Why does GGG hate melee and love spells?

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Albinosaurus wrote:

The OP makes it sound like it's "unusable" or something, when really it just falls behind non-melee builds in many cases.

The first part just isn't true, I was specifically trying to avoid saying something like that because, the cool part of this game is the fact that u can actually get most if not all skill gems to "work", now how effective it will be that's something I tried to emphasize, maybe I should have done a better job making that clear though.
The second part is basically my message, melee is waaaaay behind on non melee builds, which kinda scares me considering we've had the melee rework already and this is the result.

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Synopse wrote:

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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.

Agreed and "+ spell" maybe I'm wrong here but aren't we just back to spells carrying at this point?

Heavy Strike is quite a joke of melee skill. You have to link it with melee splash and ancestral call to have decent clear speed. So you actually only have 4-links to this skill.

Another joke of Heavy Strike is knock back. <- significantly decrease DPS again.

Lion's roar is also a reason that makes melee unbalanced. Some melee skills have almost or completely no downside of its knock back effect(ex. cyclone) but some skills have.

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Severance2hBlade wrote:

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smtad wrote:

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This is what i was talking about earlier. Players no longer care about tactics & gameplay strategies. Lets sacrifice everything in the altar of "clear speed" & AoE.

I mean why destroy a reasonably powerful single target skill like HStrike by linking it with 2 AoE elements? Can't u use it as it was meant to be used - like as a strong single target skill and in conjunction with another reasonably good pure AoE skill?

No it won't break any dps or clear speed records. But it can be optimized in such a way to have respectable performance on both aspects. You see for some players who favor a slower, more controlled gamestyle - this is more than enough to both enjoy & play the content.

But the point of playing melee is not that (clear speed) anyway - it is the feeling of been able to both tank & properly deliver damage against strong single targets (not face tanking). This is the part that GGG needs to improve on & not trying to make them work as something that were innately not made for to work with (clear speed).

While I agree that a bit more tactic and gameplay would be preferable over clearspeed only it's just not realistic to get POEs playerbase to that point. Most of them are so narrowed on getting those rewards asap they can't even begin to understand how one can actually want slower/more challenging gameplay. I had a bunch of discussions with these kind of people lately and it's just plain pointless.

There is also a problem with your Heavy Strike example. IF Heavystrike had exceptional single target damage with proper investment he might actually see use. Thing is, he doesn't. Even fully invested and build around his single target dps is at best equal to most AOE skills. Not to mention that knockback being a pain in the ass. There is just no reason to use that skill at all, compared to tecslam, moltenstrike and sorts.

Anyone that's been here for a while, especially since the beginning will know that GGG doesn't love spells. Well self casting at least, I don't count traps/mines/totems/coc as spell casting.

Attacks have always had easy access to health and mana leach, much lower mana costs, much higher attack speed compared to cast speed, higher percent increases on the tree, scales higher with weapons, better movement abilities, etc.

For pretty much the entire games history self casting has been shit. Throwing a spell on a trap/mine/totem/coc setup was always superior. Try to self cast and you end up with less damage and an insane mana cost, I remember one time doing self cast ice spear with a 6 link and it was something like 120 mana per cast. The fact that people ended up using Warlords Mark just for the mana leach even though it was obviously a melee oriented curse just shows how bad it was.

Also Heavy Strike deals 222% of base damage and has a 20% chance do deal double damage, not sure how much more damage you think it needs to be an amazing single target ability. So many people are complaining about all these melee skills being bad at clearing when that isn't their purpose. They were all made for single target for taking out rare/unique enemies. Sure since with trading people end up with insane damage now and don't need single target skills, but still doesn't mean these abilities need to be buffed to be so strong they clear just as good as the the ones meant to do that. Hopefully since we will get more 6 links in PoE 2 people will just accept that these skills aren't for clearing and actually use them for their initial purpose.

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Telzen wrote:

Also Heavy Strike deals 222% of base damage and has a 20% chance do deal double damage, not sure how much more damage you think it needs to be an amazing single target ability. So many people are complaining about all these melee skills being bad at clearing when that isn't their purpose. They were all made for single target for taking out rare/unique enemies. Sure since with trading people end up with insane damage now and don't need single target skills, but still doesn't mean these abilities need to be buffed to be so strong they clear just as good as the the ones meant to do that. Hopefully since we will get more 6 links in PoE 2 people will just accept that these skills aren't for clearing and actually use them for their initial purpose.

Just compare Heavy strike with Ice Crash for example. 222% of base with 0,85 attack rate and 20% chance for double damage against 240% of base with 0,7 attack rate and 169-254 added cold damage. I am not even sure Heavy strike comes out on top of that, even with threshold jewels. And even if it does, it will only be slight. Not to mention that Ice Crash has an inherent AOE and it doesn't knock shit back. I mean just try clobbering a Einhar Rarebeast with shaper levels of health using heavy strike. That permanent knockback is such a massive pain, you spend more time running after the beast than actually attacking. And yes, I actually used heavy strike at some point following your train of thought and it felt horribly doing that.

I really love playing melee and I've been defending its viability in like 5 topics during the last few weeks, but even I have to say that some of those Strikeskills are entirely pointless and Heavystrike is arguably the worst of them all thanks to knockback. That skill simply doesn't have a purpose to fulfill aside maybe from being bad/be used early for leveling, but even there it's not good.

my theory is that new zealand is fairy land where just elves and fairies live.

In Europe, Asia, Africa and America everyone has quite a culture of beating each other and his neighbours for thousands of years. MELEE STYLE.

But in Ozeania things are quite different. They dont have it in their blood, they dont feel it, they dont know it. They cant properly put in their game.

And another theory is that they just balance phys damage around 1000% facebreakers with 5 damage flasks for damage and kaoms heart for life scaling.

I hadn't seen the numbers on Ice Crash now so I didn't know it went so high. For a while there Heavy Strike had the highest percent damage for melee attacks. Well Heavy Strike does have an attack speed modifier of 85% over 70% for Ice Crash and so much of Ice Crash's damage being elemental just means its going to be cut by enemy res anyway.

ice crash damage might be among the best of all melee skills but that doesnt make it.

Check for example a random spell, lets say ethereal knives. 850 flat phys on lvl 21 and 1.6 base cast speed.

Now compare that with the typcial OK phys weapon (that players in SSF often only get around lvl 90 and have to spend 1 exalt or more in crafting to get it) that has 200 base flat phys and 2.0 base attack speed and the base attack speed gets already fucking by all those 0.8~ attack speed mutlipliers.

And heavy strike has literally no flat damage, 20% chance for double strike is just an inconsistent 1.2 damage multiplier.

Difference between 200 flat and 850 flat is 4.25. Thats often literally the difference between a 1 link and a 6link.

Not to mention that heavy strike builds have to burn 2 gem links for ancestral call and melee splash in order to do anything.

But yea we got all this fucking increased xy shit, right :D

Like from 3.0 to 3.6 it was actually somewhat fine when melee builds at least had the chance to roll good abyss jewels and get a 600-1000 flat damage just by using all the jewel slots so they can compete flat damage wise with the spellcasters.

But nope now we are back to this stupid ass conversion meta even more with multicraft being gone where everyone has to use 3 damage flasks (lions roar, atziris promise and taste of hate to be precise) and flat on all gear in order to get somewhat close to the flat damage that spellcasters get for free. And you really feel you are in a bad position LOL?

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The_Human_Tornado wrote:

ice crash damage might be among the best of all melee skills but that doesnt make it.

Check for example a random spell, lets say ethereal knives. 850 flat phys on lvl 21 and 1.6 base cast speed.

Now compare that with the typcial OK phys weapon (that players in SSF often only get around lvl 90 and have to spend 1 exalt or more in crafting to get it) that has 200 base flat phys and 2.0 base attack speed and the base attack speed gets already fucking by all those 0.8~ attack speed mutlipliers.

And heavy strike has literally no flat damage, 20% chance for double strike is just an inconsistent 1.2 damage multiplier.

Difference between 200 flat and 850 flat is 4.25. Thats often literally the difference between a 1 link and a 6link.

Not to mention that heavy strike builds have to burn 2 gem links for ancestral call and melee splash in order to do anything.

But yea we got all this fucking increased xy shit, right :D

Like from 3.0 to 3.6 it was actually somewhat fine when melee builds at least had the chance to roll good abyss jewels and get a 600-1000 flat damage just by using all the jewel slots so they can compete flat damage wise with the spellcasters.

But nope now we are back to this stupid ass conversion meta even more with multicraft being gone where everyone has to use 3 damage flasks (lions roar, atziris promise and taste of hate to be precise) and flat on all gear in order to get somewhat close to the flat damage that spellcasters get for free. And you really feel you are in a bad position LOL?

Correct me if I am wrong here, but if you have a 200 base damage weapon and use, for example ice crash with it, won't that do (200 + 211[average flat from icecrash]) x2,4 [240% of base] with 1,4 attacks per second? So we would talk about 986 x 1,4 against 850 x 1,6 which isn't much of a difference anymore and Icecrash is actually ahead. Sure melee still has the disadvantage of needing a good weapon while Spells just need + Gem levels but still. The difference isn't that large.