How would you improve melee playstyle

change current lab reward system and uniq emperor jewels reward

fixed

GGG can fix melee. They don't want to fix it. They improved melee last June only to take it away again with 3.9 update.

But it was a fun 5 1/2 months.

There is a simple fix to melee. Make every melee skill AOE and useable while moving and channeled like cyclone.

How long did it take GGG to make cyclone channeling? 3 years?

They'll fix the other melee skills by the time the sun goes nova.

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Sintactical wrote:

I read all of the reports of people who are getting 1M+ DPS, but I find it difficult to believe I could achieve anything like that without having to give up several of the aspects of the game that appeal to me.

Just a week after posting that, I experimented with Bladestorm and Impale—and it's my new favourite. It's especially good with the Champion Ascendancy. (I switched from Inspirational to Master of Metal, and swapped out some normal passive tree damage nodes for impale nodes.)

It doesn't have quite the same smooth feel to it that Smite did, but I'm producing far more damage than ever. I was able to kill Drox without dying at all (unlike with Smite), and I've been able to effectively one-shot other monsters that used to take me a noticeable amount of time before.

I've gone from a base of 120K to 560K. Or 950K with all of my flasks running. (And I haven't maxed my newly used gems yet, so that will only increase.) I've also realized that all of the DPS numbers reported always seem to be their maximum, not their base.

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Sintactical wrote:

"

Sintactical wrote:

I read all of the reports of people who are getting 1M+ DPS, but I find it difficult to believe I could achieve anything like that without having to give up several of the aspects of the game that appeal to me.

Just a week after posting that, I experimented with Bladestorm and Impale—and it's my new favourite. It's especially good with the Champion Ascendancy. (I switched from Inspirational to Master of Metal, and swapped out some normal passive tree damage nodes for impale nodes.)

It doesn't have quite the same smooth feel to it that Smite did, but I'm producing far more damage than ever. I was able to kill Drox without dying at all (unlike with Smite), and I've been able to effectively one-shot other monsters that used to take me a noticeable amount of time before.

I've gone from a base of 120K to 560K. Or 950K with all of my flasks running. (And I haven't maxed my newly used gems yet, so that will only increase.) I've also realized that all of the DPS numbers reported always seem to be their maximum, not their base.

Im running it right now with OG. In Delirium i will try this one but with Scion (Champion/Trickster).

AOE damage is the biggest issue IMO. I played Deadeye Molten Strike this league and took it to the limits (highest DPS). I deleted all bosses with ease. But Ancestral Call is a MUST have for maps which gimps potential.

I dont know the fix, but it seems every melee skill needs some form of AOE effect associated with it. Or figure out a way to fit in a single target and AOE skill into the same build the way bow characters do.

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trixxar wrote:

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.

Well Animation cancelling generally has 2 ways of improving gameplay, the first being able to cancel attacks and move out of bad.

The second is being able to during certain windows of attack animations cancel/use new ability without losing the damage, basically allowing you to increase burst/damage output buy cancelling parts of skill animations.

This would make melee more skill based and fun but i dont really know how you implement that side of animation cancelling into poe, considering most builds use one skill.....

The other real disadvantage you have as melee is generally speaking aside from 1 or 2 skills the damage vs ranged is not enough to make up for standing on top of big ugly boss, melee currently has no upside other than if you dont enjoy ranged playstyle and so fixing it without making it broken OP seems hard.

I'm not sure that it's really doable. Path of exile in its current state is too fast for conventional melee attacks, top end builds clear the whole screen in under a second and move on. In the time it takes to walk up to a pack and kill them, a good ranged build would have already killed them. To compete in the current environment, melee skills simply need to be quasi ranged skills. There is no other way around it. This is already more or less the case.

I think the game would be better if it were slower, as that would allow melee to have more power in less range and still compete with ranged skills that have lower dps. The devs have spoken on this however and it will probably never happen for a number of reasons.

Less monster density, less monster movement, less monster kiting. Fixing melee at this point has a lot to do with how monsters act and less with the skills themselves. The question is do you really want to play that game?

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Thror2k5 wrote:

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.

allso canot be stunned while spinning :P

Fix it so range spells dont go 2 screens off the screen. I mean seriously, why is this a thing?

Most melee skills root you in place, and barely cover the screen if they even go that far. Most just cover a quadrant to half the screen max. This coupled with the fact they are melee, and generally in harms way more often than not.

Meanwhile most ranged skills kill stuff you cant even see; projectiles and effects go like 2 screens over.

The only melee skills that keep up are something like cyclone that can keep moving, to offset the sheer aoe power of most ranged skills. Doesnt make sense to me why a lot of melee skills AoE is too small, and why so many ranged skills are not at least screen limited. You really notice it when you play with a friend and hes shooting some ranged skill and hes 2 screens back and his projectiles and affects are appearing on your screen.