Excuse-me sir, I think you're wrong! Look at this Standard SC build I've found where the guy is lvl 100, has only 18 legacy and mirror-tier items and can clear a T12 map with 2 portals left. He seems to be doing alright.
@Alexander B. I can run low reds on pretty much any skill in the game, thats not a useful metric for measuring skill viability at all. There are no "unknown ailments" in the game, and despite what reddit might tell you, 99% of the deaths in hc are completely user error, not the fault of the game. Just because I (and others) enjoy hardcore more doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have opinions on the game or to also want decent skill balancing for the game mode we prefer. Not a fan of takes like this, it's just a "you're having fun wrong" argument worded in a passive aggressive manner.
I've been playing the game for a very long time but i still learn new things I didn't know every league. It's part of what I love about the game. However your point about the new players walking in thinking they can play melee like in other games is spot on. There's so many things you need to know in order to make that be a good experience, compared to say playing a summoner, or even a bow build. Melee can be downright frustrating and thats on top of PoE being intimidating to get into for new players.
I can connect with you on an emotional level. I just LOVED previous Earthshatter and Ground Slam Impaler builds. Playing around intimidating and seismic cries was so satisfying, while other builds were just using a couple of buff/debuff skills in fights (which we used too). It was fun actually having something to do while you are mapping/bossing apart from pressing your main skill button and being actually REWARDED for your actions. MoM miners made me feel the similar way too, but well, they got nerfed too, lol. And i just remember just enjoying the impaler build. Then i get my attack cancelled by needing to reposition my character. And i SEE IT on my hud, i've got my seismic cry lose 1 exerted attack. AND IT FUCKING HIT ME that i can animation-cancel it. After that impaler ground slam became my favourite build. The rotation with animation cancelling was just too fun to do and the clear was really satisfying. I remember having fun on 5 deli orb maps with like shitty gear and just stacking mobs around delirium bosses and just fucking blowing them up in one swing, which was, i guess, a little bit cheesy, but who the fuck would do that anyway, definitely not the most strong combination in those time. Bossing damage was alright, but nothing too crazy, even a little bit weak for that time. And after that they just killed the impaler. Why? Idk, ggg just likes to remove fun from the games from time to time. Just like they did in 3.15 with seismic cry and killed it for me. SO MUCH DAMAGE LOSS. Did they even think what were they doing? You fucking nerf all support gems and delete a giant more multiplier from a skill in the same patch. They made us loose a great damage buff with actual utility in it. Why would i want to play a skill with much less dps, while also loosing utility. After that i only played it this league to league start a zerker, it felt kind of nice, but definitely not great as it was before.
Yeah expedition slam nerf was the embodiment of the whole meme of GGG nerfing one skill 23 different ways in one patch lol, that was a mind-numbing patch note reading session for me. I wish they didn't kill impaler as a mechanic. I really dislike that they didn't even bother to try balancing it, they just destroyed the interaction instead of toning down it's numbers and that was pretty lazy.
I would argue you're a very niche player in that regard, a lot of people prefer the automated styles in melee with cyclone etc (in terms of popularity) or just haven't given the other stuff enough of a shot.
@@kizzagaming6523 yeah I actually think that ggg is incredibly unlikely to buff slams unless they buff literally everything across the board simply because of how polarizing the playstyle of the archetype is
@@fizecs Yeah for sure, I will say that there has been a constant issue ever since the Flesh and Stone changes, even before that things were not great - Entry level was like 2 ex equiv into requiring 200 ex for the next step and was just majorly skewed compared to other builds. Which is even harder in SSF! They also put their " fix " for Flesh and stone for melee under the duelist in an area of the tree where nobody paths and since a lot of the tree changes most of those melee builds (using cyclone as a reference point) if you want to achieve similar dps numbers to many of the other builds you require 1) more investment & 2) more of your healthpool/defenses sacrificed. There's also fortify issues right now against high hp harvest/enemy mobs where u can't get any stacks of fort or maybe 3-4 if you're lucky even with a heavy slam style build. Old terminus est budget starter for Cyclone could get around 4 mill dps in medium level gear. Now it can get like 500k that's along with less overall HP. That's a crazy nerf. Anyway sorry for the rant, I typed this like 4 times and kept accidentally clicking elsewhere on my screen and losing it so it's an info dump. (Also the best Cycloner right now gets like 4.5k HP and is staves, which you can outclass with a max block minion build, trapper or just about anything else on the right/upper side for less investment or similar investment)
It feels like they want melee to be an archetype but they don't want to completely cut it from other archetypes. They should just rework all gems that can give you fortify and make the tree be the only source of it - that would actually fix the issue GGG had with fortify on non-melee builds. Your idea of a keystone to deal only melee damage is also pretty legit and we already have this exact thing with Ancestral Bond -> forcing you into one archetype. Besides that, melee is just not living up to its RPG nature, you deal much less damage than any caster and oddly enough are not much tankier. Combine that with lots of missing inherent clearing mechanics and you have the mess that is melee today...
Funnily enough now that you mention it, what if they just added fortify onto melee gems themselves, and you could only deal damage with whatever gave you the fortify while you are under the effect of fortify?
What if they gave us a new keystone where you can only deal melee damage and ailments from melee hits but you are perma fortified. Then remove champions fortify and give it something else. Two problems fixed with one stone
Melee feels good while leveling because you constantly get upgrades from higher tiers of equipment, once you get into maps upgrades stop that is why its so frustrating because almost all of character's power comes from equipment as opposed to leveling char and gems. IMO smart loot similar to heists would help with that a lot. At least with going through white and yellows and into red maps.
Every league since I started playing, ( 2.0 ) melee was getting destroyed league after league, spells have ALWAYS been like way better than melee in terms of everything ( damage, clear, being safe ( because you cast shit 50km away ) , and in fact, if you play melee, you have to spend tons of exalt to at least feel good, and that suck. Not to mention skills that are almost unplayable, like idk, Cleave, who tf play that, heavy strike, dual strike and many more. The last league I see any sunder build was in Harbinger, by Alkaizer. Strike skills have 0 clear, you have to use Ancestral Call and Melee Splash to feel like you have clear, like, why? Explode chest fix that, but they also killed it, also very expensive, and a hard mod to get, why we need a chest with certain mod to fix the bad quality of mechanic that our skill have, just to kill a pack of mobs in 1 strike? This last leagues I'v been playing Reave and Lancing Steel, with Reave feels awful until u get a paradoxica with AS ( or some foil with same dps). I kinda hate that spells just need some +1 lvl gems to get so much damage, and with melee u need to spend so much exalts in gear to feel the same way. You never see melee builds in the top builds cuz they suck against spells/minions/traps/mines, why u gonna go with some melee build that u have to get close to enemies , spend a lot of currency in every slot in you gear, when u can play some mine build that only needs passives in the tree and 1 unique to feel godlike. And the fortify thing is the only shit that melee has, to pay the fact that we need to stay close to all enemies, and they keep nerf that, i dont get it. Maybe i'm wrong with all of this and i'm just a noob, but I feel this way
you really dont need ancestral call or mellee splash these days, strike gloves exist new implicit for strike exists, increased strike range mastery on the tree and additional strikes on the tree it isnt remotely needed anymore, mellee isnt in a great state rn but investment and the fortify thing is its main issue, however the whole range thing on bosses isnt really true because most of the time keeping giga range from the boss is the thing that kills people not actually being able to see the mechanics but beyond slayer and going boneshatter i wouldnt say any other mellee skill feels that great rn, except the secret tech of bladestorm oni garoshi slayer which i standby as a sleeper mellee build that smacks most spells out of the water except the top tier
Long time ago Istarted the game, my first character as a witch. Well long story super short, she managed to get in mid 50s as an elementalist, but as a player I didn't understand the game at all so I deleted that character, looked up a build guide and started a new one. So my first actual character was viper strike assassin. I kinda liked the rogue playstyle and I rolled with it nicely. This was a few leagues before Harvest, but I played in standard SSF softcore. I managed to get the build somehow working but it didn't feel super good even at 89 level. Defences were all over the place, with evasion and dodge and spell dodge.. And, it was a strike dot skill so clear was kinda.. ehhh. Whilrling blades in the middle of a pack, hit em once or twice and move on. 3 screens later you hear a ding when a chaos orb or map drops cos the mobs died. Good delve character tho for exploring darkness smoothly thanks to phasing and general speed. Crap for bossing cos you get hit by anything, you died. Moving on from that, my second character I made for Harvest league was EQ bleed jugg, cos I just wanted something that would not die. Well I still didn't understand much about the game, and the build overall wasn't super good, at least in my hands. Basically the harvest itself carried the build, more or less... All of this within like my first 300 hours of path of exile ever. Well, I have about 1500 hours total now, all in SSF softcore, and I haven't touched melee ever since. I try out some other spellcasters every once in a while, but I always have just 1 main build for any given league, which has been saboteur most of the time. Different kind of variations of saboteur tho, like I have tried out CI with nothing but ES (before spell suppression was a thing, back in ritual) or just general trickster-like hybrid in the current league with life, es, ghost shroud, eva stacking and such. It always feels so smooth to play cos that's quite literally the only thing I can do well. And when I said I haven't touched melee since, I mean I haven't started new character that uses melee. I have however tried to go and do some respecs with my old character and keep em up to date. Somehow the assassin with viper strike, I managed to improve it somewhat. Mostly just spell suppression and ghost shroud made it feel more nice, and some support gems (cough cough, nightblade, cough) made it do more damage too. But compared to something like traps and mines I usually play, just being melee feels bad in general. I might be bit biased here cos saboteur as an ascendancy just has shock and ignite immune with blind aura and naturally, immune to reflects. Not to mention you can stack up traps or mines on top of enemies during random boss phases and stuff, but with melee just gotta sit there and wait. When clearing gotta actually go close to the enemies too, and if I'm fighting 7 essence corrupted monster, I don't wanna go hug it. I want to stay far away, those things are scary.
i feel thats the one point that is kinda missing in that video: you dont wanna hug that. Most enemies are way scarier in melee than at range (as long as you keep the enemy on the screen), because of shtgunning proj, melee damage on most mobs being insanely high (harvest bears are bs; i lost 2 characters this league to them), animations being to close to the hit to properly react... that all leads to relatively poor scaling builds that on top of all their problems also have a shit damage uptime. I mean cool that my dual strike meme build has 3 mil dps, but i wont ever have more than 2 sec uptime on any boss.
@@RB-xc9wg Yup, it almost feels like if you want to play melee you need to be unkillable giga tank guardian or flaskfinder that is shotgun immune with nice auto-flasks.. Or then you have to play herald of ice flicker strike or something else that can 1shot 3 screens of mobs before they have the time to look in your general direction, thanks to chain reaction. Like, melee is doable but if you want to just leapslam around and hit enemies with your melee, it's not a very viable gameplay and it takes soooo much more effort to pull it off compared to right about any projectile attack or spell. I honestly have never even entertained of playing any kind of minion build, I have no idea how easy or hard it is to get those going.
For me the point at which melee becomes playable is getting Hunter gloves (strikes target an additional nearby enemy). Recently having Strikes target 1-2 additional enemies in searing exarch mods was an insane buff for the end game. They really missed an opportunity to go crazy and put like 20-40% Inc aoe for slams in that mod pool. I'm hopeful that they just feel free to add in mods to return scalability to these skills.
Ya gotta love Fortify. Especially how melee cant get it in a lot of cases. Tried using fortify support in my 6 link dom blow while using the Scourge claw weapon but I couldnt fortify myself over the +10 min my AG gives me. That brings up the next funny thing, they made the Kingmaker give 10 fortify instead of 20 as it used to give base fortify. I can hit my leech cap which I find funny. I like the Keystone idea, melee overall just has loads of mechanic issues that requires supports or pathing on the tree.
I just have one small request wrapped in a huge compliment. Just because you dont have thousands of followers does not decrease the value of your oppinion, when you have this good arguements, thats all you need. I feel like this should be a neatly organised forum thread.
HUGE balancing needs to happen in order to justify playing melee. Delayed damage to kill people picking up items needs to disappear, additional projectiles needs to be cut by half or even down to a cap of three, fortify needs to actually work, slams need to be able to use Fist of War at least once per second (it feels awful waiting for it to proc), slams need further adjustment in terms of how frequently cries are being used, ALL melee-centric ascendancies except Champion need buffed, all melee-centric ascendancies except Champion, Slayer, and Zerker need multiple nodes reworked, AOE of effectively all melee skills needs to be addressed, strike skills need to either be removed from the game or have content added which exclusively benefits that archetype....I mean I could literally just keep typing for a couple days. GGG doesn't care. They can't care. The game has gotten too far away from them to be able to fix the situation without massively changing the current state of the game.
Cleave is one my favorite skills in the game, its very "melee", tho more dead than my character after killing a pack of porcupines in melee range :') awesome video bro
give fortify a "1.5% less spell damage" per stack, now casters wont go for fortify and GGG can give it back in a non-shit state for melee( maybe champ just has a different wording on it and doesnt get the penalty or something, if they even want to keep the spellcaster champ thing going)
Reverting fortify back to its old state and throwing this on seems pretty good. I think it would solve some issues, however certain things bypass that wording easily. Ignite or poison based spell builds would get fortify for free, and they couldn't add "less damage with ailments" because then melee posion and bleed would get caught in the crossfire.
@@fizecs Spell skills deal 1.5% less damage with ailments per fortify stack ----------------Spell skills deal 1.5% less damage per fortify stack Damn, so hard to adds that to fortify (c) GGG Team They do changes to skills like that, so its not the case to not making it for fortify. That Wording literaly kill any spell casters in the game = No damage scaling; No Dot damage scalings - and things like DD (which deal damage directly from corpses, not spell damage itself) anyway will be affected (I tested it in pob)
Been playing since beta, gotta agree with most of what you said. You can play Melee, and you can make it work but why would you when you can use less investment and have something twice as strong...
fast question, im a cyclone gladiator impaler with herald of ash and purity + Great old one's gloves, using jeweled + savior , i feel like stuck on some half crit / half ailments build ... vaal ancestral 4 link and double strike 4 link , with warlord mark on cwdt + ic + id, all the element res 78% chaos 76% , low eva low armor 50 % physical dmg red.... i need a path to follow cause i am straying like a dog
Nothing you listed there indicates any ailments - impale isn't an ailment. Also the damage reduction your character sheet shows is basically a completely fake stat. If your in-game character sheet says 50% physical reduction it's actually much lower than that. The easiest thing to do if you feel stuck is compare your character to the characters of others running the same build on poeninja and see what they are doing that you aren't. Will also give you a good idea of what your gear should be looking like and what you should be prioritizing.
so you just don't get to have fortify until you get a 5 link? no fortify while leveling or early mapping? I don't think so lol you could also just put shield charge in a helmet or gloves that give a support and it would be counted by the game as a 5+ link and thus you would still have casters getting fortify.
It took until legion league to see melee become viable and fun. If we saw a melee rework/balance in the next 2-3 years I'd be shocked. Ggg philosophy= hit what's fun or meta.
Hi, I liked your video. I have some thoughts: The main classes of "Melee" are Marauder and Duelist, the region where these classes are today, is "inefficient" compared to the Ranger region, that is, there is more advantage (most of the time) to go to the right of the tree. than staying in the native region. Also, pure melee doesn't exist, I mean this type of gameplay is heavily penalized in PoE, some types of CC just can't be stopped like Temporal Anomaly. Melee must be inherently tougher in any situation, and must be stronger than a Ranger build, otherwise Melee will only be an archetype for use in Gauntlets or HC due to the "ease" of scaling slightly better defenses in the early game. Finally, I want to emphasize that everything I've said so far is only referring to temporary leagues, where the main focus of most is the early game and mid game. Why? Because the archetype of "bow" (Ranger) in the endgame will STILL be superior, because due to the DPS and exaggerated defensive layers given by the Headhunter and Mageblood, this archetype can do absolutely anything, effectively surpassing any type of archetype in this game. So it's a problem in the PoE CORE, and for now it can't be solved.
I play exclusively melee, mostly SC. By the time I get to the level where I can buy some key items (eg, Farrul's for Flicker), everyone else has already got it. Since the clear is so slow early on, you are already behind in how fast you make currency, because you're slower at farming. Then, there's the exp issue where you have to be on degens to actually deal damage, which means you'll die more often and you'll be lower leveled, therefore weaker than a ranged/minion/trapper. And then, there's the DPS issue. We can deal out *okay* damage, if we sacrifice everything else. Throw away strike range, AoE, Tribal Fury and everything else that allows you to clear, and then you're doing ok single target DPS. Oh you want to clear? Respec entire tree to aforementioned things, and look how your build sucks at single target. The cost to get a melee build up to the level of a 20ex ranged build is probably 3 times that.
35:40 In any game you play what's normally the #1 build people pick to play when they first start and what's normally the #1 favorite class in most games? A warrior right? Yet GGG has made sure that warriors are never a thing in PoE. Being melee is so much more dangerous than being a caster. Look at the Zizaran gauntlet. Depending on how you look at it only 1 or 2 true melee skill players is on the first page, and they are both a ranged melee skill. That skill would be splitting steel and Lightning Strike. BTW they are both a 1h/shield user. So not a single 2h melee build on the page. From what I can see the highest 2h melee build was a lvl 93 Boneshatter build. Boneshatter was the only 2h melee build that made it into the 90's from what I can see. The next highest I think is a lvl 76 Earthshatter build.
going ito the fortify thing, i am playing an instacker venom gyre, i get like 10-12 stacks of fortify per whirlwind hit on a mob, and thats not really playing melee
Been playing melee since beta and start it every single league without fail. I love it and hate it at the same time. I do miss the days when leech was uncapped or when (I believe) they last buffed melee, legion league. Maybe A way to improve melee would be to straight up remove player accuracy, or at least make it scale less painfully for melee. I think it would let you get more damage suffixes like crit multi or something like that. It would be difficult to implement though since it's such a big part of evasion, there are builds around that stat, and they would have to rework jugg.
You're forgetting about slams in harvest league - which is definitely the biggest buff they've gotten since the death of stat sticking. Slams ruled mela and the hcssf meta for the next 9 months. They should remove accuracy but it shouldn't be the only change. And the change should only be for players, not monsters. A lot of builds still don't have the passive point budget to go crit so it wouldn't solve melee being super weak in general. Idk if they would ever actually do it, but I think it would an objectively good change
@@fizecs excellent points! I totally forgot about harvest slams. Also to your point about investment, maybe another way to even the playing field is to increase skill gem weapon scaling. if I have a 500pdps sword I shouldnt have to worry about my damage type scaling. Melee feels bad most of the time because I would only do damage when I'm close to the boss and am actually able to hit them (ie. namelock non ranged like glacial hammer). Ranged builds can do consistent dps so they don't usually have to invest as much into defenses. It's a simple solution, but it might make playing melee a little smoother if I can do the same total amount of damage as ranged with the low uptime that I would have if I was melee, like what they did with spells this league.
@@davideoman1000 Yeah I actually completely agree. I think they should buff melee gems slightly baseline at lower gem levels to make leveling smoother for less experienced players. While not entirely necessary, its incredibly jarring for someone to be able to level from act 1 to act 10 with a wand they got at level 8, to then swap over and make a melee character and be changing their weapon base and crafting/vendor recipe(ing) a new weapon every 6-7 levels. Especially when this isn't an obvious thing and if you played a spell first, the game actually teaches you the opposite. I think at higher levels they should just drastically increase gem weapon scaling across the board. Thematically I do enjoy that spells scale with gem levels and melee relies much more on the weapon for scaling. I think its a cool idea to draw more differences between different archetypes, currently the numbers on it are just pretty whack. Theres also a precedent for this because they have done this before. Most melee skills were already in meme territory for the great nerfening in expedition, what tier they got moved down to probably doesnt even have a name lol
Like I stated in the video, this is the game from the lens of HCSSF. Anything is achievable with enough currency in SC Trade because you have access to more resources and can trade survivability for damage.
D3, even though it's often scorned, does melee a lot better. There are many viable/strong melee builds in the game (Roland Sweep, LTK, Thorns, Frenzy, HOTA, Grim Scythe, Flame Blades, maybe TR/WW if you count it). The key differences are: 1. All the melee skills that anyone uses have built-in AOE. 2. The gameplay isn't based around one shot vs. full screen clear. This makes melee much less of a playstyle downside. 3. No "accuracy" mechanic, so melee isn't disadvantaged vs. spells. Similarly, all skills scale off of weapon damage, so spells don't get "free" scaling. 4. The melee classes get built-in damage reduction. Although we also see some melee builds like Grim Scythe or Flame Blades on non-melee classes, so this isn't mandatory. I do like your idea of the "melee keystone" to get damage reduction, however I think the other issues (#1-#3) are actually more significant.
Technically 99% of the melee skills in poe have built-in cleave, they just suck ass lol. I think most melee skills should get melee splash for free, and strike skills should gain strike + additional enemy(s) with gem levels, like they do with weapon range. I also 100% agree that accuracy is a completely worthless stat in this game. 99% of hc builds path resolute so we just ignore its existence and it makes some interesting potential builds DOA from having to factor it in. Crit slams would likely be a viable option to build around if accuracy didn't exist. Overall I agree with your points for the most part. Regardless of overall strength of melee as a playstyle, I'd argue that the most important thing is it's game feel - To which I would say currently, it feels bad to play due to just having a giant laundry list of annoying limiters to check off to function smoothly. (Which is probably why 90% of melee builds just level as spectral helix then swap in maps after setting everything up)
@@Epindary frostblades definitely is not strong. lightning strike is pretty much only good in SC trade - with the exception of running omniscience on it. but like I stated in the video, LS omniscience isn't LS being OP, it's omniscience being OP. you can make most things feel pretty op in softcore trade so I think it's a bad litmus test for build viability
@@fizecs Umm LS was strong before omni and frostblades is the same skill with better clear and shittier singletarget. e and yeah i play sc so i cant comment on hc viablity
@@Epindary Like I said in the video though, this argument is entirely framed through the eyes of a HCSSF player, where those skills are completely unplayable (LS less so, especially with omni carrying it right now) - but they simply lack the damage to be viable in hardcore and you cant sacrifice defenses for it like you can in sc - which will always be the case for some things and thats a reality that hardcore players have to accept in this game, but I think its a point of poor game balance when it applies to *most* things in the game in general, not even limited to melee. GGG being content with making the game have a worse player experience to avoid potential power creep is just absolutely not worth it IMO. It feels more like a lazy excuse to not have to actually worry about balancing 90% of the games forgotten skill gems.
Casual player here : agree with the fortify thing. About the fist of war, probably gonna have to run two different slams with it ... with ruthless support (maybe not viable, but that is the one way i see it performing). I only ever enjoy earshatter/eq with slams , not top tier but decent imo, overcomes some downsides of melee (the downtime of dmg and leech between slams + setting up for boxes and boss fases) . I definately wonder about some archnemesis mods (sentinel and arcane are gonna be really annoying for slam skills (borderline impossible). 🤔🤗 What i also dont like for hc is that block is mandatory, so 1h/shield or 2h staff only options ... but not all skills work with all weapons = cringe af
I don't understand most of what you're talking about in this video since my first league was Scourge.. however, both builds I did for Scourge and ArchNem were both melee. I would say I went pretty far on both. Scourge I played Blade Flurry/Gen Cry with Cyclone and it was smooth and fun to play. This league I played LS and did well I think. Both on zerker. Are you telling me the game is a lot better if I'm not playing melee? I really want to play a reap build, but that doesnt' seem to be in a good place.
Viability in this game, outside of HCSSF, is moreso a metric of investment levels needed than true viability. The amount of 'power' you are extracting from a build based on chaos spent is going to be much higher on better builds than weaker ones. Melee in general is typically much less power per chaos spent than the meta. You can still do all content (especially in SC trade) on almost any build. As a new player, you should really just play what you find fun, and not stress over the strength of stuff too much. As far as the game being 'better' if you play a different build? No - it's the same game. Reap can work fine in SC trade with some investment - but a lot of it's power is locked behind awakened spell cascade, and it'll feel significantly worse to play until you get it.
I always think that the biggest issues with melee is that the animations are too clunky, most attack skills require much more investment to be somewhat viable compared to traps and minions and I am somewhat forced to play a 1-Hander melee because most 2-Handers don't have enough defence unless you are a Jugg bleed slammer or Staff blocker.
I agree with you all the way but true melee was always subpar, or atleast most of time it was. I've been playing since 1.X or 2.X and i remember realising how bad it was when i joined a group and while i was fighting to death with a group of white/magic zombies, they made the whole screen explode at once with coc or spells. I just knew i picked the wrong skill. Even then, i play melee alot. I've been trying to make slams work after the nerf and they just usually suck. Usually the spell builds are just way easier to gey going and are stronger. They just are. Traps are fing amazing.
I'm just talking about the archetype in general - which definitely has not always been subpar. I personally think the whole idea of "true melee" is kind of silly and doesn't really fit into a game like poe. D2 has 'true melee' and it feels awful to play compared to everything else in the game. Any skill that lacks clear speed, quality of life, and is much more inherently dangerous is just going to feel bad regardless of how much damage it deals - the very idea of 'true melee' is counter-intuitive to ARPG's as a genre, atleast in the context of PoE and how people have been using the term lately.
What about all the dead melee skills. Ones that never get used and are more or less totally useless. Examples such as Double Strike, Dual Strike, Spectral Throw, Heavy Strike, Cleave, Glacial Hammer, ETC. If we start combining all of the other melee skills that are just the same skill with a small tiny twist and count them as one, we end up with very few viable melee skills.
I really like the idea of this, I think there's room in Path of Exile content creation for long-form content that goes deeper into a subject, and I would super be on board for more, but I feel like maybe in a different format? I was hoping to see content, like supporting graphs or infographics (whatever they may be), rather than a single take lecture.
Thanks for taking the time to leave some constructive criticism! I'll start by saying that my content isn't consciously longform, most of my videos just turn into that because I tend to try to fully explain things instead of glossing over details or assuming a certain level of pre-context. I tend to make videos like this very often, while also uploading other content around the game, and with the run times on my videos being so long I think editing them fully would be a massive undertaking. That being said I would like to increase the production value of my video across the board - this is mostly a mixture of incredibly limited (i.e. almost zero) editing knowledge and spare time. I've recently been looking around at classes to learn more basics of editing because I always struggle with it whenever I give it a go, even for very simple things. Cheers!
@@fizecs Totally understandable, it would be a huge increase in time. I just thought it would a pretty interesting niche to become the YMS of Path, and that would be content I'd watch for sure. Not that I'm not going to watch your usual content. Thanks for the really in-depth reply!
I played PoE years ago and now returned for Sentinel and started as a casual dual wield duelist. And. It. Feels. Horrible. Yeah, there is a lot of stuff to the game and any casual will get overwhelmed at one point or another. But I still remember a lot, have done some homework before starting (PoB rough skill outline), which is way more work than casually picking up a game should be, and still I constantly feel like all I can do is make the wrong decisions... ...and there is a lot that could be done, like for example uber-strong projectiles being preceded by a knockback, so I get the same chance as ranged classes to avoid them. (Not so relevant to your point I guess, as you seem to focus on an endgame I've never experienced, but I just get cheap-shotet a lot whilst levelling.
i got 2 characters one is cleave slayer/raider scion and other is raider/assassin glacial hammer scion, im suffering atm, hope this horrible league ends soon and we get some balance
never played melee in my poe life but im not surprised that melee is being the middle child of poe again. i don't play melee for the sole reason of this dps type is being killed a lot in this game and if i want to do the build again on next league, i have no guarantee that it'll not be nerfed to oblivion. another thing is there's no real advantage of melee over rdps since you can have same degree of defenses depending on the build unlike in other games that if you are melee, you are naturally tankier.
I think it is completely fair that a bleed build struggles to get fortify. in bleed build you attack once then walk around . That us not the same as being melee and contently in the face of the enemies to deal damage. But i agree that if you are going to do that then bleed needs to do more damage.
but it's still melee you have to expose yourself to more damage consistently in order to deal damage. I'll also add that, this isn't even true - crimson dance has been the meta for every bleed build for the last 2 or so years. (outside of bow, but we are talking about melee) so melee uptime is actually more important on bleed than on on-hit builds because you need to spend 5 seconds ramping to start dealing 8 stacks.
@@fizecs yes that is why I talked about damage. People resort to things like crimson dance to get more damage that they need and I don't think it is even a good mechanic. The way you get damage on bleed needs a rework . So I disagree that bleed needs fortify. Bleed needs damage without crimson dance.
My main issue isent that Melee is weak, but rather than the game design is working against itself. You need to keep moving, and later additions and bosses tend to just encourage that sort of strategy of attacking with range, because range keeps you safe from harm wheras with Melee, you need to be in the midst of battle, just exposing yourself to die. I dont think melee buffs is the way to go, because the system that supports it is fucked.
I think it actually impossible to balance two-hander and dual-wielding. Everything depends on skill that works with one of those types. For exmpl, dual strike can be used only while dual-wielding, cuz skill designed only for single target. ofc u can build bleed explo gladiator, but hey, LS is the very clear answer. It is logicaly fine that u hit first with left then with right hand, sometimes with both (Dual strike), but skills are bad. There are nodes on passive skill tree that designed pretty dmn good, like Ambidexterity has very cool idea behind it. But what we see? ofc shield crash, spectral shield throw, and nothing with an actual off-hand weapon. I think problem just the same as with Slams. Design itself is pretty cool, i love it. But u cant lay only on design. Yes it feels brutal, it feels epic, it feels like u're doing a super brutal maroder sh*t. But when u reach the maps, u realize, that actually all what u're doing is only sh*t, without brutal marodeur wibe. It stops being brutal or massiv anymore just when u start noticing ur damage, and ur survivability. Design is good. Need to keep working with skills, weapon, passives.
They are not trying to make all playstyles viable and/or playable. Never did. There was a melee league and now it is gone. Following their logic, from nerfs/buffs (the way they implement those), look for future leagues, which at some point will again be melee. Melee being dead currently is part of their logic. I do not support their views, but after years now playing (almost since release), I managed to calm myself down and accept their view and "logic".
Ah, melee... There is so much that can be said about the state of melee in PoE. I have been playing PoE pretty consistently for about a year now, and I have yet to get a single good melee weapon drop. This is the first wall melee has to pass. While casters can do great damage with a POS +1 wand because caster damage comes from the gem, not the weapon. A good endgame melee weapon will easily cost you 5 ex. A great endgame weapon might cost 20 ex. This is the real reason people play caster because it's 10x easier to gear. IMO the next issue with melee is the lack of variety in melee skill gems. There are currently at least 7 different types of slam gems, but they are all slam builds. There are at least 3 different Shattering Steel gems. Seriously, what a load of crap. You don't see 7 different kinds of fireball gems. Currently, there are really only 4 or 5 popular melee builds. Cyclone (the most overused skill gem in the game), Lighting Strike, one of the Shattering Steel gems (mainly used for leveling), Boneshatter, and Flicker Strike. I feel there is so little amount of playstyle diversity with melee or just different melee types of skill gems. 3rd lack of viable skill gems for all weapon types, What melee builds do you know of that use a dagger as the primary weapon? I don't count Seismic Trap as melee either. Even if you did that's only 1. Reave use to be one of the best dagger builds in the game, but that was nerfed into the ground. Who even uses daggers anymore for melee? Right now people are using staffs, or a 1h ax or 1h sword. How many builds are using a 2h mace for a melee or any kind of a 2h? Seriously look at the % amount of melee weapon users and it's really really low. 4th The starting skills for melee suck, this is nowhere more obvious than in the gauntlet where Templars and Marauders struggle hard to get past Hillock It might take 10 minutes while a Witch can kill him in about a minute or 2. There is only 1 viable melee starting skill for melee and that's splitting steel, and IMO splitting steel is not really a fun playstyle and costs 2 buttons spots when other caster skills take up one. Even miner builds have a special detonate button, yet Splitting Steel has to take up 2 button spots. It's total BS. IMO GGG hates melee and has a hard-on for casters. For as long as I can remember as soon as any melee build breaks threw the barrier it's quickly beat with the nerf bat. I'm talking about melee skill,s not physical damage skills. I don't count Generals Cry/Blade Fury as a melee build. Shield Crush on the other hand is a yes.
well tbh you don't see them drop ... you see bases you can use to craft on hybrid mod + good prefix => lock prefixes reforge speed with harvest => craft another prefix or use aisling Well basically you need currency and you need to know what to do last league i have had my first over 550 dps 1h weapons whereas i could barely push 450 last leagues pre 3.17
"GGG did that thing where they just kill it, but leave it in the game". Ha ha so true! I feel like this applies to so many skills and unique items in POE right now.
Melee in PoE will never be as fun as Melee in Diablo 3 where crowd control and self buffs matter more which help make Melee interesting. PoE boils down to kill stuff in a single click. I don't see a world where they make a single click of Cleave as completive to a single click of Iceshot/lightning arrow/fireball.
Alot of that has to do with us basically being one skill bots. Auras, cries, ancestral totems - all to buff your main skill. If it was several skills like in PoE2 ..
I think I can't really agree with the lightning strike argument. Lightning strike is played because of multiple things 1. It has insane damage effectiveness since both the melee portion and the projectile portion can hit the same target 2. It has insane vaal skill with 2 charges which helps a lot on clearing and bossing 3. It shoots out projectile so it's really not a "melee" skill 4. It can be used on a claw and claw is the best melee weapon in the game both offensively and defensively So even without omni, it's already a very very strong skill. Omni just makes its ceiling through the rooftop. The thing with lightning strike is that it's not a "melee" skill cuz you are using the projectiles to clear
My argument with LS pertains to the games definition of melee, and why it doesnt make sense. So yes I fully agree with you that it isn't actually melee, however according to the games logic, it is melee since it grants fortify - to which only melee skills can do. I knew I would receive kickback from the LS point - but I feel the need to reiterate that, like stated multiple times in the video, this is looking at the game through a HCSSF lens. LS is not a strong or popular build in SSF. It saw mild play after the buffs to vaal LS in ultimatum league (I did a build diary on it and played it to 98), but since the expedition nerfs, it has seen little to no representation. Skills like LS will always be a strong option in SC trade because the largest limiter is clear speed and mechanical limiters to skills. You can play it on extremely high damage ascendancies like berserker to cover that weakness, as well as just having access to much much *much* more damage and speed in general by nature of softcore, and by nature of trading. My point about omni was that it is the only reason LS is seeing play *in HC*e
@@fizecs Yeah, that makes a lot of sense when it comes to HC case. I do think that LS is a strong enough skill for SCSSF because I've played it this league and got myself a level 95 raider and it feels butter smooth as long as you know about the gear progression. Although I've not really looked into HCSSF before, I do believe you are right, since most of the LS power is from stacking elusive effect and when you are pathing to the right side of the tree then very likely you are not having enough points for defensive stats, and ranger generally has much less defense compared to other characters.
I do feel you empathetically as I enjoy melee too and feel that it’s been in a bad state for a long time. However ; I do understand that GGG has their own processes as far as balancing, I may or may not agree with it, but it is what it is. It’s made me become diverse and become experienced in other classes and archetypes. In the beginning of the video you mentioned that you don’t really stray from melee. Unfortunately, this has really affected your faith and perspective in the game as far as feeling like they’re giving up on melee, maybe they are? Am I going to quit POE over it? No. Whatever balance changes they make: I read the patch notes and I just adjust to them accordingly. Melee has been complained about for a long time, I’ve accepted it for what it is. Play some casters or ranged builds and use it as an opportunity to become more knowledgeable and diverse in the game. Ultimately it will complement your already immense knowledge that you have.
I mentioned I league started it for the past few leagues, I tend to make/play over 20 builds a league covering every archetype in the game, feel free to browse through my previous videos/build diaries - in fact after dying to a bug 20 hours into the boss rush event at league start I rerolled and made a EK Nova character that I played for the next 3 weeks of the league. This video was just centered around melee so I stayed on topic - Skill balance is honestly one of the worst things in this game objectively, I think tons of entire archetypes are actually in a terrible spot relative to content itself, not the meta. They can balance the game however they want, I adjust just like you mentioned. However critique and adaptation are not mutually exclusive - We can have both. I don't consider myself a 'melee' player - I play, and always have played, much more spell-based builds than melee builds.
Melee has been dead for a long time in PoE. People like to claim things like Lightning Strike is melee, but it isn't. By the very definition of melee, PoE has very few skills that check the box. I think one of the issues is that you have spells and other non melee skills that deal physical damage which to me should be something that is almost solely a melee damage type. It sucks but the likelihood of melee or strike builds getting any attention pre PoE 2 is very very unlikely.
@@fizecs Yea, I get that. At least you do not have to bother with making a profit or trading with others. I tried SSF but HCSSF is a *hell no* from me!
3.19, 2 leagues after the videos, and they not only managed to break melee, but the whole game with it. As someone that really loves melee in the game (I just can't play spells, hate it with every ounce of my being), pains me that you either accept doing 10-15 times less damage than spells (cause lets not forget melee uptime which spells doesnt have to manage) and all the stats you have to pay attention to.. oh boi.
The fact melee has been shit for 99% of this games life cycle, has caused me to skip multiple leagues and years playing this game. In fact, I was planning on coming back for 3.18, but apparently it is in one of its worse states, so no POE for me. Why doea the community tolerate this bullshit?
Basicly GGG fed up melee KEKW last build played impaler call of steel that was fun but hey we in nerfs all around era....why GGG doesnt leave all that bs for their wet dreamed hardmode Now i think like the d3 op wizard even some GGG devs may have some children who play only spells lol
just seems like they dont know how to innovate content so they nerf things around to try and keep things spicy. i regret buying mtx, they nerf the fun out of the game for me
i played poe since the very beginning, and it's a toxic game. at first i was amaze about how big the passive tree, then later disappointed to how much you can allocate to the tree. some mechanics just don't make sense, illogical at most! for example a active skill gem that scale to the right side of the tree but only levels to the left. a green gem that scale better in int are some examples. i also hate how your char get one shot on white map with a normal mob, which makes no sense at all. ggg just cant fix bug issues. the game just have the worst QoL, basically unfair to play the server always wins. if your lagging or a spike in latency during a boss fight most of the time happen your char just teleport to a different location which places your char in the most unfavorable situation resulting in instant death. overall i quit! d2 and grim dawn is a better gaming experience, poe is just trash every build will always be useless!
This entire video is me talking about my opinions. Surprisingly, you don't have to watch it if you don't care. I also took the time to timestamp out each topic for your convenience, it takes less time to click them than it does to type out a comment complaining. Cheers!
![Solo Self Found Guide w/ Steelmage! [PoE University]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HgZ2qDXtfjk/mqdefault.jpg)
![Solo Self Found Guide w/ Steelmage! [PoE University]](/img/tr.png)
![3.21 Vaal Reap Ascendant PoB In-Depth Breakdown [Path of Exile - Crucible - HCSSF]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YwRPd7VGAck/mqdefault.jpg)
Excuse-me sir, I think you're wrong!
Look at this Standard SC build I've found where the guy is lvl 100, has only 18 legacy and mirror-tier items and can clear a T12 map with 2 portals left. He seems to be doing alright.
KKKKKKKK muito bom
@Alexander B. alkaizer
@Alexander B. I can run low reds on pretty much any skill in the game, thats not a useful metric for measuring skill viability at all. There are no "unknown ailments" in the game, and despite what reddit might tell you, 99% of the deaths in hc are completely user error, not the fault of the game. Just because I (and others) enjoy hardcore more doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have opinions on the game or to also want decent skill balancing for the game mode we prefer. Not a fan of takes like this, it's just a "you're having fun wrong" argument worded in a passive aggressive manner.
I've been playing the game for a very long time but i still learn new things I didn't know every league. It's part of what I love about the game. However your point about the new players walking in thinking they can play melee like in other games is spot on. There's so many things you need to know in order to make that be a good experience, compared to say playing a summoner, or even a bow build. Melee can be downright frustrating and thats on top of PoE being intimidating to get into for new players.
I can connect with you on an emotional level. I just LOVED previous Earthshatter and Ground Slam Impaler builds. Playing around intimidating and seismic cries was so satisfying, while other builds were just using a couple of buff/debuff skills in fights (which we used too). It was fun actually having something to do while you are mapping/bossing apart from pressing your main skill button and being actually REWARDED for your actions. MoM miners made me feel the similar way too, but well, they got nerfed too, lol. And i just remember just enjoying the impaler build. Then i get my attack cancelled by needing to reposition my character. And i SEE IT on my hud, i've got my seismic cry lose 1 exerted attack. AND IT FUCKING HIT ME that i can animation-cancel it. After that impaler ground slam became my favourite build. The rotation with animation cancelling was just too fun to do and the clear was really satisfying. I remember having fun on 5 deli orb maps with like shitty gear and just stacking mobs around delirium bosses and just fucking blowing them up in one swing, which was, i guess, a little bit cheesy, but who the fuck would do that anyway, definitely not the most strong combination in those time. Bossing damage was alright, but nothing too crazy, even a little bit weak for that time. And after that they just killed the impaler. Why? Idk, ggg just likes to remove fun from the games from time to time. Just like they did in 3.15 with seismic cry and killed it for me. SO MUCH DAMAGE LOSS. Did they even think what were they doing? You fucking nerf all support gems and delete a giant more multiplier from a skill in the same patch. They made us loose a great damage buff with actual utility in it. Why would i want to play a skill with much less dps, while also loosing utility. After that i only played it this league to league start a zerker, it felt kind of nice, but definitely not great as it was before.
Yeah expedition slam nerf was the embodiment of the whole meme of GGG nerfing one skill 23 different ways in one patch lol, that was a mind-numbing patch note reading session for me. I wish they didn't kill impaler as a mechanic. I really dislike that they didn't even bother to try balancing it, they just destroyed the interaction instead of toning down it's numbers and that was pretty lazy.
I would argue you're a very niche player in that regard, a lot of people prefer the automated styles in melee with cyclone etc (in terms of popularity) or just haven't given the other stuff enough of a shot.
@@kizzagaming6523 yeah I actually think that ggg is incredibly unlikely to buff slams unless they buff literally everything across the board simply because of how polarizing the playstyle of the archetype is
@@fizecs Yeah for sure, I will say that there has been a constant issue ever since the Flesh and Stone changes, even before that things were not great - Entry level was like 2 ex equiv into requiring 200 ex for the next step and was just majorly skewed compared to other builds. Which is even harder in SSF! They also put their " fix " for Flesh and stone for melee under the duelist in an area of the tree where nobody paths and since a lot of the tree changes most of those melee builds (using cyclone as a reference point) if you want to achieve similar dps numbers to many of the other builds you require 1) more investment & 2) more of your healthpool/defenses sacrificed. There's also fortify issues right now against high hp harvest/enemy mobs where u can't get any stacks of fort or maybe 3-4 if you're lucky even with a heavy slam style build. Old terminus est budget starter for Cyclone could get around 4 mill dps in medium level gear. Now it can get like 500k that's along with less overall HP. That's a crazy nerf.
Anyway sorry for the rant, I typed this like 4 times and kept accidentally clicking elsewhere on my screen and losing it so it's an info dump.
(Also the best Cycloner right now gets like 4.5k HP and is staves, which you can outclass with a max block minion build, trapper or just about anything else on the right/upper side for less investment or similar investment)
It feels like they want melee to be an archetype but they don't want to completely cut it from other archetypes. They should just rework all gems that can give you fortify and make the tree be the only source of it - that would actually fix the issue GGG had with fortify on non-melee builds. Your idea of a keystone to deal only melee damage is also pretty legit and we already have this exact thing with Ancestral Bond -> forcing you into one archetype. Besides that, melee is just not living up to its RPG nature, you deal much less damage than any caster and oddly enough are not much tankier. Combine that with lots of missing inherent clearing mechanics and you have the mess that is melee today...
Funnily enough now that you mention it, what if they just added fortify onto melee gems themselves, and you could only deal damage with whatever gave you the fortify while you are under the effect of fortify?
Would be quite funny seeing casters shield charging around and getting their damage removed xD
What if they gave us a new keystone where you can only deal melee damage and ailments from melee hits but you are perma fortified. Then remove champions fortify and give it something else. Two problems fixed with one stone
Amen! Would love for content creators to make more videos like this. Melee is so much fun, but in the gutters. Tyvm for your insight!
Melee feels good while leveling because you constantly get upgrades from higher tiers of equipment, once you get into maps upgrades stop that is why its so frustrating because almost all of character's power comes from equipment as opposed to leveling char and gems. IMO smart loot similar to heists would help with that a lot. At least with going through white and yellows and into red maps.
Every league since I started playing, ( 2.0 ) melee was getting destroyed league after league, spells have ALWAYS been like way better than melee in terms of everything ( damage, clear, being safe ( because you cast shit 50km away ) , and in fact, if you play melee, you have to spend tons of exalt to at least feel good, and that suck. Not to mention skills that are almost unplayable, like idk, Cleave, who tf play that, heavy strike, dual strike and many more. The last league I see any sunder build was in Harbinger, by Alkaizer.
Strike skills have 0 clear, you have to use Ancestral Call and Melee Splash to feel like you have clear, like, why? Explode chest fix that, but they also killed it, also very expensive, and a hard mod to get, why we need a chest with certain mod to fix the bad quality of mechanic that our skill have, just to kill a pack of mobs in 1 strike?
This last leagues I'v been playing Reave and Lancing Steel, with Reave feels awful until u get a paradoxica with AS ( or some foil with same dps). I kinda hate that spells just need some +1 lvl gems to get so much damage, and with melee u need to spend so much exalts in gear to feel the same way. You never see melee builds in the top builds cuz they suck against spells/minions/traps/mines, why u gonna go with some melee build that u have to get close to enemies , spend a lot of currency in every slot in you gear, when u can play some mine build that only needs passives in the tree and 1 unique to feel godlike. And the fortify thing is the only shit that melee has, to pay the fact that we need to stay close to all enemies, and they keep nerf that, i dont get it. Maybe i'm wrong with all of this and i'm just a noob, but I feel this way
you really dont need ancestral call or mellee splash these days, strike gloves exist new implicit for strike exists, increased strike range mastery on the tree and additional strikes on the tree it isnt remotely needed anymore, mellee isnt in a great state rn but investment and the fortify thing is its main issue, however the whole range thing on bosses isnt really true because most of the time keeping giga range from the boss is the thing that kills people not actually being able to see the mechanics but beyond slayer and going boneshatter i wouldnt say any other mellee skill feels that great rn, except the secret tech of bladestorm oni garoshi slayer which i standby as a sleeper mellee build that smacks most spells out of the water except the top tier
Any one know of lacerate still does not work with fortify well?
you can get enough damage for fortify for mapping, might still be finnicky on endgame bosses.
Long time ago Istarted the game, my first character as a witch. Well long story super short, she managed to get in mid 50s as an elementalist, but as a player I didn't understand the game at all so I deleted that character, looked up a build guide and started a new one.
So my first actual character was viper strike assassin. I kinda liked the rogue playstyle and I rolled with it nicely. This was a few leagues before Harvest, but I played in standard SSF softcore. I managed to get the build somehow working but it didn't feel super good even at 89 level. Defences were all over the place, with evasion and dodge and spell dodge.. And, it was a strike dot skill so clear was kinda.. ehhh. Whilrling blades in the middle of a pack, hit em once or twice and move on. 3 screens later you hear a ding when a chaos orb or map drops cos the mobs died. Good delve character tho for exploring darkness smoothly thanks to phasing and general speed. Crap for bossing cos you get hit by anything, you died. Moving on from that, my second character I made for Harvest league was EQ bleed jugg, cos I just wanted something that would not die. Well I still didn't understand much about the game, and the build overall wasn't super good, at least in my hands. Basically the harvest itself carried the build, more or less... All of this within like my first 300 hours of path of exile ever. Well, I have about 1500 hours total now, all in SSF softcore, and I haven't touched melee ever since. I try out some other spellcasters every once in a while, but I always have just 1 main build for any given league, which has been saboteur most of the time. Different kind of variations of saboteur tho, like I have tried out CI with nothing but ES (before spell suppression was a thing, back in ritual) or just general trickster-like hybrid in the current league with life, es, ghost shroud, eva stacking and such. It always feels so smooth to play cos that's quite literally the only thing I can do well.
And when I said I haven't touched melee since, I mean I haven't started new character that uses melee. I have however tried to go and do some respecs with my old character and keep em up to date. Somehow the assassin with viper strike, I managed to improve it somewhat. Mostly just spell suppression and ghost shroud made it feel more nice, and some support gems (cough cough, nightblade, cough) made it do more damage too. But compared to something like traps and mines I usually play, just being melee feels bad in general. I might be bit biased here cos saboteur as an ascendancy just has shock and ignite immune with blind aura and naturally, immune to reflects. Not to mention you can stack up traps or mines on top of enemies during random boss phases and stuff, but with melee just gotta sit there and wait. When clearing gotta actually go close to the enemies too, and if I'm fighting 7 essence corrupted monster, I don't wanna go hug it. I want to stay far away, those things are scary.
i feel thats the one point that is kinda missing in that video: you dont wanna hug that. Most enemies are way scarier in melee than at range (as long as you keep the enemy on the screen), because of shtgunning proj, melee damage on most mobs being insanely high (harvest bears are bs; i lost 2 characters this league to them), animations being to close to the hit to properly react... that all leads to relatively poor scaling builds that on top of all their problems also have a shit damage uptime. I mean cool that my dual strike meme build has 3 mil dps, but i wont ever have more than 2 sec uptime on any boss.
@@RB-xc9wg Yup, it almost feels like if you want to play melee you need to be unkillable giga tank guardian or flaskfinder that is shotgun immune with nice auto-flasks.. Or then you have to play herald of ice flicker strike or something else that can 1shot 3 screens of mobs before they have the time to look in your general direction, thanks to chain reaction. Like, melee is doable but if you want to just leapslam around and hit enemies with your melee, it's not a very viable gameplay and it takes soooo much more effort to pull it off compared to right about any projectile attack or spell. I honestly have never even entertained of playing any kind of minion build, I have no idea how easy or hard it is to get those going.
For me the point at which melee becomes playable is getting Hunter gloves (strikes target an additional nearby enemy). Recently having Strikes target 1-2 additional enemies in searing exarch mods was an insane buff for the end game. They really missed an opportunity to go crazy and put like 20-40% Inc aoe for slams in that mod pool. I'm hopeful that they just feel free to add in mods to return scalability to these skills.
Ya gotta love Fortify. Especially how melee cant get it in a lot of cases. Tried using fortify support in my 6 link dom blow while using the Scourge claw weapon but I couldnt fortify myself over the +10 min my AG gives me. That brings up the next funny thing, they made the Kingmaker give 10 fortify instead of 20 as it used to give base fortify. I can hit my leech cap which I find funny. I like the Keystone idea, melee overall just has loads of mechanic issues that requires supports or pathing on the tree.
Also good luck getting fortify with a melee dot build lol. Meanwhile summoners casually get 10 fortify with AG lmao thanks kingmaker
I just have one small request wrapped in a huge compliment.
Just because you dont have thousands of followers does not decrease the value of your oppinion, when you have this good arguements, thats all you need.
I feel like this should be a neatly organised forum thread.
HUGE balancing needs to happen in order to justify playing melee. Delayed damage to kill people picking up items needs to disappear, additional projectiles needs to be cut by half or even down to a cap of three, fortify needs to actually work, slams need to be able to use Fist of War at least once per second (it feels awful waiting for it to proc), slams need further adjustment in terms of how frequently cries are being used, ALL melee-centric ascendancies except Champion need buffed, all melee-centric ascendancies except Champion, Slayer, and Zerker need multiple nodes reworked, AOE of effectively all melee skills needs to be addressed, strike skills need to either be removed from the game or have content added which exclusively benefits that archetype....I mean I could literally just keep typing for a couple days. GGG doesn't care. They can't care. The game has gotten too far away from them to be able to fix the situation without massively changing the current state of the game.
Cleave is one my favorite skills in the game, its very "melee", tho more dead than my character after killing a pack of porcupines in melee range :') awesome video bro
I'm sure one day I'll get to use the demon hand mtx I bought for it 4 years ago lol
give fortify a "1.5% less spell damage" per stack, now casters wont go for fortify and GGG can give it back in a non-shit state for melee( maybe champ just has a different wording on it and doesnt get the penalty or something, if they even want to keep the spellcaster champ thing going)
That's a great idea!
One of the best I heard and I watch all bigger podcasts.
Reverting fortify back to its old state and throwing this on seems pretty good. I think it would solve some issues, however certain things bypass that wording easily. Ignite or poison based spell builds would get fortify for free, and they couldn't add "less damage with ailments" because then melee posion and bleed would get caught in the crossfire.
Ailments inflicted with meleehits deal full damage
@@fizecs Spell skills deal 1.5% less damage with ailments per fortify stack
----------------Spell skills deal 1.5% less damage per fortify stack
Damn, so hard to adds that to fortify (c) GGG Team
They do changes to skills like that, so its not the case to not making it for fortify. That Wording literaly kill any spell casters in the game = No damage scaling; No Dot damage scalings - and things like DD (which deal damage directly from corpses, not spell damage itself) anyway will be affected (I tested it in pob)
Been playing since beta, gotta agree with most of what you said. You can play Melee, and you can make it work but why would you when you can use less investment and have something twice as strong...
fast question, im a cyclone gladiator impaler with herald of ash and purity + Great old one's gloves, using jeweled + savior , i feel like stuck on some half crit / half ailments build ... vaal ancestral 4 link and double strike 4 link , with warlord mark on cwdt + ic + id, all the element res 78% chaos 76% , low eva low armor 50 % physical dmg red.... i need a path to follow cause i am straying like a dog
Nothing you listed there indicates any ailments - impale isn't an ailment. Also the damage reduction your character sheet shows is basically a completely fake stat. If your in-game character sheet says 50% physical reduction it's actually much lower than that. The easiest thing to do if you feel stuck is compare your character to the characters of others running the same build on poeninja and see what they are doing that you aren't. Will also give you a good idea of what your gear should be looking like and what you should be prioritizing.
I think the simple way to fix Fortify without making spell caster abuse it is that: U can only get Fortify if your melee skill has above 5 link. Done.
so you just don't get to have fortify until you get a 5 link? no fortify while leveling or early mapping? I don't think so lol
you could also just put shield charge in a helmet or gloves that give a support and it would be counted by the game as a 5+ link and thus you would still have casters getting fortify.
It took until legion league to see melee become viable and fun. If we saw a melee rework/balance in the next 2-3 years I'd be shocked. Ggg philosophy= hit what's fun or meta.
Hi, I liked your video.
I have some thoughts:
The main classes of "Melee" are Marauder and Duelist, the region where these classes are today, is "inefficient" compared to the Ranger region, that is, there is more advantage (most of the time) to go to the right of the tree. than staying in the native region.
Also, pure melee doesn't exist, I mean this type of gameplay is heavily penalized in PoE, some types of CC just can't be stopped like Temporal Anomaly.
Melee must be inherently tougher in any situation, and must be stronger than a Ranger build, otherwise Melee will only be an archetype for use in Gauntlets or HC due to the "ease" of scaling slightly better defenses in the early game.
Finally, I want to emphasize that everything I've said so far is only referring to temporary leagues, where the main focus of most is the early game and mid game. Why? Because the archetype of "bow" (Ranger) in the endgame will STILL be superior, because due to the DPS and exaggerated defensive layers given by the Headhunter and Mageblood, this archetype can do absolutely anything, effectively surpassing any type of archetype in this game. So it's a problem in the PoE CORE, and for now it can't be solved.
I play exclusively melee, mostly SC.
By the time I get to the level where I can buy some key items (eg, Farrul's for Flicker), everyone else has already got it. Since the clear is so slow early on, you are already behind in how fast you make currency, because you're slower at farming.
Then, there's the exp issue where you have to be on degens to actually deal damage, which means you'll die more often and you'll be lower leveled, therefore weaker than a ranged/minion/trapper.
And then, there's the DPS issue. We can deal out *okay* damage, if we sacrifice everything else. Throw away strike range, AoE, Tribal Fury and everything else that allows you to clear, and then you're doing ok single target DPS.
Oh you want to clear? Respec entire tree to aforementioned things, and look how your build sucks at single target.
The cost to get a melee build up to the level of a 20ex ranged build is probably 3 times that.
35:40 In any game you play what's normally the #1 build people pick to play when they first start and what's normally the #1 favorite class in most games? A warrior right? Yet GGG has made sure that warriors are never a thing in PoE. Being melee is so much more dangerous than being a caster. Look at the Zizaran gauntlet. Depending on how you look at it only 1 or 2 true melee skill players is on the first page, and they are both a ranged melee skill. That skill would be splitting steel and Lightning Strike. BTW they are both a 1h/shield user. So not a single 2h melee build on the page. From what I can see the highest 2h melee build was a lvl 93 Boneshatter build. Boneshatter was the only 2h melee build that made it into the 90's from what I can see. The next highest I think is a lvl 76 Earthshatter build.
going ito the fortify thing, i am playing an instacker venom gyre, i get like 10-12 stacks of fortify per whirlwind hit on a mob, and thats not really playing melee
Been playing melee since beta and start it every single league without fail. I love it and hate it at the same time. I do miss the days when leech was uncapped or when (I believe) they last buffed melee, legion league. Maybe A way to improve melee would be to straight up remove player accuracy, or at least make it scale less painfully for melee. I think it would let you get more damage suffixes like crit multi or something like that. It would be difficult to implement though since it's such a big part of evasion, there are builds around that stat, and they would have to rework jugg.
You're forgetting about slams in harvest league - which is definitely the biggest buff they've gotten since the death of stat sticking. Slams ruled mela and the hcssf meta for the next 9 months. They should remove accuracy but it shouldn't be the only change. And the change should only be for players, not monsters. A lot of builds still don't have the passive point budget to go crit so it wouldn't solve melee being super weak in general. Idk if they would ever actually do it, but I think it would an objectively good change
@@fizecs excellent points! I totally forgot about harvest slams. Also to your point about investment, maybe another way to even the playing field is to increase skill gem weapon scaling. if I have a 500pdps sword I shouldnt have to worry about my damage type scaling. Melee feels bad most of the time because I would only do damage when I'm close to the boss and am actually able to hit them (ie. namelock non ranged like glacial hammer). Ranged builds can do consistent dps so they don't usually have to invest as much into defenses. It's a simple solution, but it might make playing melee a little smoother if I can do the same total amount of damage as ranged with the low uptime that I would have if I was melee, like what they did with spells this league.
@@davideoman1000 Yeah I actually completely agree. I think they should buff melee gems slightly baseline at lower gem levels to make leveling smoother for less experienced players. While not entirely necessary, its incredibly jarring for someone to be able to level from act 1 to act 10 with a wand they got at level 8, to then swap over and make a melee character and be changing their weapon base and crafting/vendor recipe(ing) a new weapon every 6-7 levels. Especially when this isn't an obvious thing and if you played a spell first, the game actually teaches you the opposite. I think at higher levels they should just drastically increase gem weapon scaling across the board. Thematically I do enjoy that spells scale with gem levels and melee relies much more on the weapon for scaling. I think its a cool idea to draw more differences between different archetypes, currently the numbers on it are just pretty whack. Theres also a precedent for this because they have done this before. Most melee skills were already in meme territory for the great nerfening in expedition, what tier they got moved down to probably doesnt even have a name lol
thoughts on the one shot tectonic slam build by Jenno then?
Like I stated in the video, this is the game from the lens of HCSSF. Anything is achievable with enough currency in SC Trade because you have access to more resources and can trade survivability for damage.
But 100ex into anything and it does damage. Slams are utter trash compared to ranged abilities.
D3, even though it's often scorned, does melee a lot better. There are many viable/strong melee builds in the game (Roland Sweep, LTK, Thorns, Frenzy, HOTA, Grim Scythe, Flame Blades, maybe TR/WW if you count it). The key differences are:
1. All the melee skills that anyone uses have built-in AOE.
2. The gameplay isn't based around one shot vs. full screen clear. This makes melee much less of a playstyle downside.
3. No "accuracy" mechanic, so melee isn't disadvantaged vs. spells. Similarly, all skills scale off of weapon damage, so spells don't get "free" scaling.
4. The melee classes get built-in damage reduction. Although we also see some melee builds like Grim Scythe or Flame Blades on non-melee classes, so this isn't mandatory.
I do like your idea of the "melee keystone" to get damage reduction, however I think the other issues (#1-#3) are actually more significant.
Technically 99% of the melee skills in poe have built-in cleave, they just suck ass lol. I think most melee skills should get melee splash for free, and strike skills should gain strike + additional enemy(s) with gem levels, like they do with weapon range. I also 100% agree that accuracy is a completely worthless stat in this game. 99% of hc builds path resolute so we just ignore its existence and it makes some interesting potential builds DOA from having to factor it in. Crit slams would likely be a viable option to build around if accuracy didn't exist. Overall I agree with your points for the most part. Regardless of overall strength of melee as a playstyle, I'd argue that the most important thing is it's game feel - To which I would say currently, it feels bad to play due to just having a giant laundry list of annoying limiters to check off to function smoothly. (Which is probably why 90% of melee builds just level as spectral helix then swap in maps after setting everything up)
@@fizecs LS and FrostBlades are really strong so u need to butcher them before u buff melee
@@Epindary frostblades definitely is not strong. lightning strike is pretty much only good in SC trade - with the exception of running omniscience on it. but like I stated in the video, LS omniscience isn't LS being OP, it's omniscience being OP.
you can make most things feel pretty op in softcore trade so I think it's a bad litmus test for build viability
@@fizecs Umm LS was strong before omni and frostblades is the same skill with better clear and shittier singletarget.
e
and yeah i play sc so i cant comment on hc viablity
@@Epindary Like I said in the video though, this argument is entirely framed through the eyes of a HCSSF player, where those skills are completely unplayable (LS less so, especially with omni carrying it right now) - but they simply lack the damage to be viable in hardcore and you cant sacrifice defenses for it like you can in sc - which will always be the case for some things and thats a reality that hardcore players have to accept in this game, but I think its a point of poor game balance when it applies to *most* things in the game in general, not even limited to melee. GGG being content with making the game have a worse player experience to avoid potential power creep is just absolutely not worth it IMO. It feels more like a lazy excuse to not have to actually worry about balancing 90% of the games forgotten skill gems.
Casual player here : agree with the fortify thing. About the fist of war, probably gonna have to run two different slams with it ... with ruthless support (maybe not viable, but that is the one way i see it performing). I only ever enjoy earshatter/eq with slams , not top tier but decent imo, overcomes some downsides of melee (the downtime of dmg and leech between slams + setting up for boxes and boss fases) . I definately wonder about some archnemesis mods (sentinel and arcane are gonna be really annoying for slam skills (borderline impossible). 🤔🤗 What i also dont like for hc is that block is mandatory, so 1h/shield or 2h staff only options ... but not all skills work with all weapons = cringe af
I don't understand most of what you're talking about in this video since my first league was Scourge.. however, both builds I did for Scourge and ArchNem were both melee. I would say I went pretty far on both. Scourge I played Blade Flurry/Gen Cry with Cyclone and it was smooth and fun to play. This league I played LS and did well I think. Both on zerker.
Are you telling me the game is a lot better if I'm not playing melee? I really want to play a reap build, but that doesnt' seem to be in a good place.
Viability in this game, outside of HCSSF, is moreso a metric of investment levels needed than true viability. The amount of 'power' you are extracting from a build based on chaos spent is going to be much higher on better builds than weaker ones. Melee in general is typically much less power per chaos spent than the meta. You can still do all content (especially in SC trade) on almost any build. As a new player, you should really just play what you find fun, and not stress over the strength of stuff too much. As far as the game being 'better' if you play a different build? No - it's the same game. Reap can work fine in SC trade with some investment - but a lot of it's power is locked behind awakened spell cascade, and it'll feel significantly worse to play until you get it.
I always think that the biggest issues with melee is that the animations are too clunky, most attack skills require much more investment to be somewhat viable compared to traps and minions and I am somewhat forced to play a 1-Hander melee because most 2-Handers don't have enough defence unless you are a Jugg bleed slammer or Staff blocker.
Carn's soulmate found!
I agree with you all the way but true melee was always subpar, or atleast most of time it was. I've been playing since 1.X or 2.X and i remember realising how bad it was when i joined a group and while i was fighting to death with a group of white/magic zombies, they made the whole screen explode at once with coc or spells. I just knew i picked the wrong skill.
Even then, i play melee alot. I've been trying to make slams work after the nerf and they just usually suck.
Usually the spell builds are just way easier to gey going and are stronger. They just are.
Traps are fing amazing.
I'm just talking about the archetype in general - which definitely has not always been subpar. I personally think the whole idea of "true melee" is kind of silly and doesn't really fit into a game like poe. D2 has 'true melee' and it feels awful to play compared to everything else in the game. Any skill that lacks clear speed, quality of life, and is much more inherently dangerous is just going to feel bad regardless of how much damage it deals - the very idea of 'true melee' is counter-intuitive to ARPG's as a genre, atleast in the context of PoE and how people have been using the term lately.
What about all the dead melee skills. Ones that never get used and are more or less totally useless. Examples such as Double Strike, Dual Strike, Spectral Throw, Heavy Strike, Cleave, Glacial Hammer, ETC. If we start combining all of the other melee skills that are just the same skill with a small tiny twist and count them as one, we end up with very few viable melee skills.
I really like the idea of this, I think there's room in Path of Exile content creation for long-form content that goes deeper into a subject, and I would super be on board for more, but I feel like maybe in a different format? I was hoping to see content, like supporting graphs or infographics (whatever they may be), rather than a single take lecture.
Thanks for taking the time to leave some constructive criticism! I'll start by saying that my content isn't consciously longform, most of my videos just turn into that because I tend to try to fully explain things instead of glossing over details or assuming a certain level of pre-context. I tend to make videos like this very often, while also uploading other content around the game, and with the run times on my videos being so long I think editing them fully would be a massive undertaking. That being said I would like to increase the production value of my video across the board - this is mostly a mixture of incredibly limited (i.e. almost zero) editing knowledge and spare time. I've recently been looking around at classes to learn more basics of editing because I always struggle with it whenever I give it a go, even for very simple things. Cheers!
@@fizecs Totally understandable, it would be a huge increase in time. I just thought it would a pretty interesting niche to become the YMS of Path, and that would be content I'd watch for sure. Not that I'm not going to watch your usual content. Thanks for the really in-depth reply!
I played PoE years ago and now returned for Sentinel and started as a casual dual wield duelist. And. It. Feels. Horrible. Yeah, there is a lot of stuff to the game and any casual will get overwhelmed at one point or another. But I still remember a lot, have done some homework before starting (PoB rough skill outline), which is way more work than casually picking up a game should be, and still I constantly feel like all I can do is make the wrong decisions...
...and there is a lot that could be done, like for example uber-strong projectiles being preceded by a knockback, so I get the same chance as ranged classes to avoid them. (Not so relevant to your point I guess, as you seem to focus on an endgame I've never experienced, but I just get cheap-shotet a lot whilst levelling.
melee is like chris wilson's bastard child which he battered every patch but he wouldn't admit it by saying "he's fine" everytime someone asked.
Nobody is unhappy in Ba Sing Se 🙍
Hey man, consider turning off the music or at least turning it way down.
Only viable melee in this game isn't technicaly melee
yep coc fr/ice spear/whatever and gen cry with cyclone for trigger. Thats the melee skill that is used.
i got 2 characters one is cleave slayer/raider scion and other is raider/assassin glacial hammer scion, im suffering atm, hope this horrible league ends soon and we get some balance
as someone whos always loved WW barbs, i have dumped hundreds and hundreds of exalts into cyclone slayer over multiple leagues and it never works.
Ty,about time someone made serious videos instead of videos like "OmG 100 BiLLiOn DpS(for 50 mirrors)" and "how to make 1 MiRrOr per MiNuTe!"
You're calling out some of the other comments on this video lol
never played melee in my poe life but im not surprised that melee is being the middle child of poe again. i don't play melee for the sole reason of this dps type is being killed a lot in this game and if i want to do the build again on next league, i have no guarantee that it'll not be nerfed to oblivion. another thing is there's no real advantage of melee over rdps since you can have same degree of defenses depending on the build unlike in other games that if you are melee, you are naturally tankier.
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I think it is completely fair that a bleed build struggles to get fortify. in bleed build you attack once then walk around . That us not the same as being melee and contently in the face of the enemies to deal damage. But i agree that if you are going to do that then bleed needs to do more damage.
but it's still melee
you have to expose yourself to more damage consistently in order to deal damage.
I'll also add that, this isn't even true - crimson dance has been the meta for every bleed build for the last 2 or so years. (outside of bow, but we are talking about melee) so melee uptime is actually more important on bleed than on on-hit builds because you need to spend 5 seconds ramping to start dealing 8 stacks.
@@fizecs yes that is why I talked about damage. People resort to things like crimson dance to get more damage that they need and I don't think it is even a good mechanic. The way you get damage on bleed needs a rework . So I disagree that bleed needs fortify. Bleed needs damage without crimson dance.
My main issue isent that Melee is weak, but rather than the game design is working against itself. You need to keep moving, and later additions and bosses tend to just encourage that sort of strategy of attacking with range, because range keeps you safe from harm wheras with Melee, you need to be in the midst of battle, just exposing yourself to die. I dont think melee buffs is the way to go, because the system that supports it is fucked.
I think it actually impossible to balance two-hander and dual-wielding. Everything depends on skill that works with one of those types. For exmpl, dual strike can be used only while dual-wielding, cuz skill designed only for single target. ofc u can build bleed explo gladiator, but hey, LS is the very clear answer.
It is logicaly fine that u hit first with left then with right hand, sometimes with both (Dual strike), but skills are bad. There are nodes on passive skill tree that designed pretty dmn good, like Ambidexterity has very cool idea behind it. But what we see? ofc shield crash, spectral shield throw, and nothing with an actual off-hand weapon.
I think problem just the same as with Slams. Design itself is pretty cool, i love it. But u cant lay only on design. Yes it feels brutal, it feels epic, it feels like u're doing a super brutal maroder sh*t. But when u reach the maps, u realize, that actually all what u're doing is only sh*t, without brutal marodeur wibe. It stops being brutal or massiv anymore just when u start noticing ur damage, and ur survivability.
Design is good. Need to keep working with skills, weapon, passives.
They are not trying to make all playstyles viable and/or playable. Never did. There was a melee league and now it is gone. Following their logic, from nerfs/buffs (the way they implement those), look for future leagues, which at some point will again be melee. Melee being dead currently is part of their logic. I do not support their views, but after years now playing (almost since release), I managed to calm myself down and accept their view and "logic".
Ah, melee... There is so much that can be said about the state of melee in PoE. I have been playing PoE pretty consistently for about a year now, and I have yet to get a single good melee weapon drop. This is the first wall melee has to pass. While casters can do great damage with a POS +1 wand because caster damage comes from the gem, not the weapon. A good endgame melee weapon will easily cost you 5 ex. A great endgame weapon might cost 20 ex. This is the real reason people play caster because it's 10x easier to gear.
IMO the next issue with melee is the lack of variety in melee skill gems. There are currently at least 7 different types of slam gems, but they are all slam builds. There are at least 3 different Shattering Steel gems. Seriously, what a load of crap. You don't see 7 different kinds of fireball gems. Currently, there are really only 4 or 5 popular melee builds. Cyclone (the most overused skill gem in the game), Lighting Strike, one of the Shattering Steel gems (mainly used for leveling), Boneshatter, and Flicker Strike. I feel there is so little amount of playstyle diversity with melee or just different melee types of skill gems.
3rd lack of viable skill gems for all weapon types, What melee builds do you know of that use a dagger as the primary weapon? I don't count Seismic Trap as melee either. Even if you did that's only 1. Reave use to be one of the best dagger builds in the game, but that was nerfed into the ground. Who even uses daggers anymore for melee? Right now people are using staffs, or a 1h ax or 1h sword. How many builds are using a 2h mace for a melee or any kind of a 2h? Seriously look at the % amount of melee weapon users and it's really really low.
4th The starting skills for melee suck, this is nowhere more obvious than in the gauntlet where Templars and Marauders struggle hard to get past Hillock It might take 10 minutes while a Witch can kill him in about a minute or 2. There is only 1 viable melee starting skill for melee and that's splitting steel, and IMO splitting steel is not really a fun playstyle and costs 2 buttons spots when other caster skills take up one. Even miner builds have a special detonate button, yet Splitting Steel has to take up 2 button spots. It's total BS.
IMO GGG hates melee and has a hard-on for casters. For as long as I can remember as soon as any melee build breaks threw the barrier it's quickly beat with the nerf bat. I'm talking about melee skill,s not physical damage skills. I don't count Generals Cry/Blade Fury as a melee build. Shield Crush on the other hand is a yes.
well tbh you don't see them drop ... you see bases you can use to craft on
hybrid mod + good prefix
=> lock prefixes reforge speed with harvest => craft another prefix or use aisling
Well basically you need currency and you need to know what to do
last league i have had my first over 550 dps 1h weapons whereas i could barely push 450 last leagues pre 3.17
"GGG did that thing where they just kill it, but leave it in the game". Ha ha so true! I feel like this applies to so many skills and unique items in POE right now.
Melee in PoE will never be as fun as Melee in Diablo 3 where crowd control and self buffs matter more which help make Melee interesting. PoE boils down to kill stuff in a single click. I don't see a world where they make a single click of Cleave as completive to a single click of Iceshot/lightning arrow/fireball.
Alot of that has to do with us basically being one skill bots. Auras, cries, ancestral totems - all to buff your main skill.
If it was several skills like in PoE2 ..
I think I can't really agree with the lightning strike argument. Lightning strike is played because of multiple things
1. It has insane damage effectiveness since both the melee portion and the projectile portion can hit the same target
2. It has insane vaal skill with 2 charges which helps a lot on clearing and bossing
3. It shoots out projectile so it's really not a "melee" skill
4. It can be used on a claw and claw is the best melee weapon in the game both offensively and defensively
So even without omni, it's already a very very strong skill. Omni just makes its ceiling through the rooftop. The thing with lightning strike is that it's not a "melee" skill cuz you are using the projectiles to clear
My argument with LS pertains to the games definition of melee, and why it doesnt make sense. So yes I fully agree with you that it isn't actually melee, however according to the games logic, it is melee since it grants fortify - to which only melee skills can do. I knew I would receive kickback from the LS point - but I feel the need to reiterate that, like stated multiple times in the video, this is looking at the game through a HCSSF lens. LS is not a strong or popular build in SSF. It saw mild play after the buffs to vaal LS in ultimatum league (I did a build diary on it and played it to 98), but since the expedition nerfs, it has seen little to no representation. Skills like LS will always be a strong option in SC trade because the largest limiter is clear speed and mechanical limiters to skills. You can play it on extremely high damage ascendancies like berserker to cover that weakness, as well as just having access to much much *much* more damage and speed in general by nature of softcore, and by nature of trading. My point about omni was that it is the only reason LS is seeing play *in HC*e
@@fizecs Yeah, that makes a lot of sense when it comes to HC case. I do think that LS is a strong enough skill for SCSSF because I've played it this league and got myself a level 95 raider and it feels butter smooth as long as you know about the gear progression. Although I've not really looked into HCSSF before, I do believe you are right, since most of the LS power is from stacking elusive effect and when you are pathing to the right side of the tree then very likely you are not having enough points for defensive stats, and ranger generally has much less defense compared to other characters.
as an aurabot i can confirm spells are just to strong. i push spells way easier than melee. thats not how it should be
Then 3.18 has no balance changes at all lmfao, what a joke. Guess I'll wait until 3.19.
trueee
honestly super fuller league (again)
poe2 must he getting closer right? copium
@@fizecs copium indeed. Good video btw.
I do feel you empathetically as I enjoy melee too and feel that it’s been in a bad state for a long time. However ; I do understand that GGG has their own processes as far as balancing, I may or may not agree with it, but it is what it is. It’s made me become diverse and become experienced in other classes and archetypes. In the beginning of the video you mentioned that you don’t really stray from melee. Unfortunately, this has really affected your faith and perspective in the game as far as feeling like they’re giving up on melee, maybe they are? Am I going to quit POE over it? No. Whatever balance changes they make: I read the patch notes and I just adjust to them accordingly. Melee has been complained about for a long time, I’ve accepted it for what it is. Play some casters or ranged builds and use it as an opportunity to become more knowledgeable and diverse in the game. Ultimately it will complement your already immense knowledge that you have.
I mentioned I league started it for the past few leagues, I tend to make/play over 20 builds a league covering every archetype in the game, feel free to browse through my previous videos/build diaries - in fact after dying to a bug 20 hours into the boss rush event at league start I rerolled and made a EK Nova character that I played for the next 3 weeks of the league. This video was just centered around melee so I stayed on topic - Skill balance is honestly one of the worst things in this game objectively, I think tons of entire archetypes are actually in a terrible spot relative to content itself, not the meta. They can balance the game however they want, I adjust just like you mentioned. However critique and adaptation are not mutually exclusive - We can have both. I don't consider myself a 'melee' player - I play, and always have played, much more spell-based builds than melee builds.
Melee has been dead for a long time in PoE. People like to claim things like Lightning Strike is melee, but it isn't. By the very definition of melee, PoE has very few skills that check the box. I think one of the issues is that you have spells and other non melee skills that deal physical damage which to me should be something that is almost solely a melee damage type. It sucks but the likelihood of melee or strike builds getting any attention pre PoE 2 is very very unlikely.
People who play HCSSF are different breeds of humans, like Godlike humans.
we just enjoy the game in a different way man lol
@@fizecs Yea, I get that. At least you do not have to bother with making a profit or trading with others.
I tried SSF but HCSSF is a *hell no* from me!
@@holyshiet787 trading is actually insanely annoying imo
Can you mute the background music while recording, its a bit annoying
the music is specifically on for the video lol
@@fizecs But I wanna listen to your rambling not listen to music :D
@@fizecs i actually got hooked by the music which reminds me of elder scrolls ost, keep it on XD
3.19, 2 leagues after the videos, and they not only managed to break melee, but the whole game with it.
As someone that really loves melee in the game (I just can't play spells, hate it with every ounce of my being), pains me that you either accept doing 10-15 times less damage than spells (cause lets not forget melee uptime which spells doesnt have to manage) and all the stats you have to pay attention to.. oh boi.
The fact melee has been shit for 99% of this games life cycle, has caused me to skip multiple leagues and years playing this game. In fact, I was planning on coming back for 3.18, but apparently it is in one of its worse states, so no POE for me. Why doea the community tolerate this bullshit?
How is knowing for sure that you’ve spent ~20% of your past 5 years playing PoE a “distinct advantage”? 😅
?
Love melee build but slam fans need fist of war support back😂
yeah for sure, and some amount of damage on seismic cry - seismic cry was like the defining mechanic of slam builds lol
👍👍
LS hits twice right? one melee hit, one whatever hit. this is the only reason ppl play it, its busted. but it has a melee hit, SH does not.
Basicly GGG fed up melee KEKW last build played impaler call of steel that was fun but hey we in nerfs all around era....why GGG doesnt leave all that bs for their wet dreamed hardmode
Now i think like the d3 op wizard even some GGG devs may have some children who play only spells lol
just seems like they dont know how to innovate content so they nerf things around to try and keep things spicy. i regret buying mtx, they nerf the fun out of the game for me
i played poe since the very beginning, and it's a toxic game. at first i was amaze about how big the passive tree, then later disappointed to how much you can allocate to the tree. some mechanics just don't make sense, illogical at most! for example a active skill gem that scale to the right side of the tree but only levels to the left. a green gem that scale better in int are some examples. i also hate how your char get one shot on white map with a normal mob, which makes no sense at all. ggg just cant fix bug issues. the game just have the worst QoL, basically unfair to play the server always wins. if your lagging or a spike in latency during a boss fight most of the time happen your char just teleport to a different location which places your char in the most unfavorable situation resulting in instant death. overall i quit! d2 and grim dawn is a better gaming experience, poe is just trash every build will always be useless!
3.20 melee is still awful
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Stop talking about yourself and get to the point.
This entire video is me talking about my opinions. Surprisingly, you don't have to watch it if you don't care. I also took the time to timestamp out each topic for your convenience, it takes less time to click them than it does to type out a comment complaining. Cheers!