Is there any way for 'true' melee skills to match ranged/area skills in high end content?

From comments here and builds on PoeNinja it seems that true melee skills (like Heavy Strike, Dual Strike, Viper Strike, etc.) are shunned at higher levels.

Is there anything that can be done to bring them closer to par without breaking something else? I can't think of any approach that wouldn't have significant downsides:

- Add Vaal versions of these skills designed for clearing. This could feel like a bit of a copout depending on the Vaal skill mechanics.

- Add stance interactions to true melee skills like Perforate has. Like Vaal skills this could feel like a copout depending on the mechanics involved.

- Add reservation skills that greatly increase true melee clearing ability without sacrificing too much damage (e.g. giant corpse explosion on kill with a strike hit, plus more strike hit damage). This would pigeonhole true melee into taking these skills.

- Bump up true melee damage so much that we can link them with Splash/Call and still have competitive damage. This could make gem hot swapping far too powerful (and personally speaking, I don't like how gem swapping feels).

Do any more experienced players have better ideas, or solutions to the problems with these ideas?

Make Multistrike... yknow... hit multiple times in rapid succession.

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PoofySleeves wrote:

Is there any way for 'true' melee skills to match ranged/area skills in high end content?

No.

Path of Exile has had a lawnmower meta for about 2-4 years now. You cannot lawnmower efficiently by cutting one blade of grass at a time.

The solutions you proposed could "work," at which point they transform 'true' melee skills into 'not-true' melee skills. They'd be variations of Blade Flurry and Tectonic Slam and such.

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adghar wrote:

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PoofySleeves wrote:

Is there any way for 'true' melee skills to match ranged/area skills in high end content?

No.

Path of Exile has had a lawnmower meta for about 2-4 years now. You cannot lawnmower efficiently by cutting one blade of grass at a time.

The solutions you proposed could "work," at which point they transform 'true' melee skills into 'not-true' melee skills. They'd be variations of Blade Flurry and Tectonic Slam and such.

Yeah I figured. Doesn't feel right to 'fix' true melee skills by basically making them not true melee where it counts.

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cimmerian32 wrote:

Make Multistrike... yknow... hit multiple times in rapid succession.

You mean make the function actually fit the name? HERESY!

IMO it's a bit silly to worry about 'true melee' in the current game state. For Path of Exile, such a thing provides no tactical benefit - but tactical benefit is not the only thing that contributes to the enjoyment of a skill. Graphics and animations are a thing! Personally, The melee-ness of a skill depends on how much it feels like I am hitting enemies with a weapon. Blade Flurry with large AOE? Not so much. Lacerate? Very yes. Lightning Strike projectile scaling? Not really... etc. That's where you should look for 'true melee' in POE.

If you want 'true melee' as in single-target combat depth, you'd best look for other games such as For Honor or Dark Souls. Or you could do it in POE and just clear maps more slowly than more efficient skills, you don't always have to "match" the competition in an ARPG, as solo is a core part of ARPG experience.

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cimmerian32 wrote:

Make Multistrike... yknow... hit multiple times in rapid succession.

Multistrike still does this. They just made it balanced, so now fast skills hit fast, slow ones don't. Multistrike will probably make some of the skills faster than they were before.

Edit: Well I was wrong about that last part. They gave every skill that's not channeling and Flicker Strike less attack speed. I don't know if you can use Multistrike with Flicker Strike, but it would still be like 20% slower than before. I still don't mind it anyways, it doesn't even feel like melee when you're throwing out 15 APS. Edit edit: Actually 15 sounds low, I'm at about 11 on a cleave raider, and cleave gets 20% less attack speed.

since my first try melee in PoE, I have played different classes and ascendancies with cyclone builds. My builds are no copy paste from guides and I try to give them a personal note, even it makes them shitty sometimes.
If I should rank the classes or playstyles for different points it would be: spell casters are strong and could make a huge damage. Like arc or other elemental skills, another group are the summoners and they are great and can make the game easy for you, when the army is doing the kills for you. Sometimes it could be laggy.
Or also very strong the trapsters and tricksters brigade.
And there are the strong ones, that show that melee is not a bad choice and could handle the enemies.
Since we have a lot vaal skills for melee, it could make a lot of fun to use those killers.
I would say, melee is very fun to play and maybe some spell casters are still stronger, the feeling with melee to kill them all, is much more fun.

Perhaps if the would ever nerf the damage range in AoE, so the damage could no longer kill enemies two screen far away, maybe then melee could rise in ranking, but please no nerfs, when there need to be a change, buff the melee and not nerf other playstyles.

The only way to make melee work is to revert 2.6 iaoe changes and allow melee skills to scale damage dispersion with herald of ash.

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BloodPuddles420 wrote:

Edit: Well I was wrong about that last part. They gave every skill that's not channeling and Flicker Strike less attack speed. I don't know if you can use Multistrike with Flicker Strike, but it would still be like 20% slower than before. I still don't mind it anyways, it doesn't even feel like melee when you're throwing out 15 APS. Edit edit: Actually 15 sounds low, I'm at about 11 on a cleave raider, and cleave gets 20% less attack speed.

From (in the skill balance bit): Legion patch notes.
"All melee skills now have an Attack Speed multiplier built into the gem. This is functionally identical to the effects of the "more attack speed" or "less attack speed" stat lines that were previously on some gems."

So that less attack speed you're getting is no different to the previous attack speed you had (all other things being equal, not counting multistrike).