Empathizing with melee fighters

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BlakeDrapeta#5377 wrote:

Tbf Lightning Spear is more goated than all the available lightning spells. High damage, long range, accurate, fast projectiles, and forking.

I hope you won't take my answers as insults, please don't, but I disagree about everything you just said here.

Lightning Spear is good because I know how to use it and scale it to beat T15 even more. We often underestimate our own knowledge in games, as if the whole world knows how to make a build that works in PoE, but how many people are actually reading this and posting about it on the forums? 1k? Maybe 2k? At this point, who are you comparing me to when you say you're doing well because you played a broken skill? Some nerd who played PoE for 16 hours daily and got their ass flattened by a chair? No thanks.

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BlakeDrapeta#5377 wrote:

Honestly I enjoy the challenge of melee. It's like a secret hard mode. Unless you're using aoe abilities which may as well be ranged, it requires a measure of thought and careful maneuvering to do well as a tru melee toon.

Whose secret is it? Any mid-level or high-level player can tell you what it is. What's so secret about it? As others have said here, you can't maneuver while attacking with a melee skill unless it's something like a rolling slam, so I don't know what reality you live in, but I'm not there.

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BlakeDrapeta#5377 wrote:

It also feels like magic should / is supposed to be superior. It's magicians casting powerful spells, while my warrior is a dude with a hammer.

Who would dream of playing a virtual game by the rules of our reality? How do you know magic is rare in Oriath? Did you live there? I'm really curious about who tf you're.

There are 2 things I feel really bad about for melee, that I think don't get talked about enough:

1) You can cast on the move, and you can shoot a bow on the move, but you cannot swing a mace on the move. And melee are the ones who need to move the most. Big sadness...

2) When an enemy gets heavy stun, they go flying back. That's great for ranged players, because it creates distance, but it sucks for melee, because now the target is outside of your attack range. Why?

3) Bonus thing, some SLOW enemies seem to just 1-tap you, after a big wind up. This is ONLY a risk for melee people, who might be within reach. I would have done the opposite. I'd have the enemy AI use dangerous ranged or closing in attacks if the player is far away, and then go easy within melee range.

I feel like melee is really disadvantaged, and not because of numbers, but just because of the dynamics implemented by the developers.

On a separate note, I guess I'm begging you for advice. I love the idea of spears. I want to play a melee and ranged spear character with parry. But every time I do - and I'm SSF for context - I just think, "Why don't I just use a bow, instead?" Can you help me figure out a way to get into spears, when I'm already hooked on the cruisiness of lightning arrow? And, my head is just thinking "spear = lightning spear". :\

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ac429#4687 wrote:

On a separate note, I guess I'm begging you for advice. I love the idea of spears. I want to play a melee and ranged spear character with parry. But every time I do - and I'm SSF for context - I just think, "Why don't I just use a bow, instead?" Can you help me figure out a way to get into spears, when I'm already hooked on the cruisiness of lightning arrow? And, my head is just thinking "spear = lightning spear". :\

I think the problem comes from underestimating the utility of melee spear skills such as spearfield or primal strikes. I'm killing half of the mobs in any map with spearfield. It's so useful for abyss monsters. I'm spamming it to the spawning points before they crawl out, adding some storm lance action too and they all die immediately because of Herald of Thunder, even the rare ones unless they have prox tang.

Bosses are not so different. If a boss has a rushing/charging ability, just spam sparfield on the ground. Most of the time they die at their first charge after hitting 35+ spears on the ground. If it's not enough, shock them and blast them with primal strikes.

My personal issue with spears is that the Ritualist class is terrible at spears and this makes no sense story-wise. Amazon x10 the dps of Ritualist with 2 ascendancy points while Ritualist has what? +1 ring and a skill that makes you stab a rare mob in 100+ other monsters for 2 modifiers with 20 seconds duration which is called "Ritual Sacrifice". I think it's complete nonsense.

That's cool! I'll give spearfield a try, thanks! Is it budget friendly?

Oof, great point about Ritualist. I don't crave high DPS. But, I'm also really hooked on the 3 rings and built-in ingenuity. That way, it's super easy to cap resistances and get high item rarity on gear, even on a budget. I think about going amazon sometimes, or even ranger, but I just can't divorce myself from Ritualist's rings, and even the +3 move speed. I get the move speed and phys damage small nodes, but not the sacrifice skill and blood boil skills that come after, lol.

I also like the Fangs of Frost pairing with Lightning Spear or Storm Lance. I feel like there's a cool tech there with Ice Bite, Innervate, and the "Unbound Forces" passive tree cluster. Thinking about it is so much fun, I just want to spec into spears right now, lol. Lots of cool skills!

Edit: I'm also thinking about using shockwave totem with spears. I use vine arrows with bows, just because it procs prox tang, and I can then shoot them from afar. The totem will let me do the same with spears, I think. Plus, it might take some heat off me, with those big slam monsters/bosses.

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ac429#4687 wrote:

Edit: I'm also thinking about using shockwave totem with spears. I use vine arrows with bows, just because it procs prox tang, and I can then shoot them from afar. The totem will let me do the same with spears, I think. Plus, it might take some heat off me, with those big slam monsters/bosses.

Totems can be fun with Ritualist and Kaom's warcry if you can configurate the fire damage and ignite. In my opinion best use of Ritualist is bleed and full physical with warcries. You can get some crazy one-shotting screen wide explosions but I don't like it so I'll continue with what I have here.

Also, here is a gameplay video for you:

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Jideament#2792 wrote:

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ac429#4687 wrote:

Edit: I'm also thinking about using shockwave totem with spears. I use vine arrows with bows, just because it procs prox tang, and I can then shoot them from afar. The totem will let me do the same with spears, I think. Plus, it might take some heat off me, with those big slam monsters/bosses.

Totems can be fun with Ritualist and Kaom's warcry if you can configurate the fire damage and ignite. In my opinion best use of Ritualist is bleed and full physical with warcries. You can get some crazy one-shotting screen wide explosions but I don't like it so I'll continue with what I have here.

Also, here is a gameplay video for you:

Spearfield interactions

https://youtu.be/DK-GvG3GP6U

Those are awesome ideas, thank you! :O

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ac429#4687 wrote:

1) You can cast on the move, and you can shoot a bow on the move, but you cannot swing a mace on the move. And melee are the ones who need to move the most. Big

Yes this is 100% anoying VS playing range. You're always moving around monsters but cant attack whille doing it.

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ac429#4687 wrote:

2) When an enemy gets heavy stun, they go flying back. That's great for ranged players, because it creates distance, but it sucks for melee, because now the target is outside of your attack range. Why?

And this also, so anoying having to reposition you when they go away. I even reduced the stun on one of my guy because it was botering me and i tought overall it's better to not stun them but keep hitting.

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ac429#4687 wrote:

On a separate note, I guess I'm begging you for advice. I love the idea of spears. I want to play a melee and ranged spear character with parry. But every time I do - and I'm SSF for context - I just think, "Why don't I just use a bow, instead?" Can you help me figure out a way to get into spears, when I'm already hooked on the cruisiness of lightning arrow? And, my head is just thinking "spear = lightning spear". :\

I've been doing spear on a new guy, i couldnt figure properly how to scale my damage with the melee distance skills and i dont like much parry overall.
I ended up using whirling slash with twister and it's very funny. I use poison and bleed with them but elemental work nicely also. I just have sensory issue and cant use much elemental other than ice so ended up with that.

It's really enjoyable/fun =)

I still use rake and bloodhunt on bosses when i can and use whirling slash in melee distance. With some twister in the middle. When the arena is small and you have a lot of twister it's really working well also.

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BlastYa#4875 wrote:

I've been doing spear on a new guy, i couldnt figure properly how to scale my damage with the melee distance skills and i dont like much parry overall.
I ended up using whirling slash with twister and it's very funny. I use poison and bleed with them but elemental work nicely also. I just have sensory issue and cant use much elemental other than ice so ended up with that.

It's really enjoyable/fun =)

I still use rake and bloodhunt on bosses when i can and use whirling slash in melee distance. With some twister in the middle. When the arena is small and you have a lot of twister it's really working well also.

That's a cool idea too, thanks. :)

I've been playing with spear and non-buckler shields. For the most part its fun until you run into these ground degens. Even while trying to keep away I had the aura just appear under me. I am admittedly a casual player and every exp set back makes me question why I am playing.

My rotation for mobs is rapid assault (with pin / combat frenzy), explosive spear, whirling slash. Thunderous leap to close the gaps and also create consecrated ground, mostly to try and reduce curse effects.

For bosses, I've been using shield wall and charge. I took that tactician perk to make enemies unable to perform actions. So I tend to rotate heavy stun and pin.

I just wanted to give an update.

I've switched to spear and big shield, and it's really fun! I did a couple tier 1 maps to test it out, and it did fine. Then I did a tier 8, and that was fine. Finally, I did a tier 14 and a 15. There it got a bit more dangerous, but I beat both without dying. More happy to report, I even got an ilvl 82 boots from the T15 boss (area level 80 + 2). This is all with self-found/crafted gear in SSF, and 3 mod maps.

But, my build is so weird (but fun)! You tell me if this counts as melee. I use basic spear stab and basic spear throw. I'm level 90, so I have all 5 support slots. Then, I use shock totem to aggro enemies and proc proximity tangibility. Finally, I also use detonate dead to pin and armour break. :| I also use Blood Boil (Ritualist) for added clear. This is like a cardinal sin in PoE. I'm using melee, ranged, and spells. But it worked on a T15, so I can't complain. And, it's fun, lol.

Cheers, and thanks to everyone who gave their suggestions! I'm still going to try out a few more builds with spears. They're way fun!