How would you improve melee playstyle

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HerrImHimmel wrote:

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Bleu42 wrote:

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HerrImHimmel wrote:

Strike skills still feel horribly clunky and not many give competitive dps on a 5-link (since you NEED ac or melee splash) compared to AoE attacks. Gem swapping is possible, but lame.

Targeting at melee range is just a no-go in a game this rippy and fast.

My almost SSF double strike is at 2.7m shaper on a 5 link (about 4.2m on a 6 link if I can ever get one to drop). Just 1 extra strike from annointment has been enough to run around and clear T16's. Getting a second strike on my hunter gloves is just extra, and now I never need to swap in splash / AC.

And what DPS would you get just playing Cyclone with similar investment (time, crafting in your case)? While moving and having inherent AoE, stun immunity and an additional "infused channeling" buff.

So, I changed my gloves and a ring, and currently sit at a tad over 2.5m shaper dps on my 5 link Double Strike.(again, no cd's).

Changing nothing except my multistrike jewel out for conc (the highest dps option currently according to pob), cyclone would be doing just under 1.4m dps.

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trixxar wrote:

It seems like some big themes are target lock, some sort of exclusive benefit to being forced to be close (more than close combat which really is no better or worse than other available supports) probably defensive in nature, movement, and the previous nerf of stat sticks greatly limiting options.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

I don't know how many multiplayer games you've played but something being underrepresented is the norm everywhere. ... making every skill work the same for the sake of artificial balance will be 100% the worse situation.

No, indeed I agree. It was just a prompt for a question not a suggestion that everything should be perfectly equal. That said, the very low representation does seem like a missed opportunity.

You're never, EVER going to get anywhere close to equal representation with anything in an ARPG like this. Classes / ascendancies / items / skills, it's just not going to happen.

One of the greatest things about POE is the reason for this; the complexity. "most" players (I say this with only anecdotal information) don't actually know how to make their own builds, and prefer to copy guides from online / forums / youtube / streamers.

This greatly narrows the majority of builds because why waste time / currency on an unknown, when you can just see what a few people are playing.

Striving for balance, sure I agree with that. But that's about the end of it. You can't take something that almost no one plays, and just buff it. There's a really good chance whatever that something is CAN perform near as well, but it's ignored, and buffing it will only break it.

In the end, I choose not to worry about what's played least. Because unless it's an actual issue that can't be overcome, such as monumentally less damage no matter what you do, there's really nothing we CAN do about it.

as long as the game is a speed race melee skills have no real place, they will never have the clear speed of ranged

but if i have to think of something then i would remove fortify or rework it into something else, instead make all melee related nodes in the skill tree come with a small % reduced damage taken when using a non movement melee skill in the past few seconds.

alternative melee nodes come with a minor boost to life


cast on melee kill could be turned into an herald say:

35% mana reservation
each enemy you kill with a non movement melee skill will cast socketed gems
socketed spell gems will have more aoe
socketed spell gems will have less damage

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Bleu42 wrote:

So, I changed my gloves and a ring, and currently sit at a tad over 2.5m shaper dps on my 5 link Double Strike.(again, no cd's).

Changing nothing except my multistrike jewel out for conc (the highest dps option currently according to pob), cyclone would be doing just under 1.4m dps.

How's your "/deaths"?

I'm sure it's fine, because you wouldn't talk positive about your DPS, unless you had defenses to back it up. People that play a lot of melee, knows that the DPS can be more than adequate. The DPS isn't the problem, never has been, never will be. The problem will always be; what can melee offer you in terms of defenses for having to be in the middle of most packs, versus ranged?

A two-year old can get 2,5 million DPS on his melee character. It doesn't say jack shit about how solid that character is, though. Not "attacking" you here, as you were probably just responding to a "melee DPS is shit" dude.

I dont know how to make melee better but i use to play sunder builds a lot and they could all do t16s (this was like 5 leagues ago tho and before multi got rekt)

But it could not do guardians or anything harder (uber/prob cant do normal t16 elder)

They were not that bad really but not being able to do guardians makes the build junk since i like to do all content im trying to do

Then again i been playing miners lately and so far only one has been able to kill uber elder and thats like 25% chance if i dont mess up to much and i still die to guardians if i dont play right


Edit: ive had ideas about how to make it better but the 2 i remember are:
1: Proxi Shield gem (replaces one of the useless guard gems) basically like mobs have but it loses its effect for xxx seconds when it takes xxx amount of damage
2: i dont really remember what i said this one did but it was something like the closer you or a mob is to you you do more damage

If the mob is in the center of the screen (> on you) you do xx% if its at the edge you do xx% if its off screen you do 0%

I also dont like playing melee skills if it doesnt auto target (multistrike) cause then it takes longer to kill mobs

I still say it doesn't need improvement. It already feels incredible, and is way tankier than ranged/magic. If they made it clear better that would just be blatantly dumb in every way, and if they made it any tankier any build better than completely terrible would have near god mode.

I'm playing Heavy Strike with just damage supports on it, and it is by far the best feeling thing I've done so far (Barely though, my Frenzy/Bladestorm Gladiator felt awesome).

The problem of melee, by the fact that you have to be up close and personal to all creatures to eliminate them, means that whatever the creatures dps is you are not easily going to avoid it. That's just a known fact. For example, at the beginning on the Twilight Strand Beach, when you farm uber Hillock to get an OG sword, it's a nice and slow paced one on one battle. The melee changes GGG made last year for Legion League work very well and the wind up UH animation prior to his big hit can be dodged which makes the boss fight very enjoyable as a melee exile. But by the time we get to maps (but way before that even), the speed of play is so much faster and such that the FX of skills obscures the boss most of the time so we can't see clearly and miss these wind ups that must be dodged. Then there are all the minions that usually surround the boss each with their own attack skill FX such that it's a visual clusterfuck of FX (both offensive and defensive) that we can hardly see what the boss is doing. That coupled with way too much speed makes it impossible to play melee like the UH battle. Visual fx reduction has been needed (and asked for) for years now but GGG seems death/blind to our feedback.

So we know that slowing down the whole speed of play is not going to come to PoE 1, that's for PoE 2 (just 1 of many reasons GGG is creating a whole new main campaign). Slowing the overall pace of play would definitely benefit melee but would elicit such an outcry from the PoE speed junkies that the reverberations would be like Krakatoa volcano had exploded again. So that's out of the question. Even with the PoE 2 campaign being slowed down since the endgame is the same for PoE 1 and 2 that tells me speed of endgame will be as it is now (way too fast IMO).

So what's viable to make melee more fun to play? One way is to modify melee skills so that the exile receives more (multiplicative) defenses so that melee gains a higher benefit from any defense (gear, auras, D-skills, etc.) as apposed to any non-melee skill and is based off of player level (similar to the way the OG sword gains physical attack damage per level, melee skills would get additional defense scaling from player level). Another is to have a damage reduction factor on the top end creatures/bosses so that the massive one-shot types of crit damage is lessened to reduce the frequency of being one shot killed (assuming normal build defensive strategy, obviously a glass cannon build should still die often). As PoE stands right now if a real melee skill (the quasi-melee skills that are classified as melee but have a ranged component, like Tectonic Slam, don't count) is in use we should get additional damage mitigation to offset the danger of playing melee.

Melee needs to gain additional attack speed to balance against it not having as much AoE clearing. The "Hit multiple targets" change of Legion League is good but didn't go far enough so additional base attack speed is needed with all true melee skills.

Reducing the frequency of dieing is what is at the heart of making melee desirable to play and is what GGG should be working toward but doing so in interesting ways (not just straight up armor stacking). Maybe when PoE 2 comes and we get 19 new ascendancies GGG will expand the tank classes that can go toe to toe with the toughest Metamorphs but then is balanced by not being an AoE mob killing speed freak.

A decently build melee char has zero problems with standing in the midst of everything. I honestly can't even understand why people think this is a problem because it's certainly never been one for me. Unlike casters melee has high amounts of Sustain via leech, coupled with several mitigation layers that means you can stand in the middle of everything, get hit hundreds of times and you lifeball won't even move.

Same thing about bosses, yes there are a few attacks that you might have to dodge, depending on how tanky your build is, but even for my less tanky builds they are few and far in between. Sirus die beam, Redeemers Tornado slam, Shaper beam/balls, Phenix Explosion (unless you have enough stack/ruby flask), Elder slam Uber Atziris Stormcalls/Flameblasts as well as Alalais bone rain. That's pretty much all i can think of right now in terms of boss moves i'd consider dangerous enough to dodge them. If there are so few things to look out for dodging them isn't exactly a challenge.

Buy mtx skin and rmt best combo!

Make flicker a support gem.