Melee vs Ranged - Possible Sollution

First off, I'm not saying melee passives don't need to be boosted a little.
I didn't do any math.

Second, I never said melee should be the best against reflect damage... but whatever.

Third, I've already suggested remote melee skills (the shadow mine/totem/sentry/trap), but that's beside the point.

Now, onto the discussion, since you seem to be disregarding it, I'll repeat:
Killspeed is only an issue for melee because melee are forced to invest more in survivability than ranged AND still can't survive without periodically moving away from the enemies, losing precious time they could be spending dealing damage, while ranged deal damage 24/7...

It's funny how you consider a mechanic such as Balls of Steel a slide rule, and not giving a flat bonus to melee damage.

I had thought about putting a defensive bonus in every single melee passive, or at least notables, but that would most likely be really hard to balance, and would scale in a way that melee might end up investing nothing into defensive passives other than resists and resist cap.

That's why I suggested this.
Something that directly benefits anyone that engages in melee.

Melee should become better at withstanding damage, enough that:
- It frees up skill points for melee to use in offensive passives, so that they can have as much damage potential as ranged, without suffering of lack of survivability
- They can have as much uptime attacking as ranged
Combining both of the above would make it so that melee is at the damage potential of ranged.
Anything wrong with it at this point, would be an issue with the offensive melee passives and melee skills.
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I like all builds - I'm a compulsive altoholic.
This - in my opinion - gives me an unbiased view on the state of games.
I never wish for superiority for one build or another.
I wish them all to be competitive.

That being said, I usually end up playing more with melee, because they are often the most challenging - not because they're better or worse.
In most games, ranged is just spamming from the safety of afar, and it ends up boring the hell out of me, eventually.

Now, making one type of build superior to the others is bad design.
If melee become better at dealing damage, they are better farmers - period.
Even if it's "riskier", it's still better. And that is unfair.

Currently, ranged holds that spot. It's also unfair.
And that's why I'm here.

Hello, i have a couple melee chars; the only problem i have with them is the damage, i don't have the proper gear so it's hard for me to compete with my... casters of the same level. I have no survivability problems at all.

Some of my friends complain that their Tank can't tank brutus/cole/etc or even vaal because his special attack oneshot them. the problem imho is in their playing skills, skill tree, and gear.

I don't know about pvp since i don't use it, probably it is there the big difference... i really have no clue.

I admit that ranged is easy to play, melee is hard (in late game ofc). i like that.

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jeonitsoc wrote:

Hello, i have a couple melee chars; the only problem i have with them is the damage, i don't have the proper gear so it's hard for me to compete with my... casters of the same level. I have no survivability problems at all.

Some of my friends complain that their Tank can't tank brutus/cole/etc or even vaal because his special attack oneshot them. the problem imho is in their playing skills, skill tree, and gear.

I don't know about pvp since i don't use it, probably it is there the big difference... i really have no clue.

I admit that ranged is easy to play, melee is hard (in late game ofc). i like that.

Yes, but the issue here is that melee are forced to take alot more defensive nodes than ranged in order to survive - that's (at least partially) why ranged damage is better.
If you had more skill points free to use on offensive nodes, you'd probably reach ranged (closer to) damage.

Not saying melee nodes don't need a boost though.

Bump.

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PlaceholderText wrote:

my opinion: totally forget trying to balance melee and ranged with damage mitigation, instead balance melee and ranged by giving melee a totally awesome badass dps advantage

melee definitely needs the added killspeed to compete with ranged in terms of kills/minute -- this is important for farming balance, and increasing survivability doesn't help you kill faster (not really)

and survivability doesn't matter once your enemy is already dead

note this would require nerfing ranged damage to the point that one-shot kills on white mobs are virtually, if not totally, impossible for them

For those who don't know: PlaceholderText is me from when I quit computers game for a month but still forum'd with my cell phone.

And still +1 this. Do you have any idea how easy it is to faceroll this game with a shield? Seriously, just support Tempest Shield with Blind, Knockback and Chance to Flee. None of those supports increase mana cost. Or you can go big with Iron Will, Life Leech, Added Chaos, Added Lightning, and Added Cold; no more room for any other auras but trust me you won't care.

If anything, it's currently too easy to facetank in PoE. Melee's problem is not survivability, it's killspeed. Well, that and the fact that a caster does more Tempest damage, and thus leeches more, and thus is evYen tankier than you are.

I was keeping this skill combo to myself, but saw a thread the other day with YouTube videos. 12k Tempest DPS on an EK caster. At 8.8% leech, that's over 1k healing per block.

@Scrotie
By adding what I'm suggesting, you indirectly allow melee to spare more points into damage, thus improving killspeed - becoming closer to ranged.

Melee shouldn't be all about having a shield, or gimmicky 2handed builds like Wall Smash.
The lack of viable options in a game that is meant to be all about options is poor gameplay philosophy.

As long as melee has the same survivability options as ranged, it will never be balanced.
And if for some reason melee damage is made alot stronger than ranged to compensate, there will be groups of people who make something like one tank and a few glass cannon melee to completely destroy everything due to superior damage as a team.

So, again, if there is such a thing as investing too much into damage, there also needs to be such a thing as investing too much into survivability.

The reason I suggest a buff that is triggered when you hit in melee, is to prevent ALL "abuse" scenarios.
If there were melee survival nodes and/or better survival stats on melee weapons, you'd be giving an unfair advantage to casters that equip melee weapons.

So the only way is to make sure you only get the bonus when you actually attack in melee, with a melee weapon (point-blank doesn't count).

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Nurvus wrote:

As long as melee has the same survivability options as ranged, it will never be balanced.

This is simply not true. If you think about it, damage output is a large part of survivability anyway. Think about a fight you've been in with a melee character that was actually close... then imagine doing less damage. You would have died... but you did more damage, so you didn't. (Well, unless that close fight involved reflected damage, but that's a whole other can of worms.)

So unless you're at the ridiculous extreme that melee is getting one- or two-shot, you don't need any more survivability; you just need the combat to be so short (or stun-intensive) that you only need worry about soaking up a single hit or two.

That is dynamic gameplay. That is what I'm going for. What I'm not going for is facetank everything mode. Hell, facetank is too strong right now and needs to be nerfed. It's caster facetank I'm talking about, though...

Four changes that would fix everything melee:

• Life Leech (and Mana Leech) supports changed to only work with physical attack damage; however, Life Gain on Hit (both support and from gear) changed to work with both non-attack hits and Ghost Reaver. (Damage effectiveness still applies, so Incinerate doesn't become OP.)
• Add a new skill that's pretty much Tempest Shield, except it requires dual-wielding and executes a free automatic basic attack when you block. Since it actually makes attacks, you'd be able to support it with Life Leech if you desire.
• Add a new keystone that allows you to wield two-handed axes, swords, and maces in one hand... but the drawback is "You can't use Spell, Totem, Trap or Mine skills." That means no more Curses or Auras for you either.
• Add a new item type. Whatever you call them, these would work like the jewels from Diablo 2; instead of socketing your items with active skills, you can socket them for passive stuff like +life.

Predicted results: Tempest Shield tank is taken from caster and given to melee (but caster can still try it with Life Gain on Hit), two-handed weapons become viable but require a large dedication (or you can play two-handed weapon the old-fashioned way), those two-handed users get extra passive stuff in exchange for not spamming Enfeeble and Decoy Totem, and Kaom's Heart wouldn't have a monopoly on sacrificing six sockets in exchange for getting a bunch of life.

No direct survivability buffs whatsoever.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Life Leech (and Mana Leech) supports changed to only work with physical attack damage

First, physical damage =/= melee damage, why so much hate to elemental damage melee build recently? Second, this would be duplicative to already available passives/item mods, so what's the reason for this?

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tmaciak wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Life Leech (and Mana Leech) supports changed to only work with physical attack damage

First, physical damage =/= melee damage, why so much hate to elemental damage melee build recently? Second, this would be duplicative to already available passives/item mods, so what's the reason for this?

Life leech is too OP to be allowed for casters. That's the primary reason for it.

In terms of elemental melee, either they're conversion-based or flat-elemental based. For conversion bases, they already have strong incentive to boost their physical damage, so no big issues there. For flat-elemental bases, they're naturally motivated towards very fast attack speeds, so Life Gain on Hit should be the natural choice.

Perhaps Life Gain on Hit needs some boosting, so that people actually make fast-attacking LGoH builds. Gem collects dust far too often. So that's why the elemental melee "hate," which isn't hate so much as wanting build diversity.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Perhaps Life Gain on Hit needs some boosting, so that people actually make fast-attacking LGoH builds. Gem collects dust far too often. So that's why the elemental melee "hate," which isn't hate so much as wanting build diversity.

My LS templar has about 7 APS so he could gain 7 * 44 = 308 life from LGoH. Theoretically we can drop in projectiles hits, but even if I always go inside mobs for better it is hard to predict, if they will hit something. At 9,5K DPS, I almost over capping LL rate considering my 4,4K HP pool. And LGoH has bigger multiplier than LL...

So you would have to increase gain from LGoH at least 3 times, to make it comparable to LL... I don't think that developers will be willing to do so.

And no, my LS templar is not standing far away and only spam projectiles, he is jumping into heart of the mob to be at his best effectiveness, he is my team walking decoy totem (small explanation, to do not be forced read again that LS is not melee enough skill).