melee.. melee never changes

"

Sauraus3 wrote:

I killed uber elder with a melee starter build last league.

Then it must mean that all melee characters are absolutely fine and the balance is perfect !






/s

Steemage won the Quin's SSF HC melee challenge earlier this league with cleave.
If it wasn't melee only ? Cleave would never have been picked, obviously.
Yet should we conclude that Cleave is an amazing skill ?

Hard question, I know !
(/s)

"

Fruz wrote:

"

Sauraus3 wrote:

I killed uber elder with a melee starter build last league.

Then it must mean that all melee characters are absolutely fine and the balance is perfect !






/s

Steemage won the Quin's SSF HC melee challenge earlier this league with cleave.
If it wasn't melee only ? Cleave would never have been picked, obviously.
Yet should we conclude that Cleave is an amazing skill ?

Hard question, I know !
(/s)

Believe it or not, but for many, if not most people a class/archetype is fine if they can beat the game with it. I mean there are like 5 people here that constantly bitch about melee while thousands of players just play it and have fun with it. Obviously not the efficiency fanatics who post their builds on POE ninja but that side shows like 0,... % of the playerbase so whatever.

Like honestly, I can beat any content this game has to offer using melee chars with selffound gear without breaking a sweat. Why the fuck should I care if a caster could do it 10 or even 20 seconds faster? Like how obsessed do you have to be to give a single fuck about that? It's honestly beyond me how you people can think like that.

@sidtherat you mentioned yourself several times that Caster damage is based on Gem level while melee damage is based on a weapon. Isn't really suprising that caster builds win out as starters is it?

so why starting melee weapons are crap not worth picking up? why casters/trapers/miners/summoners get a free pass? what is the logic?

even the 'racing recipes' for casters and melee are miles apart - casters need ONE crafted wand for 1-60. ONE. melee has to re-craft its weapon every 10 levels. using more time consuming recipes etc.

why is that?

does melee have some advantage that balances this out? it clearly doesnt - if it had, we would have significant melee presence on that ninja site, even among the 1%. right now, total melee playerbase is around 2% (after you remove Cyclone+CoC/CwC, HoAg and other 'melee'

the mere fact that Cyclone+CoC is a thing tells. it means that best melee skill is still too weak. clearly the best way to play Cyclone is to use it as a trigger for spells.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

Like honestly, I can beat any content this game has to offer using melee chars with selffound gear without breaking a sweat. Why the fuck should I care if a caster could do it 10 or even 20 seconds faster? Like how obsessed do you have to be to give a single fuck about that? It's honestly beyond me how you people can think like that.

So, your best argument is, again, "melee is ok in its subpar little niche because the game is a joke". What are we going to do if, at some point, the game isn't a joke anymore? Is it really fine if it takes so much work outfitting and playing melee compared to the netflix alternatives for no reward that only a few percent of players play it. Melee weapons are the most numerous equipment category in the game and most of it isn't even used to kill things.

Sure, I'll play melee because fuck bow league and forced meta, but is that really a good mindset to approach the game with or the one GGG would like a player to have? You're saying they shouldn't bother improving the situation to the point where people choose melee because it's actually good, why? Do you like to feel special?

"

raics wrote:

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

Like honestly, I can beat any content this game has to offer using melee chars with selffound gear without breaking a sweat. Why the fuck should I care if a caster could do it 10 or even 20 seconds faster? Like how obsessed do you have to be to give a single fuck about that? It's honestly beyond me how you people can think like that.

So, your best argument is, again, "melee is ok in its subpar little niche because the game is a joke". What are we going to do if, at some point, the game isn't a joke anymore? Is it really fine if it takes so much work outfitting and playing melee compared to the netflix alternatives for no reward that only a few percent of players play it. Melee weapons are the most numerous equipment category in the game and most of it isn't even used to kill things.

Sure, I'll play melee because fuck bow league and forced meta, but is that really a good mindset to approach the game with or the one GGG would like a player to have? You're saying they shouldn't bother improving the situation to the point where people choose melee because it's actually good, why? Do you like to feel special?

If, at some point, the game gets to a point where even a decently build melee char can't beat all end game bosses and do all content, then i'll join you in your quest to get melee buffed. Until then and given the scope of the differences I honestly don't give a fuck if something else is better. Your statement about only a few percent of players playing it is most likely wrong. You base that statement on the top 0,xxx % from POE Ninja. That's no where near representative for the entire playerbase.

Tbh I think that is precisely the mindset GGG has. They have stated several times that they don't see a problem with some skills being worse than others and I agree with that. And at the end of the day the goal of this game is to beat the content and constantly improve your character. As long as you can do this with a melee char, melee is fine as far as I am concerned.

This isn't a competitive game where melee is in direct competition to bows or caster builds. You people see it from a competitive view because you want to spend as little time and effort as possible beating the content and I guess those "forced" meta builds are GGGs concession towards your end of the playerbase (they always give you 1-2 op skills to insta delete everything so you don't have to waste time actually fighting endgame bosses if you choose to) but I don't think that this way of thinking and playing is what they really want for the game. Anyway that's just my personal opinion, only Chris knows for sure.

PS: Claiming this game is a joke is a joke in itself. It probably is for someone who has played since beta, knows everything there is has beaten every boss 100 of times and knows their attack patterns inside out while also having all the gear in the world. But go ask a new player who struggles with Kitava if he thinks the game is a joke. Hell I estimate that about 90% of the players never even reached Uberelder yet alone beating him. If the game was a joke then that number would be a hell of a lot lower.


@pirate that's your view but not mine. Just because there is an economy doesn't mean you have to compete in it. It's not the goal of the game to get as rich as possible in the shortest amount of time. Sure you can set that as your personal goal but then it's just that, a personal goal. I mean just look in the trade manifesto. They state there explicitly that most of POEs player base (overall not just SSF) never trades and most of those that do, do so like once a month. All those players give a fuck about the economy and any competitive feelings that might come with it.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

This isn't a competitive game where melee is in direct competition to bows or caster builds.

Except that it is, because (outside of SSF, which IS NOT WHAT THE GAME IS BALANCED AROUND) everyone is competing by virtue of belonging to the same economy)

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

This isn't a competitive game where melee is in direct competition to bows or caster builds.

I already gave you an example before how an overpowered item can suck enjoyment even out of a single player game, you just don't get excited anymore when you discover other things. You kinda need some semblance of balance even there, and this isn't a single player game, not really.

When you lower the bar to newcomers that don't have a clue and can't even beat kitava, thing, can only get worse. They will try melee as it's usually the easiest archetype to use, see that it's clunky as hell and say fuck this game. You're getting the very situation I mentioned where the game isn't a joke anymore.

You still haven't explained what are you losing if melee gets good and there are more reasons to play it besides 'I just like its style'. I'd understand being objected to improving it if melee was too strong or too convenient, but when the best we can say about it is that the strongest melee setups are on par with average schmoe ranged I just see no reason for it. Unless the reason is what I mentioned before, and it isn't an uncommon mindset, you see people picking low tier characters in fighting games all the time because it gives you that fuzzy feeling of being so good you have to gimp yourself.

POE isnt competetive because it is so unbalanced and luck based noone would agree to call it a sport.

But there are competition events like 30k usd race starting shortly. Guess what: there will be NO melee characters competing because competetive or not melee in POE is shit.

Having entire archetype shit by design is ok. But GGG refuses to be open about this. They deceive players with beautiful lies about diversity and options. Thats marketing and PR. Reality is different.

People claiming melee 'is ok' simply never played good non-melee build. No comparison distorts the judgement.

Simple easy to answer question: latest mathil build (cyclone coc vd). Name a melee build that can even dream of reaching similar performance. And how much does it take to make said build.

Background: I probably play this game quite abit different from many of the posters here... I play what I enjoy without giving a rats a** about what other players do, play or how fast they are... I just don't care. Neither do I like or engage the final endgame grind... (got burnt out with doing that a long long time ago)


Anyway.. Melee from my point of view..

1. Targeting... Thats without doubt the number one thing that turns me off from playing more melee builds... And thats with the band-aid of multistrike/ancestral-call, without those? NO!

2. Clear speed. Ok, it kinda sucks but I can live with that, as long as the targeting is "fixed". I can always suppliment the build with a dedicated clear speed skill if I need to.

3. Single target damage. Wouldn't complain if that was abit higher. Or rather if that was the whole point with melee skills. As it is I just don't know what the point is... probably due to the fact that I usually get stuck on the targeting issue.

"

raics wrote:

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

This isn't a competitive game where melee is in direct competition to bows or caster builds.

I already gave you an example before how an overpowered item can suck enjoyment even out of a single player game, you just don't get excited anymore when you discover other things. You kinda need some semblance of balance even there, and this isn't a single player game, not really.

When you lower the bar to newcomers that don't have a clue and can't even beat kitava, thing, can only get worse. They will try melee as it's usually the easiest archetype to use, see that it's clunky as hell and say fuck this game. You're getting the very situation I mentioned where the game isn't a joke anymore.

You still haven't explained what are you losing if melee gets good and there are more reasons to play it besides 'I just like its style'. I'd understand being objected to improving it if melee was too strong or too convenient, but when the best we can say about it is that the strongest melee setups are on par with average schmoe ranged I just see no reason for it. Unless the reason is what I mentioned before, and it isn't an uncommon mindset, you see people picking low tier characters in fighting games all the time because it gives you that fuzzy feeling of being so good you have to gimp yourself.

If GGG went ahead and nerfed ranged down to the level where melee currently is i wouldn't mind at all. When they buffed melee to the level of current top meta skills i would quit the game because counting damage in shapers per second isn't my type of amusement.

Realistically none of the 2 is ever going to happen and as i said, i don't really care about it. I have absolutely no objections to your intentions to get melee and ranged closer together, as long as melee gives the standard.

What i am objecting to is the notion here that melee is useless garbage that nobody plays. Taking 10-20 seconds longer for a tier 16 map <> useless garbage.
Not competitive, maybe, but again, all classes/archetypes being on equal terms is a respectable goal to go after but it's neither necessary nor is it achievable.

Ranged has an inherant advantage over melee, that can't be changed. You can try to give it a niche but would that make it competitive? Even if they were better at killing bosses, (which would require massive nerfs to ranged before hand given that ranged chars can delete bosses in less than a second, you can't really double that) nobody who cares about being efficient (aka the people complaining here) really cares about boss killing.
Given the drop rates killing bosses is a waste of time so what would that niche be worth at the end of the day? The entire game would need to be turned upside down to make melee really competitive and GGG is evidently afraid of doing that. Probably for good reason.
Just look at all the whine threads because summoners got nerfed a litte. If they adjusted ranged as hard as they would have to hell would break lose here.

"

Having entire archetype shit by design is ok. But GGG refuses to be open about this. They deceive players with beautiful lies about diversity and options. Thats marketing and PR. Reality is different.

So marketing guys are telling lies, that's new. No Company/Politician/Marketing guy will ever call shit shit, never. Deal with it.