How do people play Casters in this game ?

cyclone is the single strongest defensive mechanic in the game it shouldn't be used as a comparison point for anything :p

Casters have to pay attention to a lot of details, but often get to set up ancillary parts of their build to trigger automatically, so they're not standing still manually casting 3, 4, or 5 different spells that are supposed to work together.

They also get 100% accuracy for spells *unless otherwise specified* and therefore don't need to pay attention to accuracy on weapons.

If you still like the melee playstyle then you can try a hybrid build that has triggered spells on crit or channeling using cyclone or Charged Dash or even blade flurry.

same as everybody else, we get the water nice and warm, then copy a good build.

I feel like cyclone is overrated. The cast on crit variant is good enough but the regular cyclone just couldn't clear screens real fast in my experience.

I feel you OP, could have been me creating this topic about a year ago. However, i kinda found the solution meanwhile. The secret to playing casters, is to make them ES based.
Seriously, don't try life based caster builds, they suck real hard. You will end up with low HP (usually around 5k) no mitigations and shitty sustain from flasks. ES builds on the other hand have 9-10k HP which compensates for a lack of mitigation and between regen/leech/recharge you also don't struggle with sustain that much.

Only exception to that rule are MOM/Agnostic mana builds who are also life builds technically. It's not easy to get high enough hp/mitigation on them to reliably avoid oneshots, but once you've managed that they are really solid due to amazing sustain.

"

Johny_Snow wrote:

I feel like cyclone is overrated. The cast on crit variant is good enough but the regular cyclone just couldn't clear screens real fast in my experience.

Elusive, Tailwind, Onslaught, triple rage as a Berserker and a Toxic Sewers map? Cyclone beats most builds. 100 life gain on hit (in addition to regular leech) with 24 attacks per second makes you more or less unkillable to anything but the occasional one-shot.

But you're right, there are faster builds out there. So when speed is your main objective, I wouldn't touch melee at all. Luckily, there's still people out there that don't view speed as the main objective.

It all comes down to choice and prefered playstyle. Caster have much smoother scaling, while melee scales pretty bad - up to a certain point/investment threshold. They tried to even this out in Legion league with added flat phys on 'most" melee skills, but were quick to nerf the ones that got very good (Cyclone, Riposte, Reckoning). God forbid melee stayed meta for more than a league, right?

Anyhow, Cyclone is still a good skill. Not in numbers, but in mechanics. It's perfect for the severely underrated life gain on hit stats.

Afterthought-edit: What I really do not get, is when they try to add something to melee, like Fortify (back in the days), Impale and rage, in an attempt to buff melee, they decide to give ALL archetypes access to the mechanics too. Hell, it's easier to sustain Berserk (rage) on a caster these days, then on a freaking Berserker. It makes NO sense.

Put elusive and tailwind on any build and watch them go.

IDK how do people play melee.

With ranged you just run around and everything melts within seconds, you can simply explode/shatter the whole screen, nothing can touch you.

On my arma brand ignite I have glancing blows + rumi's + cinderswallow and it's enough as far as defenses go. Just don't get hit 4Head

"

rzuk892 wrote:

IDK how do people play melee.

With ranged you just run around and everything melts within seconds, you can simply explode/shatter the whole screen, nothing can touch you.

On my arma brand ignite I have glancing blows + rumi's + cinderswallow and it's enough as far as defenses go. Just don't get hit 4Head

Well that only works if you have enough dps to melt everything instantly, including map and endgame bosses. Most people don't have that. They see all that trash about "dps is the best defense" and "just don't get hit" make a glass cannon build, attempt endgame and when the map boss doesn't bend over immediately and hits them back they die. Then they come here and complain about oneshots and bad boss design, never realizing it's their own shitty builds causing the issue. If you play melee you either learn how to build proper characters quickly or you quit out of frustration.

"

rzuk892 wrote:

IDK how do people play melee.

With ranged you just run around and everything melts within seconds, you can simply explode/shatter the whole screen, nothing can touch you.

IDK how people "just run around and everything melts within seconds". That would bore the socks off me.