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

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Phrazz wrote:

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.

I always thought that's because it is harder to come up with skill ideas for melee and bows. For instance magic spells can be whatever you come up with and melee is like magic spells reduced just to blade skills (blade fall, blade blast etc.), i mean in how many sufficiently different ways you can swing a sword?

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Draegnarrr wrote:

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

Someone made a Raider dex stack unarmed IB build last league I think. It seemed fine but I'm going on memory and I didn't look that much into it.

Hollow palm definitely works for IB but its super SC, tbh If i do next league in SC i may well follow your suggestion, i've got hosed the last 2 leagues by the bugs pretty badly.

Cus melee and bow builds are 100% gear based. If your wep sucks ur dmg sucks. Spell builds get carried by gem levels ur gear can be mediocre and its fine for a lot longer.

A lot of people in this thread are basing their argument off poe.ninja charts.

Firstly, they're biased towards the better players that reach higher levels than the average player. They represent a very small sample of the builds either way.

Secondly, I've seen people saying cyclone is very popular, therefore it must be good. Have you guys played cyclone recently? Yes, cyclone can be op if you use facebreakers in the build (or even hollow palm), but this happens because of the two items. If you attempt to play cyclone as it is in a regular build, it's going to feel pretty bad, especially after the nerfs. Cyclone is a popular skill because... it's cyclone. It's the whirlwind of path of exile and people love this skill in general in all games in fact.

Thirdly, you can't really base the power of skills off poe.ninja top builds. If you browse through some of those builds, you'd notice most of them have insane gear. Most people play easy, op and maybe boring league starters (such as archmage) and then transition to fun skills like cyclone, while investing a ton of currency into them to reach a comfortable power level.

There are a few builds 'specialized' (which is something I religiously hate in an ARPG - specialized builds) for specific content, such as speed farming. In this category you can find tornado shot which still has pretty amazing clear speed, but bow builds that rely on weapon damage fall short in endgame and struggle with harder content. People play those builds simply to make currency.

All fair enough, leaves the question what do you want to base your arguments on if not POE Ninja? Your own personal perception of what's good and meta? Sure we can all do that but it's going to be pointless because everyones perception differs greatly.

I can't relate to your OP at all, not in regards to bow builds and even less so for melee. Yes, they require more gear investment to really get going compared to spells where you can do T16 maps with nothing but a level 20 gem in a 5 link. But i don't see spells as the top of the crop outside of league starts.

Bow builds are way faster when it comes to clear and Melee is way better for bossing and generally if you don't like dying. There are a couple of strong spells with good scaling/QOL like Bladeblast or Stormbrand but as a whole spells aren't anything special. There is shit ton of horrible spell skills that nobody plays and aside from the same 3 or 4 top contenders they don't play a large role in the meta.

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RitualMurder wrote:

Cus melee and bow builds are 100% gear based. If your wep sucks ur dmg sucks. Spell builds get carried by gem levels ur gear can be mediocre and its fine for a lot longer.

Sadly not very true for spell builds though ill agree in saying certain spells can get scaled easier without gear.

If you really want to scale a good spell you 100% need +levels and crit gear.

Ideally for me, id get a +5 Spell stave with flat fire and spell crit, cast speed and crit multi. Ill never have that though because staff weightings are garbage and its insanely hard to get the +level to spells on a staff, meanwhile you can literally deterministically instantly get a +3 bow for nothing but 3 fossils and the resonator.

+5 spell stave is a pipe dream. Alternatively i could try and get +2 on 1hs with similar rolls but yeah, i havent seen a single weapon within a reasonable price range with either all league.

Stuff like this makes it easier for certain builds for sure though, just not for most.

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Tin_Foil_Hat wrote:

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RitualMurder wrote:

Cus melee and bow builds are 100% gear based. If your wep sucks ur dmg sucks. Spell builds get carried by gem levels ur gear can be mediocre and its fine for a lot longer.

Sadly not very true for spell builds though ill agree in saying certain spells can get scaled easier without gear.

If you really want to scale a good spell you 100% need +levels and crit gear.

Ideally for me, id get a +5 Spell stave with flat fire and spell crit, cast speed and crit multi. Ill never have that though because staff weightings are garbage and its insanely hard to get the +level to spells on a staff, meanwhile you can literally deterministically instantly get a +3 bow for nothing but 3 fossils and the resonator.

+5 spell stave is a pipe dream. Alternatively i could try and get +2 on 1hs with similar rolls but yeah, i havent seen a single weapon within a reasonable price range with either all league.

Stuff like this makes it easier for certain builds for sure though, just not for most.

spells with no gear will take you a LOT farther than melee or bow with no gear

that means league starting or ssf with spells can get you to much better content much quicker safer and more efficiently than playing melee or bow unless you are lucky on drops, you can make +1 wands with vendor recipes now too

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RitualMurder wrote:

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Tin_Foil_Hat wrote:

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RitualMurder wrote:

Cus melee and bow builds are 100% gear based. If your wep sucks ur dmg sucks. Spell builds get carried by gem levels ur gear can be mediocre and its fine for a lot longer.

Sadly not very true for spell builds though ill agree in saying certain spells can get scaled easier without gear.

If you really want to scale a good spell you 100% need +levels and crit gear.

Ideally for me, id get a +5 Spell stave with flat fire and spell crit, cast speed and crit multi. Ill never have that though because staff weightings are garbage and its insanely hard to get the +level to spells on a staff, meanwhile you can literally deterministically instantly get a +3 bow for nothing but 3 fossils and the resonator.

+5 spell stave is a pipe dream. Alternatively i could try and get +2 on 1hs with similar rolls but yeah, i havent seen a single weapon within a reasonable price range with either all league.

Stuff like this makes it easier for certain builds for sure though, just not for most.

spells with no gear will take you a LOT farther than melee or bow with no gear

that means league starting or ssf with spells can get you to much better content much quicker safer and more efficiently than playing melee or bow unless you are lucky on drops, you can make +1 wands with vendor recipes now too

I disagree. With all the new melee based additions that ive read up on you can scale melee very well without gear reflecting that. Generic uniques would do just fine in most cases to clear it, especially slammers who essentially get free quadruple damage and can reach an absurd damage threshold on a tiny budget.. Facebreakers is still a thing as well which doesnt require much at all to start or scale and only gets better as your gear gets better while already being good.

+1 wand is generic element unless im missing the information for +1 spells recipe. +1 with the right mods is extremely rare. Ive been using the same scepter i made all league and i highly doubt ill ever get better without an extremely lucky craft or ID.



Which i may try for later on in the league, i dont know yet, because i feel like i could be doing a lot of other things with my currency instead.

Sorry, but that is a VERY nice scepter.