Strike Skills still feel really bad to play, especially early on. (Problem/Solution format)

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diarmuidtherat wrote:

Problem: Strike Skills' slow first hit and quicker second hit make them feel really awkward until you have extremely high attack speed. Additionally, the Strike area of effect is quite awkward and dependent on the weapon.

Solution: Make Cleave the default Strike Skill animation, with a large difference in AoE between weapons of different sizes.



New Problem: Strike Range has become irrelevant with this change.

Solution: All instances of Melee Strike Range should be converted into Strike Area of Effect, which should make the default Cleave animation scale similarly to how Melee Strike Range scaled the area of Strikes (from a pure numbers perspective).
A new modifier would be added to Cyclone and similar skills that reads "Modifiers to Strike Area of Effect apply to this Skill's Area of Effect at #% of their value" to replace the old modifier.



New Problem: Ancestral Call Support and Melee Splash Support have become irrelevant with Cleave becoming the default animation.

Solution: Remove both Ancestral Call Support and Melee Splash Support. Replace all instances of "Strike Skills target # additional nearby Enemies" with #% increased (more?) Strike Area of Effect.



Problem: Strike Skills still won't feel good to play after these changes, even if they've become much easier to understand and build.

Solution Preface: Good melee in games typically have movement attached to use of melee, as well as movement during melee actions, therefore...

Solution: Add two new Support Gems:
1. A Support Gem with little to no extra damage, that gives the player the ability to move, albeit slowly (slightly less slowly as the gem levels up), during the use of a Strike Skill.
2. A Support Gem with little to no extra damage, that teleports the player to the selected position of the mouse when they use a Strike Skill (with a limit on travel distance).



Problem: Strike Skills still under-perform, after all of these changes.

Solution: Buff all Strike Skills to have usable levels of damage.




There are other issues these changes create, but I think from this starting position, Strike Skills could become properly enjoyable, and feel good to play.

Worst idea i have ever read, strike skills REAL issue is that they are forced to use bad gems with low damage multipliers and you want to add 2 more?

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plaguefear wrote:

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diarmuidtherat wrote:

Spoiler

Problem: Strike Skills' slow first hit and quicker second hit make them feel really awkward until you have extremely high attack speed. Additionally, the Strike area of effect is quite awkward and dependent on the weapon.

Solution: Make Cleave the default Strike Skill animation, with a large difference in AoE between weapons of different sizes.



New Problem: Strike Range has become irrelevant with this change.

Solution: All instances of Melee Strike Range should be converted into Strike Area of Effect, which should make the default Cleave animation scale similarly to how Melee Strike Range scaled the area of Strikes (from a pure numbers perspective).
A new modifier would be added to Cyclone and similar skills that reads "Modifiers to Strike Area of Effect apply to this Skill's Area of Effect at #% of their value" to replace the old modifier.



New Problem: Ancestral Call Support and Melee Splash Support have become irrelevant with Cleave becoming the default animation.

Solution: Remove both Ancestral Call Support and Melee Splash Support. Replace all instances of "Strike Skills target # additional nearby Enemies" with #% increased (more?) Strike Area of Effect.



Problem: Strike Skills still won't feel good to play after these changes, even if they've become much easier to understand and build.

Solution Preface: Good melee in games typically have movement attached to use of melee, as well as movement during melee actions, therefore...

Solution: Add two new Support Gems:
1. A Support Gem with little to no extra damage, that gives the player the ability to move, albeit slowly (slightly less slowly as the gem levels up), during the use of a Strike Skill.
2. A Support Gem with little to no extra damage, that teleports the player to the selected position of the mouse when they use a Strike Skill (with a limit on travel distance).

Problem: Strike Skills still under-perform, after all of these changes.

Solution: Buff all Strike Skills to have usable levels of damage.

There are other issues these changes create, but I think from this starting position, Strike Skills could become properly enjoyable, and feel good to play.

Worst idea i have ever read, strike skills REAL issue is that they are forced to use bad gems with low damage multipliers and you want to add 2 more?

OP said that the very last thing would be to Buff all Strike Skills to have usable levels of damage.

And that's the correct order. First, the mechanics should be fixed, then the numbers. Lightning Strike is so popular because, unlike regular Strike skills, its mechanic is equally good at clearing and bossing.

I feel like what strike skills really need isn't a mechanical change but just some added mechanics that enable the playstyle. changing aoe etc just turns your strike in to a slam. You want to be up close hitting things but the game punishes the need to be close to enemies.

As an example my main issue having played strike last league was that during boss fights you need to be close to the boss which isn't always possible do to the different effects they have. Burning vents, slow balls, degens, beams etc etc.

I think the game needs some new defensive options to compliment strike skills. These should be quite powerful but limited to strike builds with some investment. A few examples :

- Passive skills that grant reduced damage taken if you have only used a strike skill recently,

- a new effect like elusive that works the opposite way. Instead of having a chance to avoid damage from hits reduce the damage taken from all hits and Dots by xx% during effect. Tenacious : Take 20% reduced damage during skill effect. Skill loses effectiveness over time. Effect is removed when player moves or uses a movement skill. Add a support like nightblade that grants this effect and only supports strike skills and some passive tree support for increased effect.

- a guard skill that grants damage absorption depending on power of enemies in a very small radius. A large temporary defensive bonus but only if you are very close to a lot of enemies or a very powerful one.

- in general more defensive ( and offensive ) modifiers that play off the "while stationary" status. ( I tried to play around with this during this league as a mechanic with flicker strike as it counts as being stationary and there are very few effects that play off of this )

There are a lot of limitations to melee as a playstyle but that is because there are no real extra defensive layers to counteract the fact that you are always much closer to the danger. Fortification is a start but again not exclusive to strike skills.

Give players a way to mitigate more incoming damage, especially degens, if they get up close and personal and start physically hitting enemies and or while standing still.

If you keep the same defensive options strike will only ever feel good the second it loses most of it's identity and can be player like other archetypes. All these range and aoe changes are an example of this.

As for melee splash I think that the game would be better if the weapon type had an effect on melee skills. Blunt weapons for example could grant a splash damage radius where enemies near to the strike take residual damage. Swords could strike multiple enemies as they are slashing weapons. Short weapons like claws and daggers gain no benefit like this. Just an musing I had

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Sarganis87 wrote:

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plaguefear wrote:

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diarmuidtherat wrote:

Spoiler

Problem: Strike Skills' slow first hit and quicker second hit make them feel really awkward until you have extremely high attack speed. Additionally, the Strike area of effect is quite awkward and dependent on the weapon.

Solution: Make Cleave the default Strike Skill animation, with a large difference in AoE between weapons of different sizes.



New Problem: Strike Range has become irrelevant with this change.

Solution: All instances of Melee Strike Range should be converted into Strike Area of Effect, which should make the default Cleave animation scale similarly to how Melee Strike Range scaled the area of Strikes (from a pure numbers perspective).
A new modifier would be added to Cyclone and similar skills that reads "Modifiers to Strike Area of Effect apply to this Skill's Area of Effect at #% of their value" to replace the old modifier.



New Problem: Ancestral Call Support and Melee Splash Support have become irrelevant with Cleave becoming the default animation.

Solution: Remove both Ancestral Call Support and Melee Splash Support. Replace all instances of "Strike Skills target # additional nearby Enemies" with #% increased (more?) Strike Area of Effect.



Problem: Strike Skills still won't feel good to play after these changes, even if they've become much easier to understand and build.

Solution Preface: Good melee in games typically have movement attached to use of melee, as well as movement during melee actions, therefore...

Solution: Add two new Support Gems:
1. A Support Gem with little to no extra damage, that gives the player the ability to move, albeit slowly (slightly less slowly as the gem levels up), during the use of a Strike Skill.
2. A Support Gem with little to no extra damage, that teleports the player to the selected position of the mouse when they use a Strike Skill (with a limit on travel distance).

Problem: Strike Skills still under-perform, after all of these changes.

Solution: Buff all Strike Skills to have usable levels of damage.

There are other issues these changes create, but I think from this starting position, Strike Skills could become properly enjoyable, and feel good to play.

Worst idea i have ever read, strike skills REAL issue is that they are forced to use bad gems with low damage multipliers and you want to add 2 more?

OP said that the very last thing would be to Buff all Strike Skills to have usable levels of damage.

And that's the correct order. First, the mechanics should be fixed, then the numbers. Lightning Strike is so popular because, unlike regular Strike skills, its mechanic is equally good at clearing and bossing.

Even if you buffed them to reasonable damage putting in more low multiplier gems would just tank them back down to their current terrible damage levels..
We do not need new gems, we need new passives.

The choice for melee is if you want to have even remotely viable damage you have to play claws and go evasion which allows you spell suppression.

If you go armour there is no spell suppression available and less damage, with nothing to make up for that loss.
Thats why strike skills suck, i can make a raider that can do all content on day 1-2 of the league using venom gyre or helix or LS or wild strike.
Try making anything other than lightning strike zerker on the marauder side of the tree and you are going to have a bad time.

You've mixed so many things together... I honestly cannot follow your thoughts.
Can you please separate the topics?

You said that Strikes suffer from bad gems with low multipliers, but you don't want to buff damage? Maybe you meant Splash and Call being replaced by new gems? But OP offered to fix the mechanics in the first place AND buff damage, and you wouldn't be forced to use the new "flicker" supports...

Then, Spell Suppression. It's so good that it feels mandatory, yes. But that's not a Strike-specific problem. If anything, it deserves a completely separate discussion.

And Claws... Aren't they good just because Nightblade is busted?

I think that the idea of stationary if good but i would go a step further and add make it "close by".

Something like, "take 25% reduced damage when a yellow monster or more than 3 monsters are close by", that way fake melee stuff like lightening strike would still have the same drawbacks as casters (because in practice that's what they are) but true melee spells that need to be close to the enemies wouldn't.

Also we still need to fix the AOE problem, if you guys are afraid of turning all melee skills into slams, maybe something like melee strikes chaining would be cool, "strike skills chain to the nearest enemy losing X dmg with each chain", so stronger attacks would have a further reaching AOE and faster attacks with less dmg would have a smaller AOE?

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sonicphi wrote:

I think that the idea of stationary if good but i would go a step further and add make it "close by".

Something like, "take 25% reduced damage when a yellow monster or more than 3 monsters are close by", that way fake melee stuff like lightening strike would still have the same drawbacks as casters (because in practice that's what they are) but true melee spells that need to be close to the enemies wouldn't.

I don't think it is a good idea to tie Defence to parameters that may be outside of the player's control. Many monsters and bosses have jump-away type skills or are generally very fast, so a Close By can suddenly change resulting in death. Given PoE'c current speed, it will be impossible to react. Also, it will be worse for characters with slower attack/cast speed.
Here's my (not very elegant) idea on this:

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sonicphi wrote:

Also we still need to fix the AOE problem, if you guys are afraid of turning all melee skills into slams, maybe something like melee strikes chaining would be cool, "strike skills chain to the nearest enemy losing X dmg with each chain", so stronger attacks would have a further reaching AOE and faster attacks with less dmg would have a smaller AOE?

IMHO OP's suggestion to have Cleave-type AoE as a basic, default attack for melee is the best solution.
And I disagree with the "now all is slams" position. If a skill needs an external tag - that's a redundant, repetitive, and lazily designed skill. Skills should have an identity on their own.

you just want strikes to become slams? it's a bad idea and they'll never do this. some of the strike skills like lightning strike, molten strike, pestilent strike, boneshatter, frost blades and flicker strike still work very well. it's only a bunch of them that are ass to play and they have their own upsides, but no one plays them because downsides outweigh the upsides. this doesnt mean that they're totally useless, heavy strike and glacier hammer for example simply shit on bosses with good gear.

all we need is some support gems that would work well for strike skills that dont have inherent screen clear, and it's ggg's job to come up with an idea for them

Even if Strike gems were doubled in damage would that even be enough see Strike Gems be as competitive as spells for leveling , racing ? etc

I wouldn't mind seeing some movement support gems in general. Cyclone, flicker strike, leap slam, charged dash and maybe lightning warp could all be supports.

Cyclone would up the attack speed and reduce the damage while allowing movement through enemies.

Flicker could teleport you and have increased crit change/damage.

Leap would be a damage and radius increase.

Charged Dash would obviously let you charge up the attack.

Warp would be like lightning warp, causing the attack's elemental damage at both ends.

You could have Warp, Leap, and Flicker only apply to the initial attack when you click the mouse button, but not the following ones when you're holding it so you have some options, but that wouldn't make as much sense for charged dash and cyclone.