Anti-Melee Challenge Leagues and melee discrimination

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Telzen wrote:

I swear melee builds could press a button and have everything on the level die and people would still make these threads.

Except they couldn't, because then they'd be ranged.

Spoiler

I don't think it's inherent to melee that it will always be weaker than ranged, but preventing this from happening requires the game designer to set a maximum power level for ranged skills and rigidly adhere to it, from the very start of game design, in order to prevent ranged from powercreeping past a point which melee could never achieve. For example, you could make it so melee has the only true area-of-effect in the game, while bow users must rely on a finite number of projectiles to deal damage (absolutely no true bow AoE skills); or, you could make it so melee deals all its AoE damage in a single hit, while spellcasters must rely on AoE damage over a duration (such as burning ground or Firestorm), where the spell's damage is tuned assuming monsters stay within the AoE for the vast majority of a significant duration, making it very difficult to get maximum damage out of the spell (unless the caster casts on self and tanks, at which point it's pretty much melee spellcasting; "damaging spell" would by its nature immediately imply "duration."). Additionally, "AoE" and "big damage all at once" would need to become fundamentals of pretty much any melee skill made, unless it has some other gigantic upside (for example, a melee version of Incinerate designed to evaporate single targets in an outrageously short timeframe), while using limited AoE radius and centered-on-self as balancing mechanisms.

This game does not use such deliberate balancing. There are skills which deliver the entire package - ranged, large AoE, massive damage - while other skills are hilariously noncompetitive - melee, no AoE, merely reasonable non-outrageous damage. Blue in PoE is overpowered like blue in MtG: ranged, AoE, and crit, why go anywhere else? (Answer: they made it easy to grab the best of everything without a firm attribute commitment, so everyone just uses any abilities they want at little cost and it becomes all about grabbing life and/or ES nodes. But if attributes did matter, Intelligence wins hands-down.)

Since melee is a deliberate weakness added to a skill to make its gameplay more interesting, melee skills simply cannot compete in an environment where skills without weaknesses define the power curve. So the "melee discrimination" has been a part of PoE since it was little more than ideas bouncing around in Chris Wilson's head, and I really don't see the challenge leagues as being particularly relevant to the issue, at best changing nothing and at worst just hammering in something deeply ingrained into the design.

This! Exactly this! ScrotieMcB right, thats what i mean.

Spoiler

Whats point to play melee if GGG logic are ALL BUILDS SHOULD HAVE SAME MECHANIC AND SAME DEFENSE. Rangers and spellcasters and hybrid builds like CoC or Mjolner, anyone can use Fortify, anyone can use Acro (if they spend enough points), anyone can use MoM, etc etc
BUT Spellcasters, totems, hybrid builds (CoC, Mjolner, etc), suppots, and other have better AoE, better clear speed, easier leveling and faster gear equip, everything better then melee.
Also all of those can KITE and manual DODGE attacks, run from danger, refile instantly all flask, any what they need, while in same situation and same time melee cannot do it.

Melee take always all source of damage, explosion from killed monsters, DD, tars, all slow effects, they stay in shocked ground, reflect, chaos damage, DOT, etc. So melee SHOULD have something special and very important bonus defense, then any other builds, but in GGG logic and vision melee just not a problem at all, they just fully ignored melee.

I actually do not believe melee should have some "special and very important bonus defense," not because I'm hating but because it really wouldn't matter. Melee builds could press a button and be utterly invulnerable and people would still make these threads. And they'd be completely justified for doing so, because clear speed is what really matters.

When you think about melee versus ranged balance, you need to completely forget about how deadly the monsters are in whatever high-level content you're facing, and instead imagine a total faceroll situation. Like taking your end-game character to Normal Ledge, absolutely zero chance of legitimate threats on your character's life. Then you need to equalize clearspeed for melee and projectile-based ranged based upon that situation. This is the only way to ensure that melee skills are competitive choices when it comes to killing monsters as quickly as possible, which is the point of the game.

This task is not impossible. But what it does mean is that the builds using the shortest-ranged skills need to pretty much instantly murder everything within their short-range radius around them when they use their skills, so you need AoE to be a melee staple. More importantly, it means projectile-based ranged cannot have the same type of AoE, their skills need to hit less targets at once than melee skills do in order to compensate for the time they don't spend moving from monster to monster.

Note that when I say defense doesn't really matter, what I mean is: defense is just one vector of clear speed. If you take too much damage and have to hold back and play more defensively, that eats up time, and having better defense can save you time and improve your clearspeed in that way. Dying essentially eats up huge chunks of clear speed, especially if XP gain is your objective, so avoiding that is important. But defense is only relevant as a subordinate concept to clear speed, not as a goal worth achieving for its own sake.

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Telzen wrote:

I swear melee builds could press a button and have everything on the level die and people would still make these threads.

its so true

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

Sure melee are sadomasochist mode and unplayable as it is now, its true.

and that is so not true.

I think this game is at a point now where if you are not able to make melee work, for sure youre doing something very wrong and if youre not willing to take responsibility for fixing it then its just time to stick to bows tbh. Youve probably got about 3x the effective health of a caster, full on leech that actually works, some of the highest dps potential in the entire game, the most effective movement skills, the easiest resource sustaining... theres nothing else they can do, honestly.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

not because I'm hating but because it really wouldn't matter. Melee builds could press a button and be utterly invulnerable and people would still make these threads. And they'd be completely justified for doing so, because clear speed is what really matters.

When you think about melee versus ranged balance, you need to completely forget about how deadly the monsters are in whatever high-level content you're facing, and instead imagine a total faceroll situation. Like taking your end-game character to Normal Ledge, absolutely zero chance of legitimate threats on your character's life. Then you need to equalize clearspeed for melee and projectile-based ranged based upon that situation. This is the only way to ensure that melee skills are competitive choices when it comes to killing monsters as quickly as possible, which is the point of the game.

This task is not impossible. But what it does mean is that the builds using the shortest-ranged skills need to pretty much instantly murder everything within their short-range radius around them when they use their skills, so you need AoE to be a melee staple. More importantly, it means projectile-based ranged cannot have the same type of AoE, their skills need to hit less targets at once than melee skills do in order to compensate for the time they don't spend moving from monster to monster.

Note that when I say defense doesn't really matter, what I mean is: defense is just one vector of clear speed. If you take too much damage and have to hold back and play more defensively, that eats up time, and having better defense can save you time and improve your clearspeed in that way. Dying essentially eats up huge chunks of clear speed, especially if XP gain is your objective, so avoiding that is important. But defense is only relevant as a subordinate concept to clear speed, not as a goal worth achieving for its own sake.

Alright, let's skip the newcomers trolls.

You have right idea, but in my vision you wrong about defense.
Clear speed are very very important and one of the main problem melee has (and will have in new patch and after too): clear speed compared with any other skills, as you mention.
And GGG should add much higher AOE and clear speed to melee. All agree.

But defense still super important, special after new patch with new buffed monsters that do chaos damage and DOT. Most melee play with -60% chaos res or so (let's not count expensive gear and well rolled GG ring,amulet,belt,boots and gloves) so you can see what im trying to say. New patch = new monsters and buffed monsters = melee with -60% chaos resist = no leech, no way to survive.
Also some boss created and balanced around kite and ranger, melee have no way to try them without good defense that GGG not created.
Just trying to say that clear speed as important as defense for melee.


And one more extra:
Automatically engage to the nearest target when you press your melee skill button like Flicker Strike. Melee most of time fail to attack even with RT and super lame of the having to move to new targets constantly to do any damage, it also very important.

Thanks for good discussion and nice talk.

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

Melee take always all source of damage, explosion from killed monsters, DD, tars, all slow effects, they stay in shocked ground, reflect, chaos damage, DOT, etc. So melee SHOULD have something special and very important bonus defense, then any other builds, but in GGG logic and vision melee just not a problem at all, they just fully ignored melee.

How about no? Shocking Ground is always a top priority for me to avoid. Melee is already special in terms of positioning and easy access to endurance charges. I do love those vacuum Cleaners aswell, would be quite creppy to pull this off as ranged.
Last time I played a melee was a Static Strike Tank in 1.3 (no Fortify) and I never played a toon with a higher survivability. On the 1-month fb a friend played a Cycloner, who absolutely wrecked stuff. Reave was so strong at the beginning of 2.0, I don't know where to start. The first lvl 100 Char Char in 2.0 was in fact Etups Cycloner, a melee build. Cyclone is so strong atm. You keep moving so projectiles miss, you cant get stunned, soon you dont even need to worry about curses anymore.
What could really help diversity would be a buff to some other melee attacks, but right now I think a few Attacks are in a really strong position right now.
Also lets not forget about melee CoC and the new Blade Vortex.

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

Alright, let's skip the newcomers trolls.

... aka StrongWitchCraft? Our finest poster since ...this month? :>
Since wispo is gone (!?) you took over, maybe it's time to nominee you for the "employee of the month"

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

And one more extra:
Automatically engage to the nearest target when you press your melee skill button like Flicker Strike. Melee most of time fail to attack even with RT and super lame of the having to move to new targets constantly to do any damage, it also very important.

Yeah, the combat-system from the last Batman-game :DD
Press a button "char turns to the next enemy, jumps on him, kills him, engage next enemy, kill him, engage next enemy, kill him" ... release button "all done". That's how games should work nowadays. If something requires more than a button... meh...



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IMO as long as ANY attack with ANY skill and almost the crappiest gear oneshots everything... the char with most AoE wins... plain and simple. Too much deeps in the game.

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flipser wrote:

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

Melee take always all source of damage, explosion from killed monsters, DD, tars, all slow effects, they stay in shocked ground, reflect, chaos damage, DOT, etc. So melee SHOULD have something special and very important bonus defense, then any other builds, but in GGG logic and vision melee just not a problem at all, they just fully ignored melee.

Shocking Ground is always a top priority for me to avoid.

Eh? That exactly what i said in that post...
Those i listed here always break melee, hard avoidable and pretty anti-melee, that what i said.

Multiple problems and no one has broken it down in a clear form or fashion.

By corpse explosion I think you mean volatile blood, I personally know this is an issue for melee or short ranged builds. I think its either bugged or overtuned after the changes in 2.0, but can't be certain about it. This is by definition a very anti melee ability.

Difficult mods, GGG wants the game to be challenging, unfortunately in order to make it more difficult melee\short ranged builds suffer from most of the effects that were designed to challenge all sorts of playstyles. Certain mods have been added that target ranged specifically, but they overall seem ineffective (bubble, the slower proj debuff)

Aoe, its well known that any melee attack that doesn't have built in AoE suffers and will continue to suffer until the melee splash improvements are added. This goes into play about clearspeed, but also suffering on inability to use an aoe ability (because its linked with splash) as effective vs single targets. Personally I'd love to see a melee splash jewel that grats the splash ability, but when attacking 1 target doesn't penalize you as if you were using the splash gem\jewel.

Leech, while leech got nerfed and changed, it still is somewhat useful at helping to sustain, more LGOH would be nice, but isn't as necessary. I made a level 93? cycloner without using any more leech then what naturally came on my tree\gear, which I don't think passed into leech nodes specifically. Regen and flask useage help keep you topped off.

Clearspeed, in relation to aoe, clearspeed is important, but all aspects of builds need to come into play when it comes to clearspeed, if you can effectively tank anything but bosses or very difficult encounters (like super rippy mods) then your effective clearspeed is faster because its safer to play as such with 6 endurance charges and a lightning coil. If a melee build has a surviability rate of 95% with a 90 quant map and a ranged build has 90% chance with the same map, but clears a min faster the tradeoff is the higher risk of dying due to the ability to misplay because you lack as much mitigation ability.


Those IMO are the main points, to touch up on some others:

Fortify, should have 100% been a unqiue jewel, NOT a gem. As a support gem it doesn't offer anything new or interesting aside from the buff itself. As others have stated it should increase all melee damage, not just physical melee damage, poor ele builds :(

Shocked ground, is extremely rippy, I died on my level 93 character in a 73 map with shocking ground and flamebearers. I was sad as I thought I moved out of the aoe, but I didn't see it properly and died due to taking the additional damage. I learned from this encounter to have shock immunity if I was going to run the map, on my quicksilver flask.

Other ground effects, with the addition of the warbands unqiues it does give players the ability to make these mods less effective. One thing to keep in mind is freeze immunity flask will make chilled ground have no effect as well.

Max res, GGG tried before with the idea of leaving a high amount of max res in the "melee" part of the tree, the issue is builds that aren't melee were "best" when they grabbed the additional defenses in that area, this can only be more true with the additional physical damage mobs do now and the armor, life and life regen that area provides. Many builds can get enough damage from 6-7 jewel sockets vs 15ish points into various things, like before.

Chaos damage, really isn't that large of an issue as you make it out to be, yes there are certain encounters I would avoid if I was -60, but you shouldn't be -60 by the time you hit midgame maps as melee builds. The left side of the tree has life\chaos res nodes and getting chaos res on gear isn't impossible. Life regen basically completely counters lower level chaos damage.

BM keystone is in the best place its ever been, I don't think it needs too much more to be in the very right spot.

RT is fine, it provides exactly what it should.


If i've missed an important point let me know I can go over it as well.

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

Did you see GGG that you add even more Poison Arrow strong supports: Rapid Decay + Void Manipulation? Poison Arrow ALREADY super break meta and make you fck endgame so hard, check who first kill Atziri with 4 link crap bow at few hours from start league, check who killed first at 3th day league start and now farm UBER so fast and easy that it makes no sense at all to use anything else except Poison Arrow only with crap gear.
Just tips: that skill named "Poison Arrow", and you create new support gems that buff already broken crazy skill? WTF?

Have you actually played poison arrow? I am right now. I'm hitting 15k dps but this comparable to what you'd be doing with Arc and Flame Totem. And this is only really possible because I'm running Hidden Potential. Past a 4L there just aren't any good supports besides Empower, Increased AOE and Conc Effect. (And to hell with Conc Effect.)

Trap variants of PA, which, let's be frank, is what is going to get the most dps, are tied to cooldowns and frequently has awkward positioning. It's leveling phases are also nowhere near as convenient as some skills I could name. Rapid Decay isn't going to be any good for trap variants but would enable self-attack versions.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Since melee is a deliberate weakness added to a skill to make its gameplay more interesting, melee skills simply cannot compete in an environment where skills without weaknesses define the power curve. So the "melee discrimination" has been a part of PoE since it was little more than ideas bouncing around in Chris Wilson's head, and I really don't see the challenge leagues as being particularly relevant to the issue, at best changing nothing and at worst just hammering in something deeply ingrained into the design.

The attack rates for melee could be buffed slightly, and ranged firing/casting rates (including cast on X procs) could be lowered.

Status effects could be adjusted to be more likely and last longer for melee attacks, while reduced for non-melee. Stun with blunt weapons and puncture from melee would be ideal targets.

Characters could be given a very short time frame where the character has a slight chance to dodge (spell and attacks) right after a melee attack. I'd put it on the passive tree rather than a gem skill.

There could also be a series of passive nodes that allow armor to mitigate a percentage of AOE damage, but in turn would mitigate the damage done by spells and any non-melee damage coming from the character as well.

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

You have right idea, but in my vision you wrong about defense.
Clear speed are very very important and one of the main problem melee has (and will have in new patch and after too): clear speed compared with any other skills, as you mention.
And GGG should add much higher AOE and clear speed to melee. All agree.

I would prefer my next character to be melee, and I would really be happy if that character didn't have to rely on any AOE. Single target melee skills need attention more than AOE does, imo.

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StrongWitchCraft wrote:

And one more extra:
Automatically engage to the nearest target when you press your melee skill button like Flicker Strike. Melee most of time fail to attack even with RT and super lame of the having to move to new targets constantly to do any damage, it also very important.

Thanks for good discussion and nice talk.

I would agree with you that the hitbox/targeting aspect of the game should be improved, but I certainly wouldn't want automatic targeting.