Melee Classes DESERVE 10% more movement speed and 20% damage reduction—Here’s Why!

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SelkieTheSeal#5934 wrote:

"there are no melee classes in PoE (Path of Exile)" overlooks the distinction between class identity and playstyle specialization. While it's true that every class in PoE can theoretically use any weapon or skill, the game inherently encourages specialization through ascendancy choices, gear optimization, and skill synergy. Many players gravitate toward specific archetypes—such as melee-oriented builds—that focus on close-range combat despite the flexibility of the system.

Currently both of the monk ascendancies lend themselves quite well for either a bow or a spellcasting build, while also having some of the strongest defensive ascendancy nodes in the game and easy access to the best defensive nodes in the tree. Giving them inherent damage reduction would just make them the best ranged class.

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HolmesinJussi#1854 wrote:

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SelkieTheSeal#5934 wrote:

"there are no melee classes in PoE (Path of Exile)" overlooks the distinction between class identity and playstyle specialization. While it's true that every class in PoE can theoretically use any weapon or skill, the game inherently encourages specialization through ascendancy choices, gear optimization, and skill synergy. Many players gravitate toward specific archetypes—such as melee-oriented builds—that focus on close-range combat despite the flexibility of the system.

Currently both of the monk ascendancies lend themselves quite well for either a bow or a spellcasting build, while also having some of the strongest defensive ascendancy nodes in the game and easy access to the best defensive nodes in the tree. Giving them inherent damage reduction would just make them the best ranged class.

But to get those monk ascendancies, you’ve got to sacrifice so much damage by skipping other key nodes. Like, yeah, they have solid defensive options, but points are limited—there are a ton of choices, but you can’t take them all. If you go heavy on defense, your damage output tanks, and if you lean into offense, you lose the durability that makes melee even playable.

Meanwhile, ranged builds don’t have to make those same sacrifices. They stay at a distance and avoid a lot of damage naturally just by positioning. Giving monks inherent damage reduction wouldn’t suddenly make them the best ranged class—it would just help balance things out for melee, which has to take hits constantly while still trying to do enough damage to clear content. And let’s be honest, it’s especially needed for warriors.

Melee classes have access to movement skills that ranged characters don't that let them gap close. Maybe those skills should be buffed or maybe they shouldn't and I'm not familiar enough with them yet to recommend either way.

As for the damage reduction I think just buffing the "tank" stats they already have would suffice. Buffing armour in some way and/or buffing strength to give 3 life per point would work as examples.

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SelkieTheSeal#5934 wrote:

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Herbeh#6842 wrote:

In poe they introduced fortify, which ended up being placed on shield charge by wanders to give them all the benefits without the drawbacks. GGG changed fortify so it wasn't always 20% and now it's rarely used. This issue would be worse now that we have smart weapon swapping and most of the tree is generic damage instead of weapon specific wheels.

The game is simply more complex than that and you're suggesting a change that has been proven to not work. The key to melee is to layer multiple defenses and get good

Your get good argument completely misses the point about melee challenges in POE 2. Sure, layering defenses is important, but melee builds are forced to take way more risks than ranged ones. They have to be in the middle of the action, eating AoEs and dealing with boss mechanics up close, while ranged builds can chill in the back, dodging and kiting. Telling melee players to just "get good" is ignoring the fact that the game is stacked against them in terms of risk versus reward.

The Fortify example doesn't prove the concept was bad—it just shows that GGG made it too accessible, so non-melee builds abused it. That’s a design issue, not a sign that melee survivability tools don't work. With how generic the passive tree is now and smart weapon swapping, melee builds are left with even fewer ways to feel truly "melee." Dismissing this with "just play better" ignores the real problem: melee inherently has to work harder for less payoff in PoE's system. It’s not just about skill; the mechanics need better balancing to make melee worth the effort.

Melee will always have to work harder than ranged no matter what you do because projectiles are the strongest thing available, period. The changes in settlers were actually a step in the right direction where melee has massive damage multipliers to make up for its inherent disadvantage, because mechanically you'll never balance being up close to being at range.

Also ranged attacks don't get access to block, and spells only will if they sacrifice up to 200%increased damage and +gem levels on a focus/staff AND possibly crit. Block is massively powerful and far more accessible than in poe 1.

One thing they could change is to double or triple the life regen in the warrior start, because there's really not enough to compete with ES recharge even with flasks. The lower left side of the tree could also use more resistances and maybe max res to replace some of the stun threshold because we have way too much of that. Blanket less damage taken just doesn't fit when the game is literally built on players exploiting mechanics, and we'll find a way to apply that on ranged characters.

movespeed would be nice but I don't think it needs to melee specific because we move at a glacial pace until we hit 15% ms on boots

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Melee will always have to work harder than ranged no matter what you do because projectiles are the strongest thing available, period. The changes in settlers were actually a step in the right direction where melee has massive damage multipliers to make up for its inherent disadvantage, because mechanically you'll never balance being up close to being at range.

Also ranged attacks don't get access to block, and spells only will if they sacrifice up to 200%increased damage and +gem levels on a focus/staff AND possibly crit. Block is massively powerful and far more accessible than in poe 1.

One thing they could change is to double or triple the life regen in the warrior start, because there's really not enough to compete with ES recharge even with flasks. The lower left side of the tree could also use more resistances and maybe max res to replace some of the stun threshold because we have way too much of that. Blanket less damage taken just doesn't fit when the game is literally built on players exploiting mechanics, and we'll find a way to apply that on ranged characters.

movespeed would be nice but I don't think it needs to melee specific because we move at a glacial pace until we hit 15% ms on boots

Very well put.

I'd also like to mention that max res was the way melee/strength oriented builds were balanced in PoE1, but res and max res are messy and could honestly use a rework too. I made a whole post about it that I've been shamelessly linking around and will link here too. Basically I would recommend the same thing with max res being around the strength section of the tree, but instead of max res it would be More res and res would be reworked to be a formula instead. I love PoE, but some of their scaling mechanics really could use an overhaul badly.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3629096

I don't agree with tying it to classes inherently, but it would be nice to see more flexible ascendancies, particularly given the difficulty of acquiring them as melee.

I agree with tying it to weapon archetypes, but I think that would come in the form of implicits on the weapons, no? Like warstaves used to (mostly) get block chance to some degree, but now only a select few do.

This is also exacerbated by the new passive tree, where staff block nodes have moved out of the top side of the tree. There's 2 small clusters near the border of monk and mercenary which is a definite investment to arrive at. The new tree has pathing nodes for the pathing nodes - incredibly 'feels bad' value. There's a few more by wherever templar used to be (ele witch?), bordering marauder, but only half are generic, the others are mixed with shield nodes.

Keeping the identity alive could mean that rather than 18% block on a warstaff, a 2h mace might provide -5% movspd +10% dr or whatever, but as you know, movespeed is really important too. There's only one 3% node on the left half the tree for movespeed. There should be some way to pick up more - even if it has thematic tradeoffs, like tying it to rage, warcries, or x% per spell selfcast in the last y seconds, kind of thing.

I league started a melee witch and let me tell you was that ever not the play.
It progressively got better at certain breakpoints as skills unlocked, but yesterday I rerolled a 2nd char (also a melee hybrid) and was playing A1 with a bow and it was just night and day. I had died upwards of 40 times in A1 on my first playthru. This time /deaths up until Rathbreaker - where I had swapped back to melee lol - was 3 before and 24 after, without twink gear.

There's two other issues I am frustrated with:

1) Desync & bodyblocking as melee. It's incredibly frustrating to be subject to an additional death vector, where slowing effects on your character will desync you (like those spiders in the corridors leading up to Balbala) and cause melee skills to whiff the air. Perfect strike is particularly prone to charging up, perfect release, and then it hits nothing because you've desync'd, or it's started the charge while out of range, despite clicking on a mob. Like the shift-click behaviour of cast in place, but for a melee skill? It's really awkward.

2) Autoaim - skills should not (apart from ones that require a target) magnetize towards mobs independently of where my cursor is aiming. It is so incredibly frustrating trying to aim things like frostbolt, which pierce, down the middle of 2 packs, and have it gravitate to 1 pack or the other, preventing me from applying effective CC. Sometimes it even autoaims 90 degrees acutely. Melee skills are not immune to this either, though it's somewhat ameliorated if the weapon has an aoe property to its attack.

Not sure if movement speed and damage reduction is the way to go to properly balance melee.

But you can add a skill that gives this bonus inherent on melee weapons, just like some staff skills have this weapon, and have this bonus become bigger(and thus more relevant)the higher the level of the weapon.

This means: If you want to be faster as a caster, you need a lot of strength, or get a low-level boost equipping a low level mace

And if that is even unwanted, spawn that mod only on higher weapons, and force everyone to have at least 150 strength or smt to equip said weapons. I don't think there will be a lot of mages willing to go to 150 strength just to get more movement and defences(ON SWAP)

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Appels_Zijn_Gezond#0575 wrote:

And if that is even unwanted, spawn that mod only on higher weapons, and force everyone to have at least 150 strength or smt to equip said weapons. I don't think there will be a lot of mages willing to go to 150 strength just to get more movement and defences(ON SWAP)

youd be surprised.




how about putting it on the melee passive notables?

1% or 2% movespeed on each of the big notables for damage with maces etc?


how many spell casters are going to spec into 5 wheels of phys damage with 1h maces in order to get 10% movespeed?

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Appels_Zijn_Gezond#0575 wrote:

I don't think there will be a lot of mages willing to go to 150 strength just to get more movement and defences(ON SWAP)

Just a note about this point, it would still be somewhat usable as there's mods like -28% attributes required. It's currently seeing some desirability for Giant's Blood characters. Blood mages at least also life based so strength isn't an utterly dead stat either, but I'm unsure how viable Iron Will is in PoE2.

I'll think about a suggestion that could make melee viable...