2h melee is dead

Chris wilson and devs... consider the abysmal state you left 2h melee. Just compare sunder with brutus + redblade banner with a rare high level 2h axe to see my point. Compare spells highest dps builds at poe.ninja with 2h melee highest dps builds to see my point.

Would you make this game fun and rewarding for all play styles, it would be much better. Game is still uninstalled, until the gap is lessened

they love stacking, str stacking, accu stacking armor stacking etc.

they say that fixing melee is hard yet they see no problem with STR stackers actually being 'ok'

all melee issues stem from dealing laughable damage coupled with how difficult it is to actually craft a good weapon (an item from 90% of build's power comes from)

BLS:


5.5 fire damage /10 STR -> 550 flat fire damage with 1000 STR (getting 1000 is EASY and requires VERY little 'extra' gearing/building)

so for 1000 STR you get 770 fireDPS weapon, with ~9crit


there is no comparable weapon in existence. no matter how hard you try and craft, how lucky you plan to be - there is no chance you can beat it.

but you can, relatively easily, boost STR from 1000 to 1500 and have a 1000 fireDPS 9crit weapon (and 750 flat HP.. +all the ACC you want from Warlord's helmet etc etc)

i can assure you, playing with such weapon is a pleasure in comparison to what people have endure with 'regular' weapons - esp phys weapons that are nightmare to craft


2h weapons are complete waste of time. Slams are dead, it makes no mathematical sense to play slams with exerts - just stack attack speed like everyone else. but.. why bother if a crit 1h mace + some STR stacking gives you twice the damage AND a shield slot?

btw melee.. lol :)

I feel like this post is 3 years late. Since Legion.

DW has been in a similarly lame spot for even longer. If you slot two weapons it should just automatically put Abysus on. New passive tree helped Ele DW a bit.

I've always rolled like 2/3 melee builds and man casters have it so easy. I just walked into maps with 1mil DPS. STILL using a wand I found in Act8 and doing 9mil now. Plenty of room to keep going.

The dumbest part is I'm more tanky than most my melee builds. I recall my Exsang Scion from Ultimatum had stupid defense. 1.4 mil physical and 800k ele eHP. RIP 80% Up-Time IC.

I have like 3 builds still waiting for DoT melee to be viable again.

You can beat BLS with a 2h damage wise what you guys are missing with your analysis there is STR stacking has like 5 way synergy for many builds, you don't need life, you can cheese it into damage effectiveness with 11 items/warcries intended to support spells/hybrid and it has a myriad of bonuses that all propagate off itself.

2h Melee is pretty dead though, GGG have pushed build requirements way way too far and right now I have a super hard time justifying not having a shield on a character by itself before even getting to the damage/defence differential.

It can work with Helix which is bad enough to class as melee because Helix does over double the damage of the next highest skill, this is the kind of value we are waiting for before we can return to 2h.

Honestly I'm starting to think they need to go the "offhand" route where you get like an offhand accessory with 2h that only exists for some extra stats.

I was going to make Earthquake this league because that is a tried and true favourite of most melee players like us then I saw they removed the -duration helm enchant god knows how long ago and it instantly killed the build viability.

It really does feel like they hate fun sometimes, no delay earthquake still would be in the bottom half of skills.

I think melee skills honestly just need MUCH higher damage effectiveness. The effectiveness scaling per skill level should be much higher too. It makes zero sense that a level on a spell is ~10-15% more damage (depending on the skill) while a level on a melee skill is so laughably pathetic that +levels ends up being a dump stat.

Its not just 2h's fren, its every melee, viper strike the shadows starting skill(you would think they would at least balance the starting skills for new players) is absolutely terrible not only is it terrible it suffers from -30% att speed if you dual wield for some reason.

They make millions per month and cant be bothered to balance all skill.

Also remove the melee splash gem and just give it by default to all skills that make sense, free up a slot for dps, it feels terrible to slot a gem that only gives utility when all spell have that by default.

they ve given the splash gloves for strike skills.
you can try.
unfortunately i was using infernal blow and the knockback is an anti synergy with it

The way I see it is this:

The Bad Spot is where monsters can do damage to you. Most monsters are melee, most bosses have big slams around them, AN auras are around monsters, etc. So generally, the Bad Spot is around the monster.

The more "real melee" you are - the more time you have to spend in a bad spot. In fact, with Strike skills like Boneshatter, you'll have to actively enter the bad spot to do anything at all. That's how melee is, and that's ok.

Now, there is a cap on standstill time in the bad spot. If you overstay - you die. The amount of time you have depends on the tankyness of your build, but really no more than 0.5 seconds against a strong monster in challenging content.
Think of it. You need to disengage only after half a second. This is no combat. This is crazy hares on crack!

So to me, the problem here is encounter design. 2H just highlights it brighter because, well, 2H bases are slower.

In order to fix that, GGG needs to take a very long look at the fundamentals of combat interaction. Those are straight Diablo 2, so no wonder that power overdose throughout the years smashed down the Bad Spot cap to the point where melee cannot be fun.