Fixing the Mace, Axe, and Sword physical clusters in the Marauder tree.

I have a few ideas for how to fix these clusters so they aren't basically useless with a large sect of builds. The poe.ninja heatmaps show these clusters are barely used at all, and it would be best to adjust their purpose at this point, otherwise they will simply remain unused.

Idea 1; Split the damage.
Lets use Skull Cracking for the example. This should be done to all nodes within the cluster. Creating a generalized change.

Currently;
36% increased Physical Damage with Maces or Sceptres
Mace or Sceptres deal 36% increased Damage with ailments
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My suggestion;
18% increased Physical Damage with Maces or Sceptres
18% increased Damage with Maces or Sceptres
Mace or Sceptre attacks deal 36% increased Damage with Ailments

This would allow for non physical melee builds to benefit from these nodes as well. It would also allow for some added elemental damage on top of the original base physical damage boost. They would become a bit more general rather than highly specific.
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Idea 2; Change all of the damage.
Swap all the damage with generic damage. Same as before, this should be applied to all small passives as well as the notable.

My suggestion;
36% increased Damage with Attacks or Totems using Maces or Sceptres
Mace or Sceptre attacks deal 36% increased Damage with Ailments

This one is a bit more extreme. I'd prefer the first, but this would also work. There's so many subtle things that people use from these interactions so it would need to be worded and delimited correctly. The idea is to open potential, but not provide added juice to everything. Just the more specific area's builds after all.

Also I'm aware a blanket boost in damage would do more than shift power, that's why I'd prefer the first. However, melee is definitely suffering in a lot of ways, so I don't think adding a must-have melee node is a bad thing right now personally.
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Idea 3; Restructure the numbers
Adjust all of the numbers for the passive nodes and eliminate one of the notables, bleeding the damage and ailments from it into all the other nodes. Providing the node's unique ability as a mastery (if it has one), allowing all uniformed clusters the ability to allocate it.

Mastery; 12% chance to deal double damage if attack is longer than one second
Who's going to do this? You'll be long dead before you get a slam off. Adjust it to be 12% chance to deal double damage, or reduce the chance to 4% and call it a day.

Mace;
Remove Skull Cracker;
Attach Skull Cracker's damage to the surrounding small passives, distributing it and juicing them all.

Keep in mind this is just an idea but I made a visual representation of the concept.


Conceptually I think it'll work if each of the clusters are adjusted in this way. If each of the small passives absorb the power of one notable, you'll be saving a skill point, and getting some more power from these nodes than you can get elsewhere.

change the wording to "attack damage" and "ailments from attacks" instead of "physical attack damage" and we're good.

that said, weapons should have masteries such as "attacks penetrate % enemy ele resists" and "weapon attacks crush enemies" etc are good ways to spread out some damage type specializations.

Pass, this is fixing the wrong problem

I think some of the weapon specific nodes could use a small power boost, preferably in the form of either removing one minor node, or removing one minor and distributing its values to the remaining ones.

But still to go back to the first statement those nodes aren't any worse than other nodes on the tree aside from their specificity.

Changing to generic attack damage would definitely be correct.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Pass, this is fixing the wrong problem

I think some of the weapon specific nodes could use a small power boost, preferably in the form of either removing one minor node, or removing one minor and distributing its values to the remaining ones.

But still to go back to the first statement those nodes aren't any worse than other nodes on the tree aside from their specificity.

What's the right problem then?

Replace the Blood Magic Keystone with Overleech Keystone. No timeless jewel needed anymore.

Fix fortify in a way that every melee with decent dmg can fortify on everything no matter how much HP it has.

Thats it. Melee in a good spot again.

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funplayer wrote:

What's the right problem then?

The skills you use those nodes on and the expected weapons you use them with. They could double those passive nodes and it wouldn't make that much difference you'd probably get 20-30% at most, crit would still be a drastically superior scaler.

any build - even crit build - needs a significant % of 'increased' damage scaling. 300-400% is a sweet spot before diminishing returns kick in

these 'starter' nodes are good for that, esp they can provide you with good masteries (if your weapon type has good masteries. lol staves.. lol)

so it is good idea to make them 'generic'. these few wheels around marauder are the only restrictive nodes around the tree, heavily impacting build options and in general making little sense to keep them this way

solution:

physical damage -> attack damage
or
physical damage -> melee damage (but SST, Lancing Steel and Helix exist.. so why do it)


values on these nodes are bad and are diluted due STR already providing serious %increased but the real problem is that most melee builds have to spend majority of their passives on defences due to inherent danger they operate in leaving very little to spend on offence further pushing melee as 'very gear heavy' archetype

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sidtherat wrote:

solution:

physical damage -> attack damage
or
physical damage -> melee damage (but SST, Lancing Steel and Helix exist.. so why do it)

physical melee damage > melee damage AND ailment damage with melee

physical damage -> fine

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sidtherat wrote:

but the real problem is that most melee builds have to spend majority of their passives on defences due to inherent danger they operate in leaving very little to spend on offence further pushing melee as 'very gear heavy' archetype

Exactly, if they massively buff said passives it might let you crutch the defenses properly, except it wouldn't help melee rangers or shadows.

It isn't the marauder nodes, strikes need a huge buff in general. GGG should operate on the idea that melee requires 15-20 fewer passives to reach the same value as a ranged attack because those passives are required for usability and defensive passives.

And expected weapons shouldn't be a 900pdps fleshripper, if you get a 900 pdps fleshripper you deserve to do twice expected damage and just crush everything but they should never expect us to get such. 600 is a high enough number.