Does Trauma Support 'fix' melee strikes?

I doubt it. Boneshatter itself feels terrible to play imo, so just lumping a trauma gem into another strike skill which will mostly be usable by Jugg is kinda whatever, if not outright bad.

Boneshatter is more then just Trauma though. It's built in flat damage per level is the highest of the attack based skills. Built in AoE which is scaled off a defensive mechanic that stuns enemies. As well as a scaling more damage multiplier. This is all without wasting a support gem.

We don't know the number on this support gem but there is no chance this saves or does anything new for melee. It's just a new support. People seem to think this is going to have flat damage in it. I lean on it having a low more multiplier along with a scaling one.

Gotta see patch notes and 20/20 gems this league for sure to come to any conclusion on what this can do for non boneshatter strikes.

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innervation wrote:

A lot of people say melee skills 'just need to do more damage'. Others say GGG could multiply melee skill damage by 1,000x and it wouldn't matter

The first group actually play melee, the second don't nor will they ever.

Builds are like a sequential checklist of things you have to hit to make the character good, melee has a bigger list than basically anything else as a result it is inferior by default requiring a significantly higher base damage number to compensate. Which it doesn't have.

Boneshatters consistent and regular usage despite it being a single skill shows that if a melee skill has suitable scaling, built in melee splash and doesn't use the trashbox swing animations it will see plenty of use.

The first two are damage numbers, the last one is an attack speed number. Nothing else to it.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Boneshatters consistent and regular usage despite it being a single skill shows that if a melee skill has suitable scaling, built in melee splash and doesn't use the trashbox swing animations it will see plenty of use.

The first two are damage numbers, the last one is an attack speed number. Nothing else to it.

So you seriously summarize stuff like bigger AOE and better animations as "damage increases"? Talk about stretching definitions here...

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Boneshatters consistent and regular usage despite it being a single skill shows that if a melee skill has suitable scaling, built in melee splash and doesn't use the trashbox swing animations it will see plenty of use.

The reason Boneshatter sees any play is it's clear speed, it has crap Boss damage and so that why it steadily falls off after the first week. It's the only reason anyone plays it at all. If Sunder had better AoE clear and moved as fast it would be just as popular if not more so since Boneshatter without the target being stunned is trash.

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it has crap Boss damage

It has the highest ST damage in the game... you just have to spend some time ramping (see delve builds).

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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.

This is no the problem with melee. Kobeblackmamba has a very good video on what melee's problem actually is. It's called we have to move and when we do our damage stops almost 100%. Kobe had a very high damage melee build and he was shocked at how long it took him to actually kill the boss because he could not it the boss from rage. Melee has no javelins or throwing axes, and bleed is trash still (which I said for a reason). Casters scale any physical or chaos based dot better than any melee.

It's absurd that after 10 years GGG does not have a single viable melee based DOT build in the game.

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rapind wrote:

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it has crap Boss damage

It has the highest ST damage in the game... you just have to spend some time ramping (see delve builds).

I think you are pulling some different definitions than what Ben, Imexile, or any of the top end players say. All of them have said Boneshatter is terrible for Bossing and godly for clear, every single one of them.

BTW you have to move, and you only get a few seconds and all your stacks drop.

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Valkaneer wrote:

This is no the problem with melee.

Sure it is.

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Valkaneer wrote:

Kobeblackmamba has a very good video on what melee's problem actually is. It's called we have to move and when we do our damage stops almost 100%.

So does every single build in Path of Exile that isn't a DOT build, or a build that uses independent proxies like minions or totems. EVERYBODY's damage stops 100% when they move. That's part of the weakness of the existing PoE1 animation system - the character can move or it can use skill animations, pick one. The only skill in the entire game that gets to deal direct hit damage while moving is Cyclone, and Cyclone is literal ass heresy that nevertheless remains mega-popular specifically because it breaks this rule.

Sure, you could argue that melee has to move MOAR and so its damage is "off" for a comparatively longer time than a ranged or spell build, but Melee also gets a much larger pool of overall tools to use. Ancestral totems that superjuice your damage, access to a Fortification buff that doubles your durability, access to a Rage mechanic that can heavily scale your damage and allows the use of the Berserk skill for a big surge of DPS right when you need it, access to a vastly larger pool of potential skills to use than bows/wands...

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Valkaneer wrote:

Kobe had a very high damage melee build and he was shocked at how long it took him to actually kill the boss because he could not it the boss from rage.

I assume this means "could not reliably and steadily wail on the boss to generate Rage." Either that or "could not reliably strike the boss from outside melee range." If the former, oh well. Manage Rage better. If the latter...also oh well. Melee people hate being at range. That's why they constantly complain about Stand And Bonk not being awesome enough.

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Valkaneer wrote:

Melee has no javelins or throwing axes,

Melee people would scream their heads off if they were given "thrown" options. Also, yes melee DOES have 'javelins or throwing axes'. It's a real old skill that used to be a staple of the ancient meta called Spectral Throw. You can scale your weapon damage and then chuck your weapon at enemies. It's not melee damage, no - but it is very much "you throw your melee weapon to deal axe/sword/mace/whatever damage from a distance". If you're a 1H/Shield build you can chuck your shield, instead - and SST doesn't even care about your weapon modifiers, it bases all its damage on your shield's defense values. Harder to scale if you're also trying to do, say, Sword nodes, but it's still an option.

To say nothing of skills like Lightning Strike or Frost Blades (mmm...Frost Blades...) that incorporate a ranged component into the core melee attack, so you can have your Stand And Bonk AND your Chuckin' Knives. How often have you seen people disparage Frost Blades as "NOT REAL MELEE" becaquse it's a long-range icy stab that releases fans of homing daggers? I've seen it a lot, which sucks because Frost Blades is one of my favorite skills and yet nobody builds for it or does any cool/useful research on it.

You have all the Chucking-Stuff skills you need, you just don't like them because they don't use your melee modifiers for non-melee attacks.

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Valkaneer wrote:

and bleed is trash still (which I said for a reason). Casters scale any physical or chaos based dot better than any melee.

It's absurd that after 10 years GGG does not have a single viable melee based DOT build in the game.

I've seen plenty of melee Bleed builds over the years. Are they a preponderance of builds? No. But then again, DOT builds in general tend to get the sideline compared to Giganuke hitty builds that deal 500M Uber DPS by scaling to 20+ actions per second with a ten million times total damage modifier on their base damage. No DOT build is ever really going to compete with what happens when you pour a few dozen Mirrors into a hitty build.

The upside to DOT builds is that you don't lose (all of) your DPS by moving around and avoiding boss mechanics. The downside to DOT builds is that you don't really have the option in most of them to engage in a Burn Phase where you activate half a dozen buffs in the space of a second or two while the boss is vulnerable to deal twenty times your normal Stand-And-Bonk damage, i.e. DOT builds don't get to increase their damage by finding an opportunity to stand still and smash. Some DOT builds can scale their damage high enough not to care, sure. But so can many hitty builds.

Again - the problem with melee is a combination of bad animations and unrealistic expectations. Has nothing to do with damage ceiling. The damage ceiling in this game is beyond absurd for every skill, nobody gets to complain about their favorite skill "dealing no damage!" when every skill in Path of Exile can be scaled to well over 500M Uber DPS just by throwing enough Mirrors at it.

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I think you are pulling some different definitions than what Ben, Imexile, or any of the top end players say.

I freely admit that Ben and Imexile are far more knowledgeable than I of this game. As far as I'm aware though, racers probably don't care about which build can achieve the highest DPS across all leagues (softcore trade). For this, I'd probably look at what delvers (like Rudy) or dedicated bossers are doing.

Anyways, I was just stating that "technically" boneshatter is showing top ST DPS this league on poeninja at over 3b. Maybe that's cooked DPS, but it also happens to be the deepest delver this league (as usual).

Boneshatter is a great build. It sucks on bosses early because you kind of have to be in their face to do damage, which means you're probably getting hit more often, which means you need big defences. Once you have enough defences (hard to achieve for racers in HCSSF who are in a hurry!) to facetank a lot of boss mechanics, it's DPS is actually quite strong.

Here's the thing though. Because Boneshatter is so good at early mapping, it means in SC Trade you can just dig your heels in and farm up the currency to scale into a total beast. It's basically great as a league starter but also great for the "only one build per league" type of player. I regret not starting it this league because the crucible weapons were insane. It's gonna suck at sanctum content though (if you're thinking of starting it next league).