Melee vs. Ranged: A solution

EQ is a good skill. It has good AoE to make up for its lower range, and it promotes single big hits. I like the design a lot.

Doesn't mean I'm wrong though. Any decent ranged character is still much more efficient.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

EQ is a good skill. It has good AoE to make up for its lower range, and it promotes single big hits. I like the design a lot.

Doesn't mean I'm wrong though. Any decent ranged character is still much more efficient.

Depends on the challenge and the investment.


Melee can compete which is the point, if melee's skills are brought up to par with the likes of EQ. I still dont believe that cyclone is good, but Ive seen people use it and mitigate the downsides of the 50% less on initial hit in interesting ways.

In terms of efficiency, the only reasons why a ranged character is going to be more efficient is because typically they have higher movement speed (and flask duration) and because they dont have to actually move into every nook and cranny, that being said if melee skills were all like EQ we wouldn't be having this discussion.

There is no Conan in poe !!!!!

A guy that swings his sword and axe so hard nothing can stand in his way to get the crown and become the king .

Really a melee guy using magic just looks plain stupid imo. Conan didn't like magic remember ?

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

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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).

Excellent analysis.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

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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).

Not sure if I understood your point but here is mine

No matter how much aoe-on-hit heavy strike would have (or similar melee skill that requires being next to mob) it would still be shit in fights like village ruin boss when you are punished just by being close (by being oneshotted). That is main reason why close quarters melee skills will be always worse than ranged even if they had superior on-hit aoe and damage, it doesnt matter when boss requires from you to not be close to survive.
Changing how aoe for skills works wont change anything, people would still play ranged because it is better to be afar cause of close quarters ripfest
Dont nerf ranged, dont redesign game, just remove stupid oneshots that are avoided by default when character is ranged

Turning every melee skill in semi ranged or ranged skill like earthquake or sunder doesnt even touch the core of problem (which imo is festival of close quarters oneshots)

Trying to add extra supports / items / buffs for melee-specific builds is NOT going to work because there is no clear-cut differentiation between a ranged or a melee build. Just how Fortify failed.

Also, how does adding "more AOE" to "inferior range" actually improve the state of melee lol?

You realize the more AOE you add you are just increasing the fucking range. Guys, if you are AOE'ing half your screen - are you still a melee build?

You are all already saying skills like Lightning Strike are not true melee - which is true. So somehow a build AOE'ing half the screen is still melee?

Melee by definition means being in close-combat. So adding more AOE is NOT fixing the MELEE problem.


TRUE melee gems like Double Strike, Dual Strike, etc. need to be redone to give significantly higher damage and higher speed boost on the gems themselves.


Blade Vortex, a build that plays in melee-range, is one of the strongest builds in the game?

It's not because it has high AOE.

How the hell can a melee build like Double Strike compete? You are fighting in the same range yet one build is OP and one build has not been seen in 2 years?

Melee-skills right now need to invest a good # of points traveling to and getting weapon nodes and you will STILL have inferior DPS. The only exception I can think of Facebreakers but that would require Abyssus lol, so doesn't count I guess.

Putting more DPS on the TRUE melee gems will save points and allow characters that build to use these SPECIFIC gems to invest more into survivability on the tree than other builds.

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raxleberne a écrit :

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

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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).

Not sure if I understood your point but here is mine

No matter how much aoe-on-hit heavy strike would have (or similar melee skill that requires being next to mob) it would still be shit in fights like village ruin boss when you are punished just by being close (by being oneshotted). That is main reason why close quarters melee skills will be always worse than ranged even if they had superior on-hit aoe and damage, it doesnt matter when boss requires from you to not be close to survive.
Changing how aoe for skills works wont change anything, people would still play ranged because it is better to be afar cause of close quarters ripfest
Dont nerf ranged, dont redesign game, just remove stupid oneshots that are avoided by default when character is ranged

Turning every melee skill in semi ranged or ranged skill like eartquake or sunder doesnt even touch the core of problem (which imo is festival of close quarters oneshots)

I think all builds should have some enemies which are just pains in the butt to handle. Easily kited, hard-hitting tanky single targets is already something I isolated as what Melee's weakness should be. Even if I got what I said, and ranged became a much more single-target playstyle, this would still be true.

That said, I believe melee should be short ranged, not no ranged. As I said earlier, having a decent AoE should mean not having to be right in an enemy's face. So those fights should involve short-ranged kiting, which is something melee won't be great at (short range, obviously) but should be able to pull off for those tough fights, although it should be skill-intensive and scary.

Massive melee survivability? No, not really. But good telegraphing of boss attacks is important.

Heavy Strike. Heh. There's something really messed up with design in general when Melee is the one getting all the single-target skills, that should be a ranged thing. But the few single-target melee skills which deserved to exist, much less than there are now, should be seen as, and designed to be, greedy dangerous single-target boss killers, not primary skills. They shouldn't be something you spam against a boss, but use on those rare occasions when you know you have a brief opportunity.

Ok, I understand your point now, I agree that is one way to solve problem.

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Ceryneian a écrit :

Also, how does adding "more AOE" to "inferior range" actually improve the state of melee lol?

You realize the more AOE you add you are just increasing the fucking range. Guys, if you are AOE'ing half your screen - are you still a melee build?

You are all already saying skills like Lightning Strike are not true melee - which is true. So somehow a build AOE'ing half the screen is still melee?

Melee by definition means being in close-combat. So adding more AOE is NOT fixing the MELEE problem.

First, the state of ranged AoE makes it so the baseline for "good AoE" in this game is really ridiculous. To be frank, if you are hitting half the screen in this meta, you ARE a melee build; killing things blind offscreen is the new, patently absurd standard (unless you're moving as you kill, then you get a pass for slightly lower range, meaning half the screen).

In a more sane world, I'd imagine only short-ranged skills would get 360° AoE - stuff like Cyclone. Medium-range would still have some AoE but not as good of an angle - kind of like Ground Slam. Hitting things on the edges of the screen would be a single-target affair exclusively. And off screen? Forget about it.

Second, you're essentially right: nerfing ranged isn't the same thing as buffing melee. I mean, it would obviously improve balance, which is what I'm concerned with. But perhaps you're more concerned with not dying. I think some deaths are good.

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Ceryneian a écrit :

TRUE melee gems like Double Strike, Dual Strike, etc. need to be redone to give significantly higher damage and higher speed boost on the gems themselves.

Blade Vortex, a build that plays in melee-range, is one of the strongest builds in the game?

It's not because it has high AOE.

How the hell can a melee build like Double Strike compete? You are fighting in the same range yet one build is OP and one build has not been seen in 2 years?

Melee-skills right now need to invest a good # of points traveling to and getting weapon nodes and you will STILL have inferior DPS. The only exception I can think of Facebreakers but that would require Abyssus lol, so doesn't count I guess.

Putting more DPS on the TRUE melee gems will save points and allow characters that build to use these SPECIFIC gems to invest more into survivability on the tree than other builds.

As I said earlier, there is no world I imagine where your so-called "true melee" skills are usable as primary skills. Single-target zero-range immediately puts such things in niche usability, where you might use them sometimes, opportunistically, but single-target long-range is just superior mechanically and it's unavoidable to have single-target long-range skills unless you literally don't have bows.

However, properly managing expectations on how much such skills would be used (and how many varieties of such deserve to exist), I agree that single-target in-your-face melee skills should be very, very killy. You need a very good damage payout (or similarly strong incentive) to justify socketing such gems.

@smcb

How does your solution play into the fact that various things exists in the game, for example lmp\gmp\conc\aoe\ect?


What about the fact that people are limited by the sockets\links they have. You talk about solutions in this game as if they were not a factor to consider.


Now we add in helm enchantments, +1 arrow, ascendancy classes and even things like natural AoE clearing abilities like split arrow.



IMO as someone that has played melee, likes to play melee (I do so almost exclusively in D3, not that this matters for this game) I would do so more often if melee skills were more like EQ. To this day I don't know why melee splash is even a gem are we keeping it around for summoners or something? That is one way to give melee an advantage is by removing the need to "aoe-ify" the single target skills, like ranged characters sorta have to do, or at least they have to have links for it, melee can have the advantage of only needing 1 set of links for aoe\single target, with the option to have 2 6 links, one for aoe best and one that is the best possible single target, of course that has the built in splash so you can killz those adds.