So here's *another* reason why melee and the left side of the passive tree sucks

- The Spell Damage and Critical nodes in the Witch/Shadow area scale all damage types.
- The Projectile Damage nodes in the Ranger area scale all damage types.
- ALL of the melee nodes in the Duelist/Marauder/Templar area are restricted to either physical or elemental damage.

Long story short, melee characters in this area get very little use out of flat added elemental/chaos damage, which puts a hefty restriction on what skill gems and gear affixes are viable for them.

i think double dipping will be fixed soon.

"

kompaniet wrote:

i think double dipping will be fixed soon.

That's got nothing to do with OP's point.


'Projectile damage' gets to scale all damage types from projectiles, whether it's physical or elemental or chaos. 'Spell damage' gets to scale all damage from spells, again whether it's physical or elemental or chaos. Crit in general can be used to scale up any type of base damage type. But nearly all of the 'increased damage' type nodes in the duelist and marauder areas are either 'melee physical damage' or 'physical damage with attacks', and the same goes for the lower part of the ranger area.


Basically, if you start as a witch or shadow or a projectile ranger? Feel free to use whatever damage type you want (or even multiple different types), it's all handed to you right from the start via generic spell damage or projectile damage or shadow's paths of any damage type. But if you start as a Marauder or Duelist, or just wanna be a melee in general? Well, hope you like physical, cuz you're gonna have to jump through a lot more hoops to scale any other pre-conversion type.


It's just stupid how melee is so heavily pigeonholed into physical base damage, especially in the bottom-left of the tree, while the upper-right of the tree is free to do whatever the hell type of damage they want.

^ Yes, that.


If you're on the top/right half of the tree, you can use:

- Weapons with elemental damage
- Rings/amulets with added ele damage, belts with %increased weapon ele damage
- Wands/daggers with added ele damage to spells
- Herald of Ice/Thunder
- Wrath, Anger
- Added Lightning/Cold/Chaos damage supports

and pick nodes that scale all of these effects. Whereas virtually none of the nodes in the entire Duelist/Marauder/Templar half of the tree will scale any of them, let alone all of them at once. Even the STR damage bonus is limited to physical only.

"

suszterpatt wrote:

^ Yes, that.


If you're on the top/right half of the tree, you can use:

- Weapons with elemental damage
- Rings/amulets with added ele damage, belts with %increased weapon ele damage
- Wands/daggers with added ele damage to spells
- Herald of Ice/Thunder
- Wrath, Anger
- Added Lightning/Cold/Chaos damage supports

and pick nodes that scale all of these effects. Whereas virtually none of the nodes in the entire Duelist/Marauder/Templar half of the tree will scale any of them, let alone all of them at once. Even the STR damage bonus is limited to physical only.

This is it. Please someone from GGG look up for this.

"

Bex_GGG wrote:

- Blood Drinker Life Leech is now all attack damage, not just physical.
- Mind Drinker Mana Leech is now all attack damage, not just physical.
- Soul Raker Life and Mana Leech is now all attack damage, not just physical.

And the gap just got a little wider.

GG GGG

So for the past couple weeks I've been trying to alch myself a good 1-hander to use on a non-crit max block Gladiator I want to make. And I keep getting stuff like this:



That's 3 mid-high level damage rolls right there, and yet the item is absolute junk for a non-crit build.

In fact, of the 12 prefixes that 1h swords can roll, only 4, maybe 5 if we're charitable, are good for a non-crit melee build: the 3 that add physical damage, life leech, and maybe the +1 to all gems. The +1-2 to melee gems is bad because the scaling on melee gems is bad, mana leech is never a problem, and the rest are non-physical damage bonuses which are not scaled by passives in that half of the tree.

Now, I don't know the specifics of how items are rolled, but based on the numbers above it's pretty certain that over half of all swords rolled will be automatically useless to me even if they're high tier rolls, simply because the bottom/left side of the tree is physical-only damage.

"

suszterpatt wrote:

So for the past couple weeks I've been trying to alch myself a good 1-hander to use on a non-crit max block Gladiator I want to make. And I keep getting stuff like this:

GGG has chosen an item system that gives 99% garbage,
You need the stars to align correctly to get flat and % phys, ideally with attack speed. Otherwise the weapon is garbage.

I's prefer if they got rid of local modifiers. Make it all global.

e.g. in Titen Quest, all modifiers were global. You find a Folg. Cool. You find a Folg of extra damage? Better, but not better in terms of "miles ahead".

First of all, change your thread tittle it creates a contrast that somehow right side melee is "fine".

Secondly, they can't do what your asking.


Peace,

-Boem-

"

鬼殺し wrote:

As a confirmed Easterner, I'll admit I didn't really see this as a problem but I can definitely recognise it now.

Would more 'attack damage' nodes in the West make a difference? Fewer weapon-specific, more outright 'all attacks are buffed by this node' clusters? Just as a simple query.

I'd be happy to let Witches and Shadows keep chaos scaling as their special thing. But with all the various sources of added ele damage the game throws at you, I'd say all, or at least most, instances of "melee physical damage" and "physical damage with <weapon type>" bonuses should be replaced with "non-chaos damage". Some clusters could remain pure physical for flavor, mainly bleed-related ones.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

I feel your other issue with item mods is another argument. It's a good one, and one I plan to make soon. But it's not quite the same as 'dealing with the West's melee inefficiency'.

It's only an issue because of the phys-only melee nodes. For a crit build in the Shadow area, that sword I linked above is actually not bad: just stack crit chance/multi and attack speed, and avoid phys-only nodes. A bow with similar mods is perfectly fine even for a non-crit archer: just stick to Projectile Damage nodes, and all your damage will scale. If the south/west of the tree had similar scaling, I wouldn't bat an eye at all the ele damage affixes.