GGG on Balancing Melee

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codetaku wrote:

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.

Both Blade Flurry and Molten are bosskillers, and both are trash for mapping. Blade Flurry was killed for me with the aoe nerf, I'm not playing a skill with 1 pixel AOE.

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though consecrated path looks like it was designed to be that, even though it failed to some extent).

Another trash skill for clear.

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toyotatundra wrote:

Another trash skill for clear.

God it must be boring to be such a slave to clear speed and META. "What I want to do is irrelevant. What I have to do, is everything". Takes away every charm in games like this.

Oh, wait, I forgot something... Yes: "IMO".

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鬼殺し wrote:

Nope, I've never even equipped Tectonic Slam. I was using the revamped Elemental Hit actually.

As melee? I saw Quin play it on stream, and meh, I wouldnt count it as a good skill in it's melee version. Nice damage numbers, tho!

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Phrazz wrote:

God it must be boring to be such a slave to clear speed and META. "What I want to do is irrelevant. What I have to do, is everything". Takes away every charm in games like this.

I'm not slave to meta. I play melee builds in every single league and melee hasnt been meta since... I dont actually even remember when. Game has been dominated by ranged attacks + spells for years already. Most fun melee I played was poison+bleed EQ, it cleared faster than most ranged that occasionally joined me when I opened public parties. GGG is welcome to make melee worth playing again, I welcome the day that happens.


P.S. This patch was the first league I went non-melee. I did Tectonic, Arc, a little bit of Storm Brand and Winter Orb. Storm Brand was the best, Tectonic the worst.

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toyotatundra wrote:

GGG is welcome to make melee worth playing again, I welcome the day that happens.

They are welcome to do that, but hopefully not in the way some people want them to: Just increase damage and AoE, so melee plays the same way as either ranged or caster. That would be a mistake. That would just result in more diversity when it comes to skills, less diversity when it comes to playstyles.

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Phrazz wrote:

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toyotatundra wrote:

GGG is welcome to make melee worth playing again, I welcome the day that happens.

They are welcome to do that, but hopefully not in the way some people want them to: Just increase damage and AoE, so melee plays the same way as either ranged or caster. That would be a mistake. That would just result in more diversity when it comes to skills, less diversity when it comes to playstyles.

Anything short of that will make melee relegated to bosskillers only. I guess should be ok for Delve too.

My issue here is that melee already can perform this role, people do bosses with few melee skills such as Molten Strike or Blade Flurry etc. Survivability boosts for melee wouldnt hurt, in fact, I think they are needed. GGG tried with Fortify all that time ago, they need to try again.

Where melee sucks is clear speed + frankly, it's poor value for money. There's no law that says melee must be x times slower or worse than anything else. GGG just made it that way with their nerfs, nerfs and some more nerfs they gave to melee while making all other builds more powerful at same time. It's time to start undoing this shit they created.

If they give melee a "role", they have to take that role away from spells and range. They shouldn't have any style of play that excels at all aspects of the game. Once they did, they've worked themselves into a corner. You can't have a playstyle "viable" if there's another playstyle that is better than it in every aspect.

So what the "balance melee" crowd really wants is a game that's easy enough to beat no matter what you do. That's fine. Own that. And don't come back and complain that the game has become too easy once they "balance" it.

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toyotatundra wrote:

Where melee sucks is clear speed + frankly, it's poor value for money. There's no law that says melee must be x times slower or worse than anything else. GGG just made it that way with their nerfs, nerfs and some more nerfs they gave to melee while making all other builds more powerful at same time. It's time to start undoing this shit they created.

While it's important to make melee a valid choice, and think it's also important to separate the play styles. If clear speed is everything one think about, one wouldn't care, I understand that. But this game IS so much more than clear speed for a lot of people. I think it's alpha omega to separate the play styles of ranged, casters and melee.

And yes, one of the largest drawbacks for melee as of now, is value for money. The new crafting system has made that a little bit better. But you can't go all the way one a <1 ex build, as you can with certain other archetypes.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

If they give melee a "role", they have to take that role away from spells and range. They shouldn't have any style of play that excels at all aspects of the game. Once they did, they've worked themselves into a corner. You can't have a playstyle "viable" if there's another playstyle that is better than it in every aspect.

With enough money anything is viable. Melee is too. But I get more for my money playing anything else.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

So what the "balance melee" crowd really wants is a game that's easy enough to beat no matter what you do. That's fine. Own that. And don't come back and complain that the game has become too easy once they "balance" it.

What this melee guy wants is melee to be competitive and more in-line with every other build archetype.

Btw I dont think game is too easy. When everyone was getting one-shotted by syndicate I dont remember anyone saying game is too easy. I do remember streamers rerolling every 5 minutes, and on day 2 all the hardcore players locking away syndicate encounters in research, tho.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

If they give melee a "role", they have to take that role away from spells and range. They shouldn't have any style of play that excels at all aspects of the game. Once they did, they've worked themselves into a corner. You can't have a playstyle "viable" if there's another playstyle that is better than it in every aspect.

But that's the point. Melee is bested in every aspect right now. We want exactly what this paragraph is getting at--for the role of "tanky bosskilling" to be taken away from other styles and given to Melee. It should be the one thing Melee excels at. Leave clearspeed to the ranged and spell builds. Hell, spell builds can even be the glass cannon boss killers. But right now they're the tankier bosskillers too.

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So what the "balance melee" crowd really wants is a game that's easy enough to beat no matter what you do. That's fine. Own that. And don't come back and complain that the game has become too easy once they "balance" it.

What? Make bosskilling actually fucking hard for ranged attackers. Make melee suck at clearing maps quickly on the push to 100. It already is, so no need to change that. It just needs to be more defensive and deal more damage. That won't make the game "easy no matter how you play it", it'll just give some people a reason to play melee. (namely, the people that wanna farm bosses)