Melee is broken

The game is awful for a slow attack, melee, or close-range builds! I have some ideas to help you improve the game for close-range builds.

Firstly, too many rare modifiers specifically harm melee. Siphon flask/mana and temporal bubbles are incredibly harmful to melee builds and should be removed or changed to allow melee to engage with them. It may be better to remove them entirely or change their area to have a safe space close to the monster, allowing for either close-ranged or far playstyles but punishing a failure of positioning. These are just poorly conceived mods, as the game is much easier for ranged players, meaning these modifiers are freebees for the players already having an easier time and excessively punishing for players already worse off.

Secondly, most, if not all, melee skills should have some built-in defense during animations. Animation lock is very real in this game, and too many skills expose the player to massive damage. A good idea would be to give some warrior skills base damage reduction during the animation and alternatively increase dodge/evasion for monks (to stay thematic). It seems like you are trying to avoid the fortify mistake, which allowed spellcasters to access very powerful defensive layers meant only for melee. Locking the player buffs directly to the animation will prevent other archetypes from exploiting these added defenses. Additionally, you may consider scaling the increased defenses to gem level, further reducing exploitation potential.

These are some ideas that are hopefully constructive.

I would accept if bubbles and siphons were reworked but I didn't find them hard so far. Melee does a lot of damage even with 0 mana and no skills. I kill these guys before they are a problem anyway so it never gets to that.

> The game is awful for a slow attack, melee, or close-range builds!

Can't agree with this part as I had a very easy and fun time so far but I didn't finish campaign yet.

Melee in general is getting the shaft (classic GGG)

The Window for DPS is just too small for the huge damage risk we take.

I see Vids of Ranged and Spell casters running around dodging and the Boss damage counter is just Rolling up like the US Deficit. The player is literally clicking one button then spends the next 8s running around and the DPS is happening. Melee have to dodge dodge get in close attack ONCE dodge dodge. Its so stupid. The only way to make this ok would be that ONE hit did 5-10x the damage.

If you think melee is weak, you're utterly bad at this game. Like, laughably bad.

You don't need to roll every half second. As a melee character, you have means to build up your staying power and simply facetank. Both Warrior and Monk can do that just fine, provided you have some basic idea how one should create a build.

You don't need to be fast if you can take half of the boss HP in one combo.

You don't need to zoom around the map when you can simply walk up to enemies and smack them in the face.

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just_dont#6539 wrote:

If you think melee is weak, you're utterly bad at this game. Like, laughably bad.

You don't need to roll every half second. As a melee character, you have means to build up your staying power and simply facetank. Both Warrior and Monk can do that just fine, provided you have some basic idea how one should create a build.

You don't need to be fast if you can take half of the boss HP in one combo.

You don't need to zoom around the map when you can simply walk up to enemies and smack them in the face.

You probably don't even play melee, it's not only Mapping that feels absolutely horrible for melee but Sanctum aswell, which is when i last checked mandatory to get an early ascendancy + 5th and 6th point.

The biggest issue is getting shotgunned by multiple range mobs or getting surrounded cuz your slams are super slow.

Warrior here melee not having any issues in mapping.

0 problems with the campaign as well

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GermanKilla#2153 wrote:

You probably don't even play melee

I play warrior. Presuming much?

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GermanKilla#2153 wrote:

it's not only Mapping that feels absolutely horrible for melee but Sanctum aswell, which is when i last checked mandatory to get an early ascendancy + 5th and 6th point.

Sanctum is anti-melee in design, that's absolutely true. However the presence of sanctum doesn't make all melee bad.

If you want your 3rd and 4th ascendancy as melee - do ultimatum, it hates everyone equally.

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GermanKilla#2153 wrote:

The biggest issue is getting shotgunned by multiple range mobs or getting surrounded cuz your slams are super slow.

There's a node that specifically ramps your armor against projectiles. It provides a notable upgrade vs physical stuff. For nonphysical, you obviously go max res, you can't expect to survive otherwise in melee.

There are sources of +% skill speed, which speed up your entire skill (yes, even the "wait X.X seconds" part).

So you can adjust these moments just fine... if you want.

Warrior just makes me wanna play D4 or anything else for that matter.

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zedfighter#5207 wrote:

Warrior just makes me wanna play D4 or anything else for that matter.

Looking at D4 barb makes me wanna play PoE2 more.
D4 is so incredibly pathetic at making melee feels melee, it actually hurts.

Nova sorcs and wind druids are more "melee" than goddamn barbs.