Some thoughts on melee after leveling a new character fresh in SSF

After hitting 93 on my ES based character in trade, feeling like I've basically beat the game I decided to try out the worst class in ssf to force myself to have some challenge and maybe see why everyone is crying about warrior.

Leveling with macestrike/leapslam and exploding the entire screen with boneshatter was pretty smooth, fun even. Bossing with perfect strike was also good, but about a good half of the bosses make using the skill kinda impossible since they move constantly, and perfect strike seems to whiff a ton when it clearly collided with the boss hitbox, idk what it is but seems like if they are in any kind of special animation even sitting still it will just not hit.

Around act 1 cruel, I started fully stunning mobs with leapslam, which meant I could no longer explode the entire screen, and it just started feeling like dogshit. I tried some other stuff like stampede/sunder etc. but quickly realized that warrior is just not at all able to sit in melee for more than a second or two before dying with bad gear and had to bitch out and switch to ancestor totems until I found a good enough weapon/gear to try actually playing melee (that didn't happen until level 85) so I was forced to play pseudo ranged for about 30+ levels to have any semblance of smooth progression.

Now that I finally """crafted""" a pretty decent 2her I made the switch to melee again, but now im just dying randomly a ton again which in PoE2 is simply not OK because of the 1 portal. And its made me realize some things about melee.

I think melee is fine, it feels good and weighty, but the tools to actually survive in melee simply isn't there for armor based characters, and shields are a massive bandaid for warrior that are virtually required to survive at all in the current state of things.

Block was buffed a lot compared to PoE1, spell block is baked in now, high block is much more easily achieved, warbringer can make block insanely OP with turtle charm. You can now use 2her with shield, but maybe I'm wrong but thats only realistic for trade league as getting ~600 str ssf is going to be out of the reach of virtually everyone.

My gear is pretty mediocre, but thats to be expected in ssf, out of curiosity I looked at trade and literally every peice of gear I have could be significantly upgraded for 10-20ex a slot. I have 10k armor base, 16k with plating up, 2.5k life, 89 fire, 77 lightning, 77 cold res, 56 :( chaos res, and 225 life regen a second. With less than 3 divs I could get substantially more life, regen, fix my chaos res, have str to use giants blood, and probably 15-20k armor. And this is what someone with 5k+ hours in PoE 1 who knows how to cra...gamble their items and use their currency as efficently as possible, if I was a new player my gear would probably be significantly worse since I'd be wasting a ton of currency on bad gambles, be unable to see what gear is good, what gear can become good with """crafting""" etc.

I'm just not able to survive shit using a 2her and no shield, relying on those stats. Putting my shield back on without any block nodes and just sitting in a white pack I can actually tank them basically indefinetely, but taking the shield off 5 white skeletons will mog me in under 10 seconds.

warrior also seems totally skewed towards mitigating fire damage, which is cool thematically I guess, but maybe doesn't make sense being encased in metal. With my shit gear I'm able to get that high fire res, thanks to nodes on the tree + the applying armor to fire hits + rubies naturally rolling max fire res. But I still feels weak as hell to every other damage type, even physical, and again you have to not get 1 shot above everything else.

Shields should not be required to survive, armor based characters that hyper invest into it on the tree should be able to survive without it. Giants blood should not be a bandaid for this, and it if it has to be that way it should not be something out of the reach of SSF players entirely, I have 300 str, with good rolls on half my gear, retooling my tree I could maybe reach 450 str getting to 550-600 just seems impossible.

Armor based characters either need a way to mitigate hits besides fire damage, or they need more natural HP to deal with them, sitting at 2.5k I just feel like the second a big phy/cold/chaos/lightning I'm going to fall over like a wet noodle. EVA is in a similar boat, bot those characters can apply damage significantly more safely than melee can which makes up for a lot of it.

I'm not sure what can be done to buff melee armor based characters specifically without making armor so strong that you start seeing other archtypes going for armor instead of ES/EVA but things like forify, DR on windups etc. might help a lot. And im sure plenty of other ideas out there.

I think a lot of the complaints about melee would go away if melee characters could actually tank hits/damage while doing these long windups. Dodge roll absolutely carried me early, and still is, but having to dodge roll constantly 24/7 is starting to get old. Dodging big windup/telegraphed attacks feel great, having to dodge white mobs and every pack does not.

Preach!
I love this game. But seeing sunder(or any other) attack that is winding up for „meh” damage while im a sitting duck open to being one shoted just hurts my heart. It even worse when i see my friend as a merc who just makes poe2 like DOOM. He goes Dakka Dakka and whole screen is wiped… we were told that they love melee, and to Trust them… and I do. But sometimes its hard.

i love seeing feedback like this.

i too am mace user. i love trumelee and path2 really nails the feels, just that as is, its simply too difficult/not rewarding enough compared to other skills.

ggg is back in office i assume.

let them cook

Play in easy mode and buy your gear, SSF is a trap in this game.

Yes, I am too like the combat feeling when playing warrior, but after the campain alot of things feel off. Warrior is super slow compare to other class, not tanky enough some time even with a shield, damage is not that high also, and maybe is the only class that can not fight during wakling.
For sure this class and other meele class need more love in the future. Because the close combat feel really great in this game, I hope that they cooking something and not wasting this.

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poe10000#0331 wrote:

Play in easy mode and buy your gear, SSF is a trap in this game.

Already did thats why im playing ssf until some more patches. All my upgrades are things like going from +2 to +3 amulet which are 40+ div with similar rolls to my +2.

Or spending 10+ div for a little more es or life.

Ive already seen all the content EA has to offer, grinding for smaller and smaller incremental upgrades is pointless when im already doing double corrupt t15 and have all my asc killed +4 xesht etc. Only thing i can do is reroll but if i do it in trade its going to be a faceroll with twink gear from the market.

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BossOfThisGym#2062 wrote:

After hitting 93 on my ES based character in trade, feeling like I've basically beat the game I decided to try out the worst class in ssf to force myself to have some challenge and maybe see why everyone is crying about warrior.

Now this is how you feedback. Agreed on all points. I also tend to think they made several melee things have far too high opportunity cost. Rooting in place. The cost to make attack speed good enough to feel good, let alone actually not get you butt blasted and the totally absurd reduced attack speed and duration nodes.

I can invest VERY HEAVILLY in Earth quake bleed to get (round numbers not going to go re-look-up stuff):

~500 avg hit X 400%(ish) aftershock
= 2000

2000 hit That is delivered at point blank range after a ~2.8s delay on a character with ~4k life and some limp regen or even more limp leech (Also can drop the odd HotG with a long cooldown for some temporary single target boost).

OR

I can cast a 1s comet that doesn't root me in place, at a distance that is safe that chills and freezes things it doesn't instantly obliterate, I can go EV+ES have ~6000+ health pool with ghost shroud recovery on a Bloodmage from a safe distance that Bleeds and freezes with a comparatively minor investment in ailment chance and a couple gems levels for say level 23 comet that from memory is 1400 to 2100 damage range, lower damage, but can be delivered much more consistently and with far less danger.

Its kinda dumb. Like I can see that they put 2600% damage effect on HotG and a 4 second delay on EQ with a 400% dmg effect... with all these costs to get them even remotely enjoyable in feel. Don't even get me started on Perfect Strike. Missing, feeling massively jank and rooted into place.

Can GGG not see that a 1400-2100 dmg spell with no cooldown exists? Considering "up time" its a better bleed delivery system than any melee skills is oh and its ranged and also "cast while moving"...

Damage is comparable "in theory" when you consider all the point blank jank, perfect strike window/misses, HotG cooldown and duration bullshit the damage maybe even arguably BETTER for the spell because you have more up time and chances to fish for a big roll. But then: ranged, chills, freezes, no rooting, better health pool, better recovery, better defensive layers, oh: no need for 500-600 STR for giants blood.

Anyway this is just something I found today making me feel stupid for not going spell bleed, haven';t actually respeced my BM because I'm a stupidly stuborn EQ bleed enjoyer trying to get both reduced duration wheels somehow and still have any dmg playing with my tree over and over again. Then I wonder "what about comet" and see that a 23-25 comet is just going to feel worlds better need less "opportunity cost" by literally dozens of passives, and have more eHP by a lot due to EV+ES being superior to life and AR by a lot. yeah the high end damage potential is smaller with no warcry no specialized supports, but not even sure that's actually true "in practice" considering how much more often you can get your damage on target to keep your 4s bleeds going. Like I've seen bosses melt from ignite+bleed perfect strikes... but I'll be damned if I want to subject myself you that uber jank when they can melt a little slower on a more well rounded easier to play character.

Coders are generally really good at math, and weighing logical points, I don't get it, how they made the same big and obvious mistakes with melee as they did with POE1.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

Coders are generally really good at math, and weighing logical points, I don't get it, how they made the same big and obvious mistakes with melee as they did with POE1.

throw them a bone.

the original release was earlier but due to issues that they have openly talked about, they delayed the entire game to dec.

then when the game "released" they were busy firefighting as much as possible. they were giving us constant updates and tried their best to get the game in the best possible condition and then

holiday period has arrived.

let ggg have their break.

i m pretty sure nerfs and reworks are on their priority after they return.

i really do not envy their position (workloadwise).

and my guess is, they overestimated how some builds overperformed.

all in all, i think its still a positive thing. with people giving feedback, ggg has a huge load of data to pull from.

keep the complaints coming in so GGG can help us make their game better for mutual benefit.

on the flipside, yeah OP really did good and actually rerolled rather than make a stupid ass post saying the games too easy or labelling people who criticize as whiners.

OP really went down the trenches on this and i respect him for that.

Damn, I can't believe even the tradelord himself tried SSF. TLDR though seriously I ain't reading all of that mate.

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AnimePillowCollector#2255 wrote:

Damn, I can't believe even the tradelord himself tried SSF. TLDR though seriously I ain't reading all of that mate.

SSF is fun when you are bored of trade, gives loot meaning again. But its not a league for new players that hate trade in this game looking for something better, its significantly harder than trade league.

Im missing 1.5k life, 100+ regen, chaos res, 5-10k armor, build defining uniques, gem levels, a good weapon... list goes on. For what id have in trade at this point.