Thoughts after switching from Wild Strike Trauma Trinity Slayer to Hexblast Mine Sab

I played a super scuffed take on Boneshatter using Wild strike and the new trauma support. It was complete dogshit. I quit the league after seeing 400k dps on PoB.

I then made a Sab and levelled pyroclast then into Hexblast. This build is nuts. It's doing content I couldn't do before. Breezing through everything. But something is missing. I'm yawning as I'm playing despite me being infinitely stronger.

It hits me. I miss my dogshit garbage Wildstrike Slayer. This game is about having fun. And I had fun playing that shit build because it was my shit build. Hexblast compartively doesn't engage me as much despite me seeing the appeal.

Games are about having fun. And POE is undoubtably still fun. However having played these 2 polar opposite builds it's so obvious the balance in this game is fucked.

By your own admission, your first build was "scuffed". And since it was YOUR build, I assume you were following a hexblast guide the second time around.

Of COURSE you are going to have more fun in a build you create your own. And if you don't think about it and tweak and tweak and tweak, of COURSE it is going to perform worse than a build someone else has spent potentially YEARS perfecting.

There are balance issues in the game for sure, but your post doesn't really point to any of them. It just points to two different builds with two wildly different levels of experience and preparation.

Are we seriously comparing a top 3 meta build to something that is new, niche and barely optimized?

^I could take split arrow, stack all elemental damage but have no conversion or elemental damage on my bow/supports and scream about "balance" too lol! Why doesn't MY build perform like Poison SRS?

you could take post-BloodAqueduct Hexblast saboteur and compare it to 20div WildStrike Trauma and you would not see much difference

im baffled that some of you still pretend there is not a HUGE (i mean, order of magnitude) problem with scaling between SENSIBLE build options (his char has been dismantled but what is left looks 'ok',

maybe try and play 'melee' from time to time. i bet there is a reason both of you actually dont do that. my take is - there are better options so why should you play bad ones?

most streamers dont play melee, those that do, play the ONE build that works and even then moan about the experience

it is sad to see that it is no longer a meme to say 'melee is fine as long as you overpay and avoid difficult content'. people no longer complain about it, they simply dont play this sh..

I mean if you make a scuffed off meta build then obviously it isn't going to be good. Especially when compared to a build guide/POE ninja copied top 3 meta build. Just make a good one and you won't notice much difference. Even if some people tell you otherwise, you can actually have fun AND success with melee builds.
You just need to to build proper defenses so that being at close proximity isn't an issue and while doing that is slightly more expensive than just going pure glass, it's still pretty cheap and WAY cheaper then going for high dps glass cannons.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I mean if you make a scuffed off meta build then obviously it isn't going to be good. Especially when compared to a build guide/POE ninja copied top 3 meta build. Just make a good one and you won't notice much difference. Even if some people tell you otherwise, you can actually have fun AND success with melee builds.
You just need to to build proper defenses so that being at close proximity isn't an issue and while doing that is slightly more expensive than just going pure glass, it's still pretty cheap and WAY cheaper then going for high dps glass cannons.

off meta builds can be much more powerful than meta builds if it's done well and geared up. there are hundreds of examples for that in poe.ninja and jungroan usually shows builds like that on his stream, completely off-meta stuff obliterating every piece of content the game has to offer.

average players usually fall short with off meta builds because they don't know how to properly build it and don't know what the optimized gear/tree should look like. this might sound harsh but the majority of poe players have absolutely no clue how to make and optimize a build, they can barely copy existing ones. I saw a dude in ingame chat trying to understand why he was getting killed with fourth vow and divine flesh, and he had 10% chaos res... the meta in poe only exists because of people like that divine flesh guy, they only know how to mimic others and that is the majority

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auspexa wrote:

I saw a dude in ingame chat trying to understand why he was getting killed with fourth vow and divine flesh, and he had 10% chaos res... the meta in poe only exists because of people like that divine flesh guy, they only know how to mimic others and that is the majority

Agree. That's roughly the knowledge/skill level of people typically complaining about melee here on the forum. I've actually seen comparable or worse bullshit by the dozens from selfproclaimed melee players/experts over the years.

If people at least had the self awareness to go to gameplay help first and ask for help if their build doesn't work before complaining here but no, it's obviously the games fault if their builds suck. It's just so tiresome -.-

so what is the reason people claiming 'it is ok' just.. dont play melee at all?

if they opt for off-meta (it happens really rarely) it is pretty much never melee?

yet they have lots to say about how it is 'ok'..

and Jurgoan is great at finding things that get patch-fixed 3 months later, like Arcanist Brand + Return + Eye of Winter. that build without bug in play is just average (still better than 99% melee due to 100% damage uptime and low cost) but just average

his other builds are cool, but i have trouble finding anything melee. everything seems to be 'scale with levels', 'poison', 'stacking projectiles' - aka stuff that actually can be cheaply scaled. how do you scale melee 1h once you have that 500pdps sword? mageblood?

any streamers doing melee builds this league? Quin tried and that was painful AF.

and 'gets good with investment' confirms it is shit because other options dont need investment and if they do they get BETTER with investment. gap remains

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sidtherat wrote:

so what is the reason people claiming 'it is ok' just.. dont play melee at all?

if they opt for off-meta (it happens really rarely) it is pretty much never melee?

yet they have lots to say about how it is 'ok'..

and Jurgoan is great at finding things that get patch-fixed 3 months later, like Arcanist Brand + Return + Eye of Winter. that build without bug in play is just average (still better than 99% melee due to 100% damage uptime and low cost) but just average

his other builds are cool, but i have trouble finding anything melee. everything seems to be 'scale with levels', 'poison', 'stacking projectiles' - aka stuff that actually can be cheaply scaled. how do you scale melee 1h once you have that 500pdps sword? mageblood?

any streamers doing melee builds this league? Quin tried and that was painful AF.

and 'gets good with investment' confirms it is shit because other options dont need investment and if they do they get BETTER with investment. gap remains

quin builds are always painful to watch, as he tends to have 50k dps at level 95. alkaizer, ben and others always shit on whatever they do regardless of their build. there are a lot of strong boneshatter, frost blades, cyclone, generals cry, smite and flicker strike builds around. iron fortress builds have always been pretty good at deleting content, no matter what skill you use. even wild strike becomes pretty ridiculous in terms of clear speed when you go for the lightning only route and grab the helm enchant, I played that build in the past

I agree that melee isn't as good as other archetypes. it's especially weak for sanctum. but it's not like you can't map or kill pinnacles with a melee build, and people act like melee is useless after yellow maps. that's not the case, most melee builds can easily delete everything up to uber pinnacles. the way you'd scale it depends on what skill you're using and what type of damage you're dealing, but it can be impale, crit multi, penetration, attack speed, frenzy charges, whatever fits the build