Developer Questions and Answers

Any plans on improving melee range skills/characters/builds more in the future?


At the start of leagues, and even mid leagues, I find myself almost always going to range classes, for a variety of reasons


1: Range skills mean less/no desync, which means greater survivability

2: Range skills mean farther distance from mobs, which means greater survivability

3: Range skills typically have great farming/mapping properties. For example, if 3 mobs are on the screen arranged at different points, I can typically kill them all without having to move. As a melee character, I still have to move to each one (yes, I know movement skills exist) and kill them.

*And it isn't like melee builds always do more damage than ranged builds. In the time it takes the melee guy to kill the 3 far apart mobs, the ranged guy has probably engaged the next pack and is a good ways into it.


4: Melee skills are almost all prone to heavy desync. Old, obviously vocalized, but it should be noted again.




When I think of old ARPGS where I could get away with melee builds and still be successful (D2/Titan quest)...I almost always distinctly remember melee builds doing objectively better DPS than ranged builds.

A bowazon in classic d2, even with the best gear, would NEVER kill anything faster than 2h WW barb.

The same for sorceresses and necromancers.....summoning and magic spells had their usefulness, but in PoE, it is almost like on top of getting the usual benefit of skills (shock/ignite/aoe/freeze), spells do insane damage and actually go toe to toe with melee builds.



You notice how almost every Cyclone build in PoE is basically required to use concentrated effect?

I absolutely hate that gem. I shouldn't be punished for wanting to deal more damage by sacrificing one of my gem slots for a hugely negative effect. As a melee character, AoE is just too precious.


This game needs better melee skills, improvements to old melee skills, and better melee support gems. Melee in PoE should *always* be better damage than ranged for equivalently geared characters.

edit: deleted my question for a fixed release date after reading your comment on reddit


new question:

you still believe that it's possible to prevent players from specifying a buyout for items in the new trading system?

Are there any new and interesting Vaal skills in the works?

Will you ever implement a feature like the one Diablo 2 had, where if you say "!"before a message, it appears above your character as a speech bubble? (fun with friends)

For that matter, will we ever be able to see players names on map? (would help a lot when team disperses trying to find something)

Will we ever see old bosses, such as invasion bosses back as a mod for strongboxes? (I know this was refered to in last podcast, but still, missing a lot of them, just hope their spawning is balanced to not lag people as exiles sometimes do)

What are the current plans for the next leagues duration?

Can we have the current SRS damage values for level 21 through 28?

Is there any major or medium-ish changes coming up pre-1.4?

Would you consider a new temporary multi-mod league that combined all previous league mods into one for fun for like a month or so? Would spice up the time between leagues.

Or something like that anyway...

do you devs promise to never again change basic game mechanics during a temp league so that players joining late have a serious disadvantage?

1. Now that Greed's Embrace is in game, will more IIQ items (or even the gem) make their way into the game?

2. Will there be some more improvement for Melee?

3. With a new focus on endgame unique, any chance of older/less used ones getting a buff/rework?

Keep up the good work. I've enjoyed the game since closed beta.

Are there plans to update or change the Map system as it is right now? As this is a very broad question, I'll narrow it down: are there plans for new maps based on the act 4 tilesets coming in 1.4?

Will you ever do something about 1 of biggest issues in game and thats...people using party board as TRADE POST....Whenever i search for pt,i need to scroll over 20+ "want to buy-want to sell"...to find anything.Make another board for trading pls.