Perfect Strike design and the melee problem

How do these 2 correlate?

Well, pretty simple principle, Perfect Strike is good skill design. It rewards you for timing and active playing instead of passive play.

Now, we have all the well known melee/tanking playstyle complaints:

1- My char is a tank but I need to keep rolling.
2- My character is a tank but still gets one-shot or is too slow

So the only way to solve this problem to an extent without allowing the player to create unkillable builds is to tie part of his ability to tank good ammounts of damage to defensive skills.

Why did I mention Perfect Strike? Simple: You get the timing right, you deal good damage. You don't get the timing right? You lose like 450% of the damage.

Same principle should apply to Tank build archetypes.

Example of Skill:

Perfect Bulwark:

"Press [X] Create a magical barrier arround yourself, gaining 20% dmg reduction for 6 seconds.
Damage is negated by 80% and bonuses and duration are doubled if you activate the skill right before a Rare or Unique enemy attack you."

Or something more simple, just like Perfect Strike:

"Hold the button to receive X defensive bonuses for 20s, damaging enemies while you channel" "Bonuses and duration are doubled by releasing the channela t the correct time. Releasing the channel at the correct time will deal 200% of weapon damage in an area around you."

Of course it needs more thought put into it. But that's the only sophisticated solution I can think of.

Perfect Strike is a skill to use when a boss or rare is stunned or you have time to use it, not when getting swarmed by mobs. There is no real problem with melee right now other than Hammer of the Gods being an incredibly poorly designed skill that's mandatory to use, and the fact that armor doesn't stand up to the current endgame. This is partially mob balance and partially probably some tweaking needed on the armor values.

We currently only have the mace available, and quite frankly I never understood people who think they don't have time to use skills or whatever. You get 1 skill off and the entire map is stunned. Bosses are toppling over constantly from stuns. Put expanse on leap slam and it stuns every white mob on the screen with some area increase. Use a shield and you're 10x tankier than a 2h build because block is just that strong.

The problem that we have now doesn't need some elaborate solution. It's literally just overtuned values of enemy attacks. Elemental damage is way too strong, armor is way too weak vs physical damage, and ES is just clearly not thought through properly since the life changes.

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Kashou#2868 wrote:

Perfect Strike is a skill to use when a boss or rare is stunned or you have time to use it, not when getting swarmed by mobs. There is no real problem with melee right now other than Hammer of the Gods being an incredibly poorly designed skill that's mandatory to use, and the fact that armor doesn't stand up to the current endgame. This is partially mob balance and partially probably some tweaking needed on the armor values.

We currently only have the mace available, and quite frankly I never understood people who think they don't have time to use skills or whatever. You get 1 skill off and the entire map is stunned. Bosses are toppling over constantly from stuns. Put expanse on leap slam and it stuns every white mob on the screen with some area increase. Use a shield and you're 10x tankier than a 2h build because block is just that strong.

The problem that we have now doesn't need some elaborate solution. It's literally just overtuned values of enemy attacks. Elemental damage is way too strong, armor is way too weak vs physical damage, and ES is just clearly not thought through properly since the life changes.

This won't work because the cycle will not stop.

The cycle is:

Nerf monster damage because melee is dying -> Ranged players now almost never die -> Buff monster damage

or

Buff melee survivability -> Players find a way to make unkillable builds -> Nerf melee survivability and now melee can be randomly oneshot again

Melee problem will never be solved numerically.