Melee player (preferably Warrior) wants to give the game a second chance

Its been a half year since I uninstalled the game and felt all the broken promises about "we fix melee", "its just an animation issue" after trying out Warrior.

Im curious whats the current state of defense, gameplay feel with attack speed, damage scaling (for Warrior), clear and movement speed in regards to other classes?

Is stampede still clunky as hell in its animation and usage?

There were 0 changes to Warrior, basically. But in fact he feels a bit better, because other classes are weaker (we are not talking about Lightning Spear here, it clearly won't survive the next patch). So basically they made Warrior better by making every other class worse. And they added Kitava to the game, he can be insanely tanky, pretty much unkillable, if this is what you want. But choosing a clearing skill is a problem. People go either with autoattack or Leap Slam on Kitava. Titan has more options. And players avoid using Stampede at all costs nowadays, this skill is the definition of clunk.

I see. Thanks for the headsup. I guess i will check back in a half year to see if anything has changed in my pain points.

I advise you to wait until they introduce axes and/or swords into the game. Mace builds are viable but clearly lacking right now.

I played Huntress with Hammer and was able to progress up until Act 2 Cruel.

The reason why the build fell off for me is because of the gear. With Melee I feel like gear with Armor + Shield would have been better than either pure Evasion or pure Armor.

Problem is, you need a bit of Dexterity to improve your Accuracy, Strength to be able to use Hammers and their associated gem skills and Intellect to be able to stack Energy Shield.

On the other hand, Quarterstaff and Spears feel like they are easier to build for because you can neglect Strength.

To me, Hammer feels in an odd spot, because it doesn't seem to be at it's peak without Titan Blood so you can either dual weild 2h weapons or use a 2h weapon in tandem with a shield.

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draco359#5475 wrote:

I played Huntress with Hammer and was able to progress up until Act 2 Cruel.

The reason why the build fell off for me is because of the gear. With Melee I feel like gear with Armor + Shield would have been better than either pure Evasion or pure Armor.

Problem is, you need a bit of Dexterity to improve your Accuracy, Strength to be able to use Hammers and their associated gem skills and Intellect to be able to stack Energy Shield.

On the other hand, Quarterstaff and Spears feel like they are easier to build for because you can neglect Strength.

To me, Hammer feels in an odd spot, because it doesn't seem to be at it's peak without Titan Blood so you can either dual weild 2h weapons or use a 2h weapon in tandem with a shield.

You can have "Unexpected Finesse" (skill tree) and "Precision" (support gem) to deal with accuracy without investing on DEX.

But yeah, it probably won't feel smooth on a huntress. It is already weird with a warrior, then imagine it on a classes that is not designed for that.

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zzang#1847 wrote:

Its been a half year since I uninstalled the game and felt all the broken promises about "we fix melee", "its just an animation issue" after trying out Warrior.

Im curious whats the current state of defense, gameplay feel with attack speed, damage scaling (for Warrior), clear and movement speed in regards to other classes?

Is stampede still clunky as hell in its animation and usage?

Even in decxember people played "ranged warrior"
Pick every "increased area of effect node" and its your pick to do sonic boom crybaby-build, or aftershock tremor discoparty where you just use skill and things die everywhere.

I personally played thorn-warbringer, enjoyed it until T16 maps, but lets say... gear progress is horrible endgame. "just trade it" is the solution, or "craft" better gear. Dont have the patience for either of those.


Smith of Kitava can be gamebraking. Their "skill" where max fire res counts as elemental has an insane value.

Zzang,

Spear/Shield with Rake/Disengage is a decent physical melee weapon/skill combo at the moment that has both speed and clear.

I recommend playing the combo as a gemling legionnaire, rather than a warrior though, for the extra life, damage and versatility it offers.

See below for my lv95 gemling spear/shield build guide. There is gameplay of a deathless simulacrum run included in the video as well as a text guide with more details included in the description:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNK2pN4X0dY

You could potentially build this with as a warrior. And if you do I would go for either Smith of Kitava (for easier resistance capping, more armour) or a Titan (for better small nodes, 15% more life).

Additionally, if you are primarily concerned with speed/damage, you could try using thrillsteel unique helm and rondel of fragility unique amulet combo on any melee build to help.