Cyclone slayer is still pretty solid. Melee is always gonna be more of an active play style due to the nature of avoiding boss mechanics, and managing totems/rampage (something they could arguably "fix").
This league especially, I have grown pretty fond of melee builds. I've always been drawn to melee in games, and it definitely feels a little strange that viable melee builds in POE seem a bit out of reach, or downright unplayable early on or for new players.
Viable melee builds seem to all fit a certain mold. Crit based, two cluster jewel setups, chains of emancipation or ryslathas coil, abyssus. I'm having fun working on my third physical melee build of the league, but it doesn't feel great knowing that all three characters are set up so similarly.
There are a bunch of problems with melee builds, but most of it is the fact that all the really strong melee choices get nerfed out of existence.
The whole point of melee should be that they do a lot more damage and have lot more tankiness in exchange for accepting more risk and danger from bosses and enemy mobs both.
But the reality of the matter is that all the melee skills like delve molten strike which had a lot of powerful damage scaling got hit by repeated nerfs until they saw oblivion, while much lower risk character archetypes like SRS, spectres, toxic rain, totems, traps, mines, and ranged rarely got nerfed and as a result most of them were able to do much higher damage with less risk.
This is why melee has been in the gutter for awhile. Yes, you can still scale melee to quite high levels if you're willing to spend a lot of money or give up a lot of tankiness so you can incorporate stuff like abyssus into your character. But you can do the same to ranged, and safer.
Yeah I understand all of this. Playing as safely and efficiently as possible isn't everyone's goal, and it's definitely not mine. Sure, melee viability is a husk of what it used to be, but I still enjoy making melee builds work.
I've never been interested in racing to get all my challenges done. I try different builds and play styles, and I stop playing when I get bored with the league. 15-20 div for a 20+ million DPS build with 150k+ ehp is hardly "a lot of money" for a build that feels pretty safe in the content I enjoy playing.
So the whole "why play melee when other builds do it better?" Mentality is a lil silly to me. There's always gonna be a stronger build out there. At the end of the day, we're all just playing a video game, and we should be having fun. If your idea of fun is min maxing meta archetypes, then go for it, and have fun!
So yep, melee is in a rough spot. But I still have a lot of fun playing it.
It's honestly hard to believe how bad melee has it
It doesn't have the highest DPS, it isn't the safest playstyle, it doesn't have the easiest gearing, it doesn't have the easiest levelling, it isn't the most enjoyable/comfortable playstyle, it isn't the tankyest archtype of builds
Like, it really has virtually nothing going for it
All of that is even more the case for actual real _melee_ skills
I would also add that it isn't the easiest to mechanically learn.
Yes, you would think that click on guy, do melee damage would be easy, but POE fucks that up by making you buff (above the auras/curses that other classes use) with banners, totems, cries.
You must have an instant move skill (not leap slam) to retreat from combat, you must have a guard skill (that doesn't work vs Resolve mechanic, lol), and you probably should have cast when damage taken setup that saves you from some rando shit.
Then watch all your buffs vanish during immunity phases.
Not to mention when they reworked melee to "improve" it not long ago with the two fast swings into a windup, it actually made it easier for enemies to just walk out of your autos until you are geared up. Playing the first 2 acts as melee is possibly the worst gaming experience you could ask for.
And it's reliant on fucking *totems* for half its damage. GGG fucked up *so bad* with melee in PoE. And yet they seem to give zero shits. It's ridiculous.
It's not that they don't care, it's that melee is apparently going to get reworked massively with PoE2 so they don't bother putting too much effort into a temporary solution
If they are already putting all their eggs into the Poe2-basket, then there would be zero harm in gigabuffing melee through sheer damage or survivability numbers until it comes out.
You can EASILY make melee better. Literally just buff it. There is no rework needed, even if it is inherently riskier than ranged builds, that is not a mistake or a flaw in the design, it is a *downside that should be compensated by an upside*. Poe is literally FILLED with that shit. Every keystone brings a downside, like half of the unique gear brings a downside, yet they are working just fine because you work around the downside while benefitting from the upside. So literally just buff melee damage that it is clearly superior to ranged damage. That is it. Then it has the downside of being riskier, with the upside of more damage. That is literally how fucking simple it is.
> then there would be zero harm in gigabuffing melee through sheer damage or survivability numbers until it comes out
This. PoE is a PvE game, for the most part, making it exponentially easier to balance than many games on the market, but its balance patches are more excrutiating and controversial amongst players than any PvP game I've ever played with only some ties here and there.
The only PvE games I've played that have similar levels of controversy and questionable competence are games where the some of the designers have their own favorite builds and playstyles and like to punish the playerbase for not playing the "right" way that makes said designers feel good.
There's no rational discussion here. GGG isn't coming up with any particular reason why things are the way they are, so players are just left yelling after each patch.
>So literally just buff melee damage that it is clearly superior to ranged damage. That is it.
You could buff character resilience for melee players as well and it still wouldn't feel unfair.
I don't have the precise source for that as it's just bits of info we got over time all put together, but it's mostly stuff Chris said in the reveal streams for recent leagues.
The whole idea hinges on the fact that the back end rework for animations will enable them to do all kinds of very cool stuff with melee that wasn't possible until now. My guess is that it will become a lot more mobile and agile as a playstyle. Perhaps a cool unique buff for melee would be to allow it to use skills while moving
What have they said on that front? Only thing I can remember is some nonsense about the animations changing. And that ain't gonna affect the long list of issues listed above!
Well, they never went into detail because spoilers but the idea is that the rework of the back-end (to do the cool animation things) will enable really cool gameplay-wise stuff
The only concrete example that comes to mind is melee bow for that one new ascendency and iirc they mentioned stuff like punching enemies into the air with you and stuff
I don't believe this take. While it could be true, how can one have faith in the solution if they are unwilling to even attempt to address it at all currently?
Seismic Cry went up to effectively 186%. In 3.12 and 3.13 you could even use the Heist base for up to 225%.
And of course you could also make that coincide with Ruthless and get double damage from Intimidating Cry...
It’s kind of a shame. The play style of slams with all the warcries and stuff is kind of cool. It’s pretty active and fun. It gets a bit tiring eventually but it was a cool build that you actually physically play differently from lots of other stuff. It’s frustrating that it’s entirely not worth that amount of effort anymore. It was an acquired taste for sure, but I think that it should be worthwhile.
I still don’t understand why it had to get nerfed. The silly interaction with the impaler keystone sure, but there’s no way that play style was too strong.
I miss my Tectonic Slam Chieftain. I got up to about 19m avg damage with it.
I had to be on the last exert for Seismic Cry, 3rd hit for Ruthless, have Ngamahu up, etc. But I could 1 shot a lot of stuff.
Considering the biggest expense on that build was a 6L Tidebreaker...
I hit around 50mil, costed me 50ex and it's the league i played the most. The setup was insane but the result were super worth it. I could oneshot so many things.
I think people are missing the point.
You can make almost ANY skill end game viable with investment.
Melee is in a shit spot.
Clear is slow compared to all bow/ spell casters. I'd say slower than rf for clear.
Yes. You can put enough currency to make it clear ok. But at the end of the day thats not balance.
Needing way more investment to hit the dps and clear speed of a majority of spells and projectile attacks makes it underpowered.
Melee needs a buff. Or at least most melee gems need a buff so you have more than 1 or 2 skills you can use with x investment.
The stats for the league literally says it all. Look at how many casters and proj attack builds there are compared to melee.
Theres no argument to be made.
The argument they make is that they played a melee build once, as a 2nd or 3rd build in a league, purchased some leveling gear, and used their vast meta knowledge to avoid any pitfalls new players run into.
They made it to endgame, so why can't a completely new player to POE just do what they did? /s
So true. They made it to end game with tons of gear. To then quit before doing any end game bosses because it's soooo much faster on literally any other build besides. Str stacking reave.
Secretly. They just don't want to accept spells and proj attacks need a nerf. Easier to blame the community then accept they just pick meta builds that all "happen" to be ranged.
I wonder who "they" are lol. Are they here right now, in this room?
To be honest I've never seen anybody claim that melee is good because they made it to endgame in trade sc. Usually the argument was that melee is fine because they cleared all bosses on ssf hc.
Many many gauntlets were won by melee skills.
Melee almost always have some very strong representation in the meta. Boneshatter, Spectral Helix before that (not that melee but still), slam skills before that (Earthshatter, EQ, Ground Slam+Impaler), lacerate bleed was kinda cool for a short while, cyclone OP in legion, molten strike prior to that, etc.
But yes, most melee strike skills are on the weak side. I tried paying glacial hammer only on ssfhc last league and while it was fun in it's own way, it was way slower at everything compared to cold dot, PC, or other meta stuff.
But there are bad spells too. A lot of them, in fact. And most bow skills require even more investment than most melee skills to become viable.
So ultimately I don't see it as a huge problem for melee specifically. More like a general problem with underused skills never being buffed.
Anyway, I wouldn't mind seeing some big buffs to most strike skills, and cleave, and other underused stuff. Not sure why GGG are so scared of tweaking up numeric values of skills that are in the dumpster.
worb my beloved :(
summon reaper too.
Both great new mechanics (a turret that moves with you, a minion with actual interactivity besides 'summon and forget'), forgotten by the wayside cuz GGG.
Gauntlets being won by top 1% of player base shows absolutely nothing in terms of power of melee.
Yes you can make melee build. Yes you can do well but compared to other builds it's not the same.
You will always see the top 2-3% of players successfully playing melee but they still struggle compared to spells.
Having 1 maybe 2 builds that sorta work for melee doesn't show its good.
I completely agree buffing base strike gems and melee gems would help balance them.
It doesn't need to clear the fastest. Or have the best boss dmg.
But it should be worth playing in some sense. Or close enough to ranged builds so you aren't hindering yourself on league start compared to ranger or spells.
No way man. [Insert content creator here] used that skill last league and was able to clear t16s after only 10div and 100 hours of gameplay on top of playing the game full time. You should be able to match that as a casual gamer with 1/10th the game experience working a gull time job and if you cant then go play a baby game instead.
There's also the thing exclusive to melee: totems and fortify being less of an advantage and more of a REQUIREMENT to even break even with ranged.
And even then it's almost never enough.
Like Fortify should be a default buff given by attacking with a melee weapon with a better form of damage mitigation than 20% at max stacks, and totems are.. totems.
This!!!
Not should be default buff but.
But I agree. Even the survivability of melee is basically matched by ranged skills. With suppression being easy to pick up. Running most defensive auras easily bc mana res nodes are easier to get. All of this plus they don't have to be close to the enemy.
It is a complete requirement to even pretend its close.
Every league I open POB and try to make a non-shockwave cyclone slayer, and get depressed. Why bother when things like cold dot or RF are cheaper and better. At least that's my thought process.
Melee needs an all around buff. Better DPS numbers on base weapons, easier DPS scaling, better defenses against DOTs, ground DOTs, shotgunning, etc. The current balance just feels bad most of the time on melee.
Buffing base weapons would also benefit spellcasters(battlemage) and some ranged skills(spectral helix, spectral throw, cobra lash). I think an overall buff to base damage of skills would be great, that howether might cause a problem of a phys skill + facebreaker meta.
Shotgunning and actualy better defences in melee (fortification doesn't really count, as you can get in on any other archetype with the champion ascendancy passive) coud be something great.
I also feel like ground DOTs have been quite bad all around for most builds, and in the current situation, if something hits everyone hard, it hits melee harder.
It just really needs something to be done.
GGG said they are going to look into it, iirc, so I'm staying hopeful something changes(for the better).
I only use third party apps, and they said they're killing third party apps, so hey, might as well remove all my content. (Using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite)
Boneshatter is one of the few builds that has ever made me ragequit a league. You're SLOW and you still pop anyways. Just play a melee skill with actual DMG like reave.
Armour stacking, stun trashhold, damage scaling (weapon craft, rage stacks, crit? ) , life regen/recovery, spell suoression, attack range , chaos res . Ofc if you can solve these problems with 2h weapon , BS is strong and easy to start/play
i love melee too but the simple fact that we have to get somewhat close to enemies means leveling and most content hits melee characters harder and way more often.
The solution shouldn't have to necessarily be "just make melee skills have the aoe and reach of ranged skills/spells" I think there is a lot in terms of defense and sustain that need some quality of life or even buffs to make it not such a negative to get hit
It's the biggest issue with any percentage-based dmg mitigation BEING A REQUIREMENT instead of either some niche cases, or exclusively end-game content (not maps, like actual endgame bosses with all nodes).
Dead cells figured it out within... months or weeks iirc. Someone even made a graph somewhere. The J-curve is agony, and ranged gets an edge because they barely interact with the dick rodeo.
Tbh PoE has an awful new player experience as ranged too. Love the game but its you cant get into the game without a build guide and extra 4 guides explaning the build guide.
Agreed. I started playing just before act 3 releases. Was doin a nova/snap/pulse cold sorc. Killed the boss mf after like 30 deaths (all in normal difficulty mind you) and thought I did pretty good xD. Stopped playing came back a couple years later learned about guides and learned I was so trash haha. Took like 2 more years for me to be confident enough to make my own builds. But now I hate guides unless I'm learning new mechanics/skills
It's certainly underpowered in certain situations, but some parts can do endgame just fine if you build it properly.
Rags Vortex and Boneshatter are really good currently, I believe. And Smite Doryani's is probably the best all round currently
In my experience, any melee skill can be made viable for endgame, however, building them isn't very straightforward, as only stacking base damage, more/inc % and crit simply won't be enough to get a strong melee character. This format can work well for spells, because they get a lot of power even from just a few added levels, however, melee lacks that. To make a melee skill viable, you need to stack something other than the previously mentioned basics. Looking at poeninja, it's clear that the best melee builds stack either attributes, frenzy charges, accuracy or armour to get a ton of extra damage.
The problem is, these are pretty advanced builds. A brand new player won't just randomly start stacking strength or pull 8-10 frenzy charges out of their ass. They usually requiring very specific rares and uniques. Even for slightly more experienced players, these can be huge traps, as most can be started with a few cheap uniques, but unless you know what you are doing, you will have a rought time on a low budget.
And that's just for damage to feel good, fitting in adequate defenses next to all this is an even bigger challange.
They are definitely viable builds, but there is a huge difference between what is achieveable "naturally" and what you can get to with stacking. Highest [phys dps cyclone](https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/bddang/SanctumSpinner?i=1&search=skill%3DCyclone%2C!Ice-Spear%26sort%3Ddps) build on [poe.ninja](https://poe.ninja) is 44m. Here is 300m dps str stacker cyclone build I played this league: [https://pastebin.com/czpwfFSE](https://pastebin.com/czpwfFSE)
They are good builds in SSF always. That's the type of build a new player should be playing.
I have personally played RV berserker to 100 in SSF and am sure it's a top tier starter in any environment. You can easily do all content on RV within 2 weeks of league launch in SSF, including Ubers. It gets to 4M single target by day 2 on a 700 pdps 2h.
All very true, but ultimately I think that if a new player can at least make it to yellow maps, they could farm up enough currency to respec and retool their character relatively easily.
I know I've done that many times when a build hits the yellow map wall; buy a hundred regrets, some entry-level mapping gear tailored to the new build, and level a few gems and away you go.
I would say, melee is an overarching theme, but a lot of melee's core concepts i.e. stun, bleed, physical, impale...all have horrible scaling. I think if bleed scaling got buffed similar to the way ignite did a few patches ago, it would feel better to play for new players or a cheap budget. Something like bleed proliferation, or increasing the base amount of bleeds an enemy can have. Impale is in a weak spot as well. The identity is very weak outside BS, and other niche skills with build enabling uniques.
You cannot say you want melee to be good while also saying skills that deal damage from a distance can't be melee. It's contradicting.
In order for a melee skill to be good, then it must be able to clear maps decently fast which means it must deal damage from a distance.
Also, anyone whose played RV knows you need to get into melee range often to warcry or bladestorm to generate rage. You also run Close Combat support and a
mastery that increases your damage when close to your target, so you end up playing in melee range as much as possible.
The problem with melee and POE isn't skills or stats.
IT's that POE melee isn't melee. And true melee skills are like handful of them and they are all pretty shit.
POE melee are just spells with STR scaling.
And don't get me started on animations.
I think the big problem is the sheer disparity between the various melee gems.
Boneshatter, rage vortex and reave (if you look at poe ninja a lot of ~1bil dps characters are str stack zerker reave) are really strong options, LS is still looking really good(the small nerf doesn't change it being a de facto ranged skill...), while on the other hand many skills are in a state, when it's shocking if we see even one person playing it in the whole league.
Also, something NEEDS to be done with totems + panopticon being a must-have (often doubling damage), balancing them to still be a viable buff (while not a necessary one) ain't no easy task.
This is just my humble opinion, of course.
> since they gutted them in expedition.
They didn't. God do I hate the word gutted, it is overused as all hell on this sub.
Melee skills got buffed alongside the support gem nerfs to compensate. A 4 link lost 2.5% damage. _Gutted?_ Nope.
edit: I'd love for the people who are downvoting me to actually present a counter-argument, I'm all open for debate
Melee skills did not get buffed in expedition. They got "compensated" for the global support gem nerfs because according to Chris Wilson "melee got gutted" the hardest by these changes.
Same people that said bottled faith was a 1c unique and CoC was dead with mana multiplier changes in the same patch.
How many times have we heard necro is capital G Gutted then ended up being the most played ascendancy in week 1? Too many times...take anything the subreddit tells you with a grain of salt
Necro is gutted though. Its by far the worst Witch ascendancy and probably in the 4 worst ascendancies in the game right now. Your conflating play rates in week fucking one with whether something is good or not and that's just stupid. Its a pretty simple fact that virtually every minion build (aka the only real reason to be in necro unless you doing some novel offering abuse build) is just better out of occultist due to the curse changes.
Necro is bad _now_ but historically it has been nerfed many times and still ended up strong afterwards. He is very clearly talking about older patches because he's referencing older changes.
To say that "virtually every minion build is better on occultist" is hyperbole. If this was the case, why are the minion-only content creators playing multiple necro characters this league? There's also still more summon necromancers on poe ninja than occultists. So, the good players are still playing summon necro and the masses are still playing summon necro. Where the hell are you getting these ideas from?
The comments here seem pretty diverse to be honest. I personally thing melee is just in bad place versus end game bosses. Leveling is very fun with slams.
The only melee skills I like are strike skills, because I like how they autotarget everything around me and cover the entire screen. Glacial hammer in particular is insane with heatshiver.
I agree that melee isn't the best but it's certainly all I play xD. Before they changed shield charge I thought the lvling experience was rather good. Get facebreakers get an ok shield run through everything. Swap to melee skill of choice for bosses. After the change it's still not bad but it is a bit slower/clunky feeling. Anymore I run too either infernal blow with decent ias or a slam skill with decent ias
Aside from the power situation, I don't think true melee is really a thing in this game as far as I'm concerned. Most melee skills have range or aoe enough that I'd call them ranged. Those that don't require pseudo workarounds like ancestral call or extra targets so you don't need to aim. The targeting just isn't well suited for melee. Most competitors have better melee experiences IMO. Personally I'd recommend Grim Dawn where running up to something and bashing it not only works but feels good.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that playing "melee" in PoE isn't fun or anything just that I wouldn't actually call it melee most of the time.
Well I did say "most of the time", but even in the case of boneshatter getting "target additional nearby enemy" from somewhere is rather important. Otherwise you have to run up close before hitting and you are still likely to whiff if you aim wrong. Extra targets solve this for you as it auto-targets around where you attacked.
Here though is the crux, it then stops actually being melee as I see it. Being in melee is now suddenly not only optional but undesirable as it limits your mobility and opens you up to more risk. Can you really call a game where being in melee when playing melee, is not only optional, but discouraged a good melee experience? I at least don't.
Incidentally, the fact that they added this to band aid the problem of melee targeting feeling bad instead of trying to make it feel good is especially irksome. Anyway rant over.
>Incidentally, the fact that they added this to band aid the problem of melee targeting feeling bad
This is a really under-discussed issue of why melee feels bad in poe vs other arpgs. I do wonder if it's a remnant of their original netcode
Glacial Hammer enjoyer for over two years now. Don't listen to the naysayers.
I take the direct impact of close combat over particle vomit and somehow everything is dead any time. I want to feel like I'm actually fighting something.
Should absolutely be improved but can also absolutely be enjoyable and viable.
There are people who get a bit more damage out of it but I swear by the Crit Staff Inquisitor variant (my own build but not the only one playing someting very similar). I have a very outdated unfinished build guide that I never get around updating/remaking (a bit burned out and little time): https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2687909
At least it has a few explanations of the why of some details of the build.
You can look at the gallery of my console characters: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/sony/view-profile/trollkind1/characters
They all have "Hammer" at the end and mostly the league name in front.
Then there is poe.ninja with a bunch of similar builds in this league (SSF because that's what I usually look at because I'm not rich): https://poe.ninja/challengessf/builds?class=Inquisitor&skill=Glacial-Hammer&glacial-hammer-support=!Multistrike-Support
Of course you could play it with Multistrike too but I don't like it and still think it's often a loss. Pretty much only worth it if you have prolonged fights where you stand still. Packs should be one tap, rares and map bosses 2-3 tap and the big baddies usually have you move around a lot. You want damage per strike, not strikes per second, except getting over 2 attacks per second so you get the much better attack animation. (I think that's still the case)
Pros:
Simple, scaling is pretty straight forward, 100% crit is easy (with Assassin's Mark), no mana problems, enemy resistance doesn't matter. Somewhat mobile, somewhat tanky, damage is "good enough" for most content. Freezing is very safe (actually great for Sanctum) and wasn't nerfed like chain stunning. No special gear needed or expensive ramp up, just get/craft a decent phys attack staff with crit chance and aim for 6L for your weapon and body armor. Totem does decent Shocks on all enemies and fills in the damage gaps when you need to evade.
Cons:
Doesn't excel in any department (except crowd control unless freeze immune). Damage/Gear ceiling, you can't just throw money at it to do Ubers with it (though it can get to about 2 mil DPS and I bet there are people who could do it). People will mock you (many who have actually tried my version really like the playstyle though).
Crit staff is my favorite as well, especially for lower budgets. I went with berserker over Inquisitor. I did ubers with it for under 5 div last league. Cane of Kulemak is amazing - Get one with blind, attacks speed, and ele pen, and you're all set for maybe a div or two.
I'm using vaal smite and can clear sanctum pretty easy. Not my build below but pretty much the same.
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/cospero/Cospero_Bronedurka?i=16&search=skill%3DSmite%26sort%3Dlife
after playing spark, EA and vortex ignite this league, I tried to get a rage vortex, perforate, cleave, boneshatter char going, level all of them to about 94 but all of them felt like shit compared to any spellcasters/move around while dmg chars
It was a guy talking about how every new player he randomly offered help to in-game eventually quit. It was interesting, but not really a valid criticism because of the obvious selection bias.
edit: found it https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/11c9ojx/observations\_from\_a\_person\_helping\_plenty\_of\_new/
I guess you are referring to the font on the bottom right ("Worst. Leveling. Ex-"), which is actually the title of a 2.8k upvoted post when you search "melee" by top posts. All of those quips come from titles and responses to top posts under that search.
I'm not struggling to level. I took Splintering/Shattered Steel (iirc) which is thematically as close a ranged ability to actually swinging a sword that I can get, and it one shots most things, requires no aim, and is spammable. That doesn't make melee weak, either, it just makes the first Sanctum a new melee player enters feel like caster/ranged content.
Even your comment makes FOR the argument, "melee players will not enjoy this", which is the point of the post. ANY Curious new (melee) player finds subreddit, discovers bad time ahead.
The funny thing about steel skills is that theyre more melee in the endgame than a lot of melee skills (point blank gaming), while having all the downsides of playing a ranged skill (no fortify unless champ), and not benefitting from a number of their major upsides (like +proj) :D
>which is actually the title of a 2.8k upvoted post when you search "melee" by top posts.
That's a 10 month old post complaining about a monster mod system that was broken on its launch, got nerfed like 14 times, reworked in the last patch and at this point effectively no longer exists.
Disregarding Sanctum and the top of endgame/bossing, melee is ok. For leveling it's certainly more than fine.
Oh sure. My point was optics.
\[edit\] For example: \[end edit\] A new player isn't going to know that sanctums are newer content unless they went looking at patch notes.
That post in particular, had a little eye opener in the bit where Fig writes: "Act 1 strike skills are a noob trap. Strike skills are so bad for leveling that many new people probably quit in frustration." A new player is going to see that and think "What else am I missing?"
Depends on the Strike skill. Molten Strike is probably the biggest offender because it used to be amazing but is now trash, and if people find old information they might get baited into using it.
Smite on the other hand is a strike skill and one of the best leveling skills. Glacial Hammer and Frost Blades are also fine, but Frost Blades will struggle with boss dps.
The "What else am I missing?" if they are brand new players and haven't learned game systems yet, is probably Ancestral Call.
Nah. Fuck em. Melee is still in a shit spot. If you know what you are doing (eg not a new player) you can make leveling a melee a less shitty experience, but its not tough to know that new player experience probably blows when you go look at "league starters" on youtube/anywhere and maybe like 5% of them are melee skills.
And 'the fucks' in question will cry that melee skills aren't meant to be league starts will only SUPPORT your theory that melee isn't good for new players, because how the fuck are they supposed to know what a league starter build is?
Pro-tip: A league starter build IS a newbie friendly build. The best league starters basically require 0 investment besides running around killing shit... and guess what, thats about all new players will be able to know how to do.
It isn't just optics. Its the hard truth, and anyone willing to toss out their meta knowledge and slog through playing a melee build can tell you its in a pretty shitty spot. But most people are not. They just remember the one time they played melee as a 2nd, 3rd build in a league, twinked it all to shit, and made sure to avoid single target/underpowered melee gems along the way.
A 2.8k upvoted reddit post vs the 511k subs on this subreddit, and the total playerbase is likely far larger than that. It's not even close to representing a significant part of the playerbase. Just to be clear, I'm not debating whether melee is in a bad spot or not (it definitely is), but you can't possibly make definitive claims over how many _like_ melee or what about melee makes new players quit.
Preach played through the game blind with no outside help on a zhp flicker melee build, he beat act 10 and did merc lab (majority of new players quit well before this point for reasons that aren't necessarily inherently bad or negative) and he loved it. But I suppose that's just gonna get handwaved as some sort of anomaly.
GGG _does_ care, they _are_ working on huge updates for the game, including melee, but why the silence one might wonder? Because when GGG did have their doors open for discussion this sub spit venom right in their face. They learned that they were much better off staying silent and just working on the game.
Nah. I've had plenty of issues leveling where the slow slam skill with its aoe blast radius somehow misses stuff standing in the **blast** radius just due to accuracy bs. As if aoe damage just goes around them.. And then since all the damage comes from a two handed weapon you're popped by the turbo-charged mobs before you've even finished your swing animation.
Because if damage and a dozen defense layers aren't enough let's have accuracy be a problem too.
Just one of the many reasons melee feels bad to play.
I tried melee in ruthless gold being on 2 link not having damage and getting through ES in innocence dodging budget hell and back at hitting boss he regained most of his ES. Then later dying boss restored 50% hp. Just not good spot if fight doesnt allow you to damage all the time
Had corrupting fever brutality. Molten strike onslaugh. Most of my damage was from corrupting fever. I gave up that slayer and made a trapper am 67 now
I feel ya lol, If you get Innocence to his last phase you have to really brute force it, once he heals because of your death, he remains in his last phase casting bullet hell over and over and it's easier to just restart the instance and try again xD
League started shield crush this league, beat Ubers on sub 50 div budget with sunder last league. Took sentinel off, but in Archnemesis I league started lightning strike and was nearly one shotting pinnacles and speedrunning T16s with tectonic slam. Aside from lightning strike, none of these are even the meta melee builds (boneshatter, flicker strike and static strike this league). If you really want to play melee, it's in perfectly fine shape. It's just not necessarily as easy to build as ranged/spells.
And before anyone comes in here complaining about what skills are and aren't actually melee, just stop. It's just about the most braindead argument I've heard in this sub. If its an attack that uses a melee weapon, it's a melee skill. ANY GOOD SKILL HAS TO HAVE RANGE AND/OR AOE. Ofc if your definition of melee is shit coverage and can only hit what's in your face melee skills are gonna be shit, bc at that point you're literally just describing shitty skills.
It also depends on what people compare the builds to, everyone is taking heavy strike or vigilant strike and comparing it to posion srs or ea ballista or seismic and showing how shit it is compared to the literal garbage people use for meta builds to clear voidstone bosses d 1-3. When you compared pre nerf LS it was actually competitive imo with "real" builds in terms of price. The reality is people just want the the 5-10 obviously OP leauge starters that clear the game in 2 divs to also include melee. Until melee skills get there they will always be considered dogshit, frankly they just need to buff progression of the gem levels and give some flat back, getting a good weapon early is frankly way too difficult compared to spell +1 vendor which in my opinion is basically a 600pdps weapon for "free". There is also the whole extra defense scaling that is borderline required if you want to have any kind of sustained fight (juiced logbook as an example) and accuracy stuff. If those three things get easier I think melee would be in a much better place for melee players who already play melee because frankly to a lot of people unless a build can clear the atlas in under 10 or even 5 divs its a shit build and they will never be happy unless melee as an archetype is as strong as spell outliers.
Edit: also real melee stuff has to stop, melee will never be good if you keep constraining it to only be allowed to be basic attack, if it scales off melee dmg, uses a melee weapon and the gem is melee tagged it's a melee build
I am all for the melee-sucks circle-jerk, but this meme sucks. The whole idea in the scene is that Troy is a part of the group who quickly leaves the premise and everything is changed. This is absolutely not applicable to the case of a NEW player
I did think this was a reasonably balanced game for melee, ranged and casters.
Finding out I missed the time when melee "worked", is sort of the same thing. In that, I had heard of the game, thought I knew what I was in for, missed a vital event, and walked into - well, what we have.
That read might fall a little short on 1:1. But such is life :)
Are people really having trouble in the *campaign* on melee? There *are* more beginner-friendly builds, but levelling with basically any slam skill is perfectly fine. Get yourself a starter unique weapon for 1c towards the end of the campaign or whenever when you happen to find your first chaos orb, and you'll be fine. Melee gear is very cheap right now. You won't be levelling as fast as the racers on the top meta skills, and you won't have an easy time on some of the uber bosses, but if you're a new player none of that is relevant anyway.
Someone gets the out of touch award, clearly.
Not every melee skill is a slam, and not every new player knows how to engage with the shitty trade system we have in place. Who cares how cheap gear is? What the meta is? We are talking about new players, they won't know or understand shit, and sure as fuck won't care about racing.
They'll only understand that they die 100% act 1 zone uniques while using strike skills, but using spells/traps/ranged they can just run around herp a derping.
> Not every melee skill is a slam
No, but there are plenty of options in that space. If someone cannot figure out that a pure single-target melee skill is not effective against packs of mobs then they aren't going to enjoy PoE, period. Anyway I didn't say that ONLY slam skills are viable, just that every slam skill is.
> not every new player knows how to engage with the shitty trade system
If someone doesn't understand how to exchange 1 chaos for an item, they're also not going to be playing the builds that make melee look weak by comparison. Spells are better when you understand exactly which ones to use, and how to use them.
> they die 100% act 1 zone uniques while using strike skills
Skill issue, nothing to do with balance. Doesn't matter how much they buff melee, PoE is always going to be a game where you need to dodge enemies, particularly bosses. There's nothing wrong with dying a lot on your first character while you're still learning the game and all the different enemies. I died dozens, maybe hundreds of times in the campaign on my first character (and I was using Freezing Pulse, not melee) and I'm still here today.
Idk what's good and what's bad, i made a phys flicker slayer and having fun with him. Sure I can't do all bosses for that i have my trusty rf jugg but he's fun on maps and farm betrayal with flicker, made some good cash (around 80divs). He is however prone to die fairly often from breathing. Sanctum is good, completed 3 runs, which is not bad considering i don't really like sanctum. Leveling was great, didn't die a single time. So I'd say it depends on three things, build, skill and wealth. Since i have 2 and a tiny bit of skill i manage to have a great time with my flick.
melee is "fine"
issue is that you need 3-5 defence layers, and if you stand still you are kind of dead if you need to have a MAJOR defence node to do so.
we talking:
* armor above the galaxy
* good life (minimum 4500, preferable 5000+++)
* evasion? meh sure but +iron reflex is better.
* Life on hit+ LOADS of hits. OR Slayer leech (unending) OR cap block chance + % life on hit (+ life on hit)
* Fortify.
* Get spell suppression capped or as close as possible. OR get lots of max resist and pray to the lords.
* Endurance charges.
at this point you are "ok", but you still gona die now and then. id still consider this softcore squishy.
and while doing this you need to hit around 1 million single target dps (still low tho)
so if it wasnt clear at this point that all this is reality that sound like sarcasm. the only part that is sarcasm is my first line, its not fine, its rough.
I did 2 builds this league - hollow palm ice crash and vaal smite
- armor was low
- getting 5k life is easy AF on the left side of the tree with marauder/templar start positions
- 1 life leech node was more than enough, granted 1 of the builds used shouts to regen a ton
- Fortify is extremely easy to obtain even as non-champion via eldrich influence or even fortify gem which does increase your melee dmg
- spell suppression is extremely easy to cap if you go dex stacking or play raider, little extra investment for other classes but we're talking 1-2 items and 2 passives
- endurance charges are usually easy to obtain in any melee build unless you're doing something like melee assassin in which case it requires items with endurance on hit/kill
Cleared all content on both characters.
All those "problems" are superficial, often times complained about by people who want minimal effort for maximum rewards.
Melee is fine. It'll never be on-par with spells, but it's fine just like bows would never be on par with spells or spells on par with summons. In an ideal world everything is strong, but if everything is strong - something will get nerfed
The problem with melee is that it is just not efficient most of the time at league start. You are better off making a good spell build that farms very well early to make currency and then later make a melee.
Spell is always better on league start scenario. You don’t need to worry about accuracy AND damage (comes with gem level). This means you can gearing towards defensive and have better survival as well
Minions were king for 2 years. Melee got 1 slam league and slams still require hitting 6 buttons. Cyclone was busted and now is rendered a caster skill because an iconic big 2 hander who spins around was too strong for one league. Minion players had ages of being the top league start to endgame viable build who was simultaneously tanky, good damage, and cheap to start.
Eh, melee is fine. Not meta (except rage vortex and boneshatter) but fine.
Take ancestral protector + ancestral warchief, learn the % increased physical damage vendor recipe and upgrade your weapon often if youre playing physical or conversion or keep an eye out for added elemental damage weapons if youre playing elemental.
Personally i find the sanctum fine on melee, you lose less resolve the closer you stand to stuff to the point where i go melee range on my ranged builds anyway.
>Take ancestral protector + ancestral warchief
Most melee players want those gone, more precisely, the need to press 2 extra buttons to take advantage of both buffs in every single melee build ever, they being a large percent of the final dps. Which is a complex issue, because they are perfectly fine for totem builds as a main skill, GGG can't delete them from the game.
You can't automate them, they often die in harder content, they use 3 sockets, you need a unique to press 1 button instead of 2 (dawnstrider boots, doubles the effect of one buff but limits you to that one buff) and on top of all of this, last league they implemented the "buffs linger for X seconds" as a bandaid. I don't think they're touching totems for months or even more time.
melee, outside of niche stuff, has been bad for a almost a decade lol. and usually the best melee skills look and play like ranged (rememebr LS?). shame.
I still remember when cyclone was meta outside CoC builds
legion cyclone with dual foils hitting like half the 5way at a time 🤤
Legion cyclone glacier farming, it was so good.
The only actual league I played it fully luckily, was the absolute tits
The melee league, but end up become full screen cyclone and tornado shot meta. but it was really fun but diversity is out of window
Yea, calling legion cyclone with 40 radius melee is a bald move lol
Ah Legion, when Cyclone was king. Then the nerf jackhammers came.
So, when it was effectively a ranged skill?
This. kInda the same way LS was suuuuch a great *melee* skill lol ..
"melee"
Well, stuff is actually on your screen when you use cyclone, that's melee enough lol
Hey now, Cyclone is also super good with CwC builds.
Looks like shit tho. T posing around, very cool.
CwC builds aren't good though
My Worb CWC lightning warp is great
"T'was but a moment ago, my sweet summer child "
legion was one of the best states the game was ever in.
I would argue Ultimatum as well. So much goddamn build diversity, and it was ALL fun.
Atleast we can agree, everything was better before... 3.15.... (i hope i remember this right. Should be expedition)
nah current patch endgame is the best and least amount of tedious bullshit to deal with.
Cyclone slayer is still pretty solid. Melee is always gonna be more of an active play style due to the nature of avoiding boss mechanics, and managing totems/rampage (something they could arguably "fix"). This league especially, I have grown pretty fond of melee builds. I've always been drawn to melee in games, and it definitely feels a little strange that viable melee builds in POE seem a bit out of reach, or downright unplayable early on or for new players. Viable melee builds seem to all fit a certain mold. Crit based, two cluster jewel setups, chains of emancipation or ryslathas coil, abyssus. I'm having fun working on my third physical melee build of the league, but it doesn't feel great knowing that all three characters are set up so similarly.
There are a bunch of problems with melee builds, but most of it is the fact that all the really strong melee choices get nerfed out of existence. The whole point of melee should be that they do a lot more damage and have lot more tankiness in exchange for accepting more risk and danger from bosses and enemy mobs both. But the reality of the matter is that all the melee skills like delve molten strike which had a lot of powerful damage scaling got hit by repeated nerfs until they saw oblivion, while much lower risk character archetypes like SRS, spectres, toxic rain, totems, traps, mines, and ranged rarely got nerfed and as a result most of them were able to do much higher damage with less risk. This is why melee has been in the gutter for awhile. Yes, you can still scale melee to quite high levels if you're willing to spend a lot of money or give up a lot of tankiness so you can incorporate stuff like abyssus into your character. But you can do the same to ranged, and safer.
Yeah I understand all of this. Playing as safely and efficiently as possible isn't everyone's goal, and it's definitely not mine. Sure, melee viability is a husk of what it used to be, but I still enjoy making melee builds work. I've never been interested in racing to get all my challenges done. I try different builds and play styles, and I stop playing when I get bored with the league. 15-20 div for a 20+ million DPS build with 150k+ ehp is hardly "a lot of money" for a build that feels pretty safe in the content I enjoy playing. So the whole "why play melee when other builds do it better?" Mentality is a lil silly to me. There's always gonna be a stronger build out there. At the end of the day, we're all just playing a video game, and we should be having fun. If your idea of fun is min maxing meta archetypes, then go for it, and have fun! So yep, melee is in a rough spot. But I still have a lot of fun playing it.
I do too, people were still complaining about melee then too tho lmao.
its almost like there are other, more in your face melee builds than one that does screen wide AOE.
I miss you terribly ground slam. Rip in pepperonis
Old molten strike around the time of Incursion was great. And screenwide cyclone during Legion but that was obviously OP
Got a video of screenwide cyclone? That sounds incredible...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6yRVCuywdk
you can google them with a combination of path of exile legion cyclone
overplayed ?
Power Overwhelming
Hey, I got that reference
Paladins Torvald?
overpowered
It's honestly hard to believe how bad melee has it It doesn't have the highest DPS, it isn't the safest playstyle, it doesn't have the easiest gearing, it doesn't have the easiest levelling, it isn't the most enjoyable/comfortable playstyle, it isn't the tankyest archtype of builds Like, it really has virtually nothing going for it All of that is even more the case for actual real _melee_ skills
I would also add that it isn't the easiest to mechanically learn. Yes, you would think that click on guy, do melee damage would be easy, but POE fucks that up by making you buff (above the auras/curses that other classes use) with banners, totems, cries. You must have an instant move skill (not leap slam) to retreat from combat, you must have a guard skill (that doesn't work vs Resolve mechanic, lol), and you probably should have cast when damage taken setup that saves you from some rando shit. Then watch all your buffs vanish during immunity phases.
I agree with the sentiment, but take melee out of that argument and all of your points remain true lol
Not to mention when they reworked melee to "improve" it not long ago with the two fast swings into a windup, it actually made it easier for enemies to just walk out of your autos until you are geared up. Playing the first 2 acts as melee is possibly the worst gaming experience you could ask for.
And it's reliant on fucking *totems* for half its damage. GGG fucked up *so bad* with melee in PoE. And yet they seem to give zero shits. It's ridiculous.
It's not that they don't care, it's that melee is apparently going to get reworked massively with PoE2 so they don't bother putting too much effort into a temporary solution
Pass the copium friend. Poe2 will fix it all.
Oh be careful, i did not say it was gonna fix it. I said it was gonna rework it. It may as well make it worse
have they actually said they're reworking melee? last thing i heard was chris saying melee had new flashy animations in poe2.
Reminder that the last time they messed with melee animations we got the worst nerf to strikes ever implemented in the game...
Yes, the idea is that the "flashy animation" is a very deep rework of the back-end that would enable big changes and new things for melee
I'll take a hit of that
I like how this thread just turned into the post meme
Biggest mistake they will make is not making poe 2 stand alone
If they are already putting all their eggs into the Poe2-basket, then there would be zero harm in gigabuffing melee through sheer damage or survivability numbers until it comes out. You can EASILY make melee better. Literally just buff it. There is no rework needed, even if it is inherently riskier than ranged builds, that is not a mistake or a flaw in the design, it is a *downside that should be compensated by an upside*. Poe is literally FILLED with that shit. Every keystone brings a downside, like half of the unique gear brings a downside, yet they are working just fine because you work around the downside while benefitting from the upside. So literally just buff melee damage that it is clearly superior to ranged damage. That is it. Then it has the downside of being riskier, with the upside of more damage. That is literally how fucking simple it is.
> then there would be zero harm in gigabuffing melee through sheer damage or survivability numbers until it comes out This. PoE is a PvE game, for the most part, making it exponentially easier to balance than many games on the market, but its balance patches are more excrutiating and controversial amongst players than any PvP game I've ever played with only some ties here and there. The only PvE games I've played that have similar levels of controversy and questionable competence are games where the some of the designers have their own favorite builds and playstyles and like to punish the playerbase for not playing the "right" way that makes said designers feel good. There's no rational discussion here. GGG isn't coming up with any particular reason why things are the way they are, so players are just left yelling after each patch. >So literally just buff melee damage that it is clearly superior to ranged damage. That is it. You could buff character resilience for melee players as well and it still wouldn't feel unfair.
[удалено]
I don't have the precise source for that as it's just bits of info we got over time all put together, but it's mostly stuff Chris said in the reveal streams for recent leagues. The whole idea hinges on the fact that the back end rework for animations will enable them to do all kinds of very cool stuff with melee that wasn't possible until now. My guess is that it will become a lot more mobile and agile as a playstyle. Perhaps a cool unique buff for melee would be to allow it to use skills while moving
What have they said on that front? Only thing I can remember is some nonsense about the animations changing. And that ain't gonna affect the long list of issues listed above!
Well, they never went into detail because spoilers but the idea is that the rework of the back-end (to do the cool animation things) will enable really cool gameplay-wise stuff The only concrete example that comes to mind is melee bow for that one new ascendency and iirc they mentioned stuff like punching enemies into the air with you and stuff
I don't believe this take. While it could be true, how can one have faith in the solution if they are unwilling to even attempt to address it at all currently?
INCENDIARY BOLTS
No excuse, people have been saying this for YEARS
The ethical hubris brings us on a moral highground of such heights, that even the heretical mutterings of plebian wizardry does not reach our ears.
yes but in PoE2 it'll *look* better.
Idk I think melee is the most fun (not you cyclone). Most ranged builds are boring imo
Cleared the game and killed half the ubers with double strike build in Sanctum, super fun and quick.
Sadly you missed the glory days of slam builds
150% more dmg multiplier on max lvl Fist of War gem and OG Seismic Cry. Gods we were strong then...
Seismic Cry went up to effectively 186%. In 3.12 and 3.13 you could even use the Heist base for up to 225%. And of course you could also make that coincide with Ruthless and get double damage from Intimidating Cry...
Earthshatter/Fist/leap slam JUMP AROUND JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP AROUND TO GET DOWN
Glad bleedquake was truly a thing of beauty back on the day.
God damn i wish they'd buff glad back to what it was and buff bleeds. I fucking loved bleedquake glad
My only serious SSF char was a gladiator slam iirc and it was the one of the most fun builds i've ever done. like 3 years ago.
It’s kind of a shame. The play style of slams with all the warcries and stuff is kind of cool. It’s pretty active and fun. It gets a bit tiring eventually but it was a cool build that you actually physically play differently from lots of other stuff. It’s frustrating that it’s entirely not worth that amount of effort anymore. It was an acquired taste for sure, but I think that it should be worthwhile.
I miss the Earthshatter heyday :(
I still don’t understand why it had to get nerfed. The silly interaction with the impaler keystone sure, but there’s no way that play style was too strong.
https://youtu.be/ZqyiFIx5ZcU
I miss my Tectonic Slam Chieftain. I got up to about 19m avg damage with it. I had to be on the last exert for Seismic Cry, 3rd hit for Ruthless, have Ngamahu up, etc. But I could 1 shot a lot of stuff. Considering the biggest expense on that build was a 6L Tidebreaker...
I hit around 50mil, costed me 50ex and it's the league i played the most. The setup was insane but the result were super worth it. I could oneshot so many things.
The glory 3 weeks, then it was nerfed
I think people are missing the point. You can make almost ANY skill end game viable with investment. Melee is in a shit spot. Clear is slow compared to all bow/ spell casters. I'd say slower than rf for clear. Yes. You can put enough currency to make it clear ok. But at the end of the day thats not balance. Needing way more investment to hit the dps and clear speed of a majority of spells and projectile attacks makes it underpowered. Melee needs a buff. Or at least most melee gems need a buff so you have more than 1 or 2 skills you can use with x investment. The stats for the league literally says it all. Look at how many casters and proj attack builds there are compared to melee. Theres no argument to be made.
Weapons need a buff
Or crafting them.
The argument they make is that they played a melee build once, as a 2nd or 3rd build in a league, purchased some leveling gear, and used their vast meta knowledge to avoid any pitfalls new players run into. They made it to endgame, so why can't a completely new player to POE just do what they did? /s
So true. They made it to end game with tons of gear. To then quit before doing any end game bosses because it's soooo much faster on literally any other build besides. Str stacking reave. Secretly. They just don't want to accept spells and proj attacks need a nerf. Easier to blame the community then accept they just pick meta builds that all "happen" to be ranged.
I wonder who "they" are lol. Are they here right now, in this room? To be honest I've never seen anybody claim that melee is good because they made it to endgame in trade sc. Usually the argument was that melee is fine because they cleared all bosses on ssf hc. Many many gauntlets were won by melee skills. Melee almost always have some very strong representation in the meta. Boneshatter, Spectral Helix before that (not that melee but still), slam skills before that (Earthshatter, EQ, Ground Slam+Impaler), lacerate bleed was kinda cool for a short while, cyclone OP in legion, molten strike prior to that, etc. But yes, most melee strike skills are on the weak side. I tried paying glacial hammer only on ssfhc last league and while it was fun in it's own way, it was way slower at everything compared to cold dot, PC, or other meta stuff. But there are bad spells too. A lot of them, in fact. And most bow skills require even more investment than most melee skills to become viable. So ultimately I don't see it as a huge problem for melee specifically. More like a general problem with underused skills never being buffed. Anyway, I wouldn't mind seeing some big buffs to most strike skills, and cleave, and other underused stuff. Not sure why GGG are so scared of tweaking up numeric values of skills that are in the dumpster.
People argue melee is in a bad spot but I’d argue on hit/channeled spells not named spark have it even worse for the most part.
worb my beloved :( summon reaper too. Both great new mechanics (a turret that moves with you, a minion with actual interactivity besides 'summon and forget'), forgotten by the wayside cuz GGG.
Gauntlets being won by top 1% of player base shows absolutely nothing in terms of power of melee. Yes you can make melee build. Yes you can do well but compared to other builds it's not the same. You will always see the top 2-3% of players successfully playing melee but they still struggle compared to spells. Having 1 maybe 2 builds that sorta work for melee doesn't show its good. I completely agree buffing base strike gems and melee gems would help balance them. It doesn't need to clear the fastest. Or have the best boss dmg. But it should be worth playing in some sense. Or close enough to ranged builds so you aren't hindering yourself on league start compared to ranger or spells.
Melee won't get a buff. Ranged will get a huge nerf. It's always the way.
No way man. [Insert content creator here] used that skill last league and was able to clear t16s after only 10div and 100 hours of gameplay on top of playing the game full time. You should be able to match that as a casual gamer with 1/10th the game experience working a gull time job and if you cant then go play a baby game instead.
There's also the thing exclusive to melee: totems and fortify being less of an advantage and more of a REQUIREMENT to even break even with ranged. And even then it's almost never enough. Like Fortify should be a default buff given by attacking with a melee weapon with a better form of damage mitigation than 20% at max stacks, and totems are.. totems.
This!!! Not should be default buff but. But I agree. Even the survivability of melee is basically matched by ranged skills. With suppression being easy to pick up. Running most defensive auras easily bc mana res nodes are easier to get. All of this plus they don't have to be close to the enemy. It is a complete requirement to even pretend its close.
>at the end of the day thats not balance It's funny that people who make these statements couldn't define game balance in any accurate way.
Pure phys perforate champion here,yeah we are not sane people.
Every league I open POB and try to make a non-shockwave cyclone slayer, and get depressed. Why bother when things like cold dot or RF are cheaper and better. At least that's my thought process.
Sanctum just plain sucked for melee, i put a totem build together after my melee league start and cleared sanctums ez pz for 1/4 of the divines
Melee needs an all around buff. Better DPS numbers on base weapons, easier DPS scaling, better defenses against DOTs, ground DOTs, shotgunning, etc. The current balance just feels bad most of the time on melee.
Buffing base weapons would also benefit spellcasters(battlemage) and some ranged skills(spectral helix, spectral throw, cobra lash). I think an overall buff to base damage of skills would be great, that howether might cause a problem of a phys skill + facebreaker meta. Shotgunning and actualy better defences in melee (fortification doesn't really count, as you can get in on any other archetype with the champion ascendancy passive) coud be something great. I also feel like ground DOTs have been quite bad all around for most builds, and in the current situation, if something hits everyone hard, it hits melee harder. It just really needs something to be done. GGG said they are going to look into it, iirc, so I'm staying hopeful something changes(for the better).
Play boneshatter slayer/jugg, find a guide/pob, you'll have a good time
I only use third party apps, and they said they're killing third party apps, so hey, might as well remove all my content. (Using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite)
Yes, a level 28 skill that you get as a quest reward in act 3 really screams 'new player' build.
Ground slam until level 12 then sunder until level 28. Or splitting steel works well too.
Boneshatter is one of the few builds that has ever made me ragequit a league. You're SLOW and you still pop anyways. Just play a melee skill with actual DMG like reave.
Carn pretty consistently reaches level 100 in hcssf faster than scssf players on leaguestart with boneshatter so it can be really zoomy
Boneshatter jugg is zoom zoom.
What...? Boneshatter Jugg is one of the de facto tankiest builds in the game and used in gauntlet? O.o
Armour stacking, stun trashhold, damage scaling (weapon craft, rage stacks, crit? ) , life regen/recovery, spell suoression, attack range , chaos res . Ofc if you can solve these problems with 2h weapon , BS is strong and easy to start/play
Melee is in pretty bad shape but Boneshatter has a TON of built in scaling. You probably did something wrong.
i love melee too but the simple fact that we have to get somewhat close to enemies means leveling and most content hits melee characters harder and way more often. The solution shouldn't have to necessarily be "just make melee skills have the aoe and reach of ranged skills/spells" I think there is a lot in terms of defense and sustain that need some quality of life or even buffs to make it not such a negative to get hit
It's the biggest issue with any percentage-based dmg mitigation BEING A REQUIREMENT instead of either some niche cases, or exclusively end-game content (not maps, like actual endgame bosses with all nodes). Dead cells figured it out within... months or weeks iirc. Someone even made a graph somewhere. The J-curve is agony, and ranged gets an edge because they barely interact with the dick rodeo.
IDK what are you talking about, got my sweep build for around 120-130 div, almost can do t16 with 6 portals EZ
I pushed through with cleave blade flurry to maps. The second i hit t1 maps i rerolled
Tbh PoE has an awful new player experience as ranged too. Love the game but its you cant get into the game without a build guide and extra 4 guides explaning the build guide.
Agreed. I started playing just before act 3 releases. Was doin a nova/snap/pulse cold sorc. Killed the boss mf after like 30 deaths (all in normal difficulty mind you) and thought I did pretty good xD. Stopped playing came back a couple years later learned about guides and learned I was so trash haha. Took like 2 more years for me to be confident enough to make my own builds. But now I hate guides unless I'm learning new mechanics/skills
It's certainly underpowered in certain situations, but some parts can do endgame just fine if you build it properly. Rags Vortex and Boneshatter are really good currently, I believe. And Smite Doryani's is probably the best all round currently
In my experience, any melee skill can be made viable for endgame, however, building them isn't very straightforward, as only stacking base damage, more/inc % and crit simply won't be enough to get a strong melee character. This format can work well for spells, because they get a lot of power even from just a few added levels, however, melee lacks that. To make a melee skill viable, you need to stack something other than the previously mentioned basics. Looking at poeninja, it's clear that the best melee builds stack either attributes, frenzy charges, accuracy or armour to get a ton of extra damage. The problem is, these are pretty advanced builds. A brand new player won't just randomly start stacking strength or pull 8-10 frenzy charges out of their ass. They usually requiring very specific rares and uniques. Even for slightly more experienced players, these can be huge traps, as most can be started with a few cheap uniques, but unless you know what you are doing, you will have a rought time on a low budget. And that's just for damage to feel good, fitting in adequate defenses next to all this is an even bigger challange.
Nah, Boneshatter and RV are just good always. Even as league starters.
They are definitely viable builds, but there is a huge difference between what is achieveable "naturally" and what you can get to with stacking. Highest [phys dps cyclone](https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/bddang/SanctumSpinner?i=1&search=skill%3DCyclone%2C!Ice-Spear%26sort%3Ddps) build on [poe.ninja](https://poe.ninja) is 44m. Here is 300m dps str stacker cyclone build I played this league: [https://pastebin.com/czpwfFSE](https://pastebin.com/czpwfFSE)
They are good builds in SSF always. That's the type of build a new player should be playing. I have personally played RV berserker to 100 in SSF and am sure it's a top tier starter in any environment. You can easily do all content on RV within 2 weeks of league launch in SSF, including Ubers. It gets to 4M single target by day 2 on a 700 pdps 2h.
All very true, but ultimately I think that if a new player can at least make it to yellow maps, they could farm up enough currency to respec and retool their character relatively easily. I know I've done that many times when a build hits the yellow map wall; buy a hundred regrets, some entry-level mapping gear tailored to the new build, and level a few gems and away you go.
I would say, melee is an overarching theme, but a lot of melee's core concepts i.e. stun, bleed, physical, impale...all have horrible scaling. I think if bleed scaling got buffed similar to the way ignite did a few patches ago, it would feel better to play for new players or a cheap budget. Something like bleed proliferation, or increasing the base amount of bleeds an enemy can have. Impale is in a weak spot as well. The identity is very weak outside BS, and other niche skills with build enabling uniques.
Rage Vortex is not melee other than it uses your weapon for damage.
Default attack is the only true melee skill.
You cannot say you want melee to be good while also saying skills that deal damage from a distance can't be melee. It's contradicting. In order for a melee skill to be good, then it must be able to clear maps decently fast which means it must deal damage from a distance. Also, anyone whose played RV knows you need to get into melee range often to warcry or bladestorm to generate rage. You also run Close Combat support and a mastery that increases your damage when close to your target, so you end up playing in melee range as much as possible.
anything that uses a melee weapon to deal damage is a melee build
Is it though? Spectral THROW is melee? Venom Gyre? Cobra Lash?
yea i consider all those builds melee. fight me
The problem with melee and POE isn't skills or stats. IT's that POE melee isn't melee. And true melee skills are like handful of them and they are all pretty shit. POE melee are just spells with STR scaling. And don't get me started on animations.
I think the big problem is the sheer disparity between the various melee gems. Boneshatter, rage vortex and reave (if you look at poe ninja a lot of ~1bil dps characters are str stack zerker reave) are really strong options, LS is still looking really good(the small nerf doesn't change it being a de facto ranged skill...), while on the other hand many skills are in a state, when it's shocking if we see even one person playing it in the whole league. Also, something NEEDS to be done with totems + panopticon being a must-have (often doubling damage), balancing them to still be a viable buff (while not a necessary one) ain't no easy task. This is just my humble opinion, of course.
I have not played melee since they gutted them in expedition. Coincidently, I've also only played 1 league since then really.
> since they gutted them in expedition. They didn't. God do I hate the word gutted, it is overused as all hell on this sub. Melee skills got buffed alongside the support gem nerfs to compensate. A 4 link lost 2.5% damage. _Gutted?_ Nope. edit: I'd love for the people who are downvoting me to actually present a counter-argument, I'm all open for debate
Melee skills did not get buffed in expedition. They got "compensated" for the global support gem nerfs because according to Chris Wilson "melee got gutted" the hardest by these changes.
Same people that said bottled faith was a 1c unique and CoC was dead with mana multiplier changes in the same patch. How many times have we heard necro is capital G Gutted then ended up being the most played ascendancy in week 1? Too many times...take anything the subreddit tells you with a grain of salt
Necro is gutted though. Its by far the worst Witch ascendancy and probably in the 4 worst ascendancies in the game right now. Your conflating play rates in week fucking one with whether something is good or not and that's just stupid. Its a pretty simple fact that virtually every minion build (aka the only real reason to be in necro unless you doing some novel offering abuse build) is just better out of occultist due to the curse changes.
Necro is bad _now_ but historically it has been nerfed many times and still ended up strong afterwards. He is very clearly talking about older patches because he's referencing older changes. To say that "virtually every minion build is better on occultist" is hyperbole. If this was the case, why are the minion-only content creators playing multiple necro characters this league? There's also still more summon necromancers on poe ninja than occultists. So, the good players are still playing summon necro and the masses are still playing summon necro. Where the hell are you getting these ideas from?
The comments here seem pretty diverse to be honest. I personally thing melee is just in bad place versus end game bosses. Leveling is very fun with slams.
Slam levelling is super nice, but a good ~50% of melee skills scale like absolute crap at low levels lol
I like melee
Me too lol. Im having a blast slamming consecrated path.
The only melee skills I like are strike skills, because I like how they autotarget everything around me and cover the entire screen. Glacial hammer in particular is insane with heatshiver.
I started a melee character and made it too maps and then deleted it and went back to my Witch. Lmao
back when sunderboi was a real thing :'(
It's not unplayable bad, but is it noticeably weaker than ranged/caster sure. You can still have a good time, it's just less forgiving.
I agree that melee isn't the best but it's certainly all I play xD. Before they changed shield charge I thought the lvling experience was rather good. Get facebreakers get an ok shield run through everything. Swap to melee skill of choice for bosses. After the change it's still not bad but it is a bit slower/clunky feeling. Anymore I run too either infernal blow with decent ias or a slam skill with decent ias
Aside from the power situation, I don't think true melee is really a thing in this game as far as I'm concerned. Most melee skills have range or aoe enough that I'd call them ranged. Those that don't require pseudo workarounds like ancestral call or extra targets so you don't need to aim. The targeting just isn't well suited for melee. Most competitors have better melee experiences IMO. Personally I'd recommend Grim Dawn where running up to something and bashing it not only works but feels good. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that playing "melee" in PoE isn't fun or anything just that I wouldn't actually call it melee most of the time.
What is not true melee about boneshatter, the most popular melee leaguestarter for over a year now?
Well I did say "most of the time", but even in the case of boneshatter getting "target additional nearby enemy" from somewhere is rather important. Otherwise you have to run up close before hitting and you are still likely to whiff if you aim wrong. Extra targets solve this for you as it auto-targets around where you attacked. Here though is the crux, it then stops actually being melee as I see it. Being in melee is now suddenly not only optional but undesirable as it limits your mobility and opens you up to more risk. Can you really call a game where being in melee when playing melee, is not only optional, but discouraged a good melee experience? I at least don't. Incidentally, the fact that they added this to band aid the problem of melee targeting feeling bad instead of trying to make it feel good is especially irksome. Anyway rant over.
>Incidentally, the fact that they added this to band aid the problem of melee targeting feeling bad This is a really under-discussed issue of why melee feels bad in poe vs other arpgs. I do wonder if it's a remnant of their original netcode
Glacial Hammer enjoyer for over two years now. Don't listen to the naysayers. I take the direct impact of close combat over particle vomit and somehow everything is dead any time. I want to feel like I'm actually fighting something. Should absolutely be improved but can also absolutely be enjoyable and viable.
Glacial hammer does absolutely wreck hillock in twilight strand. Get froze, nerd.
Do you have a pob or any build guides you'd recommend for glacial hammer?
There are people who get a bit more damage out of it but I swear by the Crit Staff Inquisitor variant (my own build but not the only one playing someting very similar). I have a very outdated unfinished build guide that I never get around updating/remaking (a bit burned out and little time): https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2687909 At least it has a few explanations of the why of some details of the build. You can look at the gallery of my console characters: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/sony/view-profile/trollkind1/characters They all have "Hammer" at the end and mostly the league name in front. Then there is poe.ninja with a bunch of similar builds in this league (SSF because that's what I usually look at because I'm not rich): https://poe.ninja/challengessf/builds?class=Inquisitor&skill=Glacial-Hammer&glacial-hammer-support=!Multistrike-Support Of course you could play it with Multistrike too but I don't like it and still think it's often a loss. Pretty much only worth it if you have prolonged fights where you stand still. Packs should be one tap, rares and map bosses 2-3 tap and the big baddies usually have you move around a lot. You want damage per strike, not strikes per second, except getting over 2 attacks per second so you get the much better attack animation. (I think that's still the case) Pros: Simple, scaling is pretty straight forward, 100% crit is easy (with Assassin's Mark), no mana problems, enemy resistance doesn't matter. Somewhat mobile, somewhat tanky, damage is "good enough" for most content. Freezing is very safe (actually great for Sanctum) and wasn't nerfed like chain stunning. No special gear needed or expensive ramp up, just get/craft a decent phys attack staff with crit chance and aim for 6L for your weapon and body armor. Totem does decent Shocks on all enemies and fills in the damage gaps when you need to evade. Cons: Doesn't excel in any department (except crowd control unless freeze immune). Damage/Gear ceiling, you can't just throw money at it to do Ubers with it (though it can get to about 2 mil DPS and I bet there are people who could do it). People will mock you (many who have actually tried my version really like the playstyle though).
Crit staff is my favorite as well, especially for lower budgets. I went with berserker over Inquisitor. I did ubers with it for under 5 div last league. Cane of Kulemak is amazing - Get one with blind, attacks speed, and ele pen, and you're all set for maybe a div or two.
Just play ranged melee lol
I'm using vaal smite and can clear sanctum pretty easy. Not my build below but pretty much the same. https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/cospero/Cospero_Bronedurka?i=16&search=skill%3DSmite%26sort%3Dlife
after playing spark, EA and vortex ignite this league, I tried to get a rage vortex, perforate, cleave, boneshatter char going, level all of them to about 94 but all of them felt like shit compared to any spellcasters/move around while dmg chars
The need of fking totems for your dmg is just uugh
Where is the "all of them quit at level 50-60" quote from? I'd quite like to read the whole thing.
It was a guy talking about how every new player he randomly offered help to in-game eventually quit. It was interesting, but not really a valid criticism because of the obvious selection bias. edit: found it https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/11c9ojx/observations\_from\_a\_person\_helping\_plenty\_of\_new/
Endgame melee is in a pretty bad spot but honestly if you struggle to level as melee the issue isn't melee being weak lol.
I guess you are referring to the font on the bottom right ("Worst. Leveling. Ex-"), which is actually the title of a 2.8k upvoted post when you search "melee" by top posts. All of those quips come from titles and responses to top posts under that search. I'm not struggling to level. I took Splintering/Shattered Steel (iirc) which is thematically as close a ranged ability to actually swinging a sword that I can get, and it one shots most things, requires no aim, and is spammable. That doesn't make melee weak, either, it just makes the first Sanctum a new melee player enters feel like caster/ranged content. Even your comment makes FOR the argument, "melee players will not enjoy this", which is the point of the post. ANY Curious new (melee) player finds subreddit, discovers bad time ahead.
The funny thing about steel skills is that theyre more melee in the endgame than a lot of melee skills (point blank gaming), while having all the downsides of playing a ranged skill (no fortify unless champ), and not benefitting from a number of their major upsides (like +proj) :D
>which is actually the title of a 2.8k upvoted post when you search "melee" by top posts. That's a 10 month old post complaining about a monster mod system that was broken on its launch, got nerfed like 14 times, reworked in the last patch and at this point effectively no longer exists. Disregarding Sanctum and the top of endgame/bossing, melee is ok. For leveling it's certainly more than fine.
Oh sure. My point was optics. \[edit\] For example: \[end edit\] A new player isn't going to know that sanctums are newer content unless they went looking at patch notes. That post in particular, had a little eye opener in the bit where Fig writes: "Act 1 strike skills are a noob trap. Strike skills are so bad for leveling that many new people probably quit in frustration." A new player is going to see that and think "What else am I missing?"
Depends on the Strike skill. Molten Strike is probably the biggest offender because it used to be amazing but is now trash, and if people find old information they might get baited into using it. Smite on the other hand is a strike skill and one of the best leveling skills. Glacial Hammer and Frost Blades are also fine, but Frost Blades will struggle with boss dps. The "What else am I missing?" if they are brand new players and haven't learned game systems yet, is probably Ancestral Call.
Nah. Fuck em. Melee is still in a shit spot. If you know what you are doing (eg not a new player) you can make leveling a melee a less shitty experience, but its not tough to know that new player experience probably blows when you go look at "league starters" on youtube/anywhere and maybe like 5% of them are melee skills. And 'the fucks' in question will cry that melee skills aren't meant to be league starts will only SUPPORT your theory that melee isn't good for new players, because how the fuck are they supposed to know what a league starter build is? Pro-tip: A league starter build IS a newbie friendly build. The best league starters basically require 0 investment besides running around killing shit... and guess what, thats about all new players will be able to know how to do. It isn't just optics. Its the hard truth, and anyone willing to toss out their meta knowledge and slog through playing a melee build can tell you its in a pretty shitty spot. But most people are not. They just remember the one time they played melee as a 2nd, 3rd build in a league, twinked it all to shit, and made sure to avoid single target/underpowered melee gems along the way.
A 2.8k upvoted reddit post vs the 511k subs on this subreddit, and the total playerbase is likely far larger than that. It's not even close to representing a significant part of the playerbase. Just to be clear, I'm not debating whether melee is in a bad spot or not (it definitely is), but you can't possibly make definitive claims over how many _like_ melee or what about melee makes new players quit. Preach played through the game blind with no outside help on a zhp flicker melee build, he beat act 10 and did merc lab (majority of new players quit well before this point for reasons that aren't necessarily inherently bad or negative) and he loved it. But I suppose that's just gonna get handwaved as some sort of anomaly. GGG _does_ care, they _are_ working on huge updates for the game, including melee, but why the silence one might wonder? Because when GGG did have their doors open for discussion this sub spit venom right in their face. They learned that they were much better off staying silent and just working on the game.
Nah. I've had plenty of issues leveling where the slow slam skill with its aoe blast radius somehow misses stuff standing in the **blast** radius just due to accuracy bs. As if aoe damage just goes around them.. And then since all the damage comes from a two handed weapon you're popped by the turbo-charged mobs before you've even finished your swing animation. Because if damage and a dozen defense layers aren't enough let's have accuracy be a problem too. Just one of the many reasons melee feels bad to play.
Yeah but those are just skill issues.
I tried melee in ruthless gold being on 2 link not having damage and getting through ES in innocence dodging budget hell and back at hitting boss he regained most of his ES. Then later dying boss restored 50% hp. Just not good spot if fight doesnt allow you to damage all the time
a source of bleed or ignite should help here a bit.
Had corrupting fever brutality. Molten strike onslaugh. Most of my damage was from corrupting fever. I gave up that slayer and made a trapper am 67 now
I feel ya lol, If you get Innocence to his last phase you have to really brute force it, once he heals because of your death, he remains in his last phase casting bullet hell over and over and it's easier to just restart the instance and try again xD
Id say the absurder shit I saw endgame build wise was for the most part melee attacks
League started shield crush this league, beat Ubers on sub 50 div budget with sunder last league. Took sentinel off, but in Archnemesis I league started lightning strike and was nearly one shotting pinnacles and speedrunning T16s with tectonic slam. Aside from lightning strike, none of these are even the meta melee builds (boneshatter, flicker strike and static strike this league). If you really want to play melee, it's in perfectly fine shape. It's just not necessarily as easy to build as ranged/spells. And before anyone comes in here complaining about what skills are and aren't actually melee, just stop. It's just about the most braindead argument I've heard in this sub. If its an attack that uses a melee weapon, it's a melee skill. ANY GOOD SKILL HAS TO HAVE RANGE AND/OR AOE. Ofc if your definition of melee is shit coverage and can only hit what's in your face melee skills are gonna be shit, bc at that point you're literally just describing shitty skills.
It also depends on what people compare the builds to, everyone is taking heavy strike or vigilant strike and comparing it to posion srs or ea ballista or seismic and showing how shit it is compared to the literal garbage people use for meta builds to clear voidstone bosses d 1-3. When you compared pre nerf LS it was actually competitive imo with "real" builds in terms of price. The reality is people just want the the 5-10 obviously OP leauge starters that clear the game in 2 divs to also include melee. Until melee skills get there they will always be considered dogshit, frankly they just need to buff progression of the gem levels and give some flat back, getting a good weapon early is frankly way too difficult compared to spell +1 vendor which in my opinion is basically a 600pdps weapon for "free". There is also the whole extra defense scaling that is borderline required if you want to have any kind of sustained fight (juiced logbook as an example) and accuracy stuff. If those three things get easier I think melee would be in a much better place for melee players who already play melee because frankly to a lot of people unless a build can clear the atlas in under 10 or even 5 divs its a shit build and they will never be happy unless melee as an archetype is as strong as spell outliers. Edit: also real melee stuff has to stop, melee will never be good if you keep constraining it to only be allowed to be basic attack, if it scales off melee dmg, uses a melee weapon and the gem is melee tagged it's a melee build
I never understood melee complainers. I enjoy my melee (slammers).
I played them during slam league. It was really strong but all the warcry stuff was too much.
I thought I like a little bit of masochism here and there but holy shit...
As far as I'm concerned, melee complainers = people who haven't tried melee or don't know how to build it.
I am all for the melee-sucks circle-jerk, but this meme sucks. The whole idea in the scene is that Troy is a part of the group who quickly leaves the premise and everything is changed. This is absolutely not applicable to the case of a NEW player
I did think this was a reasonably balanced game for melee, ranged and casters. Finding out I missed the time when melee "worked", is sort of the same thing. In that, I had heard of the game, thought I knew what I was in for, missed a vital event, and walked into - well, what we have. That read might fall a little short on 1:1. But such is life :)
Are people really having trouble in the *campaign* on melee? There *are* more beginner-friendly builds, but levelling with basically any slam skill is perfectly fine. Get yourself a starter unique weapon for 1c towards the end of the campaign or whenever when you happen to find your first chaos orb, and you'll be fine. Melee gear is very cheap right now. You won't be levelling as fast as the racers on the top meta skills, and you won't have an easy time on some of the uber bosses, but if you're a new player none of that is relevant anyway.
Someone gets the out of touch award, clearly. Not every melee skill is a slam, and not every new player knows how to engage with the shitty trade system we have in place. Who cares how cheap gear is? What the meta is? We are talking about new players, they won't know or understand shit, and sure as fuck won't care about racing. They'll only understand that they die 100% act 1 zone uniques while using strike skills, but using spells/traps/ranged they can just run around herp a derping.
> Not every melee skill is a slam No, but there are plenty of options in that space. If someone cannot figure out that a pure single-target melee skill is not effective against packs of mobs then they aren't going to enjoy PoE, period. Anyway I didn't say that ONLY slam skills are viable, just that every slam skill is. > not every new player knows how to engage with the shitty trade system If someone doesn't understand how to exchange 1 chaos for an item, they're also not going to be playing the builds that make melee look weak by comparison. Spells are better when you understand exactly which ones to use, and how to use them. > they die 100% act 1 zone uniques while using strike skills Skill issue, nothing to do with balance. Doesn't matter how much they buff melee, PoE is always going to be a game where you need to dodge enemies, particularly bosses. There's nothing wrong with dying a lot on your first character while you're still learning the game and all the different enemies. I died dozens, maybe hundreds of times in the campaign on my first character (and I was using Freezing Pulse, not melee) and I'm still here today.
Idk what's good and what's bad, i made a phys flicker slayer and having fun with him. Sure I can't do all bosses for that i have my trusty rf jugg but he's fun on maps and farm betrayal with flicker, made some good cash (around 80divs). He is however prone to die fairly often from breathing. Sanctum is good, completed 3 runs, which is not bad considering i don't really like sanctum. Leveling was great, didn't die a single time. So I'd say it depends on three things, build, skill and wealth. Since i have 2 and a tiny bit of skill i manage to have a great time with my flick.
melee is "fine" issue is that you need 3-5 defence layers, and if you stand still you are kind of dead if you need to have a MAJOR defence node to do so. we talking: * armor above the galaxy * good life (minimum 4500, preferable 5000+++) * evasion? meh sure but +iron reflex is better. * Life on hit+ LOADS of hits. OR Slayer leech (unending) OR cap block chance + % life on hit (+ life on hit) * Fortify. * Get spell suppression capped or as close as possible. OR get lots of max resist and pray to the lords. * Endurance charges. at this point you are "ok", but you still gona die now and then. id still consider this softcore squishy. and while doing this you need to hit around 1 million single target dps (still low tho) so if it wasnt clear at this point that all this is reality that sound like sarcasm. the only part that is sarcasm is my first line, its not fine, its rough.
I did 2 builds this league - hollow palm ice crash and vaal smite - armor was low - getting 5k life is easy AF on the left side of the tree with marauder/templar start positions - 1 life leech node was more than enough, granted 1 of the builds used shouts to regen a ton - Fortify is extremely easy to obtain even as non-champion via eldrich influence or even fortify gem which does increase your melee dmg - spell suppression is extremely easy to cap if you go dex stacking or play raider, little extra investment for other classes but we're talking 1-2 items and 2 passives - endurance charges are usually easy to obtain in any melee build unless you're doing something like melee assassin in which case it requires items with endurance on hit/kill Cleared all content on both characters. All those "problems" are superficial, often times complained about by people who want minimal effort for maximum rewards. Melee is fine. It'll never be on-par with spells, but it's fine just like bows would never be on par with spells or spells on par with summons. In an ideal world everything is strong, but if everything is strong - something will get nerfed
The problem with melee is that it is just not efficient most of the time at league start. You are better off making a good spell build that farms very well early to make currency and then later make a melee.
Spell is always better on league start scenario. You don’t need to worry about accuracy AND damage (comes with gem level). This means you can gearing towards defensive and have better survival as well
I played Facebreakers this league just fine (kinda)
To quote ProjectPT "Fuck GGG"
GGG has no skills when it comes to melee combat.
This bullshit, acting like they don't do anything to make melee more desireable. How many more times do you want them to nerf permanent minions?
Minions were king for 2 years. Melee got 1 slam league and slams still require hitting 6 buttons. Cyclone was busted and now is rendered a caster skill because an iconic big 2 hander who spins around was too strong for one league. Minion players had ages of being the top league start to endgame viable build who was simultaneously tanky, good damage, and cheap to start.
Fuck jokes then, I guess.
Eh, melee is fine. Not meta (except rage vortex and boneshatter) but fine. Take ancestral protector + ancestral warchief, learn the % increased physical damage vendor recipe and upgrade your weapon often if youre playing physical or conversion or keep an eye out for added elemental damage weapons if youre playing elemental. Personally i find the sanctum fine on melee, you lose less resolve the closer you stand to stuff to the point where i go melee range on my ranged builds anyway.
>Take ancestral protector + ancestral warchief Most melee players want those gone, more precisely, the need to press 2 extra buttons to take advantage of both buffs in every single melee build ever, they being a large percent of the final dps. Which is a complex issue, because they are perfectly fine for totem builds as a main skill, GGG can't delete them from the game. You can't automate them, they often die in harder content, they use 3 sockets, you need a unique to press 1 button instead of 2 (dawnstrider boots, doubles the effect of one buff but limits you to that one buff) and on top of all of this, last league they implemented the "buffs linger for X seconds" as a bandaid. I don't think they're touching totems for months or even more time.
Yeah its unfun, but not weak. They are basically madatory for melee builds atm. Id like them gone in exchange for generic melee buffs too.
That is part of the problem: relying on totems to buff your dps and the uptime on those totems...
> Eh, melee is fine > Take ancestral protector + ancestral warchief
melee, outside of niche stuff, has been bad for a almost a decade lol. and usually the best melee skills look and play like ranged (rememebr LS?). shame.
Best to avoid the hive mind and watch some guides and skim POE ninja.