Brainstorming about Balancing Melee in PoE

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Aim_Deep wrote:

They should just give marauders 30% damage reduction and templar and duelist 20% kinda like d3 does.

That's called the champion's perma-fortify.

not the same since everyone else can fortify too. fortitude and fortify gem for 60% now you're talking.

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Here's the thing about maxing vs. not:

Things which you max get exponentially more effective. E.G. if you have 25% block, you get 33% more EHP. 50%? 100% more. 75%? 400% more.

and this is the reason why it is so expensive to max out

fallacy it is because you can get similar 'EHP' by picking other, mitigation sources. it is simple math equation, easy to solve

you want to have 0-0-0-0-0-max defenses. you can get the same result with 25-25-25-25-25-25. that is far cheaper to gear, has less holes (block does nothing vs dots for example) and is less prone to nerfs.

it takes some experience to get out of this 'max or bust' mindset and explore the alternatives. there are many and while block is strong it was nerfed for a reason (100% mitigation for a cheap price of 350ms block-stun? id like max of that please!) and nerfed esp for evasion/dodge builds for multitude of reasons. it is still very powerful when mixed in RIGHT proportion


the best defense is large pool + vaal pact anyway

I 've adressed this issue many times. Here's what i beleive(i kinda agree with Scrotie):

1) Let's clarify WHAT is melee. To me melee is ONLY a skill that needs melee splash. From double strike to even flicker strike. In other words, if you HAVE to face the consequences of hitting a volatile mob with your main attack, then you are melee.

2) Melee, outside some shit mechanics like volatiles and obelisks that are there to only punish this playstyle AND THEY HAVE TO BE REMOVED OR REWORKED, is pretty good. Yeah, you can make pretty damn good melee builds. The problem is that ranged (or semi-ranged like reave etc.) is MUCH MUCH better and SAFER.

3) In order for melee to be on par with ranged, one of them should be safer, and the other should clear faster/have higher REAL DPS. I DO NOT THINK THAT MELEE SHOULD BE SAFER THAN IT IS NOW(except removing shit mechanics like volatile), and neither does GGG. Remeber that during 0.9 and 1 versions of the game(and to a lesser extent later), 100% IMMORTAL MELEE BUILDS(even AFK IMMORTAL) were possible(aegis aurora with kaoms etc.) and GGG nerfed the shit out of them, and introduced Mobs that countered them. And EVEN THEN, when it was possible to have an immortal melee build, high end players still prefered ranged, cause it was almost immortal and the clear speed was 1 millition times faster. So that brings us to ->

4) I beleive that ranged should be safer because it WILL be, no matter what. So the solution for me is for melee, since it will always be in higher risk than ranged(unless you make them immortal, as it was possible before and GGG made it clear that they do not want that), to be the one that has significantly higher clear speed, and higher DPS(against bosses etc.). A slight buff to melee damage would be OK, but the real issue is nerfing ranged. Mechanics like multiple projectiles, pierce, chain etc. should be massively nerfed. As it is right now, a 250K melee character with melee splash, clears 10 times slower and face 10 times more danger than even a 50K tooltip LA bow user with multiple projectiles and chain. This is serious and should FINALLY be adressed.

5) Melee TANKS and ranged should KITE. As it is right now only melee tanks, and ranged never have to actually kite because everything just melts in miliseconds.

After CoC and many spell builds lvling (including blade vortex) in last HC league, melee builds are no go for me anymore. The difference is HUGE from many perspectives: survivability, budget, damage, accessibility, clear speed

I think all melee skill must be with +25% damage reduction for 4 seconds on hit and increased AOE included.

Yesterday I saw kripparian stream Izaro fight in normal - RIP melee HC...

I'm going to throw some of my thoughts.

I think that changes should be more focused on mechanical side and less on direct number tweaking, since it often touches other side (both melee and ranged) and might receive more negative feedback.

Nerfing GMP and LMP would touch all projectile attacks/spells including strong and weak ones. If it would come to nerfing, i suppose it would be better nerfing GMP's side projectiles and center projectile's damage leave untouched. lets say bow fire 5 arrows in an arc, every projectile from left to right would receive such damage modifiers- 40% 60% 80% 60% 40%. In this way clear speed would be nerfed, but damage potential would remain intact.

Smartly modifying mob's evasion values (increasing), but in a way it would result in ranged nerf.
Most logically it would be increasing mob's evasion value against far fired projectiles, by the point that mob has more time to react to it and successfully evade it. It would work in same way as point blank does, only it is increasing monster's evasion value and not decreasing players damage value.
Although spellcaster would not suffer, there are very few projectile spells and those mostly suck as well.

Another possible way would be introducing fear (not flee !). It would work this way- the closer you are to the observing mob while you kill other mob with melee the higher chance that observing mob will freeze in fear (just standing in place and doing nothing for x seconds).

The simplest way is to increase the aoe of all melee skills drastically. While most casters and bow-users can hit a whole pack with each skill use, melee players can hit half of it or less. Then you have to add the travel time to the pack of mob and then hunting down strugglers. If we are talking clear speed, bigger aoe is all melee needs. If we are talking survivability, i think they are in a decent place right now. No need for more buffs.

The very first step should be adding an auto target and remove the slapping of air.

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sidtherat wrote:

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Here's the thing about maxing vs. not:

Things which you max get exponentially more effective. E.G. if you have 25% block, you get 33% more EHP. 50%? 100% more. 75%? 400% more.

and this is the reason why it is so expensive to max out

fallacy it is because you can get similar 'EHP' by picking other, mitigation sources. it is simple math equation, easy to solve

you want to have 0-0-0-0-0-max defenses. you can get the same result with 25-25-25-25-25-25. that is far cheaper to gear, has less holes (block does nothing vs dots for example) and is less prone to nerfs.

it takes some experience to get out of this 'max or bust' mindset and explore the alternatives. there are many and while block is strong it was nerfed for a reason (100% mitigation for a cheap price of 350ms block-stun? id like max of that please!) and nerfed esp for evasion/dodge builds for multitude of reasons. it is still very powerful when mixed in RIGHT proportion


the best defense is large pool + vaal pact anyway

Why must it be nerfed for evasion/dodge, but armor is perfectly fine? People say "we want melee!", yet the *only* "kill the monster at point blank range" types of melee that are playable are 2H cyclone builds such as cyclone disfavor. As of now, is there a reason to make right side melee builds? Because right side defenses have been eviscerated to such a point that there's basically no choice *but* to play a "shoot and scoot" type of build.