Why does GGG hate melee and love spells?

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raics wrote:

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bionicg2040 wrote:

It is funny how no other ARPG have the melee targeting problem but this game somehow has it.

The first Diablo had it, back in 1997. But it was a game where nothing respawned so it was feasible to click on each monster to finish the game, multiple times actually as you couldn't even hold a button, it was a mouse killer.

It was a completely different pace of game, yeah. A pack of monsters in Diablo 1 was 3+. The game was very methodical, you can really see how it was originally turn-based with the way you had to carefully approach encounters and manage how many enemies you took on at once.

PoE used to be *sort of* that way when Acts 1 and 2 were the entire game, it was very slowly paced compared to now and they nerfed Flicker Strike of all things for being too fast.

I think adding support gems was where they started to go astray. Of course when they were first added support gems were end-game rewards that complete your build, now you get them when you're still in the tutorial levels.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Spoiler

This is the part that is screwing ggg and where all these people commenting on so called fixes are causing more problems than they are solving.

When ggg change something melee, they are usually just putting a temporary bandaid on the problem. It will inevitably continue to be a problem as long as the core issues of clear speed aren't addressed.

And let's be honest, the bandaids being applied are really not getting the job done themselves. The best build to use in the "melee patch" was ed+contagion. That should tell you something about their approach.

I've said it a million times and I'll keep saying it until they get it: melee will ALWAYS be second or third tier as long as melee isn't clearing maps as fast as ts or old vaal spark or ed, etc. And that's just never going to happen with the existing melee splash. Melee needs to become "ranged" to compete, there's no way around it.

Wrong.

Real melee needs to compete by having a damn niche, so just envision having boss fights actually finishing faster/easier on a melee char by at least half the time any AoE/projectile focused char would. That would grant melee it's niche, and wouldn't necessarily place it on par with range on clear speed, but it would more than make it relevant at bossing - we get at most 3 bosses in a arena, so you can actually kite them, employ tactics, etc.

They need to stop with the band aids, and start resolving the real problems MELEE has - like simply the existence of Cyclone, FLicker Strike, Consecrated Path as damaging skills that also move you to the damn enemy or the need for a working targeting system - as we all know they should have done this a long, long time ago...

They are so incompetent they can't even address off screening and we still hope they will "improve melee"???

Please, let's be real...

And what is your plan for giving melee that niche? How are you going to make melee kill bosses in half the time or less when they have to constantly move to survive hits that ranged characters just don't have to bother with?

And more importantly, why does melee have to be a niche? What if melee people want to actually play the game like everyone else can?

And how is a melee supposed to get to the boss when they can't clear for shit? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of being faster at bossing?

Your ideas are welcome but misguided. This won't do anything positive for melee and we've already had melee builds like this before that none played. Melee needs to be able to clear maps as fast as spells.

melee has to have something other options dont have

ranged/minions/totems have safety, range, reflect immunity, DAMAGE, easy gearing (or no gearing required whatsoever - minions mostly, HoAg, traps/mines - all WORK without any gear and can use that fact to farm up better gear)

melee has.. clunkiness, easy access to PHYSICAL attach leech and attack leech, terrible skill rooster and braindead scaling options making most melee builds look the same. it might outdamage/outperform with mirror tier gear but.. who cares? if you can do everything with 1ex you wont do it 'better' with 10ex. there are no points for overkilling content ten times better than a build that 'just' overkills it


the only way melee can be 'good' is to..

..FIX THE FUC.. targeting mechanic, indie mobile games have better than what is implemented in POE
and nerf other options to the ground. otherwise there is no point. taking away all leech from bows/casters might be a good start. but guess what - totem/minion/trap/mine players have no leech whatsoever and they are doing perfectly fine.

tankiness? you can build tanky anything. melee had Fortify but nowadays everyone has it. baking SERIOUS damage reduction into strike skills might be an option

and ffs make melee actually do BRUTAL damage. its idiotic that one zombie deals more damage than an entire average melee end-game character. while having 50k hp. amazing

Just remove all leech from the game from all sources. Then add it to the core of strike skills. Now we have a niche for melee lol.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Spoiler

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sofocle10000 wrote:

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Spoiler

This is the part that is screwing ggg and where all these people commenting on so called fixes are causing more problems than they are solving.

When ggg change something melee, they are usually just putting a temporary bandaid on the problem. It will inevitably continue to be a problem as long as the core issues of clear speed aren't addressed.

And let's be honest, the bandaids being applied are really not getting the job done themselves. The best build to use in the "melee patch" was ed+contagion. That should tell you something about their approach.

I've said it a million times and I'll keep saying it until they get it: melee will ALWAYS be second or third tier as long as melee isn't clearing maps as fast as ts or old vaal spark or ed, etc. And that's just never going to happen with the existing melee splash. Melee needs to become "ranged" to compete, there's no way around it.

Wrong.

Real melee needs to compete by having a damn niche, so just envision having boss fights actually finishing faster/easier on a melee char by at least half the time any AoE/projectile focused char would. That would grant melee it's niche, and wouldn't necessarily place it on par with range on clear speed, but it would more than make it relevant at bossing - we get at most 3 bosses in a arena, so you can actually kite them, employ tactics, etc.

They need to stop with the band aids, and start resolving the real problems MELEE has - like simply the existence of Cyclone, FLicker Strike, Consecrated Path as damaging skills that also move you to the damn enemy or the need for a working targeting system - as we all know they should have done this a long, long time ago...

They are so incompetent they can't even address off screening and we still hope they will "improve melee"???

Please, let's be real...

And what is your plan for giving melee that niche? How are you going to make melee kill bosses in half the time or less when they have to constantly move to survive hits that ranged characters just don't have to bother with?

And more importantly, why does melee have to be a niche? What if melee people want to actually play the game like everyone else can?

And how is a melee supposed to get to the boss when they can't clear for shit? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of being faster at bossing?

Your ideas are welcome but misguided. This won't do anything positive for melee and we've already had melee builds like this before that none played. Melee needs to be able to clear maps as fast as spells.

Nope.

Melee is supposed to get to a boss in an "adequate" amount of time, with higher chance of survivability versus whatever seas of enemies the game throws at you, and also succeed in a fight versus a really dangerous enemy (a boss if you will), by either having "MOAR DAMAGE" or "MOAR TANKINESS" as opposed to a damn ranged/AoE build that "nukes" at least the entire visible screen with a single click - those "nukes" need to become tiny pebbles in effect to have the REAL MELEE hits connect and feel IMPACTFUL...

Hitting a damn monster in a <16 radius should grant triple/quadruple damage with the said "point blank hit" compared to the current "wet noodle" effect, and also be limited to REAL MELEE = melee hit in a <16 radius.

Make hits in up to a 36-40 radius hit for 100% of current damage, then have a drop off damage of 2.5% per 2 radius with an even harsher reduction of 5% for anything above 75 radius... Suddenly the focus on what you see means you actually do KILL IT, and make ranged/AoE builds stop double dipping damage and safety at the same time.

It's not rocket science, and can, and should have been implemented in PoE since 1.0.0...

Alas, you will never have "proper" melee clear as fast as ranged/AoE based playstyles without BALANCING player damage vs enemy EHP pool vs distance the enemy has from your char.

And it might not even be the point to make melee be as efficient as ranged/AoE playstyles on clearing, but making it TANKY enough and/or POWERFUL enough IS A DAMN MUST, if you want to grant REAL MELEE a DAMN PURPOSE...

We have all seen the easy way out chosen by TencentGGG with spells slapped with a "melee tag", and actually I'm fine with a removal of NAMELOCKING MELEE ENTIRELY, as long as they are so incompetent and lack the solutions to the problems of balance, and the technical aspects that REAL MELEE has in PoE, but please, they need to be open about it, declare it "dead" and transform it properly into "projectile/AoE spells/attacks with melee tag for scaling"...

Either will do fine, but not solving this damn conundrum after these years simply shows they are inept in their endeavors regarding the "melee playstyle"...

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bionicg2040 wrote:

Spoiler

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sofocle10000 wrote:

They need to stop with the band aids, and start resolving the real problems MELEE has - like simply the existence of Cyclone, FLicker Strike, Consecrated Path as damaging skills that also move you to the damn enemy or the need for a working targeting system - as we all know they should have done this a long, long time ago...

They are so incompetent they can't even address off screening and we still hope they will "improve melee"???

Please, let's be real...

I see that you also are still waiting on GGG to address melee's targeting problem with a real solution instead of putting a bandaid on it and calling it fixed.

Multistrike was the first bandaid
Ancestral Call was the second bandaid


I can't wait for the third bandaid.

It is funny how no other ARPG have the melee targeting problem but this game somehow has it. Something like that should have been fixed in Alpha or in Closed Beta. Shame...oh well more time to practice throwing those rags.


Also they ain't never going to address off screening. They can't even make a enemy mechanic that actually challenges ranged combat (well there is proxy shield and...well that other one...proxy shield plus? yeah that sounds about right).

Well, third bandaid is having "Awakened Multistrike Plus" & the damn Tribal Fury ammy implicit...

On a more serious note, without properly addressing off screening, they can't even attempt talking about melee, not to even mention REAL MELEE, as having it's purpose in PoE... So they need to "git gud & up to snuff" and properly address this "melee conundrum", or simply remove this "faux playstyle" from the game (or better yet, highlight it as the OFFICIAL "HARD MODE ON" setting)...

And I so looked forward to another new comment regarding the "coming of the Eagles"... Next time maybe... ^^

Very low amount of people actually do uber lab and even lower amount kill shapers.

Barely anyone ever kill uber elder.

The only way to balance things properly is to delete all skills and keep around 20 main ones like Diablo 2. All melee skills there were basically default attack with a little effect sometimes. Link all skills to the characters so that you can give the melee ones more defenses just like how the Barbarian gets 4 life per stat point and the range characters get 2 life per stat point. Also make the few ranged spells and attacks similar to a default attack with a small effect, similar to Diablo 2. Don't allow any skill to hit more than 3 things at a time.

There, game easily balanced.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Nope.

Melee is supposed to get to a boss in an "adequate" amount of time, with higher chance of survivability versus whatever seas of enemies the game throws at you, and also succeed in a fight versus a really dangerous enemy (a boss if you will), by either having "MOAR DAMAGE" or "MOAR TANKINESS" as opposed to a damn ranged/AoE build that "nukes" at least the entire visible screen with a single click - those "nukes" need to become tiny pebbles in effect to have the REAL MELEE hits connect and feel IMPACTFUL...

Hitting a damn monster in a <16 radius should grant triple/quadruple damage with the said "point blank hit" compared to the current "wet noodle" effect, and also be limited to REAL MELEE = melee hit in a <16 radius.

Make hits in up to a 36-40 radius hit for 100% of current damage, then have a drop off damage of 2.5% per 2 radius with an even harsher reduction of 5% for anything above 75 radius... Suddenly the focus on what you see means you actually do KILL IT, and make ranged/AoE builds stop double dipping damage and safety at the same time.

It's not rocket science, and can, and should have been implemented in PoE since 1.0.0...

Alas, you will never have "proper" melee clear as fast as ranged/AoE based playstyles without BALANCING player damage vs enemy EHP pool vs distance the enemy has from your char.

And it might not even be the point to make melee be as efficient as ranged/AoE playstyles on clearing, but making it TANKY enough and/or POWERFUL enough IS A DAMN MUST, if you want to grant REAL MELEE a DAMN PURPOSE...

We have all seen the easy way out chosen by TencentGGG with spells slapped with a "melee tag", and actually I'm fine with a removal of NAMELOCKING MELEE ENTIRELY, as long as they are so incompetent and lack the solutions to the problems of balance, and the technical aspects that REAL MELEE has in PoE, but please, they need to be open about it, declare it "dead" and transform it properly into "projectile/AoE spells/attacks with melee tag for scaling"...

Either will do fine, but not solving this damn conundrum after these years simply shows they are inept in their endeavors regarding the "melee playstyle"...

Well, third bandaid is having "Awakened Multistrike Plus" & the damn Tribal Fury ammy implicit...

On a more serious note, without properly addressing off screening, they can't even attempt talking about melee, not to even mention REAL MELEE, as having it's purpose in PoE... So they need to "git gud & up to snuff" and properly address this "melee conundrum", or simply remove this "faux playstyle" from the game (or better yet, highlight it as the OFFICIAL "HARD MODE ON" setting)...

And I so looked forward to another new comment regarding the "coming of the Eagles"... Next time maybe... ^^

+1

Except for transforming every "melee" skill into projectile/AoE.
An ARPG with swords maces and axes and no real melee skills would be a complete joke.

In fact, we need more and better true melee skills. I could create a big post with ideas for animations, combo system, short blocking skills for active tanking. Random attack(and even spell) animations in order for combat in general to not appear so robotic.

But I don't see the point in making such a post, since idk if GGG will ever read it before it gets buried(or at all).

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Legatus1982 wrote:

And more importantly, why does melee have to be a niche? What if melee people want to actually play the game like everyone else can?

But that's exactly the point though. Melee versus ranged always faces the same issue in every game, they aren't SUPPOSED to excel at the same content, they usually got content tailored for their archetype which is especially viable for them to run... and not very much so for the others.

In PoE we don't have that, ranged excels at EVERY content, leaving Melee in the dust.

Hence we need to give Melee a proper niche which they are vastly superior compared to a TS-char or a summoner for example, bossing is one of those which can work. Giving them strong defensive measures and a type of content where those are needed to succeed beyond the 'base' in conjunction would already make them viable for SOMETHING.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

And how is a melee supposed to get to the boss when they can't clear for shit? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of being faster at bossing?

That's what I wrote about already in the forum. Ranged skills being very bad at killing bosses versus Melee being very bad at clearing a map. Hence the implementation can be to ranged chars excel in farming up currency and 'common' gear, namely rare-drops. In comparison melee can go for bosses and get very specific gear or special drops. Some of the archetypes (like Summoner) can combine those and be basically worse at every part but not care about the type of content they run... never excelling in one or the other though.

That's a type of proper balance, one of many solutions.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Your ideas are welcome but misguided. This won't do anything positive for melee and we've already had melee builds like this before that none played. Melee needs to be able to clear maps as fast as spells.

It's not necessarily melee which needs to change (although there are some things very important to deal with) but it's the game which has to change to support melee-chars properly. Which means options ONLY available for point-blank melee-skills. Defensive measures which don't work if you got a wand or bow, removal of the ability for wand-users to use a shield again (because that change was fairly dumb for balance).

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Hitting a damn monster in a <16 radius should grant triple/quadruple damage with the said "point blank hit" compared to the current "wet noodle" effect, and also be limited to REAL MELEE = melee hit in a <16 radius.

Make hits in up to a 36-40 radius hit for 100% of current damage, then have a drop off damage of 2.5% per 2 radius with an even harsher reduction of 5% for anything above 75 radius... Suddenly the focus on what you see means you actually do KILL IT, and make ranged/AoE builds stop double dipping damage and safety at the same time.

That's... actually a fairly nice idea if fleshed out properly and adjusted for the different types of damage. Giving skills a 'optimal range' to work in besides that. This allows to make every skill actually unique. For example cyclone (which is the 'physical RF' plainly spoken and the same type as any nova-skill.) can deal the most damage at the edge of its area and less the closer the enemy gets (rotation-speed). While a shock-nova can deal the most when an enemy is point-blank and gets weaker the further away it is. This also works well for frost-nova which can be the mediocre damage but without being affected by the range or Earthquake which can build up towards the middle of the effect-range before falling off again.

It gives a ton of variability, I have to agree there, interesting concept.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

And it might not even be the point to make melee be as efficient as ranged/AoE playstyles on clearing, but making it TANKY enough and/or POWERFUL enough IS A DAMN MUST, if you want to grant REAL MELEE a DAMN PURPOSE...

Exactly that.

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bgi123 wrote:

Very low amount of people actually do uber lab and even lower amount kill shapers.

Barely anyone ever kill uber elder.

Yes, and only 50% make it past Brutus in Act 1 and roughly 20 or 15% reach maps. So the point isn't quite there.

GGG seems not to know how time-investment in itself seems to affect player-retention properly as they tell those numbers as if they mean something big.
If 5% of ALL players kill shaper... then that's actually a LOT. Which means 2% uber-elder is also a LOT since he's the next stage and by far harder.

If GGG would take into consideration 'characters which have been used for over 40 hours' then the whole situation would already look quite different and allow to take the respective measures to adjust the game for a fluid progression... they don't do something like that though, their benchmark goes by character-level rather then actual play-time, which obviously is a bad base to make any proper deductions from.

it aint melee in itself that is broken, its the fact that you can get 1shot by crit elites and stuff like that no matter how much hp/armor/res etc you have, melee got the disadvantage of having to stand next to them, while ist aint that hard to dodge stuff with range or totems/minions/traps.

imo i like it as it is, its add a whole new level of challenge to the game getting to endgame content as a hc melee character. i just wish they whould be more useful in party, like most melee builds suffer damagewise cuz they need more survivability, so melee need more debuffs and taunts ans stuff like that to make them more useful in party.