Difference between melee and range builds.

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goetzjam wrote:

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Actually, what matters here is clear speed, and just clear speed.

Because all people care is to copy their favorite streamers and complete their build in a week or two. There is a very good reason why this game since 2.0 has actually taken a turn for the worst because people simply cant slow the fuck down and enjoy the ride, instead they complain when they cant go at the same pace as others.

You're confusing player choices with developer choices. From a min/max perspective, it's always been about killing as much as possible as fast as possible, and always will be; this is what matters from a balance perspective. (Balance is adjusting player choices to create an illusion of equality among choices; tuning is adjusting enemies and environments to effect difficulty and pacing.)

From a player enjoyment perspective, actually fighting enemies is not a matter of extremes, there is a pace of play which is enjoyable and on both sides of "just right" there's "too hot" and "too cold." It's the dev's job to try to achieve the correct pacing, knowing that the most min-max types will probably want a faster pace overall than the less hardcore types (so as content gets more difficult, pace should increase as well). This is what matters from a tuning perspective.

The development trend has been to give players more and more tools to go faster and faster. My feeling is they've gone straight from "too cold" to "too hot" with things like Multistrike, Spell Echo, giving everyone a crazy powerful movement skill, instant healing, and enemy spike damage. But that isn't a balance consideration.

Streamers have nothing to do with it, other than they tend to have decent builds.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

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Actually, what matters here is clear speed, and just clear speed.

Because all people care is to copy their favorite streamers and complete their build in a week or two. There is a very good reason why this game since 2.0 has actually taken a turn for the worst because people simply cant slow the fuck down and enjoy the ride, instead they complain when they cant go at the same pace as others.

You're confusing player choices with developer choices. From a min/max perspective, it's always been about killing as much as possible as fast as possible, and always will be; this is what matters from a balance perspective. (Balance is adjusting player choices to create an illusion of equality among choices; tuning is adjusting enemies and environments to effect difficulty and pacing.)

From a player enjoyment perspective, actually fighting enemies is not a matter of extremes, there is a pace of play which is enjoyable and on both sides of "just right" there's "too hot" and "too cold." It's the dev's job to try to achieve the correct pacing, knowing that the most min-max types will probably want a faster pace overall than the less hardcore types (so as content gets more difficult, pace should increase as well). This is what matters from a tuning perspective.

The development trend has been to give players more and more tools to go faster and faster. My feeling is they've gone straight from "too cold" to "too hot" with things like Multistrike, Spell Echo, giving everyone a crazy powerful movement skill, instant healing, and enemy spike damage. But that isn't a balance consideration.

Streamers have nothing to do with it, other than they tend to have decent builds.

Are you really that out of touch with the current "meta" where you say streamers have nothing to do with the perception of balance in the game?

Lets not forget the "weekly" circle-jerk which is the "unoffical podcast" which is streamed by PoE streamers, including one of which that has a rather "large" following.

Streamers have more to do with the perception of balance and the mentality of people that play this game then literally anything else.

Ultimately, balance is up to GGG. Some of what ZiggyD and Co say isn't bad, but GGG would be foolish to just accept what streamers say with analyzing it critically first.

As far as what the population at large believes: it is only relevant to the extent that public "solutions" to the game which trivialize its content must be addressed. Having an OP build does not demand a nerf; having an OP build which the community knows about, does. Having an underpowered skill doesn't demand a buff; having a skill which the community knows cannot be viable, does.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Ultimately, balance is up to GGG. Some of what ZiggyD and Co say isn't bad, but GGG would be foolish to just accept what streamers say with analyzing it critically first.

As far as what the population at large believes: it is only relevant to the extent that public "solutions" to the game which trivialize its content must be addressed. Having an OP build does not demand a nerf; having an OP build which the community knows about, does. Having an underpowered skill doesn't demand a buff; having a skill which the community knows cannot be viable, does.

You say balance is up to GGG, but the perception of balance is almost exclusively given to streamers because that is what they see, this doesn't help that GGG hasn't released a build of the week episode since what looks like the end of October.

As for OP builds, once its shared with 1 person its a cascading effect which cannot be stopped, that is why it gets nerfed. We don't know of builds that would be OP but aren't nerfed because obviously if we knew about them so would GGG.


Just like GGG would be foolish to accept many of the comments in this thread about the solutions to make melee vs ranged any different. Because even in this exact thread people won't agree what is melee and what isn't. Some people view melee as only skills that utilize the splash element, others anything that requires a specific playstyle\range to the mobs (spells like freezing pulse would be included in this category) while others include anything that GGG defines with the melee skill tag, which can include reave, ice crash, ect.

Like I said before PoE's flexibility is also its largest downside in terms of balance because of the "flexibility" people can attempt to utilize things that weren't designed for that playstyle. The most extreme offenders have gotten nerfed, even retroactively (COE and crit multi on Abyssus)


One idea that popped into my head that would make sense but also be very concerning in terms of game design is what if ascendancy is just laying the foundation for GGG to change the way the game works making it have less flexibility in order to establish a means of giving the game a better chance it becoming balanced?

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goetzjam wrote:

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Actually, what matters here is clear speed, and just clear speed.

Because all people care is to copy their favorite streamers and complete their build in a week or two. There is a very good reason why this game since 2.0 has actually taken a turn for the worst because people simply cant slow the fuck down and enjoy the ride, instead they complain when they cant go at the same pace as others.

honestly i think the majority of people who make issues of clearspeed and ability to do rip rolled red tier maps etc dont have any builds that clear super fast or can handle those maps. Im not talking about scrot here, I think hes simply pointing out what does appear to be peoples big issues rather than saying "this is my issue with melee". Same with budget, I think most people who complain about the cost of melee could make melee builds as effective as their current ranged builds on their budget because their ranged builds arnt really optimal either.


I think melees biggest problem right now is that the trends in the way they are built, basically.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

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Actually, what matters here is clear speed, and just clear speed.

Because all people care is to copy their favorite streamers and complete their build in a week or two. There is a very good reason why this game since 2.0 has actually taken a turn for the worst because people simply cant slow the fuck down and enjoy the ride, instead they complain when they cant go at the same pace as others.

honestly i think the majority of people who make issues of clearspeed and ability to do rip rolled red tier maps etc dont have any builds that clear super fast or can handle those maps. Im not talking about scrot here, I think hes simply pointing out what does appear to be peoples big issues rather than saying "this is my issue with melee". Same with budget, I think most people who complain about the cost of melee could make melee builds as effective as their current ranged builds on their budget because their ranged builds arnt really optimal either.


I think melees biggest problem right now is that the trends in the way they are built, basically.

I think you are onto something here but its missing something, like for example you claim its the way people build the characters do you have examples in which you've made melee characters capable of doing the more difficult maps or mods?

In terms of the red maps specifically, idk if I had to guess only a fraction of the players in this very thread have even stepped a foot into a non-zana version of those maps and if that is the case either they are parroting information based on what they have read here or as I said what streamers say, regardless of it being true or not. I can recall a character in full mirrored gear (staff) getting absolutely destroyed when they added the village ruin map bosses, due to the enrage factor.


I do find it pretty hilarious though that some of the same people in this thread likely complained to get cyclone nerfed, when it was one of the best melee skills of all time.

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goetzjam wrote:

Like I said before PoE's flexibility is also its largest downside in terms of balance because of the "flexibility" people can attempt to utilize things that weren't designed for that playstyle. The most extreme offenders have gotten nerfed, even retroactively (COE and crit multi on Abyssus)

yep. And not just in terms of powerful stuff that then needs nerfed, but also in terms of bad habits being persistent. People used to have good block + cwdt ec ic, so they had good attack avoidance and good physical damage protection. Now they dont, so have they switched to using armour to replace the cwdt and evasion to replace the block? Nope, theyre just making characters the same way but without the block and cwdt that were keeping them alive.

So GGG has to balance around most people doing melee in really sub optimal ways atm while still understanding that theres a portion of players who are using the defenses on offer well and need to be put in danger by really brutal mobs in higher maps.

I dont want to be immortal in a pointless game because GGG had to nerf content to the point where people making suspect builds could clear everything without much risk.


I think if people really care about the subject they should post examples of what they are trying to do, where its going wrong and have real conversations about specific issues without the egos getting in the way. All this yapping and throwing around these sweeping generalizations doesnt really amount to anything of value to someone who honestly cares about their builds and being able to achieve what they want to achieve. Its just all 1upping and ego stroking, hot air. Dont be afraid to talk specifics and show examples, no one whos opinion matters is going to laugh at you or call you a noob etc. Its just a computer game, doesnt matter if you are trying to get past cruel kaom self found or you have 100 exalts of gear and are struggling to survive 78/79 maps, your position in PoE has no relevance your value as a human being. If a few people make fun then just politely call them out on it and lets raise the maturity level around here to the point where we can all be open, honest players sharing out experiences without shame and be receptive and respectful to suggestions and ideas. If youve got an issue, post about it, lets find a way to solve your issues or recognize them as a flaw in the game that can be changed and make a specific case for it to the devs.

thats what the op did, he didnt just thrash out generalizations and random bits of borrowed info, he spoke about a specific area of the game that he had personally had experience of, gave examples. I dont recall anyone disagreeing with him, no one came in and said hey man, if you do W and X instead of Y and Z then you can reliably get the same damage midgame as those particular caster options. If such a thing exists it seems we do not have it in our collective knowledge and that leaves the general consensus being that yeah, spell damage is a bit overtuned compared to melee mid game. We didnt even need to drill down to the details of what melee skill he used and what the passive trees etc were because he was specific enough that there was virtually no contradictions raised from what I remember. The major disagreements came when the convo strayed from those specific points to massive generalizations and second hand information.

couple non-ego facts:

- melee specific dangers: obelisks, volatile, bearers. these are FAR more dangerous to melee than ranged. there are no opposite ranged-only dangers (far-shot on few mobs is irrelevant as 'ranged' means these are not in the range anyway)

- anti-melee bosses: herald of lightning, death and taxes etc. the difference between ranged and melee in case of these bosses is astounding. the lesser the budget the bigger the gap is. mechanical fights like atziri can be done with 1hp with ranged. try that with melee and compare

- melee eats not only phys damage (armor/end charges) but elemental damage. and while melee has better access to phys avoidance there are no melee specific elemental defenses. (this is a punch into that 'just get 7 endurance charges and soul of steel and 12k armor noob - cool but this does nothing vs elemental such as volatile explosion). same applies to spells - except for spell dodge and block there is little. sadly these mechanics are currently available to very small portion of builds

- getting hit no matter what. only cyclone had built-in mechanical avoidance (this explains why so many players cannot see a difference - cyclone just makes most hits miss, try this out with vaal molten shell doing map clear, ive had 20sec VMS not proc once while shredding mobs with my Disfavor)

- efficiency ON A BUDGET. ranged have easy access to pre-made unique weapons that can carry them into endgame easily and due to their inherent safety DO NOT have to invest as heavily into other items. they can get along with lesser items than melee can.

- 'fixes to melee' in form of counter strike gems and fortify did little to CLOSE THE GAP. counterattack gems are neat yet unspectacular, fortify is universal (excluding bows and wands ofc) and pretty much only complete noobs play spellcasters with wand.


sure, one can build a melee character (the better the weapon, the easier it gets as one can invest passives into defense) and it is perfectly capable of clearing almost all poe' content (uber is still a ranged/cheeze territory). but for the same budget one will make a faster-clearing char with pre-built-in damage avoidance by the very feat of killing stuff before its AI even activates

The issue is melee has NEVER been the way to level in PoE, so I actually agree with him on that part and I have mentioned at least once in this thread they should have never nerfed the phys belt recipe for creating weapons.

I thought I pointed out that you have to upgrade your weapon quite constantly when leveling as melee because its crucial to the damage you do. People view it as "unfair" that spells just need 1-2 specific leveling weapons to ease the process of leveling (although bladefall + controlled destruction is too powerful when leveling)

So as far as cost goes you can spend 3-5c on getting a key leveling weapon for spells or spend 2c per leveling weapon for melee, in the end you might actually clear faster and have more HP nodes as the melee build, but acquiring the leveling gear, especially at the start of the league is "painful".

Even without the leveling gear though, melee is still very playable, but if you go back a page or two the discussion boiled down to 1 thing, efficiency. It doesn't really matter which one is or isn't it matters on the perception of which is or isn't. It doesn't help that GGG utterly destroyed the skill gem a lot of people enjoyed playing as melee and then release a bullshit statistic that cyclone is still a top used skill, when we know its not used for attack based build, but rather CoC.



As for suboptimal it REALLY doesn't help that almost none of the streamers play melee builds in PoE. Because they don't play them, especially every patch they just repeat what others say and others repeat what they say when it comes to "melee sucks".


Still I find it funny I pretty much exclusively play melee in D3, but I don't really want to play melee in PoE, yes I have a binos reaver character and I've made a cycloner, but even those are builds that either got destroyed or people want destroyed and even go as far as saying "reave isn't melee"

You can't have a discussion with people that form their options based on what others tell them, you have to have a discussion based off of experience, because IMO its not "feedback" if you haven't experienced the topic at hand...

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- melee specific dangers: obelisks, volatile, bearers. these are FAR more dangerous to melee than ranged. there are no opposite ranged-only dangers (far-shot on few mobs is irrelevant as 'ranged' means these are not in the range anyway)

Devos, drop bears, suppessor mob things, evangelist monsters (especially against evasion\acro), I'd argue that bearers can be just as dangerous to ranged.

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- anti-melee bosses: herald of lightning, death and taxes etc. the difference between ranged and melee in case of these bosses is astounding. the lesser the budget the bigger the gap is. mechanical fights like atziri can be done with 1hp with ranged. try that with melee and compare

Enough with using atziri in terms of balance, I thought people were over that bullshit argument that should have NEVER been made in the first place.

What about Whakawairua Tuahu, try doing that map boss as a ranged character, better yet do it with a witch.

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- melee eats not only phys damage (armor/end charges) but elemental damage. and while melee has better access to phys avoidance there are no melee specific elemental defenses. (this is a punch into that 'just get 7 endurance charges and soul of steel and 12k armor noob - cool but this does nothing vs elemental such as volatile explosion). same applies to spells - except for spell dodge and block there is little. sadly these mechanics are currently available to very small portion of builds

Yet fortify works against HITS, which includes elemental hits. Voliatle must be carefully looked at, even with a high amount of mitigation it can 1 shot you, I know I died with 7500 life, AA, 20k armor.

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- getting hit no matter what. only cyclone had built-in mechanical avoidance (this explains why so many players cannot see a difference - cyclone just makes most hits miss, try this out with vaal molten shell doing map clear, ive had 20sec VMS not proc once while shredding mobs with my Disfavor)

Going to call bullshit on getting hit no matter what, there are perm stun builds and builds that can freeze the screen with attacks with something like ice crash. Melee characters obviously do get hit more often, its as if they added a way to better mitigate that and as if those parts of the tree don't have higher life to help mitigate it too....

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- efficiency ON A BUDGET. ranged have easy access to pre-made unique weapons that can carry them into endgame easily and due to their inherent safety DO NOT have to invest as heavily into other items. they can get along with lesser items than melee can.

Lol, 2 handed melee has just as much access to leveling weapons then ranged do, probably better ones when you think about it.

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- 'fixes to melee' in form of counter strike gems and fortify did little to CLOSE THE GAP. counterattack gems are neat yet unspectacular, fortify is universal (excluding bows and wands ofc) and pretty much only complete noobs play spellcasters with wand.

Because people are learning that Poe's flexibility can be used in there favor. Bow builds are a great deal of ranged builds and just because the hype is to move onto daggers for spell casters, it hasn't always been that way and it wasn't that way even last patch. It wasn't until this posion meta shit where we have a great number of casters using daggers.

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sure, one can build a melee character (the better the weapon, the easier it gets as one can invest passives into defense) and it is perfectly capable of clearing almost all poe' content (uber is still a ranged/cheeze territory). but for the same budget one will make a faster-clearing char with pre-built-in damage avoidance by the very feat of killing stuff before its AI even activates

Welcome to melee in any ARPG ever made, grats on achieving what players for the past 15 years have done.


This goes for anyone in the thread, complain all you want about this and that, the simple fact of the matter is you don't have a solution for a problem, because its all in your "head" if you enjoy melee and want to play it then do it, the resources are in the game to do so. You can't compare 2 playstyles and expect it to be an even balance for all positives and negatives, it literally is impossible and has been in every ARPG title to date.