[Longform Analysis] Discussing Archetypes: Dexterity Elemental Melee (Dex Melee)

Hello everyone,
GGG (You) stated in the past that they kind of want to take a look at all previous playstyles and “archetypes” and generally polish them up for current playing. In that we now have had a couple iterations which sought to bring up melee. Poison Crit Dagger in Blight, Generally Melee in Legion, and just this league they brought up 2 Handed weapons by quite a bit, essentially promoting the “Slam” playstyle – “Slow hits but big hits”. In this patch, Dual Wield was also brought down slightly. I will now try to use this thread to talk about a type of melee we seem to have dropped under the table a few years ago now, an archetype that is just kind of suffering – Dex Melee / Dex Elemental Damage.

To really analyse the issues with this archetype, I’m gonna talk about issues with offence, defense and items, and I’ll will also be looking at some Ascendancies usually found in the bottom right area of the tree. At the end I will also quickly talk about Phys Conversion vs Flat Damage stacking. Please keep in mind, I will analyse these issues from the perspective of making a build with this archetype while playing Hardcore. The reason being that I want to analyse how balanced a character you can make with it. If defence becomes a non-elemental in the creation of a build, then the analysis completely falls flat. Everything works if you don’t take life nodes.


Offence

In my opinion Dex (Elemental) Melee has a huge damage problem currently. You either get completely crappy builds that can’t kill bosses at all, or you’re pretty much required to have mirror-tier items. And while you might argue justifiably that not every build archetype needs to be good at everything including bossing, let me remind you that since the Conqueror’s of the Atlas expansion, GGG now more or less forces you to constantly kill bosses in order to grow out of white and yellow maps. These days you HAVE TO be good at bossing too, otherwise you cannot progress the endgame at all. Kind of a questionable decision in my mind, but so be it. That means that generally you should be able to make Dex Melee builds that can kill bosses too, since the game now expects it of you.

Here are the main ways to build Dexterity based Elemental Attack builds:

• Crit-based
• Non-Crit

Crit

Let’s talk about Crit first. As with all Attack builds, most of our damage comes more or less directly from the weapon’s local stats, as opposed to mainly from the skill gem. Important stats on a weapon tend to be:

• Attack Speed
• Physical Damage
• Elemental Damage
• Local Crit Chance
• Crit Multiplier
• Accuracy

Particularly important for Crit builds, are Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Multiplier (Crit Multi) and Accuracy. So while a Spellcaster gets most of their crit chance from the tree (because the local crit chance is stuck to the gem) and then only has to fill in with Crit Multi. The weapons themselves can be all over the place. A +1 level Wand can already work wonders, especially when combined with a Shield that has an %increased Critical Strike chance for spells modifier, that isn’t hard to get either.

For melee you need to work really hard on getting your accuracy up on other gear, maybe some added damage on gear, but the weapon itself is required to have a good flat damage roll, a good increased damage roll, good attack speed AND a good local critical strike chance.

The requirements for a successful Crit build are pretty damn ludicrous. Especially if you want to have acceptable defences as well.
But here is the thing, with how powerful – given the right weapon – Melee can be, Crit might be balanced by it’s potential. So you first play Non-Crit and then work yourself up to the ability to play Crit. I’m still a bit salty though that Crit Multiplier has been nerfed recently, essentially making the requirement for Mirror-tier weapons even more prevalent.

Soooo… non-crit then?

And non-crit is were currently my biggest gripes lie, because it simply isn’t playable. Sure, you might have a somewhat working non-crit Dex Ele Melee build, but excluding Attribute stacking builds, it’s pretty bad. Both Strength Melee and Spell Elemental Damage have their own little strengths in this regard. Strength Melee has “Resolute Technique”, making you unable to critically strike enemies, but you are no longer required to accumulate accuracy to keep hitting enemies. Pretty good trade. Spell Ele has “Elemental Overload”, making your crits no longer do extra damage, but instead give you a buff on crit that awards a whopping 40% MORE Elemental Damage. Each of those trade the downside of no longer being able to use Critical Strike, for smaller but more reliable damage.

Dexterity has none of these two things, and while a valid trade-off could be that Dexterity by itself supplies plenty Accuracy, it simply does not. Travelling to the aforementioned Keystones is not just wasting points in general, but the areas they are usually have no or rather small benefits for Elemental builds (Strength and non-Fire damage) or Attacks (Intelligence and non-spells). In fact the classes with the best access to either of these two Keystones are Marauder, Templar and Witch. Almost as if Rangers are not supposed to play non-crit. Yet the crit and accuracy nodes they have aren’t more valuable than those in other areas on the tree. Without a doubt the best Keystone for Elemental Attacks, is Elemental Overload, and it’s on the opposite side of the tree from the Ranger. As if Ranger was the Ascendancy supposed to do mostly physical damage, but all the physical nodes are in the strength area. It just makes very little sense.

Ontop of all that, the pathing on the Dex side of the tree is really stale because it hasn’t changed in quite a while. Getting to the Elemental Penetration nodes is super finicky as well.

Defences

I’m actually fairly okay with the Defenses for Dex builds, ironically the best buff it got in years was giving everyone access to “Wind Dancer”, and the newly implemented “Imbalanced Guard”. But I would love if there were more life nodes in the bottom right side of the tree. It would be nice if I could reach more life nodes than a random Intelligence build. The entropical nature of Evasion means that a big chunk of damage WILL come through eventually, and Spell Avoidance is pretty damn hard to get across the board in that area of the tree, so I’d request that we get either more sources of Spell avoidance, more sources of Max % Elemental Res (which is kind of a “Dex-Survivalist” theme anyway) or more life nodes.

Items

A lot of Dex-based items are completely bunk these days and should receive another update. Weapons like Dreamfeather cannot reach acceptable damage numbers even if you kneel into Evasion till it comes out your ears. The weapon also has no crit, and I analysed, playing non-crit is kind of undoable anyway.
Then, take an item like Hyaon’s Fury. I really love the concept of this weapon, but it makes absolutely no sense. It’s “18% increased Lightning Damage per Frenzy Charge” mod is absolutely pitiful with base damage, but what is the real kicker, is that the weapon is BOTH really slow AND has a low local crit chance. So even if we ignore that this piece of shit has the audacity to also increase the damage you take, it’s absolutely horrible as a weapon. Dreamfeather at least has the courtesy to give you Accuracy Rating. So even if you wanted to play some kind of “Hyaon’s Regret” Glass Cannon build, the weapon is complete poop.

Ascendancies

So I think we can all agree, that a good Ascendancy in this area of the tree would preferably deal with one of the aforementioned issues, as well as maybe provide something cool and unique as well.

Deadeye for instance gets Tailwind to gain more action speed, increased Accuracy and increased critical strike chance for piercing. Eventhough she is more focused on Projectiles, she deals well with the aforementioned requirements of a Crit build. Really her biggest issue is that she has fairly weak defences, but a trade-off makes sense there.

Assassin deals well with making sure that the Critical Strike chance of a weapon is dealt with. Their easy access to Power Charges and a guaranteed higher local crit chance make Assassin’s really good at criting. They also get some attack, cast and movement speed from their cool elusive Node.

Pathfinders and Tricksters are more multi-purpose between Attacks and Spells there. Pathfinder has an amazing Flask-Mastery that allow her to easily keep flasks up while on a Boss, gain more elemental damage and has Elemental Ailment Immunity. Trickster is more interesting for Spells, but can gain and sustain Power and Frenzy Charges single target, they can potentially gain a ton of extra chaos damage too.

Raider has none of that. The big strength Raider has, is her easy access to the Evasion cap of 95%. So playing Raider with Wind Dancer makes for some pretty solid defences. And while you might think those defences are her strength, think again because Evasion can do nothing against Spells, and spells are currently among the biggest sources of your character dying. How often are you really dying to an enemy poking you in the sides? So not just are her defences kinda just okay (Evasion often sounds better than it plays, unless you also have a Kintsugi you are kinda screwed), her offensive capabilities completely stink. She gains no Accuracy through her Ascendancy, no Crit Chance, no Crit Multi, and since Legion’s changes to Berserkers and Gladiators, and Deadeye’s Tailwind she isn’t even the queen of speed anymore. Getting Ailment immunity is cool, but so do Hierophant and Inquisitor now too, so kinda suffers there. The biggest offender is the Frenzy Charge Arm. If you enjoy it, good for you, but numerically it stinks. And unless your build requires Frenzy Charges (like Flicker Strike and Hopeshredder builds) it is strictly the worst choice you can make when building a Raider.
Raider really needs a buff. So it’s useful for more than just Caustic Arrow botting. I’d dislike a Nerf to her Onslaught Arm and the access to more chance to evade, but I’d take a small hit there if it meant:

a) Access to some actual damage that could make melee more playable too.
b) Maybe something cool that makes her able to Evade spells instead, at like 30-50% effectiveness of her Evasion Rating. Thereby actually rewarding people for really investing into Evasion. You might even set this as it’s own Node, similar to Elusive.

Make Raider really exciting again, even if just for one or two leagues. Last time she was really really hot, was in Breach. I keep trying to make Raider work as much as possible every league, but damage is always so hard to get with her.

Phys Conversion vs Flat Damage Stacking

This topic is really strange. There used be a time when the “normal” way to play Elemental Attack builds was to roll an item with a lot of added elemental damage on it. Nowadays the main way is to convert all damage, usually by also picking a skill that does a lot of the conversion for you. If this was an intended paradigm shift for how Elemental Attack skills work, then so be it. But then abilities like Frost Blades and Glacial Hammer gain added Elemental damage as they level. So which is it? If Phys to Elemental Conversion is merely meant as an alternative way to play Elemental builds, or like cream on top of it all, then that effect is not really coming into play. Flat Elemental foils are kinda meh now unless they’re mirror-tier, the different assortment of flat elemental damage usually on these weapons (not just one element) has completely fallen out of style. During one of the last few league, Rebuke of the Vaal was buffed to now easily reach 900 total dps, a big part of that being elemental damage. But it is just so incredibly difficult to scale. Especially since the big HP buff to smaller mobs and bosses, not focusing on one element really breaks your neck these days. The flat damage that CAN roll on one handed weapons also hasn’t really changed in years, so it’s like the game became harder and harder, but Dex weapons just didn’t grow with it.

And I know people keep hampering on about it every patch, about how “Dual Wield is still better than 2H PepeLaugh”. But they never talk about Dual Wielding Daggers, or Claws, or Swords. It’s usually Dual Wielding Siege Axes and playing a Strength class. Ascendancies like Juggernaut, that for some reason has a node give them 1000 Accuracy and an increased Crit Chance. Crit and Accuracy on an Ascendancy supposedly focused on being rolling tanks. Meanwhile the “Swift, Agile and quite Dashing Dexterity Figher” gets none of that and is instead an Easy-Evasion-Vehicle-For-The-One-Bow-Skill-That-Is-Scaled-Like-A-Spell.

I understand that Melee Crit can get really crazy. But I feel like there can be a level between Mirror-Tier Uber-Elder Farmer and Can't-kill-anything.



I apologize for how ranty this piece of feedback may sound, but it is genuinely how I feel, and I tried to provide arguments for why I feel that way. So I hope that this piece of Feedback is useful to you. All I can say at the end of all this, is that I love your game. I’ve been playing for years, and I will continue playing it unless something really weird happens. But I’d also like to see my beautiful Raider get more of a chance. Dex Melee is such a rush. Swift and Clean. I would love to be able to enjoy it more again!

Thank you for reading my feedback!