The Great Melee Betrayal: How GGG Abandoned Their Promise to Melee Players

Remember when Chris Wilson stood on stage at ExileCon and told us melee would be fundamentally different in PoE2? Remember the promises about the new rig system revolutionizing melee combat? Remember how they said melee would finally feel impactful and visceral? Well, congratulations GGG, you delivered the exact opposite of everything you promised.

After years of waiting, after countless developer manifestos promising us that Path of Exile 2 would finally fix melee combat, we got...

The Screen-Clearing Nightmare

What did we actually get? The same screen-clearing, projectile-vomiting mess that plagued PoE1's endgame, except now it's baked into the core experience, it's the expectation, it's what get showcased during Build of the League video :clap:. Every single build, regardless of whether you're wielding a massive two-handed mace or dual-wielding daggers, ends up looking like a discount fireworks show. Huge explosions everywhere, projectiles flying across three screens, and enough visual clutter to give you a migraine.

This isn't melee combat. This is ranged combat with a different weapon VFX. When my "melee" Monk is shooting spirit waves that clear entire screens, something has gone fundamentally wrong with your design philosophy.

The Animation Disaster

And don't even get me started on the "revolutionary" new rig system. You know what Rake got? ONE. SINGLE. GENERIC. ANIMATION. One! For a skill that was supposed to showcase how much better melee animations would be in PoE2. I've seen mobile games with more animation variety than what we got for basic melee skills.

Where are the unique, weighty animations that were supposed to make each weapon type feel distinct? Where's the visceral feedback that was promised? Instead, we got the same generic swipe animation recycled across multiple skills, with maybe a different particle effect slapped on top if we're lucky.

The Glory Days We Lost

You want to know what real melee combat felt like? Go back and play early PoE1. I'm talking about 2013-2014 PoE, when melee actually meant something. Back then, when you swung your weapon, it connected with individual monsters. You felt the impact. Each kill was earned through positioning, timing, and skill.


There was something deeply satisfying about carefully positioning yourself to take on groups of enemies one by one, managing your resources, and actually engaging with the combat system instead of just holding down your mouse button while technicolor explosions fill your screen.

Those early days had problems (namelocking, desync), sure, but at least melee felt like melee. When you hit something with a two-handed axe, it felt like you were hitting it with a two-handed axe, not launching magical projectiles that happened to originate from your character model.

The Fundamental Betrayal

The worst part isn't even the broken promises or the lazy implementation. It's that GGG clearly knew what melee players wanted. They talked about it extensively. They acknowledged that screen-clearing wasn't satisfying for melee builds. They understood that players wanted weight, impact, and tactical combat.

And then they delivered the exact opposite.

Every single developer manifesto, every interview, every piece of marketing material promised us a return to meaningful melee combat. Instead, we got PoE1's worst tendencies amplified and forced into the core gameplay loop.

What We Actually Needed

This isn't rocket science, GGG. Melee players didn't want bigger explosions or more screen coverage. We wanted:

• Individual monster interactions that matter
• Animations with weight and impact
• Positioning and timing to be relevant factors
• Each swing to feel deliberate and meaningful
• Combat that rewards skill over just holding down buttons
• DISTINCT WEAPON TYPES, WITH PURPOSE

Instead, you gave us a system where the optimal way to play "melee" characters is to stand three screens away and let our "melee" abilities do ranged damage. How is that different from playing a caster?

The Future Looks Grim

And here's the kicker - based on the current design direction, I don't see this getting better. The entire skill system, the passive tree, the support gems, everything is built around this screen-clearing philosophy. This isn't something that can be fixed with a few balance patches. This is a fundamental design problem that would require rebuilding core systems.

So thanks, GGG. Thanks for promising us the melee experience we've been waiting for since 2013, and then delivering something that makes PoE1's melee problems look quaint by comparison. I guess I'll go back to playing actually good melee games while you continue to ignore the feedback from the players who have been asking for this for over a decade.

At least now I know not to trust your marketing content.

But I knew it, I knew it since you released your EndGame video before the EA launch, I knew you had failed, when I saw Breach, I knew it...

Edit: Yes, I know it's early access. No, that doesn't excuse promising specific improvements for years and then delivering the opposite. Core design philosophy doesn't change between early access and release.

Edit 2: To everyone saying "just wait for patches" - they explicitly said melee would be different from day one. This isn't a balance issue, it's a design philosophy issue.

Edit 3: I forgot to mention defenses, Armor anyone? LUL and I forgot to double down on why Name Locking sucks... I should write a book...

Good post.

I think when the development started things like: impact of skills, the 'connect' of melee, visual clarity, 'meaningful combat', boss encounters, etc were carefully worked on with great detail. However at some point this changed drastically. You can clearly see this with visual designs of shrines/breach/deli/after death effects that feel cheaply copied from poe1 and stand out like a sore thumb- just look how meteor shrine looks compared to rest of the game.

I want to believe it was due to deadlines and the need to release more content soon and eventually all these things will be tuned/changed or removed completely. However looking at the staffing changes I do have a terrible feeling about it. What makes me the most angry is that the core of the game looks like a lot of effort and love went into it, but it might all go to waste due to some questionable decisions. Very very fucking sad man.

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ryuukk33#4998 wrote:

But I knew it, I knew it since you released your EndGame video before the EA launch, I knew you had failed, when I saw Breach, I knew it...

Yep, when they showed Breach and Ritual it killed me inside.

What are the good melee games that you referring to?

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tobikk#4614 wrote:

What are the good melee games that you referring to?

It doesn't matter, there are plenty






If a game's core combat and gameplay loop are truly solid, that alone is enough to sustain its longevity, because fresh players will always be coming in

You might try to play the "live service/seasonal model" card, but that misses the point. This isn’t about trends, it’s about the fundamentals

There are new players turning 18 every single day. That’s how demographics work

If the gameplay holds up, the audience naturally replenishes


"Why Clear Speed Killed the Soul of ARPGs"

The clear speed meta isn’t just a balance issue, it’s a design fault. When the goal is to vaporize everything off-screen in milliseconds, there’s no room for:

Endurance-based content: You can’t design long, tactical fights when builds are optimized to delete content instantly.

Strategic gameplay: Positioning, timing, crowd control—none of that matters when it’s all about preloading a screen wipe.

Alternative game modes: Extraction, PvP, tower defense, raid-style bosses? Dead on arrival if TTK is sub-1 second and AoEs are full-screen.

GGG once promised diversity in playstyles. Clear-speed meta makes that impossible. Until they fix that core design flaw, no new content or league mechanic will ever be more than a sideshow to the zoom-zoom arms race and PowerCreep Dopamined addicts.


"Clear Speed Meta Is a Growth Trap"

Clear speed isn’t just killing gameplay varietyn, it’s killing long-term sustainability.

New player onboarding becomes ass. Watching streamers wipe screens in 0.2 seconds sets false expectations. Fresh players feel useless, clunky, and leave before endgame.

Power creep becomes mandatory. Existing players need bigger dopamine hits. Each league must outdo the last. Result: overtuned content, broken balance, and no breathing room for new designs.


Stagnant player base. If only veterans enjoy the game at its "intended pace," the funnel dries up. The game can't grow. It can’t maintain hype. It becomes a burnout loop.

If GGG wants PoE2 to survive beyond the honeymoon phase, they need to gut clear speed as the default design pillar. Until then, no amount of polish or cinematics will fix the core rot.


Make melee a central pillar of the game again;d or watch the whole thing devolve into a parody of what it used to be.

Without grounded, weighty melee combat anchoring the experience, everything turns into a VFX spam race with no soul.


Here, a cool indie game, since you asked:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2735580/Netherworld_Covenant/

you have to understand that they cant make the game too slow ..you have to have screen clearing in aarpgs when people are playing 100s or 1000s of hours doing the same maps do you think people wanna slowly go through stuff? no literally 90% of players would quit, the game would be dead.. thats just not what aarpgs are if you want a game like that play a single player game like dark souls or whatever. they just need to make better clear and speed for melee and other classes

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Jrounder82#3375 wrote:

you have to understand that they cant make the game too slow ..you have to have screen clearing in aarpgs when people are playing 100s or 1000s of hours doing the same maps do you think people wanna slowly go through stuff? no literally 90% of players would quit, the game would be dead.. thats just not what aarpgs are if you want a game like that play a single player game like dark souls or whatever. they just need to make better clear and speed for melee and other classes

There is a difference between allowing the existence of OP builds capable of clear screen and balancing around players that only look at their minimap.

.

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Jrounder82#3375 wrote:

you have to understand that they cant make the game too slow ..you have to have screen clearing in aarpgs when people are playing 100s or 1000s of hours doing the same maps do you think people wanna slowly go through stuff? no literally 90% of players would quit, the game would be dead.. thats just not what aarpgs are if you want a game like that play a single player game like dark souls or whatever. they just need to make better clear and speed for melee and other classes

Yeah, which people have already pointed out multiple times. Their actual vision for PoE2 contradicts what people wanted from PoE1.

Now its just a mishmash of everything and is PoE1.5.

Did you see posts about how even this combat is already 'too slow'?

But OP, there is no real way to implement meaningful and mediated slow combat with the current gameplay loop.
They need a serious overhaul to truly make it viable.

One possible option is to have melee skills and "character builds" to be more "tanky". Like really tacky and not this 1 hit/2hit and you lose 3k health BS.

Dual wielding should offer parry and Shields should offer 100% block without stun locks. Enemy attacks should allow a block check and then mitigation checks.

Anyways, this involves too much change which I really do not think the general community wants, as you have pointed out. You are the audience the Devs are catering to.

Just gotta live with it. The game is still solid. Just not personally for melee based meaningful combat.