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

I suppose you could use two skills, one for area clear and one for single target. Use Elder/Shaper items for pseudo 5/6 links. Or just drop the notion that you're going to be competitive.

What most people don't realize is that skills like Heavy Strike, Viper Strike, etc are usually left neglected because they're supposed to be skills you start out with in Act 1 before you're introduced to way better and complex skills.

It's why the Legion league was focused on making them more fun for Act 1 but not necessarily making them viable as fast currency farming tools.

Regardless, they need to get rid of the damage penalty from Ancestral Call at the very least.

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Llama8 wrote:

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).

Did all of them already have it and they just changed the wording? I started last league, and I hardly paid attention to most of the skills stats. I was just reading what they did then trying them out if it sounded cool.

But either way, it's still got less. It's gonna be 20% slower than if I used any skill without the less speed. Which is a retardedly unnecessary amount of speed. A regular skill that isn't meant to be fast should be getting like 5 APS if you aren't going all out on speed.

Just nerf ridiculous amount of AoE / projectile range in combination with damage output some skills have.*

Btw it´s fine to have both singl target and pack clearing skills.

You can also try some proliferation with singl target skills to clear packs.

*But it seems People and GGG are fine with bum bum style skills … :(

Its already been said but the answer is no, the only way to make melee match ranged/area skills is to rebalance either damage, defences or both to a stage where melee has an advantage that matters.

Currently you could multiply heavy strikes damage by 10 and it still wouldn't compete, why? Because ranged already melts bosses as well as offscreening lol.

Part of the reason speed meta has been carried so far in PoE is its the only metric with any growth anymore. Damage becomes pretty irrelevant past like a million but its fairly trivial to reach that value now and defences are all terrible in the face of instantly deleting anything you come across.

What exactly would it help to
Just nerf ridiculous amount of AoE / projectile range in combination with damage output some skills have.
?
It would only make the screen cleaning skills no longer good and this should help the melee skills to - not look so bad as before?

Guess it was just a joke.
It is never a good idea to nerf working mechanics just to make the not working ones a little less not worth to use.

Perhaps give the melee skills that also do AoE damage like some spells the same screen clearing kill effect.
But it is not just AoE at all what makes difference. The biggest thing is, if you are range class or build, you do not have the need to stand right before the enemy and face tank his hits. Well good melee skillers can stand and take, so the advantage from spell casters is to have some range between, because try to facetank with them, could end quickly.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

What most people don't realize is that skills like Heavy Strike, Viper Strike, etc are usually left neglected because they're supposed to be skills you start out with in Act 1 before you're introduced to way better and complex skills.

I strongly doubt GGG see it this way. If they do, that's pretty weak design. I would argue the 'better and complex' is in the support gem diversity, not the core skills.

This would have been the case years ago, but there is definitely a progression for the main melee skills. You start out with some kind of single target namelock, you can then get what's still a namelock but now it fires a projectile. Or you get Groundslam or Cleave, which are AoE but quite small at that point. Perforate is clearly meant to be an early game leveling skill. Later on Sunder and Lacerate become accessible which is a notable improvement to your AoE.

Act 3 is when you start to see skills like Earthquake, Blade Flurry, Cyclone. You know, all of the things that are strong (relatively to other Melee skills at least) and nobody wants to acknowledge as melee because they're some of the better skills.

That, and support gems which add versatility are often considered a disadvantage because they take up resources to bring more simple skills up to what skills are already doing without them.

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Gannicus2491 wrote:

What exactly would it help to
Just nerf ridiculous amount of AoE / projectile range in combination with damage output some skills have.
?
It would only make the screen cleaning skills no longer good and this should help the melee skills to - not look so bad as before?

Guess it was just a joke.
It is never a good idea to nerf working mechanics just to make the not working ones a little less not worth to use.

No not a joke. What working mechanic are you talking about? Killing two screens with one click?
Yeah the current meta thinks this way.
The game has been designed in a different way since beginning but has changed.

No. Just enjoy Path Of Cyclone while it lasts. And Cyclone is not a melee skill.

Yeah dude, fullscreen AoE fifteen character lengths away tooooootally fits the fantasy of melee.

To answer the question, no. Blame clearspeed meta. Bandaid it all you want but true melee is inherently opposed to 2 minute maps.

I've made Double Strike almost feel kind of good, but it's still basically just a cyclone build purposely gimped by my skill choice. And it's still worse than TS or ED.