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

Also from a melee veteran, since forsaken masters(me).

The problem with melee never really was damage, it's damage UPTIME, specifically on modern PoE as everything is just either blinking away or shot-gunning at close quarters. This can be easily fixed in two ways: buff defenses in general substantially for melee or increase AoE.

Better defenses for melee is what i would personally push for. Increasing damage won't fix uptime, which is what we struggle the most with. So the best balanced option for melee is to make them more resilient. For that, defenses for melee focused characters should be buffed by at least 40-50% on all fronts. More armour, more Fortification, life on hit. It's the trade off for not being able to hit 3 screens away, but also boosting damage uptime as we could stay closer more and not get one shot as easily. Flesh and Stone is a good example to be reworked for melee benefit, if in sand stance take less damage from far targets, meanwhile on blood stance take less damage from close targets(maimed is pretty meme, tbh). Fortification could also go to 30 naturally, with increased duration as you mentioned, as it's dependable of being close and hitting, as it's useless otherwise.

Side note: Would also benefit Point Blank characters, but nerfing travel distance of projectiles would fix that.

Increasing AoE would fix the "melee" part of melee, but then it would really be melee, would it?

As for your points:

• Let melee have 2x more damage than the standard ranged skills.
Won't fix core issue with melee and they would never do it.

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

• Remove Warchief totem buffs for good.
Warchief/Protector were always used as Bossing more than mapping, won't fix nor help anything.

• Buff Fortify from 4 to 10 seconds.
Agreed.

• Make Blasphemy more appealing.
I have yet to see a melee build using Blasphemy, since we're alredy starved for mana reservation as we are basically forced to use Determination/Banner. It's better to just use mark on hit.

• Add more "when you are hit" opportunities.
Agreed.

• Something like old Violent Retaliation as a guard buff except on when you are hit.
Giving it back to Gladiator, sure. Otherwise, not so much.

• Change Close Combat Support from Travel Skill to Movement Speed.
Close combat should buff defenses instead of movement speed. Would personally reduce the fixed attack speed for Leap Slam/Whirlwind Blades aswell.

Random thought. Why not make every monster inflict the player with a new ailment called fragility or something. The silent would increase dmg taken by the player. Melee ranged skills, bow strikes in melee range, and melee ranged spell hits reduce the effect of being fragile. This way all range chars take more damage, all melee reached characters would inherently take less.

Then you could add fortify on top, and nodes on the tree or whatever. They could add unique that do things while fragile, or give fragility.

Maybe super dumb, but would make melee feel tankier.

"

AdRonZh3Ro wrote:

The problem with melee never really was damage, it's damage UPTIME, specifically on modern PoE as everything is just either blinking away or shot-gunning at close quarters. This can be easily fixed in two ways: buff defenses in general substantially for melee or increase AoE.

well.. 'better damage' means 'better defences'. instead of 60passives into damage, you spend 50 or 45. for 10 passives you can get A LOT tankier (cap block if you are in that area? get +4max res? get reduced crit taken? get 2 suppress wheels? you can do LOTS of things with 10 passives).

melee builds needing to spend so much passives for damage is what prevents getting defences (and it is not greed - the resulting damage is STILL sub-par).

same story with items - if you get 50% more damage, you might drop that +crit rare chest that gives you hardly any defences for Lightning Coil that makes you crazy tanky. currently melee cannot afford that move - because if they try, they wont have damage to tackle mob soup timed content of current endgame.

and again - people STR stacking somehow had both damage and defences, these builds performed really 'ok'. Voidforge builds are 'ok' because the scaling is sooo gooood - resulting in far smaller passive investment


same stuff with the literal damage uptime: Sirus is one jumpy mofo, with 5-10sec windows every now and then. the higher your damage, the faster that fight goes -> the less risk you die


it is all about the damage.
- phys weapons are INCREDIBLY hard to roll well without a massive bank
- 'free' sources of scaling (+gems) do nothing
- most of melee scaling supposedly comes from 'increased' as there are just too few scalars available. all 'exert' mechanics are garbage because all they do is 15% increased.. that is like 1% more? entire mechanic, promoting clunky multiskill gameplay barely gives any damage since FoWar/Seismic nerfs
- some melee/attack skills deal TWICE the damage of other skills for no f.. reason. it is no wonder they 'suck'


it is rarely about AOE. picking melee you kinda know it is going to be small (and some skills like Sweep/EQ/Reave have a very solid AOE, even strikes with +range can feel perfectly fine).
but if your strike build requires so much passive investment that you need to cut into %life nodes - there is a f.. problem

"

exsea wrote:

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.

Im aware you werent talking to me, Id still like to chime in on that one.

Heavy Strike, especially 2handed, isnt bad because its melee. Its bad because its got almost nothing to scale dmg with. There are very very few options and the moment you go pure phys, you already lost because pure phys is just terrible for scaling. Thats true across the board for all skills.
Phys cant hold a candle to ele scaling right now and thats all down to support gems and other mechanics.

The only ways I can see to scale a skill like this would be:
- Stat stacking (which almost always grants extra ele dmg, so phys isnt a good option)
- Crit obviously, but Nightblade exists so why would you use a skill that cant use Nightblade?
- Bleed/Poison... It exists I guess but locks you into a few select skills with bleed/poison scaling and Heavy Strike isnt one them.
- Precise Technique. Extremely powerful keystone, if you happen to start in the right area of the tree. If not the opportunity costs of having to travel there and getting the stats right in order to utilize this is too high.
Acc stacking Jugger could use this but is worth the investment? Early on for sure, down the road not so much.
- Weapon base dmg. I decided to use a perfectly rolled Starforge as baseline, thats 557 pDPS. It took me some 25 essences and metacrafts to create an ele claw (516 phys&ele dps), which could compete with Starforge and allows me to utilize Nightblade plus Trinity. Not only that, the claw is also faster and comes with an 8% base crit compared to Starforges 5%.
I tried to craft a phys weapon capable of competing with Starforge on a similar budget. I threw the towel after spending 4x as much.

If I used any melee skill providing some 50-60% ele conversion and took a 40% conversion mastery or conversion gloves, Id be sitting pretty on 90-100% conversion and could utilize scaling methods pure phys builds simply dont have available.

All of this confirmes Heavy Strike is a pretty bad skill but none of this has anything to do with melee. Try to scale any phys spell w/o utilizing ele dmg. Its the same basic issue. There is barely anything to scale the dmg with. You cant even go impale, so its argueably worse.
The only options left are LL, RF and Crit.


The reason Im bringing this up isnt so much because Im one of those "Naysayers" - its because Im sick of the "melee is dead" fallacy which is mostly fueled by picking a terrible skill plus terrible scaling and then comparing the predictibly terrible result to toptier spells with toptier scaling.

If you wanted a fair comparison, please compare bad melee skills like Heavy Strike to bad spells or pick a toptier melee skill and compare that one to a toptier spell.
All the sudden its not looking anywhere near as bad anymore.

Im not saying melee isnt suffering from plenty issues, it absolutely does.
However, people advocating the "melee is dead" stance are almost always bringing up 2handed Heavy Strike when pushed and thats just not fair.
I could claim "spells are dead" by challening you to play a staff based Stormbind build. Have fun with that one and Stormbind is a fairly new skill, cant even claim to be outdated. Its still clunky as hell and simply sucks compared to pretty much everything else and staves ... well, why would you do that when recovery on block exists?

Same goes for anything 2handed. Giving up block and recovery on block while facing bad dmg scaling as well just isnt a smart move.

"

Orbaal wrote:

I could claim "spells are dead" by challening you to play a staff based Stormbind build. Have fun with that one and Stormbind is a fairly new skill, cant even claim to be outdated. Its still clunky as hell and simply sucks compared to pretty much everything else and staves ... well, why would you do that when recovery on block exists?

i did exactly that - and that was BEFORE spell getting their damage doubled (with 50% outright and easier +gem scaling). i did it when people spouted the same stuff: clunky, no damage, meh, lol, meme

Stormbind is a skill people do not understand nor want to give it a shot. few clueless streamers did it dirty claiming that Conc.Effect is good with it - these guys literally killed this skill for all their viewers

key to stormbind is increasing AOE like a mofo. you can get anywhere between 16x and 25x multiplier on a tooltip dps if you scale it high enough. it is INSANE bossing skill - if you think about it instead of listening to 'clunky, meh, use conc.effect' herd. AOE for this skill is FAR more important than %increased or whatnot. you want ALL of it. and it will deliver like nothing else

recently GGG hurt it a bit with mana cost changes but my old build still works, albeit is bit slower. it hardly matters when i can one-tap more than a full screen at once (and everything is hindered and chilled so it is a very cosy playstyle)

any other 'bad' spell? because maybe ive tried that as well. Ive even made Impending Doom mow Siruses like nothing.


Heavy Strike simply has no damage scaling values and its initial value is garbage to begin with. this applies to quite a few other melee skills - including queen of memees: Cleave

Sunder just got a SOLID buff that will surely make it fine


and while melee has to get close (that makes it fun) it gets nothing in return - supports are the same but base damage (from weapon and increases - just compare how much damage melee/caster build can get from an ammy) is simply lower making melee inherently LESS tanky/flexible because you HAVE to have certain level of damage in current game

as a note: ive made an endgame (not this pinacle endgame meme) viable Heavy Strike 1h with crab mace. scaling Stun is EXPENSIVE as f.. compared to chill/freeze, then i had to scale +strikes, +range and general damage because there are no hidden tricks to generate it from +gems. i had to drop life nodes to do it, 300pdps 1h mace simply is a hinderance and there is no way of crafting similar stun-focused rare

if Heavy Strike dealt 50% more - i could drop some damage nodes and have some defences. how hard it is to understand?

"

sidtherat wrote:

any other 'bad' spell? because maybe ive tried that as well.

Conversion trap ;^)

On a more serious note: Most of the channeling skills, like Tendrils or Incinerate. Selfcast ofc, no totem stuff.

You can make all of them work, thats not the point or at least not my point.
Its the level of investment needed to do so.

Same goes for bad melee skills. You can make them work as you can make everything work in PoE, if you throw enough currency at it.

"

sidtherat wrote:

... it hardly matters when i can one-tap more than a full screen at once (and everything is hindered and chilled so it is a very cosy playstyle)

I tried it myself back when mana builds were extremely strong. The dmg scaling is there, no doubt. But you wont "one tap" the entire screen. Its more like casting for a solid few seconds to place the runes and then explode the screen.
Thats hardly a one tap. Blowing up a single pack? Yes, Stormbind easily does that in no time. So does any other decent skill.


I do agree though that Stormbind is great for bossing, because the moves are predictable and you do have the time to set everything up properly. For mapping Id still maintain my claim: Its clunky AF and any decent AoE skill would clear significantly faster while being way more mobile at the same time.

Compare Stormbind mapclear to Wintertide for example.
Kills everything, slows everything and I get to exploit mobility as a free extra defensive layer. In this scenario Stormbind is clunky AF, it cant compete with Wintertide when it comes to mapping.
Sure bossing isnt going to be as fast as Stormbind would be but still very much doable and easy thanks to chill and ailment scaling. Add Aspect of the Spider and watch bosses doing basically nothing the entire fight - even if the fight takes forever by meta standards.
I used Wintertide in last Decembers Gauntlet to counter the 40% Onslaught, trying to be a special snowflake and died to Trinity Shav.

Anyways, since Id expect to spend about 98-99% of my time mapping and about 1-2% of my time bossing, the choice is a pretty obvious one, if I had to pick one of those 2 skills.


What Im trying to say is this: To me the question "can it be scaled" is far less relevant then the "why would I, when I could do X instead" question. And this is where many skills across the board are failing hard right now.
The gap created by "bang for buck" is so massive, its not even funny. And when it comes to melee vs. spells, then more melee skills are failing compared to spells regarding my 2nd question. I guess we can agree on that one.

Thats especially true, if you tried to convert a single target skill into an AoE clear skill. It can be done for sure but the opportunity costs are so high that I wouldnt consider it an option and pure singletarget is almost never required in this game.
So no upsides for playing singletarget and all the downsides for not being able to kill packs before they kill you.

As stated in a previous post: This isnt a numeric issue to me.
While numeric changes would absolutely help, Im not debating that, the game still doesnt reward nor request pure singletarget skills. There is simply no reason to play any pure singletarget and allowing an easy conversion of those skills into AoE clear doesnt make any sense to me.
The real question from my PoV is, why do pure singletargt skills even exist right now, if there is no demand for them?

"

Orbaal wrote:

The real question from my PoV is, why do pure singletargt skills even exist right now, if there is no demand for them?

I'd suspect the demand is there. It's just that the demand is found among a target group you are unlikely to find here or on reddit. Plus there are probably a good amount of people out there who care more about the "can i do it with this" than about the "is there a better option available". Yes, my RF/FT Inquisitor performs better in pretty much every way compared to my Dual Strike Ascendant. Doesn't mean i don't enjoy playing the latter and if the latter can do all the content i want to do then why not play it?

From a competitive point of view i'd agree, most strike skills as well as single target skills in general have no place in this game. Even if you go through the loops needed to make a strike skill feel good, by the time you are through with it it's no longer really a melee skill.

wrong

if you go trough the loop and give it damage - players who like to play it (like i used to do - i havent played this game in 3 months) will find a way and enjoy themselves

right now - due to absurd lack of damage you are either confined to mid-game content or have to pay exuberant money to reach parity with mid-invested anything else

the damage - or rather criminal lack of it - is the culprit. Omni + any elemental melee (EVEN F... CLEAVE) performs good enough for people who like this playstyle to not feel fuqed with sandpaper. STR stacking, even on a budget (like 1000-1300 STR) beats any 'regular' weapon out there. it is all about the damage.

nobody ever tried to boost the damage - all i read is 'it wont work'. just give it a one f.. try. just one. 6% meme glacial hammer was a petty joke, not a buff.

Sunder - thanks only to numerical change - will be a really serious skill now.


skills are liked or disliked - this is individual preference and people might enjoy things others people do not. thats irrelevant here as it is subjective

what is relevant is simple, cold, viability. if a single target skill that is shit to scale deals the same damage as a skill with already solid AOE and more scaling vectors - it is objectively wrong and can be easily fixed.

i wonder why GGG havent tried this ONCE. they seriously did not - Heavy Strike and Ground Slam are less than 10% apart vs singletarget while Ground Slam is obviously WAY stronger mechanically. make that difference 50%+ and.. now you have a serious competition

"

On a more serious note: Most of the channeling skills, like Tendrils or Incinerate. Selfcast ofc, no totem stuff.

Tendrils got a huge buffs recently and are very solid single target skill. Ive made it with CWC + Arc and happily completed all of recent edgame. As a standalone skill? it still lacks bit of AOE but CWC solves that neatly

Incinerate is very, very fun right now. granted ive played it as Hiero with Totems + Selfcast WITHOUT ignite so not pure self-cast Incinerate but still. from what i recon you can get +extra stages now (enchant? alt qual?) so it should be pretty damn strong

and Conversion Trap is one change from being interesting - converted enemies are not 'minions' so their damage reeks. change that - and then we are talking

I agree with the op in general.

There need to be more rewards for high defensiveness/survivability, since getting that involves tradeoffs.

There's lots of content that's gated behind high clear speed, in addition to the inherent farming advantage of high clear speed. But there seems to be very little content gated behind high survivability.

"

sidtherat wrote:

right now - due to absurd lack of damage you are either confined to mid-game content or have to pay exuberant money to reach parity with mid-invested anything else

OR you just stop stacking memes upon memes while making your melee build and end up with something endgame viable for <10 ex.