Strike skills need a lot more help to be competitive

Except for the strike skills that don't behave as such. Fuck calling LS a strike skill, tbh. Remove its tag and make players take 30% less damage while using a strike skill.

Strike skills do need some love, I agree. I disagree that calling LS a Strike Skill is wrong. LS is a strike skill. There are two main reasons why it's META these days:

1) Nightblade is OP, and can be scaled into oblivion.
2) Vaal LS makes the skill a good single target skill in addition to being a good clearing skill.

Personally, I love the strike skill playstyle. But the strike skills without a secondary effect, like Double Strike, Heavy Strike, Dual Strike and Vigilant Strike are in desperate need of some love/buffs/modernization. To me, there are two helping solutions that stand out as "why the hell haven't they done this already?".

1) Make Tribal Fury a mastery instead of a notable. And/or add WAY more sources of "strike additional targets" on the tree.
2) Make Melee Splash a mastery for strike skills.

A weapon scaling build already needs a very good weapon to scale its damage. When certain skills (strike skills) in addition need 2 non-damage supports in their main link setup to be efficient in clearing (without huge investment), even my mother can understand that they will fall behind.

Slam skills got their "own league" with focused buffs and reworks. It's time strike skills got the same treatment.

Strike skills need A LOT more. Starting with removing misinformation:

- Lightning Strike is so strong because it CAN be ranged. it does not need to, but it CAN be. that significantly increases damage uptime. sure, you can 2 hit in perfect circumstances (or even more with various tricks) but in the WORST case you can still hit your enemy from distance. this is TREMENDOUS advantage, do not try to downplay it. second advantage: it is clear/single target combo that needs ZERO investments to work. you dont waste any resources on boosting only one part of that combo. everything you do benefits both.

- Strike skills' biggest downfall is ancient targeting system that make you actually MISS (dont confuse with accuracy check) with your swings more often than not. This is why +strike targets is MANDATORY. Even for bossing. GGG refuses to fix this issue or acknowledge its existence. Usual process - gaining lots of publicity via reddit/youtube - is impossible because not a single big-name streamer gives a f.. about strike skills.

Then about the real issue:

Strike skills ARE NOT single target powerhouses. in fact, most of them have garbage damage values compared to 'good' skills. Skills with lots of tags can pick and choose from 'good' supports (or in general - damage scaling vectors), strike skills quickly run out of good options and have to use some gimmick, underpowered choices.

Strike skills REQUIRE +strikes and melee splash to function. GGG's 'built in' splash is worthless and should be never spoken of again. That means: two link setups OR gem swaps OR accepting lower performance. It is garbage design. Note: you get NO benefits for playing crap choice.

+strike range is - in practice - swords only. You playing 1h mace strike skill? get f..
Strike range is located in one tree area, clustered in sword nodes/masteries. like wtf was the design reasoning behind this? 1h mace meta was too strong for too long or something?

How to fix that?

- +50% damage increase to the melee hit (so Molten Strike/Lightning Strike do not benefit because they dont need it). no small steps, no sweet talking. just make Strike Skill actually BE a single target choice.

- Fix the targeting. Right now when you attack with Ancestral Call - your 'initial' hit obeys some obscure targeting mechanics while 2 extras just auto-target (pretty reliably). Just make the initial swing auto-target as well. Drop the 'targeting rectangle' and other bs - it does not work, never did. It will make 'extra targets' and OPTION, right now it is mandatory and for wrong reasons

- Strike range has to be decoupled from swords and given to all weapons in similar quantities - mastery that gives +5 range for all weapon types seems right. It is kinda sad when Mathil says in his molten strike video that he thinks about re-doing it from swords to claws. He does not realise that actually means '-10 strike range' and complete ruin of the build..

- Splash. Either make the 'built in invisible splash' actually do something outside laboratory or make Melee Splash Support more damage multiplier or BOTH. While it is possible to play 'campaign' without melee splash with things like Dual Strike - it is 100% impossible to do so when you have influence mobs, king harby and breach on the screen at the same time. Explody mechanics are NOT enough for that, tried, it simply cannot be done after certain density threshold.


Then there are generic melee issues:

- reliance on attack speed. slow melee is simply unplayable thanks to HORRENDOUS attack animation. animation windup time etc should be applied AFTER the hit, not before.

- overabundance of melee buffs. there are so many that no matter what you do - you can at most use half of them. the 'maximum potential' holds off other buffs but this potential cannot be realised. casters have far shorter list, but you actually can use all of them

- fortify is a sad f.. joke now.

- levels on melee skills mean nothing

- rolling a phys weapon is a f.. nightmare, elemental is only slightly easier

- too much power in few key uniques (abyssus, saviour, paradoxica, voidforge) prevents any sensible buffs to melee in general

in general melee is in worst spot it had ever been and the strike skills situation is the worst ANY archetype in this game has ever been. the content simply requires hoover builds that can handle 200mobs at the same time and sniper who can damage bosses outside bs degen zones

At some point this league i have considered playing smth like cleave, looked into how people play it and got discusted by totem buffing melee being mandatory for all melee. Its lame.

Other than that, it might be cool to have maybe a keystone letting you to autoattack while moving at a cost of consuming frenzy charge for example.

That would be wonderful but it won't happen the best melee players can hope for (the few of them that are left) is a 5% damage increase (this is a buff).

I just want them to fix the targeting. I can deal with the rest for right now but to not even have the a baseline issue not resolved is embarrassing. A majority of mordern ARPG's don't have these problems then there is this game.


Then again according to GGG:
Melee is fine...as long as you don't play it.

+1 to all above

i m surprised that people are being supportive of the notion.

i've always complained about strike skills but got shut down with "melee is fine".

So, i gave it yet another try - the so called 'open mind' approach.

PoB: https://pastebin.com/F2Hkmj73

VDoubleStrike, 2h, Slayer.

Got to lvl 93, used Melee Splash for the first serious time once i hit 93 to do some comparison runs. How? LEGACY explody chest. Sadly, it is now legacy and random chance makes it unreliable. Bleed-Gloves require heavier-than-expected investment into bleed chance. Not to mention they ROB US from +strike target affix/implicit. Character is comfortable in endgame (T16 maps with all the juice, ~300 delve etc) and has the damage to kill any endgame boss excluding BS ones.



Gear is.. mixed bag. Weapon + Chest are rather very good. Everything else i got from my stash and bought the amulet for 30c or something. I think that realistic gear upgrades (esp in resistances department) can result in 20% more damage.

Conclusions?

It was fun (i enjoy this playstyle) and the damage is there (it better be with 700pdps effective weapon), the clear is.. there if you run Awakened Ancestral Call and spam Ancestral Cry all the time. What is not there is the 'x factor', that something that makes me consider this choice over Cyclone or Blade Storm or pretty much any ranged-melee option out there

Having played Forbidden Rite as my previous character the difference is rather striking (lol):

- Forbidden Rite deal ABSURD damage and has a built in, smart clearing option making 'run in circles and volley' extremely effective and easy.

Double Strike has neither. Comparing boss kill times and normalizing for that, FR requires about HALF passive point investment to reach the same damage. HALF. You can mix in damage, defences, misc and convenience - with Double Strike it is life and damage. The accidental defences i pick (~90% armour) is worthless. Expected investment thresholds are banana. No wonder melee in general and strikes in particular are treated like utter crap. They are. They simply are and it is because of hard numbers.

- Damage delivery is obviously better for FR. You can offscreen, you dont have to worry about adds (4/5-way legions are pretty dope with FR thanks to all that free chests you get while focusing on generals only). Double Strike relies on clones, the damage is conditional (and you CAN be unlucky with bleed chance) and for the passive tree investment - isnt anything spectacular. You get single target worse than a skill that has also amazing clear

- Scaling physical melee should be called 'impale'. You just have to use it. Pride watchers (that i do not use in this build) is broken-mandatory. This makes scaling phys attacks both streamlined AF and weak, because the 'power density' in impale nodes is low - you need ~10 points to reach investment threshold

- Leveling as melee is garbage. There is sadly no other word to describe it. Chasing new weapons is unfun experience (on a skill with a hefty flat phys!). Compared to FR leveling i did with one white wand and a Lifesprig (legit havent noticed it was white till lvl 68) - it is just revolting. Twinking isnt much better for 2h swords, there is a big gap between lvl 22 and lvl 44 (no, that Breach sword does not cut it)

- My FR build was in reality 2 click affair: main attack and flame dash. Everything else was fully automated (charge generation, wither, guard skill, summon golem etc). Melee dude on the other hand:
- Ancestral Protector
- Ancestral Warchief (they DOUBLE my damage)
- Ancestral Cry for dense packs OR phys bosses (it gives nice chunk of AR)
- VDouble Strike when needed
- Dread Banner for +10 max fortify for few seconds (ofc you need to pick it up. the technology to recast it on expiration is not there yet)


- Warlord's Mark is a meme. It gives leech noone gives f.. about because with 6m dps you saturate your leech instantly with .2. It gives you rage.. on boss stun. And stun has been broken for 3 leagues now, so this one is useless too.. and gives you stun duration. Is there a single person at GGG that actually used it after (re)design? Ive used it all the way to 93 and now I'm 100% sure it is a dead gem, in the Chance to Flee or Conversion Trap tier


GGG, please, get a grip and actually do something with melee. Right now it is a disaster and any new player picking this choice has a significant chance of leaving in disgust. It needs SERIOUS damage buff, streamlining of buff tools and making passives 'more dense' in power and ffs fix the 'melee only' stuff like stun

strike skills can work and can be made strong enough,this is a fact

another fact is,that arent performing so well compared to other skills

some of the suggested changes seem way too strong (i.e. the less dmg taken one)

the mastery/notable changes seem to be a better approach

another thing that could be an option would be adding stuff that disables totems and or warcrys in exchange for significant strike skill power
it could create more of an identity for both slams and strike skills

i cant really tell what and how big the problem with the targeting is and how it could be improved

my experience with strike skills is extremly limited and can be described as "i just put on some really good gear and test a few things" like kill endgamebosses or run a handfull of maps
i really dont like it,but it kinda works
the endbosses die without "too much" trouble,but thats it
its neither fast nor fun

what i really disliked though was the comparison to forbidden rite,its just not fair when you ignore the biggest drawback of fr
fr has a selfdamaging component that has to be build around

with such a drawback it should be stronger/better than most other skills that dont have one
the extend on how much it is better,is too much though

strike skills definitely need some help,but i dont think its raw power they need (the exception to this are the support gem needs/options)

Its rare but I'm just gonna +1 this, people have covered like all the problems immediately lol

"

ciel289 wrote:

what i really disliked though was the comparison to forbidden rite,its just not fair when you ignore the biggest drawback of fr
fr has a selfdamaging component that has to be build around

with such a drawback it should be stronger/better than most other skills that dont have one
the extend on how much it is better,is too much though

i felt that way until i actually gave it a shot. and it is a faux-drawback once you actually spend 10c to fix it

you wouldnt know looking at PoB that i actually had to try to fix that..
- Occultist - easy 75% chaos (dont need to go for +max chaos res)
- life recoup id use anyway
- life gain on hit for spells id use anyway

that drawback reads 'you need to cap your chaos res' - it laughable how easy it is to fix it. Forbidden Rite is just ABSURDLY strong and that lame excuse of drawback is simply smoke and mirrors

my ghetto gear (check the chest.. i couldnt care less about fixing it after completing the endgame runs):


i also have the timeless jewel with spell damage per power charge



in my opinion - and experience, that was why I actually played these two skills - it is EASIER to fix the 'drawback' than to make strike skill actually WORK decently (in my case: 2 unnecessary masteries strike range related, 4 unnecessary passives: tribal fury cluster, 1 glove slot for +strike, one ascendancy point for strike range). Then i have to toy with gem swap (AwAC vs maim) and the ever present Ancestral Cry is always on the horizon

'fixing' FR is in comparison - free..