How Melee builds feel bad in endgame
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I will perface this by saying that I have not been playing a lot and reached only tier 12-ish maps, so there might be things I missed out.
The melee playstyle in campaign is vastly different to ranged playstyle and it is astonishing that GGG managed that, considering that builds still have access to ranged attacks. It is satysfying to come face to face with a monster and strike it in melee range, where it is also the most dangerous, and the melee playstyle, especially for bosses, is incredibly fulfilling. By act 6, however, the difference of playstyles only comes in the form of how big your effective damaging range is. That feels awful at some points, especially in higher tier maps, where you start running away from all mobs the same way ranged playstyles do. Damaging range and explosions on top of enemies It comes as no surprise that melee builds have melee range. It does not feel bad in the campaign, even with the temporal bubble as a possible affix. A rare mob should be hard to kill and it creates intresting fights. Hovewer, upon reaching maps the amount of mobs with affixes that affect melee builds in a drastically different way compared to ranged becomes unreasonable and frankly exhausting. There are too much explosions on top of enemies. While ranged builds still damage the mob and these explosions only influece the approach to enemies, for melee builds this acts as a temporary invulnerability, since you have to move away from an enemy and your damaging range does not support that. Moreover, it feels that quite a lot of mobs in the game has some sort of on-death effect or leaves something damaging on the ground. Normally the counterplay for these is to not loot the body instantly after killing the mob, but for melee builds we again get the temporary invulnerability or an effective dps check of whether you can kill it in time before the effect kills you. Map mod patches of burning ground is completly irrelevant for ranged builds, while a melee build would once again sit there watching an enemy leave the damaging area to start doing anything. Surprisingly, I do not dislike all of these things. This gameplay is fun and makes you approach every encounter with care. The problem comes with the overabundance of it. The periodic downtime of not doing anything while still being on high alert and adrenaline begins to wear on you after a while. At the same time you know that any ranged build would not be affected much or at all. At some point you start thinking: "this is made for melee builds to suffer" and you begin taking ranged skills just to tackle some packs of magic mobs, namely the acid-spitting snakes that for some reason don't activate all at once and have twice the size of AOE on explosions around them, making them completly invulnerable to melee builds if you don't want to risk getting oneshot. Defensive options Elemental resistances being capped is a requirement for all builds in high-tier maps, which is strange, considering that everything else in the game has diminishing returns, while resistances have higher returns the higher you go. And melee builds suffer the most again, since any random extra damage as elemental modifier is unavoidable elemental damage when you have to walk up to the enemy to damage it. Just the same as random explosions around the enemy are mostly elemental, which are easily avoidable on ranged builds. At the same time armor is completly irrelevant since quite a lot of mobs reduce your armor or break it, and reducing damage of bosses is impossible since they hit you like a truck and armor only works on small hits. Evasion is vastly superior but allows you to get oneshot by a random hit or an aoe attack. Both of these can't even come close to energy shield stacking which works on both elemental and physical damage and is allowed to get % increases, unlike life upgrades. Quite unfortunate, therefore, that melee builds need to stack dexterity and strength to use their skills and weapons. As a consequence they have harder access to energy shield nodes and energy shield gear. Ascendancy allows warrior and monk to get some extra defensive layers and these are great, but these never adress the whole "too much explosions on top of enemies". Warrior may be able to tank some elemental explosions, but ultimately these still affect melee builds more than ranged builds. Monk, on the other hand, is left completly defenceless in terms of elemental damage explosions. All in all, defensive layers for melee builds are pretty much the same as for ranged builds. The damage scaling is unreasonable to say the least, since by high tier maps staying close to enemies is way to dangerous to be considered. Guess where the melee builds tend to stay? Offensive movement skills Another form of defense is movement skills, which are ironically all offensive. But moving quickly allows you to move out of the way of any aoe attack. Movement skills are nice to play around, except the times when they fail miserably and move you at random. Warrior can randomly bounce off urns and mobs to the side, while monk's flicker strike can just go from pack to pack until you end up doing one strike at a middle-most enemy of a big pack of magic monsters and dying surrounded. Even though using flicker strike was extremly satisfying for me, I stopped using it just because you can't stop this from happening. That feels downright like getting shot in the leg, and you know you are the one that pulled the trigger, even though you aimed the gun at enemies. Gameplay consequences All of this results in a gameplay of "I do three attacks and dodge roll out in case there is an explosion, wait for a while for explosions to finish, attack three times again". This sounds like the approach GGG wanted for the game until you find a better gameplay loop of "I move as fast as possible without actually focusing on mobs in case there are explosions", which does not sound like what GGG intended. I find myself focusing the most on the terrain and effects while mapping, without even looking at enemies, because moving fast enough to dodge everything is the priority and damaging enemies comes second. And I find that using ranged attacks is better for every possible scenario in the endgame, while using melee attacks is now a luxury which can be indulged at a risk of getting oneshot. Both of these reduce my satisfaction by a huge amount, because the idea of facing a foe in melee mortal combat is the appeal of melee build for me. And if I can't do that, what is melee build for then? To get a different set of ranged attacks? Possible solutions I cannot qualify as a game designer or a knowledgable player, even though I do game development as a hobby. But I can propose some solutions. Reduce on death effects. It makes sense that some enemies explode on death or leave a damaging zone. On death effects make the game harder and introduce an intresting mechanic to engage with. Abundance of modifiers that make mobs have on death effects when they otherwise would not - that is a burden and feels like it serves no purpose other than to make a killed mob be dangerous. On death effects target melee builds more and there is no counterpart that targets ranged builds the same way. Worst part of having too much of them is the fact that there are also a number of cosmetic on death effects, which makes you feel like you have been deliberatly trolled by developers. Time explosions around the mob. There are modifiers that create 4 explosions around the mob. That mechanic is literally the same as an explosion around the mob itself, except now you have to run further as a melee character. Instead of all explosions going on at once, it could be possible to time them, so standing in one place too long becomes dangerous. Explosions on top of enemies and explosions around the enemy. Explosions on top of enemies feel like a melee build being targeted. They are annoying, break the pacing for melee builds and do nothing against ranged builds. These modifiers have no counterplay when paired with shroud walker or a monster with teleportation or that moves too fast. Ironically, there is a modifier that creates explosions around the mob that stays on the ground, which is in every way more engaging and balanced while functioning the same way, while it can be countered by melee builds in a more meaningful way. Spawn damaging modifiers further from player. There is no reason for moving explosions that target the player spawn on top of enemies. Chaos plants modifier that spawn the same explosions does not appear on top of an enemy and that modifeir influences me just the same on ranged build as on melee build, while lighting mirage instantly starts exploding melee builds and on ranged build I would kill a mob and move on, whithout even acknowledging this modifier. Armor and evasion. Armor should get reworked to be better. That much is obvious. The same way grim feast should be nerfed to make energy shield be in line with evasion and armor. This does not fix the problem of explosions blocking access to enemies. edit: I think melee in terms of balance is insanely good even in endgame. The gameplay itself is usually extremely fun. The point of this thread is to highlight the feel of melee builds in endgame, where you have no couterplay to mechanics that break the pacing of the game and feel bad to engage with since there are too many of them. Last edited by GrayCubeU#2739 on Dec 28, 2024, 5:41:21 AM Last bumped on Dec 28, 2024, 9:09:37 AM
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Can't relate, feels great to me.
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Played warbringer and titan now playing monk. Play monk.
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" 100% agree with you. Just ignore the fact that other builds that can complete the same map 2-3 times faster than mace build, with 1.5 times tankier(ES good) and 150% IIR(ES builds don't need chaos res) at the same time. Of course melee is fine af. |
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" That sounds more like a they need tuning than melee needs tuning issue. It's obvious game design wasn't intended for that shit. |
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+1 Well summarized.
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" yep, nerf the rest builds to the ground to fit "the vision". sounds hilarious, but there is a part of me that agrees with this approach. According to the operating rules of the real world and Occam's Razor, I think GGG should make mace builds work more "efficiently". At least this is better than nerfing more than 15 skills and 6-8 classes. |
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" Obviously I can't. I'm just using common sense to reason about the possible results. I don't think anyone need a particularly high IQ to see that the performance of mace in the map is obviously "different" from other classes. To deal with such an unequal situation, GGG may adopt three approaches: 1.nerf others: a lot of skills and a lot of classes 2.buff mace: 2 classes, 3-6 skills 3.do nothing pretending all is good: definitely a bad idea. For me, based on common sense, 2 is a better solution. |
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+1
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