Melee vs Bows vs Spells?

So, the 3 main types of damage dealing. How balanced are they between each other?

As far as I'm aware, general consensus is that Melee sucks balls (Outside a small smattering of pseudo ranged attacks like Spectral Throw, Frost Blades, Blade Flurry), while Bows are okay (But heavily pushed to go crit with Death's Opus) and Spells are good.

I was wondering what people thought about their general balance?

Here are my thoughts on them:

Spells

Spells have a lot going for them. Firstly, they ignore accuracy. They will always hit no matter what. This leads to them being slightly more stat independent (You don't need to get dex for accuracy for example)

Secondly, they don't care about weapon damage at all. This means that your weapon slots are entirely stat sticks. So, find a good 1h weapon with a bunch of spell damage/elemental damage/flat damage to spells and then tank up some with a nice shield and you're good to go.

Thirdly, most of their skills are AoE in some form. This leads into them being really good for clearing. Without suffering on single targets (They don't need to use supports that reduce damage in order to effectively clear). In fact, Concentrated Effect the support that seems like it would be designed to make spells more ST can be run on everything and remain good at AoE clearing due to high inherent radius.

Finally, their tree is really strong to boot. Due to the amount of flat "Spell Damage" as well as multi-element boosts such as "Ash, Frost and Storm" or "Snowforged" which allows easy damage boosting from nearly anywhere (As well as playing into double dipping). It honestly seems that the 3 major elemental nodes at the top of the Witch area are completely redundant with so much damage that works on multiple damage types everywhere.

They don't have a lot of weaknesses either. Really, the only thing that springs to mind is that since they aren't based on physical damage (Aside from Ethereal Knives/Bladefall) they can't benefit from Herald of Ash or Hatred for percentile "More" damage. However, that's somewhat mitigated by how effectively their skills can be Totemed or made into Traps allowing for more hands off clearing increasing clear speed.

However, not benefiting from HoA/Hatred isn't all bad. As it means their damage is balanced without that in mind and it means you're free to reserve your mana on more defensive auras like Discipline, Vitality or Grace.

In short, it seems that due to Spells not caring about weapon damage, nor accuracy, nor the need to make them AoE, they have the easiest time building full defences instead and naturally fit in with the "Speed Meta" explode packs playstyle.

Bows

Bows are pretty cool. They have a variety of different mechanics in their skills that can drastically change how they play.

They're not all amazing for AoE though, and even the ones that are tend to want to be enhanced some more, be it through additional projectiles, Pierce, Chain or what have you. This often means trading damage for more AoE (Or using specific uniques)

Given the nature of bows, how they're limited to just a 2h weapon and a quiver (That has carefully controlled stats), they don't get any significant advantage for building defences. In fact, they have to build in lieu of a shield, which is notable.

Their passive tree tends to be a bit generic. A lot of "Projectile Damage" and "Damage with Bows" that makes builds get strong pretty easily. Especially if you go double dipping.

In short, bows seem decently balanced mechanically. You have to trade raw power for good clear and you don't get an easy time going for defences (Other than lack of dedication towards Accuracy due to the abundant Dex you tend to get)

Melee

Melee has a hard time. There's a lot of mechanics that punish melee more so than ranged. Mostly in the form of PBAoE effects and explosions (Not to mention the fact you can get AA'd by everything if you're in range to hit them)

They have a hard time getting AoE. As attacks with AoE tend to have small radius and Melee Splash itself doesn't have the best radius.

They, like bows, have their damage tied to their weapons so they can't go all out with stat sticks and focus defence. Instead they have to balance their weapons and accuracy to ensure they deal damage ON TOP of having to try and get defences (Of which, they tend to need more, due to being vulnerable to more damage than ranged)

Finally, their passive tree is a bit of a mess. What with the abundance of "Physical Damage" and "Physical Attack Damage" modifiers on damage and leech, they're much more limited in what they can do (Both with stuff like double dipping, but also hybrid builds that use spells alongside attacks). In addition, a lot of their damage nodes are split into weapon specifics. Which makes them less flexible for splashing out from a path to pick up some damage and instead have to be built towards (Then geared for)

In short, I feel that melee could do with some assistance for gaining some defences. Alongside some optimization of their passives to make them less specific (More "Melee Attack Damage" and less small weapon specific nodes)

For example, push nodes like Splitting Strikes, Blade of Cunning, From the Shadows, Claws of the Falcon etc. into their major nodes and replace these with lesser generic damage nodes of various flavours "Melee Physical Attack", "Melee Elemental Attack" and "Melee Attack"

Add some "% Life increase while holding a 2h weapon" and "% ES increase while holding a 2h weapon" nodes/keystones in appropriate places to give 2h some defence that it misses out on without a shield or the block from DW.

Finally, a more significant change I thought of would be taking the Rampart node and completely overhauling it. Firstly, moving it into a more neutral location (Closer to the Scion area I'd assume) to make it easily accessible to all Exiles.

Then starting it off with a keystone that replaces the Fortify Support, with "Melee Attacks grant Fortify" and then branching into 3 lines that give additional "Melee Attack Damage" as well as "Increased Effect of Fortify on you" and culminate with a keystone that gives a boost to ES, Evades or Armour while under the effects of Fortify (Similar to the current Rampart keystone)

Which should help melee get the defences they need (Might need to specify non-movement skill though, so Shield Charging casters won't get the boost)

I have only played melee since I started PoE on the Prophecy League, with the exception of an Arc Elementalist and a Icy Spear Scion. It's true melee is not at their best but there's plenty to fix them and make the builds playable. Usually melee don't require as much %damage increase to reach ranged abilities levels of damage. (There's a couple of melee abilities that are total shit, like Dominating Blow, Heavy Strike, and a couple more. But they are few)

There is a lot of players using melee and life based builds. PoE's population is not only the elitist forum goers and the streamers, nor the toxic cloud of manure we call the reddit community.

Don't get too biased off the popular opinion. Most online communities over-do the "Strong-Weak" thing, to the point anything that is not 100% optimal is just garbage.

the playstyle and need for certain defenses is not defined by skills being melee, spell, or bow. We have long range melee skills and point blank bow setups, and lot of spells playing in low-medium range..

I've made dozens of different builds and what mattered was build concept potential and how good my execution was, rather than whether the skill was tagged melee, spell, or whatever

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Quo210 wrote:

There is a lot of players using melee and life based builds. PoE's population is not only the elitist forum goers and the streamers, nor the toxic cloud of manure we call the reddit community.

I'm aware that things aren't at awful as some people might state, I play melee, I play life builds. I know that people do Shaper with life builds etc.

My opinion is mostly based on my experience (I don't watch streamers. I don't really put much stock into forum users and Reddit is really only decent for porn...)

In my experience, spells are easy af. It's just get a decent stat stick, build full defence maybe pick up some Spell Damage or Elemental Damage nodes and you're golden.

Bows are decent, you got decent clear, you have good damage, and you can build enough defence which in combination with kiting can keep you alive.

Melee... It can push out the damage. But its AoE is mediocre. Then it has to put up with the extra damage taken from various mechanics, but gets no real assistance in doing so. They can work, that's for sure. But it often feels like "Challenge Mode" when you're trying to hit things in melee range that will explode on death.

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Ludvator wrote:

the playstyle and need for certain defenses is not defined by skills being melee, spell, or bow. We have long range melee skills and point blank bow setups, and lot of spells playing in low-medium range..

I've made dozens of different builds and what mattered was build concept potential and how good my execution was, rather than whether the skill was tagged melee, spell, or whatever

Of course, my original post was talking about the general trends.

Since, yeah, there are "Melee" skills that provide range and good AoE damage (Spectral Throw, Frost Blades, Lacerate and Blade Flurry). Just like there are abnormal Bow skills (Shrapnel Shot being a more close range attack. While Explosive Arrow and Blast Rain disregard Bow damage). Finally with Righteous Fire being a melee focused spell build that NEEDS tankiness.

General trends are that most melee skills are actually need melee range, and as such tend to want or need additional defences to survive the increase damage that is associated with being in melee range.

Im not gonna correct you on type mismatch when talking about "melee" skills because it is not the point here, I meant mostly EQ, Sunder and Ground slam when talking about long range melee skills..

Current best defense is high HP (usually ES), high damage and instant leech. It lets you ignore all the other defenses completely, no matter what skill you are using, as long as you keep leeching (are not stunned/frozen). There is the big balance problem because instant leech is far far superior to any other form of HP recovery. It scales with damage so the higher damage your character has, the stronger it becomes (this is also a balance problem, lowering VP effectiveness would make it weak for low level or sub-optimal characters, while still OP for the high level highly geared well made ones)

What about wands?
What about minions?
What about totems?
What about traps?

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Ludvator wrote:

It scales with damage so the higher damage your character has, the stronger it becomes (this is also a balance problem, lowering VP effectiveness would make it weak for low level or sub-optimal characters, while still OP for the high level highly geared well made ones)

cap it imo, leech applies instantly up to a maximum of X flat amount per hit. This actually makes it better for builds with lower life pools but more mitigation, like life builds, than it does for builds with high hp pools and no mitigation, and makes it equally as effective for mid tier damage builds as high damage builds.

Trying to scale it down with a % is going to end up with it being destroyed for mid tier damage builds while still being every bit as broken as it is now for the big deeps setups, which is pretty much a net negative tbh, it fixes nothing in terms of big builds facetanking bosses with it and yet hurts the middle guys.

Life on hit gem isnt broken because its a flat amount that doesnt care about your dps, despite being instant.

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Ludvator wrote:

Current best defense is high HP (usually ES), high damage and instant leech. It lets you ignore all the other defenses completely, no matter what skill you are using, as long as you keep leeching (are not stunned/frozen). There is the big balance problem because instant leech is far far superior to any other form of HP recovery. It scales with damage so the higher damage your character has, the stronger it becomes (this is also a balance problem, lowering VP effectiveness would make it weak for low level or sub-optimal characters, while still OP for the high level highly geared well made ones)

I honestly don't understand how this is relevant to the topic?

Yes, instant leech is OP af. Yes, it's currently the best method of sustain. But that doesn't mean anything, because all weapon types have equal access to Leech (Because Life Leech Support)

However, for builds outside of VP, other defences are necessary. Be it Regeneration, Evasion, Armour, Block etc.

As such, it's a question of how easily can a specific type of build get their defences vs how much defence they typically need.

It usually ends up being something like, Spells and Bows tend to need less defences because they can use range to easily kite, while Melee tend to need more defences because they're in the thick of things and have various mechanics to deal with that punish being up close (Like Volatiles)

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MBata wrote:

What about wands?

Would come under Bows, given they work essentially the same. With the advantage of being able to equip a shield for more defences.

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MBata wrote:

What about minions?

Is a tricky one to determine. I'd probably put them under Spells, given that they have that stat stick style building method. Only, their stat sticks are buffing their minions more so than themselves.

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MBata wrote:

What about totems?
What about traps?

Both of these typically cast spells when used. Stuff like Flameblast or Bladefall... Thus, would come under Spells.

Are there any other specific skill gems you want me to put under one of my generalized categories?