears and nodes.

Back before i started playing POE i was planning to make a dual wielding dps dagger rogue with good enough survivability, now all i making is dual wield dagger rogue tank wannabe...but well i survive act 2 merciless so i guess its good enough.

Check out the streams mate, even ranged take all the defensive points. Problem is you dont need any offensive passives to do good dmg. And if you go offensive passives you end up 1 shotting yourself on reflect, which means defensive is the only realistic way to go.

Besides you saying you have no problem against physi is all good and everything but you saying you cannot take magic is BS nothing short of BS you have taken to many offensive stats and not even %regen and not even %hp passives and havent gotten enough resistance.

Magic dmg is not the problem, physical is, since the only counter to that is armor or evasion and most people take Armor over evasion. And it simply doesnt do enough.

There needs to be some flat % physical reduction that ranged cannot get or something along those lines.

That is the only way to make melee as good as ranged.

And ground slam, lightning strike, EK are not melee abilities they are ranged abilities, so basicly marauders are ranging it ATM due to the lack of tankability.

As i said add some %physical reduction when shield is equipped passives..

no so far im taking evasion, life nodes, 3 points on resist and just used 5 points on dps.. and im not bsing, casters kills me and i have no problem against archers or melee mob..because im using dual wield and the amount of - resistance in merciless is just ridiculous to both eva and armor user..

I am going to agree here melee take to much dmg in general from other melee mobs. my 53 shadow struggles the most agisnt melee, my brothers 47 duelest has the same problem.
If you watch all the live streams the melee are using ranged spells, none are meleeing.

Not sure how to deal with the issue, but I will give my best idea on the subject so far.

Phyiscal dmg is supposed to be stronger vs casters, rangers, and those with low armor. Spell dmg strong vs high armor chars, and those with evade normally deal very high dmg at the risk of taking slightly higher dmg from both spells and phyiscal.

Decrease all phyiscal dmg in the game by 15% base dmg, and make it so phyiscal dmg deals 10% extra to energy shield.(Buff CI to help counter this is is to gimp after nerf.)

I also agree, true melee chars take a lot of damage, all of the time.

With cleave i got to 86 in closed beta, here still with cleave im now level 83, its very hard though and you have to manage your flasks constantly and always pop endurance charges its quite hard compared to how semi-melees have it going.

i would like to see some sort of buff to true melees

should consider block as mitigation too
with tempest you get 30+% easily

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sgolemanov wrote:

should consider block as mitigation too
with tempest you get 30+% easily

I think that is the point to the post.

You should consider many players wish to play a melee in the sense that a 2 handed or dual wielding build should not only be a viable path but a fun one to play, and not have to invest in the shield as the skill points are at a premium.

In fact what does it say about melee characters (even those that have invested very heavily in defense passives) if the entire game "changes" by throwing on a shield. It's says that two-handed and dual builds that utilize armor need another look.

Bottom line, is why can't armor scale in a linear manner, just like ES and Evasion.

Why would this be a show stopper?

at least we get to ninja all the loot from range hiding a mile away from the battle...amirite?

This is a follow-up to my earlier post where I said I'd see if I could survive better by using Warlord's Mark and my two-handed mace instead of my normal sword and shield. It didn't work out. There was a huge difference in damage taken between the two-hander and my shield. I expected there to have been some difference because I lost 34% chance to block, but not as big of a difference as there was.

For example, I ran around a medium-sized group of archers in Act 2 to get them bunched up, cast Warlord's Mark on them, then ran in the middle and proceeded to use Sweep. Their attacks took me from 784 HP (max) to 50 HP after their first volley, after which I spammed my emergency instant heal pot a couple of times and got the hell out. Then I found an even bigger group of archers and sat there with sword and shield while they shot me and did considerably less damage. Mace was like "Oh Shi-*dead*" and shield was like "Okay, this is a bit painful, better not overstay my welcome."

Fighting a monster one-on-one with the mace seemed better, but still probably not as good as S&S. I thought about keeping the mace on switch for single large enemies, but until they fix the hotbar bug, I don't think so.

Here's the skill set-up I was using:


I tried Sweep with more damage too, but it made no real difference.