Single target strike skills are terrible and how to improve them

I really enjoy playing melee in poe the only issue is that they are absolutely terrible at the moment except for a few specific builds, so i decided to level a new character with frost blades and boy oh boy was it a breath of fresh air.

This made me realize one of the reasons why single target (i know they have a very small splash area) melee skill are terrible at the moment.

Most skill gems in the game have some way to help clear large quantities of mobs in the game which melee strike skills lack, so in other for the skill to feel playable you have to socket in "melee splash" OR anoint tribal fury, so basicly you are gimped in DPS until you have enough money to buy some super expensive neck or super expensive oils which honestly sucks.

The simple solution would be to give those skills AOE by default that would scale with the game level, so you start with a small splash like we have now and it grows bigger as the gem level making those skills way more confortable to play.

This isnt that big of an issue for marauder and duelist but if you want to play melee as a shadow or even as a ranger or templar it can be a pain.

Another option would be to have something like "critical strikes with daggers/claws splash to surrounding enemies" in some mastery on the right side of the tree, this wouldnt help the templar.

Bottom line is, melee kinda sucks at the moment as most of us know and it could use some new toys and improvements and i think the AOE part of it(or lack of) is one of the main reasons that makes it so bad to play.

Well, you hit the nail on the head: the problem with most of the melee skills in the game is the issue of damage projection, i.e. "how good the skill is at distributing its DPS to enemies."

And the honest solution is just to play other skills.

They can buff Glacial Hammer and Heavy Strike and Viper Strike all they want, literally give them 20 times their current damage, and they will still be unplayable garbage because Path of Exile is simply not a game where single-target builds are viable.

It's possible SOME of these skills will see use in the future (as in, post skill gem rework) as backup skills for larger, AoE-centric melee skills. But as far as building entirely around them as a primary skill? That would require Path of Exile to fundamentally stop being the game which it is.

if youre playing scion, marauder or duelist you get easy access to tribal fury + additional strike target from mastery. else you should anoint it and get +1 strike on gloves.

you have some options esp if youre near the node, problem is most skills suck dps wise. for frostblades you get heatshiver and vengeant cascade so its like X4 dmg.