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

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MaxW81 wrote:

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.

Honestly why do people uphold this myth where fighting bosses at range is safer than at close range? Like what bosses are you fighting? Elder and Shaper have such a weak melee attack that standing close to them is close to not taking damage. Sirus DIE beam and Mavens Cascade of pain are way easier to dodge at close range compared to range. Exarchs Annihilation is also easier to dodge while close. Eater is kinda whatever. Minotaurs most dangerous attack is his borrow because you can't see shit in the arena, something he only uses when you get away from him. I find it honestly hard to name a boss where being at a distance is better/safer. Baran is pretty much the only one that comes to mind.

The problems of limited range are damage uptime and positioning against bosses (especially against uber bosses/the feared where arena is filled with shit to the brim and you don't have room to even approach the bosses) as well safety and damage projection during mapping. That notion that being close to a boss is more dangerous is complete nonsense.

On topic, a big point that is missing on the list imo are melee specific defense mechanics that are actually melee only and work properly for melee, i.e not Fortify. If there is something that could be used to distinguish melee from ranged then imo it's got to be defenses. Seeing how you can have tens of millions of DPS with a one EX paradoxica i don't see damage as a big factor. Plus with the damage output spells have even if melee has twice that, it will be hard to even notice in practise unless you timestop your bossencounters to the milisecond. But if melee had 2 or 3 defensive mechanics with impact that couldn't be used by caster builds, that would be something to realy set it apart.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

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MaxW81 wrote:

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.

Honestly why do people uphold this myth where fighting bosses at range is safer than at close range?

Like what bosses are you fighting? Elder and Shaper have such a weak melee attack

The game has now 20 bosses instead of just Elder and Shaper. For most bosses it's most optimal to stay far away to have maximum time to react to attacks.

Even your own two examples fail you here.

1) A slow projectile coming from the front of the boss allows ranged chracters to have more time to react, eventuating in less deaths and more optimized DPS for them.
Shaper balls & UElder Elder.

2) Being forced to move to dodge slams or spells for a lot longer than ranged to do DPS lowers your DPS comparetively.
Any slam in game, boss explosions, Maven strings etc.

3) Having to chase the boss lowers your DPS or even softlocks you.
Sirus final phase, Hunter.

4) You are not able to off screen or do long but safe fights.
Maven Encounters, Maven last phase or Burial boss or really anything you might want to grind out on your last portal.

I've kept it short but I just described at least half of the game's encounters.

The problem with what you are saying there Baharoth is when the bosses decide you are at range when in melee, Baran is famous for this already and you can move in to melee and he'll do a 5x overlap stack on his feet, half the time he does it if your already in melee.

Shapers OK because the balls have a deadzone before you can be hit by them, but Elder has a icicle overlap shotgun that is pretty much his more dangerous attack and again if he sets it up in melee its real bad.

All their default melees are bad, but getting them to use them reliably is already pretty variable.

@Kissmequick Your first point pretty much falls flat with the fact that neither Eldar nor Shaper will ever even use their projectiles if you are closed range so being easier to dodge at long range is a complete non issue. Having 100% damage uptime against Shaper and Elder as a melee isn't that hard to achieve. (disregarding invulnerbility phases here for obvious reasons)

Point 2 and 3 are only concerning damage uptime which i named as an actual downside myself. 4 i also addressed with positioning in regards to the feared for example. So bacially one of your statements is flat out wrong and the other 3 miss the point.

Against pretty much all single bosses in the game staying close is the safest thing to do. Shit, i keep hugging most of them even when playing ranged builds because of it.

@Draegnarrr yes Baran is an exception to the rule, i named him in my post for that fact. As for Shaper/Elder if you go face to face they won't use those attacks ever. I honestly don't understand how you can mess that up?

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Baharoth15 wrote:

@Kissmequick Your first point pretty much falls flat with the fact that neither Eldar nor Shaper will ever even use their projectiles if you are closed range so being easier to dodge at long range is a complete non issue. Having 100% damage uptime against Shaper and Elder as a melee isn't that hard to achieve. (disregarding invulnerbility phases here for obvious reasons)

Point 2 and 3 are only concerning damage uptime which i named as an actual downside myself. 4 i also addressed with positioning in regards to the feared for example. So bacially one of your statements is flat out wrong and the other 3 miss the point.

Against pretty much all single bosses in the game staying close is the safest thing to do.

I don't see a reason to disregard any phases - if the bosses use their projectiles then you cannot say that they never use their projectiles.

Even if we would move the goal post to where you want.

At UElder, Shaper or Elder always use projectiles at different phases and you will get hit by Shaper and Elder projectiles a lot more than a ranged character.

You also will get Shaper projectiles in the normal Shaper fight because even if you burst down Shaper in the normal fight in 3 seconds( which you almost never do), then with Maven you will get a clone either way who will shoot them.

If being melee truly was safer than being in ranged then we'd have ranged players playing in melee but that's obviously not the case.

You don't lose anything from me presenting scenarios to you so I don't understand the hostility and claims of me being wrong when it's demonstrably not true.

I am disregarding immunity phases for damage uptime because it should be obvious that you can't deal damage in those no matter if melee or ranged? Or is there some bug i don't know that allows ranged builds to do damage to immune bosses? And as i said, they won't use their projectiles if you just stay close. Honestly i am writing chinese here or why is this so hard to grasp? Anyway i am through with having to argue against strawmans have a nice day.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I am disregarding immunity phases for damage uptime because it should be obvious that you can't deal damage in those no matter if melee or ranged? Or is there some bug i don't know that allows ranged builds to do damage to immune bosses? And as i said, they won't use their projectiles if you just stay close. Honestly i am writing chinese here or why is this so hard to grasp? Anyway i am through with having to argue against strawmans have a nice day.

While they shoot their projectiles, you are not AFK, are you? A ranged character can shoot the Shaper portal from across the screen while a melee character has to dance while Elder is blasting them with projectiles from melee range.

Not my video but you can see how much a melee player is getting hit all the time if they want to do damage.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50kFJuShjU

Now compare this to me blasting one-shot damage from the whole screen away with no stress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4kc-O_7ZCQ

The point of this was to demonstrate that your own example of these bosses not having an influence on the archetype is just not true. There's nothing personal here.

Strikes skills need built-in splash. No reason for the support gem to exist. +1 additional enemies struck on the tree should be +2 as the 4 points or an anoint to get it isn't worth it. Accuracy needs to be softened too as thats yet ANOTHER thing you have to built alongside to make a melee build feel good because if you miss you do no damage. Strike skills, even slams, have twice as many things they have to build around just to make it functional aside from the damage and crit or however else you might scale a build, you have to go out of you way to also make sure your accuracy is good, you're hitting multiple targets, you have the range to do that and you have some sort of AOE on hit or AOE on kill. Some of those mechanics need to be built in at least.

I just want to point out that 95% of the melee skills wont have as much effective DPS uptime as ranged skills/spells with notable exceptions such as Cyclone.

Melee players will take damage for sure, but sometimes due to dangerous enemy mechanics, they will have to either dodge or be severely punished. This leads to constant micro-management compared to alternative playstyles and may lead to melee feeling less rewarding overall.

In my opinion, the melee playstyle just needs a fundamental mechanic to bring that effective 'DPS Uptime' into effect.

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AegisEmperor wrote:

In my opinion, the melee playstyle just needs a fundamental mechanic to bring that effective 'DPS Uptime' into effect.

I think that being able to explode or have big splash is what would be the solution to that as clearing is the main issue with Strike skills. It's just way too slow and too sloggy to get anything done in maps themselves.

For bosses giving more uptime and damage is what would solve the problem there.