Melee - The 2H Experience [Survivability Solution]

EDIT: A superior idea has been posted:

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flab wrote:

Block imo isn't the answer. Some form of reduced damage is.
I'll again mention deflection/parry as an implicit stat on melee weapons, suggested by a diamond supporter. The idea being that you obstruct incoming attacks to effectively make it less of a clean hit. Give weapons a low implicit DR, with passives for increasing that tied to melee damage nodes, or something.

In this situation, staves would retain their implicit block as well, instead of spell damage like i originally suggested.

----------Original Thread (Obsolete IMO)----------


This thread is going to be focusing specifically on the survivability of 2h melee users. This has been an issue, and i do believe that one good way of fixing it is with block.

Every 2h weapon in this game is large and beefy, and very capable of blocking or parrying attacks, not just staves. What i propose is that block chance becomes implicit on all melee 2h weapons.

In addition to block, two handed weapons would also retain unique implicit properties:

Axe: Increased Physical Damage
Staff: Increased Spell Damage (Rather than just having more block. This also helps staff spell users get spell damage more reliably)
Sword: Increased Accuracy
Mace: Base Stun Duration

What this means:
- It allows 2h melee users to gain some extra survivability right off the bat by having a bit of block
- It allows 2h melee users to invest in Block Chance in the passive skill tree, something they previously could not, assuming that "Two Handed Block" nodes are added.
- It allows for 2h melee users to invest in uniques with Spell Block
- It allows for weapon-specific nodes to now offer "Block Chance with X Weapon Type", increasing the desirabillity of these nodes.
- It does not allow for ranged users to benefit from the increase to melee survivability.

Sword and Board: High defence, Moderate Offence
2h: High offence, Moderate Defence
Ranged: High Offence, Defence in the form of Distance

Seems like a fairly balanced way to do it.

What do you think are interesting ways to increase the survivability of melee in a well thought out fashion? Discuss and critique this and any other ideas you come up with, let's see what we can do.

I think that 2-Hander builds really require more block chance availability on the passive tree. They should also be grouped with other appealing nodes, in turn, increasing their appeal.

The only reason I opted to use staves over some other form of 2H weapon was for block. I would be kind of pissed if all 2H weapons gained block chance, but that might just be me being selfish. I have no interest in using spells as a 2H melee-based character.

To address the greater issue of survivability, I don't think that block is the answer. Sure, every bit of defensive prowess you can gain does help one to survive, but I still take some serious damage in a pack of bonecrushers on 70+ maps. Certain mobs just dish too big of damage hits, and the current armor mechanics give relatively little damage mitigation from large damage single attacks. I would vote for a nerf on granite flasks/endurance charges and a substantial buff to the amount of damage mitigated from armor, especially from high damage single attacks.

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Tatter1337 wrote:

Certain mobs just dish too big of damage hits

That's a separate issue, check my signature. These two issues should not be addressed as the same thing. A combination of fixing enemy damage and AI as well as increasing the survivability capacity of 2h weapons is much better than only doing one or the other.

Granite flasks already got nerfed by 60% and 4k armor is essentially nothing.

Just get a kaoms after that the game is so ez u can do it blind folded

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flab wrote:

Block imo isn't the answer. Some form of reduced damage is. Without IR you're totally dependent on enfeeble and endurance charges (and I'm guessing you still are, even with IR). Granite flasks should have been tiered. They're still massively overpowered early and now borderline useless late. What I get from a granite barely passes for passive armour.

Edit:
I'll again mention deflection/parry as an implicit stat on melee weapons, suggested by a diamond supporter. The idea being that you obstruct incoming attacks to effectively make it less of a clean hit. Give weapons a low implicit DR, with passives for increasing that tied to melee damage nodes, or something.

Alternatively, give every 2h melee user an EK/Bear trap party member with triple curses (enfeeble, temp chains, vulnerability) and hexmaster. Problem solved.

Deflection/parry sounds like a really interesting idea, better than block chance actually. I'm going to add that to the OP.

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Xendran wrote:

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flab wrote:

Block imo isn't the answer. Some form of reduced damage is. Without IR you're totally dependent on enfeeble and endurance charges (and I'm guessing you still are, even with IR). Granite flasks should have been tiered. They're still massively overpowered early and now borderline useless late. What I get from a granite barely passes for passive armour.

Edit:
I'll again mention deflection/parry as an implicit stat on melee weapons, suggested by a diamond supporter. The idea being that you obstruct incoming attacks to effectively make it less of a clean hit. Give weapons a low implicit DR, with passives for increasing that tied to melee damage nodes, or something.

Alternatively, give every 2h melee user an EK/Bear trap party member with triple curses (enfeeble, temp chains, vulnerability) and hexmaster. Problem solved.

Deflection/parry sounds like a really interesting idea, better than block chance actually. I'm going to add that to the OP.

Actually no thats a bad idea especially in pvp block ll be much more safer and less complicated for game engine it already calculates dodge-evasion-block adding that to slightly hits will troublesome for RT oppononets and evasion based builds.

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Ceykey wrote:

Actually no thats a bad idea especially in pvp

How so?

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block ll be much more safer and less complicated for game engine

This is a totally invalid reason

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it already calculates dodge-evasion-block adding that to slightly hits will troublesome for RT oppononets and evasion based builds.

So? RT could use the nerf against 2h users, and this has literally no effect whatsoever on evasion other than improving the reliability of 2h evasion users, so i don't know where that's coming from.

In fact, i didn't even consider these two things, and now that i have i LIKE them and consider them positive changes.

While I agree with the general idea, there are some things I don't like:

Spell damage on staffs? Why, really? I want to use staff as a purely melee weapon, and I would be perfectly fine with it having more block/DR than other weapons.

Also, staffs and daggers are kind of problematic in regards to casters. If we give these weapons DR, what is stopping every caster from picking up these weapons? Some unique staffs/rare daggers are already superior to wands.