Difference between melee and range builds.

I think with Ascendancy Melee is going to be good, but ranged is going to OP as always. I just wish GGG made new melee skills that provide some sort defense or a buff, only for the skills where you have to be in actual melee range.

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Constraint wrote:

I think with Ascendancy Melee is going to be good, but ranged is going to OP as always. I just wish GGG made new melee skills that provide some sort defense or a buff, only for the skills where you have to be in actual melee range.

You mean something like vigilant strike?

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goetzjam wrote:

to say these are still issues, despite GGG buffing melee is concerning. People want to utterly destroy playstyle options that people enjoy, just because they feel like the playstyle they want is less viable, when all actuality is it is just as viable, just maybe less efficient at least later in the league or as you progress its still very much playable.

Less efficient is not just as viable. Efficient and viable are synonyms as far as ARPGs are concerned.

So what did you actually mean? Both can beat [insert arbitrary challenge] here, but one farms twice as fast as the other? Well the slow one is not viable.

Melee is not only poor in perfomance, it is also incredibly clunky and annoying to use essentially any skill other than ice crash.

You are doing what I would suggest you do, tell the system to get stuffed and play a build that you want to play (like an armor Melee shadow). Keep doing this and ignore whatever other meta is in season.

Personally though, 2.1 has been the worse for build diversity and I blame it 100% on damage conversions. To narrow it down, Chaos damage and Call of the Brotherhood. In the latter case, why would I play a cold build when I can use Call of the Brotherhood, use a vastly superior spell like Arc while making use of BOTH of the most powerful status effects in the game.

So I thought anyway. Turns out 'Cold' is better than lightening builds, but only if you convert it to Fire and then convert it AGAIN to Chaos. At this point you should realise the meta has gone completely bonkers.

Fire is even more screwed because you don't even need a Pyre, you just go straight into Chaos and that's pretty much all she wrote for fire builds.

Physical casters? Much worse, you don't even bother converting, you use the super strong shadow nodes and use poison on a spell who's numbers are just too high. Before 2.1 came out I knew Bladefall was going to be the winner. I'm looking at the numbers on the wiki before launch, 507–760 damage at level 20 on a large AOE spell that can hit 1 target multiple times AS PHYSICAL DAMAGE (i.e you can use added fire and hatred). Then physical damage applying poison with no stack count? BINOS?

Anyway, obviously the poison and chaos was over tuned and will be fixed and I realise there's way more builds in top meta that aren't chaos, but I'm just saying the whole generic caster building is upside-down at the moment.

Anyway, the problem with melee while leveling is that it's solely dependent on the dps of your weapon, spell casting on the other hand, depends on gem levels (mostly) which can come from gear, but will also progress as you level too, which melee can't have. There's actually little advantage of being ranged or melee while leveling, it's just about who can do it the fastest, that just happens to be a caster.

One last thing, I don't actually believe Melee is dead, at all, I leveled a lot of characters this league and the most faceroll to level (but not fastest, you dont want to rip) was a Two-Hand cyclone build. Next best was essence drain. I play hardcore but my most successful build was the very old fashioned Wings of Entropy BoR Dual Strike Melee Splash (due to the HUGE buff to that gem). It wasn't the fastest clear speed, but I still hit 35k dps without crit or any decent gear and I could face double the amount of different bosses I could on my other characters. The build wasn't even closed to being done, but I'm taking a break until Awakening.

If Melee really needs a buff, make fortify reduce the damage you take from SOME (only some) of the ground AoEs, because a range char won't land in any of them anyway and melee you have to disengage to dodge it when you have no real dps advantage over ranged (bosses will put the aoe on top of them otherwise). I don't think they do need a buff though, some of the melee skills could be given more DPS for build variety (the close up ones), but I kind of feel Melees are pretty solid boss killers atm.


I can't really speak for balance much though because I'm strictly a HC Temporary League player now so I don't know what happens in the other leagues with balancing. It's different when we all have to build big defenses and not die. Ascendancy is looking great though, sounds totally overpowered so we will either see a big buff to our enemies or getting the ascendant points will be hard as absolute balls (which I doubt), I specifically am looking keen on Dualist and Marauder, perma fortify means one less socket for my BoR build or the Marauder endurance charge build seems like a great choice for melees too. Also eyed off a bleed build in Duelist too, so exciting stuff ahead for melees I think.

One last thing on nerfs I noticed in this thread. Don't overreact if your build gets nerfed, everyone DOES overreact saying it is ruined, but GGG almost never truly ruins builds believe me (fire prolif was ruined yes I know and agree it was ass). Your build lost power, but in most cases, no it is not ruined. They blasted lifesteal, regen, roasted block, nerfed BoR TWICE, made phys damage own you (which means armor nerf) and nerfed Dual strike, but I still used that build and did super well in HC (compared to usual). Didn't some guy reach a supposed 'damage cap' with detonate dead despite that being ruined? Builds are only ruined in most cases because everyone overreacts and makes the new FOTM build.

Also try hardcore then it isn't as much about who clears the fastest.

P.S. I agree Fortify TOTALLY backfired on GGG and casters being able to use it is real bad, but some skills deserve it more than others because some blur the line between melee and ranged (Dualstrike > Frost Blades) so it's going to be a nightmare balance wise either way. Also dunno wtf those counter attacks are supposed to be or why they were implemented but they hardly proc, do little dps and don't automate crap, so perhaps they could improve these to make melee a bit better? I kind of feel like warcries should be usable while taking actions I dunno, sure they cast fast but that TINY window of time is a big deal in PoE sometimes.

tl;dr ignore top builds, play what you want, spell casting is fastest lvler due to gem scaling but it really doesn't matter, melee is surprisingly a great safe HC leveler, Melee can be viable in HC w/o cyclone, strong as a boss killer and it was my best build, chaos being op + caster dmg conversion made 2.1 lowest build diversity imo and if your build gets nerfed don't overreact, it will probably be still good.

Melee.. has too many melee-only enemies that ranged builds never even notice: volatile blood, element bearers and heralds of the obelisks

While a melee build can be quite safe (like my cycloner scion with restless ward and 7 or 9 end charges lasting 25seconds regenerating 600hp sec with blood rage and having perma Vintakar flask up thanks to poachers+blasphemy) it WILL die to surprise beyond spawn with unfavorable mods or volatile zombie emerging from the ground

Risks that are unfair and have absolutely no equivalent for ranged class

Fortify is a 'flop' as a melee defense as it is available for all but wanders and archers (spellcaster using a wand is doing it wrong..). Warcries while good a d potent are clunky and are also available to everyone. Counterattack gems.. well. I always use them.. on my spellcasters with life gain on hit. It works better than one might think

Some defense boost would be nice.

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Mahesys wrote:

Is really that hard to find ANY rare 90%+ phys dmg weapon with an open prefix or suffix?

Umm... yes? I have found only 2 or 3 from when I started playing, and that was in the end of OB.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

to say these are still issues, despite GGG buffing melee is concerning. People want to utterly destroy playstyle options that people enjoy, just because they feel like the playstyle they want is less viable, when all actuality is it is just as viable, just maybe less efficient at least later in the league or as you progress its still very much playable.

Less efficient is not just as viable. Efficient and viable are synonyms as far as ARPGs are concerned.

So what did you actually mean? Both can beat [insert arbitrary challenge] here, but one farms twice as fast as the other? Well the slow one is not viable.

Thats complete bullshit man and you know it.


Then melee has NEVER been viable in any single ARPG ever because ranged has always been safer and can always be faster with similar rng or investment into gear. Even a game like D3 that basically gives melee the built in fortify, despite the fact that melee characters can technically have ranged abilities has people playing them over things like wizard, ect. (although those are popular as well)


I guess one thing different about D3 is there is no accuracy to worry about whatsoever.

But go back to d2 times and look at that game and talk about "efficiency" did it stop anyone from playing melee that wanted to play melee back then, maybe, were melee characters able to do the content of the game, especially some of the mid\late game content a bit easier, yup. But if you want to say that D2 wasn't able to solve the issue, despite the fact they, just like D3 had the ability to truly distinguish the difference between melee and ranged AND they failed and are failing in d3, then you have to ask yourself how on earth can a game that doesn't define what a player uses skill wise just by the class selection they make be able to achieve what those games can't (even though it should be easier for D2\D3)


The answer is its IMPOSSIBLE to achieve what you are asking for in PoE, because its impossible to achieve it in any ARPG or game where you put efficiency as if thats the only thing that matters. This discussion can go further in depth in terms of HC vs SC, but I don't want to turn this thread into a circle jerk about it, even though this thread and literally every single thread thats terrible on the feedback forums boil down to 1 common denominator.

efficiency

Stupid as hell if you ask me.

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Some defense boost would be nice.

You mean like fortify that melee got in 2.0?

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Risks that are unfair and have absolutely no equivalent for ranged class

There are things, but some of them are just as much scary for melee as they are for ranged. Melee for example should be paying closer attention to the mobs and not have issues with stuff like storm bearers, but ranged don't always see them before they kill them and blink arrow\lightning warp\flame dash into them. Theres things that are scarier to ranged then melee, especially stuff that hits hard physically.

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goetzjam wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

to say these are still issues, despite GGG buffing melee is concerning. People want to utterly destroy playstyle options that people enjoy, just because they feel like the playstyle they want is less viable, when all actuality is it is just as viable, just maybe less efficient at least later in the league or as you progress its still very much playable.

Less efficient is not just as viable. Efficient and viable are synonyms as far as ARPGs are concerned.

So what did you actually mean? Both can beat [insert arbitrary challenge] here, but one farms twice as fast as the other? Well the slow one is not viable.

Thats complete bullshit man and you know it.


Then melee has NEVER been viable in any single ARPG ever because ranged has always been safer and can always be faster with similar rng or investment into gear. Even a game like D3 that basically gives melee the built in fortify, despite the fact that melee characters can technically have ranged abilities has people playing them over things like wizard, ect. (although those are popular as well)

Although I believe the most efficient class in vanilla D3 was Demon Hunter, that's a controversial opinion. The broad consensus for fastest was Barbarian, as evidenced by Alkaizer's famous MF run guide and first Paragon 100.

However, as you note, built-in Fortify and exclusive access to essentially hyper-Cyclone are what made it possible. Alkaizer was using a melee movement skill to make it happen. (The Fortify was mostly irrelevant tbh.)

Melee can be more efficient than ranged, because range isn't everything. AoE and mobility are also important. But if you design a game so ranged has the same or better access to AoE and mobility, melee can't compete.