Clicking on individual monsters really, really sucks

Every so often I try to play a melee skill that requires targeting and am immediately reminded why I don't play any skills that require targeting individual monsters.

Right now I'm level 24 using Frost Blades. Having to click on monsters to trigger the projectiles and deal damage is just awful. There are tons of tiny monsters frenetically bouncing around the screen. Melee is already disadvantaged enough by having to be right up inside monsters to kill them. It doesn't need the added disadvantage of missing attacks due to this.

It gets even worse when accuracy is factored in. When I hit air, it's impossible for me to tell if that's because I was a tiny fraction off from targeting the monster or if I just missed my accuracy roll. The lack of feedback here is terrible. I end up having to retarget every time I miss, which is incredibly unfun.

Multistrike, once you're high enough level to use it, makes up for this to a degree. It still feels terrible to miss many of your first attacks, though. It also feels terrible to be forced into using a gem that you don't necessarily want to use, simply because targeting individual monsters is godawful.

Melee Splash sucks due to this (and I wrote a similar post in the support gem feedback forum for it a long time ago). Frost Blades sucks due to this. Elemental Hit sucks due to this. Okay, Elemental Hit sucks for lots of reasons, but this is one of them. Plenty of gems get pooped on my POE's poor single target attacking.

POE either needs some kind of autoattack for melee skills or to just go ahead and make everything an AOE attack in the same vein as Lightning Tendrils. Don't make us deal with the current terrible method of attacking individual monsters every again. It's bad and it makes playing a ton of skills feel bad.

This is something that has been bad since day one and has only gotten worse over time. I've been killing the respawning Perandus mobs with Frost Blades, and I can tell you that having monsters constantly pop into existence does not make this easier.

Please fix this. It's been a long time and it'd be nice to finally have good melee attacking in POE.

I agree that targeted melee needs some work. If I had my 'druthers, here's what I would do:
The melee hitbox becomes circular, similar to Earthquake's basic attack but maybe half as large and only single-target--this would just be to prevent whiffs. Melee Splash damage would be changed from 50-30% Less to a 90%-110% multiplier (starting as less damage but eventually adding a bit of damage) and would add the AoE tag to the entire attack including the "single-target" portion.



That said, I'm playing a Static Strike character right now, and it's not as bad as I thought it would be. For levelling, Earthquake is still way better, but now that I have ~6 attacks/s and a fast Whirling Blades, I just run toward enemies and frantically click at them and it's pretty fun and smooth at clearing packs. Not to mention my single-target is like 50% better than EQ's and close to double Reave's. One error I made at first but eventually corrected is that I thought I should be shift+clicking to attack stuff, and that is WRONG. Shift-clicking means that I miss way more often, instead I mouse-hover and spam clicks and I very rarely whiff.

The thing with "true" melee is that you NEED really good mobility, you need all three of: high attack speed, high movement speed, fast movement skills. Once you have those three, melee works. Without them, just go EQ or Sunder.

I still think Melee Splash needs more buffs. Almost all the builds that use Splash also use Multistrike, and neither of those supports are top-tier, but they're necessary evils for some skills. If targeted melee is going to stay in the game, I think that Melee Splash needs to be at worst a neutral gem for AOE damage, ideally it would provide a minor buff (again, I think 10% more Area Damage would be sufficient). The fact that a lot of melee gems require 2 suboptimal supports really disincentivizes using them.

I just killed Dominus. The experience getting to and killing him was not a good one, but it was helped a bit by the fact that I found Vaal Spark and a Flame Totem while leveling (playing SSF). I'm not sure if these experiences are new because the awfulness of targeting individual monsters makes me quit playing melee skills before I hit Dominus or because I've simply forgotten after thousands of hours of POE.

I switched over to Wild Strike as soon as it became available. It's a cool skill, but it has the same terrible flaws as any other single target melee attack. Did I click empty space? Did I miss the accuracy roll? Is the monster name locked, or should I try to reclick on any monster? Will I succeed? Probably not, since clicking on tiny monsters running around is an absolute bitch.

Perandus pack sizes have gotten larger at this point. You'd think this would make it harder to click empty space. It seems even worse now, though. More monsters just means more empty space right next to them with lovely air you can attack instead. Running ten feet into a pack of monsters to swing at nothing, using mana that doesn't get leeched back, and opening myself up to absurd counterattacks from overtuned Perandus mobs is one of the shittiest feelings I've experienced in POE.

It's also incredibly annoying when monsters die right before I hit them. Both Frost Blades and Wild Strike completely fizzle when this happens, unlike non-targeted attacks that would still blast everything around you. Earthquake don't give a fuck if a guy burns to death from Herald of Ash right before it sends out an aftershock. Everything's still going to die.

Killing a pack with Wild Strike takes much, much longer than killing a pack with Earthquake or any other skill that isn't single target. It's also orders or magnitude more dangerous, since you have to get directly up a monster's butt to hit it. You also end up clicking air and doing jack shit on a significant number of attacks, which is something that will never happen with skills that function well like Earthquake, Spark, and so on.

The problem isn't that skills like Frost Blades and Wild Strike don't do enough damage or don't hit enough enemies. They're both fine on that front. It's that trying to click individual monsters in POE just doesn't work.

Again, GGG, please fix this. A basic mechanic of your game is fundamentally broken. You keep introducing new skills that rely on this broken mechanic to function. Something needs to change.

Very detailed feedback, thanks for that.
I think after lots of testing you found out that those skills aren't for you.
And while I understand that having a number of melee skills unavailable to you may seem like a waste - it is only a waste to you (not you alone I admit).

Bottom line: not every skill gem is for every player.

Please GGG do NOT fix this.

I did find one thing where shift clicking was alright. Dominating Blow and Multistrike with Melee Splash.

Trying to click with that skill is horrendous. HOWEVER, Shift clicking with multistrike while in the face of a pack was pretty good. Multistrike has an auto acquire targeting function on it, so it's not all that bad.

But yeah, targeted melee skills are a little weird, but that's just how they are.

Didn't you have to click monsters in "Diablo 2" in order to attack them with melee? Were people complaining? I don't like the idea of all melee attacks being AOE.

Edit:
Although, the flaw in POE is that holding down the right mouse button to attack, the game doesn't auto-target enemies, it attacks randomly, whether there is monster in your way or not.

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Xeledon2132 a écrit :

Very detailed feedback, thanks for that.
I think after lots of testing you found out that those skills aren't for you.
And while I understand that having a number of melee skills unavailable to you may seem like a waste - it is only a waste to you (not you alone I admit).

Bottom line: not every skill gem is for every player.

Please GGG do NOT fix this.

Okay, I'll bite. Who are skills that function in this way for? Who prefers skills that miss constantly due to having to click individual monsters like this instead of skills that don't miss constantly for this reason? I've literally never seen a person argue for your position, so I'm interested in finding out what your arguments actually are.

If you're going to argue for a side, it's very useful to actually argue for that side. I've provided what I believe are incredibly strong arguments against POE's current implementation of single target melee attacks. All you did was tell me to play something else while asking GGG to continue with business as usual. That is not useful at all.

What do you believe are the advantages of the current system? Why should it stay the same?

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Toshis8 a écrit :

Didn't you have to click monsters in "Diablo 2" in order to attack them with melee? Were people complaining? I don't like the idea of all melee attacks being AOE.

You could just hold your mouse button to walk and attack anything coming in your way. There was no trying to click somewhere and being stuck slapping air. At worst, you would be walking circles.

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Mythabril a écrit :

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Toshis8 a écrit :

Didn't you have to click monsters in "Diablo 2" in order to attack them with melee? Were people complaining? I don't like the idea of all melee attacks being AOE.

You could just hold your mouse button to walk and attack anything coming in your way. There was no trying to click somewhere and being stuck slapping air. At worst, you would be walking circles.

They should definitely fix this, Clicking (and holding) to attack with right mouse button somewhere near enemy it should automatically target and highlight the nearest enemy instead of hitting the air nearby. I would prefer if they fixed this instead of making everything AoE.

Some more items from the last bit of playing.

1. Stun sucks. It's just another layer of confusion added to the equation of why you just failed to hit an enemy. I was pretty sure I had one enemy namelocked, so I just held down the attack button even after the first miss. It took me four tries to hit him the first time even with 90% accuracy. Evidently 1100 life isn't enough to prevent tons of stuns at the start of A4 normal.

(Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not arguing against the existence of the stun mechanic here. I love stuns. I'm just pointing out that they make the current terrible single target melee mechanics feel even more terrible.)

2. Getting surrounded sucks. With a skill like Earthquake, you punch the ground and everything dies. With Wild Strike, you have to hope you not only click an enemy, but that it's an enemy you can actually target from where you're standing. Otherwise you stand there with your thumb up your ass while surrounded by enemies that are trying to kill you. Clearly that's not good or fun.