Why are the melee and especially bow archetypes so behind the spellcaster archetype?

its magic!

melee is pretty srong tho, alot of new players start cyclone slayer or max block gladiator.

it's tanky, it deletes bosses. its fun

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Draegnarrr wrote:

I agree with your overall point but not the last part, it has everything to do with balancing - now I totally agree that players exacerbate this problem but I think of it as a multiplier on whatever the base balance is. The more out of line some abilities are the more players funnel towards them.

I say this because i've seen old things become meta, tried and true builds from the past etc but i've never seen a bad or mediocre build become meta which would occur occasionally if it wasn't directly tied to power.

I sort of agree and disagree ;)


Allow me to explain my point more thoroughly:

Assuming the top 10 skills at any given point in time are defining the meta and the average powerlevel of those 10 build was 100% playerpower, this does not mean you have to play a build providing those 100% to beat the game.

You could go down to 90%, 80% or even all the way down to 50% and still beat the game as long as you know what you are doing.
Its often even easier to do that, because the budget needed to fund those weaker or less popular builds is going to be a laughable fraction of whatever those top 10 builds will cost.
So in a "power for buck" sense the meta skills are actually pretty bad compared to weaker and less popular skills.

Which is why Id argue this is still balanced, although I will absolutely concede that some skills are simply bad and even with very high investment unable to beat the game or still wont feel good enough compared to what other skills on a similar lvl of investment would feel like.

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We have Cyclone at the top of the usage ranking with 16%, a melee skill. Out of those 16% around 5% do not use CoC which makes it still a top contender in the meta. We have Burning Arrow, Elemental Hit, Tornado Shot and Lightning Strike all at 2% and above. Slams seem to be a bit out of favour this league in SC but were pretty high during the last leagues.

Looking at the top ten for SC trade league disregarding alternate qualites, vaalskills and support skills we have:

2 melee
2 bow
2 minion
4 spells

That basically already dismantles OPs Post entirely. Aside from that, most people in this game are complete meta-sheeps. I remember when I was playing Cold Conversion Pathfinder with a Hardcore-Variant, 1 sceptre + shield. Very tanky and still able to clear the game. I had such a laugh last league when tons of people went into the same build and went with 3k life, Bow + Quiver for absolute max dps and struggled hard. The problem in this game is not that there isn´t enough stuff you could play, the problem is that people always want the most zoomy character available and - especially on SC - totally ignore defenses in the meantime. While it is kind of true that the faster u go the more currency you can make it is sometimes worthwhile looking past the meta-slave-builds and pick something maybe 20% slower but 500% cheaper.

Likely comes down to targeting. Hate targeting.

Spell Caster out shine Melee as Always.

In all the history of PoE the spell cas...... ANNNDDD Heerrre comeesss the CYYYYYCLLLLOOOOONE!

A Skill with Supernatural Attack speed, A skill that wipes clean the floor with a single button. It can move, it can spin, it can DANK!
Put a CoC and you'll be a Spell Caster and cast *Magic* at a speed of light. Add a drizzle of Abyssus, Rage and Impale and it will work like a blender.

Use one now! As the time is limited... With a special offer you can buy it with 1 orb of chances, yes! 1 orb of chances. So hurry! Grab one now! Lilly Roth is waiting for your call!

The Attack and Spell tag should just be removed at this point.

I kind of wish there was a way to change the angle view of the flying camera that is fixed on your character. Like the C-stick in Super Smash Brothers Melee in the menu screen.

The sad thing in this debate, is that people define "melee" as they see fit, basing their definition narrowly on a handful of (more or less) viable skills.

Melee isn't dangerously underpowered, and in some (popular) cases, melee isn't underpowered at all. But melee as a whole, if we exclude the most popular skills? Well...

On thing is certain, though; melee has gotten FAR less love the last year or two than spells have. Far less utilities. Far less skills. Far less love. Thet's why I hoped for some melee love this league. They managed to rework low life, putting a solid focus on life builds and spending life without adding a single melee skill. Sad, at least for me.

you have to define melee though and they kind of did it for us, Slams are fine, as long as you use warcries, Strikes are variable.

Basically all there is to it :p

they could do better though and someday they will come to the realization that at the very least melee splash has to be baseline for regular strikes to be usable frankly AC probably needs a 20-30% more multiplier as well so the cost for using it isn't so high.

IB is like my favourite skill so i'm waiting.... waiting