How is this game playable in melee?

Doesn't melee builds still need Fortify to help keep them alive?

https://www.twitch.tv/alkaizerx

Melee looks fine to me

Coconutdoggy , typical totem-mine player. I checked alkaizerx , suprise! , he is also playing boneshatter, i would like to remind, there are 65 melee skills, only boneshatter-flickerstrike-frostblades are alive. And i think flickerstrike and frostblades are not pure melee.

Right but hes still melee.

Just sayin

"

Phrazz wrote:

Melee isn't in the best spot these days, but the game IS playable as melee, just not as enjoyable.

Ive been listening to this for 5 years.....

If you set your expectations right, melee is still fun.

"

And i think flickerstrike and frostblades are not pure melee.

This sentiment that has plagued the game for over 10 years is precisely why Melee is in such a bad state and people are playing only Boneshatter. You know that GGG is just going to nerf Boneshatter and Frostblade and not fix everything else because of these complaints right?

As a fun experiment, I took my ws raider, bought a bow for a few C, respecced my tree with free points, and bought a set of lvl1 gems from Lily to switch to LA / AB.

No quiver, scuffed tree with a bunch of claw nodes, lvl1 gems, and I have ~3x the clear, 2x the single target, and an order of magnitude better survival.

Yeah, melee skills are perfectly fine :D

Ive repeated this for the past 6 years, melee will never be good. It will never compete with ranged things. Stop comparing them. Its melee mechanical limitations that makes it impossible to compete. In order to fix this you would have to make so many changes to the core of the game that it will no longer be PoE.

"

kuciol wrote:

Ive repeated this for the past 6 years, melee will never be good. It will never compete with ranged things. Stop comparing them. Its melee mechanical limitations that makes it impossible to compete. In order to fix this you would have to make so many changes to the core of the game that it will no longer be PoE.

Nah, bach in legion, cyclone (not coc, just cyclone), was the top meta build. There also used to be a molten strike meta. There's nothing fundamental about melee being bad, it's just that these days melee skill gems, aside from like 2, do too little damage.