A subtle way that melee is screwed over (the melee/projectile/AoE attacks)

^ Yeah, Molten Strike for example, the wiki states that the projectiles are specifically not melee, but are based off of your weapon damage (i.e., damage is not based off the initial melee hit, but the weapon making the hit and the appropriate modifiers).

So, the projectile portion will share benefits with any node with the keywords weapon, attack, physical, or elemental damage, that does not qualify those keywords with "melee." And there are a lot of those.

Static strike, on the other hand, is still rather new (so its wiki page is lacking, and I don't have experience with it). Its description would seem to suggest that it calculates the discharge damage from the initial hit (ergo, would be affected by "melee" qualified increases), but it very well may not.. I'm sure this information is out there, somewhere, on reddit, or the skill gem page... but I don't feel like looking for it ^_^

I contend, though, that this is not an issue. It allows these skills to be built multiple different ways. E.g., a str-tree Molten Strike build that focuses on shared "weapon" nodes (which mostly are not qualified as melee), or a dex-tree build that focuses on projectile nodes and some weapon nodes, etc.. Clearly, people are putting together these builds and are capable of pretty good damage, so that must not be the issue... hmm?

Hell, screw the wiki, I posted in the thread the link where GGG said it functions as I have been describing, and quoted Mark where he said it changed, and people are still trying to deny it. Just for fun, I'll quote it again:

"

Currently "melee damage" increases apply to any damage with a melee weapon, even when dealt via non-melee means, such as a projectile.
This is on the table for investigation, so may change in future.

UPDATE: This is changed in 0.9.12 - "melee" modifiers will not apply to projectiles.

Just like you can't use Melee Physical damage to increase Spectral Throw.

It's like they have literally never used Lightning Strike or Molten Strike.

You don't scale lightning strike with melee or projectile physical. It's used with more universal bonuses like multistrike, weapon elemental damage, added fire, faster attacks, increased critical damage, etc.

"

RickyDMMontoya wrote:

Hell, screw the wiki, I posted in the thread the link where GGG said it functions as I have been describing, and quoted Mark where he said it changed, and people are still trying to deny it. Just for fun, I'll quote it again:

"

Currently "melee damage" increases apply to any damage with a melee weapon, even when dealt via non-melee means, such as a projectile.
This is on the table for investigation, so may change in future.

UPDATE: This is changed in 0.9.12 - "melee" modifiers will not apply to projectiles.

Just like you can't use Melee Physical damage to increase Spectral Throw.

It's like they have literally never used Lightning Strike or Molten Strike.

ST doesn't have a conversion. Molten strike does. The initial hit is increased by melee phys, thus the projectile dmg is increased as a result of the initial hit increasing.

The melee phys just doesn't directly increase the projectile dmg via a double dip.

E: your GGG quote is them saying it no longer double dips. That's it. The projectile had the melee tag before, it no longer does.

For Static strike,
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1127392/page/4

someone is reporting the aoe procs cast on melee kill, so it must have melee tag on it.

someone else also has this quote from Rory a couple of pages back

From Rory

"The secondary hit has the same crit roll as your primary hit, so if your first hit crits, so will the secondary explosion. The secondary explosion is just like you performing a second aoe attack, so it is affected by Melee damage, lightning damage, etc. in addition to AoE bonuses, based on your weapon damage (rather than the hit damage)

Melee Splash only applies to the first single hit, not the secondary explosion."