The Biggest Problem With Warrior + Monk Balance is Double Dipping

Rolling Slam (gem level 18): +1.5 second attack time, first hit 282% damage, second slam 564% damage. With two handed mace around ~1s attack time, that's 2.5 seconds in total for 846% combined weapon damage, or 338.4% weapon damage per second.

Tempest Flurry is a bit harder to follow since it has less attack times involved. But, baseline, at 18 it has 140% attack speed and 170% damage, and most quarterstaves are 1.4/1.5 attacks per second. Going with 1.5 for easier math, that's 2.1 aps for the first hit, 1.365 for the second, 1.155 for the third, or 0.48s, 0.73s, and 0.87s attack time for the final, for a total attack animation for all three hits of 2.1 s for 510% combined damage / 2.1 seconds = 242.8% weapon damage per second.

At a glance, it looks like the warrior does more damage, but this is before we factor in things like support gems, extra final strike, and so on.

But, unlike Warriors, Monks are designed to combo things together, and that's where the damage scaling far outshines the warrior. Consider Charged Staff. Completely ignoring the added lightning damage (which for myself, currently, goes in the 4 - 80 range), while the buff is active at any level a 99% damage shockwave is launched with each attack. To go back to the Tempest Flurry example, if we add (3 attacks x 99% effectiveness) 287% damage to the 510%, we get 807% damage, divided by the 2.1 second attack cycle, for a total of 384.3% weapon damage per second.

The bell is even worse, having a damage per shockwave (before the 30% extra if you shock it) of 197%, but its a combo skill and centered on one place so can't be up near 100% of the time like Charged Staff. This also doesn't include the differences between the skills, such as Tempest Flurry scaling VERY well with attack speed (Thanks to the 140% multiplier) while Rolling Slam and basically every other mace skill have a flat value that cannot be reduced in any way.

Basically, while on paper the two skills as a basic attack seem balanced (warriors doing more damage over time but having more lead up and commitment), the rest of the monk kit combos very well to make their damage that much higher, while Warrior skills are standalone except for War Cries that aren't are cool down locked and not avaliable for every hit. The closest the maces get is Aftershocks, which are currently bugged and not damaging from Rolling Slam, but even if it did work is percentage based (while bell/charged stuff are guaranteed), and have a delay, so not as useful for clearing except for clean up (and not factoring in the range added by charged staff projectile and how useful that is for clearing).

The warrior playstyle speaks to simplicity over comboing, though, so I don't think the answer is to give them a double hit mechanic like the monk, but I do think the skills should be buffed in some way to make up for the fact they're meant to stand alone except for set ups around heavy stun and war cries. Personally, I'd say Rolling Slam should be able to use the Crescendo support to get a third slam and maybe a bigger AoE, but that's just me.

tl;dr: The skills seem balanced on paper, but Charged Staff and Tempest Bell supercharge them far beyond the warrior's stand alone playstyle.

The + to total attack time stat needs to be rebalanced entirely. I'd say cut it down by 50-70% on all skills where it is present and slightly reduce the base attack-speed to compensate. As it stands, skill speed and attack speed are absolutely terrible on melee builds. Enemies have multiple fast instant attacks in melee so ANY skill with an added attack time means guaranteed received damage. Even worse, if that received damage stuns you, you lost your damage and any empowerments you stacked.

Everything about the design of melee in PoE2 is bad decisions stacked on bad decisions.

The +x to attack/spell time is okay as a stat, but support gems for slow play just don't have enough upside. Comet is similar and running spell echo and considered casting are musts with it because spell speed doesn't effect half the skill, but melee equivalent gems simply aren't as good. Aftershock, ancestral boost etc all need more at this stage

In terms of usability, I don't like current implementation of crescendo on Ice Strike. It would be better to add another faster but weaker attack before the final attack.

Palm skills feel weird too. Base attack time is fixed so that it takes long even when hitting a mob right in front of the character. (there are palm skill nodes but not quite better than other general attack speed nodes.)
This could be fixed by making it like a channeling skill.

The current input waiting time for Ice Strike combo is set to be quite long so if we tap the button at a tempo while changing the target, it will become a completely different skill.

My gripe with the whole way they handled warrior's entire philosophy of adding irreductible use time. An unspoken issue above all other is that since the monk attacks come out far faster means you can get two or three attacks out and cancel out into a roll while the warrior would be lucky if he manage to land a single hit off his Rolling Slam.

Kinda insane crescendo ISNT an option on a lot of the skill, I could see making the long windup of a lot of these skill worth if I get to pop out 2 fissures, earthshatters, maybe even a longer stampede by increasing the steps...

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Joxalot#2482 wrote:

My gripe with the whole way they handled warrior's entire philosophy of adding irreductible use time. An unspoken issue above all other is that since the monk attacks come out far faster means you can get two or three attacks out and cancel out into a roll while the warrior would be lucky if he manage to land a single hit off his Rolling Slam.

Kinda insane crescendo ISNT an option on a lot of the skill, I could see making the long windup of a lot of these skill worth if I get to pop out 2 fissures, earthshatters, maybe even a longer stampede by increasing the steps...

+

Irreducible attack time is ok if the floor war reasonable and player agency still mattered. The current implementation is dog water.

At MOST irreducible attack time should be 0.5-0.6 seconds on big attacks. The skills with +1.4 seconds attack time completely invalidate attack speed as a damage/response time scaling stat.

I honestly hate the current design of melee in PoE2 and I hope it changes drastically.

Funny that you compare Warrior and Monk balancing when the real issue are Bow and CastOn/caster builds.

Sure both are melee, but oh boy, both are trash in comparison too everything range.

Melee needs a hard buff, not some nitpicking of some melee skills.

Also, its not a Warrior/Monk problem, its a Quarterstaff/Mace problem ...

I don't know how much of a difference breaking armor makes (even ignoring overbreak), but warriors are well placed for that while monks aren't so much.

That might be why maces seem a bit worse, perhaps.

Also, warriors can stack 4 totems in one spot and aoe the crap out of everything like they're a ranged build, if they want to, while still being a mace build.

Though I don't really understand a context of justification when there is no delegitimization involved, there are many features yet to be released so I think it's fine that we talk about what we expect.

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Cenerae#4481 wrote:

I don't know how much of a difference breaking armor makes (even ignoring overbreak), but warriors are well placed for that while monks aren't so much.

That might be why maces seem a bit worse, perhaps.

Also, warriors can stack 4 totems in one spot and aoe the crap out of everything like they're a ranged build, if they want to, while still being a mace build.

Icemonks explode whole screens with shattering Palm --> Ice Strike (+Herald of Ice). One is a "blink" that brings you directly to the enemies the other is basically your default attack.


Also... Monks (usually) do elemental damage, so breaking armour? Why...