melee.. melee never changes

@sidtherat

I don't feel like continuing this much longer so i'll try to keep this short.

No i don't consider my Scion and my Gladiator to be tanky (enough). That's why they will get a rework with the next patch.
Except for Chieftain and Jugg i consider most of my chars WIP. As far as the chieftain goes, he can tank literally everything from Minotaur Earthquakes over shaperslams to Uber Elder Icicle spears without giving a damn. If you say that's not tanky ok, it's certainly enough for me. The jugg is tankier, sure. But it's hard to even notice the difference.

Then on this god damned "melee ascendancy" topic. I never intended to say that "melee ascendancies" are "melee only". In fact i acknowledged the fact that they can be used for other builds to some extent at several points throughout this topic. I believe i specifially mentioned Bow Slayers and RF juggernauts as exceptions at some point.

I call them "melee ascendancies" because they provide the one thing that a melee build needs above all else, tankiness. Yes, tankiness is something ranged classes want as well to some extent, but that's the point. To some extent. They normally don't want to stack defenses because they will likely lose damage in the process and when your game plan revolves around killing everything offscreen then damage should be your priority.

Yes, you can use Jugg for your TS build but considering build efficiency (and this entire topic of melee being shit is based on efficiency and opportunity cost aka why play melee when ranged is faster). So please go and apply this logic to a TS Juggernaut. Why would anyone who is serios about making a decent char do that? Compared to a Deadeye the result will be slower and have significantly less damage in exchange for tankyness that he wouldn't need if he just invested in damage. You can do this for fun but it doesn't make much sense from an effectivness point of view.

So that's it from my side, if you really want to continue this send me a pm, i won't check back on this topic, i am sick of it.


@Frostzor27 i can only guess since i haven't seen what happend but i strongly suspect that one of the beyond archers you were dealing with was Bameth, shifting darkness. That guy uses vaal detonate dead and can oneshot literally everything with it. He's one of the things in this game you can't tank.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I call them "melee ascendancies" because they provide the one thing that a melee build needs above all else, tankiness. Yes, tankiness is something ranged classes want as well to some extent, but that's the point. To some extent. They normally don't want to stack defenses because they will likely lose damage in the process and when your game plan revolves around killing everything offscreen then damage should be your priority.

thats the point i think that is the axis of all our disagreement.

ranged (bows, wands) damage output is so high that unless you are chasing paper dps numbers you can safely cut 1/3rd of it and STILL be able to offscreen and skip-phase bossing. some people prefer to stack damage - but thats their choice, not necessity.

that 'saved' 1/3rd can be easily put into defences. with no noticeable difference in the clear speed nor bossing potential (there is no gain for 250% overkill..)


ranged playstyle has an option to build tanky - there is barely any need for it (bad players with bad mechanical skills or REALLY bad builds should not be measuring tools) melee players do not have that luxury of choice. they HAVE to do it.

you can have tanky ranged and glass ranged
you can have tanky melee but you CANNOT have glass melee. that doesnt exist

the damage ranged can get (mainly due to obscene crit scaling) is so high you really dont need to chase it. there is no 'loosing damage' aspect at all



TS JUGG? havent seen one. but RoA - yep, RT/IronGrip/tanky af phys RoA. the main issue with marauder-based archers is lack of movement speed options, not damage. the damage (esp for impale based crit phys build with accuracy stacking and obscurantis) should be 'enough' and tankines beyond the scale. question is - why? when baseline tankines is 'enough' and you can get more movement speed from other choices? but im sure UE is perfectly doable with TS JUGG. it isnt the best nor obvious pick but it should work well enough

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Yes, you can use Jugg for your TS build but considering build efficiency (and this entire topic of melee being shit is based on efficiency and opportunity cost aka why play melee when ranged is faster). So please go and apply this logic to a TS Juggernaut. Why would anyone who is serios about making a decent char do that? Compared to a Deadeye the result will be slower and have significantly less damage in exchange for tankyness that he wouldn't need if he just invested in damage. You can do this for fun but it doesn't make much sense from an effectivness point of view.

Well, we determined that level 100 TS champions exist. So why do they exist? Who plays them?

a) Those that are hopeless at this game and have probably RMT-ed their way to 100 so they can't tell good from bad
b) Those that want to play ranged champion just to be a snowflake
c) Those that really want to play champion and think that going ranged on an ascendancy that has nothing to do with ranged is more efficient
d) Those that want to play ranged and realize your damage output will be perfectly fine either way so picking an ascendancy that has nothing to do with ranged for a ranged build is a great choice

Only a and b are good answers, c and d mean something stinks in the code.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Then on this god damned "melee ascendancy" topic. I never intended to say that "melee ascendancies" are "melee only". In fact i acknowledged the fact that they can be used for other builds to some extent at several points throughout this topic. I believe i specifially mentioned Bow Slayers and RF juggernauts as exceptions at some point.

I see that you started backpedaling here.
You did mention bow slayer, making fun of it, not thinking of it as a serious build :

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Some Duelist builds might use bows to be hipster but that's most likely worse than just making a melee.

You did not really acknowledge (or imply) that slayer could be (realistically) used for a (viable) bow build, and since 25% of the HC Blight 95+ slayers are bow builds, it's pretty safe to assume yes, it is "viable".


But you're starting to acknowledge it now, so there's that.


The whole point that everybody has been putting forth is that melee characters are not inherently tanky, and they neither have more dps/speed/coverage than range archetypes to compensate either.

The only difference between melee and range archetypes at the moment in PoE is that melee archetypes have to tank and to build in consequence, when range archetypes don't necessarily need to, but still can if they want to.
And if you build tanky on range archetypes, you often end up with still more speed and in many cases damage too.


I remember couple of months ago during the Quinn challenge when Steelmage leveled up a cleave character all the way to Uber Elder SSF HC ....
He barely got to the end of it.
His conclusion ?
"melee ? never again"

Melee are nowhere near viable alternative compared to range archetypes when it comes to :
- racing
- boss farming

The only place where melee might shine is in HC in deep Delves, that's it.
In SC, even range characters with as much dps as possible are preferred to delve as deep as possible I think.

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raics wrote:

Well, we determined that level 100 TS champions exist. So why do they exist? Who plays them?

a) Those that are hopeless at this game and have probably RMT-ed their way to 100 so they can't tell good from bad
b) Those that want to play ranged champion just to be a snowflake
c) Those that really want to play champion and think that going ranged on an ascendancy that has nothing to do with ranged is more efficient
d) Those that want to play ranged and realize your damage output will be perfectly fine either way so picking an ascendancy that has nothing to do with ranged for a ranged build is a great choice

Only a and b are good answers, c and d mean something stinks in the code.

Champion is not related to melee.
The only thing "melee" about champion is the drawing, that's it.
Everything the champion has to offer can be used with bows, which is why none of the lvl 100 champions HC Blight players are melee characters.

Why ?
Because you're tanky, and you have enough damage / clearspeed, so the question becomes, in a HC league, why would you play an archer with ridiculous overkill damage that is squishier ?
There are more lvl 100 bow champions in HC Blight than lvl 100 bow raider+ranger+pathfinders together.

(Yes, I personally believe that a league where you cannot afford to die is a better balancing basis)

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Fruz wrote:

Champion is not related to melee.
The only thing "melee" about champion is the drawing, that's it.
Everything the champion has to offer can be used with bows, which is why none of the lvl 100 champions HC Blight players are melee characters.

Sure, maybe you lose some damage but you already do so much it's making no difference. When the ascendancy is this generally useful why would you play melee?

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raics wrote:

Sure, maybe you lose some damage but you already do so much it's making no difference. When the ascendancy is this generally useful why would you play melee?

That's right, and it's not a problem with Champion ... it's a problem with melee ( that has deeper root than just the melee archetype, it's a big problem including what range archetypes have, have they did not use to have, connected to monster density, game speed and power creep ).

The champion ascendancy is fine being polyvalent, but given which part of the tree it's in ... I think that one could legitimately expect to see at about as many melee characters using it than range characters if not more.

"Power creep is getting out of hand, GGG needs to do something about this."

"LEMME NUKE THE WHOLE FU-CKING WORLD WITH MY FRICKEN DAGGER SLAMS!!!"

Someone probably has given this suggestion already but...

What if they removed the Fortify support and made every "low reach" melee skill grant a bonus similar to fortify on hit(removing the vfx)?

Fortify melee nodes would remain the same and still apply.

Wouldn't fix all the problems but it's better than nothing imo.

Good example of how melee can get fucked by bosses.


It's a wonder why paper-poe pros say thing like :

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Baharoth15 wrote:

But claiming that melee has to move more in bossfights than ranged is ridiculous. Same for the statement that bosses are designed to punish melee, the opposite is the case

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Baharoth wrote:

I said that melee has higher damage uptime in bossfights

When in fact stuff like this happens :

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snorkle_uk wrote:

ziz wants the game harder. when he played the devour boss in the demo hes like yeah u need to nerf this. why if he wants the game hard? because it was just bullshit 1 shotting people in melee range with no way to realistically escape it.

( not meaning to pull you, but that quote is very relevant here )

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Gordyne wrote:

Someone probably has given this suggestion already but...

What if they removed the Fortify support and made every "low reach" melee skill grant a bonus similar to fortify on hit(removing the vfx)?

Fortify melee nodes would remain the same and still apply.

Wouldn't fix all the problems but it's better than nothing imo.

Yeah, stuff like that has been mentionned couple of times I think, it would definitely be more suited imo, but you would need to justify it in a way, as a keystone ( that would become mandatory then ), a unique mod, or a rare mod, idk ...

Well said. However what can we really expect from GGG?


They couldn't even fix the targeting issue (Every other ARPG doesn't have this problem how does this game have it?...still?).


I still want to know how come melee has to deal with all enemy mechanics meanwhile every other playstyle can completely ignore them (with the exception of proxy shield)? Makes me wonder if they can even make anti range (not limited to bow users) mechanics other than smaller boss room/after death effects (that are still being completely ignored)


Fuck it maybe GGG will actually fix it. Maybe they will just give melee players bows to use melee attacks with. I mean what can go wrong there?

Hell honestly I would just be fine if GGG just came out and said: "We don't know how to fix it."

Oh well back to Wolcen, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, Diablo, Titan Quest, etc. (games that do not have such abhorrent melee issues) as I await the inevitable.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Regardless, PoE 5.0 might bring some BALANCE regarding REAL MELEE and it's purpose, as I sadly don't feel that our "puny impact" will be addressed during 4.0 in any meaningful way...

Still practicing with those rags?