Difference between melee and range builds.

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goetzjam wrote:

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?

Well heres the thing, Im not claiming melee has any big problems Im that concerned about. Theres no bench mark for what we are talking about because the people making the assertions are not posting examples of their builds and where they are failing to work. If the people who believe there actually is a problem want to show everyone the specifics of their situation, their melee builds, what ranged can do that their melee cant then Ill happily see if I know of a way of reliably doing that content with melee on a budget that is accessible to them.

People do uber atizi with melee, people have taken down core malachai with melee in hc, but if you say that then people just tailor the problem to intentionally not fit the solution because they were never specific about the problem to start with. Well its not as fast as lightning arrow, well its not as cheap as arc, endless diversions because they can go anywhere within "melee sucks" that suits them as long as they dont show us what builds they are playing and what specific encounters are forming that opinion. I can show you a build thats cheap and then you say well it cant do core malachai.

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goetzjam wrote:

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...

exactly. and I agree with most of what u said to sid tbh.



I do think volatile is a bad mechanic, and Ive even made threads about it. Bearers are fine for melee, so are obelisks since they took out sprinklers, you see it and move. Ive seen as many ranged specs die to those things as melee, I dont think Ive ever died to them on a melee.

Volatile I have died to on a melee, once. Imo was a pretty outrageous death and its a bullshit mechanic that shouldnt exist, it should be like bearers where theres a signal and time to move out of the area. But 1000s of hours of melee and Ive died to it once that I can recall. Obviously I think its an issue but compared to the dozens of times Ive died to attacks on chars that failed to have good attack mitigation its pretty insignificant when Im considering build options.

See Atziri has such insane rewards - it's a different ball game and you HAVE to balance around it. Being able to do Atziri with 1hp is exactly why Ondar's Guile was nerfed.

Ondar's was in the game for years and perfectly fine until suddenly it became a problem when Atziri was made.

At the end of the day it comes down to 3 things:
1. Survivability: defense + mobility
2. Damage
3. Cost


1. Does Ranged beat Melee in Survivability?: Yes.

- you are already avoiding SO MUCH damage simply by playing range. The melee guy is forced to take damage to his face
- access to the same mitigation items as melee (LC, Taste of Hate, Fortify, ECs)
- high mobility with Blink Arrow, high movement speed


2. Does Ranged beat Melee in Damage?: Yes.

- high damage skills
- faster clearing: just simple geometry that a ranged build can stand in one place and DPS packs in different directions, while a melee build needs to run from pack A to pack B
- potential for 2 6Ls
- absurd trap damage - if you want to see vid of bow guy using trap to ONE-SHOT an Uber clone it's on youtube. No fking way can you even dream of doing that on ANY melee build
- better DOTs and better synergy with DOTs - for even easier kiting and more survivability


3. Cost:
Agree with sid:

"

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.

Melee is in such bad shape and it is obvious by now that the better movement or range ability of your "melee" skill - the stronger it is:
- Cyclone
- Reave
- Ice Crash
- Lightning Strike

What happened to Double Strike? Dual Strike? Glacial Hammer? Is anyone even using TRUE melee skills these days? FFS even people who want to dual wield are playing fake dual wield so that they can use Reave with stat stick.

"

Ceryneian wrote:

See Atziri has such insane rewards - it's a different ball game and you HAVE to balance around it. Being able to do Atziri with 1hp is exactly why Ondar's Guile was nerfed.

Ondar's was in the game for years and perfectly fine until suddenly it became a problem when Atziri was made.

At the end of the day it comes down to 3 things:
1. Survivability: defense + mobility
2. Damage
3. Cost


1. Does Ranged beat Melee in Survivability?: Yes.

- you are already avoiding SO MUCH damage simply by playing range. The melee guy is forced to take damage to his face
- access to the same mitigation items as melee (LC, Taste of Hate, Fortify, ECs)
- high mobility with Blink Arrow, high movement speed


2. Does Ranged beat Melee in Damage?: Yes.

- high damage skills
- faster clearing: just simple geometry that a ranged build can stand in one place and DPS packs in different directions, while a melee build needs to run from pack A to pack B
- potential for 2 6Ls
- absurd trap damage - if you want to see vid of bow guy using trap to ONE-SHOT an Uber clone it's on youtube. No fking way can you even dream of doing that on ANY melee build
- better DOTs and better synergy with DOTs - for even easier kiting and more survivability


3. Cost:
Agree with sid:

"

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.

Well said mate, wish you to have a nice day for there words! It's just literally what i'm saying, now we need somehow to make GGG read it and DO SOMETHING!

Totems, Ranged, CA (old PA), Mjolner, CoC, any Chaos skills, new Physical spells, etc way cheaper and lot lot more powerful than ANY full mirrored 100% perfect with best corruption gear MELEE.

GGG think that Fortify makes such a great different, but in reality NOT, not even a little bit. Melee worse and worse after EACH patch from GGG, EACH CARL! Nothing to see in near future would be done to melee to make they just viable, or half fun as other builds are.

"

What happened to Double Strike? Dual Strike? Glacial Hammer? Is anyone even using TRUE melee skills these days? FFS even people who want to dual wield are playing fake dual wield so that they can use Reave with stat stick.

I would argue that any of those skills fall flat because they are single target, not because of their range. Cleave also has a higher range than Cyclone, which actually has the lowest (besides reave without stacks).

Also Groundslam has a higher Radius, iE more range than full stacked Reave, it is still worse mainly due to the bad weapon selection.

Melee is all about having a good and fluent gameplay. Why do people play rangers? Of course their skills are pretty cool but there are a whole lot of spells that do that as well and are hardly ever used self cast. But the ranger has insane movespeed, which he basically gets along his normal pathing, paired with stats he already wants. A strength based melee char is slow as shit and if he is actually using a non 1,5+ aps weapon often locks himself up with Multistrike. Rangers don't have to rely on Multistrike for their ranged damage, so they are never looked from moving, while Multistrike with a slow weapon is pain since you have to make 3 attacks. Those issues are far more severe then the actual power level.

If Melee would be more fluent to play (I always mention the ability to use shouts while moving and attacking, which wouldn't benefit ranged, due to the lack of nearby enemies), people would be more interested in playing it in the first place and if people play something they often come up with solutions to obvious issues to their powerlevel afterwards. But right now there is no incentitive to pick up the mace and put it into your enemies face, because as fun as that sounds inside the game it isn't.

"

See Atziri has such insane rewards - it's a different ball game and you HAVE to balance around it. Being able to do Atziri with 1hp is exactly why Ondar's Guile was nerfed.

Atziri's rewards are rather mediocre if you look at them now. Sure its a good way to make money at the start of a new league but honestly most of them fall flat in a great number of builds.

Ondars was NOT nerfed just because you can do atziri with 1 HP, it was nerfed because the keystone was an automatic pickup for anyone literally in the area and it had no downside or "build around" part at all, you would just pick it up and it "works"

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Ondar's was in the game for years and perfectly fine until suddenly it became a problem when Atziri was made.

It really wasn't "fine", thats like saying the old EB was "fine" despite everyone using it that was a caster for almost every single build. These things were both largely reworked in 2.0 BECAUSE THEY HADN'T been FINE in a very long time.

"

1. Does Ranged beat Melee in Survivability?: Yes.

- you are already avoiding SO MUCH damage simply by playing range. The melee guy is forced to take damage to his face
- access to the same mitigation items as melee (LC, Taste of Hate, Fortify, ECs)
- high mobility with Blink Arrow, high movement speed

You can't have both worlds either you have access to blink arrow (which has a cooldown and really is no different then lightning warp IMO) or you have a ranged build that uses whirling blades and fortify. In the case of fortify TECHNICALLY you are going into melee ranged to get that damage mitigation.

"

2. Does Ranged beat Melee in Damage?: Yes.

- high damage skills
- faster clearing: just simple geometry that a ranged build can stand in one place and DPS packs in different directions, while a melee build needs to run from pack A to pack B
- potential for 2 6Ls
- absurd trap damage - if you want to see vid of bow guy using trap to ONE-SHOT an Uber clone it's on youtube. No fking way can you even dream of doing that on ANY melee build
- better DOTs and better synergy with DOTs - for even easier kiting and more survivability

This is such a bullshit arguement that is setup for failure. I can make a melee build that does more damage then a ranged build, but it completely depends on factors that make it so you can't generalize this statement that much.

Potential for 2 6links, technically 3 is there for melee and ranged both.

In terms of traps you do have to semi build around it as a ranged character and the simple fact you mention a fight which should NEVER be used in terms of balance discussions multiple times is just setting up the conversation for failure. Traps are able to achieve in an excluded vacuum what other skills are unable to do, but you aren't clearing a map 1 shotting everything with a puncture trap.

"

3. Cost:
Agree with sid:

"

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.

Hello, have you seen any of the melee uniques in the game, they are all far superior to the ~level 60ish weapons you can get for ranged builds.

"

Melee is in such bad shape and it is obvious by now that the better movement or range ability of your "melee" skill - the stronger it is:
- Cyclone
- Reave
- Ice Crash
- Lightning Strike

Melee is no worst then it has ever been (except last patch cyclone, technically thats much worst)

"

What happened to Double Strike? Dual Strike? Glacial Hammer? Is anyone even using TRUE melee skills these days? FFS even people who want to dual wield are playing fake dual wield so that they can use Reave with stat stick.

You mean the single target skills that no one has used since they nerfed melee splash a long time ago, I know they re-buffed splash but haven't seen anyone build around it really. Glacial hammer fails as a skill because the culling effect only works on non unique mobs.



There are a couple issues here, people say "melee sucks" and then when people mention well these melee skills are fine, then people say well those aren't "true melee" But guess what, you don't get to define what is melee or not, that is what GGG does with the tagging system. So stop trying to spread bullshit and realize that the 'old' way of the game really isn't going to be possible going forward because people care far too much about efficiency.



@emphasy

I think you are onto something about fluent gameplay, I play melee in D3, both Barb (WW) and monk and I actually prefer to play melee in that game rather then ranged because you get built in damage mitigation and melee has something that ranged for the most part don't, which is essentially a "godmode" like ability that allows for you to deal with CC (it doesn't apply) and gives you various other benefits. My monk for example uses an ability that gives me damage avoidance\mitigation but also makes my melee attacks automatically 'blink' onto the next mob to attack.


But again you guys are focused on something no game has ever been able to achieve and PoE would NOT be the one to achieve it unless ascendancy is a foundation for limiting skill gem options to specific classes only, which I doubt would happen.

"

Ceryneian wrote:

See Atziri has such insane rewards - it's a different ball game and you HAVE to balance around it. Being able to do Atziri with 1hp is exactly why Ondar's Guile was nerfed.

Ondar's was in the game for years and perfectly fine until suddenly it became a problem when Atziri was made.

At the end of the day it comes down to 3 things:
1. Survivability: defense + mobility
2. Damage
3. Cost


1. Does Ranged beat Melee in Survivability?: Yes.

- you are already avoiding SO MUCH damage simply by playing range. The melee guy is forced to take damage to his face
- access to the same mitigation items as melee (LC, Taste of Hate, Fortify, ECs)
- high mobility with Blink Arrow, high movement speed


2. Does Ranged beat Melee in Damage?: Yes.

- high damage skills
- faster clearing: just simple geometry that a ranged build can stand in one place and DPS packs in different directions, while a melee build needs to run from pack A to pack B
- potential for 2 6Ls
- absurd trap damage - if you want to see vid of bow guy using trap to ONE-SHOT an Uber clone it's on youtube. No fking way can you even dream of doing that on ANY melee build
- better DOTs and better synergy with DOTs - for even easier kiting and more survivability


3. Cost:
Agree with sid:

"

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.

Melee is in such bad shape and it is obvious by now that the better movement or range ability of your "melee" skill - the stronger it is:
- Cyclone
- Reave
- Ice Crash
- Lightning Strike

What happened to Double Strike? Dual Strike? Glacial Hammer? Is anyone even using TRUE melee skills these days? FFS even people who want to dual wield are playing fake dual wield so that they can use Reave with stat stick.

Dear god this is such a good comparsion :D... Yup, melee is in terrible shape and there is not much GGG can do about it. Thats how the core game was created. If they really would want to change melee they would have to rewrite PoE to completly different game.

@goetzjam

"This is such a bullshit arguement that is setup for failure."

This is complete bullshit disregarding given arguments :). It doesn't matter how much TT dmg you will have, what matters is how fast you can USE this damage to kill stuff. Function of "Damage/clearspeed", and currently ranged builds are destroyin melee just from pure fact melee has to BE there to even deal the damage... (not taking to account Vaal Spark - this shit should have not even leave the kitchen)

"

eragon1111 wrote:

Dear god this is such a good comparsion :D... Yup, melee is in terrible shape and there is not much GGG can do about it. Thats how the core game was created. If they really would want to change melee they would have to rewrite PoE to completly different game.

@goetzjam

"This is such a bullshit arguement that is setup for failure."

This is complete bullshit disregarding given arguments :). It doesn't matter how much TT dmg you will have, what matters is how fast you can USE this damage to kill stuff. Function of "Damage/clearspeed", and currently ranged builds are destroyin melee just from pure fact melee has to BE there to even deal the damage... (not taking to account Vaal Spark - this shit should have not even leave the kitchen)

Again I feel like I'm one of the few people in this thread that realizes this discussion is fundamentally flawed and all this is achieving is just a circle jerk over excuses on why you don't want to play melee, despite it being able to do pretty much all the game content. Is it harder, slower and generally more painful, probably but this argument is going to fail because all it boils down to is efficiency.

Something PoE can learn from other ARPG games, like Grim Dawn or PoE is a more attrition based combat system, that actually encourages players to build "tankier" rather then the defacto kill before they can ever get in my range to do damage.


At least you somewhat acknowledge that there isn't much GGG can do with the current design of the game, but you basically ruined the statement by saying melee is terrible shape. Improvements can be made for sure, but saying melee is in terrible shape is comparing it to the current status of elemental proliferation.

I skimmed your post because it was too long to read and caught the word bullshit.

If you think melee DPS is higher than range DPS - well I really can't help you.

If you think balancing around Atziri and Uber Atziri is stupid - yeah tell that to GGG because many things that were nerfed like Ondar's, snapshot, max res, auras etc. were all because of balancing around builds that TRIVIALIZED Atziri content.

All of this shit was never a problem until Atziri and then strangely GGG is scrambling to fix it.

It's funny that Ondar's had always been an automatic pick since DAY FKING ONE, but suddenly after a Atziri is introduced and videos of guys on 1 health taking ZERO damage during Atziri fight - it gets nerfed.

Must be an awfully big coincidence.

There is nothing wrong with benchmarking to Uber Atziri. You can stack as much Abyssus and mirrored items on a melee build as you want you are not going to one-shot an Uber clone as melee. You'll probably be the one getting one-shot instead.

Apart from that, try playing a melee build in a party someday - you'll spend more time running around than even dishing out DPS because ranged builds are killing everything before you can even reach them.

This is simple geometry that I can diagram out for you: having to go from Pack A to Pack B is wasy SLOWER than simply standing in one spot and DPS'ing both packs and moving on.

BTW PoE is all about efficiency. Limited points on tree, gear slots, links, flasks, damage vs. survivability, even now with ascendancy classes. That's what this game is really about.

Yes at the end of the day you can play whatever build you want and merrily go on your way and no one will give a single fuck - but when there are constant posts on forums EVERY WEEK about melee being dogshit - it's an obvious sign that something is WRONG. Not all of us happily choose to stick our heads in the sand.

"

If you think melee DPS is higher than range DPS - well I really can't help you.

Never said that only that you can't just make a comment like that and everyone can just accept that as a fact because it depends on too many factors. If fights in PoE were more attrition based then the melee class would be better balanced compared to ranged, but that simply isn't the case, although some maps still kinda do behave that way.

"

If you think balancing around Atziri and Uber Atziri is stupid - yeah tell that to GGG because many things that were nerfed like Ondar's, snapshot, max res, auras etc. were all because of balancing around builds that TRIVIALIZED Atziri content.

All of this shit was never a problem until Atziri and then strangely GGG is scrambling to fix it.

I think discussing game balance or build balance when it comes to this fight is extremely ignorant. Atziri isn't the only endgame content in PoE, its simply one of the endgame pieces characters can do, also keep in mind the fight is a specific set of encounters that doesn't deviate at all, which allows full exploitation of various mechanics that builds that do regular maps or regular poe can't utilize.

Ondars like I said was nerfed because it was a 100% free pickup, much like EB for caster classes (non es based) There literally was no reason not to get it due to the way it worked before, now you make a choice, like almost all keystones are designed around doing.

Snapshot was broken for the regular game, again atziri allowed for snap shot to be a bit more extreme, it doesn't change the fact the most powerful build basically of all time didn't have to utilize the mechanic.

Max res is just general balance, again this affects mapping groups, aura bots ect. Auras, you mean the things that got destroyed because of things like the buzzsaw build and the thing that enabled llst to really do an extreme amount of damage.

None of those were exclusively for atziri\uber atziri those were for general game balance, suggesting otherwise is just ignorant.

"

It's funny that Ondar's had always been an automatic pick since DAY FKING ONE, but suddenly after a Atziri is introduced and videos of guys on 1 health taking ZERO damage during Atziri fight - it gets nerfed.


Must be an awfully big coincidence.

You realize that 2.0 was when they nerfed the keystones that everyone picked up? They nerfed EB at the same exact time because they pitched it as too necessary for builds in the area to not take it.

So yeah totally a big coincidence. You realize the keystone still works against atziri right? But its ok BIG COINCIDENCE, right.

"

There is nothing wrong with benchmarking to Uber Atziri. You can stack as much Abyssus and mirrored items on a melee build as you want you are not going to one-shot an Uber clone as melee. You'll probably be the one getting one-shot instead.

Yes there is, its about realistic expectations one can have for you know playing the rest of the game.

"

Apart from that, try playing a melee build in a party someday - you'll spend more time running around than even dishing out DPS because ranged builds are killing everything before you can even reach them.

Thats because PoE isn't an attrition based ARPG game it doesn't scale monsters in a way that would allow the melee class to be more useful then ranged, that doesn't mean melee is unplayable though or "terrible"

"

BTW PoE is all about efficiency. Limited points on tree, gear slots, links, flasks, damage vs. survivability, even now with ascendancy classes. That's what this game is really about.

It hasn't always been about efficiency, its about making functional builds that can perform. When you compare apples to tomatoes both have a purpose, but obviously don't taste the same.

"

Yes at the end of the day you can play whatever build you want and merrily go on your way and no one will give a single fuck - but when there are constant posts on forums EVERY WEEK about melee being dogshit - it's an obvious sign that something is WRONG. Not all of us happily choose to stick our heads in the sand.

There will always be complainers when something isn't performing or playing out in a specific way that people want, but people in general have no idea why they can't compare two things together and expect the same results.

Efficiency is why the leagues are dying faster and faster every reset, efficiency and that mentality will be the death of PoE.


The best thing about this whole thread is absolutely no one has suggested any form of a "fix" for the issue, people mention less damage taken as if that wasn't something that has already been put in place. The reason why is because PoE by design doesn't allow GGG to make melee any "better" then it already really is, if there was a solution then why hasn't it presented itself in this very thread by all you naysayers complaining about melee?

id like to see a melee build that clears faster than Tornado Shot or cocs spectral throw (latest mathils creation is a good reference - i bet his gear is 2 vagan, 2 diamonds, rats, mali and a 6 link chest. not 1ex build but not a costly one for sure)

the only skill and setup that has the slightest chance in this contest is uber dagger crit reave and even it has a problem due to cost and leaving stragglers behind

melee builds that are not crit reave are mere watchers in parties and get carried through bosses as their dps is meaningless

and even then stuff like volatile plop kills you out of the blue. fun.

no sane competitive player would ever play melee in this game if he cared about wining (classic ladder or prize contests).


and the job of making melee not an 'auto loose on a character selection screen' is the GGG's job. it can be done. removing some melee-only BS from the game is one step, adding some ranged-only BS to the game is another. cutting the bow damage in half is another good step. harsh? i bet people wouldnt notice. bow damage output is obscene right now