Feels so awful to play melee in this game :(

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its still easier to make viable self cast than viable melee just due to the requirements

Ok, name a self cast build better than Boneshatter starter

short answer, for money making:

Arc Ignite Elementalist. it might require melee-level investment to do ubers, but it is probably the best Legion farmer out there (Vaal Arc!!!), and Legion prints money. Expedition is even better but immunities make it tedious and if you missclick the entire encounter is brick. you will get to farming stage in blue gear if you wish. ignite prolif from Vaal Arc is this good.

for farming endgame (after investment)

Necro cremation (starter version, so crit spell-based, not phantasmal corpse-based) carried me to t16 with blue wand, one ring and that 50% ms boots. cremation shines with very expensive phantasmal/unearth version but the spell itself slaps hard enough to clear entire atlas. Necro is tanky AF on a budget. might be worse for speed farming and the final version (Aegis/Heart/CI) requires entire gear swap in one go - but it is 10/10 worth it. what is great both cremation and unearth have VERY generous tag lists, so getting +3/4 chest is actually reliable


Boneshatter might be tankier, any champ + auras is tanky, but if you want make money quickly - I do not think melee is fast and reliable enough to compete (starter gear ofc). Frost Blades and Lancing Steel with high investment might compete but we are talking completely different levels of investment here


so what would be your second-best melee starter (non-Trauma), maybe these tens of thousands of people who think it is all junk can learn something?

Frost blades is too easy. The clear answer is flicker strike. Easy to transition from Frost Blades. Cheap as hell if you are using Terminus Est and other cheap uniques. Quite possibly the highest gear scaling too so you are not stuck with it being an entry-level build, but also affordable enough to start using it as early as day 3. And despite melee being so bad, people clearly prefer it when compared to both Arc and Cremation.