so.. the melee is FINALLY dead now? :)

unless patch notes hide some 'surprise' moment it is ALREADY clear that it is a trap league. traps werent bad before, will reign supreme in a league where you can pre-lay the damage. traps keeping their damage while everything around got a nice -40% is kinda.. motivating



Seismic Cry - slams were the reason to play 'melee', every other option was weaker. and slams without Seismic Cry (noone is going to use this new version, its trash) do not exist. Fist of War is hardly worth it, exerting attacks is pointless now, Second Wind change makes warcries clunky, you actually need to get damage from the tree now.. so slams are gone. and slams were the only melee 'on par' with the rest. good job.

Strike skills - with less damage and 'forced' boss mechanic interaction.. just dont. strikes gone (well, they kinda never were 'here'). no, behead support is not worth it, noone is going to use it.

the rest - 25% less damage. great on skills that already sucked (Cleave..). melee supports are boring, most skills have very few tags and mechanics so you cannot start shining with more interesting supports. the 'you wont feel a damage impact' turned out to be a lie

Cyclone - if the mana cost on trigger is actually impactful (shame for it to be easily negated with -mana cost rings) then cyclone is dead too

penalties to attack speed - the hidden poison of this patch. POEs animation cancelling implementation is BAD. the slower you attack, the more pronounced this fact is. some melee setups were already hardly playable due to poor implementation of ani-cancel. if it gets worse.. (this is universal - self-cast suffers from it as well)

fortify changes.. melee being shit was not enough, lets kill the defensive perk you get for all the risk? kinda sad.

as a final hit: mobility nerf. it is bearable for ranged chars, for a striker that has to tickle every single mob personally, it is a HUGE change.


excluding Cyclone (and a possible OP skill they release this patch) i dont expect to see any melee HIT skill in top 25 of skills. bleed EQ might be the only popular 'melee' in 3.15. spells can easily absorb damage loss because their scaling and mechanics are great. melee has neither and damage was their theoretical selling point. now its gone :)

Personally Im more bothered that Aura bots went untouched basically dodged the nerf hammer with 100% chance to dodge.

It was no suprise to see melee gutted once again.
I had a few people asked me for Glacial Hammer PoB as a league starter.
They changed their mind in the meantime ^^.

Meta prediction:

Traps/Mines, Spectres, Spells especially with Mana tank interaction like Agnostic, Ball lightning/Blade Vortex and MoM will be in the min/max section depending how the numbers of Enduring Mana Flask drinking turns out.

In summary the top end stuff wasnt nerfed enough down to the level of melee to be roughly equal in power. And yeah Strike Skills still suck the most. Like how is Ancestral Call with no damage multiplier fine when there are possible gloves that provide +2 Strikes and an Amulet Annoint that can give Tribal Fury for another +1.
Sure its opportunity cost but still a nobrainer over picking a 0% damage support gem.

Spectres might be off this league - 25% less life HURTS esp with prolonged fights. and combat resurrection for spectres is very unpleasant.


The winners:
Any skill with damage coming mainly from gem levels (ele hit, spells. esp skills that have good inter-level scaling multiplier past 22) - the more damage you get 'for free' the better. And Empower suddenly gets to be a really solid more multiplier (compared to other choices) thanks to drawback.

Also skills where you multiply effect with instances (+extra arrows on blast rain, +extra skeleton, +extra zombie - this type of stuff). This will make enchants for some skills VERY expensive.

Most DoTs because with DoTs youve already cleared slowly so the difference wont make build unusable. but the safety of 'apply once, run in circles' cannot be matched.

Ofc all skills that have bad coverage are out - nobody gives a flying f.. about no-AOE skills



Ive scrolled trough the list of 'unused skill buffs' and I really wonder have they outsourced it to someone or what?

They in most cases PRECISELY avoid changing what makes the skills suck thus making sure noone will ever use them (still) or fix things that werent broken in the first place:

Split Arrow now has an attack speed of 110% of base (up from 100%) - like who needed it? SA is a clear skill in SA/Puncture bleed setup. This change does nothing. why it is even here? sure, it is a buff, more speed is always good - but why?

and the duds:

Firestorm - firestorm sucks because it has a meteor limit and this useless 'duration' component. it deals damage, it just sucks to play due to this weirdo mechanic. oh and buffing the meteor part makes the 'duration' component even less important. why change in the first place? just raise the limit, triggers bypass it anyway

Icestorm - same damn thing. raise the limit. you dont call 20 snow puffs a 'snowstorm' even in the middle of desert. not to mention the damage is not a problem (and with current INT values this change will push this even harder) - it is the limit and delayed application. try fighting Sirus with that. some damage windows are so short he will teleport away before your snow hits him. this is the real problem - delay. then the limit. not damage..

Lightning Tendrils' strong pulses now deal 100% more damage with hits and ailments (up from 50%). - noone plays lightning tendrils because this skill has TINY AOE + forces you to stand still. 25% more damage wont make ANYONE play it. the problem is AOE, not damage. channelling skill with no range and no burst potential. i really wonder sometimes..

i wonder how is the 'reworked' Scorching Ray doing.. oh wait

besides the trap skills (that will be carried by the general trap-heavy meta) i expect exactly ZERO change of popularity for the underused skills. number changes can save few them BUT these have to target proper things (aka the problems), not raw damage:

- Spark. base cast speed. it is one of the clunkiest FEELING skills while leveling

- Shock Nova - make the ring bigger or something. for self cast the ring is too difficult to arrange properly given how small it is, how little we can see during combat and how mobile most bosses are. plus you use Intensify with it, so the ring location moves all the time. or just move the damage from the ring to the main skill, leaving 20% as extra bonus

- Tendrills. DOUBLE its AOE or make that 4th tick do 500% damage. just double it, i invite anyone for the worst leveling of the game - Tendrills 1-90. it is HORRID. 25% more damage wont change a f.. thing. any new player unlucky enough to pick this skill already quit. leveling with it is UNIMAGINABLY bad. channelling skill has to be easy to use (that includes good coverage) OR have a burst built in. and no, CWC is not a 'solution'

To add to all this they give back flat out 50% more to poison just one league after they removed Elder so that poison wouldn't be absolute worst trash tier now.
Kinda makes me think do they know what they are doing...

"

sidtherat wrote:

Spectres might be off this league - 25% less life HURTS esp with prolonged fights. and combat resurrection for spectres is very unpleasant.

With gem level scaling as all proper summoners are built this wont be an issue. Spectres at lvl 25 are almost immortal and their damage will still be in boss instant deletion range in endgame.
It will take some weeks though to climb in poe.ninja population once people shaken off their blade blast and ed/contagion league starters.

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

To add to all this they give back flat out 50% more to poison just one league after they removed Elder so that poison wouldn't be absolute worst trash tier now.
Kinda makes me think do they know what they are doing...

the poison change is good, I know it looks dumb but in previous patch terms they'd have had to keep the elder mod but ban shadow from using it.

This way poisons finally not assassin only, and isn't tied specifically to one item to fix its damage, it might not be enough though but I think we'll see some interesting poison builds this league.

I was thinking going for discharge with trickster, but the second wind reversal completely guts the clear :(

Kinda sad that second wind as utility support for skills with cooldown is gone

"

zzang wrote:

"

sidtherat wrote:

Spectres might be off this league - 25% less life HURTS esp with prolonged fights. and combat resurrection for spectres is very unpleasant.

With gem level scaling as all proper summoners are built this wont be an issue. Spectres at lvl 25 are almost immortal and their damage will still be in boss instant deletion range in endgame.
It will take some weeks though to climb in poe.ninja population once people shaken off their blade blast and ed/contagion league starters.

Specters got double nerfed, not only because of minion damage support but also because all other supports are nerfed, at least the melee one.

Ranged specters might be ok but anyway it just show that poe is just a ranged game.

Well second wind as mandatory gem for warcry cooldown plus basically removal of Seismic Cry was brutal for slams.
Since slams saw literally close to 0% use in SC trade it seems this was a nerf for SSF gauntlet???

Slams was a HC nerf they really don't like lower investment builds that were effective, Tbh archmage was as well similar story.

When the constraints of point efficiency don't apply because your defence requirements are lower there isn't much reason to go slams unless you wanted to play slams specifically - hence why the SC pop usage was low.