Melee vs. Ranged: A solution

Two skill trees isnt the issue. Monster vs. player mechanics are. One-shot-bosses vs. melee/ranged is.


Your differentiation also is arguable.

There is high range stuff like most of the bow skills. Thats clear.

Melee skills cannot always be put into ranged category only because they can hit at a certain distance.


Lets take ice crash for example:
It has three radiuses of different damage. The outer circle has a substantial damage debuff ("less"). You raid through white/blue/most rares without caring too much about that. But when fighting high ehp bosses and also some rares you need to get close to deal full damage therefore it is without doubt a melee skill.

Look lightning strike. In your definition it is ranged. But this skill has severe disadvantages compared to real ranged. Its projectiles get blocked by basically everything, it is a pain to play with it in many situations.

Sure if you compare dual strike to lightning strike then the LS is advantageous in most situations. But the important thing to acknowledge is that the bow guy is always better off than them both. And of course that is true for several spell/coc builds too.

The fact that some ranged skills / spells have the same base damage as close quarter melee skills (infernal blow / glacial hammer / heavy strike) is mind boggling.

There is zero trade-off for being close range compared to the defense/offense you can acquire at the moment.

more trees plz

a forest maybe..

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Mannoth a écrit :

The fact that some ranged skills / spells have the same base damage as close quarter melee skills (infernal blow / glacial hammer / heavy strike) is mind boggling.

There is zero trade-off for being close range compared to the defense/offense you can acquire at the moment.

Your comparing apples to bananas here, the classic poe melee skills are without a doubt shit, even if they had free melee splash, like I think they should have it still won't allow them to compete with even the "new style" melee skills like sunder or earthquake.

Glacial hammer is flawed because of this:

Unique Enemies: Unique enemies that are frozen will not shatter at one third of maximum life.

Heavy strike is flawed because knockback is annoying, but not only that it shares the same flaws all "splash" abilities have.

IB can be made to work, but in general is clunky to play.



All of these fail regardless of how strong ranged ability counterparts are, they cant even compete with the melee abilities used to date, it has NOTHING to do with the ranged vs melee argument, it has to do with shit skills vs better skills.

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A lot of players believe that melee is still not in a particularly good place. What are your thoughts/plans on this?

This has dominated our thoughts for a while now and it's taken care of in the expansion.

I forgot about this one, kinda funny they made melee playable in 2.0 with various things and gutted the best melee ability. I'd like to play cyclone, but I don't want to have to use the cheese mechanics people do in order to negate that initial hit damage. I also don't want to get stuck on every fucking small rock too.

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That expansion was 2.0.0. Whilst I cannot quantify anything, I don't believe much progress has been made. (Especially when one considers that the previous major patch 1.3 nerfed the STR area of the tree rather extensively)

Well this is just false, maybe slightly less now with ascendancy, but still... they made massive improvements to melee in 2.0. Fortify, yes ranged can use it blah blah, they still have to actually do something to use it. Later fixed mana cost on melee abilities, increased the damage, increased the mana per level, so no longer forced to use bloodmagic. Plenty of improvements were made, but they promote "natural aoe" abilities moreso then melee splash abilities.


In tems of 1.3 nerf to STR area, please explain its been far too long to remember the changes that were made since then. Also worth mentioning str isn't the only melee "side"


IMO they need to bring melee abilities up, they aren't being played because THEY SUCK, nerfing the best melee abilities only makes people play another playstyle, not another melee ability.

Either melee splash or fortify should be innate abilities of melee skills or both for that matter, not sure. The other thing is you should be able to "attack air" and it hit any targets around you with melee splash abilities. Make these improvements and it will improve melee, specifically the melee abilities that need it the most to compete.

The other thing they could perhaps do is change the belt recipe back, the one with rustic+whetstone+weapon, but that also buffs bow leveling too.

For starters, Melee should not be "safer" than ranged. That's absurd. That's why "ranged" combat exists. Even in real life did you ever expect the swordman to be safer than the bowman? Melee should just deal way more damage, as simple as that. Things like, nuking down a boss HP before it even reacts should be a melee only thing, not a ranged one. I am not saying that melee characters should not be somewhat tankier -and they are- but overall they should not be safer. Melee = Risk. Remember that in the days of 0.9-1.2 there were melee builds with max block + aegis, or max block+eva+dodge etc. that were essentially IMMORTAL -> Thus they were nerfed(Even then, high end ranged was prefered, due to the fact that it was clearing maps in 3 minutes, and it still was very hard to die). Making melee immortal is not the solution to the problem.

Having said that, let me clarify that ONLY MELEE IS UNDERPOWRED. Not generally attacks with a melee weapon.. Things like Reave, sunder, earthquake, LS etc. can be very good and competitve. In the long run they loose compared to a high end bow build, but they can compete. TRUE melee skills, skills that yo need to walk right in the face of the monster, target it, and then hit, and also need melee splash to do any AoE, are the ones that feel completely trash(and have been since.....forever).

What can be done in order for the situation to be somewhat more balanced? I can say a more radical(and effective) example (without building the game from scraps, like others have posted) and a simpler one.

The more Radical:

1) Ranged skills do OK damage. For example single target bow skills are OK. The problem is that gems that give AoE and Ranged increases do not give enough penalties. From END GAME perspective, a Bow build that uses both GMP and Chain or Pierce should do ONE THIRD of it's current damage. I am not kidding. That's how it is.

2) Ranged spells with huge AoE should deal HALF the current damage.

3) Semi ranged skills(even with melee weapons, like Reave) should do HALF the current damage.

4) Melee ranged spells are OK, even if some of them deal insane amounts of damage, like blade vortex or discharge, since they are on melee range.( CoC discharge is not OK, but thats another discussion). Can leave as it is.

5) All TRUE MELEE SKILLS(that need splash), should do at least 25% MORE DAMAGE(more base damage, altering the gem itself), and melee splash should only give around 15% penalty to surrounding targets.

If you think that's crazy, compared 3 builds( i know cause i have played some of them, or played with people using them) on the extreme high end. Compare a: Mirrored dagger double strike build, a mirrored dagger reave build and a mirrored bow LA build and see how they perform.


The less radical?

Do not nerf anything, but remove melee splash from the game altogether, and give all the single target melee skills a permanent melee splash effect(but with only around 15% penalty to surrounding targets), AND buff all single targets skills to deal around 25% more damage. The damage buff and the extra gem socket could make them somewhat competetive in boss killing. Still zero use out of that, but it's something.

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Poutsos a écrit :

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1) Ranged skills do OK damage. For example single target bow skills are OK. The problem is that gems that give AoE and Ranged increases do not give enough penalties. From END GAME perspective, a Bow build that uses both GMP and Chain or Pierce should do ONE THIRD of it's current damage. I am not kidding. That's how it is.

...
If you think that's crazy, compared 3 builds( i know cause i have played some of them, or played with people using them) on the extreme high end. Compare a: Mirrored dagger double strike build, a mirrored dagger reave build and a mirrored bow LA build and see how they perform.
...

Yes, therefore I suggested crit multi/chance penalty for these gems (like half a decade ago). Then rare non crit builds would not be affected. This would not be needed if crit wasnt that much scaleable.

You compare mirror dagger with bows. But dagger is located between bows and spells on the tree. Real melee guys are on the left side however with stuff like axes and such.

As I said earlier, it's too late to fix MvR balance in this game.

Why? Because ranged already has too many tools. They have Chain and Pierce and umpteen additional Projectiles. They have screen wipes with massive AoE where the center of that area can be somewhere other than self, or can keep it centered on self and just pump Radius until it still wipes the whole screen.

Because of this, whatever cool stuff they give short-ranged skills will not really be special. Long-ranged skills already have the same stuff (or close enough), and they're ranged. All what being equal, long-range is obviously better than short.

Defense isn't really a good balance lever. This is a loot- and XP-driven game, you get those two things from killing enemies, not from tanking them. Tankiness is nice when it enables clearspeed (and dying really penalizes clearspeed) but beyond that it's not useful because being killy is what gets your loots and levels.

Damage isn't really a good lever (although better than defense). This is an ARPG, damage is essentially ever-escalating until you have perfect gear. If ranged damage was hugely nerfed
1. ranged would still be clearspeed king of easy content, hands down. So it'd still be the de facto choice for, say, Dried Lake MF runs.
2. for the most part, ranged wouldn't be seen as worse, just as more expensive. Damage penalties might mean you need an absurd bow or crazy caster items to do decent DPS, but once you have enough damage you'd have superior range AND AoE to short-range and just be superior.

Plus, really low damage just feels bad. Having enemies get hit and not die isn't nearly as satisfying a result as having each skill use kill something, even if it's only one something which dies. Chipping away at life isn't as good as chipping away at numbers.

The correct design is to not give ranged all those AoE tools in the first place. Giving short-ranged the better AoE and long-ranged a more single-target style balances out clearspeed at the "enemies hit per unit time" level, allowing for clearspeed balance without resorting to wonky damage or defense adjustments.

But it's too late for that now. Ranged has all the tools already. Short-ranged exclusives are no longer a valid design space.

Better luck next game.

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goetzjam a écrit :

Your comparing apples to bananas here, the classic poe melee skills are without a doubt shit, even if they had free melee splash, like I think they should have it still won't allow them to compete with even the "new style" melee skills like sunder or earthquake.


All of these fail regardless of how strong ranged ability counterparts are, they cant even compete with the melee abilities used to date, it has NOTHING to do with the ranged vs melee argument, it has to do with shit skills vs better skills.

Because new "melee" skills are as about as melee as me using a bow, I am talking about actual melee skills not the ranged/aoe skills with a melee tag that work with a melee weapon.

Possible solutions:
-Introduce a node which makes it impossible to take hits bigger than 6k and put it behind bloodmagic in tree.
-Give marauder +16 life/level, 6 mana/level
Witch: 8 life/level, 12 mana/level.
So dependent on the class you pick you get different stats each level.
This would hopefully also fix the mana problems casters are having.
-Give all melee gems splash/fortify so they actually stand a chance vs 1 shotters/groups.
Reduce monster damage and nerf range hard.
-Grant experience per damage point you take.
-Buff reflect of elemental damage or reflect from ranged skills.
-Do something about that retarded position of vaal pact.

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Mannoth a écrit :

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goetzjam a écrit :

Your comparing apples to bananas here, the classic poe melee skills are without a doubt shit, even if they had free melee splash, like I think they should have it still won't allow them to compete with even the "new style" melee skills like sunder or earthquake.


All of these fail regardless of how strong ranged ability counterparts are, they cant even compete with the melee abilities used to date, it has NOTHING to do with the ranged vs melee argument, it has to do with shit skills vs better skills.

Because new "melee" skills are as about as melee as me using a bow, I am talking about actual melee skills not the ranged/aoe skills with a melee tag that work with a melee weapon.

I really hate this statement here. Melee is about a playstyle not about how the skill "works". As always in these discussions there is ALWAYS someone like you that thinks only the traditional skills that require a melee splash gem are "true melee"

Sorry bro that isn't how this game works. They are all considered melee because the distance between you and the mobs isn't that great. The second part is that it uses the equipped weapon to attack, this is important otherwise things like freeze pulse could be considered "melee' although it does have similar disadvantages.


The solution cannot be lets drag everything down to the shit level of melee splash abilities, because quite frankly that is simply unfun, if it was PEOPLE WOULD BE PLAYING IT. The solution is to improve the melee splash style abilities and most likely make it so all of them splash naturally. There isn't a need to penalize these single target skills, like there is a need to penalize other things in this game that adds splash like effects, like GMP\ect.

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Possible solutions:
-Introduce a node which makes it impossible to take hits bigger than 6k and put it behind bloodmagic in tree.
-Give marauder +16 life/level, 6 mana/level
Witch: 8 life/level, 12 mana/level.
So dependent on the class you pick you get different stats each level.
This would hopefully also fix the mana problems casters are having.
-Give all melee gems splash/fortify so they actually stand a chance vs 1 shotters/groups.
Reduce monster damage and nerf range hard.
-Grant experience per damage point you take.
-Buff reflect of elemental damage or reflect from ranged skills.
-Do something about that retarded position of vaal pact.

No to the node, bloodmagic isn't exclusive to melee nor is it a mandatory melee style node.

Again marauder isn't exclusive to melee, nor all inclusive either.

There are life based witch characters, so to gut their life isn't acceptable. Again not all ranged characters are witches. Making different stats per level essentially just forces people to play a hybrid class in the case of life based ones and pure ones for things like marauder, which goes directly against what ascendancy was meant to do.

Casters shouldn't be having mana issues really anymore, they buffed mana gained per level for everyone, the only spell that likely is difficult is incinerate but I doubt anyone really uses that anymore.

All melee gems with splash built is I do agree with, not sure if fortify is necessary though.

They aren't likely to reduce monster damage, people get to 100 pretty easily now a days.

XP per damage taken, LOL thats a new one. Absolutely not. Or you know what fine sure. Let me build a character that has the highest % life possible, what im going to do is go into normal, find the nicest trap layout and just afk on the spike style floor traps. They hit twice and alternate and if you have high regen you will heal all the way back up before you get hit again. I honestly cant believe someone suggested this. You need to think of exploits before you make future suggestions.


Reflect is already a bitch to deal with. Trust me when I say I used basically every tool at my disposal and I still hurt myself to reflect on my wander. I think I had 5.6k life, I was trying to get 6k but its quite hard without near perfect gear, considering I have to use this:



Not only that they pseudo did buff reflect against ranged skills with the nerf to flask max res.


Vaal pact is fine and it simply is the ONLY way to deal with the current reflect in the game, if you agree to remove reflect you can move vaal pact whereever the hell you want.