Can someone confirm melee getting buffed?

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Thirion wrote:

Without an insane weapon you won't 1 or 2 shot even normal mobs endgame. Even then damage against magic / rare mobs always helps. And sure effectiveness always helps.

Another Bad thing about Melee, at least compared to spellcasters. Gearcheck.
You need really good weapons to do good damage.
And even for ranged some skills are just by them selves much better. Like any lightningbased skill.

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Because you already have (almost) the best effectiveness possible. In PoE mobs are in groups - a dream for melee AOE skills.

I cleave with my Duelist. It's basically the ultimate definition of melee. And I can tell you that in a party any ranger with lightningarrow is killing everything 3 times faster than me, and it is actually better to just stand out of groups and only kill some already hurt mobs or the yellows or blues.

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Play more defensive - get out earlier. Sry, but i never play melee and i had no problems my first time - your are doing something wrong (and usually playing to aggressive is what kills you).

Lol you are kidding me.
I am.
Just yesterday I was killing vaal with a group.
3 Marauders, 1 Witch and me (duelist).

The witch was doing fuck all and just stood some place and casted flametotems on random positions. She basically did nothing.

The 3 marauders and I were melee attacking vaal.
It looked like this.

Vaal sprays Ice - > Everyone closecombat hitting him.
Vaal stops - > everyone back off
Vaal lazers someone - >the others closecombat hitting him.
Vaal Stops - > Everyone back off
Vaal casts rocks - Everyone was running in circles or was hitting him.
Vaal Stops, Raises his arm - > I and everyone else backs off.
I still get hit (called desync) my life drops from 1500 (cruel) to 41! with one smash.
This is where evasion is useless (which pisses me off, why is it a spell that cannot be evaded?) and armor doesn't reduce shit, unless it's like 20k. You cannot even pop a granit because his animation started already.

After I got hit by that and lost about all my life I popped my potions and went to town, calmed down for a minute (since I play HC) and then went back in.
Swapped to poison arrow and spammed vaal with it. after his life reached like 2% I melee killed him with dualstrike which has culling strike on it.

But for 1/3 of his life I was arrowing him. It did almost no damage, but I also took non, while the marauders were getting hit by smashes left and right.

Vaal is harder for melee, and especially for ones that are somewhat evasion based.

Evasion is not bad. Vaalsmash is the problem. Melee is the problem.

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I agree here - we are getting somewhere. People in this thread wrote "melee is not viable/playable" and thats just not true. I agree melee is too weak in merciless, but i think it needs a small nerf in normal (because tanky + 1-hit normal mobs with a magic weapon is OP) - as does GS / LS in normal btw.

Well they talk BS, everything is viable if viable means you can progress through the game, and maybe even not die until you hit maps.

The question is just, how much effort do I want to put in to do that.
No effort?
Play a Dualtotem sporker.
Low Effort?
Play a Lightningarrow Chainer.
Good Effort?
Play any other good spec, that is not lightning based and not true melee.
A lot of effort?
Play a good Melee spec
My entire life?
Play Pure Evasion, Melee. Phase/acrobatics.

You forget some things :

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Another Bad thing about Melee, at least compared to spellcasters. Gearcheck.

True. But again, with a good weapon you deal way more damage (compared together with your sruvivability) than a spellcaster / bow.

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And I can tell you that in a party any ranger with lightningarrow is killing everything 3 times faster than me.

True, in a party ranged are the damage dealer and melee is the tank (and you have to know here, as long as you tank you make it possible for the ranged to deal insane damage - without you he won't deal that much damage by far). But well, in solo you can still tank and ranged has to kite -> less killspeed.

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Vaal sprays Ice - > Everyone closecombat hitting him.
Vaal stops - > everyone back off
Vaal lazers someone - >the others closecombat hitting him.
Vaal Stops - > Everyone back off
Vaal casts rocks - Everyone was running in circles or was hitting him.
Vaal Stops, Raises his arm - > I and everyone else backs off.

Again, play more defensive. Vaals skills always have the same duration. Get out BEFORE he stops and you are safe - even with desync. I am a noob at melee and i had no problems - not even close ... what did i do wrong?

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Play a Dualtotem sporker.
Low Effort?
Play a Lightningarrow Chainer.
Good Effort?

Totems deal almost no damage anymore - compared to a pure caster.
And i already said Chain is broken (btw, really expensive - 1 Exalt ... have fun ^^).

btw. :

Play solo caster, pdmg bow, pdmg wand, summoner, ele-bow ele-wand without chain, ...
A lot of effort?

Play Stun-GS, LS, ...
Low Effort?

Play Fire / Lighning caster, Crit bow, ...
My entire life?

As i already said, there are always some builds that are weaker and some that are stronger. I already said that melee needs a buff and chain a nerf/remove. But it's not like ALL ranged are OP and ALL melee are UP. The best ranged skills are better than the best melee skills atm and that needs to change.

A little late to the party here. Anyway I've been attempting to play a 1 handed HC Mara since the beta opened. I can't find a way to make it work. I did fine through normal / cruel, but I pretty much leech in merc. Can't really find a way to make my char work besides supporting my party members with various debuffs and auras.

I thought cleave was reasonable, but then when you play a bow user it doesn't really make sense why you have to stand in the enemies to do such a small amount of dmg if other chars can just blow them up super hard from that far away. Struggling to get any gear to make my char relevant atm. I can't tank dmg and I can't deal dmg. This is definitely a bit of anecdotal evidence sure. Maybe a math wiz can get in here and provide the raw stats for us. (I'm lazy). All I know is the skills that would like you to stand inside of the enemies are not very interesting or fun besides the burning build which takes ridic gear. I don't want to be superpowered or anything, I just want to be able to play my char and it's a little frustrating looking for perfect gear just to see if it will make my char viable. Probably retiring my melee man as of now until I can get gear for him.

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Thirion wrote:

True. But again, with a good weapon you deal way more damage (compared together with your sruvivability) than a spellcaster / bow.

Actually you don't

The most common HC build right is a ranger (or a marauder using a bow) who specs on the tree completely into defense, gets a very good elemental damage bow, uses things like wrath and anger, gets lightning strike + support gems + life on hit (in a 5L+ or higher weapon) and just one-two shots everything on the screen

There is a guy doing this in HC currently, its pretty ridiculous

I started to get into PoE with a simple but durable Marauder Build and it's a nice way to explore the game for beginners. Just one gem Colour, not have to care about stuff like Mana (I have no mana) or evasion (Can't evade), stun (can't get stunned) or crits ( I can't deal crits).
So, Marauder/Melee has some Advantages and I made my way till the last Waypoint now in Merciless. My gear is not the best but thanks to 7 Endurance Charges, the survivability is not that bad, of course I die sometimes and even in Softcore, this hurts me badly enough. Today I've lost my entire XP progress on just one Enemy, "KOLE" around the last waypoint level 2 in the Temple thing. I don't know exaclty why he hits so hard but he does, even with the 4K Armour Flask he kills me in Seconds and I have 80% all resists, 2.8K life and pretty fast recovery!
I see some serious Balance issues there, also at some other points in the game (why does lighning dmg hurt that much for example). As Singleplayer Melee you are the only target for the Enemies and it's really not a face roll at all to get through the game, especialy not with selffound gear.

I have not started my (planed) Summoner Witch but I guess I will feel more comfortable with ranged combat than Melee. Again, marauder is nice for Beginners and nice to make early progress in the Game. But here and there should be some more balancing, It just feels not "round" enough for my taste, there are some nasty "spikes" of hard situations that can get you pretty quick in trouble.

And did I mention that Leap Slam causes insane lags and rubberbanding, especialy against also fast enemies? Pretty dangerous Skill imho at the moment but one of my few "emergency" skills to get out of trouble.

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Thirion wrote:

True. But again, with a good weapon you deal way more damage (compared together with your sruvivability) than a spellcaster / bow.

Wrong. You're thinking about a different game.

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Thirion wrote:

Why? Vaal as melee is really easy and safe. Stay away and as soon as he does his ice/rocks/minions jump in, attack 3-4 times, jump out. No risk and no way you'll die (did it in normal and cruel, never was even close to get hit by vaal - and i play with mobile Internet -> bad ping / desync). But i died as ranged to a laser + 2-3rocks in < 1 sec - no way to avoid that.

Wanted to add that the Vaal fight on merciless is MUCH tougher for a melee than a ranged. Interestly enough you didn't mention merciless. Some melee builds do better than others but Vaal on merciless was one of the few things that was horrible against mine. The obvious advantages to ranged is painfully obvious. They are not balanced. Melee's are still viable but look pretty bad compared to ranged. That is all.

Can someone tell me how to talk to someone who can suggest to the devs that the, ah Reddit? (not sure where it is) thread should be put in somewhere in the Forums for those of us who DON'T have the time or inclination to go digging through other sites for information about upcoming changes to the game?

This way the same information will be in multiple places and no one will be left wondering what's next.