Melee builds are complete trash

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tinko92 wrote:

When I can empty whole rooms of monsters without stepping a foot in there, that is not melee. I never once hit any monster with my weapon.

In a fantasy game with magic, demons and monsters, my melee dude can shoot icy projectiles out of his sword. Of course he can.

What if blade flurry had an animation like "flicker+multistrike", or Juggernaut's ultimate in Dota, your dude jumping around like crazy in the AoE, instead of the lazy effort GGG put into the BF animation?
Would it be melee then because you're clearly touching monsters with a weapon now, even though mechanically, nothing has changed?

Maybe you should play Titan Quest. It has all you want.
*very low monster density, lots of high HP mobs
*melee has crazy high damage scaling, spells and bows have limited damage output
*melee is tanky, range is not
*melee has to kill monsters one by one, apart from a couple cooldown spells

A lot of stuff could be changed in this game.
*completely rework melee targeting, so it's not a pain in the ass to click a moving target.
*buff monsters' life or nerf players' DpS.
*remove the whole "more" multiplier mechanic, the scaling is just too crazy. Make support gems change a skill, not just buff its damage.
*introduce attack and cast speed caps. Turn crit into something "unscalable".
*remove/rework a ton of forgotten skillgems.
*introduce way more ranged or flickerstrike monsters.
*remove volatile and reflect.
*remove life leech. Just remove it, the idea of %-based life leech is broken in this type of game, has always been, will always be

...but this would be a completly different game, and obviously GGG doesn't share this vision.
So, the best and easiest fix is: give melee some range/AoE as well.

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adghar wrote:

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allbusiness wrote:

If you're going to say Snorkle has more experience than people and his experience trump everyone's argument, I'm gonna say Etup, Havoc, and many other players are far better players than Snorkle because they play HC and get #1 on HC routinely, and all say melee is in a bad spot compared to ranged.

Melee is in a bad spot compared to ranged at the very highest levels of play... but that doesn't seem like a fixable problem. I mean... is a melee build that is capable of clearing at this speed considered "true melee"? Maybe with Flicker or, because Tarille has clarified that for some odd reason, Melee Splash will always count as melee regardless of coverage, if Melee Splash had about 1500% more Area of Effect, then we would see melee not be in a bad spot compared to ranged at the highest level of play.

Also, the fact that melee is in a bad spot compared to ranged at the highest levels of play... doesn't exactly equate to "melee is trash?"

Are we not on equal grounds here, where "trash" is the smelly pile of stuff you throw away to the dumpster?

Also, are we forgetting that the original poster gave his opinion based in his own lack of ability to go past "t-11 t-12 range" "at least 15 exals on the build" and after that, we have posted videos of a melee build clearing T15 on 20c budget and 3 melee builds killing Chimera on (unknown) budget...? Doesn't this indicate that the thread title opinion is based on a lack of player ability, not game balance?

EDIT: By the way, I could be misreading the PM reply, but I think I've got clearance to repost this statement from tinko92 regarding trying Spell builds himself:

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tinko92 wrote:

I never follow any guide myself and I made a Tendrils (early levels) and Ball Lighting after that. It was piss easy. And that's self cast.
I eventually gave up at lvl 75 because I was bored to death with this ranged cheese. Unless you fuck up badly you won't die because you'll kill shit before it manages to damage you.

Fruz, this may aid you in deciding how much effort you're willing to put into this discussion.

I think Tinko's suggestion of reducing pack sizes and then upping monster hp is in the right direction of what needs to happen. Along with that, they should up monster damage on the lower end of the curve (as in the minimum damage) and reduce the maximum damage. This makes armor and evasion much more viable, as it reduces burst damage, but also makes multiple instances of damage much more deadly, where as now it doesn't matter if you stack armor/evasion vs smaller instances of damage, because vaal pact + big buffer ignores all of that.

I think the real issue is that if you want to play the economy game (which alot of the game is balanced around) you really do have to play ranged to keep up, unless you have an extensive amount of experience with the game and have lots of time (i.e. Alkaizer). If you want to purchase big ticket items early in the league before inflation sets in, ranged/caster archetypes are going to be superior in general. I think part of this has to do with clear speed meta, AoE nonsense, etc. so hopefully there will be a dramatic overhaul, but I really suspect not considering Chris Wilson's comments in the past have been inaccurate (I wouldn't say dishonest, but I would say lacking and ignorant of what it feels like to have to play melee vs ranged at the highest levels of play).

GGG generaly (as I see it), by disign desicions past years, always trying to make game "interesting" for more mainstream players who just want thing pew-pew-pew on full screen, run fast, clear fast, get loot -- they not too deep in romantic ideas of character concept: "I will be knight in shinning armor bla bla bla". Not. They mostly don't care -- just use what is effective. If they need to shot bananas from pink plastic cannon for uber-top-tier-super-build - THEY WILL.

All this ranged/es/meta "unbalances and moral problems" for them is completly okay. They love to be overpowered and be gut.

So, whats the point?

Pure melee romantics, so to say, just in bad side of moon here, few and marginalized by disign of game. GGG not very interested in them at all (they need to please 95% of others).

Game about firing/detonating/aoe-ting things, boom, boom, boom, not swinging some archaic sharp bar of iron just to kill one enemy from zero distance. So primitive!

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adghar wrote:

From tinko92 regarding trying Spell builds himself:

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tinko92 wrote:

I never follow any guide myself and I made a Tendrils (early levels) and Ball Lighting after that. It was piss easy. And that's self cast.
I eventually gave up at lvl 75 because I was bored to death with this ranged cheese. Unless you fuck up badly you won't die because you'll kill shit before it manages to damage you.

Fruz, this may aid you in deciding how much effort you're willing to put into this discussion.

This thread is getting pretty long so I'm getting a bit lost here I guess, but how does that have to do anything with me ?

And by the way, during leveling, there are so many amazing weapons to be found/used that spells or attacks ... it does not change much tbh.
However, ranges do have a clearspeed ( coverage ) advantage in most areas, that .... might probably never change.
Less threats early on too, you can go through the early content as a glass canon, only what ... malachai and Daresso's pits need you to build defenses ( or to pay a carry ........ ).
Get a fast attack speed weapon and go ele buzzsaw and you might just have the same experience.

Obviously there are balance issues regarding melees and ranges, for many reasons.
The point was : it's not as bad as people make it out to be here.
And the top 0.1% is not a good representation of the global population at all, even though in an ideal balance state we should see more melees there.
But that might not be something fixable by just buffing melee, like ever.

But anyway, even though I can understand that some people feel less appealed by spellcaster, it's harder to have a constructive discussion regarding endgame game balance with somebody that hasn't really experienced both sides.
But I don't think I've brought up the fact that he had not to be honest.



Allbusiness kinda does have a point about elemental resistances here btw, there is that to take into account too.

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tinko92 wrote:

Why don't they (ranged characters) have to kite? Because they kill screens of shit in one click before they could take damage.
What is the logical thing to change there? Increase the monster HP by a lot, and reduce the monster pack sizes all across the board (this would help with the performance as well).

Agree about the pack size, I would nerf ranged damage scaling instead of bugging monster HPs, if you have a "normal" build, some monsters are really beefy already ....
But nerfing crit multiplier ( or chance ) all accross the board might be a good start there.
Let's wait for double dipping nerf first ( I know, it won't fix everything ).

However, I'm not holding my breath, taking things from player is not an easy decision to make from GGG imho.
And pumping up the numbers even more won't be healthy for the game I think.

Btw, if you are expecting to hit in close contact every single mob ( since that is your definition of melee it seems ) and keep up with range builds, let me tell you something very very obvious :
- it will never, evern happen, and it would sink PoE into oblivion.

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Peterlerock wrote:

...but this would be a completly different game, and obviously GGG doesn't share this vision.
So, the best and easiest fix is: give melee some range/AoE as well.

Pretty much.
But GGG is sometimes going too deep on that "some" range/AoE ( @pre-nerf blade flurry and EQ ) imho.

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allbusiness wrote:

I think Tinko's suggestion of reducing pack sizes and then upping monster hp is in the right direction of what needs to happen. Along with that, they should up monster damage on the lower end of the curve (as in the minimum damage) and reduce the maximum damage. This makes armor and evasion much more viable, as it reduces burst damage, but also makes multiple instances of damage much more deadly, where as now it doesn't matter if you stack armor/evasion vs smaller instances of damage, because vaal pact + big buffer ignores all of that.

I think the real issue is that if you want to play the economy game (which alot of the game is balanced around) you really do have to play ranged to keep up, unless you have an extensive amount of experience with the game and have lots of time (i.e. Alkaizer). If you want to purchase big ticket items early in the league before inflation sets in, ranged/caster archetypes are going to be superior in general. I think part of this has to do with clear speed meta, AoE nonsense, etc. so hopefully there will be a dramatic overhaul, but I really suspect not considering Chris Wilson's comments in the past have been inaccurate (I wouldn't say dishonest, but I would say lacking and ignorant of what it feels like to have to play melee vs ranged at the highest levels of play).

That I can agree with.

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Fruz wrote:

Btw, if you are expecting to hit in close contact every single mob ( since that is your definition of melee it seems ) and keep up with range builds, let me tell you something very very obvious :
- it will never, evern happen, and it would sink PoE into oblivion.

I never implied on that, never told it and would never want having to click on every single monster.
If you read my post more carefully you'll see a part about Melee Splash, that alone makes this "expectation" non-existing.

If I want to have this bullshit AoE over, that doesn't mean I want only single target skills to be viable. Pointless exaggeration that I never said nor agree upon.

Lets focus a bit here.

I didn't imply clicking on every monster, but you did say :

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tinko92 wrote:

When I can empty whole rooms of monsters without stepping a foot in there, that is not melee. I never once hit any monster with my weapon. I'm basically killing shit with some kind of spells when I use Lacerate, Sunder, BF, etc.
My weapon never has to touch anything and I'll be killing stuff from more than a half a screen away, from a safe distance. That is not melee.

So even though I agree that for example the pre-nerf BF was way too much ( now ... it might be a bit much still ... not sure ), same for EQ .... having "the weapon needs to touch the ennemy" for every melee skill just won't work.
EQ is a cool concept for example, much cooler than BF imho, yet the weapon does not touch the ennemy.


The exageration was from you there.

What you quoted there has nothing to do with your baseless assumption.

I don't think you can read or understand what others are writing, to be honest.

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having "the weapon needs to touch the ennemy" for every melee skill just won't work.

In the current state of the game, of course not, that's exactly what's going on.
But to say that it's outright impossible is silly. You can't know that. Unless you went to the future and saw the same anti-melee shit everywhere and new "melee" skills being some spells with melee tag slapped on them.

I will yet again mention the times where melee wasn't in such a bad state. We already had melee in a good place, and to simply say that it's impossible to have it is nonsense.
Impossible if nothing gets balanced, sure.

Also, there's Cleave, which, despite its inherent AoE and no-namelocking, is still a real melee skill.
The fact that we actually have to discuss what "melee" skills are actually melee is funny itself. And it's all because of GGG's ranged agenda and their melee tags on ranged skills, even spells.
You'll never have this discussion in other games lmao, wp GGG I guess.

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tinko92 wrote:

What you quoted there has nothing to do with your baseless assumption.

Oh but it has.
You are complaining that some skills are not melee, justifying yourself by the fact that
"My weapon never has to touch anything[...]That is not melee"

Though you didn't say that it was the only reason, the way you did put it clearly imply that it is the main reason.


And some melee skills from the start could kill without touching the target.
Hell, leap slam with some modifiers ( even though it's still close to the target ) does not necessarily touch the target either.

Will people want to play an archetype that dooms you to the least efficient things there is ?
Or would GGG plan to just basically destroy everything so that it all goes down to that level of efficiency ?


As much as I would like the game to be slowed down, what you are asking is too extreme, and will never work in Path of Exile, unless GGG is planing to doom their own game.
But fortunately, they are smarter than that.

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allbusiness wrote:

If you're going to say Snorkle has more experience than people and his experience trump everyone's argument

no, more experience doesnt trump what everyone has to say, at all. Whats being said is that if you have little to no experience of the things you are commenting on then what youre saying doesnt mean a great deal and you cant sit there and insist people with a lot of experience in those areas dont know what theyre talking about.

I dont play summons, am I gonna sit there and tell someone like ghazzy whats what when it comes to the balance between summons and another another archetype then tell him he doesnt know what hes talking about when he disagrees with some of the points Im making and tries to explain why theyre wrong? You see me in summons balance threads all over this forum running my mouth like Im some kind of expert? No, you know why? Because Im not just talking to talk, Im not just mouthing off opinions because it makes me feel important, I care about the truth of the conversation and when its something I havent got much worth while experience of and Im talking to someone with a great deal of experience Im gonna shut my mouth and open my ears, learn something, try and actually understand what the person is saying. Im certainly not gonna twist their words in some pathetic, childish effort to try and win some internet text fight because my main agenda is my ego and venting.

not saying thats what youre doing allbusiness, at all, none of that is directed at you mate.

It has nothing to do with it. It's a baseless assumption.

I'm not complaining that some skills aren't melee, I'm saying that, there is a difference even if you're not aware of it.
And those spells and shit with melee tag aren't melee, by definition, which you can find on the internet since you cannot make that conclusion on your own.

Stop with you horrible assumptions. I know you're just trying to look smart but it's embarrassing.
I mean, look at this circus you've made. You're engaging a discussion that you've created by yourself with your shit assumptions (that Leap Slam bit).

You seem to be one of those guys that would claim stupid shit like "ranged is the most efficient playstyle because people don't like playing melee".

People don't want to play melee currently, only real HC melee dudez and noobs are doing it. Because it's not efficient. If it was more efficient then it would have more players. It's that simple.


Asking for Melee Splash' AoE to be efficient/viable is too extreme and would doom the game lmao

The all-knowing Fruz, man you're something. It's like you use this forum just to get rid of your thoughts ASAP. Engaging discussions without an intention to discuss but with an intention to just unload your stuff there and call it a day.

When you get your shit together and actually learn to read and understand what you've read, then I might exchange some posts. But this is plain waste of time.