So i did the first Uber atziri as 2h melee[recorded it], my feedback.

First off this fight is almost impossible without legacy kaoms, insane crit staff and acuities,

Secondly, i was wrong cause i just managed to do it with 2h RT, but its even harder than crit+acuity: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/933657/page/1

GGG assured me that their testers did it with no legacy gear and no insane gear/acuities with 2h characters, which means you have to to play absolutely perfectly, like a robot, to do this without legacy kaoms and a insane crit staff+acuities, which is not really that possible on the these servers because of desync and lag spikes.



The whole map is pretty much ridiculous, a blue vaal dude hits for like 6k, you have to stay on immortall call all of the time or else you can get one shot.

The vaals do insane amounts of lightning damage with the lightning balls, and you can not tank them even with a flask, i died at them once

The trio is the easiest since you just have to stay on immotall call all of the time

And atziri is just insane, if i dont use a fire flask the flameblast 1 shots me with almost 9k life, the spears hit for around 3-4k, you need very high movement speed and pretty much need max resists+flasks or spelldodge

Video of the run with the staff char:





After doing that fight, its pretty obvious that they did not test it enough with 2h melee characters, since most stuff in the game is not balanced around having legacy or mirrored gear, but this fight pretty much requires you have these items, which you cant get in new leagues and which are very hard to get even in parent leagues.

They need to buff these characters, some form of damage mitigation on 2h nodes is needed, not necessarily life but bonus to endurance charge mitigation, armor, evasion, movement speed, max resists maybe.

As the nodes are now there are only some nodes with IPD and life, on mace,axe and swords, there should be a lot more nodes that increase damage with two handed weapons which also give some defensive buffs, can also add Increased phys damage with two handed axe/sword/mace nodes with defensive bonuses.





Also GGG does not want to add keystones that are completely necesarry if youre playing a character, so a big node that increases defenses while wielding two handed weapons wont be added since its a no brainer, the only way to buff these buids then is to add defensive bonuses to the weapon specific nodes/two hand nodes.

But since 2h weapons have no crit, apart from staves, every 2h build takes RT, which makes it a nobrainer keystone since hitting all of the time is better than having 15% crit chance, it's exactly the thing they want to avoid, making mandatory passives.







Baiscally 2h builds have nothing to offer at the moment, they dont do as much or higher dps than other builds and are not as tanky or tankier than other builds, the tankyness needs a buff really badly in any case.But the dps should also be improved so they are on par with other characters, i think buffing crit on 2h weapons and adding crit nodes would be a great start which would also enable more types of build, not just all of them on RT.

While I don't disagree with the conclusion, I don't think that basing balancing decisions on uber atziri is a good idea.

There is plenty of stuff GGG doesn't test, but what business odes anyone have of even going with melee 2H in an ARPG? Have those builds ever been good, ever?

That must be really frustrating to farm atziri with top end gear in slowmotion :/

just watched the video Vic, and all I can think of is, really, did that guy got tyrannical on the regal? fml

grats on the getting a new chest for mtx...

I think your suggestion of rolling some sorta mitigation 2h notables is a very interesting take on balancing. too bad in this game 2h weapon is limited to lower crit (apart from staff)
and low attack speed. If you are going to sacrifice an offhand slot, might as well get another 1h and duel wield for more damage and block and you can still go crit. Its a long standing issue, and I doubt it will be look at anytime soon.

2h:

no block, pathetic crit (ignoring staves that have their own share of problems - except Hegemony ofc that is straight BiS melee staff)


this sums it up. block is the king of defense in this game. crit is the king of offense - infinite flasks is HUGE! non-crit builds have little chances for 100% uptime of utility flasks in fight like atziri when there are long periods of 1v1.

mandatory keystones wont solve it

what should be done is sadly nerfs - surgeons flask mod-> gone, block rework from 100% mitigation to diminishing returns. no sane person will take 2h over 1h+shield if survival is needed. just because of block. 75% less attack damage, 50%+ less spell damage? why not! (Wings of Entropy - ignored, this unique is broken just because of block it provides.. and while it is technically 2h it really isnt)

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

While I don't disagree with the conclusion, I don't think that basing balancing decisions on uber atziri is a good idea.

OMG, did I just read something critical of GGG?

Well done fella.:)

P.