2h melee is dead

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Sarganis87 wrote:

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.

I doubt they are gonna do a another rework of melee tho, they did one league for that and about 3 leagues later it completly reverted to how it was because they dont relly care about melee, just look at how many melee spells you have compared to ranged ones, dual wielding skills for example u have like 4? spell based projecticles you have like 200.

It feels like every developer plays spellcasters and so that what they develop for cause thats what they enjoy.

It works, if you run spectral helix or sunder. Other than those two you have to dump 20 divines into a build to even make it clear t16.

What I feel really hurt Melee DPS was the Expedition Support nerfs.

Before that I had a Zerker pushing 50m. After he was 20m. They put 5x the weight on gear after that league and they didn't give melee enough multiplier damage to compensate.

Melee has always been an uphill struggle for performance but with AN it's a cliff. I decided I just can't be bothered to invest at least a mirror to do what a 20 Divine caster build can do.

This is besides all the inherent flaws like Shields being near mandatory. 2H gets no bonus, DW gets a static bonus that's only multiplicative with Atk speed. Meanwhile grab +1 all skills for a caster which is multiplicative with all other stats.

Melee weapons don't have Affix room for +1 all Skills even if they rolled them.

My first step would be to remove +%Max Res from shield rolls and put more on the passive tree. There's two main layers to survive in this game. Max Res or Spell Suppression.

Since Delirium I can't have real FUN in this game as a 2h melee. Devs, kindly consider making skills and playstyle as balanced as possible.

Since Delirium I can't have real FUN in this game as a 2h melee. Devs, kindly consider making skills and playstyle as balanced as possible.

Yea nobody wants to buy what used to be a very nice legacy 2H weapon.

In fact, I put survival as a top priority. Melee has to serve its purpose: TANK
We need more defensive options in the south/southwest region.

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kenbak wrote:

In fact, I put survival as a top priority. Melee has to serve its purpose: TANK
We need more defensive options in the south/southwest region.

Well, I have an idea for that, actually. It is not very elegant, but at least it seems easier to implement than a total rework of combat.


According to my previous post in this thread (under the above spoiler), the problem is the amount of time the character has to spend in the Bad Spot.
There are two ways to deal with it: reduce attack/cast time and, well, not be in the Bad Spot.

But Melee cannot do damage without actively entering the Bad Spot. it's Melee after all! So the only solution for Melee is to reduce the Attack Time. And 2H Melee has an awful combo of being Melee and having bad base Attack Time! No wonder it sucks.

Since the base combat dynamics cannot change without a complete rethinking of PoE's combat, we can only focus on Attack Time. So here's my take:

1) Introduce a new defensive buff called "Readiness" (or whatever) that scales with the Attack Time.
2) Readiness gives (0-50)% less Damage Taken, scaling proportionally to the Attack or Cast time, with 50% at Attack/Cast time of 1 second.*
3) All Strike skills and most real close-combat Melee skills now have "you have Readiness while Using this skill".**

* This gives 25% less Damage Taken at 2 APS and 5% at 10 APS. The Less Damage numbers and minimum/maximum Attack Time can be tweaked.
** Different skills can have different caps. For example, sorta close-ranged Bow skills like Galvanic Arrow and fire-and-forget Melee skills like Rage Vortex can have something like (0-10)% across 0-0.5 sec Attack/Cast Time.
Basically, you're tankier while swinging, and the slower you swing - the tankier you are.

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Xzorn wrote:

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

Literally came here to say exactly this.

I'm playing some crit staff melee this league, but I'm mostly doing it for fun. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the same exact build would be much, much better reworked to use BLS, or a high-end claw (or Varunastra) and Nightblade.

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Turtledove wrote:

Yea nobody wants to buy what used to be a very nice legacy 2H weapon.

during the league that introduced sirus, i got a doctor card, bought a few awakened gems, leveled them to pre 5 (just need to click).

near end of league sold those gems as many players wanted em to quickly complete the league achievement.

bought a perfect roll legacy starforge at 20-30 ex during the league.

jizzballs

back on std, i bought a legacy perfect damage (phys+speed) roll starforge for around 100 ex 2 leagues back.

this league i got a perfect damage (phys+speed) roll starforge during the league at EXACTLY ONE DIVINE ORB. EDIT: this was within the first week of the league IIRC