Fixing Melee (Warrior/Mace)
" Nah, that's not Hayes. The thing to keep in mind is he's typically coming from a more MMO background. And there, you have the team dynamics, with a healer and a tank to keep the damage dealers alive, as well as fights that are typically a bit longer. So there, the damage over the course of the fight can't differ that much from one DPS to the next, provided both are filling the same role (say ST damage dealer). But that is over the course of the fight. A rogue will need to have higher potential DPS than a wizard, to compensate for positional requirements, time spent closing on the mobs, and likely having to spend more time avoiding mob mechanics. These things will mean that, in the end, the realized DPS will be about the same. For a single player game, the dynamics change. And it can go either way, depending on how easily mobs can be eliminated. If players can kill mobs quickly or easily keep the fight ranged, then ranged's benefit goes up, because bullets travel faster than players and the ranged type will not have to worry about losing potential DPS keeping the fight ranged, typically. And so melee then needs higher DPS per fight to compensate. But conversely, if mobs do not die fast and can generally close, then ranged characters are the ones that potentially need higher DPS, to compensate for being glass cannons. On the assumption that the ranged have less built in defenses, relying on the "don't let them touch you" layer of defense. The extreme of this being a tank build versus a glass cannon one. Or to put it another way, imagine if, in this game, ranged spells acted like Molten Blast, and stopped you from being able to freely move. This would drastically increase the amount of damage ranged types take, especially if enemies weren't super easy to obliterate, and consequently, change the entire risk versus reward dynamic. ES users in particular would suffer, since it would be much harder to avoid getting hit long enough for the shield to recharge while trying to deal damage. At the end of the day, it is a matter of balancing the risk versus reward and PITA versus reward. The higher the risk, the greater the cost of the risk, and the more annoyance you have to deal with, the greater the reward needs to be. Last edited by Axterix13#5693 on Feb 2, 2025, 10:36:58 PM
|
|
|
I think the slow mace needs some tools to move enemies to desired areas.
Currently what Ive seen mace builds have "increased area of effect" builds. "you can miss if you hit the entire map" A possible solution: Shield wall circle trap build? Yeah... there is a gem to turn shield wall into a circle, but there should be another gem to let Shield wall to be casted far away. 1. You trap enemies inside circle 2. BONK 3. ... 4. fun There are enemies who do this with players anyway. Shield wall would explode into enemies face for extra damage. And there are a few "gravity spell" that could be given to warriors. mages have gravity spells, warriors could have SMASH-terraforming, point is the same. A secondary question: Does spell cast effects or attack speed even mace skills? I play a warrior, but I chose a different build path because I felt the windup too detrimental... (and found more fun in a true masoch-- I mean thorn-shatter warbringer build) |
|
" I'm all about more ways to influence skills like that, but just focusing Shield skills won't do it. We definitely need ways to influence Wind Up speed, though, a handful of passives around Red and dotted elsewhere in the tree that affect Wind Up skills' use time would be an amazing idea. I'd already edited that in as an idea the other night to my OP. |
|
" Well... its an example option. But a two handed mace skill could be helpful too: Swipe: swinging your two handed weapon, slowing/rooting enemies and pushing them to position. Like directed "knockback" mechanic. Or not sure once all skill will be available I can imagine Maraduer with some net-cast ability or druid can have option. Lets not forget that we don't have our "neighbor class" skills unlike other available classes. |
|
" Don't forget, Marauder will be Axe based at its core, which will play (presumably) differently from mace. Only spells are not weapon reliant to cast. |
|
|
Thing I find interesting in all these posts (I've made several) is you get some warriors/mace bro's saying "nah its fine" - I mean I have a 90+ warrior, 90+ merc, 90+ monk, 80+ bloodmage etc.
With my warrior I can clear T16 juiced breach maps, kill bosses etc sure, but compared to (which is the important thing here "balance") my other classes it's an absolute torture machine. It's slow, it doesn't clear as fast or clear, it's damage out put single target is ok when you're alone but in the group by the time you drop a hammer the boss is dead etc. You can get decent life regen yep, not nearly as good as ES. You can get good life as a warrior but 1000's less than if you're a merc or bloodmage (wtf bro?) You can get decent armor, what is decent? You know to take a single white mob but that's about it. You can spec and max your block out which helps but then you lose a ton of damage. You can wear heavy armor but then you get penalities for movement which is ridiculous because you're a fucking strong warrior (or strength stacking class) The whole point of this thread and others, really is warrior can be played but it's slow and weak and squishy (unless you take off armor, put on a see thru dress and stack energy shield) - it needs a ton of work, they mentioned at the interview the morning of the patch conference it needs to be brough up A LOTTTTTT - I don't reckon it'll happen. The new weapons wont help much as the builds will still follow the same progression path unless they add a ton of new content to the passive tree. Damage nodes, life nodes, attack speed nodes etc, all the same lol just a different skill to click your mouse on. They could make some easy changes to make it more enjoyable for those who play it; buff the damage of stampede, shield charge, rolling slam, give the armour nodes a double or triple multiple of what they are now - this probably still wont be enough, add some higher life nodes on the warrior side or in the ascendancy the 15% adds like 500 to titan, thats less than the life cost of a level 18 skill with blood magic. Block needs a rework too, needs more love, less passives. TLDR; Warrior still sucks, needs massive buff. All other classes absolutely wreck it. Fact. Last edited by Sydneydonza#3078 on Feb 9, 2025, 7:34:06 PM
|
|
" I second this windup idea. Not sure if they would give us complete removal but even 75% would have me trying it out for sure. But that is EA give us it then we can test it, if its broken nerf it. At least that's how I thought this was supposed to work :D |
|
" This should be looked into. Last edited by Climet#7103 on Feb 13, 2025, 6:13:45 AM
|
|
|
- almost every increased damage map mod (even the phys one) hurts armour-based characters way more than any other class
- almost every rare monster aura is more dangerous to melee characters. Volatile flowers, detonate corpses, prevents recovery, lightning storms, temporal bubble, magma shield etc - many boss attacks that are deadly to life characters are basically freebies for ES - Armour break can absolutely delete your only defense and there's NO "you're about to die cuz no armour" indicator except for the small icon in the corner of the screen - 1 handed maces do zero damage unless you invest heavily into added damage on gloves and jewelry and most mace skills have added attack time so higher aps doesn't add much. At the same time giant's blood practically locks you out of better forms of defense than armour - it's incredibly difficult to build enough life regeneration and life leech sucks with maces due to low aps - strength characters can't even use charge infusion because it's a dex+int gem - life recovery from charge consumption is useless because it's instant. So it can only work as an emergency button BUT warcries aren't instant so it doesn't really work even for that. This is just the beginning of a long long long list. Melee can be very satisfying but it's just too underpowered. We need much better defenses, and by "much better" i mean BEST defenses in the game. |
|
" As I've said here and elsewhere, I am more than fine with us being slow, we just need the tools to make it work. of course, that also means GGG needs to do something to start hard capping mob and player top end speeds and drastically improve mob damage scaling in late game and with damage bonus mods (because SOMETHING has to be broken when a rare mob can do <200 damage to me and another rare on the same map of the same base mob type can do 2500+ with the same attack). I think part of the overall damage and defenses problem is that ES is just flat EHP without any cap beyond your gear and passives, while Armor and Evasion are logarithmic and cap out, neverminding that armor is weak against big hits and Evasion weak against any it fails to avoid. GGG needs to really reapproach some of this stuff. No matter what the approach, I think it's clear we need a lot of Life added to red and green sides of the passive tree (more on red arguably, especially baked in, with more dedicated green side so it takes more investment). Also want to agree on charges, Endurance feels utterly and completely useless in its current state because of how little provides it and how little it does in practice. Charges come off as nigh useless across the board right now except in a couple specific instances, so I didn't bother mentioning them or coming up with ideas to improve them. |
|
