How to Fix Strike Melee by a 20 League Veteran of Everything Melee - KissMeQuick( me)

League is a week away and I'm a board so I'm here.
I'll keep it short and sweet.
I will not state the obvious as much as I can.

• Let melee have 2x more damage than the standard ranged skills.

Melee being strong for boss damage isn't a problem anymore as it was 3.0 and before because there are so many phases and instakill mechanics that don't let you finish the boss any faster than a ranged character.

• Allow melee to easily choose between explosion or splash without major sacrifices.

Right now if you want either of these, you lose your DPS to a level where you're forced to swap gems at bosses which everyone dislikes. This means at least a +25% damage multiplier on top of all else.

• Remove Warchief totem buffs for good.

It's an unnecessary damage boost that you have to balance around. Remove it and compensate elsewhere.

• Buff Fortify from 4 to 10 seconds.

It is obvious why it has such a short duration but nowadays there are so many casts and spells for burst or protection that sacrificing slots just to get fortify up again through attacking for non-melee is just not worth it.
This would help melee survive better when it comes to phase swaps or dodge phases etc.

• Make Blasphemy more appealing.

Giving Blasphemy a +1 or even +2 additional curse effect would greatly increase it's usage and give Strike melee a well-deserved advantage and style of it's own.
+2 could even be an Alternative Quality gem at 30% Quality or just Awakened.
Right now it's too easy to curse in other ways and having mana reserved for it is just not efficient unless it's giving a strong advantage.

• Add more "when you are hit" opportunities.

Effects such as on getting hit receiving a "chilling ground around you", "shocked ground around you", "vines on enemies around you" etc. would be pretty much exclusive to strike melees.

• Something like old Violent Retaliation as a guard buff except on when you are hit.

"8% increased Physical Damage for each time you've Blocked in the past 10 seconds"

Previously Violent Retaliation increased your damage and defenses the more you got hit. This gave the player an incentive to dive into big packs to get as many stacks as possible.

• Change Close Combat Support from Travel Skill to Movement Speed.

Combat Rush lasts 2 seconds or until you use a Travel Skill
Combat Rush grants 20% more Attack Speed to Travel Skills that are not Supported by Close Combat
Supported Skills can only be used with Axes or Swords

The idea is good as melee characters need to spend more time to reach their targets but the problem is that Travel Skills are used multiple times over a short period of time which makes the buff very lackluster. 20% Movement Speed for 2 seconds seems more reasonable.

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I think if all that plus some appealing new supports or skills would be added, we could see Strike melees go from their 0.1% popularity to something less miserable and for the first time after 5 years( since losing instant leech) be competitive again.

Feel free to add your own ideas or comment on mine (:

Agree here.

Personally, I think of three specific changes that would make wonders for Strike skills.

1) Make Melee Splash a mastery
2) Make Tribal Fury a mastery (and/or add more sources of additional targets)
3) Increase the flat physical damage on all Strike/melee skill gems, making them a little bit less dependent on gear - and make gem levels matter.

But hey, Chris doesn't even know that there's "something wrong" with melee, so...

Generally this seems to be some reasonable suggestions.

I still think that Fortification needs to scale with attack TIME rather than attack DAMAGE. See https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3193463
What are 10 seconds good for when I still don't get any stacks?

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Phrazz wrote:

Agree here.

Personally, I think of three specific changes that would make wonders for Strike skills.

1) Make Melee Splash a mastery
2) Make Tribal Fury a mastery (and/or add more sources of additional targets)
3) Increase the flat physical damage on all Strike/melee skill gems, making them a little bit less dependent on gear - and make gem levels matter.

But hey, Chris doesn't even know that there's "something wrong" with melee, so...

1) I think supports are better as it's easier to target weapon specific interactions.

2) I think Strike skills having additional targets is bound to fail. Unless it's 3-5, it will feel bad but if you make it intrinsic then plenty of encounters with multiple bosses will become too trivialized.
Explosion + Splash would avoid that.

3) Yea, in gear there is a lot to change - too many items are BiS for all build, namely Abyssus and Paradoxica.

I think they do know but count Reave & Sweep also as melee although they have more AoE than spells.

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SuperMotte wrote:

Generally this seems to be some reasonable suggestions.

I still think that Fortification needs to scale with attack TIME rather than attack DAMAGE. See https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3193463
What are 10 seconds good for when I still don't get any stacks?

They improved it's generation for 3.19. I assume it'll be fine then.

Dear GGG,

I know you are out there watching melee posts. Please bandaid melee asap in line with these suggestions, we don’t have time to wait for PoE 2.

I would add they should consider increasing the radius of Close Combat slightly. With all the +Melee Reach nodes now it's at an annoying threshold that mostly only affects Strike skills.

Gunna bump my old post to join you. Melee needs as much attention as possible right now.

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Xzorn wrote:

I would add they should consider increasing the radius of Close Combat slightly. With all the +Melee Reach nodes now it's at an annoying threshold that mostly only affects Strike skills.

Gunna bump my old post to join you. Melee needs as much attention as possible right now.

To be honest I think it's better if it's that way because massive AOE pseudo-melee skills are doing okay.

My Reave build is killing Sirus in ~10 seconds last phase and does T16 100% below 50 EX even this league.

I'll also be playing Sweep in Kalandra and expect it to do fine.

I would say that Close combat should increase action speed of character, not the skill

This game as a whole is weirdly balanced.

One style of gameplay is close range which means you have to stay in range to do damage. If the boss teleports away or forces you to distance yourself all the DPS you do is now 0. Also it is way more risky because you have to deal wiith all of teh bosses close range attacks.

The other style lets you outsource your damage to a Balista/totem or whatever which autoattacks everything in sight for you. So way way better daamge uptime. Also said build has easy access to great tools like "totems taunt"

In GGGs mind somehow the save play style should do almost the same if not more damage.

Channelling skills face similar issues if not even worse than melee.

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MaxW81 wrote:

One style of gameplay is close range which means you have to stay in range to do damage. If the boss teleports away or forces you to distance yourself all the DPS you do is now 0. Also it is way more risky because you have to deal wiith all of teh bosses close range attacks.

This isn't a specific thing with PoE. It's Melee in just about any game.

Range has a natural advantage to Melee in any game I can think of. The most common countermeasures for simply "being melee" is you do more damage, can take more damage or have higher CC potential. The last obv doesn't apply to this game. It's just basic design.

Melee gets no compensation for being melee in PoE. Doesn't make it worthless but makes it a constant uphill battle where you have to put in much more work for no real gain.