How is this game playable in melee?

Boneshatter should never be used as the measuring stick for melee being OK or not, it should however be used as proof that an additional scaler/damage source and built in melee splash are enough to make melee viable despite GGG's constant reluctance to make said changes.

As i've said many times if they put either the qol or the damage there the players will fix the speed and clear in one of the many ways the game presents them with. They will not do so if the skill is numerically challenged to begin with as most melee skills are once mandatory passives are removed.

Imagine a boss ..

With a small circle around it.

If you are not in the circle you take damage.
The further you are from the circle the more damage you take until you are off screen.

That would suck!
Ranged classes would rage!

That would be the same thing.

Mob that turns the whole screen to lava except the 10 foot area around it.


Someone at GGG is reading this thinking ....
can we do that ?

Bump for skill rotation past Bloody Aquaducts farms at lvl 60.

As the main thing that's made me quit POE, every league since starting 3 years ago. Is getting bored spamming 1 skill at Bloody Aquaduct, after 4 leagues. Esp if some zoomer range skill is killing all the mobs before my spectral helix, viper strike, and totems get a try.

So so far, I've had most of my POE fun these past few years from making my own builds on POB for days & Story Act's with parties & not from maps at all.

I honestly don't even get to maps before getting bored of zoomers ruining the slower non range skills. Or any skill that kills all the mobs before you when partying. Raiders should just get banned from parties, partying with a raider as a non raider from BA runs and onward is not a good time, trying to keep pace with them run speed wise is lame.

So yes more gems that align with other gems to use more than one skill with, partner skills. Similar to battleshouts yet battleshouts are boring. So some other partner gems past lvl 60. While also not allowing range skills to outshine melee gems by the time you get to Bloody Aquaduct runs.

I just find this game is way more about finding items, for late game, than it is about what skill gems pair well together. Hopefully POE 2 ends this idea that min maxing one skill should be the path this game takes for any longer.

Autobombers should be muted from ARPG's forever. The word " Action " is the phrase ARPG. How the freak is autobombing " Action ", when you aren't even pressing any buttons? Please tell thee.

Action doesn't mean " Finding Items " either. Figure out what action means, it tech means making a pve game for pvpers even if you don't add pvp. Less you want to rename the genre IHRPG " Item Hoarding RPG ". Then again this game is titled a Role playing game, with barely any reason for tanks to exist party wise and healers don't exist, just aoe dps. IHAOEDPSG.

Rotation Strategy verses Art Museums.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

If GGG really wants to help melee there are other things they could do. Like removing the need for those annoying totems and redesigning uber bosses so that they don't demand a build that can constantly move while doing damage and don't have absurd area denial in the form of ground degens everywhere.

This is the first and without question, the most important step in fixing melee.

Melee will always be "meh" if you have a high chance of being obliterated if you don't focus an absurd ammount of resources into defense. Mechanics that deal high close damage always have to be reactive and rely on reflexes rather than rng. Spike rng damage like "bullethell poe" will always make melee feel like shit even if you build "right".

If someone thinks good game balance is everyone being able to oneshot everything then that person doesn't know anything about balance.

Oneshotting means you don't have to play the game and interact with enemies, and that's a crime for anyone that has studied game design/balance.

"Oh but GGG is successfull, blah blah"... well there are thousands of other games that are more successful without allowing players to trivialize everything + there are 300 more important reasons that make PoE successful. One shots aren't one of them.

I'm not saying this specifically to you Baharoth15. Just a general comment.

I've had a lot of fun playing Hollow Palm with only 3 range, completely outside the league goal of using crucible tree on weapons. So of course, with some investment some skills can still be useful in the end game.

How/What does make my melee character unplayable ?

When I often have to click on one direction to move and click on the another direction to attack at same time.

This iteration is satisfying at same time "if I'm doing ok" though, I often end up with avoiding closed locations or doing hide and seek among the obstacles.

I mean it's fun but I have mixed feelings.

ASWD or stick controller to move and click/button to attack might solve my issue.

To summarize: Melee has the problem of damge uptime, because the window to damage a boss is low. This makes melee lose a lot of damage.

Even selfcast is better because you can instantly use your time window.

You also have to usea bit more overall resources for defense and spend a lot on weapons.

"

Gordyne wrote:

This is the first and without question, the most important step in fixing melee.

I would disagree with that. The most important step is giving melee a way to craft or obtain weapons at a reasonable price. Just look at the cost difference between crafting a weapon good enough to do just your first two voidstones. I bet I can reliably do the first two voidstone on a caster with just two +1 wands. No way in hell you are going to do that with a non caster.

If you look at how Ruthless is the casters have to find their support gems unlike in Trade. So you have balance in Ruthless which was originally how the game was designed. Melee has find good weapons, Casters had to find good gems. But now the gems are just given to the casters and gem lvl is what gives casters their damage.

Also, when was the last time you saw a caster forced to spec into a caster weapon? Melee and range have to spec bow, sword, axe, mace, claw ETC. We spend 10-20 points easy. Casters spend zero points in a weapon. So they can put those points into defense and obtain the same level of armor as a plate user.

IMO When you play spell/range/trap or mine you don't need as much defense as melee skills. Investing in defense you lose on dps. In addition, the items are expensive (according to my observations). In my opinion, the trend that has been going on for a few leagues is that it totally pushes melee skills aside because they're too frustrating. If you have an aura bot on your back, it's cool. But with aura bot every build is better anyway.

From league to league, we also have more and more mobs that are one-hit us from off-screen. At the same time, the "range" of skills is limited for players. Anyway, soon we will see a league in which only the best will be able to play. For the rest, it will no longer be a game, but a torment.

I think my mind has turned at least 120 degrees on this subject lately.

We have to options.
1) We can embrace GGG's definition of 'melee'. If we do that, melee is decent. And when we get leagues like Harvest or Crucible, where 'most' players can achieve tremendous power creep, melee is actually a little bit more than decent. What does that tell us? Well, it tells me that the mechanics of several melee skills are actually on par, but they are somewhat under powered. The scaling/investment needed to go from acts to mapping, as well as from T16 to 'the next level' is steep.

2) We can refuse GGG's definition of 'melee'. If we do that, we're forcing ourselves to wish for a completely different game. Because 'proper melee' will never work in the game we have today; the speed, the density, the mechanics of 90% of the bosses. It's just not plausible. Anymore... We're past that point.

I actually don't think that there's much they need to do here. Give melee some compensation for the "free" scaling spell builds get from increasing gem levels, or certain bow/DoT builds get from strangely "easy-to-craft" items, and I think we're there. And for the love of God, throw in some defenses on weapon specific notables; melee builds can rarely afford to spec into enough defense.