Why does GGG hate melee and love spells?

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Baharoth15 wrote:

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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.

You aren't wrong, Ice Crash is dps wise fine. I was focussed on heavy strike at this post.

But point is that melee is full of shit like Heavy Strike or even worse, Dual Strike, that doesnt just work out of the box like that. And the fact that he used heavy strike as an example for melee superiority over self casters was a mistake imo because heavy strike is among the worst unless you force it to succeed with whatever trade league gear.

Agreed. Question is, is it such a big problem if some melee skills are shit? I mean how many shitty spells and bow skills are there that nobody ever uses? Personally I don't really give a shit. Maybe it's because I've played so many card games where like 10% of the existing cards were actually usable, I am just used to the fact that not everything can be viable.

Yea sure its fine if not everything is viable but this game has like a fucking 6 year long history of having only 1-2 melee skills at the time being viable and even they are not a real deal compared to the rest.

Like even the 3.7 cyclone wasnt as good as the bane contagion stuff.

before cyclone it was sunder that was OP with stats stick, but wasnt any good at boss killing. Before that it was blade flurry, that was OP as fuck as everything before they nerfed it. Before that it was EQ, that could also both clear and boss kill. Before that it was ice crash, could also do both before nerf and before that we are cyclone again.

It was like literally always that "that one melee skill" while when GGG fixed spellcasting in 3.6 we had frostbolt builds from mathil, ice nova, fireball builds, there were like 10-20 skillgems that could destroy all gem content with 0 investment, damage flasks and without any non common sense uniques.

While what did we have in 3.7 for melee? Cylcone ...

And yea now without multicraft we dont even have weapons anymore like what the fuck. Really just fucking scaling damage with a foil that has nice base attack speed and base crit and just pop in wrath, added cold, added lightning for flat phys.

From 3.0 to 3.5 we didnt even need that cause we got a 600-1000 flat damage just from spamming abyss jewels so we did not need to waste an aura or 1-2 support gems just for getting an acceptable amount of flat base damage.

It keeps getting worse and worse since delve and yea just wtf.

I've only started playing last year so I don't know all the history, but I can see why it gets annoying if there is always just 1 or 2 skills that are really good. Question is how good are the other melee skills leaving the extremes aside?

TecSlam, Consecrated Path, Moltenstrike, Frostblades, Lacerate and Cyclone are the melee skills I've tried to a good extent so far and they all feel more or less equal, maybe a little weaker than Ice Crash right now. From my experience at least.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Spoiler

I've only started playing last year so I don't know all the history, but I can see why it gets annoying if there is always just 1 or 2 skills that are really good. Question is how good are the other melee skills leaving the extremes aside?

TecSlam, Consecrated Path, Moltenstrike, Frostblades, Lacerate and Cyclone are the melee skills I've tried to a good extent so far and they all feel more or less equal, maybe a little weaker than Ice Crash right now. From my experience at least.

Heh, out of all those "melee" skills, you actually can consider Molten Strike (with the current interaction which requires namelocking) and Cyclone/Ice Crash supported by CE, as REAL MELEE skills, the rest, not so much even if they employ a melee weapon - the inconsistency of TencentGGG regarding this aspect is another asinine decision...

There really are a few REAL MELEE skills, those are mostly Strike skills - Lightning/Molten/Heavy/Dual/Double/Pestilent/Vigilant/Viper/Static/Wild Strike (as they don't work if you don't hit an enemy with it, Lightning Strike being the sole exception at the moment), then you have Infernal Blow/Elemental Hit/Glacial Hammer/Dominating Blow/Puncture/Frenzy which are also REAL MELEE, and then you got Cyclone in a league of it's own (with Blade Vortex being a spell variation which can get as melee as Cyclone can), being the one MELEE skill wonder, and then you get the plethora of Ice Crash/Sweep/Cleave/Blade Flurry/Frost Blades/Lacerate/Reave/Blood and Sand/Sunder/Earthquake/Ground Slam/Perforate/Smite and Tectonic Slam, which are either AoE or projectile based, and far from a melee skill - the honorable mentions go to Consecrated Path and Flicker Strike to being movement melee skill that can be used to damage enemies end game...

Now, I can tell you that to get the REAL MELEE skills closer to the "melee" ones, you need to either make them shine offensively and/or defensively, or simply transform those to "melee" too, via threshold jewels at least, as their impact in such a heavy focused on AoE & monster pack number clearing mentality is close to null - and this comes from a damn dual wielding RT REAL MELEE player (yet even I had to swap to Smite due to the failed rework of Static Strike), which still levels casually toward 100...

I dread that TencentGGG can't, and unfortunately won't, improve REAL MELEE until they take either of the above paths. They simply need to be open about it, and come forward with their solution, and then further adjust the game to said "vision" - heck, I'll might even throw some $ their way, if they "grow some" and take a definite stance on the matter...

First of, when I talk about melee, I mean stuff that has a melee tag in the game. Not about some random definition of melee.

As for the Strikeskills, the only way to make them viable is to move them away from being "real melee" as you put it. There is just no way in hell that a single target skill with no AOE that only works with manual targeting at point blank range will ever be considered good or popular in this game where the community is all about "gieb all those rewards NOWWWWW!!!!!". It's just plain impossible. POE has to either change it's community or accept the fact that strike skills will suck forever for 99% of the people playing the game.

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Telzen wrote:

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.

You can't ignore knock back effect. Because you have to hit -> jump -> hit -> jump.....

You only deal 1/2 its theoretical dps actually.

And then, there're TIMERS everywhere in this game. You can't ignore clear speed. So heavy strike is a 4-links skill unless you can use single target setup to clear incursion temples.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

First of, when I talk about melee, I mean stuff that has a melee tag in the game. Not about some random definition of melee.

As for the Strikeskills, the only way to make them viable is to move them away from being "real melee" as you put it. There is just no way in hell that a single target skill with no AOE that only works with manual targeting at point blank range will ever be considered good or popular in this game where the community is all about "gieb all those rewards NOWWWWW!!!!!". It's just plain impossible. POE has to either change it's community or accept the fact that strike skills will suck forever for 99% of the people playing the game.

Yeah I don't understand the constant complaints about melee. Do people even know what they want? Attacking a mob in the face one/three at a time is always going to be slower than blowing up the whole screen with spells or bows. That's just physics.

So either they want melee to no longer be true melee where you hit half the screen (eg. Cyclone, Reave, Tectonic Slam, etc.) or they want spell or bow nerfs. Bows clear speed is getting nerfed so melee complainers should be happy?

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SaiyanZ wrote:

Do people even know what they want?

Of course we do, short version:

- Native advantages at short range, either in dps or survivability when compared to a ranged build that just happened to stand close to the enemy. Yes, native mechanics, not something you were forced to pursue and pay for either in currency or build real estate.
- Mob density and eHP that will make those advantages meaningful.
- A modern targeting system that works without crutches.

That's the bare minimum where I'll consider shutting up on the issue.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Spoiler

First of, when I talk about melee, I mean stuff that has a melee tag in the game. Not about some random definition of melee.

As for the Strikeskills, the only way to make them viable is to move them away from being "real melee" as you put it. There is just no way in hell that a single target skill with no AOE that only works with manual targeting at point blank range will ever be considered good or popular in this game where the community is all about "gieb all those rewards NOWWWWW!!!!!". It's just plain impossible. POE has to either change it's community or accept the fact that strike skills will suck forever for 99% of the people playing the game.

TencentGGG's going with slapping a tag, and making their own asinine definition of "melee", are to blame for this sad fiasco...

I actually don't mind having a damn skill that has "no AoE that only works with manual targeting at point blank range" that WORKS and HAS A PURPOSE - make said skills excel at damage output (have them do triple damage of their AoE/projectile counterparts and you will see them used), or at the defensive input, so they double/triple Fortify effect for 1 second, if you have hit an enemy into a <16 radius recently.

They actually need to GRANT REAL MELEE A DAMN PURPOSE, or REMOVE IT COMPLETELY...

I don't care which direction they will go, as long as they commit to a clear stance before PoE 2 gets introduced.

We might argue that PoE still is a damn incomplete, unfinished product, but please, that doesn't excuse TencentGGG's futile attempts of having melee in this semi-usable state (compared to the other playstyles), with it getting worse as the game gets more shallow under the weight of freely thrown power creep (and we all know that bringing down the power creep too much is a NO GO by default, they at least need new "shiny stuff" to distract their players)...

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SaiyanZ wrote:

Spoiler

Yeah I don't understand the constant complaints about melee. Do people even know what they want? Attacking a mob in the face one/three at a time is always going to be slower than blowing up the whole screen with spells or bows. That's just physics.

So either they want melee to no longer be true melee where you hit half the screen (eg. Cyclone, Reave, Tectonic Slam, etc.) or they want spell or bow nerfs. Bows clear speed is getting nerfed so melee complainers should be happy?

And some of us don't need to make the melee faster than blowing up the whole screen with spells or bows. We know physics.

We simply want something that REAL MELEE excels, or at least manages as the other playstyles do.

And "true melee" never hits half the screen, they hit maybe impactful for at most half the screen.

Oh, and don't be mislead yet, I don't hold too much hope that TencentGGG will address off screening, and that is the main culprit of bow clear speed, and projectile speed granting further reach...