I'll be streaming the announcement of 3.25 tomorrow evening so be sure to give me a follow over on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/lolcohol Great clip from Carn explaining what he thinks Melee needs: www.twitch.tv/carn_/clip/ObliviousRoughHeronPJSalt-xcvYncMaU0a5RWqI?filter=clips&range=24hr&sort=time
"Has 1 socket. You are under the effect of socketed Ancestral skill. Cannot use socketed Ancestral skill." It feels so shit to have to always cast totems as a melee user
In most other games, melee simply get the "more tanky" approach to compensate all the lacking it has vs ranged, inherently. I'm a firm believer that its should be the case in PoE too.
Actually the devs attempted to do this with the Fortify buff when it was first introduced, however that led to casters using "melee" weapons, typically caster daggers, and attaching fortify to whirling blades.
yeah kinda like that but innate for melee build. But i guess with how complex PoE is today, it's hard to differentiate which one is actually melee without accidentally making other non melee skills broken
Well, we had stun as a mechanic for melee. And all they did to it is just removal it as a viable thing. Tbh, i dont think they even care at this point and see poe1 as a testing ground for ideas
rage generation will be implemented into base of melle skills, and some other buff I cant imagine just yet also totems for 2h would mean 1h are useless
@@Elunvira or make it so 1H = fast attacks -> option for scaling block, armour, evasion and es (shield stuff) or dual wielding for more crit crit multi or smth
@@skyler1469 well thats what the entire theory craft was about DW or 1H + shield would ofc. need to be on the same level as 2H and totem DW or 1H + Shield would just be either more offence or defence with strike skills where 2H would be maybe heavier but slower hits compared ヾ(•ω•`)o
Forget totems altogether. Make two handers get a weapon sheath for your back, for stats like a quiver. Could work with staves as well since you would carry your weapons on your back when not in use.
2H-intended skills should be slow, massive damage skills. Therefore, skills like Earthquake should have an inherent -IAS modifier, and trade that for the biggest more multipliers in the game. "Hit hard, hit once" should actually be a thing when you invest in these skills. You could even do something where you invert a calculation where the more you lower your attack speed, the bigger that modifier gets.
Maybe the implicits of the new side hand for 2h melee are all OP, like 10% more damage/attack speed, 7th support socket, attacks cause chain explosions or using melee attack causes character to leap at target, while adding melee friendly mechanics to bosses. Take Grim Dawn for example, the first act boss has a mechanic, which is his most deadly mechanic, where he shoots a machine gun crossbow at you, but he will only start shooting it when you are out of melee range. So, adding in the proximity mechanics, which would make it tougher for ranged unless they facetanked, and give melee a chance to shine.
Melee feels good when there's tactical decisions involved. But in PoE's case, you're mostly one-shotting packs in maps, or running around dodging stuff in boss fights, unless you build for tank and just facetank bosses. In both these cases, ranged just has much more advantages then a melee build. When the goal of these types of games is to kill as much and as fast as you can, melee just becomes one-dimensional.
regardless how broken you make melee, all strike skills just feel bad except for maybe flicker. Having to walk up, chase mobs around, and basically requiring ancestor call effects (in most sceanarios) and becoming animation locked is really unfun. I would like to see all strike skills move you around or maybe even combo after movement skills and always have a form of inherent AoE like molten or static strike
Behead support is really fun. It's what makes melee worth for me, as a casual player. The best part, in comparisson to HH, is that the buff get's refreshed. I wonder why more people don't use it. But I really, really would like that the skill gems could scale damage better. Yes, there are pretty high damage melee builds out there. But decent damage and tanky is really rare. And bellow 30 div budget? I don't think I know one. Ranged builds in the other hand, are far away from their foes. They don't need to have as good defenses to be able to feel good. Edit: If not that, a big and fat increase in the base AoE by 100% of all gems (at very least). That would fix... But I don't know if it would be that 'melee' at that point... The aesthetic would be cool tough. All melee builds with huge Aoe look fun
the biggest problem of melee is that it is melee. why in war, we use gun instead of sword : both can kill, but one can kill from far. why in middle age, both sword and bow were used : because bow was near ineffective against armor. but despite the sword being far more effective, because of the melee, bow was also used. so 2 solution : - have the melee doing 3+ time more damage than distance builds - have the melee able to kill from far/in big area. (so not really be melee)
i mean they could just have an explode mod, like enemies killed my melee attacks or explosions explode for 50% hp. boosts melee clear. make movement skills much much better, but only on investment. so for a lot of melee dmg nodes just add +500% incr action speed with leap slam or something. so non melee builds are slower as well. buff behead support, add like awakened behead that is essentially headhunter, but kinda better. buff fortify to like 50% less dmg taken. make all ancestral totems into one and then make that totem an aura, maybe amcestral aura. there, fixed melee for you.
Tried ssf for the first time a couple weeks ago cause the league sucks and followed your raider ls guide and I made it to t16s and cleared most of the atlas. Started messing w it before all the dead totems in the teasers. I'm huffing the copium hard that it gets buffed w the patch notes. If melee is really getting the love we're assuming, I'm definitely league starting it. Thanks for the guide, so nice to enjoy a fun build that's off meta. Newer player and kinda sick of the meta already 😅 GGs!!
crit builds are meh with the amount of crit resistant mobs and mods. I would take PT build over crit build anytime unless the dmg difference is 5x, which it cannot be. Slams should always hit, since they aoe spells also always hit.
Fortify lasting 6s baseline is just bad. Whenever you are bossing, you have to make your build work without it. Think about it, would the game break if it was 30s and therefore be reliable? Let me spec duration + damage when fortified and it will become infinitely better.
If you buff two handed weapon.... Nobody will play Dual because now you have a big weapon + a Totem, but Dual only get an other crappy weapon. Unless you give all skill you can dual damage from both weapon every time.
please discuss the Raider class considering it has been changed to Warden and also whether you can still play lightning strike Warden, since you said it was the skill you liked the most in POE
There's a fundamental way to balance melee versus ranged attack, that strangely I've never seen in an ARPG and actually makes physical sense. Ranged accuracy needs to be penalized / Melee should benefit more from accuracy, anyone that has shot an actual bow knows this. Makes sense in game, makes sense in real life. Then, if you want to hammer it down make melee have a higher inherit critical strike multiplier. Yes you can outright take someone out with an arrow if you manage to hit it in the throat but but now imagine you get hit in the throat with a two handed axe... now that's a critical strike.
technically hammers should not be blockable instead it should work like glancing blows - mob gets hit by huge hammer and blocks? Too bad 50% damage goes through. Slams should always hit, since its "skillshot" like icenova/glacial cascade.
I saw a BigDucks video not too long ago that he was using molten strike of the zenith on a trickster to burn down uber bosses in practically a flash. If melee gets unparalleled single target damage coupled with unique defensive mechanics, it may be very viable as a bossing build, and depending on link setups, might also be decent at mapping if you go molten strike for single target and frost blades for clear.
how about a keystone that ables you to wield 2handers in one hand but with some random downside like 25% less effect of modifiers from left hand or something.
Wouldn't make more sense to just buff melee skills with higher multipliers. Personally I hate to have to play totems to even try to do a Boneshatter build
that or buff mods on melee weapons again, so 2h mods are again better than bows, we have problems with xxx stacking being overpowered already, so my change would buff the "weak archetypes" and not stuff like strength stacking.
@@Scroapy I still believe that melee should have higher damage than ranged, in ARPGs you are supposed to dodge stuff, 99% of the time you cant, so instead of buff on "melee weapons", buff for melee, Close Combat Support stuff
I hope not. I mean even fantasy needs some realism to avoid the uncanny-valley feel. I mean the char is holding a 2H, yet we still need totems, but as an off-hand. Yeah no. Sorry. I'd rather stay the same. Because what if someone wants to do a DW setup? Now we're bound by these items, and who knows how rare a drop these would be or to craft if these are implemented? At least with a Bow, the quiver makes sense. I won't totally shit on this idea, but the whole dependency on something else to be viable as a melee character is what doesn't sit well with people. Why not just buff the damn skills to what they would be like with the totems setup? Just keep it simple, at least for melee.
What about damage effectiveness, hmm? Melee skills that are ranged? Mathil? Okay, I‘ll stop fooling around. Itemized totems as well as a dual wielding buff would be a way. Another idea I had to give melee more identity in tandem with a buff is in-built Point Blank for all melee skills. That way even the screen-filling attacks would be more effective in an enemy’s face… Y‘know, melee. The outlier skills that are great even now could be nerfed to be somewhat on par with everything else.
I have been asking for a better movement skill for a while now and after Epoch added the small dash I think that would help melee a lot. Maybe there could be other skills that you actually socket and press to make melee combat more engaging, even better if these could animation cancel attacks Dodge roll - small dash with some dr Parrying - prevent damage if timed properly Blocking - prevent damage but with a cooldown/stamina/resource gauge
Idk how you can ever make melee actually "good" in poe1 melee is the antithesis of poe1 gameplay. Efficiency is always the end goal, so having to go up to every single mob to kill them is gonna take WAY longer than any ranged gameplay Basically every "melee" build now specs towards giga aoe or mobility to close that gap with ranged. this is one of the main reasons poe2 split off to be its own game, to give them a chance to fix fundamental issues.
I'll be streaming the announcement of 3.25 tomorrow evening so be sure to give me a follow over on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/lolcohol
Great clip from Carn explaining what he thinks Melee needs: www.twitch.tv/carn_/clip/ObliviousRoughHeronPJSalt-xcvYncMaU0a5RWqI?filter=clips&range=24hr&sort=time
"Has 1 socket. You are under the effect of socketed Ancestral skill. Cannot use socketed Ancestral skill."
It feels so shit to have to always cast totems as a melee user
In most other games, melee simply get the "more tanky" approach to compensate all the lacking it has vs ranged, inherently. I'm a firm believer that its should be the case in PoE too.
Actually the devs attempted to do this with the Fortify buff when it was first introduced, however that led to casters using "melee" weapons, typically caster daggers, and attaching fortify to whirling blades.
yeah kinda like that but innate for melee build. But i guess with how complex PoE is today, it's hard to differentiate which one is actually melee without accidentally making other non melee skills broken
I dont want to be tanky instead of doing big damage just because in this game tankiness is not really fun.
Well, we had stun as a mechanic for melee. And all they did to it is just removal it as a viable thing. Tbh, i dont think they even care at this point and see poe1 as a testing ground for ideas
rage generation will be implemented into base of melle skills, and some other buff I cant imagine just yet
also totems for 2h would mean 1h are useless
could just make the scaling for 1 handers be better than 2 handers
@@Elunvira or make it so 1H = fast attacks -> option for scaling block, armour, evasion and es (shield stuff) or dual wielding for more crit crit multi or smth
It wouldn't, shields are very powerful. It would just mean dual wield is useless, which it basically has always been
@@CobusGreyling shields are there to compensate for base power of 2h
That bows have quiver is what it is ,,😅
@@skyler1469 well thats what the entire theory craft was about
DW or 1H + shield would ofc. need to be on the same level as 2H and totem
DW or 1H + Shield would just be either more offence or defence with strike skills
where 2H would be maybe heavier but slower hits compared ヾ(•ω•`)o
I mean for 2handers that is a fine addition. But fixing melee should also include dual wielding.
A shield on the back with 50% effectiveness can also work great
Melee also needs more counterattacks, parrying, and some sort of power gained when hit.
@@Pshaurk Vengeance already exists. and it can give rage when attached to rage support. so those things are already in the game.
Forget totems altogether. Make two handers get a weapon sheath for your back, for stats like a quiver. Could work with staves as well since you would carry your weapons on your back when not in use.
2H-intended skills should be slow, massive damage skills. Therefore, skills like Earthquake should have an inherent -IAS modifier, and trade that for the biggest more multipliers in the game. "Hit hard, hit once" should actually be a thing when you invest in these skills. You could even do something where you invert a calculation where the more you lower your attack speed, the bigger that modifier gets.
Maybe the implicits of the new side hand for 2h melee are all OP, like 10% more damage/attack speed, 7th support socket, attacks cause chain explosions or using melee attack causes character to leap at target, while adding melee friendly mechanics to bosses.
Take Grim Dawn for example, the first act boss has a mechanic, which is his most deadly mechanic, where he shoots a machine gun crossbow at you, but he will only start shooting it when you are out of melee range. So, adding in the proximity mechanics, which would make it tougher for ranged unless they facetanked, and give melee a chance to shine.
Melee feels good when there's tactical decisions involved. But in PoE's case, you're mostly one-shotting packs in maps, or running around dodging stuff in boss fights, unless you build for tank and just facetank bosses. In both these cases, ranged just has much more advantages then a melee build. When the goal of these types of games is to kill as much and as fast as you can, melee just becomes one-dimensional.
regardless how broken you make melee, all strike skills just feel bad except for maybe flicker. Having to walk up, chase mobs around, and basically requiring ancestor call effects (in most sceanarios) and becoming animation locked is really unfun. I would like to see all strike skills move you around or maybe even combo after movement skills and always have a form of inherent AoE like molten or static strike
Behead support is really fun. It's what makes melee worth for me, as a casual player.
The best part, in comparisson to HH, is that the buff get's refreshed.
I wonder why more people don't use it.
But I really, really would like that the skill gems could scale damage better. Yes, there are pretty high damage melee builds out there. But decent damage and tanky is really rare. And bellow 30 div budget? I don't think I know one.
Ranged builds in the other hand, are far away from their foes. They don't need to have as good defenses to be able to feel good.
Edit: If not that, a big and fat increase in the base AoE by 100% of all gems (at very least). That would fix... But I don't know if it would be that 'melee' at that point... The aesthetic would be cool tough. All melee builds with huge Aoe look fun
Bows get a quiver, melee gets a weapon holster/scabbard
The best part about melee it always turning out to be ranged after some brainstorming process
the biggest problem of melee is that it is melee.
why in war, we use gun instead of sword : both can kill, but one can kill from far.
why in middle age, both sword and bow were used : because bow was near ineffective against armor. but despite the sword being far more effective, because of the melee, bow was also used.
so 2 solution :
- have the melee doing 3+ time more damage than distance builds
- have the melee able to kill from far/in big area. (so not really be melee)
The 7-link off-hand could be a unique, like uul-netol's vow.
i mean they could just have an explode mod, like enemies killed my melee attacks or explosions explode for 50% hp.
boosts melee clear.
make movement skills much much better, but only on investment. so for a lot of melee dmg nodes just add +500% incr action speed with leap slam or something. so non melee builds are slower as well.
buff behead support, add like awakened behead that is essentially headhunter, but kinda better.
buff fortify to like 50% less dmg taken.
make all ancestral totems into one and then make that totem an aura, maybe amcestral aura.
there, fixed melee for you.
Totems link/chain to character and travel/pulled along while durability/duration last. For all totems not just melee.
I would remove the melee totems and leave the spell ones. And instead of itemizing melee totems, I'd create wrapping or grips for the melee weapon.
Totem idea is great! Never thought of it but it look really nice!
Just make Leech nodes on the tree just work for Melee. So you need a support gem if you want to leech with bows.
Tried ssf for the first time a couple weeks ago cause the league sucks and followed your raider ls guide and I made it to t16s and cleared most of the atlas. Started messing w it before all the dead totems in the teasers. I'm huffing the copium hard that it gets buffed w the patch notes. If melee is really getting the love we're assuming, I'm definitely league starting it. Thanks for the guide, so nice to enjoy a fun build that's off meta. Newer player and kinda sick of the meta already 😅 GGs!!
Another approach, would be to decrease accuracy requirements to hit a target, and then convert it into crit chance
crit builds are meh with the amount of crit resistant mobs and mods. I would take PT build over crit build anytime unless the dmg difference is 5x, which it cannot be. Slams should always hit, since they aoe spells also always hit.
Fortify lasting 6s baseline is just bad. Whenever you are bossing, you have to make your build work without it. Think about it, would the game break if it was 30s and therefore be reliable? Let me spec duration + damage when fortified and it will become infinitely better.
All I know is if we don’t have to place down totems for buffs anymore I’m league starting melee for sure
If you buff two handed weapon.... Nobody will play Dual because now you have a big weapon + a Totem, but Dual only get an other crappy weapon. Unless you give all skill you can dual damage from both weapon every time.
How to make melee viable? Make ranged nonviable, haha
please discuss the Raider class considering it has been changed to Warden and also whether you can still play lightning strike Warden, since you said it was the skill you liked the most in POE
I will :) will spend time on stream this week working on it
@@Lolcohol great excited too see!!
There's a fundamental way to balance melee versus ranged attack, that strangely I've never seen in an ARPG and actually makes physical sense. Ranged accuracy needs to be penalized / Melee should benefit more from accuracy, anyone that has shot an actual bow knows this. Makes sense in game, makes sense in real life. Then, if you want to hammer it down make melee have a higher inherit critical strike multiplier. Yes you can outright take someone out with an arrow if you manage to hit it in the throat but but now imagine you get hit in the throat with a two handed axe... now that's a critical strike.
technically hammers should not be blockable instead it should work like glancing blows - mob gets hit by huge hammer and blocks? Too bad 50% damage goes through. Slams should always hit, since its "skillshot" like icenova/glacial cascade.
I saw a BigDucks video not too long ago that he was using molten strike of the zenith on a trickster to burn down uber bosses in practically a flash. If melee gets unparalleled single target damage coupled with unique defensive mechanics, it may be very viable as a bossing build, and depending on link setups, might also be decent at mapping if you go molten strike for single target and frost blades for clear.
that build is weak on defenses.
just one more bosser.
how about a keystone that ables you to wield 2handers in one hand but with some random downside like 25% less effect of modifiers from left hand or something.
Wouldn't make more sense to just buff melee skills with higher multipliers. Personally I hate to have to play totems to even try to do a Boneshatter build
that or buff mods on melee weapons again, so 2h mods are again better than bows, we have problems with xxx stacking being overpowered already, so my change would buff the "weak archetypes" and not stuff like strength stacking.
@@Scroapy I still believe that melee should have higher damage than ranged, in ARPGs you are supposed to dodge stuff, 99% of the time you cant, so instead of buff on "melee weapons", buff for melee, Close Combat Support stuff
I hope not. I mean even fantasy needs some realism to avoid the uncanny-valley feel. I mean the char is holding a 2H, yet we still need totems, but as an off-hand. Yeah no. Sorry. I'd rather stay the same. Because what if someone wants to do a DW setup? Now we're bound by these items, and who knows how rare a drop these would be or to craft if these are implemented? At least with a Bow, the quiver makes sense. I won't totally shit on this idea, but the whole dependency on something else to be viable as a melee character is what doesn't sit well with people. Why not just buff the damn skills to what they would be like with the totems setup? Just keep it simple, at least for melee.
Add crucible trees back into the game with slightly more powerful ones for melee weapons
Remove the totems and make is baseline for melee skills ez, beign melee is enough of a disadvantage by itself
Ive they gave capes.... how ive been asking forever.... just gimme a cape........ plz... put in the offhand like a quiver....
Make Melee Great Again!
What about damage effectiveness, hmm? Melee skills that are ranged? Mathil?
Okay, I‘ll stop fooling around. Itemized totems as well as a dual wielding buff would be a way. Another idea I had to give melee more identity in tandem with a buff is in-built Point Blank for all melee skills. That way even the screen-filling attacks would be more effective in an enemy’s face… Y‘know, melee. The outlier skills that are great even now could be nerfed to be somewhat on par with everything else.
Bring back statsticks please!
How did you know that this next league item will be added to the game?
How did you get the photo of the item?
Are you part of the game developer?
What are you on about? It’s stated in the video that a chatter had the idea and scraped together some art.
Yes
@@Lolcohol KKKKKKK
Such a fun video thanks. Too bad youre not working at gg
I have been asking for a better movement skill for a while now and after Epoch added the small dash I think that would help melee a lot.
Maybe there could be other skills that you actually socket and press to make melee combat more engaging, even better if these could animation cancel attacks
Dodge roll - small dash with some dr
Parrying - prevent damage if timed properly
Blocking - prevent damage but with a cooldown/stamina/resource gauge
I asked chatgpt how to make melee viable in PoE and it said to use Heavy Strike. Short answer: wait for PoE2
LOL Chat GPT is probably right :'(
@@Lolcohol maybe ChatGPT knew something we didn’t
I like it
I don't believe Melee can be fixed in PoE1.
first
:O Catmaster!
first!
Nice :o
@@Lolcohol thank you 😊
2nd
Idk how you can ever make melee actually "good" in poe1
melee is the antithesis of poe1 gameplay. Efficiency is always the end goal, so having to go up to every single mob to kill them is gonna take WAY longer than any ranged gameplay
Basically every "melee" build now specs towards giga aoe or mobility to close that gap with ranged.
this is one of the main reasons poe2 split off to be its own game, to give them a chance to fix fundamental issues.