Melee is bad, Monk is worse

in the end its a symptom of annoying design flaws that seem to be most apparent early on with this class

end of Act 2 is such a horrible experience. I crafted the highest dps staff possible at for my level, fairly high resistances and evasion, kitted him with gear I farmed with the 6 other characters I have, runes, highest lvl skill gems possible, got my first ascension. I even switched my build to meta and still there are is so many flaws in encounter and level design, it just fuses into a pile of bs.

for example
- enemy range attacks just passing through obstacles while mine get blocked
- killing palm not hitting 50% of the time because a vase is between me and an enemy
- essential skills like killing blow or staggering blow getting interupted, leaving you exposed, damaged and without charges to hit back. triple punishment, how fun...
- low damage and defenses despite using best items possible at the time
- enemies respawning after death is the icing on the cake of feeling like rolling a boulder up a hill. let us go back and kill the fricking group of monsters that just killed us! in D2 I can retry a tough mob that might have a tough constellation of modifiers and adds, you can learn from it and get accomplishment of overcoming.

the safe way seems to hang back and using glacial cascade ad infinitum. as soon as you try to use the mechanics the game gives you have to endure so much punishment just to get to the point to being able to dish out some damage. attack wind ups and palm strikes are so slow it leaves you with 1/3 life left before you even land 1 big attack. you either have to use a shield or go full ES which honestly SUCKS and destroys melee archetypes on a fundamental level. it feels so horrible playing melee that switching to a ranged class is like playing a totally different game all together. that should make you think at least a little bit.

here you have to slog through all new mobs AGAIN, destroying all sense of accomplishment and punishing you on top of the punishment. this game is full of anti fun mechanics like this, the honour system, exp loss on death, maps only allow 1 life etc.

if you want a slower, methodical and precise gameplay experience you need to finetune the systems a lot, cause its PoE 1.5 at the moment and I don`t want that tbh

Yeah monk is clunky but i tried to beat acts with a warrior for weeks and blasted through them the moment i switched to quarterstaff blood mage. It's so easy in comparison it's not even funny, so saying "monk is worse" is crazy.

But yeah things like palm skills were clearly designed around "slow and methodical" gameplay and feel absolutely terrible.

I think melee isnt half bad - it just seems to be way more gear and build dependent than any other class.

Also melee from my point of view feels way worse compared to other classes early game and if you dont have good gear/good build.

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

Yeah monk is clunky but i tried to beat acts with a warrior for weeks and blasted through them the moment i switched to quarterstaff blood mage. It's so easy in comparison it's not even funny, so saying "monk is worse" is crazy.

But yeah things like palm skills were clearly designed around "slow and methodical" gameplay and feel absolutely terrible.

that`s not melee though is it? I dont want to play a mage, I want to bonk things with a stick and play Wukong basically. this monks basic movements are so sluggish and slow, they need to make all his attacks 25% faster. look at what Shaolin monks can do. the attack speed especially of crucial things like palm strikes is utter shit

There are times when it pays to use the powerful quarterstaff attack rather than your skills because it is so fast.

Also, unless you're playing SSF, buying a powerful staff with at least 4 potent affixes, lots of Phys DPS, and + to level of melee skills is cheap. Does it suck to have to shortcut the game this way, yes, but it's the GGG way. Of course, no one will fault you for you for playing the way you want, however, trade gets you over hurdles.

I do agree the palm-based monk skills suck ass both for attack speed (which doesn't make any sense at all) and accuracy. I only use one to generate power charges in a pinch.

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Brzlmo#0565 wrote:

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

Yeah monk is clunky but i tried to beat acts with a warrior for weeks and blasted through them the moment i switched to quarterstaff blood mage. It's so easy in comparison it's not even funny, so saying "monk is worse" is crazy.

But yeah things like palm skills were clearly designed around "slow and methodical" gameplay and feel absolutely terrible.

that`s not melee though is it? I dont want to play a mage, I want to bonk things with a stick and play Wukong basically. this monks basic movements are so sluggish and slow, they need to make all his attacks 25% faster. look at what Shaolin monks can do. the attack speed especially of crucial things like palm strikes is utter shit

what do you mean 'not melee'? he's using a quarterstaff. nothing about picking witch locks you into casting spells. it's just a choice of ascensions and placement in the passive tree.

also, the palm skills teleport you to the target. you're expected to roll out and dash back in a lot.

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Glorfndel01#6465 wrote:

There are times when it pays to use the powerful quarterstaff attack rather than your skills because it is so fast.

Also, unless you're playing SSF, buying a powerful staff with at least 4 potent affixes, lots of Phys DPS, and + to level of melee skills is cheap. Does it suck to have to shortcut the game this way, yes, but it's the GGG way. Of course, no one will fault you for you for playing the way you want, however, trade gets you over hurdles.

I do agree the palm-based monk skills suck ass both for attack speed (which doesn't make any sense at all) and accuracy. I only use one to generate power charges in a pinch.

playing SSF but crafted the strongest staff I can have atm, + max phys damage, + fire and ice dmg, 2 runes raising phys dmg by another 40%. I have a lot of resources from all my other characters, scary to imagine how bad monk progress would be without build guide and resources collected with other chars...

Invoker in itself is very good but melee suffers from Life and armor being bad. Go ES and CI or you will wipe a lot!
Also feels like lots of rare mods exist only to piss off melee players, often I end up killing the rare mob with storm wave instead of Tempest flurry because there is some random garbo preventing me from coming close. And by the time a opening window shows up the mob is already dead or at low HP. So just range kill it and wait for the on death effect to explode...

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drkekyll#1294 wrote:

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Brzlmo#0565 wrote:

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

Yeah monk is clunky but i tried to beat acts with a warrior for weeks and blasted through them the moment i switched to quarterstaff blood mage. It's so easy in comparison it's not even funny, so saying "monk is worse" is crazy.

But yeah things like palm skills were clearly designed around "slow and methodical" gameplay and feel absolutely terrible.

that`s not melee though is it? I dont want to play a mage, I want to bonk things with a stick and play Wukong basically. this monks basic movements are so sluggish and slow, they need to make all his attacks 25% faster. look at what Shaolin monks can do. the attack speed especially of crucial things like palm strikes is utter shit

what do you mean 'not melee'? he's using a quarterstaff. nothing about picking witch locks you into casting spells. it's just a choice of ascensions and placement in the passive tree.

also, the palm skills teleport you to the target. you're expected to roll out and dash back in a lot.

there`s a thing called class phantasy or archetypes. for example best melee build is wearing a dress and using ES instead of life. I rather not play the game than do that. if witch is a better melee class than monk or warrior there is something seriously wrong with your game.

palm strike teleports me in alright but misses all the time, gets interrupted or blocked by a vase :D. also rolling doesn`t make you invulnerable, no chance doing that without getting hit a bunch in tight corridors.

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Brzlmo#0565 wrote:

there`s a thing called class phantasy or archetypes. for example best melee build is wearing a dress and using ES instead of life. I rather not play the game then do that. if witch is a better melee class than monk or warrior there is something seriously wrong with your game.

palm strike teleports me in alright but misses all the time, gets interrupted or blocked by a vase :D. also rolling doesn`t make you invulnerable, no chance doing that without getting hit a bunch in tight corridors.

lol you're defensive, aren't you? no one claimed witch was better. i was just pointing out that your assumption that his witch wasn't melee because it's a witch was wrong. chill, dude.