WHY ARE MELEE BUILD CLUNKY TO PLAY!?

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FearZGamer wrote:

RF is literally 0 button

Only if you play it bad.
Even rf requires 2 bottoms at best to work well optimized unless you want to skip fire trap or Scorching Ray for single target and shield charge to go snail mode in maps. Not even including vaal rf which would be even another bottom that can be clicked ever so often to improve the performance of the build.

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Pashid wrote:

Only if you play it bad.
Even rf requires 2 bottoms at best to work well optimized unless you want to skip fire trap or Scorching Ray for single target and shield charge to go snail mode in maps. Not even including vaal rf which would be even another bottom that can be clicked ever so often to improve the performance of the build.

People love bringing up RF in many different arguments....and always appear to have no idea how a RF build actually functions lol.

RF, like most other builds, is 0 to 1-button ONLY during "normal" mapping. The second you get into harder material, it requires at least 2 buttons if not 3 buttons to fully function. Compare that to most other builds (except shout piano builds) and.....its very similar.

Nearly every build in modern PoE can function at high levels with 1 or 2 button playstyle. They might require an additional button press for bossing. This is true of melee as well as any other class.

To get to the point of RF being a TRULY 0-button build, you are looking at the best of the best possible gear. And even then, you aren't going to be bossing very fast at all if you stick to that 0-button.

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mefistozxz wrote:

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Pashid wrote:

Only if you play it bad.
Even rf requires 2 bottoms at best to work well optimized unless you want to skip fire trap or Scorching Ray for single target and shield charge to go snail mode in maps. Not even including vaal rf which would be even another bottom that can be clicked ever so often to improve the performance of the build.

People love bringing up RF in many different arguments....and always appear to have no idea how a RF build actually functions lol.

RF, like most other builds, is 0 to 1-button ONLY during "normal" mapping. The second you get into harder material, it requires at least 2 buttons if not 3 buttons to fully function. Compare that to most other builds (except shout piano builds) and.....its very similar.

Nearly every build in modern PoE can function at high levels with 1 or 2 button playstyle. They might require an additional button press for bossing. This is true of melee as well as any other class.

To get to the point of RF being a TRULY 0-button build, you are looking at the best of the best possible gear. And even then, you aren't going to be bossing very fast at all if you stick to that 0-button.

Think what everyone is talking about when it comes to buttons pressed is really what you are doing the majority of the time.

As RF its not like... hahaha

Its not like you built RF to be a bosser ill just say. So the majority of the time (extremely so for RF), you really arent doing any firetrap and extra buttons, you are just hitting movement.

Much like lacerate, you just shield charge around and lacerate. Curse blade storm for the boss and thats it.

Very similar across many builds for sure.

The slammers, if they dont want auto-exertion, like me and Art did, we have a lot of buttons. But its not like its arduous in the slightest.

6 Cries manually casted here across both my melee builds along with the other things you gotta do is fine. It quickly becomes less what people think the more you play them.

I can understand at a glance, like what most people do when they judge before trying, it seems insane.

^yea but that was kinda my point. MOST builds, for the majority of the time, are 0 or 1 button play. 2 buttons if you count the movement skill. You don't need to cast curses, you don't need to cast buffs, you don't need to cast vaal skills, etc. RF is not unique in that regard. Flicker Strike should get more hate than RF since you get movement AND killing all in one. Yet flicker never seems to get the same shoutouts.

It's really only self-cast shout slam builds that have all those extra buttons. I can't really name any other build that requires anything remotely like that for "normal" gameplay.

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mefistozxz wrote:

^yea but that was kinda my point. MOST builds, for the majority of the time, are 0 or 1 button play. 2 buttons if you count the movement skill. You don't need to cast curses, you don't need to cast buffs, you don't need to cast vaal skills, etc. RF is not unique in that regard. Flicker Strike should get more hate than RF since you get movement AND killing all in one. Yet flicker never seems to get the same shoutouts.

It's really only self-cast shout slam builds that have all those extra buttons. I can't really name any other build that requires anything remotely like that for "normal" gameplay.

Oh yeah for sure everyone plays the same really button wise, I dont really know any build that has the buttons that self casting cry slammers do.

Or my Heavy strike cry variant for that matter. Same amount of cries, I just did a bit of carry over and tweaking.

Again though people make it sound like you are just spamming buttons constantly and straining your hand, I could throw up a VOD of it and it quickly becomes apparent thats not the case.

melee is clunky because for years GGG completely ignored it and while others got streamlined, automated or their features were consolidated - melee lived in 2.x era with plethora of insignificant buffs players were forced to use if they wanted to achieve anything

currently it got somewhat improved but still there is no comparison between summoners that mostly auto-play, auto-target and auto-heal and melee that has to manually target enemies and chase them around in bad layouts to manage all the buffs and heals

it isnt even about buttons - buttons you press unconditionally, rhythmically are mostly fine. same as 2-button sequences (various 'detonates', exposure sources etc)

what is a problem is with conditional mechanics that are not on a rigid timer - my recent example is: Berserk on a Berserker with Vengeance Cry. you play Berserker rage, so LOTS of your damage comes from properly managing it. and while maping is mostly no extra buttons but anything remotely different (bad ritual, blight bosses) or pinacle content - you HAVE to babysit that rage/berserk because it is like 80% of your damage. and it is simply tedious (and sadly hardly worth it despite huge multipliers)

same with banners - while you can automate your WARCRY PUMP and get valour without any action, managing banners is actually clunky AF. and if you decide to build around them you kinda have to use them all the time. again, tedious - compounded by no visual clarity

leveling is a completely different can of worms, melee with its no range, no auto-target and meh base damage/action speed is the worst leveling experience you can pick

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sidtherat wrote:

leveling is a completely different can of worms, melee with its no range, no auto-target and meh base damage/action speed is the worst leveling experience you can pick

Meanwhile a melee build finished the gauntlet campaign first and didn't had struggles to outperform all those caster and mine enjoyer lol

No shocking surprise as melee is not as bad as you're trying to claim and even less bad since the huge buffs and reworks this league lol.

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sidtherat wrote:

melee is clunky because for years GGG completely ignored it and while others got streamlined, automated or their features were consolidated - melee lived in 2.x era with plethora of insignificant buffs players were forced to use if they wanted to achieve anything

leveling is a completely different can of worms, melee with its no range, no auto-target and meh base damage/action speed is the worst leveling experience you can pick

This is another example where its true for you but its just not true for the majority of palyers.

Its an expression/player issue on your end think melee is struggling for leveling or even clunky.




Keep in mind the people with Xfigured gems couldn't even level with those by the way. They had to go back and farm lab to get the skills AND THEN STILL be in the top of the ladder xp wise.

The first character to complete the campaign was also melee.


So no melee isnt the worst leveling experience you can pick.... its just that way for you.

"The majority of the players"

Proceeds to show the top 25 players in a super-elite, super-temporary Hardcore league ! x'D

The actual majority of the players never even made it to Act 2 !
(And that in the Standard Bench Trade Softcore league.)

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One aspect that IMHO makes melee clunky (especially early on !) is how the strike skills have this two-timer animation, where one attack is slow, but the next, exactly the same skill, is noticeably much shorter.

Supposedly it has been improved in 3.25 —

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Skills that use the basic melee strike animation now have a more consistent swing speed, rather than the first swing being slower than the second swing.

— but it didn't really seem like it to me.

(To be fair, I don't have much experience here in 3.25, mostly Glacial Hammer vs Gauntlet-beefed Hillock.)

I guess some people maight say that this makes the game more interesting,
(you could perhaps build around this with bonuses that need an even number of attacks/hits, or switching to a different skill ??),
but if so, this shouldn't be the case for the first ~half of available skills.
After all, I'd expect a lot of new players (especially those not familiar with dungeon runners/zoomers !) to pick them as main skills on their very first character !

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Well duh, some special enemies, like bosses or even some rare mobs, might need a different approach. And thanks Sin for that !

I'll note that my own experience is that over-complicating the build with too many different buttons you can press (and haven't trained yourself to yet) results in deaths against those.

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BlueTemplar85 wrote:

"The majority of the players"

Proceeds to show the top 25 players in a super-elite, super-temporary Hardcore league ! x'D

The actual majority of the players never even made it to Act 2 !
(And that in the Standard Bench Trade Softcore league.)

----

One aspect that IMHO makes melee clunky (especially early on !) is how the strike skills have this two-timer animation, where one attack is slow, but the next, exactly the same skill, is noticeably much shorter.

Supposedly it has been improved in 3.25 —

"

Skills that use the basic melee strike animation now have a more consistent swing speed, rather than the first swing being slower than the second swing.

— but it didn't really seem like it to me.

(To be fair, I don't have much experience here in 3.25, mostly Glacial Hammer vs Gauntlet-beefed Hillock.)

I guess some people maight say that this makes the game more interesting,
(you could perhaps build around this with bonuses that need an even number of attacks/hits, or switching to a different skill ??),
but if so, this shouldn't be the case for the first ~half of available skills.
After all, I'd expect a lot of new players (especially those not familiar with dungeon runners/zoomers !) to pick them as main skills on their very first character !

----

Well duh, some special enemies, like bosses or even some rare mobs, might need a different approach. And thanks Sin for that !

I'll note that my own experience is that over-complicating the build with too many different buttons you can press (and haven't trained yourself to yet) results in deaths against those.

Edit: Yea looking at you never getting anything above level 80 and never getting a single void stone, the tip top of players from your perspective probably includes me at that point.

Id recommend focusing a bit more around current ... and many changes that have happened over the years. It seems you are on the lower end of the player base, so it can be overwhelming seeing data from a newer perspective.

You may not know how to make a strike skill build. Thats fine if thats the case for you. Maybe work on that one. You admitted you havent really tried it since settlers so...



X'D indeed.

Other skills to get them going require way more gear. Why is why, Ben, the best player in the world is BEHIND right now xp wise. Power siphon takes A LOT of gear to even get going, its terrible for leveling.

Minions are the same, you need way too many crafts to get them going not just offensive but defensive on the tree as well.

Ice nova/Spark has the same issue, requires a bunch of gear to get going, and has defense as well.

Bow users TR/Scourge leveling is horrific now that weapon damage is multiplied on quality. These require +gem level and also defense scaling.


Late game sure, you can say these mechanics can swap around. But for leveling?? Its not even close.


Meanwhile, a melee skill requires a weapon that only cares about 3 prefix mods. And then the tree takes care of you for leveling. You get fort, you get endurance, you get block, you get max res, ALL quickly.

Which is why its the number 1 choice for leveling, even in the hardest Gauntlet we have seen yet.

I suggest you practice a bit more with the current changes before coming to a conclusion about melee as it seems that did not happen yet.

If you have any questions about how to build a strike character reach out to me in DMS and I will be happy to help!