Melee Experience

I want to give some feedback regarding my experience with a melee build. I just reached mapping, I'm in t3. I have participated in all league content so far. This is my second time getting baited into Acolyte of Chayula so, well, it's my bad. But I guess I dream that every time you touch this class it will somehow become good.

This game is incredibly melee unfriendly, unless you are in late game and completely blast everything.

I will not get into performance issues, but mob density in abyss and particle effects have crashed my game twice. I assume these will get fixed. I want to get into the frustrating experience of reaching early endgame, being poor and starved of gear and currency and just want to grind.

I'm in a map with 2 modifiers and no extra content, coz I failed it. Elemental resistance in mobs, extra fire damage if I remember correctly
Let's start with ground effects.



Everything on the left hand side is no go. I have around 33k dps with the current buffs of my bar with ice strike. Should be more than plenty for early game. I haven't detonated volatility coz I keep it for when I need it. We have poisoned ground, lightning circles, exploding walls, casters throwing stuff from afar. This essentially means my dps is meaningless. I can't get in there in my early mapping when I don't even have resistances maxed. Which brings me to the core problem

When I kill something or play well, I get punished . I have to wait for the ground effects of the mobs I just killed to dissipate or spam health flask. My buffs last from 5 to 20 seconds (5 for breach flames which is completely useless so I specced out of it, 20 for mantra of destruction flames, 10 for volatility). So I have to go through the mobs or risk my dps dropping from 33k to ~9k and having to re-combo it, with higher risk of dying of course.

So, I managed to kill this wave of mobs. I am greeted by this monstrosity.



What even is this? What am I supposed to do here? There are two rares with laser beams, one of which has shroud and chilled ground which debuffs me for 30% skill speed. So it teleports next to me, makes my actions 30% slower and it also has a poison aura, which means even if I dodge behind it to avoid the laser I ~slowly~ quickly die.



Chilled ground really grinds my gears by the way. Or anything that chills.Do you know just how much 30% is? I feel like I'm playing in slow motion. My buffs don't last as much sometimes.

I die twice, finish the content, then it's time to open a rare chest.



Alright, unlucky I guess.

I press on.

A pack of magic mobs. At this point all my buffs have expired. DPS is at 9k.



Where do I stand on this screen? If I want to attack, build my combo and stack my buffs I need to go in but I have to wait for the ice explosions. Bonus poison ground, so I can walk at around 5% of the map I see on the screen, without attacking of course. So I do the sensible thing. I get some attacks in, and dodge roll out of the circles before explosion. I should be rewarded right?



Well tough luck I guess. Good job dodging this, but you just activated the trap card, chilled ground. Now you gotta kill the magic mobs with a debuff. Which is insane btw, 30% is not balanced at all.

We can also discuss how frustrating the stupid mobs in Ogham Manor that leave a blood pool behind for 5-6 seconds are. Or the worms that explode leaving poison pools. Or the abyss rares that make your whole screen unwalkable from the ground poison. Or the shielded monsters that constantly interrupt my attacks because they have a shield and I can't kill them fast enough or stagger them. My buffs expire waiting for the aoe to dissipate. There are so many mobs that you get punished for killing, or playing well (dodging their attacks) it's insane. I cannot build any momentum unless I spam health flask. Ultimately, this also runs out.

At the end of the day, this is just not fun. I will of course reroll and try a meta build, coz why not? I play games for fun not to struggle. Given the melee difficulty, my skills should be doing triple the damage of ranged, to account for the downtime. Of course that's not the case. Then at least stop punishing me for playing well.

Ya I got into mapping and I'm a melee build as well. I'm getting swarmed by particle effects and thousands of mobs. I like the feeling of getting overwhelmed, but I can't really see what is going on with all the particle effects.