The Damage Doesn't Even Matter

After beating my head for days to find some function in a melee attack based witch. I keep running into the same choices that have to be made over and over again. To the point where it doesn't feel like I have the actual freedom of choice in builds. It moreso feels like theres a false sense of freedom of choice.

Energy Blade? Welp You're gonna be on half ES unless you find a way to ridiculously heighten quality, plus its lightning ranges no matter how you convert it its still going to have like 20 damage on the low end. Your choices? A helmet. A gem. And a necklace thats usually outrageous in price due to whats needed to get it.

But witch is on the north side of the tree, theres so much spell damage if there was just a way to convert that into attack damage.

Crown of Eyes and thats it. And you'll still have to solve for accuracy which is on the other side of the world. Great...now we're into travel points willy nilly and suffix slots just to get the strength and other things needed to make melee work. And I'm not even going to talk about attack speed...like why remove so much of it? Why?

You want rage? -10 skill points just moving.

God forbid you want to use a bow or slam. Or stack frenzy charges with passives. You have to go items at that point.

You want leech? Good luck its on the other side of the world. Or you set up an entirely different tree with cluster jewels. And doing patchwork nonsense based on a drop rate.

You want ES leech but deal elemental damage? Now you're wearing a goofy belt and or setting up yet another cluster jewel set of nonsense for 1 function that isn't even the hallmark of whats going on.

But why would you want to play melee when spells are so much better and easier to set up?

And easier to use and cheaper to set up.

This whole patch I took the time to just try out melee no matter the ascendency. And I gotta say... no matter how much damage you give melee it needs more quality of life to function than damage.

Targeting enemies on a skill that doesn't shoot some barrage of nonsense or instant transmission you into the face of an enemy is absolutely toxic.

Using those same skills that don't shoot some barrage of nonsense and forces your character to move into place without them being a movement skill feel horrible.

The amount of substats and preliminary nonsense like accuracy attack speed leech and etc you have to set up just to get quality of life is equally poor.

Missing an enemy with a slam that makes a rainbow arc just because it decided to move close and he's just to the right of impact feels terrible.

Retaliation skills while great in concept force you to lose agency and wait for things to happen play a gladiator, use a unique non SSF shield or you get stuck using a curse item that spawns enemies to make you retaliate no choice there its not open ended theres 1 item.

The only melee skill I've played this league that didn't feel bad to play and just carried itself based on the skill gem ALONE was Volcanic Fissure of Snaking on a chieftain and its crazy to even call it a melee skill because you're literally just throwing volcanos across the ground and they home in on targets. Which says a lot about the state of melee.

Trying to play melee after coming from spells which actually do grant a sense of choice has convinced me to never touch, try or ever fathom another melee build/skill in this game ever again. I'm done. I don't care how much damage you slap on these things there is a fundamental problem in their execution. Fix that first. Damage be damned. I don't wanna set up here for days mind melting how to get these things to function as well as spells or ranged attacks which in the box just do better. I'm tired of false choices in itemization and false senses of freedom to make what you want. I'm tired of accuracy attack speed and weird leech options. I'm tired of swinging my weapon half way and attack canceling for random reasons and nothing comes out. I'm tired of baby walking through 80 projectiles to get to the enemy who's 2 feet away because strike range is an issue. I'm tired of there being no bleed prolif. I'm tired of 5-6 different renditions of "SWEEP" or cleave or reap or rainbow slash which all pretty much do the same thing with light variations.
And also Generals Cry should basically just be the replacement for melee totems like seriously just give them added support through passives or something...something for mirages I don't care.

And I feel honestly sorry for every single one of you out there who are "melee mains" and have to go through this cause I woulda lost my damn mind by now. Cause holy....

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melee attack based witch

Problem identified.

Melee Elementalist is pretty good actually

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DoubleU wrote:

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melee attack based witch

Problem identified.

It honestly doesn't matter if its a melee jugg, melee slayer, melee ranger, melee trickster it doesn't matter. The biggest problem with melee is just straight up mechanical quality of life. The skills are clunky. The targeting is clunky. The attack speed is clunky. And the risk is high while the reward is....meh.

And melee attack based witches should be just as viable as spell based slayers and Marauders. The problem is obvious. Spells and ranged attacks have way more utility, way more quality of life, way more functionality, way easier scaling, way more freedom of choice in gearing, way less reliance on what are now micro stats like attack speed. The game is already top down so both ranged and spells already flow well with that. Mines and traps and totems and brands have better functionality freedom and quality of life than melee. Its a fundamental issue.

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AndromedaDelux wrote:

it doesn't feel like I have the actual freedom of choice in builds. It moreso feels like theres a false sense of freedom of choice.

That's the illusion of path of exile, play anything you want... but if you want it to function, well then you only have a few choices.
Want to;
Farm t16s? fair few build options.
Farm 8mod corrupted t16s? certainly less build choices.
Push t17+ content? well the number of viable builds gets smaller and smaller.

There is a meta, for a reason.
These builds achieve higher levels of defensive layering more efficiently.
Like you've pointed out, to do anything off-meta you require so much investment in gear or passives making it non-viable.

Melee is working pretty well in the melee section of the tree since the reworks. This might open up some potential for more melee builds for witch as well. It's not a typical build though. You are surrounded by intelligence and spell nodes instead of strength and melee nodes. The defenses in that area are not designed specifically for being in melee range. I'm sure it can be done if you want to, but what's the reasoning for not using a typically melee based character. Usually people start with a build or items and think what class it would work well with, or pick a class and find builds that work well with it. Not usually pick a class and a build and force them to work. I've wanted to play melee witch in the past as well. Damage is probably not the main hurdle, I agree with that. It's getting enough defense and damage on the build. In SSF and when melee was weaker, this seem hard to do, without maybe farming a out a brass dome. I'm sure it is possible currently in trade league. What is the purpose though. What are you going to achieve from Witch that you will not get from another class. As someone else mentioned, maybe elementalist is a good option here, as it has some mechanics that other build don't have that also might work with melee.

Witch is actually close to some pretty nice block nodes.

I mean, one of my builds this league is a cyclone shockwave cold-fire convert elementalist using marohi erqi. Witch goes bonk.

Squishy as all hell but it works. I just had to accept that my defensive layers were 6 portals.

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Jixa87 wrote:

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AndromedaDelux wrote:

it doesn't feel like I have the actual freedom of choice in builds. It moreso feels like theres a false sense of freedom of choice.

That's the illusion of path of exile, play anything you want... but if you want it to function, well then you only have a few choices.
Want to;
Farm t16s? fair few build options.
Farm 8mod corrupted t16s? certainly less build choices.
Push t17+ content? well the number of viable builds gets smaller and smaller.

There is a meta, for a reason.
These builds achieve higher levels of defensive layering more efficiently.
Like you've pointed out, to do anything off-meta you require so much investment in gear or passives making it non-viable.

that's just wrong... there are 2 players on poe.ninja using the build I'm playing, one of them being me, and I'm destroying 60% delirium t17s, not even dying in most maps, and ubers are easier than twilight strand hillock.

it's pretty much the same thing every league for me, I was literally the only player using explosive concoction when I cleared everything with it, same for lightning trap elementalist, same for the specific version of dark pact necro I was using. you can make anything work if you understand the game and know how to build defensive layers. there's nothing easier in this game than building a character with good dps

meta exists because poe is a complex game and most people simply copy-paste what their streamer is playing, because they don't want to fk up and waste their time. meta doesn't define what's strong and what's weak

there are tons of melee occultist builds that can work, pestilent strike, viper/mamba viper, any build that uses replica alberons, anything with covenant/replica covenant, anything with energy blade, anything with anathema/doedres scorn combo, dominating blow of inspiring variants, cold conversion smite, retaliation builds with mistress of sacrifice forbiddens, cold/chaos boneshatter/trauma builds, staff based glacial hammer, cold only ele hit, ice crash...

and you have a lot of options for forbidden jewels, such as mistress of sacrifice, shaper of winter, heart of destruction, bone barrier, etc.

idk why you don't want to use cluster jewels, they're literally made for people who want to play builds that are seemingly on the wrong side of the tree

and OP, every problem you described has a solution, either somewhere on the tree, or within some items

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auspexa wrote:

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Jixa87 wrote:

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AndromedaDelux wrote:

it doesn't feel like I have the actual freedom of choice in builds. It moreso feels like theres a false sense of freedom of choice.

That's the illusion of path of exile, play anything you want... but if you want it to function, well then you only have a few choices.
Want to;
Farm t16s? fair few build options.
Farm 8mod corrupted t16s? certainly less build choices.
Push t17+ content? well the number of viable builds gets smaller and smaller.

There is a meta, for a reason.
These builds achieve higher levels of defensive layering more efficiently.
Like you've pointed out, to do anything off-meta you require so much investment in gear or passives making it non-viable.

that's just wrong... there are 2 players on poe.ninja using the build I'm playing, one of them being me, and I'm destroying 60% delirium t17s, not even dying in most maps, and ubers are easier than twilight strand hillock.

it's pretty much the same thing every league for me, I was literally the only player using explosive concoction when I cleared everything with it, same for lightning trap elementalist, same for the specific version of dark pact necro I was using. you can make anything work if you understand the game and know how to build defensive layers. there's nothing easier in this game than building a character with good dps

meta exists because poe is a complex game and most people simply copy-paste what their streamer is playing, because they don't want to fk up and waste their time. meta doesn't define what's strong and what's weak

there are tons of melee occultist builds that can work, pestilent strike, viper/mamba viper, any build that uses replica alberons, anything with covenant/replica covenant, anything with energy blade, anything with anathema/doedres scorn combo, dominating blow of inspiring variants, cold conversion smite, retaliation builds with mistress of sacrifice forbiddens, cold/chaos boneshatter/trauma builds, staff based glacial hammer, cold only ele hit, ice crash...

and you have a lot of options for forbidden jewels, such as mistress of sacrifice, shaper of winter, heart of destruction, bone barrier, etc.

idk why you don't want to use cluster jewels, they're literally made for people who want to play builds that are seemingly on the wrong side of the tree

and OP, every problem you described has a solution, either somewhere on the tree, or within some items

Thats probably also the biggest problem I've been facing. Is trying to find information and details about item interactions that aren't already being meta'd to death. For instance last concept I was going over was Energy Blade Occultist with Call of the brotherhood since then deleted and rerolled for levels. Tried power charge flicker set up...wasn't as fluid and had to do wonky things with the tree. Ended up with Charged dash which was cool....but not exactly what I was aiming for. Plus losing at least 3-4 slots just to make energy blade not destroy my ES pool. Which isn't terrible but man...that skill is pain...Then theres base stat requirements. POE 2 is supposedly going to let use pick stats on our travel nodes which I hope can ease up some of the tension required to make more creative builds function. But thats a whole new box of worms to open down the line full of hopes and dreams.

Also side note. On that Alberons occultist are you converting elemental to chaos or phys to chaos at all?