Melee rework needed badly.

Time upgrade melee skills, most are way too clunky to use. Poe is so great game that is should not have so hard to use melee skills.

I'm big melee fan but most melee skills in POE just are not fun to use.

Currently I use only Earthquake (using Sceptre) but would like to use other skills too.

Lacerate, Sunder, Cleave, Reave, Sweep, Ground slam, Cyclone and Ice Crash are usable too but I would like to see big change in single target name locking skills.

Most single target name locking skills would be usable if they were more like Cleave but with smaller AoE and with the skills specific effect.

Example:

Glacial Hammer could be like mini Cleave with Freezing and Shattering effect (usable with hammers and unarmed attacks).

Also Skills like Infernal Blow, Heavy Strike, Puncture, Viper Strike would also be more usable if they were like mini Cleave with there own specific effect.

Static Strike i would change more like Earthquake (hit on the ground for small AoE three times and fourth strike would create big AoE).

Molten Strike small ground hitting AoE and fire balls flying.

Dual Strike would be like mini Lacerate with both hands doing the Lacerate effect simultaneously (also with small AoE).

Double Strike I would remove because any skill with Multi Strike would do the same.

Melee Splash I would remove because all the melee attacks would have small AoE already.

After changes like these I would most definitely test skills like Dual Strike with Dual Claw character, Glacial Hammer with big two hand hammer, Viper Strike with Phys/chaos damage dagger etc.

Also Ice Crash is currently not very good AoE or Single target attack, I would give it's AoE Portion a little boost and also changed graphics little less overwhelming as when using it with fast hitting char I cant see any ground effects or anything else in that matter (more transparent slightly bluish and more "bulky" ice spikes would be fine).

And lastly I would make almost every melee attack work with unarmed attacks (Glacial Hammer, Heavy Strike, Static Strike, Molten Strike, Lightning Strike, Ground slam, Sunder) but not with the Viper Strike, Puncture, Cleave, Sweep, Lacerate off course.

It's not going to happend, but there is a lot more that needs to be changed in order to get balance between ranged and melee.

Ranged AOE spells and attacks should all be nerfed to 15-25% of melee single target DPS. Ranged single target should be 40-60% of melee single target DPS.

Melee character should have skill options in the line of "more defense when using melee weapons and unarmed" to be able to have some more defense. Fortify as a mechanic needs to go.

Single target melee should do considerably more DPS than AOE melee. Like AOE is just 25-35% of the single target melee.

This way POE will work like other RPG games. There is a reason the other games choose this kind of balance.

Earthquake has a waaayy too big radius to be an actual melee skill imho.

To re-balance melee, GGG would need to find a miracle solution, or butchered range so that melee could have an advantage.
Atm we have only :
- fake melees ( Spec throw, Earthquake, Sunder, etc .... )
- Juggernauts

Some high level bosses, either you instant kill them, you are ranged and can dodge, or you are juggernaut and stack all defense of the game.

If you are not in one of those categories, rip.
And that's sad :/

To compete with the clear speed, given that melees need to move closer to their targets ... they need to be able to blow them up faster than range .... but range already instant kill everything anyway.
So melee is no just the problem, the whole power creep makes it basically impossible to have actual good melees imho.

Welcome to the magical land of GGG doesn't care.

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suszterpatt wrote:

Welcome to the magical land of GGG doesn't care.

Preach sister.

"

This way POE will work like other RPG games. There is a reason the other games choose this kind of balance.

Poe doesn't need to work like other RPG games.


And in terms of what other games do, they also have much more defined classes that prevents people from having the option of doing whatever the hell they want, they can get away with defining playstyles more, because they restrict you further then PoE does.

Not saying melee doesn't need some love, but the issue is not black and white and pretending it is will do you no good.

A step towards better parity between melee range characters and long range would be to give melee range characters easy access to melee range only movement speed. Giving melee range characters the ability to transition more quickly between groups of monsters would help clear speed.

It would probably have to be a temporary, ~ 2 seconds, on hit buff through individual melee range skills like cleave or single target melee skills.

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Redherring13 wrote:

Most single target name locking skills would be usable if they were more like Cleave but with smaller AoE and with the skills specific effect.

that's why there's melee splash support? if anything, I would like to see more supports that change the dynamics of single target melee attacks.

Initiate
Supported Melee Attacks now begin with a short dash to targeted location and temporally increases damage and accuracy rating. Dash distance increased by % Movement Speed.

20% More Damage for 2 seconds
20% increased Accuracy Rating for 2 seconds

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Ceryneian wrote:

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suszterpatt wrote:

Welcome to the magical land of GGG doesn't care.

Preach sister.

Amen.

Melee will always be fucked, simply because GGG is really bad at designing such things. Just look at claws, they have been bad, almost useless, for forever.
And they will never revamp it, because of all the other mechanics. If you want that kind of in-your-face melee you'd have to design the game around it, which never happened. Monsters would have to be redesigned. The only challenge avaiable (insta rips) would have to be removed to allow some kind of sustained brawling. And so on. That's the main problem, not the gap between ranged and melee. If you were to nerf ranged to melee niveau (minus any abusive mechanics) you'd just have garbage gameplay.

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Skronos wrote:

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Redherring13 wrote:

Most single target name locking skills would be usable if they were more like Cleave but with smaller AoE and with the skills specific effect.

that's why there's melee splash support? if anything, I would like to see more supports that change the dynamics of single target melee attacks.

Initiate
Supported Melee Attacks now begin with a short dash to targeted location and temporally increases damage and accuracy rating. Dash distance increased by % Movement Speed.

20% More Damage for 2 seconds
20% increased Accuracy Rating for 2 seconds

Melee splash is a horrible archaic mandatory support gem that is still here despite having one of those trash manifestos for mandatory gems.
But yes, more dynamic supports is a great idea. Elemental Hit, Wild Strike, even Earthquake should all have been supports. Lot's of ranged skill gems, too. But then GGG wouldn't have anything to pad the roster of useless gems with. I can't remember the last support that wasn't a run of the mill more / on status ailment modificator.

People make a number of assertions about what drives melee imbalance and need for massive AoE; I don't always agree with them. I was thinking about it today; it seems like there's a fairly simple set of reasons which flow one to the next:

The game is set up to allow a wide range of variance in defences for players. Compare your 3k life low mitigation glass cannon to your 8k life lots of endurance charges guy to your 15k ES guy.

->-> The game therefore needs to find a middle ground to kill you. If damage is too high, everyone dies. If it's too low, the higher end guys with good defences and good dps will roflstomp Uber one handed and blindfolded (perhaps that occurs now, but not really the point).

->-> Game therefore has some significant damage spikes possible. But given the above, this generally won't be enough to kill you if you build well, because GGG need to be cautious about overtuning damage (as they always do).

->-> Game therefore also has a 'bullet hell' setup. Things can and will hit you from offscreen with no warning nor reason to expect they're coming. Bearers, volatiles, etc etc. This is to give additional ways to die.

->-> Game also has a range of extraneously dangerous conditions, from FPS drops, to disconnects, to ground clutter, to name-locking, to not being able to cancel that BLOODY mis-click on a pot when you want to attack something instead (!). I imagine some of these are also unchanged because deaths would drop if they were fixed. Let's be honest.

->-> The only truly important things to focus on are therefore speed to enemy, speed of killing enemy, and mitigation.

Melee without large inbuilt AoE will never work well unless PoE is re-designed from the ground up. That's not going to happen, so give most or all melee earthquake-style AoE, or accept that it stinks (GGG seem to be preferring the latter, but people can still hope).