Best Path of Exile Melee Player(cArn_): The Problem With Melee & How to Fix It

rue is a cat

+1

It's sad how some of these aren't obvious and we have to ask them to put into the game but oh well

Melee already won the Act 3 race competition so they should nerf it imo.

I hope they do something about giants blood aswell. Warrior feels unplayable without that node, as far as i know. You are dying to anything in the game if you dont have shield, or you are not dealing damage with 1h maces. All warrior stuff balances around giants blood. Its like arch mage situation, those 2 nodes are must have, gives no option to player. Because warrior sucks anyway, its just not hot topic as archmage in balance considerations.

"

Blastyxx#5143 wrote:

It still doesn't prevent deaths and xp loss, there's a reason why there are less then 200 players who have reach lvl 100 on softcore trade so far.

i dont think i died with my monk after lvl 80 or something. 97 was enough for me to change builds. Its %99 time issue, rather than skill. Maps are not dangerous as they are in poe1.
There is a reason less than 200 ppl in softcore reached lvl 100 and the reason is there is no reason to reach lvl 100. unless you stream on twitch and advertising it.

"

Steelmage#5874 wrote:

Melee already won the Act 3 race competition so they should nerf it imo.

Stare

Anyone trying to discredit carn is hilarious. Hes not really good "because" he is a streamer.

Whenever you (on a melee build) 7/7 ubers in hcssf or full clear a gauntlet then you can talk about him.

If you're the average scrubcore player then you don't know anything about what it takes to do this kind of stuff in hcssf.

The lvl 100 in poe2 on a titan isn't what people are basing his skill level on.

Best can be objective, but I doubt anyone on this forum is better than him. He is certainly top 10 and probably top 3 if were being serious. Even though ben seems to favor melee, I don't really consider him to be a melee player because he will play whats best in a competitive environment. Carn will almost always play melee no matter how competitive it is.

As far as poe2 goes i quite enjoy the campaign on warrior. its around lvl 75+ where you start having problems. I've never been able to make it past 83 without ripping. always in t15s I get 1 shot by something from body blocking or terrain traversal errors. Basically trying to dodge roll and running into a rock or tree and getting shotgunned by ground effects.

Honestly 1h mace damage is actually fine, but only because HOWA is so broken. If you invest the extra strength needed by giant blood into int, you get enough added damage from HOWA to make up for a large chunk of the base damage difference between 1h and 2h maces. Furthermore the faster attack speed of 1h makes the added damage go even further. If HOWA is gutted in 0.2.0 then yes, 1h mace will need some buff.

i'd like to add my 2 cents to the topic of "melee animation while moving":
generally speaking, sure that would be great fun. hands down if they would have implemented it from the very beginning, designing the entire game around wasd movement (which would be necessary since m+kb players are already at a big disadvantage, this furthermore would just increase the gap between wasd and m+kb players to the point where you either had to make the game boring af for wasd players, or actually add difficulty settings so wasd players can crank the difficulty up, or well, just remove m+kb). yes please, that would have been great fun.

however:
please don't add that. it certainly will break the entire game in terms of melee being absolutely and completely op. like you'd have to completely overhaul everything, including making enemy swings make you follow for longer and like, just everything.
i try to make it short, but i don't want to exclude too many nuanced aspects:
i played games where you can melee swing while moving (i.e. 9 parchments), and it certainly is hella fun. BUT it must suit the game, and POE2 is way way too slow for that:

i love to basic attack, and i hope they'll add at least one character build/playstyle that isn't utter garbage outside of using their skills.

you basically are almost untouchable in melee vs melee combat if done right, with basic attacking, without requiring to move while attacking and no dodge rolling. the only exclusion are enemies that dash you (you often still avoid them), enemies with spears (they're too quick) and most boss attacks due to the aoe size/arc range and that. all you gotta do is hit, walk, hit, walk...
if you fight only a small grp, or even just one dude, don't walk away from them, walk in a circle around them. for as long as you get the timing right, you will always start moving away from your spot before their hit connects --> makes you almost untouchable.
and if you fight a big grp, well just move back, swing (have them walk into your swing while you start swinging "out of reach"), move back, swing, move back.. (keep in mind we still do have skills, this is just for highlighting why "melee attacking while moving" would make it completely busted unless they redesign a huge part of the game (animation duration for "window of opportunity" adjustments and so on)).

and here comes in the 2nd part, attack speed. quick heads-up: enemies have a wide variety of attack-animation duration and thus there is no real "hard breakpoint" in terms of attack-speed. quite lovely! it means you have to figure out yourself which enemies swing slow enough for you to get a 2nd hit in, or you having to move after every single hit.

this gameplay honestly is highly addictive. not only do you get 100% feedback wether you done it right, or died due to your own mistake, but you actually can fiddle around with your build in more depth. it's not just "let me add damage that at the end of the day, does nothing but changing some math in the background". it's more on the line of active building for specific purpose (again, enemies have a huge variety in attack speed, thus changing your attack speed changes the whole gameplay, depending on the enemies, and not due to some artificial breakpoints) because your attack speed actually matters a lot in direct gameplay.
also it is a highly responsive gameplay. you're not stuck in long-ass animations, you're not forced to do some shenanigans that more often than not won't line up naturally (talking about culling) until you're that late in the game so your screen is full of enemies and everything just "averages out".

being able to move while attacking would completely ruin everything. when you already don't get hit with "attack, move, attack, move", well there's no way it won't get boring when you can attack while moving. you literally will just "run and gun" them down with no possibilities for the enemies to ever catch you at all (except aoe and the occasional projectile that you walked back into).

and again, even if they would make this change, this almost certainly would mean m+kb playstyle must cease to exist in POE2, because you already can't compete even close to wasd. yes, also in melee you're just overall that much more quick+accurate in your positioning while already aiming at your enemy using wasd, which you just can't do with m+kb since you can not do 2 things at once with only 1 mouse. physically impossible. you can get close, but it's never gonna compete as it is right now. walking while attacking in melee, which often requires more than just "go there while attacking here", would just make it that much worse for m+kb players. are you guys sure you would want that? some folks here argue so "most poe2 players use m+kb anyway and that will not change in the future", and wether that's true or not, it certainly would exclude such folks from this game, or in the very least hinder them even more than they already are anyway.

imho, it was a giant mistake to go both ways of m+kb and wasd, and since GGG clearly wants to make money, and thus needs controller support, m+kb would simply have to go away. like this whole "we need to suit both, entirely opposite playstyle at once" is just a mess. not saying it's impossible, just that it's a huge mess and my hopes are low so it actually will ever be done properly. there are too many "noob-helper"/accessibility mechanics in this game to not make me think the dev's themself are neither experienced gamers nor have much clue of what hardcore gamers want. just too much accessibility and other crap, like namelocking, that no hardcore gamer would ever come up with. like who comes up with "target last hovered-above enemy > target at cursor". seriously, who can think of such a crap. certainly no experienced gamer.

edit: btw and those enemies that are too quick (spears and daggers), there's a good solution too. just do a feint, as in, get close enough so the enemy starts their animation, immediately walk back and then somewhat to the side and engage. while they stab too quickly for you to get a hit inbetween, they actually are animation locked for a very long time. you just have to make them stab/jump the air by feinting them. quite fun!
and again, if you think this only works in early game, well we still do have skills to deal with big grps. the above is solely intent to showcase as to why "moving while attacking" would make it op af.

"

Axterix13#5693 wrote:

"

Climet#7103 wrote:

> Improve the scaling of one-handed weapons to make them viable alternatives.

This is the problem with Giant's Blood. Not the 3x strength requirement. That's what makes it a keystone, that makes it change how you build.

But 1h maces feeling bad, that's what makes people feel they have to take Giant's Blood. And that's the problem.

And worth noting that other keystone nodes suffer from this "must have" feel as well. Acrobatics would be another key example of one that people feel they have to take, because the cost of not taking it is too high (slams will kill you).

3x str req means nothing because you have to build str to be able to survive on a hp based build anyway

it's insane how ggg missed such obvious design flaws after spending years working on poe 2

very good post. +1