Melee vs. Ranged: A solution

First we have to accept it is a problem. Do any streamers use melee? Ok do more than 10% of streamers play melee? No. It has a competitive disadvantage to Ranged. Why?
1. Obviously you deliver your damage face to face instead of at a distance. Since most monsters deal their damage face to face, you are putting yourself in harm's way in order to deliver your damage. Worse Monsters that deal ranged damage you also have to put yourself in harm's way to deal damage to them, meaning you can't line of sight them like you can with ranged. You can...but you simply won't be removing the threat/killing the mob.
2. Melee except with multistrike type skills can never hit multiple monsters simultaneously. Almost all ranged if not all can hit multiple monsters simultaneously and does. This creates superior clear speed.
3. The two things we value most in this game is staying alive and superior clear speed. The game even incentivizes it.
4. The market knows all. Look at the player build choices as a market. In hardcore, where staying alive is at an absolute premium, does anyone in the top 1000 of ladder play a melee build? Even Ground slam is a melee converted to range attack. Lightning Strike? Same thing.
THe market is telling GGG and us that the game is severely imbalanced in favor of ranged. Everyone who is honest about the strategies knows this.
5. So how do we solve it? Since all classes can easily wander into other parts of the tree that are not their proper starting range, it is not as simple as just adding nodes to the tree that benefit melee, like increased life and damage reduction which they desperately need because range will just exploit it. As well they should.
6. Even increasing damage to melee won't help as it is still single target dps. Or multi target melee converted to range like Ground Slam will use the nodes and became OP as well.
7. Under the current game design, there is no solution. We must either just accept that no one will ever play melee thereby making all melee physical damage worthless or we need to rethink design.
8. The solution? It's time for TWO SKILL TREES. You choose either melee or ranged at the beginning when you choose your character, and it can only be changed with a full passive reset which we get often enough anyway for the perm leagues to make changes.
Two Skill trees will let GGG add buffs for melee that ranged cannot take advantage of...like life bonuses and other damage reduction bonuses.
I know the skill tree is fundamental to the core design of the game. The skill tree in many ways is the game. I think it can remain the single greatest feature of POE even if it is split into two trees. IF this cannot be accomplished then there really is no solution that will help melee characters. Even if you say something like...Buff only applies when holding a sword. There is lots of ranged classes that use daggers for their abilities for example. Or Ground Slam, Lightning strike use two handed weapons. I think this really is the best solution. What do you think?

I wholeheartedly agree.

I also believe it will never happen. Like, ever. Either GGG would shoot this proposed idea down from the outset, or you'd get people coming out of the woodwork to decry the implementation as "fundamentally altering the game". As it would be, only they'd state it as a negative when you (and I) would find it a positive.

*shrugs* I think it might be time for me to pull the ripcord and go back to Diablo :/

Perhaps I am just being cynical.

I would nerf all aoe and ranged skills about 70%. This way melee is rewarded by huge DPS comparatively for risks you take.

Two skill tree's you say? How about Threshold Nodes instead?

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The solution? It's time for TWO SKILL TREES.

no, thanks

Why do you want things to be more complicated? da fuck lol

there is much mure simple solution.

leech applies only from nearby enemies

done. you can still offscreen and kite etc but if you want sustain - you need to take risks

and another thing: vaal pact. this node alone makes 99% of bullshit builds possible

What is considered melee nowadays though? Because we already had full screen Reave and now there's Earthquake and Sunder.

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sidtherat a écrit :

there is much mure simple solution.

leech applies only from nearby enemies

done. you can still offscreen and kite etc but if you want sustain - you need to take risks

and another thing: vaal pact. this node alone makes 99% of bullshit builds possible

Vaal Pact and leech are needed for range to mitigate reflect to some degree. So I wouldn't mess with those cause then no one could go ranged especially on no regen maps...

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Raudram a écrit :

What is considered melee nowadays though? Because we already had full screen Reave and now there's Earthquake and Sunder.

Agree. But again it's back to single target dps or multi target...all good ranged builds are multi target. So for melee to compete...well they need multi target too.