Difference between melee and range builds.

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goetzjam wrote:

The measures and other things they have done to try to make melee a bit more balanced doesn't matter if people aren't willing to try them out and just repeat what others say despite the lack of actual experience.

Some try, and find melee still sucks. 20% damage reducton from fortify is nice, but you have to waste 1 gem slot for it (or spam another skill every 4 sec dealing no damage). And Fortify isnt enough to save you from oneshots at melee range. While ranged feels completely safe even without it.


To make melee truly viable, you should reduce ranged damage for popular builds (Voltaxic, Bladefall, etc) by a factor of 2, 3 or even 5!
After all, last patch buffed Voltaxic's DPS by factor of 2-3, so why dont revert it with nerf? IT was OK even before that.

Players WILL play melee if GGG makes it more balanced.

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sidtherat wrote:

melee can easily USE vintakar but can melee build easily kill Avatar of Thunder? have you seen that fight? it is one of the worst 'ranged master race' cases in this game. wasteland is probably the worst

and as for the uber - it might be done by minority but how telling is that that that minority is not melee at all? and that ranged builds can do it wearing tabula? it might be not the best 'metric' but it is just fine of a metric and gauge


take any gorge run with tornado shot or lightning arrow (my infractem build does gorge in <4min and that is a 220pdps bow worth 1c!) and try to beat that with ground slam, molten strike or any other melee skill (reave, cyclone and flicker are out. first two are hands down 100% better than the rest and flicker is pretty bad in non-open maps)

Dear god, why do you obsess over ubers and avatars. Have you actually ever done either or will actually ever do either more than once or thrice in your lifetime?

This is NOT something to base a build around unless you intend to corner the market and no life 24/7 on a fresh league. It is absolutely irrelevant if a build can do ubers or not, what is relevant is clear time and EXP/hour factored by cost. This is honestly worst than dps whoring your single target skill.

Reave and cyclone are not melee. Okay. I didn't realize every melee skill had to be on par with LA. I suppose you think burning arrow and PA should clear as fast as LA or TS right? I'm out of ideas if you think ground slam needs to be on par with cyclone and reave much less LA.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

The measures and other things they have done to try to make melee a bit more balanced doesn't matter if people aren't willing to try them out and just repeat what others say despite the lack of actual experience.

Some try, and find melee still sucks. 20% damage reducton from fortify is nice, but you have to waste 1 gem slot for it (or spam another skill every 4 sec dealing no damage). And Fortify isnt enough to save you from oneshots at melee range. While ranged feels completely safe even without it.


To make melee truly viable, you should reduce ranged damage for popular builds (Voltaxic, Bladefall, etc) by a factor of 2, 3 or even 5!
After all, last patch buffed Voltaxic's DPS by factor of 2-3, so why dont revert it with nerf? IT was OK even before that.

Players WILL play melee if GGG makes it more balanced.

How did Voltaxic dps double it's dps since last patch again? Are you talking about single target poison?

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

The measures and other things they have done to try to make melee a bit more balanced doesn't matter if people aren't willing to try them out and just repeat what others say despite the lack of actual experience.

Some try, and find melee still sucks. 20% damage reducton from fortify is nice, but you have to waste 1 gem slot for it (or spam another skill every 4 sec dealing no damage). And Fortify isnt enough to save you from oneshots at melee range. While ranged feels completely safe even without it.


To make melee truly viable, you should reduce ranged damage for popular builds (Voltaxic, Bladefall, etc) by a factor of 2, 3 or even 5!
After all, last patch buffed Voltaxic's DPS by factor of 2-3, so why dont revert it with nerf? IT was OK even before that.

Players WILL play melee if GGG makes it more balanced.

Reducing ranged damage by a magnitude of 2 or more times simply isn't an option, people play this game to have fun plenty of ranged build already barely make due with what they have, lets not also forget the ability to craft a GG bow is pretty much impossible due to the removal of the eternal orb.

Part of the ranged playstyle is killing mobs before they have a chance to really do anything to you, if the game was more attrition based (aka either monster life doubled or ranged damage halved) the game would have to be COMPLETELY reblaanced because the tools simply don't exists for many builds to take damage over time (not real dots, but actual damage)

With the exception of a few meta builds ranged builds aren't "broken" and melee builds can easily compete if they so choose, the better question is why did GGG nerf a skill like cyclone so hard when people were playing melee. If anything the 50% initial hit needs to be reverted and if they want less people to use it make it less desirable for COC.

Plus, even if you nerfed bow damage 60%, the result would be that it would be a more expensive build. Only the most ridiculous mirror-worthy bows would deal sufficient damage, but once that was achieved they'd still have superior clear speed to similarly geared melee. Perhaps not Utziri viable, but still great for MF in mid-tier maps.

The problem isn't ranged damage, it's ranged AoE.

Also lulz at Eternals.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Plus, even if you nerfed bow damage 60%, the result would be that it would be a more expensive build. Only the most ridiculous mirror-worthy bows would deal sufficient damage, but once that was achieved they'd still have superior clear speed to similarly geared melee. Perhaps not Utziri viable, but still great for MF in mid-tier maps.

The problem isn't ranged damage, it's ranged AoE.

Also lulz at Eternals.

There is an optimal threshold where dps beyond that point is meaningless but before that, its very much a spectrum of values between painfully slow aoe clear and hyper fast clear as opposed to trash tier clear and god tier clear reliant on a mirror bow.

Regardless, that's a poor solution. It does not matter how hard you nerf damage. The intrinsic aoe range properties can not be overcome with numbers alone, in fact, by definition, it can not be overcome at all.

Even if you make ground slam do DOUBLE its damage and reave HALF its damage, the latter will still clear faster albiet be incapable of ST w/o poison abuse.

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Nephalim wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

melee can easily USE vintakar but can melee build easily kill Avatar of Thunder? have you seen that fight? it is one of the worst 'ranged master race' cases in this game. wasteland is probably the worst

and as for the uber - it might be done by minority but how telling is that that that minority is not melee at all? and that ranged builds can do it wearing tabula? it might be not the best 'metric' but it is just fine of a metric and gauge


take any gorge run with tornado shot or lightning arrow (my infractem build does gorge in <4min and that is a 220pdps bow worth 1c!) and try to beat that with ground slam, molten strike or any other melee skill (reave, cyclone and flicker are out. first two are hands down 100% better than the rest and flicker is pretty bad in non-open maps)

Dear god, why do you obsess over ubers and avatars. Have you actually ever done either or will actually ever do either more than once or thrice in your lifetime?

This is NOT something to base a build around unless you intend to corner the market and no life 24/7 on a fresh league. It is absolutely irrelevant if a build can do ubers or not, what is relevant is clear time and EXP/hour factored by cost. This is honestly worst than dps whoring your single target skill.

Reave and cyclone are not melee. Okay. I didn't realize every melee skill had to be on par with LA. I suppose you think burning arrow and PA should clear as fast as LA or TS right? I'm out of ideas if you think ground slam needs to be on par with cyclone and reave much less LA.

so in short you confirm that ranged is just better than melee - and it is ok and expected and it is the way of life we are not going to do anything about, right?

you confirm that melee == crit reave (because why other skills should be en par with it? right?)

you confirm that some content is - by design! - undoable by major % of builds and you are ok with that?


so why not reverse the situation. cut the ranged damage in half and double melee's damage. people play to have fun so let melee guys have some of it, mkay? and that might make it so people with 300pdps harbs are not faceroling content while 300pdps one hander is at most 'adequate' for the job (excluding daggers)

any game that has a 'you've lost on the character selection screen' scenario is a very bad design. gating exp/h and/or content for builds that happen to use bows is a very bad design and should be reverted. i wonder why people pretend it is impossible.

cut the damage in half and let ranged players slog doing pretty much nothing in parties. melee does this all the time and 'it is fine' isnt it? when they cannot one-shot everything there will be at least some risks involved - melee faces this all the time so why cannot ranged for once? because ranged is entitled to have a monopoly on fun?

current situation is very simple - check the ladder. how many melee players are there? and how many of these are dagger crit?

and why ground slam is to 'suck by design'?

'intristic AOE dealing half damage' is already a fix to bows as people would have to rearrange their links/setups to reach satisfactory damage. like use LMP instead of GMP, use a single target etc. numbers can fix current situation perfectly fine. 'you are safe and can hit anything but you hit like a wet noodle' is the ranged meta in many games and it works. it solves the risk/reward ratio that in current poe is completely broken as there is no risk playing ranged and no reward playing melee

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Nephalim wrote:

How did Voltaxic dps double it's dps since last patch again? Are you talking about single target poison?

Even if you use Poison for AoE, it will double your DPS. You also have 1 free gem slot (that was accupied by BM gem). And a cherry on top of the cake - you can use Vinktar+Rech for massive DPS boost too.

For single target, DPS grew 3 times at least.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Plus, even if you nerfed bow damage 60%, the result would be that it would be a more expensive build. Only the most ridiculous mirror-worthy bows would deal sufficient damage, but once that was achieved they'd still have superior clear speed to similarly geared melee. Perhaps not Utziri viable, but still great for MF in mid-tier maps.

The problem isn't ranged damage, it's ranged AoE.

Also lulz at Eternals.

It's fine when a super-powerful build requires super-massive investmnents. Especialy from a league-player perspective, where 6xT1 mirrored weapons are unavailable.

Oh, and what about Voltaxic? Windripper? Spells? They dont have uber-powerful mirrored version available.

If you just nerf ranged's AoE, you turn ranged class into a "sniper" who still excells at killing bosses, but will be bad against packs. I dont know, if that's a proper solution - i think there should be a certain balance between AoE and single-target DPS.

Nerfing ranged's damage (especially bow) is easy and sure way to fix things.

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sidtherat wrote:

and why ground slam is to 'suck by design'?

'intristic AOE dealing half damage' is already a fix to bows as people would have to rearrange their links/setups to reach satisfactory damage. like use LMP instead of GMP, use a single target etc. numbers can fix current situation perfectly fine. 'you are safe and can hit anything but you hit like a wet noodle' is the ranged meta in many games and it works. it solves the risk/reward ratio that in current poe is completely broken as there is no risk playing ranged and no reward playing melee

+
Or, if GGG think melee should be viable at all, let them just remove all melee skills from the game, so noobs wont get caught into "melee trap". Oh, and rename a game into "Path of Ranged".

BTW, Ground Slam is at least "decent" cause with certain investments you can turn in almost ranged skill. Bows get the same with less investments, though.

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'intristic AOE dealing half damage' is already a fix to bows as people would have to rearrange their links/setups to reach satisfactory damage. like use LMP instead of GMP, use a single target etc. numbers can fix current situation perfectly fine. 'you are safe and can hit anything but you hit like a wet noodle' is the ranged meta in many games and it works. it solves the risk/reward ratio that in current poe is completely broken as there is no risk playing ranged and no reward playing melee

No, you seem to misunderstand the situation completely. Range's inherent large AoE multi hit is the reason why it clears so fast. Numbers don't matter, unless you break it.

Here is an example:
If you nerf the numbers of Range too much, anyone who plays self found cannot make it through NORMAL, because they simply don't have the damage.
While on the opposite spectrum, the players who god tier items will STILL BREEZE through the game, because one shot is one shot. The only thing that matters after being able to one shot is to hit as many targets as possible.
This is what range has, ability to hit many targets.

The issue at hand is the incredibly large difference between high damage and low damage. Average players at level 75 do less than 10k damage with their bow.
However, high end players can do over 500k damage with their bow.
Do you see the difference in numbers? This is over a 50 fold difference between top tier and average.

If you nerf it so that top tier's speed is only good, then, an average player will never ever kill anything.

The fact that you are comparing top tier is really moronic, since those numbers are so out of sync with average, it doesn't even matter.


Have you ever wonder why some people think ball lightning is absolute shit a league or so ago? And others think otherwise? This is the difference between high damage and low damage. Ball Lightning is frankly speaking, shit for self found players a league or two ago. Damage is shit, you can't kill anything with it.
Now, once you get the items, then, its inherent larger AoE makes it better than other spells. Why? The reason is once you get enough damage, all that matters is how many targets that spell can hit.

By the way, Ball Lightning is in an okay spot right now.

oh please. you cut the damage and suddenly GMP is no longer mandatory no cost gem. this alone cuts the hits number.

you give the players a choice: numerous weak hits OR few strong ones. currently there is only one choice: lots of strong hits

current damage values are tailored so picking anything else than multi hit is foolish. as the damage is already absurd with mid-tier weapons (300pdps bow) for single target there is only one choice: cut the damage in general so people have to make decisions: aoe with no damage OR lessAOE with more damage

if one can pick chain gmp and still one shot with mediocre gear something is not right.

other games limit aoe hits to 8 per shot. would you like that instead?

people having to click thrice per screen wont suddenly die. melee players do that for years and 'it is fine'.

btw it was me who claimed - on the release date - that ball lightning is perfect. check the skull feedback section. current ball lightning is probably the best all around spell in the game. when build right. people cannot build for it and create noodle spam..