How is this game playable in melee?

No dude you just want to make the game bland. You complain about on death effects but you didnt give any alternatives. Hell even if you remove every single mechanic monsters have you only make ranged options even more superior.

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kuciol wrote:

Also many on death effects happen after a delay, those are more of a problem for ranged characters since They will run into them...

Hah! This just isn't true. At all. Anyhow...

There are three main problems with melee as I see it:

1) Melee needs more DPS than ranged to be able to be CLOSE to the clear speed of ranged.

2) Melee needs more defense than ranged for obvious reasons, but they all have access to the same types of defenses (except one).

3) Melee is - in most cases - way harder to scale than 'anything' else.

Point 1 and 2 are easily fixable by improving melee scaling by adding more flat damage to skills and/or flat damage to melee/weapon specific nodes on the tree.

The defense part is also easy - and can be done in LOTS of ways. They can start with making Fortify work on DoT. They can also add defensive stats on melee/weapon specific nodes on the tree, to make them "melee only", making it a unique benefit for melee. Hell, they can even build Fortify into "close ranged" melee skills. Melee needs Fortify; why do melee builds have to invest into defense they need over other classes? And maybe a Chaos Resistance cluster in the south-west part of the tree?

Two things are certain:
1) PoE will ALWAYS have huge mob density. Advocating for them to remove the most iconic part of the game, is futile. They need to balance melee around the current mob density - the current state of the game.

2) As long as melee characters are supposed/forced/expected to dodge the same stuff as ranged characters (AKA jumping around like a frog), melee will never be balanced. No one is asking for melee to be able to face tank everything. But you need to be able to tank WAY more than ranged characters - and not die every time you stop for half a second.

1. DPS solves nothing. Everything dies instantly anyway. We have builds with shapers per second DMG.

2. Defenses are meaningless. Killing things before it can touch you will always be vastly superior. We already can make very tanky builds, its not an option for vast majority of players because its not damage.

3. Melee is not harder to scale. You just cant since you need more defenses.

All this "solutions" look good in a vacuum but they wont change anything. Melee is in bad spot BECAUSE we have more then enough of dmg and defense in both cases. We also cant balance anything around weak characters. That would make the game boring.

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kuciol wrote:

1. DPS solves nothing. Everything dies instantly anyway. We have builds with shapers per second DMG.

2. Defenses are meaningless. Killing things before it can touch you will always be vastly superior. We already can make very tanky builds, its not an option for vast majority of players because its not damage.

3. Melee is not harder to scale. You just cant since you need more defenses.

All this "solutions" look good in a vacuum but they wont change anything. Melee is in bad spot BECAUSE we have more then enough of dmg and defense in both cases. We also cant balance anything around weak characters. That would make the game boring.

I don't know if I can actually count all the contradictions in your post. I'll start now, I'll let you know when I'm done.

Its not contradictions, as melee you need defenses faster because well melee. You need them while ranged chars can focus on damage first. In the top end (not talking about mirror gear here) both have enough of both damage and defense. Giving more solves nothing. Builds that can stand in "die" Beam are a norm these days.

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Phrazz wrote:

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kuciol wrote:

1. DPS solves nothing. Everything dies instantly anyway. We have builds with shapers per second DMG.

2. Defenses are meaningless. Killing things before it can touch you will always be vastly superior. We already can make very tanky builds, its not an option for vast majority of players because its not damage.

3. Melee is not harder to scale. You just cant since you need more defenses.

All this "solutions" look good in a vacuum but they wont change anything. Melee is in bad spot BECAUSE we have more then enough of dmg and defense in both cases. We also cant balance anything around weak characters. That would make the game boring.

I don't know if I can actually count all the contradictions in your post. I'll start now, I'll let you know when I'm done.

haha my thoughts exactly

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kuciol wrote:

Its not contradictions, as melee you need defenses faster because well melee. You need them while ranged chars can focus on damage first. In the top end (not talking about mirror gear here) both have enough of both damage and defense. Giving more solves nothing. Builds that can stand in "die" Beam are a norm these days.

more nonsense

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I've leaguestarted melee this league. It was essentially my first league start since Bestiary since i am mostly a standard player.

Went for a 2 handed elemental based slayer build aiming for Voidforge as my endgame weapon. Started with double strike but switched to frost blades during yellow maps because my new weapon had low added cold and i compensated for that with conversion. Could have switched back later but didn't bother.

Thank you for this. Out of curiosity, does this include Sanctum?

I had more questions but I've just looked at your character setup and can see how it ticks. Slayers are great. PS LOL Double Strike on the wand -- as good a place to store it as any.

I already have 8 active buttons I need to push, keep track of exerted attacks, fist of War, make sure I keep my Battlemages Cry buff going, and I don't even have the last 2 active buttons. In all I will have to use 10 active buttons and the UI is only handles 7 without the Ctrl button.

Then their is the cost. Good melee weapons cost 20-50 Divine easy. Most of the time you need 15 Divine to even get started with melee unless you're Boneshatter. 15 Divine worth with a caster can get you a 15-20 million dps build. You will be lucky to hit 8 million with the same amount of currency.

Cheap melee builds are known for having multiple weaknesses that casters generally can cover for easily with their tree. Most of the strongest caster builds don't put any points into damage nodes but a very small handful and they can still clear all content some can even do ubers. The rest of their points go into defenses. I had a caster build last league I spent a whole 150c and I could clear most any map

Melee gets more extreme in terms of min-maxing buffs for boss fights. Your damage doubles with

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Ancestral Protector + Vaal Ancestral Warchief + Maim Support + Culling Strike Support + Panopticon anoint

Also the number of impales you have stacked on the boss. Berserkers accumulate rage count and then go "Berserk" to further double that. "Blood Stance", "Vaal Double Strike", "Blood Rage" adds a little more. In short, their DPS fluctuates like no other.

IMHO nearly all ranged attacks builds use either Point Blank or Far Shot so their damage fluctuates too according to distance.

I don't think spellcasters have anything as extreme as the other archetypes above other than the boost from "Vaal Righteous Fire" and "Divine Blessing" (for builds with huge unreserved mana). Their DPS is more consistent. The downside is they have the hardest access to life leech and Fortify.

Having said that, in my theorycrafts so far it is still the Berserker melee build with the highest DPS on budget gears.

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jeerinho wrote:

Melee gets more extreme in terms of min-maxing buffs for boss fights. Your damage doubles with

"

Ancestral Protector + Vaal Ancestral Warchief + Maim Support + Culling Strike Support + Panopticon anoint

Also the number of impales you have stacked on the boss. Berserkers accumulate rage count and then go "Berserk" to further double that. "Blood Stance", "Vaal Double Strike", "Blood Rage" adds a little more. In short, their DPS fluctuates like no other.

IMHO nearly all ranged attacks builds use either Point Blank or Far Shot so their damage fluctuates too according to distance.

I don't think spellcasters have anything as extreme as the other archetypes above other than the boost from "Vaal Righteous Fire" and "Divine Blessing" (for builds with huge unreserved mana). Their DPS is more consistent. The downside is they have the hardest access to life leech and Fortify.

Having said that, in my theorycrafts so far it is still the Berserker melee build with the highest DPS on budget gears.

No way, highest burst maybe, and that's about it. If it was so good good players would actually play it. There is only one melee build that has a chance, and that's boneshatter. The highest burst with shit defense, maybe, but I think I will out perform that with a miner build any day. No way in hell you are going to beat a budget Absolution build with a melee build with a high dps and high defensed for a reasonable price. I don't think you are going to beat a MaW build either.

And we will have a much easier build, with much better defense and very high dps all done with 2-3 buttons, unlike a melee build that's going to use 6-10 buttons and have to do the mental Olympics to pull off that dps.

Reminds me back in the day when I use to play Wow and they theory crafters said that Enhancement Shammy was the highest DPS in the game. Then when the logs came out it was near the worst, because pretty much no human could pull off that rotation. 1 in a 100k might have been able to, and so it ended up dumpster tier.