I wonder how many of these failed leagues will it take GGG for them to learn, if ever?

^From the most recent interviews my impression is more that the devs actually dont like developing melee stuff for various reasons like animations for new gems instead of there being some internal guideline to keep melee low to the ground as it is now.
I could be wrong in that assesment though.

"

zzang wrote:

^From the most recent interviews my impression is more that the devs actually dont like developing melee stuff for various reasons like animations for new gems instead of there being some internal guideline to keep melee low to the ground as it is now.
I could be wrong in that assesment though.

This isn't about new gem animations though.

The game has plenty of melee gems already. It needs power in them.

There's no good reason why melee hits are weaker or even on par with ranged hits when ranged skirt most or even all of the damage melee soak.

The only way to make melee work today is to play the most recent gem cut (ambi) or get replica Alberon's for chaos conversion.

That's not a good sign for overall melee gems and supports which we know were nerfed to the ground between 3.15 and now.

They wanted melee to be less popular and got a less popular game out of it. Play stupid games win stupid prizes I guess.

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Izrakhan wrote:

This isn't about new gem animations though.

The game has plenty of melee gems already. It needs power in them.

There's no good reason why melee hits are weaker or even on par with ranged hits when ranged skirt most or even all of the damage melee soak.

The only way to make melee work today is to play the most recent gem cut (ambi) or get replica Alberon's for chaos conversion.

That's not a good sign for overall melee gems and supports which we know were nerfed to the ground between 3.15 and now.

I completely agree with you. In my naive world i just refuse to believe there is an internal guideline to make melee that bad in terms of numbers.
There are a few outliers stack Alberons and Boneshatter Complex Trauma are among the few examples. Usually those outliers are brought up in discussions. But the overall picture looks pretty grim. Throw in the totem buffs where totems instantly die nowadays in the new t17 content and it gets very dark.

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zzang wrote:

Some stuff where GGG did nail it pretty hard and did a great job:
- Tattoos including build enabling Keystone Tattoos
- Crucible Weapon & Shield Trees - build enabling mods
- That Which was Taken - some mods are build enabling
- Recombinators - allowed the creation of pretty "unique" rare items
- Scourge Items some were also build enabling esp. the Keystone ones
- 3.13 Harvest Crafting aka the Golden Era of PoE. I never saw standard on fire like in this patch
- Delirium with its Cluster Jewels - build enabling

I think if GGG pairs the good innovations with decent archetype balancing like bringing melee more in line with spells and projectiles from a number balance perspective the endresult would be a wonderful next league.

sadly those are all gone. recombinators go for 15div a piece in std, some tatoos are like 150divs and some crucible items are worth a mirror or two. ok tattoos are still around but a shadow of its former glory.

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feral_nature wrote:

sadly those are all gone

And that's why we've been able to enjoy all of them.

"

zzang wrote:

I completely agree with you. In my naive world i just refuse to believe there is an internal guideline to make melee that bad in terms of numbers.
There are a few outliers stack Alberons and Boneshatter Complex Trauma are among the few examples. Usually those outliers are brought up in discussions. But the overall picture looks pretty grim. Throw in the totem buffs where totems instantly die nowadays in the new t17 content and it gets very dark.

Going back in time to 3.15 the conversation started around 18:00 of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Sorx3EhNY

The motivation was fixing power creep. Yet we then went on to two consecutive years of DD builds farming the leagues with almost no rebalancing.

Again I think what they saw was a lot of power players / streamers playing melee builds (streamers are players like others) and because more people play melee than anything else they disproportionally hit melee builds and haven't gone back on that decision.

If melee are competitive with range more players will play melee. That's just how ARPGs are. When mages were two tapping bosses in Elden Ring more people still preferred melee.

GGG might not use the words I do but I'm not a customer facing sort. I just say what I think. All those nerfs going back to 3.15 were the start of something awful for the game overall and they even admitted this with the player numbers and satisfaction.

"

Izrakhan wrote:

Again I think what they saw was a lot of power players / streamers playing melee builds (streamers are players like others) and because more people play melee than anything else they disproportionally hit melee builds and haven't gone back on that decision.

If melee are competitive with range more players will play melee. That's just how ARPGs are. When mages were two tapping bosses in Elden Ring more people still preferred melee.

You have two completely different points here:
1) People will play melee regardless of power, see Elden Ring example
2) If melee is more competitive, more people will play it

These appear to be two completely opposite points....

Additionally, your premise "lot of power players/streamers playing melee" lead to nerfs.....that is false. At its BEST state, melee was STILL less popular overall when compared to bow skills and especially minion skills. Spell skills went through a short lull before they got MASSIVE buffs in that one league that pretty much multiplied all spell damage by 2.5 - 3x.

There were standout melee "moments" in PoE history, but it was NEVER so meta that it would warrant special attention (such as minions....tear).

GGG has a history of nerfing melee.....for no reason. That is actually the primary reason why "GGG hates melee" is the meme. It's not that they attacked an OP skillset, its that they continuously attacked a NON OP or overused archetype. Like....over and over and over again.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

"

Izrakhan wrote:

Again I think what they saw was a lot of power players / streamers playing melee builds (streamers are players like others) and because more people play melee than anything else they disproportionally hit melee builds and haven't gone back on that decision.

If melee are competitive with range more players will play melee. That's just how ARPGs are. When mages were two tapping bosses in Elden Ring more people still preferred melee.

You have two completely different points here:
1) People will play melee regardless of power, see Elden Ring example
2) If melee is more competitive, more people will play it

These appear to be two completely opposite points....

Additionally, your premise "lot of power players/streamers playing melee" lead to nerfs.....that is false. At its BEST state, melee was STILL less popular overall when compared to bow skills and especially minion skills. Spell skills went through a short lull before they got MASSIVE buffs in that one league that pretty much multiplied all spell damage by 2.5 - 3x.

There were standout melee "moments" in PoE history, but it was NEVER so meta that it would warrant special attention (such as minions....tear).

GGG has a history of nerfing melee.....for no reason. That is actually the primary reason why "GGG hates melee" is the meme. It's not that they attacked an OP skillset, its that they continuously attacked a NON OP or overused archetype. Like....over and over and over again.

Not two completely different points. Melee is disproportionately popular in ARPG games. That's it.

So if melee is comparable to ranged in terms of power melee will be over represented. If it's somewhat less powerful it'll still be over represented.

If you nerf melee into the dirt then it'll just be less popular and the game overall will be less popular too. That's where PoE seems to be right now.

So it's true of all ARPGs whether PoE, ER, DS, Diablo, etc. 20 years ago you could query bnet and find many more people playing zealadins, smite and barbs than anything else. Some things just don't change.

Admittedly current PoE might be different but that's only because melee is dogwater in power comparison. That said Jugg, Champ both get pretty good representation with niche builds still. Last league that was also true of Slayer. If Gladiator wasn't complete garbage it would also be heavily represented.

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Izrakhan wrote:

Not two completely different points. Melee is disproportionately popular in ARPG games. That's it.

So if melee is comparable to ranged in terms of power melee will be over represented. If it's somewhat less powerful it'll still be over represented.

If you nerf melee into the dirt then it'll just be less popular and the game overall will be less popular too. That's where PoE seems to be right now.

So it's true of all ARPGs whether PoE, ER, DS, Diablo, etc. 20 years ago you could query bnet and find many more people playing zealadins, smite and barbs than anything else. Some things just don't change.

I mean this is just plain not true......the most popular classes in Diablo were amazons, hammerdins, and sorceresses. Smiters were only popular for tristram runs and basically nowhere else. It was commonly known that the melee classes were LESS popular because they were generally slower. Frenzy and WW barbs, wolves, and zealots were meme builds and not even close to overrepresented. WW shouting barb was more popular as a support character than as an ACTUAL character, and even that was supplanted by hammerdins using HOTO. Melee was slightly more popular for PVP, but that was already niche within the game.

Same with PoE. Melee is NEVER "disproportionately popular". In fact, it is almost always the opposite. Unless melee is really really really good.....it tends to be UNpopular in arpgs because of positioning and speed issues.

In order to be even remotely competitive against spellcasters, necros, and ranged play, melee in ALL arpgs has faced the same problem: the need for either special defenses or WAY MORE damage than the other archetypes. That is the ONLY way to make melee ACTUALLY even proportionally popular, let alone "disproportionately" lol.

think single most annoying thing for me when I want to roll a new character is having to do the campaign again

would love if they kept campaign only for the first character of the league, and subsequent characters got another way to level up