Tinctures, the unsung "trumelee/strikes fixer"

As a refresher, tru melee is any melee attack that involves smacking an enemy with your weapon directly to do damage.

in most cases the most accurate depiction of true melee skills are strike skills specifically.

and of course not all strike skills are considered true melee as some have huge aoes/projectiles tied to them.

you're free to disagree but i ll simply not entertain any debate on what true melee is and isnt.

the important bit is, the core concept of bonking the enemy with a stick. in arpgs in general the key problem with this is finding the actual opportunity to bonk the enemy.

other skills in the game simply do not need to worry about finding opportunities as all they need to do is fire off the skill and rely on the skill's range/aoe or projectiles so their damage uptime is maintained.

this does not work with trumelee, as at times there will be area denials whether from degen pools or huge ass telegraphed attacks.

the result is tru melee-ers will struggle finding time to position themselves to begin with and even when they start attacking, they have a small window of opportunity to deal damage.

this is where tinctures come in. many people see the current iteration of tinctures in a very negative light as the uptime is short and can be a hassle to maintain.

but consider this. during the short period of opportunity that presents itself, how can you boost up your damage reliably?

the previous answer is by using warcries. while waiting for the opportunity, we can cry a lot.

but now we have a new solution. tinctures.

for sure its a bitch to maintain, but in short bursts, you dont really need to maintain it. you just need to keep it up for a few seconds.

most of us DONT CARE for tinctures while clearing trash mobs. we dont need them. but as a tool for clearing bosses, i really think all melee-ers should consider incorporating tinctures into their build.

mana burn is annoying but it's minimal enough to use in short bursts.

I agree and there are ways around mana-burn.

It does seem like GGG should choose one downside though - (1) make tinctures limited duration, or (2) have mana-burn.

Right now they have both downsides so you have to fix your mana situation so you can still attack during the tincture, but also have it for a pretty short time unless you are a Warden.


I think the Warden +6 seconds after it falls off should be a passive tree notable.


Also, bring back "All damage can poison" and "All damage can ignite" mods, they were cool and fun without being overpowered.

As it stand now, Tinctures more or less feel like a Warden only item, and I don't want class specific items in PoE.

The thing is; for Tinctures to be really worth it, you have to bypass the clunkyness by investing quite a few points on the passive tree. I just can't see how that's worth it when you only have access to one un-buffed Tincture as a non-Warden. I might be wrong here, though.

I really don't like this implementation. It's just overly clunky and inconvenient JUST to make melee "more active".

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Phrazz wrote:

As it stand now, Tinctures more or less feel like a Warden only item, and I don't want class specific items in PoE.

The thing is; for Tinctures to be really worth it, you have to bypass the clunkyness by investing quite a few points on the passive tree. I just can't see how that's worth it when you only have access to one un-buffed Tincture as a non-Warden. I might be wrong here, though.

I really don't like this implementation. It's just overly clunky and inconvenient JUST to make melee "more active".

yeah actually thats a concern i have about tinctures. and if we're going there, i dont like the idea of "forcing players to fix problems".

like strike skills. they're really bad until you get "strikes an additional target" mod. which makes it somewhat compulsory.

as well as fortify. which i feel should be something inherent to anything "tru melee". where melee-ers should be rewarded for slapping enemies with their stick at close range. but instead we're forced to find ways to enable fortify.

the interesting thing about tinctures is GGG dropped tinctures in the same expansion that they increased the mana consumption of melee skills.

thus making tinctures even more undesirable. especially when most of us are used to reserving a huge bulk of mana to use a small amount.

the biggest salt on the wound is that wardens get to use tinctures on ranged weapons.

when i say that, its not "ranged should not get tinctures!" but more of, "eh? melee needed help and the solution you gave is also gonna make ranged even better?" sort of vibe.

also another issue i have is that theres no way to get "players can use an additional tincture" on tree normally. for curses we have it on tree and on items. but for tinctures, only warden and the unique sword has this feature.

but all that said, the current implementation is good enough to have a tincture running for a decent amount of time. for bursting, it feels good enough. for prolonged use, it requires a lot of investment but i think its not too required. tho i would feel it would feel less forced if the cooldown is reduced to maybe 4 seconds or something.

I'm playing a warden, but I only recently specced the tincture ascendancies. Before that I was using an ele dmg/pen tincture since the campaign, with no passive tree investment in tinctures. One point in mana Leech and a mana flask which I needed anyway. Tinctures help fill the hole left by totems to an extent: something that is always ready for you to use (unless on cooldown) to help burst down strong targets. Doing anything more than that requires specialization and investment, which seems well balanced to me.

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drayle wrote:

I'm playing a warden, but I only recently specced the tincture ascendancies. Before that I was using an ele dmg/pen tincture since the campaign, with no passive tree investment in tinctures. One point in mana Leech and a mana flask which I needed anyway. Tinctures help fill the hole left by totems to an extent: something that is always ready for you to use (unless on cooldown) to help burst down strong targets. Doing anything more than that requires specialization and investment, which seems well balanced to me.

yeah, i burst enemies down way quicker now with tinctures.

for being used for that sole purpose, tinctures really work well as is out of the box.