melee.. melee never changes

"

Fruz wrote:

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

"

Fruz wrote:

pretty long rage post

Honestly all you're doing is making claims without any arguments to back them up along with some insults here and there, not to mention that your willingness (ability?) to read is pretty low. You truly aren't worth bothering with.

So, me adressing the nonsense you were trying to spread by actual facts with actual evidence <=> "claims without any arguments" to you ?


lulz, GOTCHA.
This was meant to happen at some point.

I agree with fruz here and i reported that post as flamebait because i don't think it's good forum etiquette to sum up someone else's post in a discussion forum as: pretty long rage post.
Expecially when it was full of good information like the builds from poe.ninja.

On one hand, making melee skills more in line with ranged ones should be done cause "balance good". On the other hand, that shouldn't be done cause that would powercreep the rest of the non-powercreeped skills and "powercreep bad".

With the current state of affairs you get skills on the whole range of the power spectrum. I think that's better, even if most of the playerbase just uses the OP ones.

Melee is the unofficial hard mode of poe, holding the powercreep of the game in check. Melee players should be proud of that.

so, you seem serious about the 'tankiness' so i took liberty and inspected your characters in details looking for clues (you deliberately set them as public so i hope you take no offence)

TL;DR: there are none. you extrapolate jugg 2*nebuloh experience to all other melee characters and compare them to your - in my opinion not well made - ranged characters. in short - your outlook is SERIOUSLY biased with your own experience

you built the tankiest non-guardian out there, accepting its low combat effectiveness (clear speed) and compare it to glass-cannony ranged characters of yours.


moving on to the details:
your characters with defensive mechanics, ill mark them with -U- if they are universal

your lvl 92 slayer lacerate:
-slayer leech -U-
-lots of attack leech -U-
-Lion's Roar (melee only)
-basalt flask -U-
-flesh and stone's blind/maim -U-
-fortify on movement skill -U- (what a surprise..)
-+1 endurance charge -U-


in short: tankines built solely around (over)leeching. destroyed by -recovery map mod. the only melee-only stuff is one flask.


lvl 93 gladiator ice crash
-dual wielding (+12% block) -U- (you can spectral throw while dual wielding just as well)
-blind from Bringer of Rain (melee only as only melee can use this helmet) albeit blind is easy to get from other sources
-the same flasks as above
-(spell) block passives from gladiator melee/-U-

i hope you dont consider this char tanky as it is nothing special in the defensive department

lvl 92 berserker SST
- stun immunity from berserker -U-
- rumi's flask -U-
- soul of steel -U- (including oils it is pretty accessible for a price)
- +1 end charge -U-
- some block passives there and there -U- (albeit some are coupled with attack/melee damage)
- blind from shaper gloves -U-
- some ailment immunity from Cyclopean Coil -U-

the biggest defense source is that this character is fast and ranged.. with some block chance

lvl 92 ascendant starforge
- +100 life from weapon (weapon specific, safe to assume it is melee only)
- stun immunity from rage (ascendant) -U-
- fortify from hit (ascendant) melee only
- fortify effect cluster (melee only in practice)
- lots of leech passives and items -U-
- soul of steel -U-

i hope you dont consider this character tanky. it isnt


lvl 94 chieftain molten strike
- nebuloh. attack only. powerhouse of an item
- loreweave -U-
- stun immunity from Kaom's boots -U-
- Wise Oak + ele flask -U-
- fortify on movement skill -U- (what a surprise.. i thought it is melee's perk to dont have to use it.. lol)
- soul of steel -U-
- +3 endurance charges -U- (albeit mostly melee will pick all 3 - except slayer archers with end==frenzy ascendancy)
- phys taken as fire (ascendancy) -U-
- lots of life regen (ascendancy) -U-
- LGOH on a fast attacking skill -U-

again, nothing special and the only semi-melee-only bit is all 3 charges taken. but thats stretching it. for that 'tankines' you pay with damage as clear speed must be preeeettty bad


and then is the 2*nebuloh jugg. this one is tanky.



to sum it up: 'melee is tanky because my ONE SETUP is'. best part is - that tankiness of your remaining characters is almost entirely universal and can (and is) used by any type of character. and your jugg would be junk if you replace 2*nebuloh with 2*rare 400pdps 1h maces. that one item makes or breaks your build..

btw summoner jugg is a thing. summons are so idiotic that you need NOTHING from the ascendancy to clear entire game and can focus entirely on 'tankines' if for some reason you dont like +83max res low life guardian with boners mana->ES. having skills that deal damage from gem levels alone is much better than melee when you actually HAVE to invest a lot into passives and gear

Steelmage theorycrafting a bow build from Dan's character right now ...

BOW BUILD ( bleed based ).



Guess what ?

Gladiator.




Yep

"

kompaniet wrote:

I agree with fruz here and i reported that post as flamebait because i don't think it's good forum etiquette to sum up someone else's post in a discussion forum as: pretty long rage post.
Expecially when it was full of good information like the builds from poe.ninja.

You call that pile of flames a good post? Seriously?

"

You think so because you just cannot read/understand the context, as I pointed out already.

No argument, just a flame.

"

??????
Have you ever played melee in this game AT ALL ???

Holy crap, range characters are the one who have positioning very easy and spend most of their time actually dealing damage, not melee characters.

flame followed by a claim without argument.

"

pretty much adressed all that nonsense you've been throwing, right above.

And .... leech, something that you lack as a caster ? WUT ?
Are you aware that GGG added ES LEECH gems and nodes on the tree ?
Are you aware that jewellery that provides element-based leech is not hard to find ?
What the hell are you talking about ? HAve you played the game at all in 2019 ?

Starts with a flame, ends with a flame and puts some "argument" in the middle that I addressed specifically serveral times in this topic.

"

Because you lack experience with melee characters, it's as simple as that.

and another flame

"

Never noticed porcupines, and never noticed the delve on death effects before deep delves ???
The ONLY, the ONLY REASON to not notice those on-death effect are corpse disposal, there is no other fucking way to be that unaware otherwise ( unless bad faith, I guess that's very much a possibility ).

no argument, just outright denial, but alt least no flame this time.

"

Both statement being blatantly wrong, it does not matter

another claim without back up.

Honestly, responding to that post in kind would probably get me banned. Guess it was wrong to value it at all by making a response but oh well. It's amazing that the mods actually tolerate posts like that. But good idea with the reporting, just did that with Fruz post.

/edit oh and since you mentioned those POE Ninja stats as "good data". Let me point out some facts here:

Fruz is arguing for 3 things here:
There aren't any melee classes
Melee is not viable
Strikeskill are even worse than melee in general.

Then he goes and posts the top 10 for each of the 6 (what I call melee ascendancies) from the HC Blight ladder, so what's supposed to be the highest skill level there is. If something indicates viability it's probably those stats right?

And what do we get? 36/60 people using supposedly melee classes actually play melee and 5/60 play strike skills. That's close to 2/3 in the first and 1/10 in the second case. Pretty good numbers considering how completely shitty and unviable especially strike skills are don't you think? If he wanted to completely disprove his postion in this discussion then that data sure did the job. It gets even funnier when you see that he considers 5 strikeskills in the top 10 as a sign that strikeskills are shit and then claims that Jugg Summoner is a viable class because it shows up once. How much more contradiction can you possibly get into one post?

@Sidtherat I will respond to you later, don't have the time right now.

My apologies for not willing to write/explain again what you already did not previously understand (therefore just mentioning them) ....

Or not, I don't actually care.

The only relevant thing is that you cannot deny fact, so when you face facts, you seem to just resort to "wow you're flaming me ! not worth my time !".



Feel free to report me as much as you want, I'm not the want purely going ad-hominem @"you're just flaming you're not worth my time"

I showed clear fact/evidence and mentioned other ones that we already tried to explain you, and that's it, it's as simple as that.
And yes, pointing out that if you never noticed weta's on death effect in delve before depth 300 it can only mean that you just lack experience is neither flaming, it means that you like just.lack.experience.

It's that simple.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

Fruz is arguing for 3 things here:
There aren't any melee classes
Melee is not viable
Strikeskill are even worse than melee in general.

Then he goes and posts the top 10 for each of the 6 (what I call melee ascendancies) from the HC Blight ladder, so what's supposed to be the highest skill level there is. If something indicates viable it's probably those stats right?

Holy cow, now putting words in my mouth, how much more disingenuous do you want to get ? seriously ?
If anything, beyond disingenuous it's also pretty toxic, legitimately toxic.

I literally quoted the part of your post that this quick analyze was answering to, because it was nonsense and I wanted to address it :

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

"

sidtherat wrote:

- there is nothing 'melee' does better than bow and casters. 'tanky' doesnt count as nothing in melee makes you inherently tanky. while you HAVE to be tanky to play melee in the first place.

The Ascendancies do. Berserker aside the other 5 melee ascendancies provide far more defensive utility than any other ascendancy. Slayer leech, Champions Fortify, Gladiators Block and Spellblock and Chieftain/Juggernauts Endurance Charges, flat Damage reduction and life regen. What do other ascendancies have? Guardian can reach high ES jevels and Trickster has Ghost Shrouds but the rest?

You explicitly said that those ascendancies were "melee" ascendancies and that was why melee archetypes were tankier.
Guess what ?

Those are no melee ascendancies, the whole premise you used to try to justify some kind of inherent tankiness for melee archetype is obviously wrong, making your whole argument irrelevant because erroneous.

Is it explicit enough ? Can you understand this ? I am genuinely asking, because it's honestly not a given at this point I think.

"

The Ascendancies do. Berserker aside the other 5 melee ascendancies provide far more defensive utility than any other ascendancy. Slayer leech, Champions Fortify, Gladiators Block and Spellblock and Chieftain/Juggernauts Endurance Charges, flat Damage reduction and life regen. What do other ascendancies have? Guardian can reach high ES jevels and Trickster has Ghost Shrouds but the rest?

sorry, ive missed this bit earlier

not a single one of these things you mention is melee-only. i think you mix the reason and result here.

people that want to play 2h full phys cyclone HAVE to pick marauder or duelist because all impale nodes (nodes that bring the damage into that build) are centered around there. you wont find witch 2h phys cycloners. you might find elemental cycloners if you look closely. passive tree nodes determine what class is 'viable' for what. the travel cost is prohibitive at some point.


then there is case of one certain ascendancy node being 'the best' for one build or another - covered in ash for fire builds, totem nodes for totem builds (chieftain), rage (gotta go fast - wanders and archers are zerkers as well!), base crit for 5% crit weapons (slayer) etc.

endurance charges, phys damage taken - all that can be used by any archetype.


you ask what defenses are in other classes?
Hierophant - mana/MoM (and mana->ES) stuff. emphasis on by-proxy gameplay (totems/brands)
Inquisitor - 8% less elemental damage from nearby (huge range on this one) enemies, 4nodes cons. ground path providing VERY nice regen
Occultist - curses. 10% less damage (malediction) and 10% less damage taken from nearby enemies (cold path). very strong regen
Elementalist - chill effect (incredible if stacked), 8% less damage from a given element, various golem stuff if you invest into that (chaos golem is like 10% phys dam reduction alone)
Necro - offerings, 10% less damage from enemies near corpse, enemies are chilled, bone armour. best part you can pick all-defense because you do not need any damage from ascendancy
Assassin - elusive (it is still more than what berserker gives), insane life regen from poison path
Trickster - ghost shroud and general hybrid playstyle (VERY strong with legion jewel), 10% less DoT damage, various life recovery stuff
Sabo - blind aura, 10% life regen, 8% AOE damage taken, 10% damage taken from blind enemies, hinder for mines.
Deadeye (the weakest) - 1000EV + gottagofast. this one is not defensive at all (and it doesnt need to be tbh)
Pathfinder - flasks. nuff said
Raider - more evade chance (easy to cap it), 15% less accuracy for nearby mobs (even less hits and crits from attacks), lots of dodge, perma-phasing (underestimated)


while some classes are damage only (zerk, deadeye, maybe assassin) most follow the rule of ~40% more combined damage and ~10% less damage taken.

jugg is an exception as it both provides less damage taken and more damage dealt (esp due to free accuracy opening up crit for no investment). thats most likely the strongest class in the game right now if one wants 'balanced' character.

bit of trivia:
word 'melee' is present in total of THREE ascendancies:
- raider's 30% more chance to evade MELEE attacks
- ascendant/champion's chance to fortify on MELEE hit
- slayer's more MELEE damage to nearby enemies (and this one is the one and only TRUE melee-only line/node out of ALL ascendancy nodes).

"

Chieftain/Juggernauts Endurance Charges

Endurance charges are NOTHING. 9 endurance charges, fortify, enemies cursed with enfeeble, caped resists, tons of armour and consecrated ground, Jugg defensive passives, a beyond pack killed me in a T12 map with only one damage mod: +% damage as extra cold damage. That BEFORE I could get close.

"

sidtherat wrote:

Elementalist - chill effect (incredible if stacked), 8% less damage from a given element, various golem stuff if you invest into that (chaos golem is like 10% phys dam reduction alone)

Playing chaos golemancer in SSF HC this league, it already goves me +22% flat phys reduction (I have no anima stone, it could be higher).

Add to that Soul of Steel, an anima stone and I would have +30% flat physical reduction, toped by ~8500 armour (could be higher) before Rumi's.
9k buffer too.
Oh and ~750 life regen with my stone golem too

Long story short, it's quite tanky and much safer than most melee characters, because of the different perks it has access to and its inherent safety from the gameplay.

There is no "melee" problem in the game. There is a structural problem with the whole class system and that's due to the way updates affect it. There's nothing that can be done if GGG continues on the same path of implementing changes based on a 3 month period. Every rpg's class system needs to have some fundamentals and any changes to it, must be double checked to make sure they don't alter basic principles of the game. You can't just add and remove and buff and nerf every 3 months just to present something "new". We saw it with the stat-stick problem and the change of a core mechanic of dual wielding, when there was no need to alter that mechanic outside of OP gear.

For balance to exist, you need to have different playstyles that have different pros and cons. For that to happen, you need to have various types of content that favour those types of builds. Buffing melee won't change much. Being able to optimise any build to clear content also doesn't say much, when the power of your gear surpasses by a lot the difficulty of the content. Powercreep worked as a band-aid to give players the feel that anything they can do will be viable. But still there is a small percentage of the class/skill/gear system that combines all the pros. An example of that is the 3 "recent" minion skills, reworked Dom blow/HoP/HoA. When they came out, HoA gathered all the pros compared to the other 2, making them viable as minion skills only in a way of "you can play them if you like them". And that mentality applies to a lot of things, yes you can make a mace stun build, yes you can make a RT build, yes you can make an IB build. What does it offer you though?

This problem cannot be solved without changing how end-game, gear, updates work and this is becoming more difficult to handle with each new league.