Melee builds are complete trash

Melee same level of balance as Life, so nothing will be done by GGG.

Playing a juggernaut build at the moment focusing on stun, leech, regen, massive armor (40k+ with flask and Brass Dome of.c.), endurance charges (9), and immortal call.
It works well and at less than 1EX spent trading I can currently facetank most stuff T9 and below I've tried.

Elemental reflect. Not a problem... Mostly physical damage.
Physical reflect. Not a problem... Endurance charges, leech, regen and immortal call takes care of that.
Kill speed? Not the greatest (35k+ single-target DPS), but as everything is stunned most/all the time, it doesn't matter.

...and I'm currently only L75... Pretty sure it'll do well at higher tiers too when leveled up a bit...

Can it do Shaper and uber Atziri? Possibly not. Might also run into problems with some of the high-tier content with strong mods, but at a very low investment like that, this is what I'd expect.

I think melee is fine... For a very low investment you can create a build that is fun, and lets you have the satisfaction of just walking (well, leap-slamming) in and meting out justice. It may not be perfectly balanced with CI/ES builds, but then, I remember when those sucked and melee ruled.

Perfect balance in a game like this is impossible, and to be honest, not desirable either. It is much better to have changing balance over time so players are challenged to explore new builds as their old ones get weaker.

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Cyzax wrote:

Playing a juggernaut build at the moment focusing on stun, leech, regen, massive armor (40k+ with flask and Brass Dome of.c.), endurance charges (9), and immortal call.
It works well and at less than 1EX spent trading I can currently facetank most stuff T9 and below I've tried.

Elemental reflect. Not a problem... Mostly physical damage.
Physical reflect. Not a problem... Endurance charges, leech, regen and immortal call takes care of that.
Kill speed? Not the greatest (35k+ single-target DPS), but as everything is stunned most/all the time, it doesn't matter.

...and I'm currently only L75... Pretty sure it'll do well at higher tiers too when leveled up a bit...

Can it do Shaper and uber Atziri? Possibly not. Might also run into problems with some of the high-tier content with strong mods, but at a very low investment like that, this is what I'd expect.

I think melee is fine... For a very low investment you can create a build that is fun, and lets you have the satisfaction of just walking (well, leap-slamming) in and meting out justice. It may not be perfectly balanced with CI/ES builds, but then, I remember when those sucked and melee ruled.

Perfect balance in a game like this is impossible, and to be honest, not desirable either. It is much better to have changing balance over time so players are challenged to explore new builds as their old ones get weaker.

try the Esh breachlord with your build. the only thing you have that will help you is leech. everything else is irrelevant. and with your low damage you will have a very rough time

and 'facetanking T9 and below' is not really worth braging about - esp with these stats. 8 mod shaped strand (that is pretty much guaranteed to roll brutal elemental mods) with breach and you will quickly change your mind. esp with this damage of yours

'melee is fine' (in dried lake)

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sidtherat wrote:

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Cyzax wrote:

My post

try the Esh breachlord with your build. the only thing you have that will help you is leech. everything else is irrelevant. and with your low damage you will have a very rough time

and 'facetanking T9 and below' is not really worth braging about - esp with these stats. 8 mod shaped strand (that is pretty much guaranteed to roll brutal elemental mods) with breach and you will quickly change your mind. esp with this damage of yours

'melee is fine' (in dried lake)

*shrug*

I think you misread... I said 'fine', not 'balanced on par with other possible types of play'....

Please read this part from the above again:
"Perfect balance in a game like this is impossible, and to be honest, not desirable either. It is much better to have changing balance over time so players are challenged to explore new builds as their old ones get weaker."

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Cyzax wrote:

...and I'm currently only L75... Pretty sure it'll do well at higher tiers too when leveled up a bit...

Pretty sure it won't. You'll begin to struggle as long as you hit the low red maps. You will painfully crawl through the game with insufficient clear speed, low exp gain, and the false feeling of tankiness which is going to immediately let you down at the moment you face high chaos/ele damage, or nasty map mods in general.

Bosses will become utter PITA and will take ageis to kill. Some will tear you apart no matter what. Even phys attack based ones. At a certain point you will progress so slowly, that you'd desperately want a gear upgrade. Especially the weapon. But it will cost you an arm and a leg and it's not gonna ever happen. You'll try T13-15 out of curiosity just to realize your build is impossible to cut hrough it without godly gear, or you have to play them white and painfully slowly. Guardians/shaper/atziri would be completely out of reach.
Around lvl 85-87 you'll just give up and will try something else.

Been there, seen this.

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Cyzax wrote:

Please read this part from the above again:
"Perfect balance in a game like this is impossible, and to be honest, not desirable either. It is much better to have changing balance over time so players are challenged to explore new builds as their old ones get weaker."

this is your version of the reality

balance is possible. ggg would just have to do anything to achieve that. saying it is not desirable is just pushing it too far

things like HoWA, BLS, life/ES, Guardian and several other broken things are not 'complex interactions'. these are just inexcusable blunders

and the power creep you mention in the last sentence is typical for f2p games. when the game itself is not good enough to keep players playing - you just give them more power so they feed on the 'achievement'. short-term goals with no long-term sustainability

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Docbp87 wrote:

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MagicalMove wrote:

same with me

have all res good dps but i am not able to even fight atziri

on the other side i run tier 14 maps

i wanna play melee but ... :P

Not being able to do normal atziri, but being able to do Tier 14+ maps makes me think it is probably just an issue with knowledge of the encounter. Familiarize yourself with the mechanics of the fight.

yeah if you have the damage and defenses to do T14 maps no problem and especially with nasty rolls then you should be able to curb stomp normal atziri blindfolded. The Apex just has mechanics you have to learn. Especially in the actual Atziri encounter. And to some extent the vaal's and trio. But hell with enough damage the mechanics begin to not even matter anymore.

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sidtherat wrote:

and 'facetanking T9 and below' is not really worth braging about - esp with these stats. 8 mod shaped strand (that is pretty much guaranteed to roll brutal elemental mods) with breach and you will quickly change your mind.

i wish Leaguestones worked in Standard so I could post a vid of a melee build using 1c uniques facetanking elemental mod breaches in T13+, unfortunately all I got in that category is a vid of a melee build using 1c uniques facetanking 2 elemental damage mod T15, sad

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adghar wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

and 'facetanking T9 and below' is not really worth braging about - esp with these stats. 8 mod shaped strand (that is pretty much guaranteed to roll brutal elemental mods) with breach and you will quickly change your mind.

i wish Leaguestones worked in Standard so I could post a vid of a melee build using 1c uniques facetanking elemental mod breaches in T13+, unfortunately all I got in that category is a vid of a melee build using 1c uniques facetanking 2 elemental damage mod T15, sad

Yeah honestly i think Melee does better than Bow when it comes to defenses anyway. My Bow builds struggle defensively a lot more than my Melee builds. Guess its all in how you build them.

Dude chill you are not supposed to be playing melee. Like seriously you have to stop playing melee or they will find you.

To be honest you are asking for the moon for melee anyway.
You need to look around and check for those eagles

As for me I have long since lost my mind and so I will keep playing melee because they can find me and i do not care..."do you see the eagles jimmy!? the eagles are coming Jimmy...we will be saved!!! there will be balance in the land!!! (little did he know that the eagles are moderately over sized pigeons and Jimmy is just a stick with some leaves on it that he had picked up on his journey)"


Seriously they do not know what to do with melee because they do not understand it. they do not understand why people play it. which is lead to them doing whatever they can to keep people from playing it or making people play melee adjacent/pseudo melee. Why do you think melee has all the risk with no reward/payoff still? why do you think V. Blood has had no changes ever? why do you think they still have yet to fix melee targeting (yeah it is not like Torchlight 2, D2, D3, Grim Dawn, Lost Ark, etc. have not figured melee targeting out. I have had better melee targeting in Gauntlet Legends yeah I said it.) why do you think they have put in "melee" skills into the game that do not require targeting?

You need to chill, take a deep breath, and get ready for 3.0 where you will be out there throwing shade like the rest of us melee players. We all know they are not going to fix/balance shit they are going to throw threshold jewels at the problem and call it a day. it might be a 5% thing again just this time even more slaps in the face.