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

This game is already die, just jump for another good game.

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

sidtherat wrote:

since when Lightning Strike is 'melee'?

It is even less 'melee' than it is 'strike' (does not need Splash nor hitting the target)

Seriously, try Heavy Strike or Cleave or (overnerfed) some slam. Lightning Strike is a bow skill that scales with melee weapon damage. nothing else.

Since everyone and their mother have their own, subjective definition of "melee", I'll stick to the game's definition and tags, thank you very much. I'll have you know that I did wave 20 Sim, Sirus 8 and delirius 80 T16 maps as Smite, before respec'ing to LS.

But I guess Smite isn't melee either.

lol, Sidtherat is right. GGGT could really simply remove melee and just add a melee tag to all other skills. At least Phrazz wouldn't mind - all it needs is the melee tag ;-) (just kidding)

You might not believe this, but it genuinely saddens me that 'what is melee in PoE?' is still a legitimate query for PoE when many of us gave up trying to answer it like 5 years ago.

Melee in PoE is whatever TencentGGG says melee is. Phrazz is correct even if GGG themselves are wrong, always have been wrong, and will continue to be wrong as regards the widely accepted definition of 'melee' in gaming -- because their truthiness here trumps any other definition or interpretation. Their game, their rules.

I tried to play with other terms like hand-to-hand or close quarters combat (CQC) but neither have the same brevity or assumed nature of weapon-against-weapon-and/or-flesh as 'melee' does. It's interesting to note that virtually no other game I've played has ever had this conflict, maybe because the devs didn't possess the hubris or inexperience to go about undermining otherwise accepted terms in game design because they couldn't keep a firm grip on it.

AFAIK Lightning Strike has *always* had the melee tag. The projectile portion of it was secondary, but like most things in PoE, secondary ranged overshadowed primary hand-to-hand/CQC. And are we talking about a different skill here? Just checked the wiki and Lightning Strike is explicitly a melee skill that can't be used with bows. Or were you being facetious?

Either way, this buff to 'self cast' is just another in a string (possibly a loop) of powercreep-induced frog leaps that should surprise no one. 'Balance' in PoE is a deck (as if you'd expect anything else from MTG junkies) and they keep cycling which cards are on top. Just play the topmost card and you'll win. Going by reactions so far, in 3.17 that card will most definitely not be 'melee'. You might be bored doing so but winning is fun, right?

Don't try to fight GGG on their terms (or about them); trust me, you will lose.

I'm thinking we should just use gem tags for what they were intended to be used. That would be to give us a hint about which supports work with it, and also provide a target for +X to level of gems of type. They really do no more than that.

For the way the skill is used we should probably trust the way we use it, or maybe follow our hearts if that fails miserably. And it might, after all we have melee skills with projectile tag like molten strike, which are about as melee as you can get, versus skills like ground or tectonic slam which cover half the screen.
But then again, ground slam has that close range bonus, so if it isn't too risky you want to stand close to maximize dps. And if the skill encourages you to stand close, isn't that a melee skill in spirit? Probably, at least as much as freezing pulse is.

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

You can blame zzang for melee rip xD

ZZang like all those good disgruntled pvp players put his knowledge and intelligence into breaking pve game. If only the game had listened to people like him when he was pvping, the game would have become much less broken and melee would have been in a better place.

So now he started to abuse the game like those he was hating when he was pvping. Smart guy, creating broken build in pve is the real pvp contest.

What does trying to make self-cast more than a meme have to do with melee?

The bow buffs did come outa nowhere though. Bows are already the majority.

I'm mostly concerned DW will now be dead due to Savior being side content.

If the archmemesis league will be something as insignificant as ritual was, i might as well play cold sst in ssf standard. Not sure its 100% "melee" tho.

There is an existing term for spells like Freezing Pulse though: short range spell. I get that 'short' isn't absolute but it gives you a general idea that is greater than point blank but less than mid to long range. And if long range is your absolute maximum then you can figure out roughly what mid and short range are. Or you can use obscure 'units' or 'yards' -- plenty of games do that but also have indicators of range applicability such as greyed out skills if out of range or a radar setup with range markers. Neither work for PoE, but on the other hand, no other ARPG has had this range vs melee fuckery either, so it really shouldn't need them. Arguably it's a necessary evil when you make skill modification (too) complicated: Whirlwind in D2 is always melee, but Cyclone in PoE can be 'made' into something much larger in all sorts of ways. And at the other end of the scale you have Diablo 3, where ranged and melee aren't even differentiated: you just have different ways of killing shit, although I do note the descriptions sometimes use vagaries like 'short range' and relatively useless specifics like 'X yards'.

And then there's the aforementioned early puzzler, Lightning Strike. Are you melee, dear skill, because you require a melee weapon to trigger and your initial hit is close quarters, or are you ranged because of your secondary projectile effect? GGG solution: tag 'em all and let God the players sort it out.

A short range spell in other games can become mid to long range with modifications -- 'extend' is hardly a PoE innovation. And a melee skill can gain AoE or ranged properties, especially with procs. But there has always been a cost in both cases, a significant one. Cooldowns. Massive resource requirements. Casting time. GGG never did figure out how to make its skill mod costs appropriate, which is why even now they're struggling to hide the shuffledeck trick.

What they do to PoE doesn't look or feel like 'balancing'. It reeks of overcompensation every single turn. If you've ever wondered why things never felt stable, that's your reason right there. Were PoE a boat, you'd all be puking or struggling to figure out which way to lean when the waves shove it about. You can blame the weather for this, but equally you can look at the fact that the helm has no turn setting other than 'hard'. I mean, I know you all want PoE to be hard(core), but that's just not healthy.

So am I saying, blasphemy of blasphemies, that this entire mess can be traced back to GGG's skill design reach far exceeding their balance grasp? Why yes, good people of Wraeclast.

Beyond this nauseating pendulous pattern of buff, nerf, buff, nerf, overbuff, overnerf, they keep introducing new layers of power, which is like adding extra cargo to that boat despite its inability to find amenable stability.

Look, it's not as if they don't know. PoE 4.0's skill gem overhaul should be an impressive stab at rectifying things by limiting what can support what, but I think it's agonisingly naïve to think it can't just as likely introduce an even more exploitable setup. Equally, I think waiting for such a massive expansion, purportedly at least a year away, for something that should be addressed much more immediately is...charmingly hopeful.

Though it was said tongue in cheek, 'just get rid of the melee tag' is far from the worst suggestion. Keep weapon tags, of course, but otherwise what does it matter? Too many initially melee skills can be made ranged, and too many 'melee' skills are nothing more than spells cast with your weapon in practice. Contrary to whatever my long-running crusade on the matter might indicate, I AM TOTALLY COOL WITH THIS. Just...be honest about it, GGG. Your game doesn't *have* melee in the traditional game design sense, but then again neither do most games anymore. This is one of those innovations you let others take from you by their realisation that ARPG skills should not be limited to 'melee' or 'ranged', or even 'single target' and 'AoE'. You fucking pioneered the flexibility of skill mutations in ARPGs, GGG, but then you clung to outdated terms and tags to create unnecessary complexity.

So hypothetically, you remake PoE but without the melee tag. All Skilldrasil buffs to 'melee' are modified, I'd posit to something like added damage at short range or some such. What have you lost? You still have the 'strike' tag for weapon-based melee attacks, 'projectile' for weapon or spell based ranged attacks. I'd nix the single target requirement for 'strike' tags, maybe create a single target tag IF people want to build on that to contrast the existing 'AoE' tag.

Suddenly the argument of 'playing melee' is rightfully moot. So your sword swing now conjures big bellows of flame? Great, add 'fire', 'mid range', 'aoe' (or 'cone', if you'd rather). Your fireball now detonates at mid range for extra damage? Change the long range tag to mid, modify damage output appropriately. As to whether the base skills were melee or ranged: who fucking cares? If it works, it works.

(And while you're at it, get rid of basic attack as an option. With no way to modify it, it's a fucking waste, as Diablo 3 proved by removing it altogether (it's semi-hidden on PC, but you can't do it on console). Leave it to other ARPGs that have figured out how to make basic attacks significant. This is a loss you should have accepted long ago, GGG. Oh, keep it for the start, but once an attack gem is equipped? Fucking yeet. Out of mana? THEN punish people with a basic attack that does pissfuck all. Not that anyone runs out of mana these days.)

And once you've eliminated the false dichotomy between 'melee' and ranged' in PoE (false from the start; it's only a problem because most people playing the game have some pre-existing idea of what 'melee' is, and PoE spits in the face of it), you can get to work on the real issue, which is something GGG is trying to address with 3.17 (for fuck knows how many times now): appropriate drawbacks for the usage of attack and spell skills in a secondary manner, such as totems, mines, traps, etc. Another glaring example of GGG's reach exceeding their grasp, but we've known that pretty much from the introduction of the totem support and the beginning of the self-inflicted struggle of how to make an ARPG that allows you to use your skills at extreme range even vaguely challenging without making it fucking impossible for those who don't want to play Tower Defence -- what is apparently called now, with what I find to be hilarious redundancy, 'handcasting'.

You say handcasting and I think of those silly fishing reels we used to use as kids despite being *infinitely* more dangerous than fishing rods. Maybe not an inappropriate comparison.

Lightning strikes pretty fail as a measure of melee regardless of whether GGG put the label on it or not, if you had to hit a target to get the lightning it'd be different but you don't and its almost exclusively scaled where the melee component isn't any different to the ranged part (as it should be)

Smite though is definitely melee.

Its all about the range, if they aren't within X it isn't melee where X depends on each player I guess but its like a discussion i had with another poster prior with groundslam, my groundslam at the time reached off the screen you can't call it melee its more ranged than most of the ranged skills.

I think there is an argument to be made that on a developed build melee no longer exists, I love heavy strike, infernal blow, boneshatter etc but once I've got +2 strike targets or a certain amount of weapon range I might as well be a point blank barrage build or slower proj lightning ball etc. I can stand near enemies to hit them, but i don't have to.

Kinda agree that removing the melee tag would actually be good tbh lol they may as well abandon the concept then maybe less will complain about the definitions, just attacks and spells.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

Lightning strikes pretty fail as a measure of melee regardless of whether GGG put the label on it or not, if you had to hit a target to get the lightning it'd be different but you don't and its almost exclusively scaled where the melee component isn't any different to the ranged part (as it should be)

Smite though is definitely melee.

Its all about the range, if they aren't within X it isn't melee where X depends on each player I guess but its like a discussion i had with another poster prior with groundslam, my groundslam at the time reached off the screen you can't call it melee its more ranged than most of the ranged skills.

I think there is an argument to be made that on a developed build melee no longer exists, I love heavy strike, infernal blow, boneshatter etc but once I've got +2 strike targets or a certain amount of weapon range I might as well be a point blank barrage build or slower proj lightning ball etc. I can stand near enemies to hit them, but i don't have to.

Kinda agree that removing the melee tag would actually be good tbh lol they may as well abandon the concept then maybe less will complain about the definitions, just attacks and spells.

Range is a factor - yes. but it is.. not the most important part. THE most important part is damage. same as with self-cast. If you have enough damage, melee is fine (and fun)

problem is - there are three ways of getting enough HIT damage right now (bleed/DoT builds are different beasts altogether):

- using the correct skills (Smite is the 'good' one. it has several scaling vectors, it does not need hitting target nor splash investment). be it mechanical or simply numerical. when one skill deals 50% less damage than its direct counterpart.. there is no reason to ever touch the turd (Cleave)

- being omega rich and investing into 10-20% percentile weapon to bruteforce the problem.

- using one of few 'the setups': Paradoxica +/ Saviour, Voidforge, Abyssus, Facebreaker/HollowPalm etc. if rare weapon - always use swords as swords are just outright priviledged in every regard. avoid 2h weapons. avoid slow weapons.

if you want to 'think outside the box' you end up with not enough damage. POE is a game of 'best/obvious choices' and it is fine if you happen to like playing the pre-planned stuff.

the remaining 90%+ of choices/setups is abhorrent when you pick them. no matter how hard you try and how much though you put into it, some build ideas - despite there being no reason to on the outside - just suck horribly. be it skill being absolute trash (Cleave, Heavy Strike and many, MANY more), weapon family being a sad joke (1h Maces) or playstyle being dangerous if you cannot remove all enemies instantly (defence changes helped 'a bit'.


I seriously ask any 'melee is fine, l2p noob' participant to do themselves a favour and league start Cleave to see what the talk is all about. casters/archers having an opinion without actually playing this stuff.. it just isnt cool.