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

+1

Did anyone expect the to ACTUALLY REWORK SINGLE TARGET MELEE "THE RIGHT WAY"???

It seems you granted them too much credit (I personally became skeptical a long time ago, when they were "totally missing the mark" with the first rework, and I'm still sad they didn't prove me wrong).

They will need to keep working on these aspects until at least 4.0, so we might get a more "fluid" REAL MELEE experience up to D2 level (not even talk about TL2, D3 or Grim Dawn, heck not to even mention Titan Quest), but their ineptitude to even properly adjust the speed of the melee skills post the devastating (but necessary) attack speed nerf to Multistrike. Add to that the accuracy problems, the lack of "properly" scaling the damage on Multistrike second and third hits, and we can dread their "future improvements" regarding melee.

These days you're not safe with an "unnerfable" skill tree build, as the supports get gutted without proper balance passes... Sure, keeping 10 APS as the "norm" for a moderate to fast attack speed based build was mandated by no animation canceling, but today, any Multistrike build feels like hitting with a wet noodle on all the hits even if it's noticeably slower than before... They really outdid themselves... Not to even mention the 2 handed weapons "buff"...

The best thing that they might do for REAL MELEE now, is to remove all the single target namelocking skills for a further rework and/or combine them ALL with Melee Splash/Ancestrall Call (Multistrike should have always been an Ancestral Call that hit the same enemy since Ancestral Call got introduced)...

But pride and stubbornness seems to govern TencentGGG as they have the wrong mentality that "they always know best" and it's "their way or the highway"...

The single best thing that this "sad melee rework" introduced was the updates for the passive skill tree on the duelist are, and if they keep reworking the other areas, I would really like for those that focused on the skill tree to simply get involved into making melee "feel and play like REAL MELEE". A large part of their team needs to be tasked to REPRODUCE IDENTICALLY the control from D3/TL2/Grim Dawn for the melee combat and FOCUS ON SOLELY THAT UNTIL THEY GET IT RIGHT (hopefully before, or as late as 4.0)...

A single-handed axe has 11 range.
A 2h Maul has 14 range.

That inherent AOE thing was never thought upon. They didn't want to upset godly builds, so it's another "Guess I'll try glacial hammer. Oh nvm I got Frostbolt which can always hit AND pierce everything."

There goes another Templar try with a mere 1 attack in 2 secs, with 70% hit chance. Cos you know, we never talked about those stuff in suggestions forum.

ST skills, even with these improvements, will never, and have never, been capable of clearing. Either hot-swap AoE support gems or have a second skill for clearing, saving this one for uniques/bosses. My original main was a dual strike dualist. Act 3 normal was IMPOSSIBLE to clear. I'm talking OPEN BETA days. Melee Splash made it possible to play the character (I actually MS Dual Strike AND Viper Strike on him cuz why not poison too with my baked in bleeds). Their buffs, however, should definitely help towards giving them the kind of damage and utility they need. Haven't tried them seriously yet this patch, I wanted to try Blade Flurry as I never had the chance to try it so I started using Double Strike. While the improvements are noticeable, it'll never be good for clear. I'd do another melee but the game kept giving me cold spell and spell crit gear so my 2nd character uses Ice Spear (and the only reason act bosses take more than 5 seconds is because of their mechanics and multiple stages holy shit this build is nasty, Arakaali full to 0 <3 seconds but didn't die cuz she had to munch on Silk still)

clarification: melee skills DID NOT GET buffs..

even skills that got flat phys damage gained around 0% net damage.

why? check attack speed. some skills got -30% attack speed..

so no, there were no buffs at all (apart some exceptions ofc)

"

sidtherat wrote:

clarification: melee skills DID NOT GET buffs..

even skills that got flat phys damage gained around 0% net damage.

why? check attack speed. some skills got -30% attack speed..

so no, there were no buffs at all (apart some exceptions ofc)

Thats exactly what I pointed out when patch notes came out.

Additionaly take into account that hiting more often (so having 100% dmg x 3 versus 300% x 1 during the same frame of time) is much better in terms of scaling all other functions avaliable in the current game : all on hit effect, life/mana steal stacking, positioning, easier to get out of stunlock etc.

So actualy most melee skills were nerfed if you take that into account.

@topic

Strike skills rework was a failure and they should simply remove cleave from the game and use its animation as a base of all Strike skills.
Maybe it is not super big aoe, but its more reliable.

"

herflik wrote:

Thats exactly what I pointed out when patch notes came out.

Also, now 2h is even more doodoo than it was, hard to believe nobody ran any numbers by this change but there it is.

"

sidtherat wrote:

so.. melee rework?

such rework, much wow? no.

melee rework: "PLAY CYCLONE"

I couldn't have put it better myself. Cyclone gets rework and basically that's it. Oh I forgot. The first three acts have tougher bosses so you can't facetank and need to move now. More melee rework there.