instead of 3.9 bow rework we should get a 3.9 melee rework 2.0

We're all talking in a Grognak thread right now. This is something like the fourth one I've seen this Lolozori dude make bitching about a bow redux instead of "MELEE REWORK 2.0 MAKE MELEE GR8 4 1NCE"

All this "we just want melee to have a point" stuff sidesteps an issue that is, so far as I know, unique to Path of Exile. That being, with hundreds of different skills and many thousands of tree variations even discounting the billions of "take this ten-point node instead of that one" switches, the fact that support gems are not generally locked to specific build classes, and complete commonality of gear...anything they give one archetype will inevitably trickle out to others.

Skitterbots, for example. Cool little Tech Bros that run around and make your mines and traps explode, and debuff enemies some while they do it. Great booster for miners, makes trapping less utterly dependent on Chain Reaction. They also run around and chill/shock everything near them, which makes them popular for minion builds, too. They were not even slightly intended for Zomboid Hordes or Golemancers or the like, but those builds use them with, arguably, even greater effectiveness than their native mine/trap Techboi builds.

Melee has the same point as everything else - kill shit, take their loot. If you like the style and feel of a melee build, then make one. It's easier than ever to carry your builds to the next level these days, melee included. But half the melee skills in the game blur the lines between "melee" and "spell", while several spells blur the line in turn. Blade Vortex is a spell, no question - but it's one that requires that whole Armpit Range thing and all the issues attendant thereof.

Popular builds like CWC/CoC Cyclone, Mjolnir/Cospri's Malice, and also just regular Cast on Crit minus the Cyclone blur the weapon/spellcaster split even more, making it difficult to build melee survivability tools that are JUST for melee, only melee, REAL MAAAAAN MELEE only, no shitty caster or archer need apply - because those tools are both difficult to deny to hybrid builds and also just as valid for those builds.

Grinding Gear put the Defense skills in the game in 3.7, gave us Steelskin and reworks to Molten Shell and Immortal Call that everybody has since ignored, despite the fact that those skills are now actually really good. Yes, they require timing and effort to utilize, but damn can they do their jobs. Even better, we got a huge swath of both improvements to existing movement skills and new movement skills altogether.

I maintain that Dash - simple, humble, click-and-scoot Dash - is possibly one of the greatest additions to the Path of Exile skill roster in ever. ANY build can use it, regardless of weapon or skill choice, the cooldown is low enough that it's available when you need it even with only modest Dex and a sub-20 gem, and it does exactly what you need such a skill to do - scoots you out of the way of Bigg Gnasty Owchie Schyte with a quickness. I love Dash, especially in conjunction with movement skills that traverse areas better but are much slower, like Blink Arrow, Leap Slam, or Lightning Warp. It has made Path of Exile at least two hundred and thirteen percent more responsive, engaging, and fun to play, and yet I don't think anybody else even remembers it exists. Because having to move away from a target FOR ANY REASON is just the absolute height of completely and utterly unacceptable for REAL MAAAAAN MELEE folks.

Y'all have the bloody tools. You can make REAL MAAAAAN MELEE do what you want it to. There's no reason you can't. This idea that damage has to drop off to 5% or less of its base value the moment you move out of Facebreaker distance to the target is absolutely ludicrous. Yes, DPS has gone nuts with maximized streamer builds that can erase Uber Elder in fifteen seconds, but that is an unfortunate byproduct of the fundamental way path of Exile is built. if you want that shit to go away? They'd have to eliminate the vast majority of the build customizability and depth of choice they built into the game, and ain't nobody worth listening to wants that.

"

1453R wrote:

Spoiler

We're all talking in a Grognak thread right now. This is something like the fourth one I've seen this Lolozori dude make bitching about a bow redux instead of "MELEE REWORK 2.0 MAKE MELEE GR8 4 1NCE"

All this "we just want melee to have a point" stuff sidesteps an issue that is, so far as I know, unique to Path of Exile. That being, with hundreds of different skills and many thousands of tree variations even discounting the billions of "take this ten-point node instead of that one" switches, the fact that support gems are not generally locked to specific build classes, and complete commonality of gear...anything they give one archetype will inevitably trickle out to others.

Skitterbots, for example. Cool little Tech Bros that run around and make your mines and traps explode, and debuff enemies some while they do it. Great booster for miners, makes trapping less utterly dependent on Chain Reaction. They also run around and chill/shock everything near them, which makes them popular for minion builds, too. They were not even slightly intended for Zomboid Hordes or Golemancers or the like, but those builds use them with, arguably, even greater effectiveness than their native mine/trap Techboi builds.

Melee has the same point as everything else - kill shit, take their loot. If you like the style and feel of a melee build, then make one. It's easier than ever to carry your builds to the next level these days, melee included. But half the melee skills in the game blur the lines between "melee" and "spell", while several spells blur the line in turn. Blade Vortex is a spell, no question - but it's one that requires that whole Armpit Range thing and all the issues attendant thereof.

Popular builds like CWC/CoC Cyclone, Mjolnir/Cospri's Malice, and also just regular Cast on Crit minus the Cyclone blur the weapon/spellcaster split even more, making it difficult to build melee survivability tools that are JUST for melee, only melee, REAL MAAAAAN MELEE only, no shitty caster or archer need apply - because those tools are both difficult to deny to hybrid builds and also just as valid for those builds.

Grinding Gear put the Defense skills in the game in 3.7, gave us Steelskin and reworks to Molten Shell and Immortal Call that everybody has since ignored, despite the fact that those skills are now actually really good. Yes, they require timing and effort to utilize, but damn can they do their jobs. Even better, we got a huge swath of both improvements to existing movement skills and new movement skills altogether.

I maintain that Dash - simple, humble, click-and-scoot Dash - is possibly one of the greatest additions to the Path of Exile skill roster in ever. ANY build can use it, regardless of weapon or skill choice, the cooldown is low enough that it's available when you need it even with only modest Dex and a sub-20 gem, and it does exactly what you need such a skill to do - scoots you out of the way of Bigg Gnasty Owchie Schyte with a quickness. I love Dash, especially in conjunction with movement skills that traverse areas better but are much slower, like Blink Arrow, Leap Slam, or Lightning Warp. It has made Path of Exile at least two hundred and thirteen percent more responsive, engaging, and fun to play, and yet I don't think anybody else even remembers it exists. Because having to move away from a target FOR ANY REASON is just the absolute height of completely and utterly unacceptable for REAL MAAAAAN MELEE folks.

Y'all have the bloody tools. You can make REAL MAAAAAN MELEE do what you want it to. There's no reason you can't. This idea that damage has to drop off to 5% or less of its base value the moment you move out of Facebreaker distance to the target is absolutely ludicrous. Yes, DPS has gone nuts with maximized streamer builds that can erase Uber Elder in fifteen seconds, but that is an unfortunate byproduct of the fundamental way path of Exile is built. if you want that shit to go away? They'd have to eliminate the vast majority of the build customizability and depth of choice they built into the game, and ain't nobody worth listening to wants that.

You have a good point regarding the defensive skills, heck, I still use Vaal IC as a cheat death mechanic, and Vaal Molten Shell + Molten Shell are even better than Steelskin IMHO.

Will try Dash, as that addition went under my radar, but please don't disregard the fact that a long time ago, even with the asinine increase of monsters in packs, and their further increase in density on most maps, you actually NOTICED magic and rare monsters before killing them and getting loot.

And that was due to damage being a lot more scarce.

Having the most damage dealt at "ground 0" is actually the best way to balance AoE effects, and curbing projectile damage by distance actually happens in real life, so that should have worked decently in PoE for BALANCE reasons mainly...

So please, why having 10 million DPS vs END GAME boss (Shaper/Uber Elder/Atziri etc.) as a REAL MELEE hitting said enemy in a 16 radius distance would be so distressing for a projectile based build which gets 100K DPS at the edge of the screen? Why hitting for 1 million DPS in a 40 radius would be distressing for a channeling caster which can hit for 10 million DPS after a 10 second channel at the edge of the screen?

Common sense scenarios like those presented above, added next to a hard cap on damage that should never be reached, and a further soft cap that would make increasing damage towards said hard cap difficult is needed, as we see TencentGGG never managed to balance the relation between damage and proximity, and they should have done that from the start, especially with their convoluted system based on additional and multiplier damage scaling...

The fun fact is that they COULD and SHOULD TONE DOWN THE DAMN POWER CREEP as suggested above if they want PoE to provide a game that is not a subpar "Clicker Heroes arcade shooter" ONE SHOT FEST... And if they also curb their current obsession regarding forcing "metas" down the throat of their players with every damn update, that would be even better...

lmao my attempts to keep the discussion rational have failed I see :p

I mean, come on Draeg. I was just told that a build which otherwise deals 10 million DPS (which, let us all remind ourselves, is an absolutely exceptional number that less than one percent of one percent of the player base for this game will ever even see on YouTube, let alone personally achieve) should be perfectly content with that damage falling to 100k at the edge of the screen. A distance of, perhaps, twenty or thirty feet, given the extremely close zoom imposed by Path of Exile.

How is that rational?

People are constantly comparing their crappy half-an-ex 5L/Tabby melee builds to Mathil's latest screen-wiping boss-eating monster thing, and then they blame the game for not making sure that their half-an-ex dickbuild doesn't match up. It's hogwash.

Unless it has INSANE single target that gets put down into line when talking clear speed when you have to slap ancestral call + melee splash and other quality of life links into stuff, there will never be a great spot for any skill that does nothing besides hit a single target for damage. Elemental Hit should be called Elemental Arrow being perfectly honest, Wild Strike is the "melee" Ele Hit.

Dominating Blow is a weird exception to this but it has ulterior usefulness. Vigilant Strike has the Vigil but tbh that should just be built into it at this point in some way shape or fashion. but in general I think that all current "strike" skills should just get the equivalent of a melee splash. Simple. The game is not paced nor designed in a way that is conducive to 1-on-1 facetank combat for anything short a dedicated "don't kill me" style build. Not this "you kinda' might hit two mobs at once," melee splash should just be a default. Give different skills different VISIBLE areas, sure, some being huge to start but with lower upper end damage potential, others being kind of small but high damage - the kind of Perforate treatment for all.

I agree with HH - I think every strike should work a little bit closer to Sunder/Ice Crash/Bladestorm now. They should all be AOEs with reasonable size (not screen clear, but minimum one pack of mobs so about current icecrash size.

At the least they should have default Ancestral Call plus Melee Splash on all strike skills.

"

1453R wrote:

Spoiler

I mean, come on Draeg. I was just told that a build which otherwise deals 10 million DPS (which, let us all remind ourselves, is an absolutely exceptional number that less than one percent of one percent of the player base for this game will ever even see on YouTube, let alone personally achieve) should be perfectly content with that damage falling to 100k at the edge of the screen. A distance of, perhaps, twenty or thirty feet, given the extremely close zoom imposed by Path of Exile.

How is that rational?

People are constantly comparing their crappy half-an-ex 5L/Tabby melee builds to Mathil's latest screen-wiping boss-eating monster thing, and then they blame the game for not making sure that their half-an-ex dickbuild doesn't match up. It's hogwash.

"Hogwash" as you put it, is simply not having that implemented (sure numbers could be different, but it actually needs to have that dramatic reduction to be noticeable with the amount of POWER CREEP thrown at players).

"Hogwash" is having Crit and Accuracy raining down and being scaled so easily that it's appalling.

"Hogwash" is Resolute Technique being the worst choice for end game (though it's also the last "setting" the game has if you want to actually play in ARPG mode), due to the power creep that graced Crit and Accuracy ease of acquiring.

"How is that rational?"

Please, there is no discussion when we talk min-maxing and "meta" focusing a build (Mathil simply specs half decent survivability and focuses on damage, and has above average skillplay and connection/tech specs), and the best items should grant you the best experience, the problems appear when you actually have decent items worth sensibly more that that "half-an-ex", and you're not playing a "dickbuild", but a reasonably balanced one and try to manage all content without same skillplay - in a funny way, using close enough items, same skill gem setups, and decent gameplay will most of the time convey the same experience as "copy-paste" works surprisingly well in PoE...

Slapping AoE and multi-targeting on REAL MELEE skills will be the EASY WAY OUT, yet TencentGGG simply need to at least take it and implement it PROPERLY... Their indecision is so detrimental, that really is disheartening to ever contemplate...

"

1453R wrote:

How is that rational?

Its not :p I mean somebody else has made your point about grognaks very well but I still would like the namelock skills to deal damage equivalent somewhat related to their awkwardness so that while slower you didn't feel like a total retard for playing infernal blow.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

"

1453R wrote:

How is that rational?

Its not :p I mean somebody else has made your point about grognaks very well but I still would like the namelock skills to deal damage equivalent somewhat related to their awkwardness so that while slower you didn't feel like a total retard for playing infernal blow.

That's the thing. I'm not sure they don't. Most of those skills have an extremely high damage effectiveness coefficient, dealing a huge percentage of base weapon damage. Vigilant Strike deals two hundred and sixty freaking percent of its weapon's base damage; that is monster numbers. Infernal Blow has significantly less damage effectiveness, but it's also Infernal Blow and isn't super concerned with its damage effectiveness in the first place.

A big part of the issue can be summed up in three words, methinks.

Concentrated.

Effect.

And Support.

Conc. Effect is such a monumental damage booster that it skews the numbers. When you can bolt a 54% MOAR modifier onto anything with an AoE tag for free - and without even suffering its drawbacks, given that many AoE skills function in a way that minimizes the negative effect on radius and if they don't, people just do the dumbass gem-swapping thing instead - the AoE tag itself becomes a damage booster that's hard to ignore. Yeah, at this point there's enough dumb MOAR gems in the game that the monotarget melee can usually find equivalent gems - but few of those can swap for an Inc. AoE equivalent the way Concentrated Effect can.

"

1453R wrote:

I maintain that Dash - simple, humble, click-and-scoot Dash - is possibly one of the greatest additions to the Path of Exile skill roster in ever. ANY build can use it, regardless of weapon or skill choice

Dash should have been locked to melee use only. No reason to play melee if everything else kill faster, quicker and skills like dash can be used by every builds.

It could have been a melee attack support like minion had this league with frenzy or meat shield.

as for the motivation for this thread you are all wrong. I never asked to have melee hit harder or have the same efficiency than ranged.