"GGG Hates Melee" well now we have EMPIRICAL PROOF that GGG has an Anti-Melee bias

This is not some tin foil conspiracy theory. This is objective evidence that proves the claim. This skill rework shows it quite plainly in objective terms. So lets break it down:

Number of Spell Skills on each page that have more than one Transfigured version:

10
10
6

Number of Melee Skills on each page that have more than one Transfigured version:

2
Zero
Zero



Thats right 26 spells (counts minions) have 2 or more variations and exactly 2 melee skills have 2 variants. There are over 50 examples of extra variations of spells and only 4 examples of extra variations of melee skills

"but more people play spells than melee so it makes sense" this is called a self fulfilling prophecy, AKA confirmation bias creating a feedback loop. When 90% of your development effort focuses on creative mechanically interesting spell skills that are easier to scale, less RNG dependent and also always safer (faster) and smoother to cast or trigger. Well of course more people will gravitate to those.

Now for something more subjective and harder to define many of the melee T-variations have what I would call basic "at home" not very inspired or creative or interesting variations I mean mechanically complex or having the potential for cool new niches.

Several of them (like EQ) are (probably) bait IMO.

As a point of comparison Sunder variation is just mimicking old sunder, where Firestorm gets a variation that mimics the old Fire Storm skill but also gets a variation that doubles down on the big meteor newer version.

Where's a double down Sunder variation? Slower moving massive hitting version?

Groundslam simply has the old threshold Angle jewels and nothing mechanically interesting. Why not have Call of Steel groundslam? You basically made a MUCH more powerful version of this For Blade blast + Blade Vortex (Blade Blast of Unloading)... Literally that skill is GS/CoS but you can keep moving and don't need to root in place to slam, nor do you need to piano warcries...

Sometimes you guys design choices feel like you have the Melee guy locked in a closet away from the Spell guys. Which is a big reason why its very common to hear people exclaim "GGG hates melee" over and over.

Yeah... in effect GGG objectively can be seen to have a massive bias towards spells and a clear apathy and lack of inspiration or creativity for melee.

Ye I've seen 3 days of Sirgog's gem reviews. For his LiveStream for these gems.

Most of the melee gems he's unimpressed. I wanted to make a Frozen Legion of Rallying tho he said he's not impressed with this and the gem loses it's purpose since the dps is too low.

Then the Double Strike gems he was unimpressed. One just had Impale and the other makes you have to stand still for attack speed. Which he's stated Momentum is stupid. Standing still is stupid.

Theirs a few ones he liked that were already decent before the rework. Such as Lightning Strike, Glacier Hammer.

The Chieftain Shield Crash he said did worst dmg.

So wth is good then for melee with these new gems? Just a 6 hitter big ignite molten strike and maybe Con Path with Endurance.

2 to 4 melee gems were ok, the rest were trash.

Literally for these batch days, I was only excited for red gems. Then when he reads them the review is so below average of the red gems.

Like realllly? They redid some dumb minion skills before giving us a better double strike? Not even a static strike rework. It's just a replacement. Not a 2nd option.

Frozen Legion of Rallying needs a buff.
The Double Strike Skills need a buff.
The Earthquake rework needs a buff.
Fire Shield Crash needs a buff.

The leap slam who knows if that's ok.
Lightning Strike of Arcing is essentially just Arc. Aka turning melee into range.
The new smite skill doesn't really alter the mechanic enough or the pob builds.

So what is there? 50 new gems and barely anything to get excited about for melee. Even Conc Path is probably gonna be so so since ur burning 3 charges so fast you'll probably only be able to sustain 5.

Even the ignite 6 hitter molten strike build doesn't offer varying ways to build that without Beserker. So over these berserker only gems like trauma.

Mostly the new useful gems are just for bows,novas, vortex's, chaos spells, and totems.

Once again these guys need to study melee atack skill patterns from Lost Ark. Just to know how combos, slams, and knockdowns are like. Instead of just making melee skills about shooting beams or something. MELEE is MELEE, not just slamming a ground to unleash aoe. Or Slamming the ground to shoot projectiles. More like tackling objects, knocking down foes, and having kung fu combos. Lost Arks knows. They don't just have " guy pokes the floor to unleash spells ".

Somebody needs to study kickboxing, sword fencing, and wrestling.
& fire the " melee unleashes projectiles " guy.
Also fire the guy who built slams for 10 year olds,
they aren't smart enough to use, needs strategy. & warcry's aren't it,
some other combo more active and engaging, not a passive buff.

The transfig gems are better than most updates. I'd toss the game 40 more tfig gems. Still fix the underperforming listed and hire a melee mmorpg guy.

+1

spell skills have flashy mtx, mtx = $

nerfs also = money unironically

hey guys,

chill.

poe 2 is gonna fix melee in poe 1



cryface.jpg

way easier to edit spell/ranged functionality than a melee animation and since they are very short on time that probably explains it, Then again it feels awful...

It is really sad that transfigured gems don't guarantee ailments

I bet GGG would love to simply remove melee completely from the game to focus more on pew pew aspect. but they sadly cannot, arpg without melee.. just doesnt work

so they keep it on life support, keeping it alive but not really caring for comfort

i do not know if they hate it - to hate something you need an emotional investment first. for me - GGG never actually even liked melee. never did and never will. there was never (and im here since closed beta) a time when you could feel that 'melee, yes, lets make it fun, viable and deep'. it was always 'arpg has to have melee, so here you go, happy?' instead


as a side note: trans gems are SIDEgrades, not UPgrades (no idea why people though so). most of these gems, even for spells have significant drawbacks hiding in the plain sight. these gems are 'cool' but most of them are repackaged alt-quals/threshold jewels but with fine-tuned numbers to make sure they are not too strong

ofc you can already see the outliers (in both directions) and there are a few.

melee players, me included, should really move on and forget it. POEs 'face' right now is a Tornado Shot with 200movement speed and return projectiles.

"

sidtherat wrote:

I bet GGG would love to simply remove melee completely from the game to focus more on pew pew aspect. but they sadly cannot, arpg without melee.. just doesnt work

so they keep it on life support, keeping it alive but not really caring for comfort

i do not know if they hate it - to hate something you need an emotional investment first. for me - GGG never actually even liked melee. never did and never will. there was never (and im here since closed beta) a time when you could feel that 'melee, yes, lets make it fun, viable and deep'. it was always 'arpg has to have melee, so here you go, happy?' instead


as a side note: trans gems are SIDEgrades, not UPgrades (no idea why people though so). most of these gems, even for spells have significant drawbacks hiding in the plain sight. these gems are 'cool' but most of them are repackaged alt-quals/threshold jewels but with fine-tuned numbers to make sure they are not too strong

ofc you can already see the outliers (in both directions) and there are a few.

melee players, me included, should really move on and forget it. POEs 'face' right now is a Tornado Shot with 200movement speed and return projectiles.

you're wrong! melee is fine! i can do millions of melee dps easily

you just need to farm like a few hundred divines, and it will be only slightly weaker than a non melee build that used a fraction of that amount.

also why are all these melee whiners all attacking bosses head on?

dont you know you should make your melee attacks have a huge ass range so that you can hit them safely from a range?

/s

Hate is the wrong word, i would say indifferent, its like they don't actually care if it exists or not.