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

Well yea playing meta builds or some dog water streamer builds is just not always the optimal way to maximize your fun.

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auspexa wrote:

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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

Boneshatter is strong/played due to damage output the skill does - even on meh build it does roughly ~3times the damage of the next best option. Boneshatter has the damage output and ease of scaling ALL other melee should have to match spells/minions

Iron Fortress (or broader attribute stacking) - the same story. They provide damage that 'scaling from rare weapon' just cannot provide. There is no rare weapon in existence that can match Brutus Lead Sprinkler on a STR stacking build. All T1 mods + tripple synth implicit is still WORSE than BLS + STR stacking. If that is not a sign of a serious problem i do not know what is

and when you mention 'strong melee builds' you mean they are strong or 'strong' - because strong builds can do all content, maybe with slowness here or there. 'strong' builds fizzle out at similacrum ~26, deli 80%+ and ubers. you know, the typical streamers 'melee is fine, sans ubers ofc.. oh and i do not play it, here is an actual good build btw'


and about scaling - the strongest scaling vector currently is the %aura effect. sadly 'stance skills' are not auras. and phys builds already take ALL youve mention along with mandatory totems and other junk that occupy all action slots.

Captain Lance used a heavy strike build for a 10 divine challenge where they had to do mapping and as many uber bosses as possible. He didn't use heavy strike because it's anywhere near the best melee skill or because it was necessary to do so for any reason. The point was to show that EVEN heavy strike can get this done when build right. On a good skill it would have been way easier.

Here the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQfEVdtz-oI

If the statement is: "Range always has an edge over melee" be it ease of scaling (gem levels vs weapon based) or ease of doing content/making builds (range can kite shit around the map if their defense/damage sucks, melee can't) then nobody is going to disagree.

But acting like you can't do deli maps, ubers, wave 30 simus or deep delves on melee just makes you look clueless. Heck, being melee isn't even a downside for most of those because mobs literally spawn in your face/density is so high it will end in melee combat even if you are ranged.

I've done both wave 30 simus and most ubers on melee builds worth ~20 div based on the prices in sanctum league. You'd be hardpressed to find ranged builds that can do both for the same investment, nevermind less and if you did it's like going to be poison sheningans.

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sidtherat wrote:

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..

having just made a stunning ground slam ignite chieftan to try the new stuff. a 1 divine char It had about the same dps of a level 20-40c 55ish toxic rain champ... granted this is small potatoes, Nonmeta melee skills are so scuffed on hit damage, dot damage, damage uptime, attackspeed, accuracy, penetration. I am sure I could have made it better with some different approaches, but holy cow do they need to examine their design paradigms. imagine if spells didn't have access to + levels on gear, then you are still better than most melee skills.

I find it wild that I have more mana problems swinging a weapon then casting spells. Their needs to be like a 20 mana on hit notable near marauder or something.

Ugh, melee is actually much better at mana sustain because their skills don't require more mana per levels. Usually you can solve all your mana issues with 2 ring mods.