Melee changes in Necropolis?

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1453R wrote:
Name one time TRU MELEE people weren't howling for GGG's blood and making all kinds of absurd ultra-cynical claims about GGG being worse than the Mafia with Machiavellian strategies to somehow bilk TRU MELEE ENJOYERS of their money while actively and maliciously seeking to make them as miserable as humanly possible.

Name me one time.

One. Single. Time.

I've never once seen it. Never ONCE. They don't buff melee, TRU MELEE people howl and scream. They DO buff melee? TRU MELEE people howl and scream. They add new skills to expand melee, try to sidegrade-buff it by offering options? TRU MELEE people howl and scream. They knock other skills down, making TRU MELEE better by comparison? TRU MELEE people howl and scream. They add a ton of new passives to the tree to try and make strike skills freaking relevant in a game where Click To Bonk hasn't been relevant for half a decade? TRU MELEE people howl and scream.

It does not matter what action Grinding Gear takes; they get the exact same reaction from TRU MELEE people. It never changes, no matter what the devs do. Therefor I can only assume TRU MELEE people have absolutely outrageous and thoroughly unreasonable standards of what "melee viability" looks like and would require Grinding Gear to quite seriously and very literally break the game to achieve. Something like a hidden support gem on all melee weapons that adds 1200% MOAR multiplier and 2000 base physical damage to any strike skill, and a hidden stat on Strength-aligned body armor that provides 95% damage reduction if only skills on a list of those considered associated with TRU MELEE Click-To-Bonk are equipped. Stuff so absolutely freaking beyond busted you could get TwitchPlaysPoE to clear Uber Maven with it.

Again - you don't think this is true? Give me one single example of a period in time when TRU MELEE people weren't spewing more venom and vitriol than Al'Hezmin.

One time.

One single example.

Don't worry. I won't bother waiting. We all know you won't be able to find one.


Again, you're just making stuff up then holding people to it. Are you trolling when saying things like 12000% MOAR, etc? I just told you about how much I enjoy melee and then you immediately ignored and said "G1V3 M3 0ne EX4mPle!" lol. Are you drunk? I know I wish I was drunk.

If people ask for something, then at every patch it doesn't happen, or it's even made worse, then it's hard for people to just let it go. Just like you can't let go of the opportunity to mischaracterise their complaints.

Oh Well.
No one can hear you poop in the forrest.
I tried, many leagues ago, to engage in dialogue with TRU MELEE people. I asked them: "what would constitute a proper, reasonable, buff to melee, such that you would be content?"

The answer I received was, broadly:
1.) TRU MELEE (i.e. Click To Bonk, strike-skill close-quarters melee, a'la Heavy Strtike) should be the absolute undisputed king of bosskill, with no other build coming anywhere close. Melee wasn't supposed to just be better at bosskill than every other build, it needed to be dramatically better. Less than half the kill time of the next best build.

2.) TRU MELEE should be able to survive any blow, with only moderate-at-best defensive investment, to offset "The Melee Penalty" of having to be within sword distance of the target. The argument was that since TRU MELEE can't move to avoid enemy attacks without losing damage uptime (neither can anyone else, very few builds can move and deal damage at the same time, but that's apparently irrelevant), and since TRU MELEE needs to have drastically better boss kill times than any other build, TRU MELEE needs to be able to facetank any hit without giving up any sort of damage or utility in their build

3.) Ranged (this being any skill that extends past the character's immediate arm's reach, regardless of classification) should not be able to reach much further than half a screen or so away, and should have its damage cut severely such that TRU MELEE Click-To-Bonk is also competitive in clear speeds while retaining its absolutely unmatchable edge in bosskill. Because this is apparently a 'buff to melee' rather than simply ruining every other build in the game for no real discernible reason save spite.

When I asked how this package was fair to other builds and playstyles, I was informed that 'fair' is for children to eat cotton candy at; the people I was speaking to at the time actively wished for the destruction of all non-melee builds as "revenge" for Melee Sucking for so long. The exact phrase I recall was "LOL maybe its ur turn to spend 1000ex just to beat yellow maps".

So yes. Pardon me if I'm jaded and cynical towards the jaded, cynical buttholes who have basically decided that nothing short of evicting every other build from PoE will be enough to Make Melee Great Again(TM).
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mnieradko wrote:

1) melee builds can't go in melee range

They can, it's just dangerous and requires additional layers of defences, one of which melee get and rangers characters don't. Fortify is actually the single most consistent and broadly applicable layer of defence in the game and it's exclusive to melee.

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mnieradko wrote:
2) melee builds can't stand still

Standing still is dangerous. Casting totems, etc is often not even worth it. So this is a multi-layered problem that instant casts on things like blood rage fix. If we could instantly cast totems it would resolve this.

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mnieradko wrote:
3) you can't reasonably gear up as a melee (by finding most/all of your own currency) by playing a melee build

Melee isn't meta most of the time, and so lots of melee gear is often quite cheap. The issue comes when you're trying to get good rare weapons. These are incredibly expensive and are required to achieve the same level of scaling that spell gems have inherently.

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mnieradko wrote:
4) you MIGHT be able to get around the previous three points by playing this "Melee" gem tag skill that is a rare exception and instead fires or attacks from half a screen away (e.g. stage 4-6 reave), but even then you are dead if you stand still, and oh here are these 4-5 other mechanics you must juggle that casters and ranged/bows completely ignore.

Lightning strike is great for bridging the gap, but it stops on all terrain obstacles. Even a spec of dust stops LS lol. This position kinda pollutes your initial points though; people will instantly assume you want ranged clear, with fortify and endurance charges etc. Choose your battles wisely here.

Spoiler
I have paraphrased the below to concisely address each point. Hope I summarised correctly.

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mnieradko wrote:
5) "People are turned off"

Yes. PoE is for the insane.

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mnieradko wrote:
6) "off-screening as a concept/meta hurts balance"

I think a lot of people would agree, though I think an appropriate position to advocate for is the remedy of melee issues, not the nerfing of ranged benefits.

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mnieradko wrote:
7) "will issues with melee being even more exaggerated in PoE2?"

Dunno. If I do play it, I'll play melee though. Flicking colours and off screening with needles makes me want to uninstall PoE. I utterly despise playing as a ranged character, though I will do it to benefit from something like currency generation in affliction.

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mnieradko wrote:
8) "bows and spell casters don't need the same level of ramp up via totems, warcries, etc"

I haven't played enough ranged builds to know to what level of complexity they reach, though I know that every melee build I make has at least 8 buttons required and some ramp up.
No one can hear you poop in the forrest.
All caps. Silly spelling of true melee die hards. Generalization of anyone expressing issues that are real with melee as "true melee die hards."

Pretty sure this is the most toxic series of posts on the thread. Can you try to make your point without assuming that people are just complaining to be negative and making up mean names? I don't even understand the point of these blanket attacks.
Last edited by Roziel_Longblade on Mar 27, 2024, 1:31:54 AM
Melee died after legion league. Not only various changes in form of nerfs, or slight buff in the archetype (ascendancy changes, passive tree changes, impale nerfs, etc.), GGG adds numerous new game mechanics started from legion onward, that make melee in massive disadvantageous position than range / caster. Some examples are ; Legion monolith, blight, tons of ground effects, heist, AN mods, new pinnacle boss encounter, new map mods like reduce armor and block or monster have extra phys reduction.

Back then, despite all the shortcoming of melee builds, it has access to impale, a great mechanics that massively boost damage of melee skills. Paired with ascendancy that gives speed or utility like gladiator, slayer, jugg, or for more damage like berserker or champion, it was a great time for me. Slap on paradoxica, elder influence mana cost and crit chance on chest, mana cost on ring, then its good to go. It at least able to compete with spell builds on similar budget with similar result in term of speed and damage. However, berserker is gutted into oblivion afterwards, impale receive incremental changes that lower its damage in favor of global usage, un-rewarding slam playstyle, and here we are.

For sure, you can still play melee if its "fun" for you, since fun is a subjective term and everyone have their own version of fun. But it is undoubtedly and objectively, melee is not in a good spot in the whole picture of build archetypes.
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mnieradko wrote:


Can you imagine how many melee ARPG enthusiasts want to try POE and then they are told point blank:

1) melee builds can't go in melee range
2) melee builds can't stand still
3) you can't reasonably gear up as a melee (by finding most/all of your own currency) by playing a melee build
4) you MIGHT be able to get around the previous three points by playing this


YOu are repeating yourself and we already told you why you are wrong.
"
1453R wrote:
I tried, many leagues ago, to engage in dialogue with TRU MELEE people. I asked them: "what would constitute a proper, reasonable, buff to melee, such that you would be content?"

The answer I received was, broadly:
1.) TRU MELEE (i.e. Click To Bonk, strike-skill close-quarters melee, a'la Heavy Strtike) should be the absolute undisputed king of bosskill, with no other build coming anywhere close. Melee wasn't supposed to just be better at bosskill than every other build, it needed to be dramatically better. Less than half the kill time of the next best build.

2.) TRU MELEE should be able to survive any blow, with only moderate-at-best defensive investment, to offset "The Melee Penalty" of having to be within sword distance of the target. The argument was that since TRU MELEE can't move to avoid enemy attacks without losing damage uptime (neither can anyone else, very few builds can move and deal damage at the same time, but that's apparently irrelevant), and since TRU MELEE needs to have drastically better boss kill times than any other build, TRU MELEE needs to be able to facetank any hit without giving up any sort of damage or utility in their build

3.) Ranged (this being any skill that extends past the character's immediate arm's reach, regardless of classification) should not be able to reach much further than half a screen or so away, and should have its damage cut severely such that TRU MELEE Click-To-Bonk is also competitive in clear speeds while retaining its absolutely unmatchable edge in bosskill. Because this is apparently a 'buff to melee' rather than simply ruining every other build in the game for no real discernible reason save spite.

When I asked how this package was fair to other builds and playstyles, I was informed that 'fair' is for children to eat cotton candy at; the people I was speaking to at the time actively wished for the destruction of all non-melee builds as "revenge" for Melee Sucking for so long. The exact phrase I recall was "LOL maybe its ur turn to spend 1000ex just to beat yellow maps".

So yes. Pardon me if I'm jaded and cynical towards the jaded, cynical buttholes who have basically decided that nothing short of evicting every other build from PoE will be enough to Make Melee Great Again(TM).


More that as melee you have to wade into dangerous territory whereas ranged doesn't. Corpse explosion effects for instance. Point blank AoE for another. Effects typically work out from melee range to range with the shortest ramp at melee making it much more difficult to time.

The way Blizzard handles this in WoW is to balance mechanics between ranged and melee to be more equitable. If you load up a boss with 5 point blank AoE abilities of course the raid will be ranged stacked.

A lot of PoE is really just moving and staying moving. So instant cast abilities are ideal. But a lot more safety exists at range as well.
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YOu are repeating yourself and we already told you why you are wrong.


No, you haven't explained a damn thing to counter those points. You, many others, and nearly the entire POE streaming and build guide community describes that "melee" should be played this way.

Imagine a number line that goes from 1 to 100. "Melee" in POE1 is currently at a state of 4 while casters/totems are somewhere around 64 and bows are somewhere around 81. You and others make hyperbolic extrapolations that I want the melee number to go from 4 to 99, when I want something reasonable (both offensive and defensive) like going from a 4 to a 37. Something like "this will be harder but we will give you the proper tools to use and you don't need to be rich", instead of "this will be constant escalating agony turn back now".

Saw a new 2 hour zizaran video posted today from Mark (GGG) about both POE1 and POE2, and again it was completely oblivious about melee. The video then had a description of "Mark really wants to know that we give a sh*t about the players". Sure, as long as you select a main skill that has a bow or spell gem tag we will love you forever.

"
If you load up a boss with 5 point blank AoE abilities


This design is evident throughout POE1 map bosses. For example, the boss in the "crater" map just spams giant firestorms near where she is standing that last way too long. The bosses in the "plateau" map just spam big cold/lightning AOE/puddles around themselves. The boss in the "spider forest" map just spams phys/chaos death zones around herself. There are many more examples where any ranged/bow/totem/minion build just trivializes this garbage design while a melee wonders "so when do I get to attack without dying?"

Pinnacle bosses are even worse, and then uber bosses 10x worse than regulars for the same reasons.

And now in POE2 the devs are seriously implying to you that a melee will avoid really hard monster melee auto attacks by not being in melee and using supposed defensive tools that don't even exist, while going to town constantly to refresh flasks.
Last edited by mnieradko on Mar 27, 2024, 10:03:32 AM
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mnieradko wrote:


No, you haven't explained a damn thing to counter those points. You, many others, and nearly the entire POE streaming and build guide community describes that "melee" should be played this way.



Dude, i don't know what kind of streamers/build guides you are following but nobody in his right mind plays melee like that.

The first two points about cannot go into melee range and cannot stand still are just plain false. Anyone with a minimum level of knowledge and experience under their belt can tell you that and there are plenty of guides and videos showcasing how wrong you actually are.

Almost every mechanic in this game can be tanked if you use the defensive tools you are given properly. There are a handful exceptions that apply lethal debuffs with no counter play and there is another handful where attempting to tank them requires way too much effort to be worth it compared to just dodging it since it's super telegraphed stuff but we are still talking about like 10 mechanics here that make up the exceptions.

Everything else is a non issue. There are plenty of builds that can afk in T16 maps. Facetanking mapboss mechanics is easily doable on most builds.
If you push it a bit further you can afk in wave 30 simulacrums and facetank pinnacle and even uber bosses. I know that for a fact because i've been doing that for years. Just stop playing glass cannons and you won't have any of the issues you are whining about.

There is some truth to the point that it's easier to gear up spell builds, up to a certain level anyway, compared to attack builds but even that is overblown in a trade environment.
Last edited by Baharoth15 on Mar 27, 2024, 10:32:17 AM
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mnieradko wrote:
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YOu are repeating yourself and we already told you why you are wrong.


No, you haven't explained a damn thing to counter those points. You, many others, and nearly the entire POE streaming and build guide community describes that "melee" should be played this way.



You sure love to write wall of texts while you are unable to read few lines of textx that explain why you are wrong.

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