Does Trauma Support 'fix' melee strikes?

I think what you describe as unclear outliers and im pretty sure we disagree here should be the baseline for melee damage it is too weak to be interesting to build around on most gems in terms of their damage numbers.

I wasnt saying the Molten Strike is one of the best overall gems in fact mechanically its one of the worst with its 0.5 second ball drop period before damage happens its why i prefer lightning strike even with just regular double hit and its vaal version i feel it competes in damage but plays a lot smoother in a generalist setup. But with VC only Boneshatter scaling could match and exceed the damage effectivity number probably the major reason why players like cARN use the bonezone - its damage.

About Heavy Strike if you would actually quadrupple its damage effectivity and remove the knock back then yes you would see me make a build around it. Unfortunately that is my estimation what it would take to offset the gems disadvantages and make it kind of interesting. AC support + melee splash support would probably make it interesting when the damage effectivity number of the gem itself is high enough.

HS alt quality removes knockback guys. used that for at least 2 leagues

HS is usable already, but its just Boneshatter with extra steps tbh as soon as Boneshatter was added HS lost its niche immediately.

It doesn't have the trashbox attack animation though :p so its better than most and it makes a reasonable build eventually. Its a good test case for all the melee problems though as its almost impossible to make a great build out of. It has to solve clear/AoE, damage scaling without access to any of the popular types then tankiness to actually be able to stand there and dish anything out.

It remains one of my favourite skills despite that, there is something very satisfying about HS.

Also as is mentioned the "thematic" property of knockback is actually a tangible penalty to the skill and while I understand their reticence in removing it they still should anyway, they can then make an alternate quality that puts it back with a damage and/or stun bonus.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Also why even bring up old spectral helix? The shit got nerfed because it was out of line and as a reminder, even before the nerf it was mostly used for leveling. Hardly anyone played it lategame despite busted numbers, why is that?

This is a really good point. Old Spectral Helix has the record set for most times the following back-and-forth took place on reddit

OP: Hi, I'm new and want to play PoE, what build should I do?

Answer 1: Spectral Helix

Guaranteed response to answer 1: don't play this, its strong but a miserable playstyle

Answer 2: x, y, or z and don't listen to anyone who says spectral helix you will hate yourself and the game

My berserk viable for all content but very expensive and need know positioning or you get deleted in uber fights

On the other hand my inquis exanguonate miner can get same dps for 1/4 the curency and ez mode cause can throw mines accros whole screen and they auto aim …

We talking a 700 div build having same dmg as a 80 div miner …

And the miner has huge QoL can range the enemy and clear all screen by just put chain in my 6l


So yes id say we are in a pretty bad spot

Respect

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1453R wrote:

Trauma Support doesn't "fix" anything, because the problem with "MELEE" has nothing to do with damage. Every melee skill can scale to the same eleventeen gorillion DPS as every other skill in Path of Exile. Is it 'harder'? Yes. Ohhh noooo, you might have 50M Uber DPS instead of 100M, whatever will you do.

The problem with melee is that Melee People want "I stand in one spot and click 'Bonk' to bonk one guy one time with my bonkstick, then do that again repeatedly until it works" to feel as smooth, responsive, and versatile in all roles for all things as a character with multiple chaining projectiles, or a character with wide-swath AoE damage, or a character with a small army of minions, while also somehow being the highest DPS AND highest defense AAAND highest clearspeed build in the entire game.

The problem with "Melee" is a combination of the game's ancient and barely useable animation rigging making any sort of fluid martial-strike animation difficult-to-impossible and people's utterly unreasonable expectations where Stand And Bonk is concerned. Trauma Support addresses neither issue and will fix nothing, the same as any of the other "THis will fix melee!" support gems has. If Fortification doubling "Melee" durability didn't do it, Trauma adding some extyra superfluous DPS while dramatically decreasing melee survivability won't do it either.

terrible take, Ben_ just touched on this idea that damage can't fix melee (I posted a clip in feedback) or that animation is the only fix for "feel" (he continued to talk about this in the vod after the clip).

If animation is "A" fix well then it follows that a negative attack speed multiplier slowing down every initial swing of melee on every melee skill certainly isn't a fix. But because someone important made this tremendous mistake no ones willing to take this disastrous yolk off melee's necks.

In fact if I specify who made this change my post will be auto edited (despite the fact that this person talked about it glowingly on Baeclast right before he and another well known said:

"we know melee needs more than this revamp"

and then spent 4 years not doing anything else.

Removing Negative attack speed multiplier by itself tremendously helps melee feel better/ (we know this because melee actually felt better before the revamp, which mostly worsened it and was a mixed bag of improvements and mistakes like most of POE's update history)

Ben_ touched on how easily poor performing melee skills can be made more relevant. Its a bit of apeal to authority but I feel an expert player saying things I've been saying for 10 years might just have enough weight around the GGG offices to get through the coporate politics log jam thats been hamstringing melee since early days..

To me there's just this endless 10 year parade of excuse making and enabling around melee, white knights justifying every bad decision that allows the founders of GGG to see conflicting views and then double down on refusing to admit or even acknowledge their mistakes.

Veritasium has an amazing video on the science of Expertise, basically its impossible to be an expert in something if you never understand and acknowledge your mistakes.

Sounds familiar when you Lens certain parts of POE this way.