Make Melee Great for Once

I have collected the following feedback items over the course of playing 3 characters, titan lvl85, pathfinder lvl75 and warbringer lvl35 just to see how it would feel to retry the melee from scratch.
A lot of players here complain "warrior" is bad, warrior is this, especially new ones who don't understand that the warrior or a starting class in PoE means nothing and can be basically anything you want it to be. So what does actually suck and what is bad with melee in its current state? It is Mace skills & Giant's Blood plus Strength stacking.

Let's list all the current problem with mace skills, armour and some of the skill tree problems, enemies and not obvious one but controls.

Monk or rather Staves skills are not true melee so I will not refer to those as melee in this post, only maces

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Controls

This one is not as obvious as you may think, while playing the first character(titan lvl85) I played mouse & keyboard only just like PoE1 while this was really the preferred playstyle for ages, I decided to switch to WASD on my pathfinder and later on warbringer. For whatever reason the game seems to feel so much better when played WASD than Mouse & Keyboard it was day and night difference in terms of an ability to avoid on ground effects, boss slams and just moving out of the way while still somehow engaging in combat.
While on pathfinder this type of gameplay is really good on a melee character it helps with movement but I cannot execute any attacks at all, clicking while attacking moves my character forward with WASD, while it should have attack animations for melee while moving as well. Why again range gets all the benefits and melee doesnt? I strongly advice all the melee players to try WASD just for the sake of comparison of the playstyle.

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Mace Skills & Mechanics etc.

Playing with maces feels like an either complete afterthought or you started development of the game with it to accommodate for the slower gameplay you aimed for and then you moved on to Monk and Staves and left it behind again, saying we fixed melee.

All the mace attacks are extremely slow and unrewarding, even after significant amount of attack speed investment. I tried to play with 2 1-handed maces just to see how it would go and I was stunned that all the skills receive 30% reduced attack speed, like why?

I understand that removing Life nodes from the skill tree was your choice and I totally agree with this, yet the amount of ES you can get on the tree just absolutely destroys any life based character I would ever try to build and if I did, I would probably also combine it with ES.

In the current state, the Giant's Blood notable is mandatory, it is not optional, it is literally mandatory since I need to stack Strength to get any Life at all.
2H Mace bases have so much more damage and better implicits than their 1H counterparts that it is comical to even think of using any 1H mace at all, since the damage is laughable.

Armour - I dont think I even have to mention this one, it is thus far the worst defense mechanic currently in the game, completely outpaced by EV/ES ranged characters who can just juke around and not get hit while I have to engage in close combat not being able to sustain at all. There are dozens of videos, posts etc. so won't go deeper on this.

Scavenged Plating - should also provide PDR 1%, and with 20 quality it should be 2% at max, this would allow me to jump in the pack get extra armour and PDR and be able to survive getting surrounded for bosses you can increase the stacks gained by breaking armour to half of the max value or scale it by monster power like warcries this way it is fair.

Time of Need - while it is great on paper, the healing and ailment removal it is gated behind quite big duration between the blessing. It feels almost unfair compared to the active way of working for Ghost Dance when ranged characters get hit they recover ES and I have to be on a mercy of "time between blessing". This should be changed to have 2 charges gained during the duration between blessings, when affected by ailment it would remove it and remove the charge and also when hit below when reaching low life it should trigger the healing portion. It is only fair when skills works actively protecting me just like for Ghost Shrouds.

Stun - there are quite a lot of things wrong with the stun mechanics currently, simply putting heavy stun duration is way too short or mace skills have to slow of a windup of their attacks to even benefit from the heavy stun damage bonuses.
Another thing is that there are no stun duration nodes on the tree. Compare that to Freeze, far more superior in every manner, last longer easier to apply etc.
Stun mechanic should only be allowed for the melee characters, or rather melee/slam attacks should build up the stun bar as it is currently is, while the ranged attacks should only get 1/10 of a build up, they are already ranged and should not get the inherent bonuses or same treatments.

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2 Worst Affixes

Now the contenders for the worst affixes that should be removed or restricted only to unique items just like they used to be in PoE1, as those are really considered lazy development, so what are those?

- Level of All XXXX Skills - this absolutely destroys any illusion of choice you may have had while selecting the items for your build it looks so lazy that is comical, any + to level of all skills should be removed from rares in the amounts they grant right now and should be reserved for the uniques
- Reduced Attribute Requirements - why is this still a thing? This is the most useless affix you can get with the highest weight that it just comes all the time when crafting

Now wait a minute "Reduced Attribute Requirements" is useless right? This is just means to get to the Giant's Blood ultimate mace guide of course. You grab yourself 2x 2H Maces with 40% reduced attribute requirements then +7 to Level of All Melee Skills and welcome to the ultimate Mace guide, +14 to Level of all Melee Skill gems. This is so lazy that I won't even comment.
All the skills in the game should should have their inherent level bonuses adjusted and that affix has to be gone, especially in such quantities. You said it yourself if something is so good that is mandatory then there is clearly something wrong and there is no choice.


List of additional problems below:

1) Bleed doesn't work on enemies with Energy Shield, I don't know if that is intended or is a bug, but this is literally build breaking mechanic that should not exist and bleed should be applied

2) All the mace skills that have a built in attack time, this is unacceptable hindering of the mace playstyle that currently is not really possible to be bypassed and should be removed in favor of scaling with attack speed.

3) Earthquake is really really bad, it is slow, clunky and in it's current state is one of the worst ones, here are some things related to it:
- 4s until explosion, what am I supposed do with it when I am fightning mobs or a boss that constantly moves?
- Jagged Ground is really useless, why would I need to slow movement speed of the enemies that I am already in range with, it should instead have up to 10% reduced action speed from the center of it applied ot the enemies near it
- Jagged Spikes cannot be detonated by warcries, missing supports I guess in Earthquake
- Detonating Jagged Spikes can only be donlt currently by smashing EQ and immediately following up with a Shockwave totem
- Also if i wait for so long why the damage of EQ doesn't scale off also the time until it procced the explosion? Only logical
4) Jagged Ground support doesnt work with Earthshatter, never creates Jagged Ground, neither around the spikes nor during the shockwave

5) Stampede, while the skills is good, the pathing is atrocious, it should have an absolute pathing going where my cursor is at and if encountering a wall or an obstacle triggering shockwave from that point. I caught myself going randomly way too many times.

6) Shield charge - why is there a cooldown? Also pathing again is random a lot of times

7) Perfect strike has terrible targeting and misses most of the time, hitboxes are very bad on a lot of bosses, please make sure that it hits the enemies in an approximate area however small

8) Honourless Notable favors all the stunned nodes with Immobilised, while it should also include Jagged Ground and Maim as there is only access to that close by: Change to 50% dmg to Immobilised and 25% to Slowed(Maim, Jagged Ground etc.)

9) Armor explosion technically consumes the armor but not in an explicit way, it should have 50% less duration of armour break on the affected mob, this would allow for better single target damage with fast attacks, why do I have to invest in a less skill duration to reduce it when the armour is broken. If the armour is broken I should be able to immediately start breaking it again.

10) Why the mana cost for the all the mace attacks is huge, you use sunder once and it is all gone and pop mana potion, it literally forces everyone to go Blood Magic for no reason every time

11) Gemcutter on most of the maces skills(e.g. Earthquake) provides no bonus until 10% threshold is reached each 5% should provide a bonus and reward players for upgrading gems

13) Aoe slams missing, how is it that my character cannot avoid aoe attacks or block them while mobs can and my attacks miss?

14) Titan extra storage should be changed to "Second Skin" - Armour penalty is reversed, with so much strength I should be able to wear my armour without movement speed penalty and benefit from it

15) Accuracy from melee attacks should always be 30% increased, this would help with build variety of melee characters and by melee I mean literally at the face of the mobs not Monk low-range playstyle which not true melee at all. Just like ranged characters losing accuracy the further away they are from the enemy, melee should get the closer they are to the enemy, capped at 1.2m distance

16) Surrounded Notable should have 2 effects when 5 enemies nearby or 1 and benefit melee to fight bosses and rares

17) 1 handed maces are bad, low damage, attack speed doesnt make much of a difference with lower end of a damage and 2H maces have better implicits, why not put the Splash Implict from 2H to 1H bases they are already far moer superior, even more incetifying usage of Giant's Blood.

18) Sunder doesn't break Armour even with Anvil's Weight ascendency node on Warbringer

19) Volcanic Fissure is extremely weak and barely deals any damage even with the shockwave, when leap slamming onto the fissures my leap slam dealt more damage than the shockwave so what is the point of using that skill if I can just use leap slam alone? Also the visuals of the shockwave are barely visible, it lits up a little bit but that's about it. Not sure if bugged?

20) What is with the constant knockback from larger enemies, if I have a lot of stun threshold it should not even tickle me and stopped their rolling attacks etc. Please allow Stun Threshold to also counter all the knockback/pushback effects, it makes no sense

21) Ignite is the worst ailment in the game, the damage is so low and bypassing ailment threshold to ignite a mob with 10dmg/s because of the resistances is absolutely worthless in its current state, surely you can use Perfect Strike, but this one guarantees an Ignite so don't count it

22) Enemies breaking my armour? How about enemies stealing evasion and ES? It is only fair you treat ranged characters just as equal as Melee.

23) Cast on XXX, why there is no Cast on Armour Break or Cast on Melee Heavy Stun?

24) Default Attack is better than any mace skills combined, so I guess you will nerf default attack right or will you buff the other skill?

25) Ranged mobs attacks within melee range should deal reduced damage unless it is a "grenade" or other explosion like skill, but not arrows and darts. Would be ideal to have up 45% decreased damage from projectiles fired at you in a melee range.

26) Jade Heritage node on the Warbringer is a bad design, the skill should absorb damage and allow me to move, why would I put myself out there being literally stunned? Also it should shatter dealing damage equal to the portion of absorbed amount.
Or make it situational where upon entering Low Life the skill triggers automatically preventing the damage and healing of the portion of the absorbed damage this way you can keep the "stunned" state.

27) Answered Call node on the Warbringer is very rng and very underwhelming, bonuses should be specified and consistent.

28) All the maces skills revolve around Armour Explosion support, again required support on all the builds only alternative that could be a contender would be Jagged Ground if not for being completely useless in its current state.

29) Earthshatter spike doesn't consistently explode while using a Warcry. It happens mostly when my spikes are around small crevices, or little terrain obstacles where the Warcry technically has the AoE but it doesn't trigger explosion. Also a lot of times using the Warcry instead of exploding the spike, it just disappears instead and nothing happens.

30) Endurance Charges - currently there is no consistent way to of generating Endurance Charges at all, it is either 20% chance with Armour break which is extremely low considering I have to sacrifice a support gem and another one is heavy stun. Heavy stun is bad in its current state especially when we talk about rares/bosses, there is simply no way to get the charges and the bonuses from the consumption only involve warcries and slight healing. There should be more ways of consistently generating them, why frenzy and power charges again are so much better for all the ranged/staves skills.

31) Culling Strike Support gem is kinda useless as the thresholds are very low and to add to that it only works with rares and unique enemies where most of the white trash mobs are the issue. If I sacrifice the gem slot is should cull the white and magic monsters as well otherwise what is the point?

32) Elemental Ailments & Damage - Again ranged characters have better access to the all the elemental ailments and damage plus stun mechanics on top of that. Warrior & Maces only have access to Fire which is the worst of all along with the ignite, why all the mace skills revolve around fire damage where all the other weapon types have access to all the elements so easily and the conversion to elemental is so much higher? On the warrior I am in a close proximity to ignite chance where on the mercenary I have access to "chance to inflict elemental ailments with projectiles" or 1 node to work with everything including stun buildup? Buff the fire damage notables and increase the fire damage conversion on the mace skills to be at least 80% not 60%. Why the Molten Blast has no melee tag or attack tag? What am I supposed to do with it? Weapon swap and travel to projectile nodes? Volcanic fissure -30% attack speed on dual wield and also 60% damage conversion to fire, it is just bad for dual wield, again go Giant's Blood since it is bad scaling, conversion and damage.

33) Artilery Balista is far more superior to the Ancestral Warchief Totem. It attacks in AoE, has a faster attack rate and hits more consistently, whereas Ancestral Totem is clunky, require me to put a skill to be used, meaning -1 support. Using slams with the totem is extremely underwhelming since all of them are so slow, sometimes the totem expires right in the middle of slam animation making it even worse. Totem should have more attack speed and better targeting which is impossible with fast moving enemies, also it should taunt the enemies in spawn. It would be good to have the totem have innate ability to create an Aftershock of the slotted slam abilities or splash damage of the strike skills. Plus all of them have a fixed attack time making it the worst use for the totem where it just wastes attack time.

They don't care. melee players struggled enough with bad tools they can't
ever get good treatment or else they become immortal gods.

This is what happens when you think balance based on professional gamers

Call it copium, but i think when we get axes/swords we will gain some faster attacking melee abilities then we can weapon swap to sunder and do massive damage to stunned armour broken bosses.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

Call it copium, but i think when we get axes/swords we will gain some faster attacking melee abilities then we can weapon swap to sunder and do massive damage to stunned armour broken bosses.

I know, I want to be able even after significant investment to swing my maces like feathers and now it is gated behind "While dual wielding attack speed is reduced by 30%". Plus without the shield you are just dead on leap slam arrival or rather slow-mo arrival coz it is also slow.

i think 35% - Reduced Attribute Requirements is a great stats

back in the old day of d2 this translate to 35% more life because you drop all point save in vitality

for poe2 this free all your gear to be stuck with Attribute but also free a lot of point from the skill tree
is so much freedom to get other bonus 212 x3 =636 - 35% =222.6 this free a lot of skill point and very powerful for other class to use giant blood


but yea melee are in a bad spot overall

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charley222#3935 wrote:

i think 35% - Reduced Attribute Requirements is a great stats

back in the old day of d2 this translate to 35% more life because you drop all point save in vitality

for poe2 this free all your gear to be stuck with Attribute but also free a lot of point from the skill tree
is so much freedom to get other bonus 212 x3 =636 - 35% =222.6 this free a lot of skill point and very powerful for other class to use giant blood


but yea melee are in a bad spot overall

The issue with that is, it provides a workaround for the commitment you should normally take by doing a certain build. How about just getting a better gear with more stats instead so you have a chase item or craft to do instead of cheesing it with lazy affix?

As a 91 Titan, I agree so much with everything you have written.
@GGG please fix melee (warrior).
And why the class have long damn animation for every skill?
Mon can just spam his skills while moving.... Warriors have to be standing like a statue to do anything.

And yes, pathing of Stampede and Shield charge is ridiculous.

As far as "Reduced Attribute" mods go I think it's handy during leveling and before your build has hit its peak.

Only today [I'm super slow] did I finally stack enough STR to hit the magic 636 [212 * 3] as well as to CAP all resistances including Chaos

this weapon only ask me 137 str mean all my character will use this weapon easy also i have the giant blood option, i free all my point in the skill tree also free all my gear from stats


https://imgur.com/a/679sHCB


show me what you have better

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charley222#3935 wrote:

this weapon only ask me 137 str mean all my character will use this weapon easy also i have the giant blood option, i free all my point in the skill tree also free all my gear from stats


https://imgur.com/a/679sHCB


show me what you have better

I'm not on the same planet as that bad boy .. LOL. I did choose to get go ahead and sacrifice gear affixes so I can wield 212 str REQ items one handed. At least this way I can wield any weapon that I want.

Plus I did get at least some life out of the STR so it's not like that's completely wasted either. Still the more you restrict yourself [on gearing, passive tree, etc.] the fewer options you have and the more expensive the "really good" options will be.

YMMV.