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

You want to use a skill that kills one mob at a time. To do that even remotely effectively, it would have to kill one mob at a time very quickly and probably include retargeting mechanics to help you get to and kill the next one mob at a time. But, you can't kill your target any faster than a single hit, and any meta, semi-meta, or even remotely adjacent to meta aoe build will also kill white and blue mobs in one hit, rares in a hit or three, and bosses in seconds. So what's your niche? Killing the rares in one hit instead of two? Killing the boss in 4 seconds instead of 8? That's just not good enough. I can always just invest a few more exalts to get my aoe skill to do the same, all while killing those other 50 mobs at the same time.

AOE/Range and movement speed have gotten out of hand in this game. They would need to massively nerf them in order for true melee abilities to have value. Maybe 4.0 will do something about it, but I wouldn't count on it.

The problem with "true" single target melee skills is that you physically need to walk to an enemy and click on him to punch him in the face. You can have 100% accuracy and still miss by misclicking while the enemy is moving or simply having such a low attack speed that the enemy moved away mid swing. While you miss you are not leeching and die stuck in a worthless swing animation.

AOE skills don't have this problem as you hit the ground and stuff around you die.

The only "true" single tareget skill that works well is flicker strike as it bypasses the issue of physically clicking on an enemy. So the solution to the rest of the single target melee skills is to make flicker strike a support gem for them.

Someone would just chime in and say flicker strike wasn't true melee. It's called "the no true Scotsman" fallacy. You can read up on it on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

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adghar wrote:

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.

Speaking of which, "for Honor" is free on Epic next week.

As for topic, not if you need to manually target things. If you could somehow have "movement skill cast on kill auto-targeting next opponent" e.g. flicker strike but with any skill (hey, why not make it a support?) so that you were hitting stuff in "melee" range WHICH IS THE LENGTH OF YOUR SWORD DAMMIT but moving really quickly (like shield charge or something) then hey that might be fun.

Calling the current skills melee is a bit of a joke. They just made some ranged skills and gave them "melee" tag, and it seems to have satisfied most people.

We're so far beyond "true melee" that even talking about it is directly stupid.

First: "True melee" is subjective.

Second: "True melee" will never compete with the alternatives unless it gets a huge AoE. Cyclone got a huge AoE, and suddenly it's not "true melee" anymore. Figures.

Finally: The game isn't suited for "true melee". Too high density of mobs makes melee FAR inferior to everything else unless, again, AoE. For "true melee" to shine, they would have to rework the whole freakin' game, from monster mechanics, monster density, damage scaling, nerfing spells, nerfing ranged and buffing the hell out of melee.

Not going to happen. Sadly? Arguably.

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Phrazz wrote:

they would have to rework the whole freakin' game, from monster mechanics, monster density,

This. A typical map might have 700-1000 monsters in it. If you want to kill them one at a time, even very efficiently, it's going to take ages (and the other 999 are beating your face in while you do it). You need to kill them 5, 10, 50 at a time. The only solution that makes single target viable is a complete game rework where a map might have 20 total monsters well spread out. Now killing them one at a time is mandatory, whether you do it from range or up close. That's not PoE though. It's a lot closer to something like World of Warcraft raids with bosses and relatively small trash packs in between.

Or a skill system that affords each character more than one main skill.

Uber Elder Farmer Bob wields a high calibre, high power rifle to take down the most dangerous targets. From enraged plated rhino to vast cosmic horror, if you have to pick one tool for the job, and you only get one chance, you want the BFG.

There's also a shotgun in the same closet. Wouldn't that do even better, since charging rhinos and vast sanity-shredding unmakers of creation usually also have adds?

Nah, he has enough sense to learn how to quickly and effectively deploy an ultrasonic perimeter fence that repels little varmints. Hordes of prairie dogs, gophers, locusts, rabid rhoas, potato-stealing zombies, moles, voles, anoles, rogue exiles, and other invasive species, effectively immobilized and downed by the electric shrieking fence (or the poisoned bait, or the fly paper/bug zapper/spray field) whose primary effect is in area denial.

So what's the shotgun for?

It's for inflicting damage on a target you aren't sure you can hit at range, damage you aren't sure will kill it, but will probably whittle it down and inflict some sort of ailment on it.

It's the least effective option in the closet for the types of encounters we see in PoE, although it does great at warning off solicitors, revenuers, and unwelcome visitors of medium size.

If our primary role in the game were to defend our henhouse from fast-moving coyotes or foxes or hawks or Cletus Eggsucker, we would not hesitate to pick up a scattershot item and sting their chops with lead to teach 'em a lesson.

But that's not our primary role. Our role is to a) clear areas and b) take down massive singular entities.

Blood and Sand only partially adjusts for these two roles. At the end of the day, a tactical or assault shotgun is still a shotgun.