so who is 'brave' enough to play melee in 3.17 (LOL)

melee is barely usable in 3.16 due to various reasons.

melee got 3.15 'buff' to compensate for support gem butchering
still sucked

and now spells get the same buff?

like wtf? what is happening there.

is there a single reason to play melee when both bows and casters just got 60% more damage out of the blue?

and you remove Glacial Hammer's splash? without Cast on Crit there is actually ZERO reason to play any melee skill in the game, ZERO. just remove it altogether please, it is ok to be first ARPG without melee

They could completely remove pure Melee / Pure Physical from the game as it is completely useless.
I laughed a lot when I read that builds that use bow/quiver would get buffs, although in the endgame any ranger build can have insane clear and even boss performance, nullifying any advantage of any melee build.


I wonder since when I started playing this game, why would I invest in any melee build?


But of course, we need to wait for the patch notes.

"

sidtherat wrote:

like wtf? what is happening there.

A hostage situation, dear sid.

The logical thing to do here would be to just rollback the monster life increase and nerf traps/mines/totems. Melee good (or at least usable), selfcast good, ranged good.

But they can't to that because that would be a nerf to monster life and a nerf to traps/mines/totems. Oh noes, fun detected, trappers having fun, monsters having fun, can't have that.

So, instead, we're getting a buff to selfcast and ranged, then next league we'll have a buff to melee and then next-next league we'll have a buff to monster life again.

Dunno, maybe it's just me that's crazy.

i havent been playing much this patch, lots of RL stuff and got tired of absurd power discrepancies between archetypes but ive made two junk characters - attack one and caster one. both with junk items and exploring the 'unusable' interactions ('is the bleed+poison viable?' and 'is ES recharge enough for endgame' - answers: no, yes)

the caster one got to lvl 80 with two blue +1 wands and goldrim/7th league step. the attack one.. the opposite

with changes like this - i no longer need wands! it is just absurd


and i meant it when i proposed melee removal. it would make POE unique - it is already a zoom zoom dont-look-at-the-screen game but this space is getting cluttered, it can be first real bullet hell ARPG and just ditch melee as an incompatible archetype. i bet not many would notice.

i honestly wonder how can anyone think that Cleave is 'ok' while Arc exists with damage number it has. Heavy Strike's 'huge damage effectiveness' is now beaten by pretty much every single spell out there.

what is happening here? WTF?

So what you are saying is: melee is 100% fine. As long as you don't play it.


It could be worse. They could completely ignore the targeting problem again only to rely on an unintended bandaid fix that they gut in the next league while providing no redemy on the back end...wait a minute...

I mean.. u play only STD so every single build should be possible, no? If not then what is the point of playing STD? LOLW

I'm gonna be playing Lost ark in 3.17 I'm very disappointed with the state of the game.

"

NasusPodInta wrote:

I mean.. u play only STD so every single build should be possible, no? If not then what is the point of playing STD? LOLW

No, not every build is possible. And builds that were possible got deleted last patch. I personally have 0 Characters. Last patch I still had 4 that were playable.

I had necro that was nerfed 4 patches in a row.
I had a cycloner that got nerfed constantly since Legion league.
A ED+contagion
a Str based bladefall/bv

So yeah-no, not every build is possible.


EDIT: Also note.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3228807

Sources of Added Damage
Problem:
Added Cold, Lightning and Chaos Damage Support Gems provide significant unconditional added damage that outclasses many damage options available to some builds, most notably bow builds. By comparison, many other sources of added damage are relatively weak.

Solution:
Lower the strength of unconditional "Added Damage" Support Gems, and raise the strength of "Local Added Damage" and "Added Damage to Spells" on weapons.


Guess what builds use AWK Cold and AWK lightning, is it BOWS? is it Spellcasters?? is it minions??? No, it's melee again. GJ balance team. You rock.

https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?allskill=Awakened-Added-Cold-Damage-Support,Awakened-Added-Lightning-Damage-Support


Edit for the EDIT

I even went out of my way to make a picture. Here ya go.

I'm going to play melee build quite possibly. There's plenty of viable melee builds in the game at the moment. Still not 100% decided because I prefer to see the full patch notes before deciding.

But if they don't nerf the skill I wanna go with, it will work just fine.

Buffing spells does not make melee any worse :D

"

Buffing spells does not make melee any worse :D

unless the new endgame is balanced around new spells power then sure it does


i bet it is.

wanna have fun? league start as Heavy Strike/Cleave/Glacial Hammer - aka skills GGG butchered this patch despite them being already terrible