Can someone confirm melee getting buffed?

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Courageous wrote:

Melee is not a class. It is a character from any class that closes the distance to the mobs and engages at melee range. Buffing specific classes is not the right thing here. We need to think at length about what qualifies a specific character for "melee," and enact some balancing around that specifically.

I'm not going to recommend a specific idea, because it needs a lot of though. But the category of thing I am thinking of is: suppose melee skills, when activated, put a temporary DR buff on the skill user, and any use of a ranged skill removed that buff. That's an out-of-the-box way of thinking about it, although as I said: I don't want to recommend anything specifically at all (not even this).

You can make it simpler than that. Just toss in defensive stats with the offensive melee weapon passives.

This is only really an issue with HC merciless/end game but I feel like a lot of people are getting on the bandwagon. Honestly this is something that I am sure the devs can sort out, in the mean time melee is just going to be more gear dependent than a ranged spec.

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KrO wrote:

This is only really an issue with HC merciless/end game but I feel like a lot of people are getting on the bandwagon. Honestly this is something that I am sure the devs can sort out, in the mean time melee is just going to be more gear dependent than a ranged spec.

Its mainly due to how armor works out, its explained very nicely (by kripp) here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j5a_voG6K4)

Long story short, armor is terrible against anything that doesn't hit you for a low amount of damage. In fact this feature probably makes it one of the most useless stats in the game, because if you are taking low damage in the first place, odds are you are just going to be healing through it with lifesteal/flasks etc etc.

Its the armor being useless is what is causing melee's build options to be terrible (basically anything thats not an elemental ES templar, or a perma stun ground slam marauder, and neither of those builds are "proper" melee)

Armor is also causing a lot more other indirect issues. Its making damage return (aka thorns) completely meaningless stat, because with the chance of being instant gibbed always apparent in merciless and above, your never going to tank long enough for damage return to be of use. Its also causing issues with spells like Molten shield, which while are ridiculously strong in normal (and up to halfway cruel), the spell ends up becoming useless when you hit merciless.

Basically everything in merciless hits like a truck, molten shield for my templar is basically getting blown up in less than a second. The whole point of melees is they need to tank. Proper tanking (as in, withstanding damage for more than 2 seconds) in this game is not possible with the current armor system when you start hitting merciless (its even an issue earlier, but at least you can mitigate it to some degree)

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KrO wrote:

This is only really an issue with HC merciless/end game but I feel like a lot of people are getting on the bandwagon. Honestly this is something that I am sure the devs can sort out, in the mean time melee is just going to be more gear dependent than a ranged spec.

No way. I had to respec my 2H user to nothing but defensive nodes up to level 60 because I was getting killed way too easily. It makes a big difference elsewhere.

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Long story short, armor is terrible against anything that doesn't hit you for a low amount of damage.

That's what Endurance charges are for. They make up for all of armour's weaknesses and then some.

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Proper tanking (as in, withstanding damage for more than 2 seconds) in this game is not possible with the current armor system when you start hitting merciless (its even an issue earlier, but at least you can mitigate it to some degree)

Yes it is. Again, endurance charges can easily double or even quintuple your EHP.

I made suggestion post which got all of 9 views and no replies, but my fix for melee is to add a stacking defensive buff to all melee skill gems. Each stack grants all defensive stats or maybe %damage reductions. And to avoid it being abused by ranged so they don't just stack it up and kite, the buff timer would expire faster the further away from a mob you are kind of like a reverse puncture. Yes this I would mean melee only have the buff while fighting but its a way to make sure it helps the right people.

Melee skill gems would be defined as any skill that can only hit things in melee range.

i think the problem is clear: armour doesnt protect characters who want to go in melee-range enough.

so that is the point, that should be fixed by GGG.

but how to buff armour?

i really liked, how armour works in D3 (not everything about that game is bad, remember?):

it just decreases ANY incoming damage by the reduction-percentage on your stat-sheet. that includes elemental-damage as well, which makes armour the strongest stat-overall. put this in POE and suddenly melee-chars won't have the problems, they have now - and everyone else will be wanting to get some armour at least.

obviously i didnt do any math on this, so it could be OP in some ways. but i think the direction wouldn't be wrong, or what do you all think?

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Chancellor wrote:

I made suggestion post which got all of 9 views and no replies, but my fix for melee is to add a stacking defensive buff to all melee skill gems. Each stack grants all defensive stats or maybe %damage reductions. And to avoid it being abused by ranged so they don't just stack it up and kite, the buff timer would expire faster the further away from a mob you are kind of like a reverse puncture. Yes this I would mean melee only have the buff while fighting but its a way to make sure it helps the right people.

Melee skill gems would be defined as any skill that can only hit things in melee range.

That sounds like a pretty damn good idea.

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Its making damage return (aka thorns) completely meaningless stat, because with the chance of being instant gibbed always apparent in merciless and above, your never going to tank long enough for damage return to be of use.

Even if armor were eighty times stronger, thorns would still be a meaningless stat.



Staying on topic, I really don't like how endurance charges work right now (or any charge, for that matter). They need tweaking. I think armor is fine as is, but my opinions on endurance charges are here.

Honestly physical damage is not the most threatening thing for melees. And I mean Melees, Groundslam and Lightning-Strike aren't melee. Cleave is, Heavy-Strike is and Sweep is and many others, but Groundslam and Lightning-Strike have a high enough range to stay away from the trouble.

I have a range of stuff that comes to my mind when I think about buffing Melee, without buffing ranged or the already very good Lightning-Strike/Groundslam builds.

The first idea is, that some of the weapon-nodes for swords, daggers, claws and axes should have defensive aspects with them, mostly placed in the duellist and ranger part of the tree (to make it more difficult to get them + elemental damage from the templer). Swords could parry (well block), while axes could increase chaos-resistance a bit. Dual-Wield should have a node that applies your Dual-Wield-Blockchance to spells, which would be a great bonus to Dual-Wielding Builds.

So I think buffing the special weapon-nodes with a bit of defensive would be a good way to go. It would first ensure that you can balance certain combat-stile against each other, since a Melee-Shadow propably has other problems than a Melee-Duellist, while Elemental-Damage-Builds with Lightning-Strike and Groundslam are already very good (since they are technically not melee).

lol GS and LS aren't melee, oh boy here we go...

Anyway, I have a 48 HC Duelist who uses Cleave (gasp) and Dual Strike and I'm going to be entering merciless too. The build has been very easy to execute and I've only taken Diamond Skin. Hell, my max life has been consistently 15-20% lower than usual (compared to my Templar/Marauder builds).

I'm not convinced melee is broken in 'every way' though they do have some issues. Going to wide with strokes here is going to result in a nerf patch that we really don't want.