Really want to play a melee character but targeting sucks

So I play off and on solo, but always a ranged aoe-ish character. I have tried to do melee a few times and its always so frustrating.

I hold my left mouse button to move around but in order to attack an enemy I either need to release and precisely click the person I want to attack to change to an attack action. Doing this means my character keeps running to the last place my cursor was at BTW.

Another option time my distance and try to hit shift at the correct distance to attack. But as enemies are always moving as well this is just a frustrating sequences of shift click, click, click, shift, click, hold, shift, click. 70% of These miss because I didn't click the target or I didn't get in range.

I would love to have a target on hover-over option. So as I am holding down my mouse button to move if I put my cursor in the area of an enemy I should automatically target that enemy and move to attack. This would be similar if I had clicked on an enemy and held the button. If I take my cursor off that enemy I should lose that target and move around like normal.

Target on Hover-Over would benefit every character type from the smoother game play this provides. You would even open up new play styles beyond ranged aoe, and slightly shorter range AOE.

Every other ARPG in my library had target on hover-over even the alpha / beta games. It just makes the game feel so much smoother.

Sincerely,
Tired of playing a mage.

Currently, there's two ways to "solve" the targeting problem:

a) Use multistrike support. Even when your first click misses, the following two attacks will find a target (if there's a target in range). I'd NEVER use a singletarget attack skill without MS.

b) use a pseudo-melee attack like everybody else:
Cleave, Blade Flurry, Lacerate, Earthquake, Sweep, ...
You don't have to precisely click on monsters any more. And you get AoE.

Blade flurry, earthquake, ice crash maybe sunder.

Problem solved and melee suddenly doesn't suck dick anymore.

Supposedly, targeting is getting reworked in 3.0.0 .... that's a lot of things that GGG "planned" for 3.0.0.

As others have said, switch to a hybrid melee-aoe skill..or slot in melee splash to support your main skill.

And get used to melee sucking. It's been on a steady decline for a cple years now..if GGG isnt actively nerfing the skills/passive's melee players use, they are releasing yet another skill or 2 that's obviously made with ranged-domination in mind.

At this point, i honestly think the staff either actively dislike melee players, and would rather see their playerbase all turn to pure ranged.

Thank you for the suggestions, I seem to be doing OK I guess.

I bound Leap Slam to my left mouse button, and am using Lacerate and my primary attack atm. Trying to work in EarthQuake and IceCrash rotation as well. With this at least when I click shift while running at and enemy I'll "jump" to him. Not great, but passable for now.

Still wish targeting and movement were a lot smoother thou. I guess I'll throw myself in with the lot hoping for a targeting / movement rework for 3.0.

"

Sogolon wrote:

Blade flurry, earthquake, ice crash maybe sunder.

Problem solved and melee suddenly doesn't suck dick anymore.

It actually sucks compared to ranged.