Why does GGG hate melee and love spells?

Sup boyz,

This is going to be about my experience in the game so urs might differ.
Fair warning to the GGG whiteknights that are gonna be all over this, yes this will be an other whine thread bout melee so come at me I will take your hatred for the greater good, lol.

Honestly all I want to know is what I asked in the title, because if melee is in this shit of a state AFTER they buffed it.. clearly GGG and most of the melee community are NOT seeing eye to eye.
Really when compared to spells, it's just funny how far of the average melee skill gem is from what the top tier gems are in this game (mostly spells btw).


Couple of things that need to be addressed from my perspective at least:

-When looking at the amount of currency required to make melee builds viable compared to spells on average melee is still way behind.

-Power scaling of melee compared to spells is still a JOKE! Really in the early game. They're so far apart that it truly feels like we're playing a different game compared to spells. Power level wise it feels like the spells boyz are playing D3 RoS when the melee guys are still playing PoE 1.0.. but now with animation canceling! which wasn't nearly as good as I was hoping it would be and leads nicely into my next point..

-Not sure how other melee players feel about the animation canceling but it's kinda hit or miss for me depending on what melee skill I'm playing and I would love for a feature that's able to turn OFF animation canceling seeing as it feels very weird quite often.

-Give me old multistrike back cuz the current version feels really bad and not fun at all. When I equipped old multistrike it felt good a bit glitchy maybe but that was part of the charm of it! And I kinda like the super speedy attacks of old multistrike. Now a days I'm looking for melee builds that avoid multistrike when before I was looking forward to get to lvl 38 and equip it, pretty big swap in enjoyment from my end at least.

-Either have BOTH caster AND melee be more dependent on their weapon being crucial or non do. Even though I can appreciate the difference if apparently it's THIS hard to balance then maybe it needs to be disposed of. The fact is that people can get to act10 with the wand they found on the starter beach, try doing that with melee I dare ya.



What bothers me most about the whole thing is that this is the state of melee AFTER the so called melee buffs were done so I'm really hoping GGG isn't in a mindset right now were they believe melee is just fine.
I probably missed a few things that aren't great about melee right now so to my fellow melee players, please add whatever has been bothering you because I'd love for GGG to be more aware of what's going on.

You nailed it.

Melee is a big mess for years now.
GGG's recent attempt to fix it was turning it into a damage aura like thing which has nothing in comon with melee game play anymore.

For me, a good melee experience is based on positioning and precise targeting. PoE is not the game which excells when it comes to positioning and precise targeting. It focus on clear speed (recently) and most of the time feels very gibberish.

My theorie is that melee as we know it is broken beyond fix in this game.

best melee skill is Cyclone

and you know what? Cyclone + Cast on Crit + spell is strictly better damage and clear speed

it is beyond repair

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sidtherat wrote:

best melee skill is Cyclone

and you know what? Cyclone + Cast on Crit + spell is strictly better damage and clear speed

it is beyond repair

Yes. But Cyclone is not very melee. It is a damage aura.

I play most of the character's archetypes. I skip only mines and totems cuz i think it's not my place, but one day i try it out.

I think tthe problem You see here is just difference of core mechanic's of this two type of skills.

If i'm wrong i'm sorry, but i think the problem You see here is mele skill's need acuracy to hit monsters everytime, spells don't have this problem, and it's a ponit, the GGG try to scale this somehow and they delete an option for mages that allow them to leech mana while using spell's. In addition, mele archetype's get an aura that pump up acuracy at the start of the lvling character.

About prizes, i test already a very cheap incinerate build that easly kill uber elder, and same very cheap build contain a blade flurry that also help me to kill uber elder deathless. Of course You can go crazy with both this build, and make it easier to do but you realy no need this, and i'm sure every skill can be used in cheap and expiensive version to do mostly all content (except HOGM, but this map is anomaly) and can be realy great.

Of course i dont say You not right, but i cant agree in 100%.

The quintessential melee skill in the whole genre "isn't melee," somehow? Okay... lmao. I agree melee needs help, but this is a ridiculous notion.

It should be noted that some melee skills do quite well still: Frostblades, Wild Strike, Reave, Blade Flurry, Tec Slam, and Blade Storm; and some are even still usable despite their relative drop in power compared to when they were meta: Earthquake, Cleave, Sunder, Molten Strike, Heavy Strike, Flicker Strike, and Infernal Blow.

The OP makes it sound like it's "unusable" or something, when really it just falls behind non-melee builds in many cases. This isn't really because GGG hates melee or anything. It's the result of the game's evolution toward clear speed meta, mobility creep, large numbers of ways to produce enormous aoe or triggered effects, enemies becoming very binary in their threat level toward players, and enemies generally being one-shottable. Put another way, since it's so much easier to scale your damage than defenses, and ranged skills tend to produce more aoe, we see the situation where melee just takes longer to accomplish the same thing while also being less safe about it. The introduction of Fortify was a good idea in concept, but lots of ranged builds found ways to incorporate it, so melee didn't really gain any advantage while ranged was made safer.

I think this next league (Metamorph) may help highlight what identity melee should have in this game. While people can disagree with me on what that is, I would suggest that it should be tuned toward bossing and longer endurance fights while ranged can have its clear speed. A few things they could do for it are:
*Actually fix Fortify to work with non-mobility melee gems only.
*They could also do more to ensure Intimidate is properly a melee debuff and then buff its effect. Making it somewhat more available to melee builds wouldn't hurt either.
*The damage efficiency scaling on melee skills could use about 0.5 buff across the board, or melee weapons themselves could be buffed a bit.
*Armor from gear could be buffed as well, again by about 50%.
*Reduce the reservation cost of Pride.
*Remove the reservation cost for Blood/Sand and/or Flesh/Stone.
*Reduce or remove the reservation on Banners.
*Make warcries triggerable now that IC has been reworked.
*Buff boss hp and resistances alongside some of these other changes.

They don't have to do all of these. These are just some things to look at that could help.

The core issue with melee, as I see it, is that it needs to outscale ranged in damage and defenses to make up for its disadvantages in aoe/clear speed and the inherent extra danger of just being closer to enemies. The only place in the game where your positioning plays a major role in the fight is against bossing, so this is where melee must shine. Right now, ranged builds have such big advantages and can easily do enough dps that the emphasis on bossing next league in combination with the bow reworks points to melee only falling further behind.

GGG doesn't hate melee, I think they just think that melee should have comparable stats, but aren't understanding that melee has an overall tougher time playing the game. There was a time when melee was on equal footing with ranged and caster, but that was back when we only had 2 acts. Over the years, they've added new monsters, bosses, and buffed them to the point that you can get 1shot under a clusterfuck of particle effects or giving them to bosses to scatter you from them.

Ranged and casters have kiting and mobility they can use to fight things, which gives them a far superior advantage in combat over melee.

The only way for melee to compete with caster and ranged builds these days is if they're given melee exclusive buffs like significant defenses for wielding melee weapons, movement speed bonuses depending on weapon used, etc.

Or, you know, nerfing ranged and caster builds to account for them having safety and mobility.

It's just that while the game was adding "more and bigger stuff" league after league it ended up favoring AoE too much, then true "in your face" melee will be lackluster. Not only that but also high damage spikes favor long range, high dmg AoE skills.

"

Synopse wrote:

You nailed it.
For me, a good melee experience is based on positioning and precise targeting.

Well, good luck with the clusterf*ck of effects and mobs...

Because they are Warlocks.