Can someone confirm melee getting buffed?

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Ok, I'll go play a sweep mara...

Okay. Sweep only. No ranged. Tell us how it works on Merciless.

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lyravega wrote:

Melee stance could improve defenses, and could reduce melee damage taken for example. Use your imagination for the rest.

This is a really good idea in concept but I feel like it's excessively counter-intuitive to have it as a passive intrinsic buff that just occurs once you've been doing using melee weapons without any spells or ranged attacks.

One of the problems I see are things like Traps or Summoners. Does a summon witch using a melee weapon get to have the damage reduction? What about curses? Currently they are very important in most aspects of the gameplay, would they count?

I think implementing it as a gem which is essentially an aura that increases damage reduction but reduces spell / projectile damage to zero would be an option that might work better. Implementing it as a white gem could also work, essentially like the portal gem, to allow any character to have access to melee tankability.

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Thirion wrote:

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You cannot say, people are just to dumb to create working builds.

I never said / meant that. I wanted to say people give up way to easy and don't think too much about it. I have a problem -> most peoply cry instead of trying to solve it.

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But it's ridiculuos, that incoming damage of a dozen trashmobs couldn't harm me, but rare and unique hard hitters forces me to kite or stunlock them

And you think ranged doesn't have the same problem? Compared to melee we usually don't have an insanely good decoy totem.

No offense but this whole post seems extremely troll-ish. You are essentially calling anyone who sees this failure of balance a whiner that is just whining instead of looking for a solution. When the reason they are giving feedback is because there is no solution.

And as to your last point, there is absolutely nothing stopping a ranged character from having an insanely good decoy totem. Refer to the "ranged" bow duelist build I linked earlier in this thread. ~300 strength base, 25+ life nodes. Why wouldn't such a character have access to an insanely good decoy totem? They would have the exact same access as a melee character or a caster templar.

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FamousTrip wrote:

One of the problems I see are things like Traps or Summoners. Does a summon witch using a melee weapon get to have the damage reduction? What about curses? Currently they are very important in most aspects of the gameplay, would they count?

I think implementing it as a gem which is essentially an aura that increases damage reduction but reduces spell / projectile damage to zero would be an option that might work better. Implementing it as a white gem could also work, essentially like the portal gem, to allow any character to have access to melee tankability.

White gem suggestion is OK, but don't you need to add it to your bar in order to use it? In any case, some sort of thing needs to be done. As I've said, Traps/Summons/etc... all skills, needs to be considered, whether or not they'll deactivate the melee stance. Personally, I don't see any problem with traps or summons.

I really do hope they plan to buff melee. All I ever see in parties or anywhere are LA rangers and EK Shadow/witch. It's sad. There's no build diversity anymore. Everyone avoids melee like the plague and everyone goes LA/EK because they clear the fastest and most efficient without being in danger.

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lyravega wrote:

What will not work;


Changing the armor formula - As above, not every melee uses armor.

Actually, if you are melee, you are implicitly wearing a lot of armor due to gear. Obviously the templar/marauder/duelist are more likely to wear gear that gives you armor, as opposed to ranger/shadow which would most likely wear evasion, but the thing is, if you are wearing a heavy gear, that gear will provide you with armor

All typical melee gear for the classes I mentioned above either provide armor as a passive, or armor combined with evasion

Evasion probably needs to be looked at anyways. Personally I havn't used evasion, so I have little idea how effective it is

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FamousTrip wrote:

No offense but this whole post seems extremely troll-ish. You are essentially calling anyone who sees this failure of balance a whiner that is just whining instead of looking for a solution. When the reason they are giving feedback is because there is no solution.

And as to your last point, there is absolutely nothing stopping a ranged character from having an insanely good decoy totem. Refer to the "ranged" bow duelist build I linked earlier in this thread. ~300 strength base, 25+ life nodes. Why wouldn't such a character have access to an insanely good decoy totem? They would have the exact same access as a melee character or a caster templar.

It is essentially trolling. If we were suddenly to half the values of any ES item and bonus, you could use that exact same argument to say "everything is fine" with ES based builds when everyone would be complaining that ES sucks (for obvious reasons)

The logic is stupid and doesn't help anyone.

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lyravega wrote:

What will not work;

Modifying the endurance charges - Not every melee class out there can stack these.
Changing the armor formula - As above, not every melee uses armor.

Uh, yes we do. See, to be a properly viable melee, especially if you're two handed, you will need to stack Strength for raw damage, and most gear that uses strength has Armour on it. Scale, Plate, Chain, all have Armour (Scale also has Evasion and Chain has Energy Shield, but they all have Armour listed on them.)

So Armour needs to be redesigned in compensation.

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lyravega wrote:

Melee stance could improve defenses, and could reduce melee damage taken for example. Use your imagination for the rest.

That's what Armour should be doing. What it's doing now is, and I hate to say this but, idiotic. At higher levels and difficulties it's useless. It should never be.

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Nagisawa wrote:

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lyravega wrote:

What will not work;

Modifying the endurance charges - Not every melee class out there can stack these.
Changing the armor formula - As above, not every melee uses armor.

Uh, yes we do. See, to be a properly viable melee, especially if you're two handed, you will need to stack Strength for raw damage, and most gear that uses strength has Armour on it. Scale, Plate, Chain, all have Armour (Scale also has Evasion and Chain has Energy Shield, but they all have Armour listed on them.)

So Armour needs to be redesigned in compensation.

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lyravega wrote:

Melee stance could improve defenses, and could reduce melee damage taken for example. Use your imagination for the rest.

That's what Armour should be doing. What it's doing now is, and I hate to say this but, idiotic. At higher levels and difficulties it's useless. It should never be.

YOU do, but not every melee does. For example melee shadows or witches. They need to be viable too, but getting to decent levels of armor is almost prohibitive because of their proximity to sufficient amounts of strength and / or IR.

Currently, it's even WORSE for a melee shadow than it is for a melee everything else, but it was clearly within the design to have melee based shadows. After all, the entire second node on their non-magic path is devoted entirely to melee passives, and the weapon nodes nearby are primarily claw, dagger, and bow nodes.

They need to be able to survive in melee range too, and despite armors current failings, evasion is even worse.

And to top it off, it's incredibly difficult for things like melee shadows and rangers and witches to access Endurance charges, which are currently the only sufficient way to tank.

As an aside, improving armor also to make it do "what it should be doing" is just going to make templars and marauders who do not fight in melee range even stronger, unless melee has a significant damage advantage. Which, at the moment, it does not.

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FamousTrip wrote:

As an aside, improving armor also to make it do "what it should be doing" is just going to make Templar and marauders who do not fight in melee range even stronger, unless melee has a significant damage advantage. Which, at the moment, it does not.

I think what Templars and Maraudars are doing with ground slam/lightning strike/wand is a separate issue and should be dealt with separately, its an issue with certain abilities (ground slam/lightning strike) and scaling with nodes being too string (eleemntal damage). If you are doing a melee build with marauder and templar, you are going to hit the same issues as any other character attempting to do a melee build

Again, and as stated earlier, you can't say that "Templar" or "Marauder" in PoE are broken, PoE classes are not the conventional classes in RPG. The only difference between classes is where you are placed on the tree. Its specific abilities or stats in PoE that are broken, not classes. If there is an issue with classes, it would be an issue with nodes, specifically which ones and where they are placed, and this isn't the issue

Even setting aside ground slam and lightning strike, Ancestral Bond Templars, Wand Templars, and Elemental Bow Marauders are still going to have equal access to the best STR based armor as any tank can use, and the result will just be stronger ranged casters (as long as they're using armor), and more people rolling templar and marauder.

I also say Marauders and Templars are broken because that whole side of the tree is the best side, and Str is the best primary stat by a mile.

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FamousTrip wrote:

Even setting aside ground slam and lightning strike, Ancestral Bond Templars, Wand Templars, and Elemental Bow Marauders are still going to have equal access to the best STR based armor as any tank can use, and the result will just be stronger ranged casters (as long as they're using armor), and more people rolling templar and marauder.

Again, this is more of an issue with certain abilities and/or scaling (like elemental damage scaling is currently ridiculous, hence why Wand Power siphon Templar and Elemental Bow marauders are so strong). I don't have an issue with templars using wands and maraduers using bows, its just that if they invested 3/4 of their tree into defense (which most of them do) then their damage should be lower than it is now.

This is purely an issue with elemental damage scaling way to well for the investment required, there was another thread on this where most people came to this conclusion. The return for the amount of investment into elemental damage nodes (particularly stuff like the catalyst node) is way too high, and should either be toned down or made a keystone

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FamousTrip wrote:

I also say Marauders and Templars are broken because that whole side of the tree is the best side, and Str is the best primary stat by a mile.

The thing is, the only reason that side of the tree is so strong is because of how mandatory defense (specifically health and elemental resistance) is in HC/Merciless, so its not surprising that many people use Templars/Marauders for that reason. If glass cannon builds were more viable, this wouldn't be an issue. In other cases, its with specific abilities which need to be looked at

The "classes" are "broken" because of the fact that if you dont have health at those stages of the game, you get one hit, and this goes back to the problem of how weak the other defenses (Armor/Evasion) are