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

Brave ? As any build, it has its pros and cons, but you can enjoy melee builds..
Was considering some Trinity Raider.. something.. Or my beloved Molten Strike Juggernaut <3
Of course ranged/minions builds always seem better 'cause you can avoid stuff, offscreen, let allies tank.. those kind of builds have always been more popular in hack & slashes like Diablo and such, that doesn't mean you can't find a load of useful skills to make your way in melee, perhaps it's just less brainless and may require more knowledge on mechanics or bosses patterns.. but you'll learn them on the way !

starting melee as either smite or frost blades, leaning towards frost blades with dual ahns might for crit multi and damage

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Chickenwink wrote:

Melee is fine check in regularly on my character page as the league goes on to learn more. Juggernaut heavy strike/ground slam is gonna be dope.

since youve asked, i did:

youve ditched Heavy Strike around lvl 40. kinda proves my point already and that was the sensible thing to do


but on the other hand..

you play Ground Slam, pick Impale nodes, pick Crush, pick Overwhelm on Impales and in general build phys damage

and then you convert 40% of it to fire and use Added Fire support..

is that a Tectonic Slam build (even if, why waste ~10 points on phys bonuses?) in disguise or something?

i know you are still leveling but some choices you made make no sense WHATSOEVER and now i do wonder what 'skill gap' you are talking about

"

Chickenwink wrote:

Melee is fine check in regularly on my character page as the league goes on to learn more. Juggernaut heavy strike/ground slam is gonna be dope.

update 2:

'dope' means abandon the character at lvl 80 and move to much better, safer and cheaper Toxic Rain? do i understand the situation correctly?

so tell me, how is the ground slam/heavy strike in current game?

Just to repeat, im never touching melee until they "fix all melee builds need totem" thing.

Side note: i tried a little slapping together melee build just with two pob suggested rage axes on berserker, spec-ed in skill tree added rage and result- oh boi i suck at making melee builds :D was surpirside by that low dps (cleave):D.

Hi everyone. This was the first year ever I took my time to post any feedback here even though I started playing POE in 2013.

I agree with pretty much everything Sidtherat posted.

I have been playing SSF softcore only since always and only Barbarian-like characters. I enjoy tankiness and actually hitting things with weapons. I also don't like playing too many differenct characters. I usually play as a single one from start to finish.

On 3.17 Archnemesis I played as a Duelist, Slayer, Cyclone, pure physical character. Weapon of choice: warstaff.

My biggest "mistake" was most probably my insistance in not getting any spell suppression at all. I like to adhere to the archetype of a heavy armoured Barbarian and that's why I just sticked to pure armour bases.

I managed to complete 36/40 challenges and could've easily gotten 39/40 had I played more on the start of the league.

Simulacrum wave 30, juiced The Feared and deep delving (as in 500 depth plus) as far as I can see I would have not been able to achieve even with considerably better equipment and 100% spell suppression. There is simply no way to scale damage up enough for that.

My pastebin in case you guys wanna see what I have: s9bFUxCS

Feel free to criticize my build in any way. I don't consider myself good in POE, although I'd say I'm fairly knowledgeable at this point.

Even though I managed to get a Mageblood at around the 600th Gwenen reroll, I did not come even close to defeating The Feared. I'd say it is impossible to defeat it without 100% spell suppression or over 6k HP and same 87 all res, 90% phys red etc I had when I attempted it (I had 4.5k HP and just got one shotted every time). Currently sitting at 86 all res.

Managed to defeat wave 21 Simulacrum and Aul on 390 ish Delve depth at most.

Sincerely, I consider this build of mine a fail and a demonstration that melee is in appalling state.

A fast fact: I died over 650 times during the league. Finished the league at lvl 99.

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sidtherat wrote:

"

Chickenwink wrote:

Melee is fine check in regularly on my character page as the league goes on to learn more. Juggernaut heavy strike/ground slam is gonna be dope.

update 2:

'dope' means abandon the character at lvl 80 and move to much better, safer and cheaper Toxic Rain? do i understand the situation correctly?

so tell me, how is the ground slam/heavy strike in current game?

Loool nice catch the faker is real fake.

"

sidtherat wrote:

"

Chickenwink wrote:

Melee is fine check in regularly on my character page as the league goes on to learn more. Juggernaut heavy strike/ground slam is gonna be dope.

update 2:

'dope' means abandon the character at lvl 80 and move to much better, safer and cheaper Toxic Rain? do i understand the situation correctly?

so tell me, how is the ground slam/heavy strike in current game?

+1 LOL

"

sidtherat wrote:

"

Chickenwink wrote:

Melee is fine check in regularly on my character page as the league goes on to learn more. Juggernaut heavy strike/ground slam is gonna be dope.

update 2:

'dope' means abandon the character at lvl 80 and move to much better, safer and cheaper Toxic Rain? do i understand the situation correctly?

so tell me, how is the ground slam/heavy strike in current game?

I like the dope character evolution, first ditch heavy strike then ground slam too.

Last league I played around with some triple dot cyclone trickster. It was a bit meh, the league mechanic was meh, the character was a poor choice for it and probably wouldn't be able to get good without more investment than I was willing to work for, so I ended the league early. Figured - "this is a joke, no way they'll let this stand for one more league", and decided to play battlemage cry next league.

Unfortunately, I was wrong, so I'm playing freeze pulse tornado. What's the point of battlemage cry if the attack will do zero damage compared to the spell, just cast the spell directly instead.