How is this game playable in melee?

problem with melee is you have to tank everything the game throws at you. prepare to invest some 30-40% of your skill points and items resources into defences. unless you`re facerolling the content, you cant even do much of the atlas farming strats. want to do harbinger as melee? good luck with that. wanna do blight? essences are quite deadly too. i will never forget how i started poisonous concoction and was just fine doing expedition and other stuff. i was already rolling in currency so i decided to switch to a melee char - it was like falling from a cliff into an abyss... and my posion concoction build had items for like 5-10c i picked up from ground.

i almost exclusively play melee, but every time i switch to something range it feels like a cheat.

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feral_nature wrote:

...i almost exclusively play melee, but every time i switch to something range it feels like a cheat.

Exactly.

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hmcg020 wrote:

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innervation wrote:

So here's a thought excercize.

If every era of the game's past gives you fond memories of viable/powerful melee skills (CI, instant leech, Savior, Legion Cyclone, Slams, Hateforge) ...why do we not think that Bonezone and Heatshiver aren't going to be this era's "yeah melee was good back then but now it sucks" reference 3-5 years from now?

Maybe it is and has always been overblown just how 'bad' 'melee' is. There has always been a melee skill or 3 in the meta, and if that doesn't seem like much remember its competing with bows, minions, trigger builds, totems, trap/mines, and hand cast. I feel like anyone from outside of PoE doing a statistical analysis wouldn't find evidence that matches the absolute outrage this issue is and has been given over the years. Yes, they might find a little lag, a little underrepresentation, maybe a little more cost and trade friction. But based on the community sentiment you'd think melee was full of gems that deal no damage and were literally unusable.

You may be right, though I think you've overlooked valid concerns that are unique to melee and the prolonged existence of which's lead to the boil-over you're mentioning.

I don't think melee has had that many 'valid' concerns over the years.

1. Melee has to get in range of getting hit by melee. Attempted solution was Fortify which worked....better some patches than others. C-

2. Melee 'shouldn't' have to spend 2 skill gem links on inc aoe (melee splash) and multiple target hitting (+ X strikes). This is debatably valid as I believe it overlooked what other archetypes also have to do. Totem and traps usually give up a slot to make a thing a totem or trap. Bows 'need' extra proj. Overall I'll allow it as a gripe, but GGG have also been pushing splash and + X targets. They could do better, but they are doing better than they were before. B-

3. DPS 'uptime' on pinnacle boss fights relative to other archetypes. This is the main one I think will never be solved because if they cared enough to solve it, it would have been done by now. D-

Every other gripe to me has just been noise or a get good issue. None of these things made the complain noise = reality in my opinion. You had some extra hoops to jump through, I don't really care. I play melee when I feel like it. Frostblades, Glacial Hammer in Ultimatum (before it was cool), Volcanic Fissure slam in Sanctum, etc. Seems fine* to me but I also don't bumrush Uber Maven day 3. Or ever.

*Volcanic slam was NOT fine in Sanctum, but Chris said in the hype video to Ziggy that they were making sure to make melee feel good in Sanctum despite the obvious apparent disadvantages they would be at. I believe this is where the kids type 'KEKW' or 'sadge'.

also, I leave it to the community here to decide if this is melee

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/164jw1b/i_experimented_with_other_steel_skills_and/

seems both melee and good to me and one that almost never makes the skill gem list in conversations like these.

ive been told frost blades isnt melee theres no shot people will accept splitting steel to be one

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yamface wrote:

ive been told frost blades isnt melee theres no shot people will accept splitting steel to be one

I mean homie in the video is standing inside Sirus' ass idk

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innervation wrote:

also, I leave it to the community here to decide if this is melee

You don't have to "leave it up to the community". Steel Skills do not have a "melee tag". Melee debates just get stupid when everyone and their grandmother use their feelings and the wind to decide what's melee and what's not. Using the in-game tags removes that. Anyhow, I didn't deep dive into that video, but we all know EVERY skill in the game can be made insane with enough investment.

But you are right: The melee "whine" is probably a little bit exaggerated. But there are some problems, mainly scaling issues IMO, and certain fixes would be so damn easy. And I think that's the main issue; GGG's refusal to even try to come up with some sort of global melee buff. They just have to look at Boneshatter for one second to understand what's wrong with 'most' melee skills when it comes to scaling.

And it doesn't help that when Chris was asked about melee fixes, he uttered the words "...melee feels great in PoE 2", and a few months after, the news about them splitting the games came, leaving us with uncertainty.

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innervation wrote:

So here's a thought excercize.

If every era of the game's past gives you fond memories of viable/powerful melee skills (CI, instant leech, Savior, Legion Cyclone, Slams, Hateforge) ...why do we not think that Bonezone and Heatshiver aren't going to be this era's "yeah melee was good back then but now it sucks" reference 3-5 years from now?

Maybe it is and has always been overblown just how 'bad' 'melee' is. There has always been a melee skill or 3 in the meta, and if that doesn't seem like much remember its competing with bows, minions, trigger builds, totems, trap/mines, and hand cast. I feel like anyone from outside of PoE doing a statistical analysis wouldn't find evidence that matches the absolute outrage this issue is and has been given over the years. Yes, they might find a little lag, a little underrepresentation, maybe a little more cost and trade friction. But based on the community sentiment you'd think melee was full of gems that deal no damage and were literally unusable.

Hard agree on this.

As for the part of that long list of other playstyles competing with melee, people tend to classify all of those and half the melee skills as "ranged" or "spells". So if everything except Heavy Strike is a ranged skill/spell then it's understandable why people feel melee is underrepresented.

Nah when stat sticks were in vogue melee was basically meta for any skill, its had moments when it was very popular and has moments when it isn't. Bonezone is what happens when you make a skill superior in every form to its peers so its number is naturally skewed.

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innervation wrote:

2. Melee 'shouldn't' have to spend 2 skill gem links on inc aoe (melee splash) and multiple target hitting (+ X strikes). This is debatably valid as I believe it overlooked what other archetypes also have to do. Totem and traps usually give up a slot to make a thing a totem or trap. Bows 'need' extra proj. Overall I'll allow it as a gripe, but GGG have also been pushing splash and + X targets. They could do better, but they are doing better than they were before. B-

Totems are a more multiplier by default on any build that uses them, traps are a cast speed override and give access to better scaling and the popular bow skills get more damage from projectiles it isn't just QoL for clearing (kinda like when you could use extra strikes to hit hydrosphere tbh). They can also get 100% of their requirement from bow + quiver at next to no opportunity cost - it isn't like melee weapons get extra strikes and melee splash as suffixes though maybe they should.

Lastly the distance argument is important, some melee skills really aren't melee there isn't any point memeing about it. Equally some "ranged" skills are. The way splitting steel is required to be played for it to be anything like viable it is a melee skill. I honestly think you can make an argument that channeling skills are melee, they share almost all the same problems regardless.

Now that changes from person to person obviously but if you are arguing that a skill which does full damage to the entire screen is melee just because it has the tag it isn't, there isn't a restriction there.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Now that changes from person to person obviously but if you are arguing that a skill which does full damage to the entire screen is melee just because it has the tag it isn't, there isn't a restriction there.

There's not really many skills like that in the game, though - unless we're speaking of heavy investment. Well, maybe Lightning Strike, as it doesn't require you to hit an enemy for the projectiles to proc.

I always refer to the tag when discussing melee. Everything else becomes WAY too vague. Cyclone is suddenly not a melee skill when you reach X% increased AoE. Frost Blades is suddenly not a melee skill once you hit X melee strike range. Heavy Strike is not a melee skill once you add Melee Splash and scale its AoE a little bit.

It's 100% impossible to have a discussion around the subject, unless people have some sort of common denominator. I think the melee tag is a natural one, even though badly designed skills like LS comes and messes with that philosophy.