How would you improve melee playstyle

Imagine your assignment from GGG is getting melee to 33% representation, and split across multiple skills not just cyclone.

Ignoring for a moment if this is a good idea, what would you do?

What quality of life features would improve melee representation?

In the age of cyclone/CwC/CoC, do we even have room for play styles that run up to bosses and only then start spamming their skills?

Should all melee skills be channel/movement based? Curious what ideas are out there.

That's the big riddle. Melee is tough because you have to namelock almost every skill out there which naturally leads to deadly situations.

I honestly don't think melee is that bad if you invest in it, but mid-tier melee (where most average players end) always feels bad.

I think the changes to molten strike, for example, were in the wrong direction. Rather than changing that skill to make it to where you have to hit an enemy, they should have made more skills go the other way. Being able to strategically stand a little bit a way and position your ancestrals.

I think melee will always be in a weird spot because every character can technically be "anything". I would say in a blanket statement that the closer any character is to the enemy they are attacking should multiply their damage.

Range would have a bit less damage but safety of range.
Melee would be close, but end battles quickly by dealing more damage.

They have already changed how fortify works, but imo that should have been integrated into the skill gems themselves.

Ranged melee (like reave) would have less fortify effect where as strike melee (glacial hammer) would have the most fortify effect.

This would make it so there is an incentive to maybe create melee boss killers.

Also adding physical damage to gems as they scale was a good addition. I still think melee gems need to scale better with levels and still be even less dependent on weapon damage of their weapon like casters do with wands, etc.

There is just so much to stress about with melee which is completely erased by a ranged play style. The answer is somewhere in the middle.

GGG is moving closer to that, but aren't quite there yet.

it's called stat stick.

Put proximity shield on every other mob.

i got to a point where the only melee i use is cyclone. everything else feels clunky af.

Reasons why cyclone is so good:
Aoe
Movement while dps
good dps
channeling tag
fast hits for CoC

cyclone does it ALL.

Other melee skills need to be designed so that they can compete with one or more of these aspects.

Give cleave a longer cone. Let earthquake/tec slam/something be a screen clearing aoe monster. Let blade flurry attack 12 times per second. Give other skills increased crit chance. Make ANY other melee skill that can move and attack (maybe just rework flicker strike to not need frenzy charges?)

Cyclone has everything, and it's even being abused by non melees (looking at you necros!) I really like it being a channeling skill, but it's possible that it just shouldnt work with CWC.

Tectonic slam is an aoe clearing monster, especially in delve. It kinda needs to be built in a specific way though. One variation of what I am doing is to grab endurance charge on stun somewhere then the increased % change for charged slam on helm. With that every other hit will be charged slam screen clearing and with enough attack speed (strength + accuracy stacking) it'll be even better than it is now. And right now it is awesome.

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Thror2k5 wrote:

cyclone does it ALL.

Other melee skills need to be designed so that they can compete with one or more of these aspects.
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What if they made a support gem that said, X melee skill becomes channeled, and you move at 70% of speed while you channel it.

Would that be broken? It would be weird for sure, molten strike gliding across the screen.

But why NOT do it? There are many melee skills under 0.2% representation.

I don't know how many multiplayer games you've played but something being underrepresented is the norm everywhere. It has its own advantages too. In a multiplayer PVP game a team/player can pick something that is not common to throw off their opponent/s. Here it is done to get access to cheap gear or to do things that are normally not expected from a build. Everything has its place, making every skill work the same for the sake of artificial balance will be 100% the worse situation.

1. Fix the targeting problem properly and cuss out every single person in that office who suggests or has suggested band aid fixes...

(Grim Dawn, Torchlight (both games), Titan Quest, Diablo (2 & 3 (fuck D3)), Wolcen, do not have issues with melee targeting how in the fuck does this game have targeting problems?)

2. Erase fortify gem. Add fortify effect to all strike skills that only last for one second. Make non melee fight to obtain it make them fight to keep it.

3. make melee less weapon dependent (better gem scaling)

4. EAGLES!!! no I swear the eagles are coming this time...