Melee Splash

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Melee splash requires you to directly click on an enemy

It does not require either of those things.

"

aimlessgun wrote:

And since it cannot shift-attack

It can.

Melee Splash causes an AoE around the thing hit by the melee attack - all it requires is that the melee hit actually hit something. You can shift attack, and provided something's close enough to you and in the right direction to be hit by that swing, the splash will still trigger around it. It does not and has never required you to directly target a specific enemy or refain from shift attacking.

Thanks for your response. But I think what Aimlessgun was getting at, and what I would also like to see, is the ability to attack the 'air' and still splash damage.

I'm curious, why is it that the initial hit needs to hit something?

In my opinion, melee splash shouldn't act differently to other AoE abilities in this regard. While it may seem right, conceptually, for it to have to hit an enemy, this doesn't make for good gameplay or fair balance.

"

Vultighjime wrote:

In my opinion, melee splash shouldn't act differently to other AoE abilities in this regard. While it may seem right, conceptually, for it to have to hit an enemy, this doesn't make for good gameplay or fair balance.

You step into the wrong direction because You try to compare melee aoe to range one.

Attacking air to produce splash may even seem all right, but it is counter-productive. Why hit the air, missing main (the strongest) part of an attack hoping for the AoE only? The script I posted allows You to negate the problem of constant clicking in search of new targets, and I strongly suggest that behavior to be the new norm for all the melee. Or use Titan Quest-like two-modes mouse handling.

"

Daefecator wrote:

"

Vultighjime wrote:

In my opinion, melee splash shouldn't act differently to other AoE abilities in this regard. While it may seem right, conceptually, for it to have to hit an enemy, this doesn't make for good gameplay or fair balance.

You step into the wrong direction because You try to compare melee aoe to range one.

Attacking air to produce splash may even seem all right, but it is counter-productive. Why hit the air, missing main (the strongest) part of an attack hoping for the AoE only? The script I posted allows You to negate the problem of constant clicking in search of new targets, and I strongly suggest that behavior to be the new norm for all the melee. Or use Titan Quest-like two-modes mouse handling.

Thanks, but I'm not particularly interested in using mouse scripts etc. I'm fairly happy playing the way I've been playing, which is trying to land all my Melee Splash hits on targets, without missing a lot so that I don't waste mana/miss out on lifesteal. I just think that when I do miss a target, it would be better if the splash still happened.

As for this change making Melee Splash into a ranged attack... The splash AoE is small enough to not be considered "ranged". It still would be a melee AoE, since it's basically the same idea as Cleave. Given that Cleave is a melee AoE, Melee Splash would also be a melee AoE if it behaved similarly (i.e. if you could swing at the air and still splash damage).

"

Vultighjime wrote:

Thanks, but I'm not particularly interested in using mouse scripts etc. I'm fairly happy playing the way I've been playing, which is trying to land all my Melee Splash hits on targets, without missing a lot so that I don't waste mana/miss out on lifesteal. I just think that when I do miss a target, it would be better if the splash still happened.

You are welcome! Actually, what I realize now You are talking about - is the very thing that annoyed me the most at start - I needed to always *click* *click* ... *click* near the center of my game screen to try hitting monster all the time while minimizing downtimes after previous monster is already dead and there is a new target next to the character. Shift-clicking can make it a bit better, but will certainly make me waste at least some resources attacking free space, so I suppose this is the only way at the moment to not waste resources on melee hits that give no leech back.

So actually, I wanted to debate on a slightly different topic - whether or not current left mouse button behavior is good or not, could it be possibly improved, and what should be changed if yes. I suggested an alternative option for players to test how it feels, and hopefully GGG will eventually fix something, as melee right now need some quality of life improvements. This game rocks, I want it to be even better! Though I fully agree with You that modifying existent game environment may feel like cheating. But as we are still in Beta, I think it's totally the time to try and experiment so we all can win in the end having the best polished released game ever!

"

Vultighjime wrote:

As for this change making Melee Splash into a ranged attack... The splash AoE is small enough to not be considered "ranged". It still would be a melee AoE, since it's basically the same idea as Cleave. Given that Cleave is a melee AoE, Melee Splash would also be a melee AoE if it behaved similarly (i.e. if you could swing at the air and still splash damage).

Actually, I already addressed the problem about Melee Splash'ing free space - You give up on the main (strongest) part of attack and rely only on added splash damage, and it is really counter-productive. So, instead of being a support gem, Melee Splash becomes a band-aid fix to allow using any single target attack without a target - how clever is that? And also note, how this logic doesn't apply to Cleave which is an AoE in the first place.

And by the way, I never suggested anything like changing Melee Splash to ranged attack, but I always fell Melee Splash and Chain should be swapped into Melee Chain and Splash. The latter will provide splash to ranged/spell hits, and the former will act similar to Charged Hammer in Heroes of Newerth (or Mjollnir in Dota) giving a chance to proc a bolt of lightning chaining from your main target to several adjacent targets. At the moment, I feel Melee Splash is very solid, but Chain is becoming more and more useless (considering its cost while it still is a drop-only gem), and this suggestion could really buff Chain, as that gem should be awesome too!

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Melee splash requires you to directly click on an enemy

It does not require either of those things.

"

aimlessgun wrote:

And since it cannot shift-attack

It can.

Melee Splash causes an AoE around the thing hit by the melee attack - all it requires is that the melee hit actually hit something. You can shift attack, and provided something's close enough to you and in the right direction to be hit by that swing, the splash will still trigger around it. It does not and has never required you to directly target a specific enemy or refain from shift attacking.

Hooray you read my rant!

Yes, you can technically hit things while shift attacking and clicking near enough to an enemy. However this is unreliable and if things are just out of your melee range, worthless.

Here's the hard reality of desync: In Path of Exile, a good ability must be able to reliably hit enemies even when you don't know exactly where those enemies are. Because you mostly don't know exactly where those enemies are.

Honestly it feels like it sucks to have to design skills around this reality. But that's just how it is.

Take this common gameplay situation. You are outside a room that is too dangerous to enter. Since you are true melee, you cannot kill stuff simply by shooting through the door, so you have to wait for enemies to come out to you. However, you cannot actually tell which enemies are coming out of the room, much less their exact positions to allow shift attacking. An enemy that appears to run out of the door up to you stands a very high chance of still being in the room in serverside reality. A melee splasher needs a way to simply damage a general area where enemies will likely enter.

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Take this common gameplay situation. You are outside a room that is too dangerous to enter. Since you are true melee, you cannot kill stuff simply by shooting through the door, so you have to wait for enemies to come out to you. However, you cannot actually tell which enemies are coming out of the room, much less their exact positions to allow shift attacking. An enemy that appears to run out of the door up to you stands a very high chance of still being in the room in serverside reality. A melee splasher needs a way to simply damage a general area where enemies will likely enter.

My script shown above does nothing but replaces holding left mouse button to rapid successive clicking (10 times per second).

If You guys really try it out, You'll notice, that in the exact situation, described in this quoted post, you suddenly have got the reliable way to damage and more so - not just splashing to empty space, but actually attacking direct enemies, and producing real splash around it. There were lots of situations where I had one or several monster just resync'ed next to me after I attacked a target, that was actually also re-synced next to me when I was just running on my auto-clicking left button.

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Here's the hard reality of desync: In Path of Exile, a good ability must be able to reliably hit enemies even when you don't know exactly where those enemies are. Because you mostly don't know exactly where those enemies are.

Constant clicking almost solves it. Even though You have no idea whether there is a monster in a doorway or not, but as you are clicking very fast on top of it, the monster will be re-synced to your screen and you'll see it appear, unless there were none on the server. I have very limited knowledge about how it works, and my best educated guess is that every time You click a location, the coordinates are sent to the server, and if there is a monster there, server tells you about it. I am basing this on other people observations when, for example, you throw a trap into a severely desynced monster you can see your trap flies to absolutely another (but "true") monster position, and sometimes it even starts flying not from the center of your screen, but rather from your "true" server position, that can be in your top-left screen corner for example.

Furthermore, Melee Splash does the rest in fighting against desync - as soon as you attack the just found monster, you start producing splash AoE damage, and You may not even see any other targets on your screen being in melee, but server does know who exactly is being affected by this AoE, and all these "invisible-to-you" targets will be re-synced.

TLDR: Playing the game constantly clicking left mouse button (the faster - the better) instead of just holding it - does wonders in actively fighting against desyncs and leads to much smoother gameplay. If this could be achieved without using third party software (game auto-clicks for you while holding a button) - it would lead to a very relaxing and enjoyable experience in my opinion.

My experience with this gem so far has been pretty negative. I respecced a 45 shadow to dagger-crit-melee splash, and pretty much hate it. Between desynch and its small radius, I'm constantly missing or just hitting a few targets, while requiring an additional support gem to do it. Cleave or Lightning Strike just seem to be vastly superior options. If the radius were bigger, and I could actually tell where mobs were to hit them, then I'd love the gem. As it is, it's another underwhelming gem that wants to be good, but isn't (my experience with multistrike and cyclone builds hasn't been any better). It seems pretty much every gem added lately has been that way. I really, really want to play melee characters but they just can't compete with freezing pulse, EK, spork totems, summoners, lightning arrow, etc. They're both more vulnerable AND clear slower.

"

Daefecator wrote:

Playing the game constantly clicking left mouse button (the faster - the better) instead of just holding it - does wonders in actively fighting against desyncs and leads to much smoother gameplay. If this could be achieved without using third party software (game auto-clicks for you while holding a button) - it would lead to a very relaxing and enjoyable experience in my opinion.

Hm, that could be an interesting solution. Ill have to try out the script at some point.

this would be a good gem if the melee splash effect worked with the variety of things it has evidently been engineered specifically not to, ie: shield charge, infernal blow's 'explode on death' buff, viper strike's charges, puncture (i hear it actually does work with puncture? interesting), dominating blow's domination effect, etc.

in essence all we have is a skill gem that is never worth actually using as it provides no benefit that isn't vastly outweighed by simply using an AoE skill instead of using a single target skill + a gem that makes it do less damage and cost more mana and waste a gem slot.

yes, viper strike's DoT should be affected by the damage penalty, yes, dominated enemies that come back should be affected by melee splash with their attacks even if thats bad, and yes, it needs to be able to hit a sizeable radius without actually striking a monster. you can't walk up to a room you know you can't enter due to desync and/or death inside (spark mages are woefully inadequate at killing you through doors and absurdly quick about it when you're in a small room) and just ground slam, lit strike or cleave the doorway til stuff is dead. you have to actually enter, and hit things. it isn't good gameplay.

also the penalty is too high, it should be more along the lines of 20% less damage dealt, with no additional penalty to other targets, and an AoE increase as you level it as well as 1% inc melee dmg. the mere fact that you have to equip a support gem for this functionality is already a large penalty, the mana cost mult is another blow, it just doesn't provide nearly enough benefit for its current functionality.

tl;dr it needs to work on the skills it doesn't and the second damage penalty needs to be dropped. currently this gem has no functional value in game.