Can someone confirm melee getting buffed?

I want to throw out there that the problem isn't just mechanics of monsters. While that has an impact, it's also part of the way the game is designed in general. With the complete freedom of the passive point attribution all the defensive stats are equally available to both melee and range.

And while the game is still dangerous for ranged characters, it's significantly less so than melee. So, having the same access to defensive stats and defensive passives will always leave melee at a significant disadvantage.

Furthermore, many of the support gems are specifically designed with ranged skills in mind - LMP, GMP, Chain, Fork, etc. While there are none that specifically buff melee skills. This means that ranged characters have better access to ways to increase their damage (or ability to do aoe damage) without actually having to sacrifice their passive skill points.

While I think all of the passive defensive stats other than elemental resistances need to be buffed, I think that there are a lot of ways to increase the effectiveness and effective tankiness of melee without further buffing ranged:

1) Add defensive stats to the melee nodes. Things like increased block chance, increased hp, increased evasion, life leech, increased armor, etc. There is a risk though, in that many ranged spells are usable with melee weapons (spells, ground slam, lightning strike) so care should be taken with this approach. Limiting it to life leech would probably be the best because most ranged skills with melee weapons do not do physical damage.

2) Make Endurance charges more available. This could be accomplished in 3 ways:
a) Have a frenzy-like melee (only) skill that adds endurance charges on hit like frenzy does for frenzy charges. This would solve problems of maintaining the charges against single, heavy hitting bosses where Warlords and Cry are not options.
b) Add a support gem that only affects single target melee skills which gives them a chance to generate an endurance charge on hit. Again, it would be important to keep this from working with ground slam and lightning strike.
c) Add a passive major keystone which gives all your melee attacks a chance to generate an endurance charge. What kind of downside it would need and placement I'm not sure about.

3) Make armor, evasion and ES all slightly more effective when highly stacked. It is important to remember that witches and shadows also have a lot of melee range stuff in their trees, and being primarily evasion and ES based simply improving armor would leave them in a poor position in terms of being viable in melee. Plus evasion could use a bit of a buff in general.

4) Add a passive keystone that increases durability significantly, but reduces your projectile damage and spell damage to zero. The only problem I see with this is that there is some fun in playing a melee range caster (concentrate - shock nova, ice nova, molten shell) so reducing spell damage to zero wouldn't help this type of character, but it would help all other melee so I think that would be ok.

5) Turn Cleave into a support gem, or have a support gem similar to its effect - i.e. a way to turn your single target hits into aoe hits much the same way that GMP, Chain, Fork do for ranged attacks.

Anyway, that's just some thoughts.

Improving existing defensive nodes and adding new ones intended for melee-only I think is a better decision than adding a "smattering" of stats to melee-weapon nodes.

Loving these suggestions!

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FamousTrip wrote:

I want to throw out there that the problem isn't just mechanics of monsters. While that has an impact, it's also part of the way the game is designed in general. With the complete freedom of the passive point attribution all the defensive stats are equally available to both melee and range.

This is generally the same idea I spoke to in my first post here, but I think it's worth analyzing the encounter design because ultimately I do think that the specific topic of the value of defense does pretty squarely come down to encounter design. Or, rather, that their encounter design speaks a very clear message that they do not in turn meet with their design of the skill tree and gem system. I don't think the encounter design is actually a problem at all, I think the flaws underlying make it simply appear that way.

Ultimately, during the iterative process one of two things must have happened: either they designed the foundation of mechanics - including the skill tree - and then used that to inform their encounter design, or they did the opposite and let their encounter design be the driver to inform the way they needed to proceed in designing mechanics.

Where we stand now, we can see that the encounter design speaks almost universally to the concept that threat and proximity are directly related to each other. There is not one instance in this entire game where they introduce the concept of being less vulnerable to anything when you are nearer to it; there really isn't a more consistent message throughout this game spoken by the enemy design.

This is one of the most key elements that players use to inform their decisions, whether that's how they engage with a specific target or how they conceptualize their build. It's actually a good thing that this message is spoken so clearly because it has done a good job in helping players make considerations even against the backdrop of a very complex gem and skill system.

Where it fails is in the skill tree's ability to support this design. As soon as a player makes the decision that they want to play in a way that exposes them more to the threat of proximity, they are going to look at the skill tree and realize that there is nothing there that supports their decision. All of the options that are available to them are available at any distance; immediately players see that the core value of proximity within the encounter design does not apply to them. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that; ranged characters have the option of taking a keystone that allows them the opportunity to significantly increase their power in trade for exposing themselves to more danger (Point Blank). You are essentially asked to do this in return for nothing should you choose to take a melee path.

One of two things is very wrong here: either the encounter design is totally wrong about the message it is sending (I find this very unlikely) or the skill and gem system does not appropriately allow players to navigate that concept in a natural way. Were that the case, then melee paths through the skill tree would in a compounding way reward players for exposing themselves to the more extreme levels of threat in a matching fashion. Instead, the opportunity costs for investing your skill points in the tree seems to have the same value without regard to that relationship, and the current spread of characters in the ladder very clearly reflect this.

In my opinion what needs to happen is a fairly significant reassessment of the skill tree in it's offerings towards melee characters. The encounter design is not a problem at all once there is a matching scale of return to the danger a melee character exposes themselves to, and that needs to allow for both damage and defensive specializations. As long as you cannot gain in some way exclusive advantages for reducing your effective range this dynamic is not going to budge in the slightest.

My suggestion in the short term would probably be to look at the melee physical and especially the melee weapon-specific physical nodes and increase their returns significantly. Endurance charges should also probably be looked at to offer more significant returns to players specifically engaging in melee over ranged (not just specifically stacking Armor). Essentially, both the effective HP and DPS potential in melee range needs to be higher than ranged options for it to match the current state of encounter design; what's most important in the short-term I feel is that the average of both of these things needs to come up substantially.

Agreed. Melee without the use of pseudo-ranged skills like ground slam, lightning strike and the rest suck. Armor doesn't scale worth a shit, and anyone considering face-to-face melee skills without constant endurance charge spam needs to just hang up their hat until they fix this.

Armor doesn't scale in a linear manner like ES or Evasion.
The number of attackers does not scale the damage on a melee character.
Without ES, you are easily stun locked to death.
Ranged classes don't / aren't required to use MELEE skills, why are melee required to use pseudo-ranged skills to be effective.
Melee (without the use of the psuedo-ranged skills) are required to use endurance charges, however the same is not true of ranged crit classes (they aren't required to use power or frenzy charges)

The lists go ON and ON .. the denial of the problems only feeds the beast, in the mean time, don't roll melee unless it's on the "APPROVED" list of viable builds, that is the shitty part and that is exactly what everyone is irritated with.

More defensive nodes is NOT the answer to any of this. We need damage scaled based on the current number of attackers or something that prevents stun-lock absent the mandated use of endurance charges, which is boring as all get out.

Oh, why can't I attach a Chain gem to my cleaves? Funny right.

This thread is full of win and great ideas. I've been playing a Shadow, and without doing research as to what would be the most viable build, I decided I wanted to be a high attack speed, life leech character specializing in claws. I still haven't done any research on my class as to what things work best in the later difficulties, but right now I'm in Cruel and only on Act 1 and I feel I'm suffering for my choices. Going into the Fetid Pools is a horrific experience that usually ends with me using my Whirling Blades Skill AKA Oh Shit! Get Out of There.

I think that some of the people that use the excuse of "you should have done research and selected a viable build" are just plain boring. Why would you want to play this game the exact same way that other people are playing it just go progress. At that point doesn't it turn into cookie cutter builds like Diablo 3? I think the whole point of the massive skill tree is that you can make your character whatever you want.

With the skill trees, and the way armor and evasion work right now you can still make your character whatever you want, it will just be much harder to survive. I made a Shadow on the basis that I would have to duck in and out of combat occasionally and I understand that, but I also thought of him as more of a roguey assassin type guy. That's what I want for my character, but I feel like I'm being penalized for making the type of character that I want.

Granted I've still put some points into life and strength, but I don't want to focus so heavily on armor/life that I can't really be the class that I want to be.

There's obviously certain situations where I'm going t have to stack certain resistances before I go into battle (lightning resist for Peity etc.) and I understand that. But for just regular places it seems melee gets completely f**ked at times. I agree wholeheartedly with the posts above in regards to most game mechanics being harder for characters in melee range, without many options for us to mitigate that other than using cookie cutter builds.

That being said... I fucking love this game, and I REALLY love that the devs pay attention to the community.

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FcknGroovin wrote:

Armor doesn't scale in a linear manner like ES or Evasion.
The number of attackers does not scale the damage on a melee character.
Without ES, you are easily stun locked to death.

I just want to point out that Evasion doesn't necessarily scale very well either, and much of it is in the dark, and while Evasion scales in a somewhat "linear" fashion in general in terms of damage reduction, it's still reliant on the enemy's chance to hit, and your being able to actually evade the attacks.

I think there are some enemies with hits which can't be evaded, and there are likely enemies with big damage as well as high accuracy.

Just as an example, if you have 3,000 evasion on your character, your sheet may say you have 20% chance to evade attacks. But this is based on the average accuracy of mobs your level (in this case it would put them around 1000 accuracy, I don't know how realistic that is).

But lets say you run into Brutus. What is his accuracy? We don't really know because we have no way of knowing. It could be that his accuracy is 2000, which would put you at 10% chance to evade. It could be that some of his attacks are not dodgeable. I don't know, because we don't really have any way of knowing.

While we can estimate enemy damage by seeing how much damage they do to us and then inversely applying our armor to see the base of monsters, we can't do the same for evasion.

I guess what I'm saying is that it could be possible that evasion suffers the same problem as Armor. While the damage reduction is based on a formula that heavily values the enemy damage over your armor (Armor / (Armor + 12*dmg), the chance to evade is similar though somewhat inverted, (Accuracy / (Accuracy + (Evasion/4)^.8). So, in this way the higher the opponents attack rating the more likely you are to be hit. But it's not a linear scale. With 10,000 evasion, your 'evasion factor' in the equation goes to 522. At high monster accuracy levels the effect of your evasion is greatly diminished even if you have super high evasion. In other words, 10,000 evasion I think we can all agree on is a lot. But even an enemy with 500 (very low compared to 10,000 evasion) accuracy rating would have a 50% chance to hit you.

so what I'm saying is that evasion in some ways works the same as armor, except it's worse in a lot of ways. It's more bursty, and in general it doesn't protect as well against large packs of mobs. Add to the fact that we don't really know how monster accuracy varies from monster to monster, and it's hard to say that armor scales worse than evasion in terms of damage reduction.

Ultimately, it's unlikely that any of the defenses are sufficient for a melee character, it's just that armor is in the spotlight right now because of how unintuitive it is. Ultimately, all of the defensive types need to be an option for melee characters. I think the main problem is how to make them better for melee without making them grossly overpowered for ranged.

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anubite wrote:

Improving existing defensive nodes and adding new ones intended for melee-only I think is a better decision than adding a "smattering" of stats to melee-weapon nodes.

Not to mention this will only make GS and LS builds stronger. This needs to be solved through active skills and supports. Both GS and LS needs to be nerfed in range and made better in other ways. Buff for sweep and Cleave and Whirling Strike as well and new useful supports.

Yep melee sucks at the moment, why even bother playing it when you can play a ranger and melt scores of enemies in a few hits?

As a melee I have to run up to them get hit at least once or twice for about 50% of my HP with max armor from a merciless mob, and if there are few of them around its insta death if they all hit me the same time.

Sorry but ground slam and lightning strike are not real melee skills because they can dish out damage without getting hit by the mob.


Easiest fix would be to make it so that if using melee weapons it would automatically grant a pure X% damage reduction. Melee weapons that grant innate elemental damage increases do not get the bonus.

Some people are making good notes here about the disparity between ranged and melee (where ranged heroes can get just as tanky as melee ones due to the distribution of nodes in the tree)

There isn't any problem with this if the typical melee gear (heavy chest and head armor) actually provided good defense (and guess what, this type of gear either provides very high armor), and the reason why this gear doesn't provide good defense, is because armor sucks, and so having high armor (unless its granite) is irrelevant in the game.

I honestly think we don't really need to touch the tree at all, that would create such massive balance disruptions it wouldn't be funny.

All it comes down to is armor being shit, and since armor is the predominant stat that non ES/Evasion melee based characters are going to get (apart from life) it doesn't take Einstein to figure it out.

You would have the exact same problem if ES scaled terribly, than any non-blood magic based caster would be terrible and you would only have specific viable caster builds if you want to get into merciless (in just the same way you only have specific viable builds for melee if you want to get into merciless)

As for evasion, I can't really comment since I don't play an evasion based character , however evasion is always going to be a less valuable defense since its based on chance. It will also probably need some sought of buff, but then again thats the point of evasion. Things like evasion and ES are gotten typically on non tanky characters, and because of that, both of those defense mechanics are meant to less reliable and/or weaker than actual life/armor. Tanks are tanks because they can reliably tank (rolling the dice with dodging doesn't cut it, and ES doesn't allow you to tank for extended periods of time). The thing is, a shadow or a melee duelist is not supposed to be as tanky as a pure STR maruader (or a combination ES/Life based templar), however they make up for it in other ways. Shadow has superior mobility (which also happens to play very well with CI, get out before your shield burns out and then jump back in), and Dualists are meant to do a lot more damage. This is just general class roles and balance though. Shadows/Dualists aren't that weak, although they aren't the strongest. Shadows (especially CI ones due to how stun work) can easily kite and get out if you have good reaction time, and dualist can use things like totems to distract so they can kill in sane amount of time

Reliable tanking means having a big HP pool (allows you to better calculate how long you can survive and allows you to pot earlier) and flat damage reduction (not based on luck, again easy to estimate). Currently the only way to get the latter is endurance charges, which probably would need some slight nerf after armor gets buffed