Melee bad - Feels good and bad to have devs confirm it

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

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Aynix wrote:

Instead the dude who is good at the game is constantly playing melee in SSFHC and reaching lvl100.

Can you stop with the vast exaggerations and spreading of misinformation?

That "one guy" pretty much only plays Occultist. From mega Chill Vortex to Doomblast and whatever. Not a single melee character.

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That is not person who Im talking about, but nice to see more of GGG people play the game in high level.
I was talking about Mark Roberts.

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

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Aynix wrote:

I was talking about Mark Roberts.

Then maybe you should be more specific when referencing people.

You got a source for any of these random claims? Because Mark_GGG is Mark Roberts' account. Not sure if he has another account. This one has barely any activity besides forum posts.

He is well known as Neon. He probably doesnt play as much now that he become "the main guy for PoE 1".

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

And it's not surprising why.

Because he plays SSFHC. Wanna discuss how many builds are viable there? Because you for sure wont see TS Deadeyes or "ward looper" there.
People who complain about "melee bad" however are not playing SSFHC. Vast majority of them are playing in SC trade.

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Baharoth15
For me melee is "fine" as long as i can take a melee build from twighlight strand to ubers on a reasonable budget (~20-30 div depending on league prices) and i can do just that.

If someone thinks melee is "bad" because totems are annoying, or because gem scaling is so much more convienient, or because range is easier to build since it can just dodge stuff rather than needing defense, i won't say a thing or disagree, those are valid points. But that's not something i read often. Instead i see lines like:

"Even with a 600 pdps weapon melee caps out at 5 mio dps" or "You need 20+ div weapons to do red maps with melee" or "melee is unplayable because you can't go close to shit/stand still without dying" and the likes.

My complaint has nothing to do with shoestring ubers, if you're willing to accept miserable playstyles and a single bit of latency costing you a portal you can do ubers on a sub 5 div budget on ranged spell builds because spell totem and trap builds haven't been nerfed as hard as everything else and can probably find a workable melee build for under 40 divs, my complaint is that for melee to feel remotely good you need to be not really melee and/or functionally invulnerable which requires an enormous amount of investment.

Spell Totems are even less popular than melee. I cant remember when was last time someone made popular Spell Totem build (Ball Lightning of Static doesnt count, because as we can see GGG didnt want it to even work with totems in the first place)

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zzang wrote:

I think melee lacks that proper balance where you can be tanky with good dps (without double totems buffs) on a reasonable budget.

That's ultimately correct. You can nitpick about shattering steel champ or w/e is currently pumping 10-15m dps on a pure tank build but the vast majority of slams, strikes, bleeds and aoe builds are suffering.

Since 3.15 a lot of changes in the game disproportionately affected melee. Take spell suppression for instance. A lot of melee builds worked through acrobatics which offset the need to spend so many passives. That's gone. On top of that the melee supports got nerfed which made it harder to get damage.

So not only are mobs up longer they are also pumping higher ele numbers on spells that are point blank AoE (anti-melee).

And then the armor changes hit. The bleed changes hit. Warcries got hit, etc.

There's a focus on nerfing particular builds. Like today shattering steel champ will probably get nerfed. Will it get nerfed in a way that buries 20 other build potentials? Or will it get nerfed in a way it doesn't? Given history probably the former.

Shattering Steel sint even melee. Its projectile build with that plays in melee range to maximize its DMG output thanks to shotgunning and return proj mechanic.

Totem builds are not unpopular because they suck, they are unpopular because the vast majority of the playerbase finds them terribly unfun to play and slow at mapping, but they are and have been for more than a year at this point one of if not the best budget uber farming options in the game due to being all but untouched by nerfs for quite some time.

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lagwin1980 wrote:

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exsea wrote:

Its really frustrating whenever a forum topic about melee being bad and some bloke says melee is fine.

The problem i think is that alot of people say melee is bad because being ranged is safer and can deal damage, that mentality will never change (prety sure there will be posts about melee being bad in PoE2)

The problem i have with the confirmation is that it was linked to the character rigging and animation, something that was developed for PoE1, then taken away (kinda, i seem to recall that they were using the new rigs on NPCs)

Wouldn't it be easier than spending all that time with the old rigs and just spend that time on making the new rigs work in PoE1?

my personal take on the rigs is, its a bit too late at this point. current poe requires you to delete everything or get deleted yourself.

one thing some people may have missed out in POE2 reveals is that a lot of the animation rigging is weapon class locked.

if they brought poe2 rigging to poe1 it might break player builds. personally i m using 2handed viperstrike. i d be pissed if they made viperstrike suddenly one hander/dagger only.

theres a significant amount of work being done to poe2's animation rigging but i do hope some of it goes to poe1.

i m giving jonathan a lot of benefit of doubt but the things he mentioned do highlight a lot of melee's problems. one of the largest problem is melee lacks "attack while moving". in poe1. for sure you have cyclone, but if you use heavy strike, you waste time walking up to the opponent before actually executing the attack. in poe 2 you actually move towards the opponent as part of the attack.

this allows less downtime with melee where you could even make an attack while "stepping out of the way".

also the rigs dont work in poe 1 because of how armor pieces are modeled. with older models being tied to an older "just make it work" philosophy, they might not translate well when using newer animation rigs where the armor pieces look weird.

theres a lot of tweaking they have to do before they can bring the new rigs to poe1.

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this allows less downtime with melee

except monster auto attacks in POE2 hit incredibly hard and your maneuvering speed is a snail compared to POE1

coupled with zero flask replenishment in combat and POE2 melee will have an incredibly amount of downtime

this is while mr. ranged dances around while shooting singing "I can do this all day."

at some point one must assume all this absurdity is intentional, and not just years of built up dev ignorance.

how many years have melee players been clamoring for strong built in defenses for melee in POE1 WHILE PLAYING MELEE SKILLS? nothing was provided but the joke of fortify support, and nothing is being provided in POE2

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Totem builds are not unpopular because they suck, they are unpopular because the vast majority of the playerbase finds them terribly unfun to play and slow at mapping

Totem builds are strongly recommended because modern POE1 design has devolved to the absurd point that seeing your enemy on your screen means you have already failed and you will die. This isn't an ARPG anymore but instead some bullet hell dark souls version of frogger with 2 pixels of brightness provided to discern what the hell is happening on your screen