'Strike' melee skills without Ancestral Call and splash are STILL useless

so.. melee rework?

such rework, much wow? no.

targeting system is STILL deep in the 90's. you have applied primitive bandaid - increased weapon range - and kept the flawed system in place. your target acquisition algo for player's attack is WORTHLESS 90% of the time.

i challenge anyone to play 'strike' skill (Dual Strike? Heavy Strike?) with non-foil weapon (normal sword is ok) to 90 without Ancestral Call. youll lose your mind before you reach lvl 40

and before 'you need accuracy' - i had accuracy 100% vs both types, easy.

it all goes away with Ancestral Call that simply does what normal targeting should do - pick targets in range even if the target is not the one directly clicked. requirement to actually precisely click a mob when this game promotes auto-play is just stupid.

current situation FORCES players using Strike skills to -1 link setup as one link is permanently used up by Ancestral Call.

i expected this patch to close the gap between POE combat and Diablo 3 combat - oh i was wrong, it is the same clunky mess (+cancelling that is in early Alpha)



and then is the splash situation. well, it sucks. there is nothing more to say - this small 'cone' is just pathetic and does absolutely nothing

i challenge anyone to provide a demo of Strike character doing well vs legion (poison prolif does not count, flicker is out, Static Strike is out) without using built in splash - relying solely on the much hyped 'cone AOE'


that wouldnt be that bad if Strike skills did like 300% damage of AOE ones. but they do the same damage. have no AOE, have outdated and clunky targeting and on top of that got gutted attack speed

melee rework: "PLAY CYCLONE"

sad bit: that was the first and last melee rework in POE's history. i expect exactly ZERO improvements in this area in following years. the 'fix melee' task is already closed isnt it..

Melee MUST have WAY more life and defence by default to be in line with any nonmelee builds and has as big aoe as any meta non melee builds has

You'd think that they would understand the main problem with these skills in PoE. At least for me, it seems like you have to expend so much just to make these namelock/strike skills become an AoE skill. At that point, why not just pick up an actual AoE skill. There are many options to make these kind of skills function as both a clear and single target.

I believe this is the 3rd time they have worked on the targeting behavior for these kind of skills and it never solves the biggest issue with them. This game left those skills behind years ago. They aren't unplayable.. but it they always feel worse to play because you have to commit your tree and gems to force the skill to clear packs.

I wanted to start with a glacial hammer or heavy strike build but they still felt bad to play.

There is also a bug which leads to missing the first hit even if Resolute Technique is specced.

If you think about it, how hard can it really to just slap on target acquisition from multistrike on every strike skill. If you clicked on something, fine, if you haven't, just pick a target from a 180 degree angle in front if any is within strike range, if not, move forward.

Never expected that strike arc thing to replace splash or ancestral, I think it's supposed to be there just to make the game start feel less clunky. If anyone wanted to see 2h melee work like in TL2, yeah, fat chance of that.

TL2 is a modern game

i would like POE melee combat to feel just as good as Diablo 2's one feels..

it is NOT rose tinted nostalgia, D2 melee targeting REALLY feels better. Grim Dawn, D3 etc are miles ahead but lets keep our goals reasonable..


NOTE: Dual Strike was mostly immune to 'first strike' bug, you attack so slowly that there is ample time to assess each and every hit. so no, i was not affected by that bug

I suggest:

1. Enemies that hit by your melee hit also suffer slash damage from melee splash.

2. Ancestral call always deal 2 additional hits. That means if there is only one enemy, it will be hit 3 times by your 1 skill use. (and needs to adjust its less damage multiplier)

So it can make strike melee skill more usable and no need to change gems during map running.

I had a plan, grosse plan. Use heavy strike berserker with all that damage doubling goodness. In act 3 I couldnt do it no more, swinging in the air next to group of monsters while they are smacking my balls done it. How GGG doesn't see what a piece of crap targeting still is...Very disappointed, murmured to myself as I always do and went forced cyclone. Yey, so many option for melee...

you CAN do heavy strike AS LONG as you get +range weapons and passives as you go

i have sub-optimal HS character with all this Double Damage stuff (that PoB seems unable to calculate) and the damage is there and it is a very good Delver

but clear speed on open maps.. not nice
+ knockback. hate it



dear GGG - please do us a favor and play Facebreaker Infernal Blow (you can copy my character) with and without Ancestral Call.

your melee rework did nothing to help this character. the target acquisition is GARBAGE, the +range bandaid is just that - bandaid. i cannot see how you consider current situation 'fixed'

Also Multistrike is useless