How is this game playable in melee?

vaal temp nerfed hard... so melee in worse state

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Phrazz wrote:

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.

Its usually best to just not focus on the details as which fall within melee and which don't really don't change the problems with melee its just splitting hairs.

They don't actually need a common denominator other than the summarise the skills as a group. As I mentioned channelling skills actually share loads of the melee problems.

If your personal measurement for example is can it off screen as "ranged" then i'd be pretty happy with that as a go to point that everything shorter than that needs more defence.

Edit: just to muddy the waters further, when I think about it the melee class that I have a problem with is almost entirely strikes - slams can be made ranged enough that it doesn't matter and their scaling isn't redundant its very similar to ranged and projectiles. The supports for AoE are also pretty decent.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

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.

Its usually best to just not focus on the details as which fall within melee and which don't really don't change the problems with melee its just splitting hairs.

They don't actually need a common denominator other than the summarise the skills as a group. As I mentioned channelling skills actually share loads of the melee problems.

If your personal measurement for example is can it off screen as "ranged" then i'd be pretty happy with that as a go to point that everything shorter than that needs more defence.

Edit: just to muddy the waters further, when I think about it the melee class that I have a problem with is almost entirely strikes - slams can be made ranged enough that it doesn't matter and their scaling isn't redundant its very similar to ranged and projectiles. The supports for AoE are also pretty decent.

Disagree, the thing these debates miss the most are details and substance. Everyone participating has an idea in his head what he is talking about but most of it never comes across ending with futile talks where neither side reaches the other.

We all play the same game but at the same time we don't. Just between you, Phrazz and me our perspectives are already worlds apart. Phrazz plays SC trade league and typically stops his progression at red maps or shortly after.
You do the same but in hardcore which is a big difference already. For me on the other hand t16 maps are more like the start of the actual game, not the end. And my perspective is mostly based on that.

You say you have issues with strikes but that is already a big invitation to failure given how vastly different strikes are. Between Heavy Strike and Frost Blades/Lightning/Molten Strike there is a world of a difference in power and playability. They should be judged independently.
Not to mention that like half the people in this topic will go "but those aren't melee skills" if you end up using them as examples for anything.

Here's my modest Zerk. Pretty big right?

Now here's some kinetic bolt action.

Melee is dogshit, at every turn, compared to any rang- projectile focused build. It is what it is.

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Phrazz wrote:

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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.

There's a situation like 'the sky is blue' where we say something because its mostly true and it's not worth diving into the technical nuances and exceptions.

'melee skills have the melee tag' is not that situation imo - the video I linked is the perfect example.

Do I want to do that in every melee discussion....not really. But I would still rather be flexible on this definition than rigid.

I dunno if the game is playable to melee or not; I rarely get to the 'actual game' that is the map grind or past that. Don't know what the actual 'game' part of the game is these days nor how it stacks up.

I will say though there's a reason most the characters still on my roster are Melee based, even if it's like Shockwave or Lacerate builds. There's something fun about leap slamming in as an angry blender compared to tossing out traps or using spells.

I suppose though the flip side is that's part of the reason I don't get far post MQ, my fun melee gets curb stomped by numbers. Or I'm just bad at the game.

I'm still probably gonna go melee a few more times.

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innervation wrote:

There's a situation like 'the sky is blue' where we say something because its mostly true and it's not worth diving into the technical nuances and exceptions.

'melee skills have the melee tag' is not that situation imo - the video I linked is the perfect example.

Do I want to do that in every melee discussion....not really. But I would still rather be flexible on this definition than rigid.

That's fine, I guess.

I just find it very weird to have a discussion about the state of melee, when everyone and their grandmother have their own definition of what melee is. I'm sure there's even people out there viewing Freezing Pulse as "melee", just because you're doing more damage at close range. Hell, even my own definition is probably wrong, because I will never view a spell as "melee".

So for me it's simple: When we're talking about the in-game state of melee, everything that scales off of melee damage is melee. I would also find it very weird if someone was debating the state of channeling skills, spells or totem skills, and was using Cleave as an example, just because they "feel" it looks like a spell after all the "juicy" AoE buffs it got :P

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Phrazz wrote:

That's fine, I guess.

I just find it very weird to have a discussion about the state of melee, when everyone and their grandmother have their own definition of what melee is. I'm sure there's even people out there viewing Freezing Pulse as "melee", just because you're doing more damage at close range. Hell, even my own definition is probably wrong, because I will never view a spell as "melee".

So for me it's simple: When we're talking about the in-game state of melee, everything that scales off of melee damage is melee. I would also find it very weird if someone was debating the state of channeling skills, spells or totem skills, and was using Cleave as an example, just because they "feel" it looks like a spell after all the "juicy" AoE buffs it got :P

I just assumed Melee was anything not Bow/Spell/Trap based myself. I mean I count Lacerate and the Earthquake move as "melee" even though you can get some range with those.

Melee: physically hit the monsters with an axe, sword, mace, staff or dagger to do damage. No projectiles, spikes, spells, rays, etc. Channeling is not melee. Throwing is not melee.

Given the state of the game aoe and splash count when attached to the above. I do like cleave using a big axe and large aoe. :)

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ChanBalam wrote:

Melee: physically hit the monsters with an axe, sword, mace, staff or dagger to do damage. No projectiles, spikes, spells, rays, etc. Channeling is not melee. Throwing is not melee.

Given the state of the game aoe and splash count when attached to the above. I do like cleave using a big axe and large aoe. :)

What if your melee physical hit creates projectiles?