Melee vs. Ranged: A solution

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I_NO a écrit :

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

No one wants things more complicated. I just want melee to be actually viable. This is the only way to accomplish that. So that or just remove melee from the game completely...the players already have.

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Aim_Deep a écrit :

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

This is a good suggestion too. But that kind of nerf might make many people quit.

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IceMatrix a écrit :

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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.

The difference becomes very small with absurd "melee" skills like those though, in fact those builds are way more tanky while having similar clear speed.

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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

This! I had in my mind too.

And increase the damage of the f*** "face to face" melee skills to make it possible to switch a defensive support gem in !

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Aim_Deep a écrit :

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

This.

This is how you balance it out. want to play ranged? fine, here's less Aoe for you.
Play melee, have fun hitting the whole screen at once.

Tl;dr
Melee is always going to be worse cause poe is a ripfest of oneshot mechanics that are easily avoidable when ranged, end of story

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raxleberne a écrit :

Tl;dr
Melee is always going to be worse cause poe is a ripfest of oneshot mechanics that are easily avoidable when ranged, end of story

True.

Ther hasn't been any intention to change that from GGG. (That poor excuse of a mechanic called fortify doesn't count).


Ranged should be rippy, melee about survivability (in general). Map rewards, mapping time, etc should be balanced around that. This would also allow for more interesting game mechanics. Imagine how cool it would be to summon a clone of you with a bow that explodes!

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raxleberne a écrit :

Tl;dr
Melee is always going to be worse cause poe is a ripfest of oneshot mechanics that are easily avoidable when ranged, end of story

Since you're not at the root cause yet, not end of story.

The real problem is that ranged has superior range (obviously) and equal or superior AoE. For skills to be balanced against each other, the skill with inferior range needs superior AoE. AoE is range itself up to a certain extent, but in general AoE should be plentiful and taken for granted for short-ranged styles, while AoE offerings should be difficult to acquire and meager in effect for long-ranged skills.

There is no possibility of MvR balance while LMP and Chain are support gems. Ranged gets great (better than melee) AoE options and will always trump melee as a result.

Now, as a result of this, you get the situation you complain about. Because ranged has better AoE (and better range), there is no way to create enemies which threaten holes in its positioning pattern, while not also threatening melee. Note that, if ranged was limited to single-target skills, this wouldn't be the case; you could then easily design threats which are fast, numerous and low HP (good vs ranged) or slow, tanky hard-hitting loners (good against melee).

current ranged -leech would be perfectly balanced

most 'ranged builds' rely on VP and not getting LITERALLY one shot. if ranged have no ranged-leech then they can
a) play as usual and die horribly from time to time (player error, unsustainable above lvl80)
b) focus less on damage per hit (it is already OBSCENE) more on extra perks (slows, chance to flee's etc) - thus killing just as fast but giving a damn about own survival
c) spec even more into defences (spec at all that is..) and play more carefully. instead of happily offscreening maybe use Slower Projectiles for its intended purpose?

ranged can kite, can choose fights and in most cases kill everything before it even has a chance to hit back

take away the leech and it suddenly makes sense. extreme reward (clear speed) with extreme risks (reliance on potions and mechanical skills) - low reward (melee clear speed.. it sucks) with low risk (leech really makes things easy)

and REMOVE vaal pact. this bs node makes all 3.8k hp heroes possible, all these CoCS etc are impossible to make without VP. CoCS without VP is very dangerous (reflect). again - it can be very powerful but just add some risk into it

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sidtherat a écrit :

current ranged -leech would be perfectly balanced

most 'ranged builds' rely on VP and not getting LITERALLY one shot. if ranged have no ranged-leech then they can
a) play as usual and die horribly from time to time (player error, unsustainable above lvl80)
b) focus less on damage per hit (it is already OBSCENE) more on extra perks (slows, chance to flee's etc) - thus killing just as fast but giving a damn about own survival
c) spec even more into defences (spec at all that is..) and play more carefully. instead of happily offscreening maybe use Slower Projectiles for its intended purpose?

ranged can kite, can choose fights and in most cases kill everything before it even has a chance to hit back

take away the leech and it suddenly makes sense. extreme reward (clear speed) with extreme risks (reliance on potions and mechanical skills) - low reward (melee clear speed.. it sucks) with low risk (leech really makes things easy)

and REMOVE vaal pact. this bs node makes all 3.8k hp heroes possible, all these CoCS etc are impossible to make without VP. CoCS without VP is very dangerous (reflect). again - it can be very powerful but just add some risk into it

I'm pretty sure you've never played a ranged character in this game, note your suggestion essentially lets destroy one aspect of the game that is possible for all builds, but just for 1 or anything that isn't "melee" lets remove a mechanic that has existed for a long time, just because you think it would be better balanced.

Sorry there are things preventing what you are suggesting here, one is reflect, without vaal pact and leech reflect would 100% have to be removed from the game, because there simply is no other way to deal with the mechanic for those sorts of builds that typically take it. If you are OK with removing reflect then we can discuss vaal pact or no vaal pact, as well as leech.

OP defines some melee skills as ranged, despite in LS case not all of it is ranged (you do more damage in melee) and GS honestly no one uses because its shit. But what about massive AOE melee abilities like EQ?

Then where do casters fit into this, i'm talking traditional casters, that lack defensive options and go vaal pact + es or go low life + vaal pact, I guess in name of balance they get gutted too, after 2.0 hurt those builds hard with map mods anyway.



As for OP, it won't and shouldn't ever happen, it defeats the spirit of the game you are essentially asking for GGG to make a separate skill tree, despite the fact that the game is balanced around and designed around 1 skill tree to pickup stuff you want. Is it going to mirror the regular tree but have higher nodes? As for melee only, how are you going to prevent builds from taking it, like people take champion for their bow characters?

POE is complicated enough with 1 skill tree, IMO this is just another example of people wanting to homogenize the game, by having melee this, ranged that, spells this.



@smcb

Simply put you are wrong. Melee can compete with ranged if anything EQ is a good indication of that. Melee skills should be more like EQ and less like GS or other shitty melee abilities. But in all actuality what will happen is EQ gets nerfed because its popular because GGG treats melee abilities just like spells and ranged (bow) abilities.