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

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demonstorm wrote:

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.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

If your talking about HC Archmage is single handedly responsible for most of the caster imbalance and propping up design fails.

Slams don't lack at clear either but the idea that slams are melee is an absolute joke, if your attack can be used anywhere and reaches the edge of the screen you are ranged.

Crutches aside balance between most stuff is fairly even, they obviously have some kind of mathematical equation that balances most things to within 10-20% of each other which is why the skill list is a bit zzzz however the game is defined by outliers in the modern era because being a meta cuck is the norm.

Just to cherrypick an example for spells as thats what OP's complaining about, spell cascade is a more multiplier for some arbitrarily chosen skills. This is actually the spell equivalent of original shotgunning where a gem intended to increase coverage (GMP) infact increases coverage and damage.

Personally i don't think thats bad for the game infact I think its pretty flavourful, the issue becomes that skills that don't get similar interactions are statistically worse due to be tied to the original normalised formula but without any possible cheeses.

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Erexonvayne wrote:

Slams don't hit the entire screen, not matter how much you exxagurate, they have aoe in order to actually be able to keep up, the basic thing most slam builds are missing is speed, which streamers and racers use the classic double movement-skill set up to offset this + smoke mine for some reason gives you 30+ ms.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Edit: I'm not advocating a nerf for slams either I think its thematically superior design to most of the other skills now, but they are superior melee by a significant margin and i'd love if the other melee got similar attention.

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Phrazz wrote:

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.

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yamface wrote:

they literally added a free more multiplier to just about every strike skill last league... this is an archetype that was already ok in damage and it got boosted even more

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demonstorm wrote:

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