Feedback and Suggestions (Path of Exile 1) - Can someone confirm melee getting buffed? - Forum

This topic is starting to make me sick. All I hear is still templar this, marauder that. What about the rest?	Posted by lyravega#6200 on Feb 7, 2013, 2:04:47 AM Quote this Post
Slightly adjust stun/armor scaling, make new monsters, make the game tougher for ranged characters, etc. I think that last point is the strongest sentiment of those wanting melee buffed. The way I feel 99 percent of people should be wary of stuns. And I mean 99 percent, or whoever isn't taking unwavering stance. After that pump some more stun related passives into the tree. I reiterate, the way I feel is stun is a very hard balanced mechanic and is not fluid at all. Its basically "you must be this tall to farm". Even on evasion based characters, luck of the draw won't prevent moderate damage stun chains due to the mechanics. Don't even get me started on EV melee. Theres about 3 directly related counters to stuns, ES, armor, and health. ES really shouldn't even be related but it is. Templars are nigh unkillable in a vast majority of situations due to this relation of 50 percent stun resistance, and it also stacks with their armor to mitigate the ES damage to begin with, meaning they can tank "excessively" against stun prone mobs. Ranger used to have a hard time getting health in CB from what I remember before they changed it later in CB. Marauder has the greatest ability to tank stuns by changing I think almost every value related to stun. Armor scaling is borderline broken in relation to all these stats. in a way the ES stun mitigation gap is now transplanted right into the group of passives the marauder can pick up. The rest of the characters particularly on the DEX side are lacking if they don't pick up some form of hybrid armor. A direct solution is an open scaling stun system instead. But as far as I know the devs will not do this and I agree for the particular reason that hit recovery is a much more fun mechanic to balance since it doesnt mean the player sits for 5 seconds staring at some swirls every time the most common damage type hovers in their direction. They should just slightly repurpose blocking and stun recovery, in fact blocking period onto all weapons. Not in the way staff is though, this is explicitly for the purpose of a new interruption mechanic similar to parrying. This could also tie in accuracy replacing the standard critical effect evade. On parry, either remove the stun animation but still recieve damage, or introduce a much shorter stun animation effect for parrying. Melee parry passive or whatever. Excludes ranged characters obviously. Current stun length is 350ms, I would like to say DEX melee can get off consistent stun as well but thats not entirely true, youre just as reliant on the same mechanics to screw the enemy up, and if theyre matching you and exceeding you will get stunned in melee more than likely and the 350ms stun is hitting you harder than the 2hander builds. I also think parry and block should stack as well, otherwise they would overwrite each other too often. Not to say it shouldn't be rebalanced though. You would be able to parry seperately from your block but should you roll both successfully it should default to the normal non-animation block. Personally I would think that duelist would be the most "skilled" shield user, not to say the best shield user (which their shouldn't be), but one who relies heavily on knowing where strikes will come from in all directions. tl;dr new situations involving stun need to occur, the current dynamic is not very entertaining for the dark side of melee. That last paragraph in particular would make duelists feel perfect in PvP. i got tired of writing this post and may visit this later because its 3 in the morning	Posted by maskedmartyr#0479 on Feb 7, 2013, 4:17:28 AM Quote this Post
Spoiler " 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. You could always check with a really high level char with a lot of evasion, go to normal brutus, see if he ever misses. Then you'll know if he can or can't. But I do agree, evasion is horrific at the moment, even with a ranged build. Things like rhoas/ribbons/elitegaurds will 1-2 shot you, reason 1, you will have relatively low life as a ranged build(unless you do the whole bowrauder thing), reason 2, you simply cannot evade rhoas, no matter what your evasion(this also applies to a few other things). That I will have to say is a problem with shieldcharge mobs. Even with melee, regardless of hp, armour, or level, they can still stun you and knock you back. Spoiler " Torin wrote: " 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. I agree to having the supports. But imagine you're a 2 hander, with slow attack speed, and sweep(would like to see this work with 2h swords in the future too) does the speed of your weapon, if you're slightly surrounded, you're going to get busted up, and it only works with 2 handed anyway. Cleave isn't too bad, but for the area it covers, it is slightly too weak. Some say, make amour more effective, problem would be that IR builds would be godlike. Especially in comparison to someone with just evasion. Automatic damage reduction while using a melee weapon, doesn't seem too bad of an idea, could add a slight bit more for a shield user or dual wielder. But it just doesn't seem right to implement, and I don't know why to be honest. Making new monsters to make the game tougher for ranged, would most probably make it even harder for melee. Maskedmartyr, mentioned parrying, this is not a bad idea, but this would be like adding secondary block chance, which would be like dual chance to evade, with some required recovery. This would also leave 2 handed behind as you would only have 1 weapon to parry with, unless you have a staff then you would have block and parry. Will be thinking of another solution to this, duelist needs some help when it comes to melee. Lyravega, shadow and duelist were mentioned a bit. But I agree, at the moment they are very easy to kill, if you use melee with them. But shadow is sitting between the ranger and the witch, which makes it seriously hard for a viable melee build. Changing the shadow to be more melee, would probably make witch and ranger weaker. Because I have played the living jebus out of melee. I can tell you that, at the moment, you have to use ground spam, or lightning strike. Because it is simply kill or be killed. As a guy who almost always uses a shield, I am useless in comparison to my brother who almost always uses 2 handed. Even with an "insane" 1 handed weapon, and a shield, which gives a lot of elemental resistance since open beta and the new shield passives at the templar. I am more likely to die, just because I do not kill fast enough nor tank well enough. Block chance at 47% just doesn't work well, due to recovery, and blocking seems completely random. Plus I don't know what I can and cannot block, other than spells, which is hard to figure out about some things(such as constructs). Now, there is the problem of marauder and templar, just plain RAPING with spells such as power siphon. I have seen it, never used it so I cannot explain the issues or recommend solutions. But also, I have played a duelist, ranger and a marauder with a bow, the marauder is definitely more likely to survive, but things take a bit longer to kill. All of those builds are piss, in comparison to melee versions. Even compared to gs, I will pick the bow to survive, because getting 1-3 shot is less likely when I have the option of not getting hit at all.	Posted by Zrahurgh#2431 on Feb 7, 2013, 7:04:45 AM Quote this Post
" Zrahurgh wrote: Spoiler " 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 + 12dmg), 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. You could always check with a really high level char with a lot of evasion, go to normal brutus, see if he ever misses. Then you'll know if he can or can't. But I do agree, evasion is horrific at the moment, even with a ranged build. Things like rhoas/ribbons/elitegaurds will 1-2 shot you, reason 1, you will have relatively low life as a ranged build(unless you do the whole bowrauder thing), reason 2, you simply cannot evade rhoas, no matter what your evasion(this also applies to a few other things). That I will have to say is a problem with shieldcharge mobs. Even with melee, regardless of hp, armour, or level, they can still stun you and knock you back. Spoiler " Torin wrote: " 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. I agree to having the supports. But imagine you're a 2 hander, with slow attack speed, and sweep(would like to see this work with 2h swords in the future too) does the speed of your weapon, if you're slightly surrounded, you're going to get busted up, and it only works with 2 handed anyway. Cleave isn't too bad, but for the area it covers, it is slightly too weak. Some say, make amour more effective, problem would be that IR builds would be godlike. Especially in comparison to someone with just evasion. Automatic damage reduction while using a melee weapon, doesn't seem too bad of an idea, could add a slight bit more for a shield user or dual wielder. But it just doesn't seem right to implement, and I don't know why to be honest. Making new monsters to make the game tougher for ranged, would most probably make it even harder for melee. Maskedmartyr, mentioned parrying, this is not a bad idea, but this would be like adding secondary block chance, which would be like dual chance to evade, with some required recovery. This would also leave 2 handed behind as you would only have 1 weapon to parry with, unless you have a staff then you would have block and parry. Will be thinking of another solution to this, duelist needs some help when it comes to melee. Lyravega, shadow and duelist were mentioned a bit. But I agree, at the moment they are very easy to kill, if you use melee with them. But shadow is sitting between the ranger and the witch, which makes it seriously hard for a viable melee build. Changing the shadow to be more melee, would probably make witch and ranger weaker. Because I have played the living jebus out of melee. I can tell you that, at the moment, you have to use ground spam, or lightning strike. Because it is simply kill or be killed. As a guy who almost always uses a shield, I am useless in comparison to my brother who almost always uses 2 handed. Even with an "insane" 1 handed weapon, and a shield, which gives a lot of elemental resistance since open beta and the new shield passives at the templar. I am more likely to die, just because I do not kill fast enough nor tank well enough. Block chance at 47% just doesn't work well, due to recovery, and blocking seems completely random. Plus I don't know what I can and cannot block, other than spells, which is hard to figure out about some things(such as constructs). Now, there is the problem of marauder and templar, just plain RAPING with spells such as power siphon. I have seen it, never used it so I cannot explain the issues or recommend solutions. But also, I have played a duelist, ranger and a marauder with a bow, the marauder is definitely more likely to survive, but things take a bit longer to kill. All of those builds are piss, in comparison to melee versions. Even compared to gs, I will pick the bow to survive, because getting 1-3 shot is less likely when I have the option of not getting hit at all. I pretty much agree with almost everything that is said here. Long story short, proper true melee is not viable at all. Regarding the armor comment, I think if people realized how weak armor is as a stat, they wouldn't really have issues in buffing it, here is a quote from the mechanics thread. " Malice wrote: Armour / Damage Reduction* Damage Reduction reduces physical damage taken. Elemental damage and damage-over-time are not affected. The amount of damage reduction depends on the defender's armour total, and the attacker's attack damage: reduction = armour / (armour + 12damage) The amount of reduction is capped, it cannot be more than 90%. The fact that damage reduction scales with the amount of damage means it is difficult to know exactly how much damage is being reduced. An easy to remember rule of thumb is that to achieve 50% damage reduction, you will need an armour rating equal to twelve times that of the damage being dealt. For example, to achieve 50% damage reduction against a 100 damage hit, you'll need 1200 armour. Here are two graphical representations of the armour formula: Effect of X Armour on Damage Effect of Armour on X Damage Now the thing is, getting hit for 300+ damage is basically normal in merciless. In fact, 300 damage is pretty much the minimum. This means to reduce that 300 damage by half, you need to have 3600 armor. That is probably as high as you are going to get without someone ridiculous year farmed epic items with perfect rolls. As you can see from the graph, melee builds will typically have around 2k armor (other builds will typically have around 500-1k armor). At 2k armor, the effectiveness greatly decreases at the 100-160 damage mark. Basically every mob in merciless is going to hit you for that amount as an absolute minimum* The stat is by far the worst scaling stat in the game, to the point where its almost useless in merciless difficulty. Thats why everyone spams HP at those high levels of play. Armor is very good in normal, because mobs don't hit you that hard, but since damage scales so insanely in merciless and due to the formula it becomes next to useless. As to why GGG has implemented armor this way we would need some semi official comment, because as it stands currently, armor is not really armor in the definition of the word (that is, defending against big and heavy blows) Obviously a buff to armor would throw some other things out of balance, and such things can be tweaked, but having a useless stat is just going to create more issues than its going to solve Last edited by deteego#6606 on Feb 7, 2013, 7:21:17 AM	Posted by deteego#6606 on Feb 7, 2013, 7:17:44 AM Quote this Post
Wall of text incoming. I am Zrahurgh's brother, he typically ends up going for the tankier builds when we play. Normally he has higher armour (IR), block chance, etc. I typically have higher damage and no armour (I absolutely never get IR) or evasion (currently at lvl 68 with 600 armour and 700 evasion). I only ever die to absolutely horrible mistakes or desyncs/disconnections, the difference between our tankiness is only apparent against monsters and situations that don't matter, because of armour scaling and randomness associated with things like block. Typically, in a situation where I can't get hit, he can't get hit either, there are some exceptions to this with things like shield chargers, if I have no granite charges, but that's about it. One big reason for my less than tanky 2h builds feeling comparably tanky to his 1h builds is stupid amounts of life leech and the safety provided by the range and area of GS and Sweep (I get myself surrounded a lot). I also get to kill faster. I will say it again, a lot of situations compound damage to the point where most builds simply can't deal with it, it's wall of numbers, don't get hit or die. It's not fun, it leaves no room for potential tactical play (even if the game is currently a bit too limited to support complex tactical play). I would far prefer, for instance, 20% faster monsters and 20% less damage. Leech is my main form of "mitigation", but of course it's not really mitigation, it's getting a big enough buffer and regenerating it continuously with very little effort or cost, it's virtually a free side-effect of damage (which in itself is probably the best defense). In terms of actual mitigation, there are 3 things that matter to me in terms of value: enfeeble, granite flasks (not so much anymore) and endurance charges on top of the granite/armour. Granite flasks are pretty shitty now, a nerf at lower levels was definitely needed, but at the same time, it's armour, it doesn't scale. Granite flasks just become irrelevant sooner now, they need to be tiered. Enfeeble means that most things don't matter to me at all, that I am more afraid of a pack of blue mobs with "immune to curses" than virtually all bosses. Otoh, immune to curses mod is stupidly prevalent. It's an odd situation where I am more likely to die to 3 blue rhoas than to Brutus, Piety or Vaal (stupid damage in merciless btw, you need >4k HP with 80% fire res to be able to just survive one slam). Endurance charges are more annoying to use than they were, are almost entirely useless early on and don't mean much without armour and/or having lots of charges (which requires investment and you typically just don't have lots of charges against the things you most need them for, rares/bosses). There's the notion that endurance charges are too powerful, my honest opinion on this is that they are not, they are simply necessary because armour scaling SUCKS. Endurance charges feel powerful because they provide consistency. I'm tired of seeing people playing exclusively ranged chiming in on melee defenses and people taking things out of practical context into the realm of theory and speculation. EHP and idealized scenarios don't mean shit, deal with it. It's been proven (through actual play and competitive results) time and time again that it just doesn't mean shit. Users stacking evasion and armour are continuously disappointed by results because they cannot keep up with scaling. The base considerations of EHP (for a limited set of damage too, no less), which is great as a sort of vague/averaged view of things, has very little bearing on practical situations, extreme scenarios kill you, not average ones. How many people complain about the effects of resistance or endurance charges vs the effects of evasion and armour? It doesn't take a genius to figure out what ends up being effective, what people like and prefer. I will end with what I feel are simple improvements to the current defensive situation, flat, constant DR from passives and gear. Armour could get straight DR, evasion could get crit DR.	Posted by Deleted on Feb 7, 2013, 8:22:01 AM
" Thirion wrote: No, just no. Getting HP nodes compared to a marauder / templare / duelist is a joke (there are a lot of 8% nodes ... compared to 12% nodes). And better AOE skills like ground slam, leap slam or cleave (which have some crowd control too) - really? All ranged skills have a limited amount of units hit - well ... melee skills don't. In addition you have insane mana problems ... melee has blood magic! More damage - have you seen the base stats of a 2-hand melee weapon compared to a e.g. bow? In addition str gives you damage ... well, int and dex doesn't. No, just no. There are more dangerours situations for melee, yes. But melee still has usually a good escape and is more tanky. In ranged there are a few, but insanely hard situations! And well, at least in HC you don't want that ... You ever played ranged? Try to use all "good" support gems with any skill and well , you won't ne able attack more than 2-3 times because of mana cost. Melee has Blood magic and because of that you can use all of the insane support gems. Btw, AOE melee skills usually hit ALL targets in an area, why would you ever need LMP / Fork / Chain? Dont get me wrong, ranged is probably easier to play at the moment, but there are a few situations that are way harder to survive with ranged than with melee. Maybe in default it doesn't matter, but in HC it does. Don't forget, as melee you have your escape, as ranged you don't - which means a single wrong position kills you in HC. I'm sorry but all the stuff you say is utterly bullshit. HP wise, Marauder can be lucky right off the bat, but there are a lot of HP nodes on Ranger side (in addition to 8, there are some 12's and some 10's with +20 STR, also another with 18%, etc...). To use those AoE skills, you need to be next to them. Ranged doesn't. And don't give me that "limited amount of hits" bullshit. Mana problems? Then pick items that grant mana regen, put a clarity aura, and get nodes that further boost your mana regen. On top of that, you can get mana leech. Or, you can go for blood magic, too. It isn't an excuse. We are not comparing the base stats on an item. Lucky roll is lucky; you can get insane bows, and you'll be obliterating everything from afar. STR gives damage, true. You can get Iron Grip keystone, or Iron Grip support gem to get that bonus if you want, too. Like rangers play with physical damage in mind... "Melee has usually good escape" really? That's your excuse? How about adding a whirl gem or leap slam even, and change weapons to quickly get away, for example? No, this is not an excuse. And about support gems, your own words contradict each other. Also, again, you can go for blood magic, or stack mana regeneration, slap a mana leech too. Tell us how many melee support gems out there, compared to ranged ones, and NOT shared. Go ahead, please. And I've played with both melee and ranged builds, there have been no situations that a melee could escape but ranged could not. And again; get a 2nd weapon set and slap an escape skill there if you want to get a quick escape button, that is NOT an excuse.	Posted by lyravega#6200 on Feb 7, 2013, 11:49:34 AM Quote this Post
" lyravega wrote: I'm sorry but all the stuff you say is utterly bullshit. I play PoE for some time now and i got with at least 5 builds in HC to map content - i know what i am writing. Thx for the utterly bullshit btw. (ok, i have to admit i provoked that a bit). " lyravega wrote: HP wise, Marauder can be lucky right off the bat, but there are a lot of HP nodes on Ranger side (in addition to 8, there are some 12's and some 10's with +20 STR, also another with 18%, etc...). You really want me to count the nodes? Sure, there are some nodes, but they are weaker (means a lot more 8% nodes compared to mara / templar / duelist) and not as much. " lyravega wrote: To use those AoE skills, you need to be next to them. Ranged doesn't. And don't give me that "limited amount of hits" bullshit. Yes, you have to be next to them. But thanks to e.g. leap slam / whirling blades you can "jump in" kill them - before they hit you more than 2-3 times. " lyravega wrote: Mana problems? Then pick items that grant mana regen, put a clarity aura, and get nodes that further boost your mana regen. On top of that, you can get mana leech. Or, you can go for blood magic, too. It isn't an excuse. Well, seems like you never played high lvl ranged (means caster and/or bow). I have all mana regen nodes from templar / witch starting area, 3 items with mana regen and a full lvl clarity - and i still cant spam my ice spear more than 2-3 times. Blood magic is too far away - mana leech is the only solution here. But well, compared to a BM mara / templar i lost an support spot (which means usually 20-30% less damage). " lyravega wrote: We are not comparing the base stats on an item. Lucky roll is lucky; you can get insane bows, and you'll be obliterating everything from afar. You know it doesn't make sense to compare good rolls, right? Because you can get lucky rolls with 2h too - and well, its even more insane than a good bow. Do we wan't to talk about the 5% of best/worst cases or about the weapons 95% of the people are running around with? And well, base stats say alot about that. And 2h base stats are insane compared to bows and all other weapons. " lyravega wrote: STR gives damage, true. You can get Iron Grip keystone, or Iron Grip support gem to get that bonus if you want, too. Like rangers play with physical damage in mind.. Wait, were doesn the ranger/caster get the str (mara / templar gets it for free) to make iron grip worth it? You are arguing "just do what the mara / templar does". But you know ranger / caster don't start there? " lyravega wrote: "Melee has usually good escape" really? That's your excuse? How about adding a whirl gem or leap slam even, and change weapons to quickly get away, for example? No, this is not an excuse. My excuse is i am too lazy for this. But all the pro melee people argue that you can't do Vaal as melee. Well, you can always switch to ranged. But yeah, you are right here. :) " lyravega wrote: And about support gems, your own words contradict each other. Why? " lyravega wrote: Tell us how many melee support gems out there, compared to ranged ones, and NOT shared. Go ahead, please. Melee Damage on Full Life + Melee Physical Damage vs. Point Blank + RAT. Not counting all projectile supports because of lighning strike and spell totem / mine / trap because you can use it as melee too. " lyravega wrote: And I've played with both melee and ranged builds, there have been no situations that a melee could escape but ranged could not. And again; get a 2nd weapon set and slap an escape skill there if you want to get a quick escape button, that is NOT an excuse. I agree with you here - my argumentation was bad because i used "escape" as only argument for melee being better than ranged. In another post i wrote about a lot of situations were melee is better off than ranged - i should have added that here too. Do you play HC btw? Because i kind of agree with your opinion if you play default. There ranged is better and melee is weaker. In HC melee is better and usual (- means not a 5k life tank) ranged weaker. ^^	Posted by Thirion#4157 on Feb 7, 2013, 2:01:34 PM Quote this Post
If ranged is weaker, why is every highly ranked HC ladder character some version of a ranged build? It's very easy to traverse from area to area on the skill tree. Here is an example of a semi-end-game "bow" ranged build: Spoiler http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBAdwB5wJxBLMFLQ6tFCAUTRRSFHUXHRjbGS4ZtBo4G_ohYCXfJ-0ppSzpMn4yiTboOlJAoEOcR35KfU3jUEdQUFRJVvpXDVfiWGNYr1nzXz9gS2OnZU1noG6qcql0QXTtdPF35XgNeu982YTZhO-HdozPjX6QVZstnrmezaIApBmnMKeEqW6rxaxZrKq18re2ud2-ir6nwBrB2MbYytPNmNIh1I_ZYd0N3Ubext-_51LqYuw47w7wH_Iv8932SPqx_E78xf6P How is this character at a huge survival disadvantage for deciding to go with ranged damage instead of melee? It has 5% life regen per second and ~25 life nodes. The passives give a significant amount of armor, and shifting points around or adding more could easily increase armor, all res, or additional HP. The build has enough STR and DEX to have access to any piece of Armor and Dex based equipment. Resolute Technique renders Accuracy moot. Blood Magic renders mana moot. This is what people are talking about when they say Ranged have the same access to defensive capabilities as melee. The only exception for a bow user is no access to a shield. However, similar builds can be made for totem-casters. Not counting the support gems because lightning strike (a ranged, not melee, skill) is affected by them is a cop out. Chain, Fork, LMP, GMP, Faster Projectiles, RAT, Pierce. Basically all the green support gems apply only to ranged skills (Lightning Strike is a ranged skill) while all the Red support gems apply to both melee and ranged skills with the exception of melee damage on full life, which is essentially worthless because in melee range you are virtually never at full life.	Posted by FamousTrip#7061 on Feb 7, 2013, 3:08:24 PM Quote this Post
I think marauders and especially Templar dont need help right now Its the duelist and shadow that are obsolite wich sucks because there the most fun classes to play but not so fun later when you cant take any hits	Posted by waxapnts#0527 on Feb 7, 2013, 4:24:23 PM Quote this Post
" waxapnts wrote: I think marauders and especially Templar dont need help right now Its the duelist and shadow that are obsolite wich sucks because there the most fun classes to play but not so fun later when you cant take any hits Marauders and templars have the same problems. If you like to play them as melee, they are just dying. In my opinion, the problem is in overall game design/philosophie. Builds have to die. To make it a hard game, builds have to die. Because you can overstacking defensive skills and life, enemies have to make so much damage, they can damage peak/one hit a full defensive charakter. If you balance damage on medium and light defensive charakters, tank builds are undying. Thats a dilemma. GGG needs to go away from the more armor/more life/more incoming damage spiral and find some other way to balance incoming damage and armor/evasion. There should be space for more damage based melee builds too. Perhaps this could work: Damage from hard hitting monsters will be nerfed, you get high peaks, but no overkilling blows. Every swing (not hit) from hard hitters will sunder armor or evasion and reduce flask effects. Melees can tank hardhitters, but got more and more vulnerable every time the enemy swings on him. Retreating from boss and got no hits will allow to run out the debuff, granite flasks will reduce the debuff and shield blocks reduce them to. Now players has the option to build tanky melees, who could stand long against hardhitters without being undyable or damage builds, who are not one hits for hardhitters, but have to retreat and recover more often as pure tanks (like the hit and run gameplay actuel works for tanky melees).	Posted by Nibori#5674 on Feb 7, 2013, 5:28:28 PM Quote this Post