Melee Skills Feel Bad… Again

Semi-sane exile here. I know GGG likes clear examples and suggestions. So after a brief intro I’ll get to the point.

I’ve played poe since the first beta. I was so excited to hear POE2 was re working melee because it desperately needed to be re worked.

Here’s what I’ve noticed after leveling two warriors - one into the 90s in the first early access patch, and one to 85 in the dawn of the hunt patch. I played molten blast the first time and leap slam, bone shatter, sunder this patch.

Molten Blast felt much better because it was far less “melee”

- Warrior feels great in the campaign when enemy mechanics have not scaled yet.

- Warrior feels worse and worse the further you get into the endgame.

- This is because as endgame difficulty scales, being slow is punished more and more exponentially.

- Floor 4 of Trial of the Sekhemas on Warrior? Why would you even bother? Every single mechanic disproportionally punishes being slow. Sand pits reduce action speed and make you even slower, you’re guaranteed to take chip damage during your long attack animations, and the floor 3 scorpion boss constantly resets its stun meter during its underground phase. Warriors lack of move speed and action speed means I have very few tools to deal with these limitations.

- I see all my friends getting stronger as they progress, but warrior just feels worse the farther I go, because endgame mechanics disproportionally punish melee skills generally, while punishing slow skills further, making it even worse, warriors have terrible move speed due to heavy armor and zero move speed on the tree.

- Meta builds on warrior completely ignore class mechanics and either abuse leap slam damage, or the mace splash weapon. But playing the warrior as the mace skill tree suggests it was designed to be played is just tedious and unfun because the endgame does not seem like it was designed for all the slow methodical setup required to stun, break armor, etc.

- I love the idea of setups for big damage, but the current endgame design disincentivizes it.

Problems:
- Warrior does not feel fun in the endgame.
- Slow methodical setups are not rewarded, and are in fact a sub optimal way to play the endgame.
- Warrior does not have enough tools to deal with endgame mechanics without relying on cheesy mechanics (abusing leap slam, abusing the mace splash weapon).
- it does not feel like melee is of equitable power compared to ranged builds.
- GGG seems to undervalue the implicit advantages faster / ranged classes have
- GGG seems to undervalue the implicit disadvantages of slower / melee classes.

Solutions:
- Give Warrior options to substantially increase skill speed and movement speed in a pinch. Could be rare / cooldown based.
- Cut way back on the fixed attack time if endgame mechanics are not going to be re worked to factor in a class that’s stuck with 2 second attack animations.
- Let warriors invest in move speed. I mean if we’re strong enough to dual wield two hand maces, surely we can run fast with armor on?
- Consider a shield skill that allows you to apply a short damage mitigation shield DURING an attack animation (maybe like poe1 molten shell)
- Consider additional skills that “feel fun” to use. Slow, set-up style skills wouldn’t feel so bad if we had faster, satisfying options to balance them. Like a fun utility shout that makes the next attack instant.
- Look at two handed balance: i would prefer to do less damage and be way faster; im sure many would agree.