How do you nerf melee (attack speed) and then give Ranged 3 free totems and no speed nerfs?

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demon9675 wrote:

For all the talk of it being impossible for melee to be competitive because of the game’s genre, speed, mechanics, laws of physics, etc. the fact remains there’s a litany of specific decisions GGG made that caused melee to be as bad as it is.

I never buy those arguments that melee simply can’t be good, because they ignore the fact that GGG consciously decided to keep the damage low, restrict qol, restrict melee-specific defenses, etc. while handing other playstyles massive buffs.

Indeed its totally possible to fix melee to have a niche where its actually good even. It does take GGG actually understanding why melee is so bad historically in POE compared to other games. GGG has to actually admit there's a problem before they can fix it. There are many example of melee being competitive with ranged styles in other games. One of my favorite examples is Ultima Online, where melee and ranged were both fully neck and neck competitive in both PvP and PvE for basically the entire history over two decades.

The main difference between the styles in that game is: melee doesn't get rooted when it attacks while spells and ranged have to stop. The next reason is: ranged doesn't do more DPS than melee and doesn't hit as many targets as spells, while spells hit many more targets and do even less DPS and have longer casting times.

This general formula is present in almost every game that gets melee vs ranged vs spells into a good place. And this has never been close to the case in POE which is why its always had really bad melee combat compared to other games.

Some mechanics such as leech, life/es gain on hit, blind and so could also be very costly on ranged characters, they have inherent safety, melee can have sustain instead.

There are many ways to make melee characters as viable as ranged characters, but there is a LOT to do in PoE for this to happen at this point, and increasing the overal speed of the game is really not helping honestly.

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demon9675 wrote:

I never buy those arguments that melee simply can’t be good, because they ignore the fact that GGG consciously decided to keep the damage low, restrict qol, restrict melee-specific defenses, etc. while handing other playstyles massive buffs.

I also dont buy it. In my perspective people which tend to say melee can only be shit have a lack of imagination and will to make melee good in some aspect of the game.

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alhazred70 wrote:

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Ozxell wrote:

going to be more until GGG actually understands the issues and does something about it.

Its almost like they have a melee developer locked in a room and he's not allowed to see whats happening in the actual game or do any relative comparisons to what ranged and spells skills can do.

Realistically i think the team that does the balancing only likes bows, spells, minions but simply hates melee therefore we only see shit happen to melee and awesome stuff to the other mentioned gem types.

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alhazred70 wrote:

You give Ranged "three free balistas" ranged DPS for free.

Melee meanwhile has 1 shitty ancestor totem that dies really easy because its close to the target, has puny AOE or NO AOE.

You give ranged "mirage archer" automated DPS just attack and run and kill stuff without stopping.

Melee gets Ancestral call: give up damage to hit two extra mobs and not feel as shit for targeting

You give spells Winter Orb, automated dps that shotguns and overlaps and auto targets and has every gem tag in existence so is immensely flexible.

Melee gets tribal fury annoint: you hit one extra mob and your targeting doesn't feel as shit.

You give spells Brands, automated DPS that moves from mob to mob, its a totem that can't be killed and can leech and it can be "recalled" without needing to stop.

Melee gets an attack speed base nerf that makes already slow melee skills or slow weapon bases FEEL REALLY BAD.

I could go on, I haven't even mentioned multistrike... screw it lets go there:

You give Minions great AI and totally unnecessary DPS buffs to the point where a summoner can AFK in Uber Elder

Melee gets Multi Strike... if you stand still and let it go off you hit again...

I don't need to keep going. I think anyone paying even a little attention can see the disparity and widening gap and exactly why it keeps getting wider. You add amazing OP stuff to all the safe ranged and automated playstyles while the gritty melee style gets scraps and nerfs and constantly rooting in place to deliver LESS DAMAGE FROM CLOSER RANGE with no automation and less effective hit points than most Spell/Minion ES builds.

So to sum up and vent some of my frustration:

YOU GUYS NEED TO STOP BUFFING THE BEST PLAYSTYLES WHILE NERFING AND UNDER BUFFING THE WORST.

Melee should pay NOTHING for quality of life things like Ancestral call, it should pay little to nothing for mitigation because it takes something like 80% more incoming damage... effective health should be FAR MORE accessible on a melee than on all other styles. Instead the eHP king is a mana guardian. followed by ES spell builds followed by hybrid spell builds. Melee should be the way to get 20,000 eHP, not a Mana guardian/Hiero with automated minions or Worb, or brands, or totems...

And melee should have mechanical advantages like not needing to stop to swing.

Spoiler

as always melee means close combat not ranged attacks like tec slam etc.

Ancestor totems give significant buffs to the character on top of their own damage. With Vaal Ancestral Warchief you have 2 totems, 1 of which can even move.

Mirage Archer might be automated DPS but the skill has a sharp damage penalty by itself and it needs to be socketed into your main skill gem setup costing you even more dps.

Ancestral Call has no damage penalty on level 20, with some quality it even gives more damage through increased attack speed.

Winter orb was nerfed into oblivion after it was FOTM if i recall.

So getting to hit an extra target at no cost is bad? Ok.

Brands need quite a bit of investment on the tree to be worth it, same as totems. You act like it's a free bonus.

That's what multistrike and increased damage nodes are for. Reaching 4-6 APS doesn't even require much effort. Those speed reductions also came with increased damage values.

Yeah summoner was the fotm of the blight league and will be nerfed into oblivion when the league ends so what?

Multistrike has the highest more attack speed multiplier in the game, js.


Honestly if you people don't like playing melee because it can't deal 20 billion dps while being afk then don't? For those among us who actually like to play the game it's perfectly fine.

All silliness aside, they can not fix the melee problem because they do not know how to. So they are going the other way with it. Just make it so crappy nobody plays it ever so they can slowly phase out melee completely. It is working so far.


It could be worse I mean they could give bow and wand users all the melee buffs on top of all the shit they are got now...oh wait...

But but, you can now fight melee with a bows! xD

It is simple: people that play games to be rewarded (as in - to achieve something rather to challenge themselves) must be majority. So you cater to them giving them free power. They are happy, they spend money.

Going into detailed mechanics is going to be removed so i wont. But it is deliberate.


Name me one person that played the game for more than 1 month that claims that bows needed any sort of buffs..

Melee meanwhile.. yep. Garbage playstyle with no redeeming qualities (tankiness is NOT melee quality. Wander can use fortify, armour and other stuff while clearing 2 screens at once not being in danger for entire map.

Anyone claiming that melee is fine should complete this sentence: playing melee provides me unique ability to........

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sidtherat wrote:

It is simple: people that play games to be rewarded (as in - to achieve something rather to challenge themselves) must be majority. So you cater to them giving them free power. They are happy, they spend money.

Going into detailed mechanics is going to be removed so i wont. But it is deliberate.


Name me one person that played the game for more than 1 month that claims that bows needed any sort of buffs..

Melee meanwhile.. yep. Garbage playstyle with no redeeming qualities (tankiness is NOT melee quality. Wander can use fortify, armour and other stuff while clearing 2 screens at once not being in danger for entire map.

Anyone claiming that melee is fine should complete this sentence: playing melee provides me unique ability to........

Honestly your first paragraph pretty much shows the core of the problem.

You think the "gieb free" players are the majority, might be I can't really tell, only GGG knows. They surely are part of the community. And for this part of the community your notion is probably true. If all you care about is the reward at the end and do everything possible to get it as easy and fast as possible then there is no point in playing melee. If your running the current fotm with 20 million dps you will get your rewards much faster than you ever could playing melee and there is very little GGG can do about it. As mentioned multiple times during multiple topics melee can't possible compare to ranged when it comes to clear speed, that's a simple fact.

The point you either miss or ignore on purpose is the fact that, even if the "gieb free" part of the community made up the majority (and I honestly don't think that's the case, I expect it to be pretty much 50/50), there would still be a minority that actually likes a challenge. People that enjoy playing the game because it's fun to play it, not because of the rewards that might come at the end. And for this part of the community melee is far from useless.

You want me to complete your sentence? Fine:

"playing melee provides me unique ability to play melee"

Probably doesn't make much sense to you but it sure does for me and probably a whole lot of other people as well. Even if melee had nothing else going for it, and on my gear level it sure has, I would still play it because I want to play it. I might even play it because it's bad to have a challenge. Or I just play it because I like it and I don't even know that I could also play a 20 million dps ranged character. The latter probably applies to the ~90% of the poe playing community that doesn't follow the forums/reddit.

Also from my experience melee is much better at my gear level than ranged. If I compare the clear speed between my Jugg/Chieftain and my Trapper/ED Con caster there is no comparison. The melees win by a mile in terms of speed and are safer. The thing here is, if your dps isn't high enough to just delete all content and you have to actively engage with it then range loses a lot of it's strength. Instead of only moving forward in a tier 16 while playing melee I have to move backwards to maintain distance to mobs. Instead of dishing out dps face to face against bosses I have to run around and dodge. And I honestly don't think this can be done via caster, maybe if you can make some 12k ES tank but otherwise?

The core problem is that the POE community is split in two. For one half the game is to slow and difficult, for the other it's too fast and easy. I believe GGG is trying to satisfy both. That's why all that massive powercreep is created. They give the "too slow" faction builds that are so ridiculously overpowered that any content can be done in no time. While at the other hand they leave other skills on a normal level so that people from the too fast faction can actually engage with the content and play the game at their pace.

And that's why melee isn't useless. There is an audience for it. You are clearly not part of this audience so I understand where you are coming from. But please try to understand that not everyone here is playing the game with the same mentality and for the same reasons as you do.

Because logic and balance team is not equal.

Look at the new snarearrow stuff. You would think melee would have needed something to slow down monsters more than the 3 screen away ranged builds archetypes...

Well ok now that ranged is the new melee this new snarearrow thing make sense.

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sidtherat wrote:

Anyone claiming that melee is fine should complete this sentence: playing melee provides me unique ability to........

not be shitty spell casting meta-slave wanker or some ranged bow fucking pussy or some save space summoner but being instead a true warrior that dominates not "due to" but "in spite of".