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

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Baharoth15 wrote:

...it would probably end in a massive outrage.

Thats a given at this point with regards to the vocal part of the PoE community.
Why even bother?

The hype and panic cycle is in full swing right now and there no shortage of those "the end is nigh" threads - and as usual, it´ll be fine once the dust has settled.

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Orbaal wrote:

Wouldnt it be better if singletargets skills would actually shine in singletarget situations (which they dont) instead of trying to shoehorn them into something they were never intended to do?

I know the games aren't the same, but this puts us into the same situation Warframe is having where nobody cares about single-target, because the AoE is meta. PoE throws way too many enemies at you nowadays to make single-target a viable option anymore unless you're a super dedicated bosser.

What's better for mapping: An AoE melee or single-target melee?
What's better for bosses who spawn adds: AoE or single-target melee?
What's likely to give you the most rewards in a timed league encounter such as Delirium, Incursion, or Legion: AoE or single-target melee?
What is more likely to keep you alive in Heist, Expedition, Blight, or Harbinger encounters: Single-target or AoE?

This game has shifted too much into needing clear speed for any kind of optimal farm to allow single-target to shine, much less melee. You can buff it until "damage per second" becomes "Shapers per second", but most people will just not use it in favor of something that'll make the screen explode.

No, nerfing AoE isn't going to fix that, because the problem that made people choose that playstyle is still in the game. It's a symptom, but not the cause, to an underlying problem this game has which affects every build.

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Orbaal wrote:

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Baharoth15 wrote:

...it would probably end in a massive outrage.

Thats a given at this point with regards to the vocal part of the PoE community.
Why even bother?

The hype and panic cycle is in full swing right now and there no shortage of those "the end is nigh" threads - and as usual, it´ll be fine once the dust has settled.

I think GGG will bother. Given all the apologizing Chris had to do after 3.15... can't imagine he wants to have that all the time. A complete direction change is a different scale than then usual crying about whatever has been nerfed this league.

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You can buff it until "damage per second" becomes "Shapers per second", but most people will just not use it in favor of something that'll make the screen explode.

Thank you very much for showing me that i am not the only person to realize that.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

A complete direction change is a different scale than then usual crying about whatever has been nerfed this league.

True and to be clear: Im not asking for AoE nerfs.
I still dont see why buffing singletarget skills or allowing them to turn into pseudo AoE skills more comfortably would solve anything.

And it looks like we do agree that AoE is the undisputed king, will remain to be king and buffs/nerfs wont change a whole lot.


Also: Just to reiterate, this isnt a melee issue. This specific issue persists across the board for skills.
While melee has a ton of issues to deal with, lacking options for AoE clear isnt one of them.

Which then begs the question again: Why do players want singletarget melee skills buffed so badly?

From my perspective in today's PoE biggest problems of melee are

1) Base damage being too low in the first place and because of that it requires big investments. It's nowhere near spell scaling.

2) Clearing, simply inferior. Splash as mastery would make melee feel good without loosing a gem slot. It's day and night difference with and without Splash.

3) Current defenses that are melee specific simply aren't enough to compensate for all incoming damage today.
Ironically the more damage your char has the more defense Fortify provides, which leaves weaker chars even less viable.

4) It's stale and neglected.

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TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

3) Current defenses that are melee specific simply aren't enough to compensate for all incoming damage today.
Ironically the more damage your char has the more defense Fortify provides, which leaves weaker chars even less viable.

This, for me. With ranged I can clear the next screen without even being engaged by mobs on it. And even with the fortify nerf, ranged characters can be tanky enough to survive stray damage. Where melee gets spiked regularly for a lot of dmg and I don't think defenses you have access too are good enough. At least not if you have to stand in one place to deliver dmg.

Ideas:

Sand stance now offers a MUCH LARGER increase in AoE. Even more if you run both stance gems which cost you alot of reservation.
If you also offer them some more defense in blood stance They would suddenly be more interesting and they should be as 45% mana res (if both are used) it is asking a lot.

a stupid idea that solves nothing build could open up some meme builds.
https://us.diablo3.blizzard.com/en-us/item/tzo-krins-gaze-Unique_SpiritStone_007_x1
add a unique like this for melee. Downside, you give up your helmet slot

add chain shockwave support gem or have shockwave support change its effects depending on stance. Simply put this version of shockwave will cause weaker shockwaves but they will cause chain shockwaves spreading to packs.

Have strike skills target 2 additional nearby enemies stat as a built in baseline for strike skills.

1vs1 gems verse aoe gems is always a issue with this game. Hope they figure out how to fairly have both.

long time no see

read trough the patch notes - sadly, the same ineptitude coupled with blindness and bias

melee issues boil down to damage. at this point it is around at 50% of where it should be

reason: attribute stacking (pre-Omni)

we all remember STR stack + Iron chest + Replica Alberon + Repentance Gloves + (insert melee skill here)

suddenly melee was fine. why? because that setup dealt more damage than 6*T0 phys weapon EVER could. suddenly melee issues dissapeared

STR stacking can give melee enough damage to actually solve its all 'build tax' issues without a problem. sadly, regular weapons (like 450pdps 1h) deal like 30% of that damage

Boneshatter is played, people enjoy it despite it being a strike skill. why? because it deals 3x(?) the damage of Heavy Strike when built properly. suddenly players can cope with drawbacks and build tax - just because the damage is there and they dont have to pick between glass cannon and semi-tanky zdps

so that out of the way:

melee's first and most important problem is damage. too big % of a build potential HAS to go into damage leaving not enough for defences etc. and that damage is shit anyway in comparison to caster with +1 blue wands and 21/20 gem he got for 3c

second problem: inter-melee damage numbers are batshit crazy

Spectral Helix deals TWICE the effective damage than Cleave while having more range, better scaling, access to elusive etc. and Cleave gets +2 radius? like seriously what the quack?

third problem: single target skills are in fact WORSE that AOE counterparts. GroundSlam > Heavy Strike. Sweep > Cleave. dont look at the 'eff%' but also check scaling vectors and such. Heavy Strike has so few 'good' supports for it that lifetap is actually solid choice. im pretty sure GGG doesnt give a quack about that

fourth: animation for most melee skills (that 1-2 thing) is garbage. revert that. noone wanted it, noone likes it. it sucks.


stop overthinking the issue and dreaming about magic solutions to reinvent the wheel. keep it simple:

melee (melee, that is NOT likes of Helix or Lightning Strike) skills get 'spellcastered' that is 50% more damage. it can be eff% change or flat damage change or whatever. will that make some outliers? maybe. even if - remember, it is still melee, aka 'garbage playstyle'. 3.19 Shock Nova is absolutely BONKERS yet i bet noone will touch it because autoaiming zaps are just better. but you could play it if you want and not feel robbed

all 'dumpster' skills get something special that do not change visible mechanic much:

Cleave - hits Fortify, +5 to fortify (that threshold jewel idea was good..). damage is low but at least you are tanky mofo.
Dual Strike - 5% chance to treat a hit as vs enemy on full life (that skill is fun but if you dont kill with first hit, the skill is an auto-attack)
Glacial Hammer - cull at 10% if that hit would freeze (uniques ignore big perk of this skill)
Heavy Strike - if you kill a stunned enemy, it pops for some small value (3%?) as phys (it might not need melee splash, maybe)

Seismic Cry - revert that. current shape of this skill (and exerts in general) is garbage. all exert bonuses are 'increased'. nobody gives a rat about that anymore. it is a modifier that is diminishy-returny beyond salvation. exert bonuses should be more, without it 'slam' playstyle is a meme


Note: Sunder changes are just that - simple and im pretty sure effective. Sunder right now is a great contender for sub-par compared to CoC Forbidden Rite or minion-anything but still a viable build


buffing damage might save 10-15 passives, allowing them to go from damage into 'misc' - to reach parity with spellcasters who spend barely anything on damage passives. that might be actually enough to solve the problem


but noooo.. we need muh animation muh POE2

the true reason is simple: low % of playerbase plays melee? dont spend any dev time on them. it is a negative feedback loop that cannot be stopped due to some bias in the dev team. there is no other explanation because melee right now is at its worst in entire history of POE

and they give Cleave +2 radius

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Baharoth15 wrote:

If i thought it might have any sort of effect then i'd actually do that but it won't. There are dozens if not hundreds of videos on youtube where people do top end content using melee skills. Including one where Uber Sirus is killed using Cleave. Result of it? People complained that the fight was 5 minutes long. Even if i made a video killing all uber bosses in 5 seconds, the only reply i would get would be along the lines of "olololol my COC icespear build can do it in one second, melee sucks GGG please tripple its damage".

All this whining about melee isn't because melee can't do all content in the game. It's because it's performance is weaker when compared to the top meta skills of whatever league you are in. That the same applies to pretty much all the ranged attack skills, spells and minion skills as well, that's somehow not relevant. Like when was the last time you saw someone do uber bosses with lightning tendrils or basically any channel skill for that matter?

PS: Only to make this clear here since people seem to misinterped my posts on a regular basis.
I fully agree that melee can't compare to top tier spells in performance and is especially weak for league starts as it's weapon dependend. I also agree that some buffs would be well deserved and necessary after getting nothing but nerfs for 2 years straight.
I just think that people exaggerate a lot when this topic comes up. Mostly people who never even played melee in the first place and only talk based on what they've seen on reddit.

i appreciate how you clarified that recognize that there is some disparity between melee.

as for people exaggerating, i ll avoid commenting on that. you might be right, they might be right. maybe you're viewing things from a less biased point of view. as for me i am heavily biased and i guess many people who are from the melee is bad camp have had terrible experiences that affect their bias.

as for the challenge i issued. there is a reason why i chose to specifically mention 2 handed heavy strike. heavy strike is one of the game's oldest skills. it's also has a natural synergy with 2handed weapons. it's meant to be played with 2handers but many prefer going 1hander.

i would disagree on what you said "it wont have an effect". i just googled "uber sirus heavy strike". NO such vids.

vids i could find were cleave, flicker, boneshatter etc. those are quite "meta melee". in fact, one of the most used melee skills is lightning strike which is technically a projectile attack. to me those vids are pointless. meta skills represent a small slice of "melee".

take a gander at poeninja. sentinel, heavy strike is at 0.0%

if you can clear uber sirus using 2handed heavy strike, i will have immense respect for you for even being able to complete it regardless of time taken.

as for people complaining about cleave vid "takes too long". i view it from a different angle. cleave still represents a "meta melee" skill.

hell, you could even try heavy strike as your next league starter and come back and tell us if your bias/views have changed.

its too easy to say people are overreacting when we're not on the same page or have the same experiences.

when you told me that there are many vids of people clearing content using melee, i already knew you're basing your perspective of melee based on the best melee skills available. its not a very balanced perspective. a healthy chart would be "best few" at top, "many average" in the middle, "worst few" at bottom. for POE's melee its more of "handful of best" at top, "average few" in the middle, then a sharp "all the rest is shit" at bottom.

a lot of naysayers dont even try this challenge.

if you see my signature. the story behind it is a forummer like yourself, he acknowledge melee had some flaws but was very adamant that it wasnt "that bad". he rolled a character on sentinel and set his profile to public and invited us to watch him. the last i checked he was maybe level 90? 1handed with shield heavy strike build. some of his slots were missing. upon further investigation he had rerolled a ranged duelist.

you WILL make an impact if you roll a 2handed heavy striker and clear end game content. trust me.