Melee vs Ranged - Possible Sollution

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tmaciak wrote:

Spoiler

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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).

If you're only getting one hit off of LS per attack, you're doing it wrong. Especially if Chain is involved in any way, shape, or form.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

If you're only getting one hit off of LS per attack, you're doing it wrong. Especially if Chain is involved in any way, shape, or form.

It works quite efficiently so I don't think I'm doing it wrong. I just follow melee "LS" path and don't use it as lighting spear equivalent :) I have LS-Multistike-BM-LL-MPD-FA-Blind using Bringer of Rain. Will switch to 20%Q LS after I level one. Considering, that after few swings mobs are blinded, my attacks are effective, so still LGoH would be outperformed by LL by far.

And probably for a reason LL is from lvl 31 and LGoH is from lvl 12...

But OK. lets assume that we will follow your path. What about rangers? For example RoA rangers?

Hey Scrotie!

I have no melee chars, just some ranged ones, so I won't be stating my ideas on how melee works. I just don't know as I've never tested it in endgame maps and I would feel totally stupid to make some assupmtions on how it should work. I believe you understand it perfectly.

I would like to get some more insight on it from you!

As I assume from your posts regarding melee vs ranged disparity in this topic, you must have an extensive knowledge on the actual gameplay of melee build in endgame.

question 1)
Could you please tell me what maps you've been to with your main melee char (and on which league)?

question 2)
Could you please tell me what is your main melee char, what's its build? I am wondering what is the base for your ideas in this topic.

EDIT: I found however a statement of yours:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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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.

Concerning the ranged characters. I would assure you LL is not OP, it's just a bare surivability minimum.

I have only been to lvl 75 maps max (recently running lvl 70-73 mostly).

I have 9k armour, 77 all res, and 6 K DPS on my EKs, 5.5K ES CI Witch.
You can find the gear below and judge if that's endgame gear, or some trash.


Kinnat, battlemage

With that:
a) gear
b) passive build
c) active skills
d) LL

I am able to run maps 73+. Without any of a), b), c) or d) I wouldn't be able to do that with acceptable death count.

I may be wrong, but it's no vendor trash gear, and my build is also quite defensive. It's not the fact that a caster just needs the LL to survive. A caster needs LL and some serious gear investment.

I assume you tested comparable or higher level of maps with comparable level of gear to state that LL is too OP for casters.

question 3)
Could you please tell me what caster builds you used in maps that felt OP because of the fact you were able to use LL as a caster? It would be best if you'd link the build and your gear, if that's not a problem?

question 4)
I assume that you were able to do some maps lvl 73+ easymode with trash gear because of the fact you used LL as a caster? Could you please provide me with a description of encounters you found trivial because of LL?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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...

And by improving melee survivability WITHOUT messing with Passives or Items, I'm letting you get more offensive nodes to do more damage.
I agree dealing more damage helps

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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.

Where do two-handed weapon melee go? You force them to wield a shield or get the "titan grip" keystone? You call that a fix?

Here's some food for thought:
Ranged barely get hit, and when they do, they can survive 2-3 hits.
Melees need to be able to facetank a little.
You're going to possible get yourself surrounded by mobs, so you need to be able to survive more than 5 simultaneous attacks - by dodging, mitigating, whatever.

Several gameplay styles need to be supported.

I've made my suggestions on Evasion through "Balance Gauge", as well as this.
Both of them would be an improvement.
Perfect? Not a chance. There's certainly better.
But at least my suggestion doesn't skew or screw any kind of build, nor force players into certain gimmicks.

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Nurvus wrote:

Where do two-handed weapon melee go? You force them to wield a shield or get the "titan grip" keystone? You call that a fix?

Yes.

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Nurvus wrote:

Here's some food for thought:
Ranged barely get hit, and when they do, they can survive 2-3 hits.
Melees need to be able to facetank a little.
You're going to possible get yourself surrounded by mobs, so you need to be able to survive more than 5 simultaneous attacks - by dodging, mitigating, whatever.

Seriously not that much.

I use Cleave in races almost every time I race. So at the end of a longer race (say, 3 hours), you're in Cruel with crap gear because you've sped through Normal at mach three. Yet you're still hardcore melee. So how to survive?

Yes, life helps. Obviously. But the most important thing in my opinion is stunning. I'm normally going elemental Cleave templar, so it's not like I have stun nodes, or even the Stun support... instead I'm just counting on my attacks to keep enemies relatively locked down. In order to do that, I need to be doing good damage; the chance to stun caps at 50%, and although I'm normally only two-shotting enemies on crits, I'm virtually guaranteed to die if I'm not consistently three-shotting them. Of course, it's Cleave, so the DPS is pretty good; other melee skills are not so lucky.

The point is that playing under this mode makes you really see how closely damage and survivability are linked. When I start having to four-shot enemies, that's when I start to get that sinking, "I'm going to die unless I get a good drop real soon" feeling. There are some diminishing returns — going past two-shotting doesn't give a huge survivability boost — but in general DPS output is the most important element of melee survivability in races. I feel that's how melee should really play out, not some overgeared facetank mitigate-everything nonsense. I want it to still matter what direction I'm Cleaving in, and thus which enemies I'm stunning; I want to be manuevering so my character is going for that Cleave-optimized half-surround, rather than the Full Surround of Impending Death.

The problem is that this pattern isn't sustainable, because melee DPS drops off around Merciless. You end up becoming very reliant on curses and totems to create additional distractions, or stacking endurance charges, or some such. Some form of spell-forsaking Titan Grip would indeed allow melee to continue playing in that racer style into the lategame.

Hey Scrotie, could you please answer my questions from the post above?

I would like to know your experience from end-game, running high level maps with melee and caster builds as you posted opinions and ideas how both of them should be change (no LL for caster for example).

As far as melee on merciless, I have seen many melee builds on maps that were able to dish out serious damage and retain high survivability, relying on totems in some really bad situations (double Oak in Dark Forest with Vulnerability and 100% more Lightning Damage?).


So I would like to know what is the basis for your previous ideas on who the melee should be changed or why casters should use LL? You ran maps on HC, Onslaught, Anarchy, Standard? Solo, in party? You run maps up to level 77, or around 75 max? How many builds you tried - what melee build you used for maps, what caster builds you used?

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entropus wrote:

I would like to know your experience from end-game, running high level maps with melee

I don't. I pretty much just race melee, and I'm currently leveling a melee templar, although I've been very distracted lately. Partly because I keep checking the forums. I've leveled up race melee characters in Hardcore to somewhere in Merciless, then normally died somewhere and, it being Hardcore, abandoned them.

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entropus wrote:

and caster builds

This I have done. I had a CI witch with a 6L Tempest Shield, Iron Will + Crit Chance + Crit Damage + Chaos Damage + Life Leech. Also Fireball, with an ignite focus (crit chance instead of Chance to Ignite). I was essentially immortal; with 75% block chance and gaining large amounts of ES whenever I blocked, it was like Aegis Aurora but even better. I deleted the character as part of an effort to quit computer games for a month; this was some time ago, so I never got a chance to try a low-life Righteous Fire version with Shavronne's, which would have been even more stupid tanky, nor play around with Power Charge on Critical. I figure it would only be even stronger now, maybe even facetank map Kole strong. Getting enough ES to withstand two hits wouldn't be a problem with granite, and I figure Tempest Shield damage would now be high enough to leech back 1/3 of a Kole swing of damage.

The only other caster builds I've seriously fiddled with have been that same witch, but in previous incarnations. I didn't settle on that one build right away and tried many variations of the whole Fireball thing.

So yes, very strong opinion on the Life Leech support. It's the lynchpin in that build that allows for hyper-tanky casters. It's also why I want that dual-wield variant of Tempest Shield, capable of actually working with "new Life Leech" support; I'd rather have megatank Cleave duelists than megatank Fireball witches.

Scrotie, I'm not suggesting facetanking everything either.

3-4x 5% reduced damage doesn't make you facetank.
Make it 3% for all I care.

Following your logic, you need to do damage, and my suggestion lets you invest less in survivability and more in offense, accomplishing just that.

So yes, my suggestion improves damage dealt.

However, the difference between melee and ranged must be survivability.
It's not fair to let melee be the best dpsers.

Ranged survival is avoiding damage and contact entirely.
Melee survival should be stronger to compensate, such that, with the same amount of damage as a ranged build, you have a somewhat similar survivability.

Giving melee better damage just does this:
Let's facetankers invest even MORE into facetanking.
Let's glass cannons hit even harder.

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Nurvus wrote:

Scrotie, I'm not suggesting facetanking everything either.

3-4x 5% reduced damage doesn't make you facetank.
Make it 3% for all I care.

Following your logic, you need to do damage, and my suggestion lets you invest less in survivability and more in offense, accomplishing just that.

So yes, my suggestion improves damage dealt.

However, the difference between melee and ranged must be survivability.
It's not fair to let melee be the best dpsers.

It absolutely is fair, they have to waste time moving to their targets. As such, they should get compensation in the form of added DPS for the wasted movement.

But here's the real point: your suggestion doesn't attack the real problems. It's triggered off melee strikes, when the bulk of melee damage taken by a true meleer (and not a braindead facetank) is on approach to target, before any melee skills are used. It reinforces facetanking by punishing tactical movement, and it does this by encouraging standing still and spamming the same attack multiple times.

My suggestions have two primary goals: first, to transfer to current optimal facetanking mechanic away from casters (who most certainly do not need it) and to dual-wielding melee; and to promote two-handed weapon use using defenses that look and feel different from the standard Enfeeble+auras+totem defense that casters are just as likely to use. I'll admit the first is kind of pro-facetanking, but I'm not so much changing the game as changing who gets to use them, but I definitely feel I've put a lot more thought into this than you have.

1 -> 5 seconds is not standing still.
2 -> You lose 1 stack every 5 seconds, wich means if you use hit and run tactics, even if take more than 5 seconds to attack again, you'll probably preempt the enemy, getting the lost stack back before you get hit.
So no, it doesn't encourage facetanking.

I somewhat agree with your point on melee movement losing us dps. It might warrant a slight dps advantage.
However, it's worth noting that even though ranged doesn't need to move to do damage, enemy movement makes you occasionally miss attacks entirely.
So melee doesn't need as much compensation for movement as it might seem - still needs some.

I also agree getting hit while getting into position is an issue.
But isn't that what Leap Slam, Whirling Blades, and the old Phase Run are all about?
With them, you preempt the enemies, and get your stacks really fast/instantly by going into/through a group of enemies.

Plus, once you have the stacks going, you move faster, able to keep up the mayhem, and refreshing the stacks.

My suggestion even helps deal with Evasion's squishyness.

And the best part, it doesn't screw any kind of build.