How We're Approaching the Melee Rebalance in 3.7.0

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Sonidox wrote:

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matgog wrote:

• Change Leap Slam to jump straight to the desired direction instead of walking to the point where leap can be done.

check attack in place option lol

And if he mean without holding a button?

And stop writing "lol" in wrong places, nothing funny in your post, you even know what it mean? Jesus
Also, stop acting like you are a dev handing out solutions. You act like it was meant for you. Cant stand this cancer responds.

I would really like to see some work being done with Bleeds, Currently there's no real way to calculate bleeds correctly, not even PoB does it. There are only a few ways to scale bleed damage, whereas elemental damage can be clearly and easily scaled up. I guess poison dot might be on the same wagon, but I cannot tell since I haven't done a pure poison build in a really long time. Closest I've done is a HoA build which doesn't really count.

I would also like to see some abilities like Ground slam being viable. Tried to make a ground slam build this league and ended up having to reroll, it hits a threshold of damage that a lot of other abilities can easily surpass.

Earthquake has somewhat decent damage but to be honest, it's the clunkiest and slowest melee ability by far,and it needs some work to make it function a bit more confortably, by taking things like less duration and swift affliction which improve the QoL and a little bit the DoT sacrificing slots that could be used for damage.

It would be really nice to see other active abilities being Cold based for melee, as well as Poison based. As for poison, theres one and only one being viper strike, and is not really that great,almost anything that poisons nowadays runs Herald of Agony with it and it getting really old, since poison is so bad HoA is a staple that must be added to make it decent. Cold has ice crash and frost blades and that's about it.

Static strike has a really weird mechanic which makes it very unconfortable to use, it would be great to see that changed into something more straightforward without so much hassle to use.

Spectral throw is not a melee gem but it definitely needs attention, it really doesn't reach as much damage as other ranged abilities around, almost nobody runs it anymore.

And Spectral shield throw is in the same wagon as spectral throw, has some really mediocre damage, requires an insane investment for a minimal return, again not a 100% melee gem but definitely needs attention.

It feels like there's so much stuff about melee that has been left behind after new shiny abilities get released.

The life issue is real, I've seen ES builds reach 11k ES and still deal some pretty respectable damage, whereas for life you need to sacrifice all your damage to reach something that doesn't even get close to that 11k. There's melee builds being made left and right which are ES based which kinda points out that there's something wrong when you have to deviate and invest into caster related nodes to fix your tankiness issues as a melee. Not that I'm against such level of creativity, but honestly when you spend tons of points into life and get small returns even after equipping items with high flat life it feels bad specially because you have to be close to the mobs taking the damage and hoping that something doesn't one shot your 7k life and 8k armor.

The only decent melee build I've made this league is a cold/fire based tect slam jugg, sure deals a ton of damage but also has a really meh life pool. I guess tect slam is only that decent' because it's range is not really melee range.

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Sonidox wrote:

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matgog wrote:

• Change Leap Slam to jump straight to the desired direction instead of walking to the point where leap can be done.

check attack in place option lol

YAY that was helpful and changed my gameplay a lot.

Thank you.

Single-target melee attacks need some love, for sure. The melee splash support helps, but - and I mean this in a constructive way - it's also the least imaginatively designed support to solve the horde-clearing weakness in those skills.

I'd be all for supports for melee attacks that add a movement component to them, letting them deal some damage along the way. Maybe a "charge" support that makes you run a short distance to an enemy and deals bonus damage based on your movement speed for the melee attack, and does lesser damage and knocks back enemies between you and the target. Or one that adds a short range teleport like several skills already have, but that teleports to two or three other nearby enemies and attacks them before the target, increasing the critical strike damage with each successful hit, and with an improved critical strike chance. Stuff like that.

Why do I get the feeling they will crush any viable build like Sunder? And Sunder isn't really viable for end game bosses. Just doesn't do enough DPS without trying to face tank a given end game boss, which doesn't work either.

GGG doesn't just nerf things, they kill them off.

So every league, it's a race to build the new skill/meta classes, only to be completely butchered in 3 months.

No mo mi money n long time fo 10cent

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Chris wrote:

In Synthesis, we performed an extensive rebalance of Spellcasting throughout Path of Exile. A lot of this work focused on a numerical rebalance of most skills.

We have indicated that the June 3.7.0 expansion contains a similar rebalance of Melee skills, and while we certainly do intend to numerically adjust them to make sure they're viable, the actual scope of Melee changes planned is a lot larger than we have indicated so far.

Players from other Action RPGs have occasionally criticised Path of Exile's melee combat for being "clunky", especially early on before players get a lot of attack speed. We are making various experimental changes to the animation system that should help resolve these concerns and really tighten up the feel of melee combat.

In addition to animation system improvements and melee skill rebalances, we are experimenting with changes to systems such as accuracy, melee splash, leech, fortify, various Ascendancy classes, the passive tree, hit/miss feedback, melee base types, movement skills and melee damage availability on items.

This post has been intentionally light on specific details because all of the above potential changes are ongoing experiments that evolve as we try new stuff. We'll post more information in the news over the coming weeks (with the majority of it after 3.7.0's announcement in May). We are very excited about these changes and look forward to sharing more information with you.

Edit: And Cyclone is now a Channelled skill.

When it comes to smooth feeling combat, the 2 BEST feeling ARPGs I've ever played (and I've tried damn nearly all of them) are Diablo 3 and MU legend. Those 2 games feel insanely smooth and really damn good to play when it comes to combat. And if you'd allow me to play a MU legend or d3 toon in the PoE universe I'd do nothing but play that game (and maybe adress trading cuz its aids :p)
PoE combat by comparison is a bad joke and then some. This is why I find it VERY curious that the melee and caster rework weren't done after the 4.0 patch rather then before because in my frank opinion not having a serious overhaul of the base engine of the game will ensure the combat of the game will never actually feel "smooth" compared to competitors that I find to feel truly smooth.

This is obviously my opinion on smooth combat, yours might differ and some people might even prefer (dont ask me why) the clunky combat, I however am very much so NOT one of those people, I KNOW we can do better than a game that feels like it was made in the 90's.

I just wanted to be sure a developer had read Enki's recent comments concerning his Arc witch build (very top of first post): https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1147951/page/1.

He makes some good points about defense-oriented ascendancies ruling the meta. I think he deserves to be heard out by GGG because he has spent so much time maintaining this guide every league and it is truly the best guide out there for new players. It provides a comprehensive learning experience for all the mechanics it uses, emphasizes principles that promote a deeper understanding of the gameplay (e.g. learning enemy movement patterns, proper flask setup, weighing opportunity vs cost in gear selection), and can be played all the way up to the highest levels of content, all while being ridiculously fun to play, making it a perfect (and extremely popular) introduction to Path of Exile.

So please hear him out! (Also, he has been imploring a moderator to delete the second post in that thread for awhile so he can expand the guide without interruption, but no luck yet...)

Early melee...actually all melee is much easier on the console. Targeting is more kind, as opposed to the PC where you have to click on the tiny tiny hitbox or miss/take no action (depending on which key has the skill on it).

Thanks for reworking it, though!

And buff summoners and minions!

Also Life needed buffs to be in line with ES

From my PoV:

Weapons:
- the droprate for high pdps melee weapons is junk, that needs to improve significantly
- multimod crafting should be and stay enabled again
- seriously, how many ppl have a ~200-~300% physical damage weapon - most of the mfers just ignore rare weapons completely)??


it's too hard to get life and damage nodes:
- resolute technique is just crap without adding a MORE damage multiplier and limiting it to attacks
- getting accuracy + crit rate eats up nodes
- getting melee damage/faster attack eats up nodes
- increased melee range is relatively hard to come by
- I wonder who really uses the bloodmagic keystone...


Gems with negative habits, while on ranged+spells there is no such thing:
- you cannot use bloodlust directly without triggering bleed elsewhere - just remove that mod
- brutality is mostly useless - there isn't a good phys only aura (except for herald of purity but that's low), on ranged and spells - remove the no chaos/elemental mods!
- ruthless, multistrike have been disabled for cyclone (ok, granted, that'll be a channeling skill soon(tm), but still...)
- punishment needs to be triggered by monsters which makes it hard to see a point there, except for maybe boss fights