Can someone confirm melee getting buffed?

All I hear at the moment is, Templar this, Marauder that. What about the rest? I'm a Ranger, and I have a dual-wield melee build, for example. Also, not to forget; there are Duelists, Shadow, and even melee Witches.

Templars, Duelists, and Marauders are lucky, especially Marauders. They have an insane resist-wheel right next to their starting point in the passive skill tree. Both Templars and Duelists can reach that resist-wheel with ease too. Not that easy, but definitely a LOT more easier than other starting points, such as Ranger for example.

Gear dependency; sure this game revolves around that. But as others said, ranged builds are much more viable and less gear dependent than a melee build. They're not prone to taking damage as much as melee builds (naturally), but they can stack up the same defenses that melee builds can take.

About armor; armor functions need to be examined. My friend and I were talking the other day, he is going for a tanky marauder build, and I'm a dual-wield dodge ranger. He told me that against powerful physical bosses, that I am more lucky. When I asked why, he explained how armor works, and I gotta say, it really sucks.

And, a question; why do spells hit 100% of the time, even if it is a projectile? Shouldn't evasion apply to spell projectiles aswell?

Also, a suggestion; how about stances? For example, a melee stance which boosts defenses, melee efficiency and is auto-activated (gained) when melee weapons are equipped? And can be improved via the passives? Passives could be new, or the existing ones, defensive passives such as evasion/ES/armor/resistances could improve melee stance further for example... Some armor passives could further increase your armor when in melee stance, or some evasion passives could increase your evasion further in it, and so on like that... on top of the innate melee stance bonuses, that is... (also, things like ground slam or lightning strike needs to be accounted for, along with other offensive spells; equipping these will disable melee stance for example).

-----

Below are kinda off-topic:
Take a look at some of the popular ranger builds; using split arrow / lightning arrow with GMP, sometimes chain, and most of the time, last linked support is "life gain on hit". Every arrow, every enemy hit grants them the full benefit. Gems like these should have diminishing returns for ranged characters, if linked to a skill (or a skill with GMP/LMP), they should do less.

Also, in my opinion, one of the problems with physical builds is that, physical affixes are weaker. Well, there are 3-4 physical affixes if I am correct (that being bonuses to damage and damage% from both weapon itself and from armor). When you compare this with elemental stuff, you have 3 elemental damage types, each one is as powerful as physical damage affix (except the damage% on the weapons), and this tips the favor towards elemental stacking. And if you are using a ranged character with aforementioned skills, and slap some +elemental damage% passives... Voila, you have a "working" build.

Talking about both of the nonsense and off-topic stuff now... If you ask me, first step for me would be altering the "life on hit" gem. Turning it into a melee-support gem would be the first step. That, or, removing this gem all together, but making life steal instant for melee weapons. Secondly, about elemental damage and stuff... Splitting "projectile damage" into two; "physical damage" and "elemental damage". Elemental damage should "level up" slower than the physical counterpart. Thirdly, making armor work in two ways; flat reduction AND percentage reduction after that. As far as I know, armor reduces damage by a flat amount at the moment (don't take my word on this - I don't have any armor at all), but it should reduce rest of the damage by a percentage too.

I agree Im only in act3 of normal and Im constantly dying with my melee shadow dagger build
with my lightning strike/totem Templar I have no problem breezing through this area

"

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

Yes, that is another way. I suppose they'd need to issue a total respec for all the open beta chars, but it's not like they haven't done that before.

I think there are a large host of problems with the current state of the game in regards to melee.

When it comes to the passive and/or mechanics side of things, I think one of the big ones is simply that passive defenses don't scale well in relation to the amount of danger a true melee character exposes themselves to. There is nothing really in the game right now that allows someone that wants to actually stand in melee range offset the volume of incoming damage in a way that makes the proposition worthwhile rather than simply possible. Any amount of defense I am capable of stacking does not ask of me anything in regards to how I engage in combat; until this is something directly asked of me by the game design this discrepancy will always exist.

You can look at this from the aspect of the encounter design and see why it results in such a large balance problem. There is really no element to this game where being closer to an enemy is less dangerous than being farther from an enemy. There are countless examples where the opposite is obviously true; pretty much every boss encounter is designed such that their threat level increases strictly on your proximity to them.

That inherently is not a problem until we go back and look at the opportunity cost of investing in survival and see that in almost no way at all does the game account for this. The best way I could argue it does is in the starting positions offered and in the grand scheme of things it currently amounts to almost nothing. Especially so when ranged builds still have access to them and reap their benefits in full if they choose to do so.

Really what it comes down to is that being in melee range exposes your character to orders of magnitude more threat but all of the ways a player can invest into their defenses simply do not scale in relation to their distance from a target. Until the game offers me more per unit I invest into my defense on the nature of being in melee range there is too large of a hole for a melee player to dig themselves out of.

One of the main problems is the primary source of damage mitigation for melee (outside of just killing stuff faster) comes from endurance charges.

Endurance charges are ridiculously powerful, armor is ridiculously shit.
Without endurance charges in melee range, you are made of paper (at least in merciless).
This pigeonholes most melee builds (all good ones?) into working around endurance charges, and then your quality of life is going to suck unless you take the increased duration nodes. So you're going all the way around the templar and duelist tree to get that crap just to have a chance to sit in melee range relatively safe without flopping over instantly.

That needs an overhaul.

"

Wallach wrote:

I think there are a large host of problems with the current state of the game in regards to melee.

When it comes to the passive and/or mechanics side of things, I think one of the big ones is simply that passive defenses don't scale well in relation to the amount of danger a true melee character exposes themselves to. There is nothing really in the game right now that allows someone that wants to actually stand in melee range offset the volume of incoming damage in a way that makes the proposition worthwhile rather than simply possible. Any amount of defense I am capable of stacking does not ask of me anything in regards to how I engage in combat; until this is something directly asked of me by the game design this discrepancy will always exist.

You can look at this from the aspect of the encounter design and see why it results in such a large balance problem. There is really no element to this game where being closer to an enemy is more dangerous than being farther from an enemy. There are countless examples where the opposite is obviously true; pretty much every boss encounter is designed such that their threat level increases strictly on your proximity to them.

That inherently is not a problem until we go back and look at the opportunity cost of investing in survival and see that in almost no way at all does the game account for this. The best way I could argue it does is in the starting positions offered and in the grand scheme of things it currently amounts to almost nothing. Especially so when ranged builds still have access to them and reap their benefits in full if they choose to do so.

Really what it comes down to is that being in melee range exposes your character to orders of magnitude more threat but all of the ways a player can invest into their defenses simply do not scale in relation to their distance from a target. Until the game offers me more per unit I invest into my defense on the nature of being in melee range there is too large of a hole for a melee player to dig themselves out of.

Well put and doesn't even begin to describe the multitudes of ways that ranged characters are able to grind loot faster with more mobility and sills that destroy legions of enemies with no downtime.

As a melee i'm spending more time burning down small clumps of units, casting defensive skills, running around slowly in big armor. Every component that defines my class puts me in a lower tier to get new items, which directly factors into how well you will perform in the mid and late game.

In all honesty, the way that armor works should be reverted. It should be more effective the more damage you take (with an obvious cap) and not the other way around.

Endurance charges would also probably need to be looked at with the above change

Melee survivability isn't bad.

It's just poor game mechancis.

Look at GGG game design for "Challenging" mobs.

Voidbearers sit there and channel an ability that destroys you. Only challenging if you're melee.

The General in Act3 has a shield that destroys you. Only challenging if you're melee.

Mobs swing super fast, hit super hard, but move like a snail. Only challenging if you're melee.

Mob is a stationary and 1 shots if you come into melee range. Only challenging if you're melee.

Casters shoot out multiple projectiles that fan out the further they go. Only challenging if you're melee.

Then let's talk about the massive desync problems in this game. Hell, mobs can't even make it around walls sometimes. Only matters if you're melee.

Every. Single. Game. Mechanic.

It's all centered around making a melee's life hell.

It's something common in new development companies. They don't know how to design, so they think of things. And the ideas they think of only screw melee and don't affect range.

List me a single ability in this game that range has a problem with. Because I can't think of 1 that isn't equally as hard or harder as melee.

I still don't understand why everbody is crying about ranged beeing OP and melee UP. Because it's not. They are balanced - but work in different ways and because of that in some situations melee is better and in some ranged is.

First, you have to understand that PoE is supposed to be a hard game. That means you won't be safe even if you just build defense and that there will be always hard situations for you. And you have to understand that damage is really important too, you need to kill things fast - otherwise they will hurt.

I play a lot HC with a friend. He builds tanky melee and i build glass cannon damage ranged. It works really well. Without a good weapon he deals less damage than me and then thinks he is useless. But well, he isn't - because having someone in front that takes the aggro is by far the best thing for a ranged player!
With a good weapon he deals more (and better AOE - with leap slam / cleave) damage than me - while beeing way more tanky / safe. Do i cry OP? No, because i know in other situations i'm better than him.

Maybe armour is weak. Maybe Vaal is hard. But well, there are a lot of hard things for ranged too (like Viper Strike, Puncture, faster movement, Oak, Freeze, ...) and compared to melee i won't be as tanky and i have no escape.

About the elemental damage vs phys. dmg. It's balanced. Why? Elemntal damage is insane early and falls off late. And we'll, pdmg is weak early and insanely strong late. Which makes it balanced again.

About builds. A lot of builds work really well. Just because people play similar builds doesn't mean others are not viable or weaker. And e.g. for ranged bow Burning Arrow is really good too (because lower mana costs -> better supports possible and the highest base damage). Most people have btw no idea how to make a build work really well and usually just copy builds ^^.

"

List me a single ability in this game that range has a problem with. Because I can't think of 1 that isn't equally as hard or harder as melee.

Vaal rocks, Piety lighning ball, Bear traps, Puncture, Flicker mobs, ...

"

Thirion wrote:

Vaal rocks, Piety lighning ball, Bear traps, Puncture, Flicker mobs, ...

None of these things are inherently more dangerous at range than they are in melee.