2h melee weapon balance is crap

+1

melee sux atm and need buff special for 2H

So much of this is variable.

Like a Fleshripper is not actually the best axe, but it seems like everyone's looking for a Fleshripper.

I have a for-the-lulz Smite build I've been mucking round with that's relatively neutral. I turn off one weapon specific node & swap a couple of jewel affixes to "with two handed melee weapons" and it becomes a weapon agnostic two handed build, using a fairly conventional physically based skill.

So for my own interest, I decided to use it as the basis for a 2H weapon comparison.

I've got PoB running under what should be poe.ninja's config settings for this build (fortify, rage, consecrated ground, power charges, flasks on, versus shaper/guardian). PoB link is: https://pastebin.com/UMYbyam4

The weapon setup I used is for conventionally 'perfect' base physical weapons:
- 179% increased Physical Damage (top of T1)
- Adds 43-78 Physical Damage (top of T1)
- 27% increased Attack Speed (top of T1)
- 38% increased Critical Strike Chance (top of T1)

I left off a 5th & 6th affix cos they'll be starting to get increasingly build specific & should have relatively equal impact anyway.

I did throw in a few with T2 & T3 rolls on Deafening Contempt Essences for perspective & anything with a useful implicit I've also done a bricked implicit version of so we can compare implicit-vs-base-stats. Also chucked in a couple of double corrupted versions.

I picked weapon bases that offered best DPS, best attack speed, best crit & best balance-of-stats for each type.

Full List by Type:


Just the Ranked Summary:


Thoughts:
- If you're not messing with implicits, Swords win
- Axes are overrated unless you're planning on corrupting them or hate crit
- The only really desirable Sword corruption is Fortify, so despite being the best basic weapon they corrupt badly
- My build has fortify in the 6-link & swapping it out is about a million dps gain, so I've actually under-valued all the corruptions but that applies to all weapon types equally & just means corruptions are relatively better than the ranked table already makes them look. A lucky double corruption on a T2 or T3 weapon would shoot it straight up above anything non-corrupted.
- Several of the more popular bases are actually mediocre, they're just easier to craft cos a good implicit can make up for bad rolls
- Well Synthesised Axes & Maces will be good enough to catch up to Swords
- Builds that don't like crit will also dislike swords - they're all about those crit/multi implicits
- The best mace is (just) within 10% of the best non-corrupted weapon. They are clearly worse... but close enough that well rolled maces will beat average rolls on other weapons
- All of this ignores the relative prices of jewels
- All this ignores skill tree pathing (e.g. bleed would introduce more constricted pathing) & utility (how do you value stun?).
- That said, most of the 'best' weapon specific nodes clusters are fairly equally separated from the 2nd best choice for that weapon type, and many (most?) 2H builds are probably better off picking just one keystone then using clusters/jewels/non-weapon-nodes rather than pathing between them.

And as an interesting aside - the default weapon on that PoB does have a 5th affix (crafted lightning damage to attacks), but that & some chaos damage is enough to take a T2/T3 rolls colossus mace to within 15% of the BiS four affix non-corrupted weapon. For reference, that mace cost me 25c when non-6 socketed & had been on the market for several days when I bought it. That said, I'm about to replace it with an exquisite blade sword.

Maces are the only weapon type that allow to use Shockwave Support with slam skills, which IMO is hugely underrated, since it essentially grants you second skill for free, which is as effective against single enemies as against packs, and is often at least just as strong as the base skill, since it still benefits from all the other compatable support gems in the setup.

And regarding stun mechanic you can still make it very useful when using Warlord's Mark (20 Rage generated on stun) and Bersersk skill, which all combined can pretty much give you constant berserk buff, with only exception really being bosses that don't spawn minions.

nice analysis. i really like the way you did it.

few comments tho:

- this is just for one build: strike, hit build. this is a build that benefits directly from attack speed and crit. there are two other and popular setups: slam hit build and bleed build. these two make SIGNIFICANT part of entire melee spectrum. slam builds dont really care about attack speed (they do.. but they kinda dont. you calculate your 'true damage' differently, esp with Fist of War). bleed builds care only about TOP damage, unlike all other builds that care about averages. you kinda ignore crit for bleed builds (you might use it, but the gain is negligible). you can mix slam and bleed ofc - same rules apply.

axes might be overhyped for direct hit builds but they rightfully are best picks for bleeds. same story with slams. you dont care much about dps but check average hit. it changes results a bit if not by a lot - staves with good crit support make gorgeous slam buils

- tree support. mace nodes focus on stun (worthless) and %increased damage. it might have been 'enough' in 1.3 or earlier, but.. in modern POE people have +500% increased damage and noone cares about yet another increased node. it is faaaar too late for that - diminishing returns and all that. you say that maces get bits of area of effect? yeah.. 'bits'. real life effect is 100% negligible. and even if - you wont make use of it vs bosses anyway.

passive tree nodes are a BIG part of the problem. mere %increased damage wont cut it. area of effect.. you cannot pick all the clusters so you get 25% increased AOE. good, but is it worth taking subpar basetype and using subpar passives?

- stun. stun being what it is - this is what makes maces garbage. pretty much EVERY mace related item/skill/passive has a word 'stun' somewhere. and stun is unreliable quirk at best. first - some enemies (quite annoyingly syndicate members and quite a few endgame bosses) are outright stun immune. just like that all your investment into stun is wasted.
and enemies that are not outright stun immune.. kinda are. because they are immune for several seconds. with 75%+ enemy stun threshold reduction etc you can very easily apply microstun that a) wears off immediately b) applies stun immunity. aka - you can go trough entire battle with sirus keeping him permanently stun immune due to not criting or low-rolling etc

it is a shitty feeling that once experienced makes you jagged. stun immunity window has to go. it ruins maces identity like nothing else.


re: Shockwave support. staves can use it too

"

Balcyn wrote:

Maces are the only weapon type that allow to use Shockwave Support with slam skills, which IMO is hugely underrated, since it essentially grants you second skill for free, which is as effective against single enemies as against packs, and is often at least just as strong as the base skill, since it still benefits from all the other compatable support gems in the setup.

Shockwave doesn't get exerted nor does it work with fist of war, ironically its actually worst on slams and good on other stuff.

I actually like Stun the only thing that really holds it back is when you make a passive tree for stun you essentially have 10 floater points that you allocate to the psuedo stun nodes, however you do like 40% more damage if you allocate them in damage and if you are on HC its hard to allocate them anywhere that isn't defensive.

Basically their point efficiency isn't high enough to justify the investment and the supports aren't quite good enough, 8s stuns are great if your lazy though and 2 rounds of warcries is enough to kill most bosses even on a stun build.

2H seems fine mostly. Maces I question because I feel like, why not staff?

The whole Stun lock feature maces were known for kinda died a very long time ago and I'd rather have the block. Just simple as that. Swords and Axes are fine.

A lot of issue for me is that shields in general are just massively good. Since 3.13 when they just started stripping Ascendancy defense perks and further stripping nodes like Hardened Scars.
I find it hard to not use a shield.

I would like to add two more cents to the already said:

- Shockwave does not exert and is not supported by Fist of War and therefore mostly usless for slams. It comes with 5 Charges at lvl 21 which is a bad mechanic by itself. Once charges are constantly empty (like in endgame delirium maps) you are basically playing a 5 link skill. Plus its useable by superior staves too.
- Warlords Mark or Marks in general. No one is using self cast marks if they dont come as a ring suffix marks are useless. Among all Marks Warlords Mark with gain Rage on stun is the most useless. Stop 2 seconds for a rare to cast a mark before hitting it? No thanks. Bosses where marks are supposed to shine? Have stun immune period after stun so garbage. Also opportunity cost over not picking Assassins Mark on a ring suffix that automatically applies since you can only have one mark at a time on an rare/unique enemy.

Maces are full of Anti Synergy and their skill nodes are all over the place leading to high inefficiency pathing into them. There is not even a single good crit mace. All other weapons got atleast a dedicated crit variant with > 6 crit chance or otherwise interesting implicits which maces lack completely.

In short maces got no identity in this game.

"

Lakh wrote:

So much of this is variable.
Like a Fleshripper is not actually the best axe, but it seems like everyone's looking for a Fleshripper.

You didn't optimize for each weapon. Different weapons should be optimized for different passives and gears.

You can't get the best DPS for Fleshripper because your crit multiplier is too low.

You didn't even optimize your passives for axes.

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smtad wrote:

"

Lakh wrote:

So much of this is variable.
Like a Fleshripper is not actually the best axe, but it seems like everyone's looking for a Fleshripper.

You didn't optimize for each weapon. Different weapons should be optimized for different passives and gears.

You can't get the best DPS for Fleshripper because your crit multiplier is too low.

You didn't even optimize your passives for axes.

That's because I was attempting a neutral build to examine the weapons themselves, not their skill trees. I'm trying to keep the variables under control.

If you wanted to go into the value of the nodes, my post would serve as an outline for what the 'best' generic options for each weapon type are (as well as being suggestive of which ones might be better for a non-speed or non-crit setup).

So you'd take those weapons & then plug them into a range of fairly standardised builds with weapon-specific support. And ideally not someone's whacked out off-meta scion =)

This way you'd keep the range of variables under better control, avoiding messing around trying to simultaneously test weapons & builds.

And as Sid pointed out, you'd probably want a strike, a bleed, a slam & quite likely an impale build option for each weapon type.

If you did want to shift 5-15 points into weapon specific nodes on the actual build I was working from, you'd either need to rework it radically or swords would still look the best. It's got really convenient access to the Blade of Cunning circle & doesn't get much out of the impale/overwhelm oriented axe nodes or the Spinecruncher mace nodes (and can pick up the only convenient juicy node for mace with one skillpoint via the Thread of Hope jewel).