GGG on Balancing Melee

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

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Thing is, there arent that many great melee skills which are purely phys. Theres shattering steel...and..ugh...thats it?

Shattering Steel doesn't have the melee tag.

I'll be damned, you are right... It is sort of funny isn't it? For elemental hits youre looking at goo' ol' molten strike...where you scale the projectiles anyways...hmm...seems to be a trend here...

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鬼殺し wrote:

Well if those last two posts didn't sum up this thread nicely...

Witty...Witty...I gulped up coffee over my keyboard reading this, but you are absolutely right :)

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Phrazz wrote:

The biggest problems is offense versus defense. No matter how much damage you have as a caster or a ranged character, there's not much room for mistakes. Yes, you oneshot almost everything, but if you play like an ass, you die.

Melee IS lacking - especially in the so-called "clear-speed META", but it still has A LOT of sustainability. Leech. Regen. Larger and larger health pools. If GGG should buff melee, we're closing in on GGG's worst nightmare: "cheezing content through defense".

We've seem countless of times that GGG have no problems letting players cheeze content through offense. But we've also seen countless of times that GGG finds the nerf hammer pretty quick, if defense gets too strong. Why? There's room for too many mistakes if your character is too strong defensively. You can play like an ass, and still "win".

It's hard. It's difficult. But melee needs some love. I'm looking forward to 3.7.

Tanking hits is THE defining characteristic of melee combat. If you tank a Voll slam or a Shaper slam or a similar slow, telegraphed and visually clear skill, you deserve to die regardless if you're melee. HOWEVER, you should be comfortably tanking regular hits from trash packs, no matter how bad the mods are or how deep you're delving. If you need to jump in the face of every mob to deal your damage, then you NEED to be able to take the smaller hits otherwise the entire melee playstyle becomes a Russian roulette.

Melee in PoE is fundamentally broken because it doesn't have the necessary tools to do its job properly. In every other game, melee classes get huge damage mitigation. PoE gets... armor and fortify lol??? The solution to melee is NOT to turn it into the same shitfest that is the rest of this game, just offscreening and oneshotting glorified xp bags. It should be a completely different playstyle that wins through DEFENSE. The melee fantasy is to stand toe to toe with enemies and outlast them. That's not "playing like an ass", that's what playing melee is about in every game that isn't a hack-n-slash or Dark Souls.

The levels of sins one can commit to go straight to hell:

> don't vaxxine your kids

> force your cat on a vegan diet

and the worst of all

> post a reddit screenshot on the poe forums

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ChefoSLR wrote:

The melee fantasy is to stand toe to toe with enemies and outlast them. That's not "playing like an ass", that's what playing melee is about in every game that isn't a hack-n-slash or Dark Souls.

Well, this IS a Hack'n Slash game.

So you want the melee playstyle to completely neglect player skill, focus all on gear - and let you "outlast" everything the game throws at you, besides telegraphed hits? You're right: That IS just a fantasy. While I agree that melee needs some (defensive/offensive) love, I think your fantasy is a little bit... Ambitious, in lack of better words.

Yep, told ya. 3.7 Melee + Berserker.

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Phrazz wrote:

Melee IS lacking - especially in the so-called "clear-speed META",

Tectonic Slam wants to speak with you. Offscreening with "melee" totally lacks in the so-called "clear-speed META"

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Phrazz wrote:

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ChefoSLR wrote:

The melee fantasy is to stand toe to toe with enemies and outlast them. That's not "playing like an ass", that's what playing melee is about in every game that isn't a hack-n-slash or Dark Souls.

Well, this IS a Hack'n Slash game.

So you want the melee playstyle to completely neglect player skill, focus all on gear - and let you "outlast" everything the game throws at you, besides telegraphed hits? You're right: That IS just a fantasy. While I agree that melee needs some (defensive/offensive) love, I think your fantasy is a little bit... Ambitious, in lack of better words.

Hack-and-slash games are about player skill and a level playing field. PoE is the exact opposite - it is 95% statcheck, 5% skill for all but the late endgame bosses. You are being statchecked every time you leap slam into a trash pack and start hitting it with a melee skill. If you're playing a real melee skill and not """""melee"""""" like Tectonic Slam, then you don't have the range or AoE to prevent mobs from hitting you before dying.

And let's not pretend that melee tanking trash mobs will somehow ruin the perfect balance in this otherwise e-sports ready game. PoE is about the worst balanced online game I can think of and seeing as melee currently has no niche and no reason to exist in the meta, I see no reason why "outlasting enemies" shouldn't be its niche. It's different, it's unique to the melee playstyle and it sure as fuck wouldn't dethrone all the degenerate bow and spell builds that don't even interact with the enemies in this game.

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

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Thing is, there arent that many great melee skills which are purely phys. Theres shattering steel...and..ugh...thats it?

Shattering Steel doesn't have the melee tag.

Yes, it's a strange skill.
But when killing bossis it's more melee than Tectonic slam or even Molten Strike - you have to be at 0 distance to hit with most shards. On distance it's a good (not great) sweeper but with mediocre damage - enough for packs, not enough for bosses.

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ChefoSLR wrote:

it is 95% statcheck, 5% skill for all but the late endgame bosses.

This is just bullcrap.

First off, I agree; in games like PoE, gear should matter. And it does. But should gear matter so much that you neglect all forms of player skill? All reasons to be careful? To think? Remove most dangers? because that is what will happen if you can "outlast" everything but telegraphed hits.

We all see Mathil (and others) running around with melee characters, hardly surpassing 5k life, and "never" dies. That IS more than 5% skill, whether you like it or not. Positioning. Flask management. Timing with actives like Focus. Player skill is underrated in PoE. At least more than 5%. And you want to remove that?

Look, I'm not saying melee doesn't need some love. It does. But the goal shouldn't be to "outlast" everything. There wouldn't be much game left.

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Phrazz wrote:

The biggest problems is offense versus defense. No matter how much damage you have as a caster or a ranged character, there's not much room for mistakes. Yes, you oneshot almost everything, but if you play like an ass, you die.

Melee IS lacking - especially in the so-called "clear-speed META", but it still has A LOT of sustainability. Leech. Regen. Larger and larger health pools. If GGG should buff melee, we're closing in on GGG's worst nightmare: "cheezing content through defense".

We've seem countless of times that GGG have no problems letting players cheeze content through offense. But we've also seen countless of times that GGG finds the nerf hammer pretty quick, if defense gets too strong. Why? There's room for too many mistakes if your character is too strong defensively. You can play like an ass, and still "win".

It's hard. It's difficult. But melee needs some love. I'm looking forward to 3.7.

Agreed.

I think melee only needs more skill options and better damage scaling as you level to be closer to spellcaster viability, or at least level of fun.

With regard to 2h weapons, why not give melee a "quiver" as the bow users get. A stat stick as it were.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Melee can't be fixed without making the other options less viable. That's a fact they have to deal with. So long as you can kill stuff safely from ranged or spell use, there's no reason at all to risk getting in close except for the feels of it. Know that. Fixing melee means removing the effectiveness of the alternatives.

All I have to do to prove you wrong is point at molten strike.

Blade flurry was also popular before the stat stick nerf.

But molten strike is not a clearspeed skill. It may have more clearspeed than, say, heavy strike (lol), but it thrives in being nigh-unkillable while also dealing massive dps to bosses.

Melee needs to be more like that. No one expects melee to be the new meta clearspeed mechanic (though consecrated path looks like it was designed to be that, even though it failed to some extent).