GGG on Balancing Melee

"

Mythreindeer wrote:

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

That has been suggested many times. And the word "banner" has even been used - several years ago. Then "banners" came, and had nothing to do with 2-handed weapons :P

As I see it, 2-handed characters are strong beasts. While dualwielders get direct bonuses just for dualwielding, I think 2-handed characters should do the same, within the "strong beasts" theme. Scaling weapon damage, 2-handed characters are lacking both offensively and defensively. So I say; let 2-handed characters double/triple the effect of strength. Should be a start :)

"

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.

Depends on what you consider less viable, if they made melee functionally tankier it'd fix the issues in one go by freeing up passives to allocate to more appropriate nodes. If X is better therefore Y is less viable though then the only thing they can do that doesn't make something less viable is nothing lol.

In my view they could easily buff at least short range melee skills like heavy strike easily. Just e.g. do 400% base dmg instead of 200% base dmg.
They could also buff it with implicit fortify on hit.

Or does someone see why such simple buffs don't work for melee single target short-range skills?

In my view the melee single-target skills should have high dmg. Because you are near the monsters and that is what creates most opportunity for mistake. Ranged with high DPS kills all off-screen and nothing gets even near. With melee on HC you are very near monsters a lot of time and that makes you much more prone to make that 1 single mistake which kills your character!

Edit:
For totem case they could just split base dmg of skill to totem and non-totem use.

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

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.

On the other hand this is in the same context as Storm Brand, a total fire and forget skill which allows you to completely concentrate on moving around whilst it does all the work for you, even going off to find new things to kill without input. (Also totems, traps, etc)


Melee being tanky enough to eat most incoming damage and not care isn't actually functionally different from ranged fire and forget which gets to have the damage all happen way over there and not bother with most of it anyway.

"

Phrazz wrote:

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.

Player skill in a game like this is as much build and gear choice as anything else. Being able to spend the effort to build a character that can face tank 99% of content doesn't take away anything from the game, it adds new options, options you aren't required to take, with trade offs that if done correctly balance things out so that it's not the only way to play. Every other game in the genre I can think of has build options that are essentially immortal, that often involve just walking up to bosses and going AFK for a bit then coming back to collect your loot.

The genre is not about high skill for a large part of the playerbase, it's about quick mindless combat and/or loot pinatas followed by gear and progression analysis and planning. Constantly requiring split second twitch manipulation of your character or face instant death is the current reason melee, actual melee not range melee, is basically non-existent in the game. There's no survivability bonus to speak of for a melee character so there is no reason anyone would find it worthwhile to shove their face into a pack of enemies when they could instead just off screen everything.

I don't see melee ever being popular or "fixed" until defense is buffed or most enemy damage is greatly reduced, and I honestly don't see that ever happening. If I want to play "melee" I play D3 or Grim Dawn.

First off, they need to make other melee skills viable. Whether its a mechanical change, or dps increase. With 6-7 link gloves and helms, its quite feasible to run a clear skill and a boss skill without weapon swapping. (reave flurry before stat stick nerf).

I think most melee skills would require some mechanical change along with at least one helm enchant that was a mechanical multiplier like molten strike. I sincerely hope they do it right in 3.7.

what would people think about having some melee skills usable while moving (similar to how cyclone is)? Most spell and ranged attacks require at least a moment of standing still which generally is where you would die if you do. (obviously not brands).

"

Blakwhysper wrote:

what would people think about having some melee skills usable while moving (similar to how cyclone is)? Most spell and ranged attacks require at least a moment of standing still which generally is where you would die if you do. (obviously not brands).

They did that with the Static Strike rework. People don't seem all that impressed with it. It's currently sitting as the main skill of just 0.1% of builds - https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds

"

Nephalim wrote:

That is not GGG's style. More likely 3.6 will heavily nerf the top tier spells and heavily buff the lower tier ones in order to create a more level playing field for 3.7.

Why would anyone even play that game, tho?

Higher tier spells and ranged attacks are the only thing worth playing right now. If they make good skills as bad as Cleave, holy shit I'm skipping that league and every league after until they make something actually good and fun to play.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Honestly, I'd rather they address the fact that physical damage is currently nothing more than something for elemental damage multipliers to work with. I think *that* would go a long way to giving good old melee a leg-up.

The best melee builds I've made lately were all super heavy reliant on those elemental multipliers combined with significant AoE. Boring as pissfuck and about as visceral as playing a mage.

You must be talking about Tectonic, since there's like 2 melee skills in the game that have AOE wider than 2 pixels - Tectonic and Vaal Reave.

I played Tec Slam in Betrayal and found it meh. It's "charged slam" mechanic kept eating my endurance charges and that's with using all of the available options to consistently generate charges. Damage was kinda ok, survivability was kinda ok, clear speed was shit and build simply cost waaaaaaaay too much for what it provides.

For 10x less cost, you can play Storm Brand and clear 10x faster and be in zero danger due to how wonderful it is mechanically.