Dexterity, fixing Ranged vs Melee, fixing totems...etc Solutions. QARL & GGG PLZ READ

As well all know, STR and INT trump DEX. Lets look at what each gives:

STR - flat life, increased physical dmg
INT - flat mana, increased energy shield
DES - Accuracy, increased evasion rating


STR and INT increase your survivability by increasing your hit point pool. If you are life based, STR gives you flat life, which further plays on your increased life percentage passives. If you use energy shield, INT increases your energy shield.

Both allow you to take more dmg from any source. Be it physical, elemental, or chaos (bypasses ES ofcourse assuming you're not CI). It doesn't matter what build you are going for. If you use life, STR will increase your survivability whether you use evasion/armor/energy shield. If you use ES, INT will increase your survivability.

STR also increases your physical dmg. Doesn't matter what build you're going for. If you use physical dmg, and want to beef it up, STR can do that for you. INT gives flat mana. Once again, doesn't matter what build you're going for, if you rely on mana then INT can increase it for it.

Now lets look at DEX. It gives accuracy, and it increases your evasion rating. If you use resolute technique or spells, it's accuracy bonus does nothing for you. If you don't use evasion, then the evasion portion also does nothing for you. So you have a huge pool of builds that only use DEX to meet the equip requirements for their gems (grace/temp chains/lightning arrow/etc).

Dexterity looks you in the eye and says, "if you use resolute technique/spells/armor/energy shield then you have no use for me".

INT and STR increase general/primary survivability mechanics. You're life based and taking elemental dmg? You need resistance AND life. Taking chaos? or what about physical? Still need life. Energy shield based and taking physical or elemental? You need ES as well.

Taking physical, chaos, or elemental? How does DEX allow you to take more hits like STR/INT? It doesn't

This is the problem. Dexterity does not increase primary survivability.

STR and INT were designed to help armor and es builds more, in theory. Which is understandable, but overall they give your hit points a boost, allowing you to take more dmg.


SOLUTION

We've all heard of a "glancing blows" mechanic for evasion proposed several times.

GGG, you made evasion scale to higher numbers in the "evasion" patch, so to speak, but even still something is still missing.

Evasion heavy characters tend to have a ton of DEX. Which is funny cause evasion characters, especially evasion melee, need more life than their armor based counterparts. So they need more str than dex in actuality.

This is only because DEX doesn't increase their chance to take more hits.

I came up with a glancing blows formula that helps everyone. Yes, it helps everyone.

DEX needs to give general survivability, like INT/STR.

This is my glancing blows equation:

• { [Chance to evade against monster] + [Dexterity/7] }/2

Essentially, it's Glancing Blows = [Chance to evade]/2 + [Dexterity]/14


What is Glancing Blows?

Lets assume glancing blows = x, x is a percentage. What this means is if you would get hit, you have a x% pure rng chance to take (100-x)% of the dmg.

I'll give you an example. I'll use my character.

At lvl 76, I have 60% chance to evade, and 402 dexterity. I run through lunaris 3 in merciless to find Kole. Kole is lvl 67, so lets assume, due to scaling, my chance to evade against him, or any lvl 67-68 monster for that matter, is 62%.

My glancing blow against kole is

Glancing blows = [62]/2 + [402]/14 = 59.7%


What this means is if I would get hit by kole, or any lvl 67-68 monster, there is a 59.7& pure rng chance that I would only take (100-59.7) 40.3% of the dmg.

If I would get hit by a fireball from a lvl 68 mage, there is a 59.7% chance that I would only take 40.3% of the dmg.

If you're wondering, my character has a ton of dex, not only because my gear grants more than I need, but because i stay primariy in the ranger and lower half of the shadow portion of the tree. I've also taken every single evasion node in the ranger tree as well. I would like to stack more dex to help my survivability, but as we know DEX will not improve that.

"but isn't that a bit too much...."

No, my character is on the deep end. Most dex heavy characters are usually sitting at around 330 dex in their 70s, and with less than 60% chance to evade. In the same token they have more life than I do cause they pick up more str/life nodes. I used to have around 450 dex, but yeah....specced out of it to get....yep you guessed it, more str/life.

This helps everyone, but it is designed to help evasion/dex heavy characters increase their general survivability more than non evasion builds.

It's meant to be:

The more evasive you are, stacking dex and evasion, the higher your reflexes, and the less dmg you take from attacks that almost fully connect.

Non evasion builds come with a 5% chance to evade, so you'll have a 2.5% glancing blows chance by default. If you have atleast 280 dexterity, then that's a 22.5% chance to take 77.5% of the dmg, which would then be checked against your armor/es.

Evasion characters would still need life, but now atleast DEX would increase their survivability as a whole since they would take less dmg from hits overall. They can opt to stack more dex if trying to reach str nodes are not worth the cost.

The dexterity portion of the equation will remain the same, no matter what monster you're facing. Just like how the flat life gained from str and ES from INT remain the same regardless of the monster.

This will buff overall survivability, without actually buffing armor/evasion(again)/es.

Unwavering stance would remove your glancing blows. So if you take US as an armor character, you will never be able to make use of the glancing blows from dexterity alone.

The ranger's "+4% Increased evasion per frenzy charge needs a change" doesn't yield the same benefit as that granted by it's other counterparts.

Lets take a look:

Marauder: 0.2% of maximum life regenerated per second per Endurance charge
Witch: 2% increased spell damage per Power Charged

Marauder: If you are life based, or ES with Zealoths Oath, and use endurance charges then this will help you. Life regen helps life based builds, doesn't matter what build it is. If you use life and endurance charges, then this helps you. If you have 5 endurance charges at lvl 20 you'll have 1% life regen, and at lvl 70 5 endurance charges will still yield 1% life regen. The benefit is still constant regardless of lvl.

Witch: If you use spells and power charges, it doesn't matter what type of spell as long as you use spells and power charges, this will increase your spell dmg by 2%. All monsters will take 2% increased spell dmg per power charge. Regardless of whether you're facing a lvl 1 monster or a lvl 70 monster. It will take 2% more dmg per power charge. The benefit is still constant regardless the lvl.

This doesn't hold true for the ranger's version.

I'll use my character once again.

I have 59% chance to evade at lvl 76. I also have 7 frenzy charges. With all 7 frenzy charges I go from 59% to 60%. Against a lvl 75 monster. My evasion will still be 60%.

This means that I went from evading approximately 59% of the attacks, to evading 60% of the attacks. You see where I'm going? There is no benefit.

Why is there no benefit: The 4% frenzy charge is subject to evasion scaling, and because of how evasion entropy works.

Even if you used it and went from 50% chance to evade to 52% chance to evade, at 50% chance to evade you'll get hit-miss-hit-miss, and at 52% chance to evade you'll still get hit-miss-hit-miss.

Heck if you went from 50% to 54%, you'll still get hit-miss-hit-miss at 54% like you did at 50%. This is a byproduct of the entropy system.

In other words, the keystone yeilds no benefit. It actually does nothing, unlike the witch/marauder counterpart.

Not only is the node useless to you if you don't use evasion as a defense (unlike the marauder/witch which don't discriminate), even if you do use evasion it doesn't do anything for you as well.


SOLUTION

Dex is about avoidance, and being faster than your enemy. Avoidance doesn't have to mean evasion.

This node needs to be changed to:

+4% chance to avoid stuns and status ailments per frenzy charge.

This goes back to my STR/INT vs DEX argument. The STR/INT versions are broad and general, the DEX version is specific and even then it still doesn't help what it was specifically designed to help. Just like how DEX doesn't help evasion characters take more hits like STR does for armor characters, or INT does for ES characters.

This new version knows no discrimination, unlike the current node. If you want a higher chance to avoid stuns/status ailments, regardless of your build, and you make use of frenzy charges, then this node will help you. Just like how if you use life and end charges the marauder one will help, and if you use spells of any kind then the witch will help.

The ranger "+4% evasion" is subject to evasion scaling which, in turn with how entropy works, kills the node itself. 50% chance to evade yeilds the exact same result at 52 or 53 or 54 or 55% chance to evade. As does 59% and 60% in my case. No change or benefit for those it was designed to help.

As we all know ranged characters (bows/skills) can offscreen mobs without ever knowing what enemies they were firing out.

This is a huge advantage over melee as melee has to be closer, risking the possibility of retaliation.


SOLUTION

I can't remember the user who proposed this, but he said Point Blank should apply to ranged attacks, and yes this is the solution.

Point Blank BASED ON DMG EFFECTIVENESS per distance should apply to all projectile/ranged spell/attacks by default.

I'll expand on this a little further.

When you zoom out completely, your character lies in the middle of the POE game client. If you draw an oval, with your character as the middle, to the top/bottom/left/right side of the screen, that will be the point blank range. Any projectile (spell/bow) that goes beyond that range will have a damage effectiveness of 0.

Lemme use pictures to explain



That's the oval circle i'm talking about.

The numbers represent dmg effectiveness. If I shoot a freezing pulse, or fire an arrow, and an enemy is at the 50% range, my spell/arrow will be 50% effective. Meaning I deal 50% of my full dmg.

100% range is point blank 1.0. 60% range is point blank 0.6, and so on.

In the same regard, if I hit an enemy with freezing pulse, or an arrow, and they are the 0% range or beyond the circle, my freezing pulse/arrow till be 0% effective, or deal 0 dmg.

What this means is that no ranged spell user or bow, or projectiles in general, user can ever offscreen anything ever again.


If they want to deal more dmg, then they have to get closer, like melee, and put themselves at more risk.

This means unless they are point blank, they will never deal 100% of their dmg.

This will apply to all projectiles, spells and bows. So if you use lightning strike, for instance, as "melee"...well, you need to get much closer.

Point blank keystone/gem will reduce the range, and increase your dmg effectiveness by 50%.

The dmg effectiveness based on distance would also affect Life Gain On Hit and leech. So if you hit a monster at point blank 0.5 (50% distance), then your mana/life leech or LGoH will be 50% effective.

Ironically this also prevents ranged users from killing themselves from offscreen projectiles on reflect. If your projectile(s) travel(s) 3 miles and hit(s) a reflect mob at the other end of the map, well it will have a dmg effectiveness of 0% or point blank 0.0, so you deal 0 dmg and reflect 0 dmg.

Attacking from a distance allows you to not have to worry about having the same kind of defense someone who is in the thick of things is required to have.

This means, by default, ranged characters will always be at an advantage defensively. The best defense is not getting hit at all.

As such, up close melee need more defenses/life than ranged. This is a problem though because of how the skill tree is designed. You can't give melee more without making ranged even stronger.


SOLUTION

Point blank melee skill should come with a defensive/life buff on hit effect.

Point blank melee skills like Heavy strike, Flicker strike, dual strike, etc will all come with a buff to es/ev/ar and life.

Ofcourse, how effective the buff to es/ev/ar will depend on the skill.

Lets take heavy strike for instance. When you hit an enemy with heavy strike, you gain (just tossing numbers out there)

40% increased energy shield
50% increased armor
80% increased evasion rating

35% increased maximum life.

The buff will last for say 10 seconds. if you hit another enemy again the duration will refresh.

Each melee skill will come with it's own increased defense numbers as all melee skills aren't made equal. Skills like cleave, which gives incredible range that can be augmented will have the lowest defensive buffs. Glacial hammer which adds chill/freeze to enemies will fall in the same category as cleave. Lightning strike will only gain it's defensive buff on the melee hit.

The amount of es/ar/ev/life each melee skill gives on hit can be added to the lower left/right hand side of the skill's description in the form of 40ES/50AR/80EV/35LI (heavy strike for example). This way people know how much of what they will get when they hit with a skill.

Like so, on the lower right:



Since each skill has it's defensive buff, if you hit with heavy strike and then hit with cleave shortly after, cleave's defensive buff will override heavy strike's buff.

If you use a non melee skill (projectile/spell/totem), or use a bow for a skill that is bow and melee (frenzy/puncture) you lose the buff. The moment you a hit with heavy strike and attempt to attack with lightning arrow or fireball or cast a totem, the buff will be removed.

As long as you have a totem out, you cannot gain the buff. This separates a melee user who makes use of totems, and one that doesn't. I will address totems below, but you don't need the buff if you're spamming totems.

This will give melee users the added bit of survivability they need without buffing ranged characters.

Totems right now are freebies. There is no reason why you shouldn't be using one.

The difference between characters that use totems and ones that don't is night and day.

Totems pull all the aggro so your defenses don't come to question. You simply just attack the enemies while they pulverize your totem. Without totems you take 100% of the dmg all the time and pull all mobs to you. There is nothing to soften the blows.

This one of the reasons dual sporker is so strong. They can have terrible defenses and still survive. This is the reason why they can stack MF up the wazoo and not feel a decrease in survivability.

At the same time, totems are too much of an easy button and require no thought. There is absolutely no reason to not have one out AT ALL TIMES. If you've played in groups all you ever see is decoy/spark totems out 24/7.

People dont even know what stacking defenses are, cause spamming totems are the only defense u need.


SOLUTION

Totems should be subject to a double point blank mechanic. Point blank from the caster, and point blank from the enemies. Players should also take a portion of the dmg totems take.

First, the caster of a totem should take 50% of the dmg the totem is taking. This will be checked against your armor/ev/es. The dmg can be evaded/blocked/dodged/spell blocked/spell dodged. If you have Ancestral blood, the dmg taken is reduced to 10-15% of the dmg your totems take. In the case of skillie/zombie totems, the totem that summoned the skellies/zombies should be linked to them, and take 100% of the dmg it's summons take.

You should share the same ailments your totems take. If your totem is shocked/frozen/chilled/burned/punctured/etc, then you will be shocked/frozen/etc for the same duration as your totem. The duration of the ailment will end when it ends on your totem.

Totems should also come with a built in double point blank. What do I mean by double point blank mechanic? First off, if you haven't already, plz read the "How to address the ranged vs melee disparity: OFFENSE", as this explains the point blank mechanic i'm going to be using.

Double Point Blank: The dmg effectiveness of an offensive totem that uses projectiles should be affected by the multiplicative dmg effectiveness of totem's distance from the enemy, and the totem's distance from it's caster.

Here's the picture I'll use to explain



The monster is at a distance of 10% dmg effectiveness from the totem, or Point Blank 0.1. The caster of the totem is at 50% dmg effectiveness of it's totem, or Point Blank 0.5. The dmg the monster will take is the "multiplicative dmg effectiveness of the totem's distance from the enemy, and the totem's distance from it's caster". At these specifies point blank ranges of 0.1 and 0.5, the totem will have a dmg effectiveness of [(0.1 x 0.5) x 100%] 5%. So it will only deal 5% of it's dmg.

The dmg the monster will take is calculated from when the projectile was released and at what Point blank ranges the totem was from the caster and monster. So if the monster in this example moved up to 50% range, or Point Blank 0.5, and got hit by the projectile, it would still only take 5% of the totem's dmg cause the dmg of the projectile it got hit by was calculated when the monster was at 10% range, or Point Blank 0.1. The same applies to the caster. Moving closer before the monster gets hit won't chance the dmg of the projectile that hit's the monster as the projectile dmg was calculated before the caster moved.

What this means is in order for a totem to deal 100% of it's dmg at all time, the caster has to be close to the totem (100% range or Point Blank 1.0), and the monster has to be close to the totem as well (100% range or Point Blank 1.0). In this case the multiplicative dmg effectiveness of the totem will be [(1.0 x 1.0) x 100%] 100%

This means a totem can never offscreen kill anything 4 rooms over like dual sporkers can currently do. If the user isn't close to the totem, the point blank range between the user and totem will scale the dmg down drastically even if the monster is point blank 1.0 of the totem. If the caster can't see the totem on screen, then their Point blank will be 0.0. Meaning even though the monster is Point Blank 1.0, because the caster is too far, the monster will take 0 dmg.

Lighting up an entire map with spark bolts won't do anything anymore. If the caster is point blank 1.0 range from the totem, the projectile spark bolts would have gone so far that they would be at point blank 0.0 from the totem. Meaning the monsters on the other end of the map getting hit by the sparks you released at the very beginning take [(1.0 x 0.0) x 100] 0% of the totems dmg.

A totem user cannot place a totem and run 3 miles away only to return 30 seconds later and see the room + 4 adjacent rooms cleared in the process. You want to deal more dmg? Then there has to be more risk. The monster not only has to be close to your totem, but you also have to be close to your totem as well. More risk, more reward.

So:

The caster of a totem takes 50% of the dmg it's totem takes. If you have ancestral blood the dmg taken is reduced to 10-15%. Summons (skeletons/zombies) created by totems transfer 100% of the dmg they take to the totem.

You share ailments with your totems. Stun/freeze/shock/burn.

Totems are subject to a double point blank mechanic. Point blank between caster, and point blank between monster.

There are 3 way a melee character can arm himself:

1-handed weapon and a shield
Dual Wield (2 1-handed weapons)
2-handed weapon

Each was designed to have a specific design.

1h + shield = Offensive and defense
Dual Wield = More offense, less defense
2H weapon = Only offense

1H + shield is just about right. The problem is dual wield and 2H weapons. Dual wield comes with dual wield block chance, and an attack speed bonus. 2H weapons come with nothing, and the general idea was that you "deal more dmg in exchance for offense".

There are certain skills that break this rule

Dual strike and Cleave (ele cleave to be more precise)

Ele Cleave adds the elemental dmg of both weapons together. So even though you're only cleaving with one sword visually, dmg wise (mathematically), you're holding both weapons in 1 hand and cleaving with them. This is a problem cause 2H weapons have the same mod pool as 1h weapons. So in other words, a dual wielding ele cleaver has 2x the elemental dmg as a 2H ele cleaver. This wouldn't be a problem if cleave reduced ALL DMG by 40%, but this isn't the case. It's an easy fix, but as of right now cleave breaks this mold.

Dual strike uses the dmg of both weapons to strike the enemy. 2 1-handed weapons, when added together, can easily surpass that of a 2H weapon. This wouldn't be a problem, if dual wielding didn't grant an attack speed bonus AND 15% dual wield block.

The mods from 1 weapon, like LGoH/life leech/mana leech/stun duration/crit multiplier/etc also apply to the other one. Take 5% leech on a claw. This applies to both the claw and the other weapon, even though the other weapon does not have 5% leech.

POE is filled with burst dmg, so much so that 2H weapon users are almost extinct. When ever you see someone using a 2H they are 99,9% if the time using Lightning strike (2H sword) or groundslam (2H mace).

Why ranged attacks? Cause with no added block chance, like that of DW and 1h+shield, you take so much dmg. To avoid this, you simply use ranged attacks.


SOLUTION

2H weapons are all about offense. So why don't they come with a parry mechanic?

Parry: When using a 2-Handed weapon, there is a 20% chance to reflect 50% of the dmg you take back to it's source as AoE.

The reflected dmg uses your stats and is subject to your leech/LGoH/crit/chance to freeze-burn-shock/etc.

This way, you still take the dmg, but you can also parry some of it back to the attacker.

This isn't about anything balance related but more so about removing knockback from heavy strike.

I understand you guys want to give skills special effects, and in the case of heavy strike, "knockback on hit".

This is a great idea, but the knockback cause the player to desync.

So plz, for the love of all thing running smoothly, remove knockback from heavy strike for the time being till knockback desyncing is fixed.

Please and thank you.

+4% Increased evasion per frenzy charge needs a change: You continue to have a poor understand of evasion entropy. However, I actually think your suggestion isn't a bad one; as I said in the last paragraph, the problem with evasion is stuns, and to a lesser effect status ailments. Pretty decent suggestion, despite the poor reasoning.

Heavy Strike: I'm not worried about the desync so much as the anti-synergy: if you're melee, why push the monsters from you? Either they should remove the knockback like you suggest, or increase the melee range of Heavy Strike such that you're not continuously moving up on melee monsters when you're using it (unless you're attacking so fast they can't move back within close range in time).

Making Dexterity a primary survival stat like INT/STR: Evasion is a survival stat; it might not let you take more hits, but it does let you take more attacks (by making some of them not hits). You, like so many others, are stuck in a fantasy world where the fact that you can evade half the attacks doesn't matter to you, you're just focused on one-shots when big hits are actually what evasion is good with (it's smaller hits and stunlock that's the real problem).

How to address the ranged vs melee disparity: OFFENSE: Couldn't disagree more. I have noticed a few instances of monsters taking damage and not moving; we do need to fix that, so that damaging any monster draws aggro instead of being safe. However, that doesn't mean we should turn this into a game where essentially every character is a melee character. Instead, the answer is in the damage effectiveness stat; simply put, a ring that adds 5-50 Lightning damage should add maybe 4-40 damage to an arrow attack, while adding perhaps 10-100 Lightning Damage to a melee skill. It's downright silly that off-weapon damage adds to many melee skills no more than it adds to ranged.

How to address the ranged vs melee disparity: DEFENSE: Hate this idea. You know how it's frustrating to manage endurance charges with Enduring Cry? I don't want to see more mechanics that grant temporary defensive buffs, because I don't think buff juggling is fun.

Making totems more risky, which in turn also addresses dual sporkers: This is a misguided suggestion, because totem offense isn't all that great. 40% less damage which you can't get around. 30% reduced attack/cast speed, which means you add Faster Casting and go from -30% to +19%, toss in some more speed from passives and gear to get to around +50%, it's really only 1/6 less damage so you end up doing 50% damage per totem, two totems to 100%, same as non-totem.

The problem is their tankiness; totems are too good at absorbing monster aggression on behalf of their casters. I've noticed myself that the life of Spell and Ranged Attack totems increases as they gain levels, and that by endgame they can tank more hits than they should. We should cut totem life by about 35%, and expand the Minion Life gem to be Minion and Totem Life, so that players can have totems with pre-nerf Life values if they're willing to commit to it (0.65*1.64=1.06, for 20q support). The totem life passives also need nerfing; 22% is a lot, 10% (as with minions) wouldn't be crazy, I'd go 15% since there's only two totem life nodes.

Less life on totems also means they kill themselves faster with reflected damage, another big incentive for using totems.

2-Handed Weapons: You don't parry with two-handed weapons, you parry by dual-wielding. Parrying is completely out-of-flavor for two-handers. I think the solution is to offer the old fan favorite of allowing two-handed weapons to be wielded in one hand, in keystone form, with an appropriately strong drawback to make up for the triple 6L; I'd go with "Cannot use non-Attack skills," which means no auras and no curses to fill all those extra sockets.

In the long term of how things work in this game, armor and evasion are equally as effective. 10000 evasion provides 50% evasion, and 30000 armor provides 50% protection (according to the sheet at least) Over a long, long period of time, evasion and armor will balance out to where each user has taken an equal amount of damage... but evasion actually has additional modifiers on how it handles damage that make it better than strength in a field test. Namely crit avoidance. Where if you assume a mob has a 5% crit chance, evasion will wind up taking approximately 6% less damage over a string of 10000 blows... Even more if elemental damage is concerned! While an armor character would be reducing 100 physical damage by 50%, and the evasion character would be reducing it by 50% a hit (by only taking every other hit)... if the target starts doing elemental damage of any sort.

100 physical, 100 elemental.
Armor char takes 50+50 physical, and 25+25 elemental (after resists)
150 damage taken.
Evasion char takes 0+100 physical, and 0+25 elemental.
125 damage taken.

When elemental is added to the mix, the evasion character instantly becomes superior.

The issue with evasion is that without HP bonus's, even with 95% dodge chance, the crit that finally gets through will kill you in one hit. Even if the possibility of being hit by that crit is 0.25%... it eventually will happen and kill you.

Your glancing blow formula would simply reduce the probability of being killed in one hit to 0.0125%... which means that the biggest perceived issue with evasion would not be resolved! On top of this, it would -heavily- weight defensive power into the hands of evasion, because a vast majority of the time you'd be reducing the damage you take by 95%. Even if you cut this value to a fifth of that, you'd be taking 20% less damage on the 1 in 20 blows that get through. This would just make evasion the new armor :P Especially if it applied to spells, or elemental damage on attacks.

It's even worse if a glancing blow is made garentee'd, because that's what armor does already! Since mathematically, evasion is already favorably better than armor, giving it even more advantages such as dramatically reducing the amount of damage the blows they do take do, would simply overpower the stat and make it too desirable.

I know where you're coming from though, I initially thought less of evasion than it was worth too! (http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/409374)

You're correct. This does NOTHING. And it's because it's got a stupid choice of wording. Want me to reword this for you? "Increases dexterity by 20 per frenzy charge." As we know. increased is added to other increased modifiers. So if you have 500 dexterity, and 100% increased evasion from the tree, than you already are at 300% base value. Going from 300% to 312% with 3 frenzy charges is... well? Worthless.

The only thing that needs to be changed is the skill needs to become a "more" modifier. So that 3 frenzy charges would instead take you to 336%. 7 charges is all the way up at 384%. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this would mean the difference inbetween the buff being "from 59% to 60%" all the way to "from 59% to 66%", and that's actually a pretty big deal! You've went from "hit miss" on average to "hit miss miss". I honestly feel the same change should be made to the increased spell damage directly behind power charges.

I ran a thread sometime ago about point blank.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/402424
In this thread I went over the mechanics of Point Blank, and found that in most combat situations point blank is only a damage boost. It would generally only make spells more effective than they already are, and frankly is a drastic boost to their power once the playerbase gets used to it.

This idea would be such an obscene buffer to a melee players stats, that I'm unsure of if it's actually a wise idea. I've got nothing solid to stand on there. It simply doesn't sit well with me. I'd much rather see defensive boosts giving directly to melee passives, both promoting offense and defense boosts for melee in the form of skill nodes a ranged class can't make use of. Especially because in those conditions melee wouldn't be constantly losing a large chunk of their EHP inbetween battles.

Hold. The Fuck. Up. 50%?! Totems would be unusable for anyone except ancestral bond (especially with the above change to defense proposed.). The last thing a melee user needs is to get one-shot because their totem was attacked, and it's the last thing a ranged user needs either. This would just immediately kill any totem user. Especially if sharing status ailments, because totems have lower life totals than the player to work with! Noone would touch the things again. ever. I can promise you that.

In blizzard games, turret skills (such as Turret for Demon Hunter, or Hydra for Wizard) simply stop attacking if the player gets more than 1 screen away. That's all that must be done here to help balance risk and reward.

Those. Those are the issue. Not two handed weapons. Otherwise the three melee specs are relatively balanced in their risk reward. The only issue being that two particular dual wield specs fuck up the entire balance. Rebalancing those two skills is the best way to achieve balance.