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

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sidtherat wrote:

Spoiler

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The_Human_Tornado wrote:

Melee is gucci just be yourself. Before 3.8 it lacked damage, now it doesnt. Just give it a try.

care to elaborate?

what changes suddenly made melee deal damage comparable to things like Divine Ire, Winter Orb, Vortex or Elemental Hit? not mentioning Tornado Shot or CoCS? summoners play their own game right now.


the 'buffs' and 'reworks' of melee skills were cosmetic at best and pathetic at worst. they gave (mostly irrelevant junk) with one hand while taking away with the other. most melee skills lost 20-30% base attack speed to compensate foe the 'buffs'

flat ELEMENTAL damage added to skills? way to achieve nothing - lightning strike, glacial bummer, infernal blow.. all got totally garbage elemental flat that made it pretty damn impossible to scale them fully. great design.


what changed was the passive tree with LOTS of crit put everywhere (playing non-crit melee is still a grave mistake) and impale being just dumb "DOUBLE YOUR DAMAGE, press here!"


melee doesnt exist in a void. there is a competition around. what competition loses to melee in damage?

As always, you hit the "nail on it's head" @sidtherat...

The worst offender was, and still is, the asinine mana cost of Elemental Hit as a melee skill. The one skill that could allow total disregard of weapon intrinsic damage is mana gated more than the asinine "melee tag slapped" Cyclone "one size that fits all"...

The base attack speed reduction for the melee skills was TencentGGG's [Removed by support] favorite solution after slapping "% moar attack speed" conditional "buffs" to Berserker/Gladiator, and also because they added the flat phys/ele damage to melee skills...

Playing NON CRIT melee actually is the last "setting" to transform PoE into a game that resembles an ARPG (I also challenge anyone "courageous" enough to level to 100 with a REAL MELEE dual wielding RT build versus ONLY REAL ENDGAME CONTENT - you know, the regular Uber Elder/Atziri, T16 Vaal Temple, and even T16 Guardians and Shaper, and then share the "epic" experience of playing that ARCHETYPE in PoE)...

Sure, it's nice to have tactical movement options available, but please, when was the last time a proper build that went crit acknowledged the normal and magic monsters on T15-T16 content? Not even discussing the ranged/cast variety, it's also applying to AoE melee as well... Real melee at least need to namelock something for at least 1 damn hit before moving to other packs...

Oh, and REAL melee lost damage twofold, by having fights longer due to less attack speed AND skill canceling, so yes, you might say you have the opportunity to get out of said "dire situations", but you also are hard pressed to never miss a keypress if you intend to finish an end game fight in a timely manner (some of us still played RT before the nerf, and are still playing it, so we might know first hand the impact of their so "called improvements to the REAL MELEE EXPERIENCE" - hint, they are simply "MEH" worthy, and that's about it)...

And as I said, MELEE as in REAL MELEE needs it's DAMN NICHE. I couldn't care less which option between high survivability, damage, mobility, ease of gearing, scaling, cost/effectiveness will be picked, as coverage and clear will be forever bound to AoE/projectile based archetypes, but TencentGGG need to make up their damn mind and actually PICK AT LEAST 1...

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sidtherat wrote:

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The_Human_Tornado wrote:

Melee is gucci just be yourself. Before 3.8 it lacked damage, now it doesnt. Just give it a try.

care to elaborate?

what changes suddenly made melee deal damage comparable to things like Divine Ire, Winter Orb, Vortex or Elemental Hit? not mentioning Tornado Shot or CoCS? summoners play their own game right now.


the 'buffs' and 'reworks' of melee skills were cosmetic at best and pathetic at worst. they gave (mostly irrelevant junk) with one hand while taking away with the other. most melee skills lost 20-30% base attack speed to compensate foe the 'buffs'

flat ELEMENTAL damage added to skills? way to achieve nothing - lightning strike, glacial bummer, infernal blow.. all got totally garbage elemental flat that made it pretty damn impossible to scale them fully. great design.


what changed was the passive tree with LOTS of crit put everywhere (playing non-crit melee is still a grave mistake) and impale being just dumb "DOUBLE YOUR DAMAGE, press here!"


melee doesnt exist in a void. there is a competition around. what competition loses to melee in damage?

Sure.

1. 3.8 Ancestral Call not giving less damage anymore at level 20. 1/0.82 = 22% more damage.

2. 3.8 Multistrike giving an average of 60% more dps instead of only 37%. 1.6 / 1.37 = 17% more damage.

So if you play a build that uses both ancestral call and multistrike you got 1.22*1.17 = 42% more damage. Thats literally a free damage supportgem just because 3.8 and that is enough for a lot of builds to turn from shit into OK or even good.

And multistrike is like A SEVERAL YEAR OLD nemesis of mine, you can find DOZENS THREADS I MADE ABOUT IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN, when spell echo always gave 63% more dps while multistrike only gave 37% more dps and was required by many builds for targeting, that was some real unfair shit but 3.8 changed that.

Like I was saying all the time that multistrike is probably the main reason why melee dps has such shitty numbers except with abyssus and mirror gear and all that compensating snowflake bullshit and its really not against common sense. The typical melee build had:

-Ancestral Call 18% less damage,
-Melee Splash, 0% more damage
-Multistrike, a super bad dps gem but required for auto targeting

required in order to function properly. 3 support gem slots wasted just for basic functioality its really no wonder that the damage was missing for most of the melee skillgems except when playing with abyssus, unrealistic abyss jewel spam or mirror items.

Since the damage conversion flasks nerf and even more since abyss jewels nobody should be shy to flat ele damage scaling. Base attack speed loss for flat damage is questionable for a lot of skills, like the worst skill currently is dual strike I think because the player cant even use leap slap properly due the targets not being full hp anymore if hit by leap slam and therefor nullifying the bonus of the skillgem. But normal skills like smite got another 10% more damage boost by that so its good enough.

BUT you must admit that the changes of the skilltree were a super big deal because easy and cheap crit was always the kind of stuff that were hold back to marauder players at least for years. Like it was common to walk to the fucking shadow tree from marauder start. Now all that is gone so the players easily have both 250% increased life and 3 crit wheels in their builds and that is a huge difference.

well.. the tree changes and some supports (Shockwave!) were really good for melee. but - again - it only closed the gap between rich-as-hell top part of the tree and bottom part.

there is one big issue with that tho: if 'crit is the legit way to go' now, then ascendancies that dont significantly buff it in some way (be it accuracy or direct crit) are relegated to secondary class. Jugg, Slayer, Champion, Berserk - they have accuracy/crit in abundance. Chieftain/Gladiator on the other hand.. Ele Overload or bust. making 'crit' the default option while leaving classes that cannot really utilize it - half-smart move.

when you check heatmaps you can clearly see that there is more or less ONE good pathing trough the bottom part of the tree with minor weapon type variations.

still - a very good change. i also liked the subtle but significant bleed changes (now you can treat is as ~10-20% more multiplier to phys builds or invest into pure bleed build - both options are very nice)


the multistrike.. well i tried my best to NOT use that gem because it was simply dumb (mostly because out of 3 hits the 3rd one was almost guaranteed to hit corpses only). ofc it HAD to be used with single-target skills and it STILL is required (or ancestral call) because POE targeting is garbage. they not fixing it is the biggest letdown of 3.7 for me. i got used to terrible 'balance' but mechanics like targeting.. this is the new low.


as for the AC/MS numbers. it is still 'waste one link to make skill playable' situation. the built in splash is irrelevant (tried to play like that with +2 Disfavour - still GARBAGE) so you need some splash source (thank you for removing it from Slayer btw. that was LOW) - yet another oportunity cost

and all that because Heavy Strike or Dual Strike have 'high numbers' (they ofc dont have high numbers in the first place)

people like mathil make good builds out of semi-turd skills (and Abyssus). what is deceiving is that they DO NOT make meta builds to put things in perspective.. (and youll never see him using REAL turds..)
not to mention that ALL of his 'melee' builds are ranged and work just because he puts attack speed EVERYWHERE. melee relies on attack speed - ergo slow weapon bases should be removed from the game as noone cares about them, picks them up, ID them nor uses them. this part of 'rework' was a giant fiasco


btw spell echo casts in the same direction AND being rooted in place + slow(er) cast speed is really dangerous. with strong build spell echo is just a numbers buff because the second spell hits burning corpses doing nothing. PoB warrioring, nothing more

I was writing some wall of texts, but I try to be shorter this time:

1. Yes but at least it did close the gap. Before 3.7 we had nothing in Marauder and duellist skilltree. NOTHING. Now its gucci.

2. I used a 5% base crit weapon and did not skill Berserker crit with my latest glacial hammer dude, Yawning_Hyena. Still ended up with a 65% effective crit chance with just a diamond flask pressed and power charges generated by the templar mace wheel. Assassins mark not included. 80% with assassins mark.

3. If you got the damage to oneshot all trash with a 4 link or even less then Multistrike means oneshotting everything 44% faster, that is big.

4. Agreed splash should be either threshold jewel or built in for everything directly like in Smite/Ele hit/Glacial Hammer etc. or indirectly like in infernal blow.

5. Slow weapon bases are not that bad if you use shield charge. Le Gavel face.

6. Whats your problem with Ancestral Call exactly? For me it feels still like real melee "I slap a dude in the face with a hammer :D" all the time. It gives some gud overlapping damage and is a real comfort for positioning while I really dont like shockwave support except for melee Elemental hit. And since it doesnt give the 18% less damage anymore its quite a thing. Like I would use the current Ancestral call even if they would fix targeting and all the other shit. But agreed targeting is still super garbage.

And then there is Smite where the old "hit a single target twice thanks to AC" trick still works.

So I guess that most of the people here complaining about melee being bad run some high end xx millions dps range builds and whine about the fact that melee skills can't reach the levels of range and AOE that their casters have and therefore think that melee is shit. Out of that perspective that's true I guess.

However from my casual point of view, where even 1 million dps is a rare occurrence, melee is actually much better than casters/range characters. If you can't insta kill endgame bosses and have to deal with their mechanics it's quite a big deal to have the tankiness and sustain that melee characters can have. Not getting 1 shot by any mob coming too close also helps a lot.

I've tried a bunch of caster builds and honestly I don't like them at all. Yeah seeing 2 screens of monsters drop to a single ED/Contagion cast is fun but fighting bosses isn't at all. Maybe if you're so familiar with the fight to just not get hit at all this might work at low dps but it's still a pain. I have to waste lots of time running around and kiting when my melee char can just facetank the shit out of the boss. Even if my caster had more damage, and they don't, their real dps in boss fights would still be lower because they have to keep moving, melee chars don't.

So while melee might not have a place in the high end speed farming meta that so many here seem to play, it's still a very good thing for us normal people. I wouldn't mind some of the lesser used skills seeing some buffs but overall I think melee is fine.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

it's quite a big deal to have the tankiness and sustain that melee characters can have

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I have to waste lots of time running around and kiting when my melee char can just facetank the shit out of the boss. Even if my caster had more damage, and they don't, their real dps in boss fights would still be lower because they have to keep moving, melee chars don't.

well.. nothing in 'melee' adds tankiness to the character. you can add defenses to any build and builds that allow more freedom with gearing are usually the tankier ones - it happens to be casters/ranged/summoners as most of their damage comes from gem levels. attack builds pretty much assume you have all your jewelry, jewels and weapon purely for damage

the ONLY thing that separates attack builds from casters is access to life leech but even that is not a problem people care about

eveything else is available to any character and - again - the more freedom you have with gearing the more 'tank' you can become

and the higher in content you go the more frequently youll notice that the bolded part above is reversed. melee players have to dodge ground degens or no-go zones while casters (or archers with mirage archer) just sidestep them and deal damage pretty much all the time

there are no 'points' for facetanking stuff. melee simply has to do it but it gives no advantage as short-ranged mob attacks are actually very dangerous while their ranged abilities are rather easy to dodge (mobs cannot lead targets in this game)

and sorry but if your casters dont have damage.. then something went horribly wrong. melee players have to pretty much a) multimod a weapon (2-5ex minimum) b) buy something already crafted as without a weapon you wont go far. sure, leveling uniques form a good baseline but.. they are not enough

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sidtherat wrote:

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Baharoth15 wrote:

it's quite a big deal to have the tankiness and sustain that melee characters can have

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I have to waste lots of time running around and kiting when my melee char can just facetank the shit out of the boss. Even if my caster had more damage, and they don't, their real dps in boss fights would still be lower because they have to keep moving, melee chars don't.

well.. nothing in 'melee' adds tankiness to the character.

Fortify. One of the most busted things in the game. I'm playing with 4,500 life and missing a lot of resists, but I'm nearly unkillable. I'm stacking all the fortify buff effect and dual wielding Ichimonjis.

I can't imagine how busted that 100% effect while focused is.

the ONLY setup that cannot have fortify is 'dual wands'

staff casters can use leap slam, wand users can use shield charge, bow users can (but they dont need it) use Champion

then there is always The Vigil jewel - used by many to get Fortify with weapon swap.

and the Focus mod (~120% Fortify effect) is available to anyone with spare prefix(?) on his body armour. again, surprisingly it is less available for melee users as they rare body armours are rather starved for affixes (life, %life, Maim, attack crit, -mana in best case scenario)

same applies to Guard skills and block (the best block builds are.. Necromancers) - anyone can use them and characters with more gearing freedom can stack more and more of these mechanics.

that doesnt mean melee CANNOT get tanky - it can. but: you can make melee tanky, being melee doesnt make you tanky

oh and if you cannot imagine: it is cool but wears off after 4 seconds and then you are on 10+ sec cooldown. hardly reliable.

It might be true that you can make a caster as tanky as a melee on high end gear. But I am talking about SSF levels of gearing. There is just no way I can get my ED/Con Occultist or Arc Trapper to the levels of tankiness that my Jugg/Chieftain have.

Aside from melee ascendancies providing a lot of bulk you also have Fortify Support linked to your main skill which is just far more practical than leap slamming your caster into a mob to get fortify when you want to stay away. The other thing is life leech. The main problem I have with casters in boss fights is the lack of recovery. I guess if your caster is pure ES this isn't such a big deal but I tried fighting Red Elder with my Trapper and with my ED/Con Occultist and with both I had the issue that every time I got hit by one of his spears 70-80% of my life were gone, forcing me to use a life flask. After 2 hits my flask was empty and no minions around to refill. My melee builds don't have this problem at all.

Again, you're probably right when it comes to high end gearing where you can do whatever the hell you want but with limited resources melee makes your way to tankiness a lot easier.

You're point further up about melee chars having to dodge more than casters is wrong from my experience. Sure there are a few attacks you want to dodge even as a Juggernaut/Chieftain/Champion but they are few and far in between. As a matter of fact the only Boss encounters where I have to move a lot are uber Elder and Uber Atziri. Everything else I can face tank, despite trash level gear.

I'm playing a melee charachter this league. I don't have any issues.