Clicking on individual monsters really, really sucks

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Jennik a écrit :

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.

And that's why you don't play melee in this game .

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tryhardgg a écrit :

And that's why you don't play melee in this game .

I've actually had a good time with some of the "melee" skills like Earthquake and Ground Slam that are really ranged attacks and spells that use melee weapons instead of bows or wands. I'd like to see the legitimate melee skills like Wild Strike become worth using as well.

I just killed Daresso exclusively using Wild Strike on my self found build. Defensively it's the same dodge/evasion build I recently played with both Earthquake and Lightning Arrow (both currently level 81 in PHC). It did not play the same, though. Those two were never in any real danger fighting Daresso, since manually dodging his attacks is cake if you're playing a ranged skill.

I'm not sure how many portal scrolls I burned fighting Daresso this time, but it was a hell of a lot more than the zero I used on the other two. Part of that was some true RNG bullshit with spinning swords spawning on me about a dozen times while Daresso was attacking, though. That is super unfun for an evasion build.

True melee just sucks. I made this thread just for the problem of targeting (which still sucks even when you're only fighting Daresso, and rest assured the air around him is pretty fucking dead after our fight). The other problems, like being forced to tank ungodly amounts of damage from monsters tuned to be scary for ranged characters, are also pretty awful.

I'd still love to see the Fortify gem get removed and simply have the effect buffed and rolled into true melee skills. Heavy Strike gets fortify. Ground Slam doesn't. Wild Strike gets fortify. Earthquake doesn't. Do you have to be close enough to monsters that you can feel their breath? You get fortify. Are you a ranged skill in disguise? Congrats, you already prevent shitloads of damage. You don't need fortify. Leave the fortifying to those poor, unfortunate people unwilling to give up on their Dual Strikes and Glacial Hammers.

I just ran into a Perandus box guarded by four uniques. I always love that, since they remind me of my first character this league dying when one of these unique boxes froze my screen for over 10 seconds. RIP my dreams of running a triple Lightning Warp totem self cast Ball Lightning Hierophant.

Anyway, there's that barely noticeable red outline that shows up on mobs when you mouse over them. Typically POE's so damn hectic that you really don't have time to look for it, because every fraction of a second that a melee character is not killing mobs is increasing their chances of dying. Still, it's something to look for if you're in a situation where you can.

I can't see shit when I mouse over these Perandus mobs. Instead of a red outline I just see more of that damn boring, generic gold. You bet your ass I beat the ever-loving fuck out of the air around them, though. I'm sure they were scared after seeing that. Maybe Kaom heard about the air-murdering Shadow coming his way. Better watch out, Kaom. You're next.

Edit: Man, Kaom is so incredibly easy compared to Daresso. Not ignoring my 60% evasion and not spawning tons of physical damage AOEs on top of me really help. No portals needed.

Now that I have Multistrike, I'm out of things to add here. I'm lucky enough to be playing a build (back to Frost Blades now) that honestly wants to use Multistrike, so the awfulness of POE's targeting isn't ruining things anymore. Missing the first attack constantly still sucks, obviously, but I can probably deal with that. I'm not sure if I've ever hit maps with a single target skill before. I'd like to do that if the first attack whiffs don't make me give up. I know they made me stop playing Dominating Blow somewhere in Act 2 merciless a while back.

I'll end my contributions to the thread by showing off my ridiculously lucky item level 37 5-link that dropped on the way to Daresso. It would have been much easier to give up on this character if not for this. If only the alch was less poopy.

Just so you know, something that might come in handy with frost blades is that melee skills act a little bit like very short-range projectiles. That is, when you attack, you put out a hitbox in a line according to your weapon range. So you don't have to target to hit stuff. If you click to attack right behind a monster, you'll attack in its direction and hit it.

Frost Blades has really long range, if you work on your mouse accuracy and reflexes then you won't constantly miss your first attack.

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ThatsSoGoodman a écrit :

Just so you know, something that might come in handy with frost blades is that melee skills act a little bit like very short-range projectiles. That is, when you attack, you put out a hitbox in a line according to your weapon range. So you don't have to target to hit stuff. If you click to attack right behind a monster, you'll attack in its direction and hit it.

Frost Blades has really long range, if you work on your mouse accuracy and reflexes then you won't constantly miss your first attack.

Yeah, Frost Blades is better than most for that reason. It's still not good, though. That also doesn't really come into play until pack sizes big enough that being slightly to the left or right of one guy hits another, which is about the same time as I'llstop playing this character. I honestly dislike the mechanics of single target melee skills enough that I'll delete this character as soon as I run one map.

I have to survive to that point, though. I think Malachai and Piety just got me to single digits on life twice. I still have the second fight to go, using a poopy single target skill with a poopy weapon. I've never died to normal Malachai out of a hell of a lot of characters, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first to not make it past him.

Edit: Made it to cruel. Malachai's no Daresso, but he still made me portal out a couple dozen times.

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Jennik a écrit :

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?

If anyone still cares here's it (have been on PoE hiatus, so sorry for the delay):

You're right, I didn't make a real point for the current system. I'll try to give you my angle.

To get one thing straight first: There can never be a performance advantage to the current system. I am not going to argue this. The advantages I see are purely in how the game feels. It's even hidden in your follow up posts ;):

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Jennik a écrit :

True melee just sucks.

That's right - to me it only feels like real melee when I'm namelocking. To me Earthquake isn't a melee skill flavourwise. Sure it is a melee skill for all intents and purposes in the game rules. To me it is the attempt to fuse the badass feel of walking into the fray with steel blazing with getting to attack from a save distance. Those skills have their place in the game - their flavour can be awesome (I mean hitting the ground so hard it kills bystanders is awesome!), they can be cool targets for minmaxing etc...

Namelocking is a more down to earth approack to fighting your enemies. Suboptimal yet awesome in its own right. It's less fantasy (still a lot) - the mechanic gives me the distinct impression I'm actually walking up to that guy and hitting him with a melee weapon. The game would lack something without those skills.
Plus this creates a challange I'm sometimes in the mood to take upon myself. The mechanic is part of a skill that I am challenging myself to play "as is". There are those who despise the mechanic so much for its inefficiency and whatnot that they can't bring themself to play with these skills - and that's fine. I truely believe they should just forget about these skills and move on. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way - there is plenty of stuff in this game that I'm not touching because it simply isn't for me.

That said I'm all for improving how namelocking skills work within their scope. I just think that removing namelocking altogether is to remove true melee from the game.

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Jennik a écrit :

made this thread just for the problem of targeting

Are you like, really really bad at fps games?

Had no problems back in the day when i played double strike and glacial hammer chars, desync was the issue then. I'd actually love to remake glacial hammer with hegemony staff.

I can somewhat see where you're coming from OP - i felt the same during normal when i played frost blades when it came out with Warbands.

However, as soon as i got Multistrike though this started turning a 180 degrees.

First stage was getting Multistrike, which alleviated the having to hit problem because the second/third attacks auto-aim.
Second stage though i was starting to enjoy the aiming component of the first attack - good play netted me 33% bonus damage, which was really noticeable when i was playing fresh instead of when i should be going to bed.
Third stage i got so good at aiming with Frost Blades i could also easily use it before getting Multistrike - its even become my goto racing skill for Rangers.

I can feel many people's disgust of namelocking, and to some extent i agree it should go. Melee Splash would be a prime candidate. However i feel namelocking has its place for some skills too - Frost Blades probably being the skill i'd most advocate to keep this way, the mechanic really adds depth to the skill.

GGG is too small to adress this. They are busy anyway doll playing with totem developement.