Difference between melee and range builds.

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Mythabril wrote:

But the most glaring issue remains the slapping of air, which leaves you stuck in an attack animation while dealing zero damage. With the way target locking works (or doesn't) it's the most frustrating thing playing as melee in my opinion.

Soooooo much this. I've given up melee exactly because of this. Yes, multistrike helps, but I didn't want to use it on all my skills...

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grepman wrote:

the true problem of melee in poe is because every class can do anything and there are no designated melee classes like in other arpgs. you cant give something to a duelist or a marauder without making it available for everyone else as well.
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Exactly, and therefore I suggested negative crit multiplier on gems that offer the highest aoe addition to ranged like 2 years or whatever ago.

GGG never got in their brain that giving one playstyle everything can't be balanced out. To repeat it again:
1. max range = best defense and fastest way to approach enemies.
2. max aoe = most enemies hit at the same time.
3. max damage = most damage on top of it
4. max speed = highest run and movement speed.

The game can only be balanced by taking away from that.



PoE could get on a real good level if the slightest bit of teamplay was involved and not only a rush and run for the highest kill and clearspeed.

That could be:

Melee is mainly tanking stuff but doesn't deal enough damage and aoe damage.
Ranged AOE is softening stuff with high aoe but doesn't deal enough damage to kill hard opponents quick enough and gets easily killed when they come close.
Ranged Single Target can take out strong opponents but doesn't deal enough aoe to kill fast enough.

Then some mixed classes:
Melee 2 hand: 2x 6L allows aoe + single target to be mixed at the cost of defense compared to one hand + shield.


This is only for endgame. It is completely fine that every char can level up to 85/90 alone and do everything on its own and in general can play lower content alone.

Just think a moment about if the game was like that. It would be alot of fun to arrange, coordinate and play such groups.


Of course we still got the problem that Bows get 2 6L while most others don't and therefore can get one high aoe and one high single target skill. Also the quiver advantage on top of all that. I would say tweaking gems (negative crit multiplier) offer enough potential to deal with many of these things.


Another thing to do is to allow every class to get at least two 6L items by either letting them use chest twice or introducing 6L pants. That would benefit the overall experience of playing the game as everyone could spam two skill instead of one then.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

It inherently bothers me that it's considered 'okay' or even encouraged that we 'level' with one skill or style but then switch to another after passing a certain threshold. I just can't bring myself to do it. A level 20 Fighter in D and D doesn't suddenly switch to a level 21 Wizard with his next level up (at least, in my experience).

This is on GGG for not somehow balancing all of what I'd consider to the basic play styles as rewarding experiences from beginning to end. Plenty of other games manage it so why can't PoE? Hypothetical: because PoE *allows* that sort of broad respec mid-game. One Skilldrasil, many paths...but all that means is people will be all the more eager to find the most efficient paths.

i think this is just the way it is now and anyone wanting to play thematically, to start as one thing and then master it, is going to run the risk of reaching a much earlier plateau than a player who is build fluid with any given character.

As for Bladefall vs 'true' melee, or indeed any magic vs true melee, this was always going to be a problem because true melee relies on a lot of skill node investment *and* good weapons. Spells typically scale much better and they are weapon-independent. Perhaps GGG should pull back on the great inherent scaling of spells and increase the implicit spell damage on wands and staves (not daggers, since the crit chance *is* implicit spell damage). This way even casters who are serious about casting would need to gear up the same way a melee player does. I don't really know. All I do know is you're dead right. At this moment, we have skills that function beautifully out of the box and are much 'easier' to level with than melee skills that demand more intensive building and play.

And I think that's problematic.

Im gonna have to agree with Charan on this one... I just cant get with the Flame Totem+Fire Trap lvling meta thing honestly. I mean theres some skills such a RF that you simply have no choice but to run as something else up until the point you can run RF and sustain or COC where you need the gem a certain lvl and certain amount of crit for it to start to work well but, other wise i feel if the skill isnt good enough for me to lvl through the content with them why in the hell would i try to force it to be worth a damn in endgame? Makes no sense to me. If i plan to use a certain skill at endgame the i want to know what its capable of throughout the lvling process and know how its going to scale for me as well.

And as far as Melee goes to be honest Melee isnt no where near as bad as people are making out. Infact some of the most tanky builds ive ever had were melee builds. I feel the ONLY reason people make out like Melee sucks is because everyone bases the worth of a build on Clearspeed NOT Viablility and tankiness. Thus why you see some of the same people claiming melee sucks also begging for the Exp Pen to be removed/altered.

I personally would much rather have a build that can stay alove better at the cost of taking a few minutes more to clear the map. But the majority of the playerbase is all about Clearspeed. And as long as clearspeed is the judge of a builds worth we will always have the Melee Ranged discrepancy.

Its just like Evasion and Armour... Evasion is always going to work better on a Ranged build than it will on a Melee build for obvious reasons. And ranged is always going to be able to be destroyed if you get surrounded where as Melee has the ability to take hits but can not clear out mobs across the whole screen as fast.

So after reading this thread and some more post in it again.


Does melee need more damage

or

Does melee need more survivability



Because the consensus on here isn't at all the same, part of the reason why I think is because some people view melee as some sort of sword and board tanky character that should be immortal and some view melee as a risk\reward style character that should "hit the hardest" but takes a while to get going.

Thoughts?

(Melee RT) needs more on survivability especially for 2hand and dual wield character. Melee RT should clasify as tank. 5-8k hp people still get one shotted at times.

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HudaZki wrote:

(Melee RT) needs more on survivability especially for 2hand and dual wield character. Melee RT should clasify as tank.

Not that I disagree with you, but what makes you think RT specifically needs buffed when its probably one of the more popular melee keystones?

As for "tank" care to explain why melee in this game should be more focused on the tanky aspect?


Keep in mind the thread has also established that efficiency is a key factor in this game, having a character that is tanky or more tanky isn't going to help you "clear faster" at least not directly.

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5-8k hp people still get one shotted at times.

5k HP isn't a lot, 7-8k kinda is, only few builds get higher then that. 1 shot in PoE is "part" of the game design if PoE was more attrition based I do believe melee would have a better shot at being equally viable as other playstyles, but it isn't and that means the same 1 shot mechanics are a higher risk for those that get closer or can't as easily dodge.

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goetzjam wrote:

So after reading this thread and some more post in it again.


Does melee need more damage

or

Does melee need more survivability



Because the consensus on here isn't at all the same, part of the reason why I think is because some people view melee as some sort of sword and board tanky character that should be immortal and some view melee as a risk\reward style character that should "hit the hardest" but takes a while to get going.

Thoughts?

Neither. Ranged needs less AoE.

I mean, let's consider Sweep as a skill for a second. Very basic skill, just does damage in an AoE centered on the character. It's got a bit of a large AoE, but still has enough limited range where you feel it. It does enough damage where one-hitting everything around you is a reasonable expectation, for white and blue mobs anyway.

Sweep is garbage tier in the current meta.

Giving melee more damage isn't going to help Sweep, it already hits hard enough. Giving melee more survivability isn't really going to help Sweep, either, because the real issue is that Sweep just doesn't kill fast enough compared to ranged options.

The only way to make short-ranged skills viable in this game is to nerf long-ranged skills. There's no short-ranged buff in the world which could do the trick, except for making all the short-ranged skills long-range, which would just be dodging the issue.

After ranged is appropriately nerfed, it would then be possible to rebalance content according to a variety meta, rather than balance it against an exclusively long-range, absurd AoE screenwiping meta.

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grepman wrote:

the true problem of melee in poe is because every class can do anything and there are no designated melee classes like in other arpgs. you cant give something to a duelist or a marauder without making it available for everyone else as well.
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But GGG could nerf DPS for ranged skills drastically so their "off-screen coverage" is balanced by low DPS (= slow clearing speed).
Sure, when ranged class does oneshots emenies in huge AoE (offscreen), you cant buff melee to be on par with that. But if he doesnt...

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The only way to make short-ranged ,small AoE skills viable in this game is to nerf long-ranged HUGE AoE skills.

Fixed a bit. It doent change your idea, though, and i completely agree with it.

there is also one layer to all this:

Vaal Pact (and other forms of instant leech). you know what is common for most ranged builds? Vaal Pact + pretty much no defenses + 'large enough' buffer + high damage

regardless of what POE' survivability model SHOULD look like it currently looks pretty much like this: get enough life to not get one shot, get some defenses as it does not really hurt, select Vaal Pact, go all banana with damage

why? well.. because it works. it shouldnt but it works and it dwarfs all these 'evasion vs armor' dilemmas and other fancy fluff mechanics.

this 'mechanic' works way better with ranged playstyles (esp bows) due to.. well.. range and absurd coverage their AOE attacks have

game could have been so much better without instant leech. moving this node just in the middle of the 'rangerest' classes out there AND removing reflect from the game (with vaal pact is not even an issue anyway) just made ranged what they are now - offscreening dgaf pretty much unkillable types that make melee guys look like idiots wasting their time

id love to have VP as a melee player from the left side of the tree but it is like 30 passives to get there. Berserk has leech augment but in that case it is a noob trap of epic proportions, just like his +100% inc damage