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

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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

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mnieradko wrote:

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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

all that you and many others have said is true. but based on what the interview it seems that the devs know every single one of our concerns. its to the point i dont see the need to make any new "melee is bad/here is why" sort of posts.

the devs are indeed trying to improve the game with melee in mind.

how true or how far they go is all up to them.

the fact that johnathan went up and said melee is bad shows their commitment towards melee. they did not shy away from it. in fact josh actually has a new vid on his channel that is just a cut of the entire "melee is bad" portion from his interview with john.

GGG is putting pressure on themselves to "prove us" that they get it.

'commitment'? Then why have there been no melee changes aside from collateral damage nerfs in more than a year? Melee lost a lot of power and QoL in the removal of alt quality gems and helmet enchants and has gained basically nothing aside from legacy borrowed power in standard used to make builds that don't implode on entering melee and can do dps. Quite frankly they may want to do a full rework of melee and it may need one but it would not be hard to meaningfully bandaid it, revert most of the slam nerfs buff the base fortify cap (the literal maximum possible achievable currently is 61 and that requires using the ritual base that crushes you and a ton of mirror cost legacy gear + replica badge of the brotherhood) to 40 or 50 and have every melee skill give inherent fortification not just vigilant strike, fold the boni of the ancestors totems into melee skills in general and suddenly melee works an awful lot better.

That 12 minute POE2 melee segment of Josh with Jonathan is 12 minutes of nothing but word salad with excuses that are completely unrelated to why melee sucks both offensively and defensively.

"Melee isn't strong because of rigging and animation issues blah blah"

What?

Who cares if you make the best animations in the world if you hit like a wet napkin and take a dirt nap as soon as something threatening looks in your direction?

The entire 12 minutes segment screamed to me "we don't play these archetypes in the game that we made."

I left a comment on that video telling people to ignore Jonathan's comments and just go watch the POE2 melee playthroughs from people like Alkaizer. Actions speak louder than words and the POE2 melee gameplay is horrific beyond anything currently present in POE1.

As for "fixes" in POE1 it's been said in numerous threads by myself and other people. Devs obviously want low hanging fruit low effort fixes, so the best approach here is to unruin what you ruined, for example:

- new gladiator is bad, revert to old gladiator or something approaching its power
- slams are terrible, revert their gigantic nerfs
- current fortify support is terrible, revert to an older version

Beyond this you simply tune up everything both offensively and defensively. Anyways, whatever, no point of typing more because POE2 gameplay shows that melee garbage is intended. You'll have the most wonderful animations and be in agony EVERY SINGLE MOMENT YOU PLAY.

1. Jonathan is not playing melee (and probably never was)
2. Jonathan is focusing on PoE 2, he donest give a fuck about PoE

Asking him why melee suck and how they plan to fix it is pointless.

Quite true. If you don't think something sucks, why change it? This will end well.