3.25. short list of melee nerfs (and few buffs) teaser and announcement didnt want you to know

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Coconutdoggy wrote:

Hes the best melee player in the world when Ben even acknowledging it if he says it's cooked then it's cooked likely and you didn't even fully watch his stream did you? Naw naw he says for bleed to be good it has to be like a giantatic hit such as lets say RET skill Crushing fish which is likely to do 1000%+ damage effectiveness.

Alk and Ben were both talking to each other about bleed too that's the only way for bleed to be good.

If it's a MASSIVE hit.

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alhazred70 wrote:

Now post 3.24 str stacking he's calling everything else dogshit. Stuck on his highest setting like a girl who just dated Ryan Gosling.

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Coconutdoggy wrote:

16m is bad I ono what to tell you in terms of high end settings lmao.

That's like zdps in ubers t17s even.

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sidtherat wrote:

so, the 220% -> 550% announcement hit hard, made people excited

let me throw a wrench into the enthusiasm. in my opinion melees strength relative to competition remains unchanged, the QoL is slightly better (still bad, but you now baby sit a banner not a totem(s)) and the biggest issues plaguing the archetype are still here, untouched

so, in no particular order

1) all melee players lost A LOT of attack speed. some builds less, most of them more. attack speed from rage, attack speed from things like Challenger Charges, attack speed from totem(s).
hard to measure it in general, all builds are different, but the change is serious and will affect DPS and fluidity of combat. it is one of these 'build feels like shit' changes

2) mana cost increase. previously all melee skills were shit but GGG balanced it out by making them 'cheap on mana'. well, they are no longer cheap. most melee skills had a base cost of 5 or 6. now it is ~12. it is HUGE deal.
total cost goes from ~20 to ~50. 20 can be limited with -7mana rings, 50 - no way

3) the life mastery 'pay 30% mana cost with life' is now 15% and to get to current value you need attack mastery that you might have not planned to take. ~4+ passives down the drain

4) these two combined mean you WILL have to do one of: Lifetap support (19% more instead of ~30% more. direct nerf) or speccing heavily into otherwise garbage 'attack cost reduction' nodes (5+ passives - direct nerf)

5) one less aura for you. melee aura cluster had been cut in two and made worse in the process. you either get 8%rmr less, or pay several passives to get more. congrats, you are one aura shorter

6) all flat damage (except boneshatter) is gone. that means that you either level as boneshatter or dont level melee at all. unless you actually are enjoying being disappointed IDing 17th weapon from the ground. bigger % and stuff for skills is ok, but that helps only if the base is there to be multiplied.

7) retaliation skills are DOA. they have attack time (garbage attack time to be precise). they cost A LOT of mana. they have incredibly clunky activation logic. and you have to constantly be on a lookout if that shit is ready to go and play FOMO minigames to squeeze that into your combat rythm.
it might have worked on a bow build, but it wont on melee. even if it does bonkers damage.

8) retaliation, banners and warcries are presented as a 'solution' to melee - problem is, there is no option to get all 3 into the build. each costs ~8 passives in mandatory nodes to just f.. work. bare banners are rags, bare warcries are 2s shrieks nobody cares about. GGG released them pre-nerfed.

9) warcry massacre. warcries were bad already, now the stats are so unbelievably undesirable that i seriously wonder if the plan is to make a mid-league buff.

10) no Armour formula change. get rekt with phys damage without phys-as-ele. casters will just outrange this, melee - no chance. have fun, your auras will be up after respawn :)

11) Rage.. rage will drop off mid-fight unless you stack (see 8) rage loss rate reduction and increased delay. yet another 8+ passives. if you dont, all your rage is gone while you dodge shaper's beam or do the ball phase. it seems to be made to be completely unusable UNLESS you spend the passive tax. without it you get a nice mapping buff, worthless vs anything remotely dangerous (this one im not sure of, the wording in patch notes and on the skill tree is confusing)

12) no change to spell suppression means one thing: you STILL have to cap it as the game is balanced accordingly. do not even try to replace it with max res. it wont work. capped suppression equals ~87 max res. you wont get that much, get suppression.

good things:

1) overwhelm is gone. it seems to be realistic to get 100% chance to ignore phys reduction. phys wheel + mastery gives that outright but you could shop around.

2) overwhelm for impales can be solved with one mastery. most people underestimate power of this change. impales by default did not 'overwhelm', there was a separate stat for that, and it was limited - not enough to beat special mobs with 80%+ PDR. this makes impale builds MUCH more reliable damage wise

3) there is - finally - block mastery in Marauder's area. this was sorely missed

4) solid buffs to 'increased defences from shield' - 150% near unwavering stance with a 2000 AR shield is actually something. not gamebreaking but something.

5) Flesh and Stone change is actually nice numerical buff. sadly still not an aura so not %aura effect but - no longer needs maim support. less mana, less sockets - seems fine to me.



all that combined means GGG did a great PR stunt but I highly doubt we will see more than 5% melee players end of week 1. these changes are mostly net neutral, with some positive outliers that are still crap compared to things like mana casters or minions (that got all the broken corpses to play with)

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6) all flat damage (except boneshatter) is gone. that means that you either level as boneshatter or dont level melee at all. unless you actually are enjoying being disappointed IDing 17th weapon from the ground. bigger % and stuff for skills is ok, but that helps only if the base is there to be multiplied.

"

7) retaliation skills are DOA. they have attack time (garbage attack time to be precise). they cost A LOT of mana. they have incredibly clunky activation logic. and you have to constantly be on a lookout if that shit is ready to go and play FOMO minigames to squeeze that into your combat rythm.
it might have worked on a bow build, but it wont on melee. even if it does bonkers damage.

"

8) retaliation, banners and warcries are presented as a 'solution' to melee - problem is, there is no option to get all 3 into the build. each costs ~8 passives in mandatory nodes to just f.. work. bare banners are rags, bare warcries are 2s shrieks nobody cares about. GGG released them pre-nerfed.

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10) no Armour formula change. get rekt with phys damage without phys-as-ele. casters will just outrange this, melee - no chance. have fun, your auras will be up after respawn :)

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alhazred70 wrote:

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Coconutdoggy wrote:

16m is bad I ono what to tell you in terms of high end settings lmao.

That's like zdps in ubers t17s even.

I would expect nothing less from you. I guess its a meta trade player thing.