2h Pure Physical Heavy Strike Slayer - build review (state of melee)

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

Maybe, but mirage archer beats elder at level 38, so relatively speaking, yes melee is still that bad.

wow.

the problem is that the wording indicates that you think melee skills should be in line with stupidly OP skills. as if THAT'S what should be the standard for balance and comparison. this is some 1000 hours level bs.

i'd rather have mirage archer/winter orb/etc nerfed like hell to keep them in line with most skills.

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Abyss jewels also, the amount of damage they give is ridiculous, this is not only something that melee can have though ... but since it is not better on melee characters than range characters ... :/

I mean, you have the same amount of damage for long distance weapons than melee weapons, and you have crazy scaling with spells too, and on top of giving the same amount of damage, they can just be used from a distance without any problem ....

How do you want to balance the game when GGG keeps adding ridiculous power creep that just gives archetype who already have the position and coverage advantages as much damage as other archetypes that should have an edge somewhere (=damage for example) ?

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robmafia a écrit :

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

Maybe, but mirage archer beats elder at level 38, so relatively speaking, yes melee is still that bad.

wow.

the problem is that the wording indicates that you think melee skills should be in line with stupidly OP skills. as if THAT'S what should be the standard for balance and comparison. this is some 1000 hours level bs.

i'd rather have mirage archer/winter orb/etc nerfed like hell to keep them in line with most skills.

Well rob, I think you finally managed to find it, the thing that we actually agree on! Imagine that.

No, I do not think everything should be able to do elder at level 38. I think nerfing every op spell or bow or molten strike in poe is totally fine.

But I don't design the game and what we have is what we have. If ranged can do it, melee should be able to also. For as long as I've played poe ranged/ spell was always easier and faster than melee.

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Fruz a écrit :

^

Abyss jewels also, the amount of damage they give is ridiculous, this is not only something that melee can have though ... but since it is not better on melee characters than range characters ... :/

I mean, you have the same amount of damage for long distance weapons than melee weapons, and you have crazy scaling with spells too, and on top of giving the same amount of damage, they can just be used from a distance without any problem ....

How do you want to balance the game when GGG keeps adding ridiculous power creep that just gives archetype who already have the position and coverage advantages as much damage as other archetypes that should have an edge somewhere (=damage for example) ?

This is why I think melee either needs to have the same coverage and reach as ranged, or it needs to be able to move while attacking. I don't see a way for this to be fixed without one of those two things. It doesn't seem like ggg is capable of balancing skills in such a way that they correctly provide bonuses to slower, shorter ranged skills.

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sidtherat a écrit :

have you played with TideBreaker? I did. I have a Tectonic Slam char with that weapon. on a Jugg. and sure, that 28% more damage + stun support is nice. Problem is - this weapon is rather slow AND it does not have +2 range.

Play a build with +2 and without it. it makes day/night difference to how the build plays. seriously, i cannot imagine playing Heavy Strike with no bonus to range. for me it is unfathomable.

TBH, I have (and have had) a number of melee builds. None of them on weapons with a bonus to melee range. Hell, my first char was a stunner with a one-handed mace.

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sidtherat a écrit :

well.. it is 'the melee, tanky' chest out of set of 4 ultimate Bestiary bosses. i know it is junk but I seriously wanted to use it and test Aspect of the Crab (we all know Spider is THE choice, i just wanted to know how sh.. are the 3 other options).

First off, while Aspect of the Spider sees more use in being crafted onto jewelry, Fenumus' gear is NOT the most popular: that'd be Farrul's Fur, which ALONE accounts for ~60% of all Bestiary unique armour used. (~2.8% of Betrayal players used it, vs. 0.7% for Fenumus' Spinnerets)

It's easy to see why: it lets you have permanent frenzy+power charge uptime for basically free; the chest has good armour and evasion (and high armour if you're using IR) and still has decent life.

Secondly, you're just interjecting your own personal decision that does NOT match what a "noob" would do, and trying to justify it as the context of what Noobs are faced with. Bestiary League was nearly a year ago, and we've had substantial re-works to the core game since then. "What sidtherat really wanted to try" is not the same as "what we'd expect a noob to do."

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sidtherat a écrit :

maybe i tried to do too much at once. thanks for pointing it out.

That's putting it a little lightly; you attempted something that, logically, relied on a circular argument of sorts. "melee sucks as noobs would take it" coupled with "It's hard for noobs because they make bad choices."

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sidtherat a écrit :

how many non-noob-trap passives are there between Marauder and Duelist? because that is the sh.. part of the tree with absolutely nothing there. you go there, grab life (that every part of the tree has so it is nothing special) and move on to better places

To be honest, the lack of life in the ranger/shadow section is those classes' biggest weakness, while the left side of the tree is particularly rich.

If we're talking about the space between their two core sections, then yes, there are some noob trap nodes there like Lust for Carnage and Fending... But at the same time, a number of supposed "noob trap" nodes are simply under-rated, like Soul of Steel.

And it's not like this is somehow only a problem for tanky/melee characters: need I point out Essence Sap or Acuity in the Ranger section... Or y'know, CRYSTAL SKIN? The Witch (in spite of being the most popular non-scion class) is probably the worst off here: Static Blows and Essence Surge are godawful, and don't even get STARTED on how badly balanced wand and staff passives are; Elder Power and Blunt Trauma are really bad, and Prism Weave is outright sad. (Back when we had easy access to allocation rates for notable passives, we learned that Prism Weave consistently sat in the bottom 3 for the ENTIRE TREE)

It's as Charan hinted; the tree is actually FULL of bad decisions and noob traps. Making a "dumb noob" melee class only shows you some of them.

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sidtherat a écrit :

and the biggest one:
how many MTX for melee skills are there?

22 of the 135 MTX are for melee skills... Compared to just 16 of them for ranged attacks.

The reason 22 of 135 is bigger than it sounds is because you're forgetting that skills come outside of the range of just "melee/ranged/spell"; a whole 27 of them are just for BUFFS, (e.g, heralds and auras) and you're forgetting 10 totem skins and 12 minion-related effects.

Once you remove those, in the traditional 3-way split, Melee has 22 of 86 MTXes available, or just over one-quarter of all melee/ranged/spell reskins. None of the categories have more MTX than total skills, and Melee's lagging can be partly explained by its fraction of overall skills having been climbing the past few leagues.

well.. the passive tree. passive tree is pretty homogenized nowadays. there are 2 big life clusters per each 6 sections. there is 'some' more life added as a 'section' flavour to mara/duelist/templar sections. but we are talking ~10% per section difference.

'lack of life' for rangers comes from STR or rather lack of it in the first place

when i talk about noob traps ill continue to say that the section between mara and duelist (including LARGE parts of marauder section) is total garbage. why do i say so?

- there is pretty much NOTHING that people not passing by would like to pick. people go for EleOverload or EleEq even if it means 5 travel nodes. what is there to travel for?
- several nodes around that part of the tree have %armour. was there anyone EVER who wasted their points on that? AR scaling is - by design - bad idea. you get enormous benefit from first 1-2K and after that the diminishing return is real. these nodes might as well give 50% per point. noone would go for them
- Soul of Steel + Warcry node: they are 'ok' but.. you ask me to spend 4 passives on 4% phys reduction? (%armour is worthless for me. on classes with armour I already have enough, classes without it wont benefit from them). same with warcry notable. melee builds are already f.. starved for points to get their damage AND survivability.
- i do not consider Knockback node a trap. it is situational and doesnt lie about its value. you like knocking stuff back - you take it.
- Rampart is a lying node. it promises you land of security and great fortify. when in reality you are pretty much golden skipping it and investing these passives into more %life. the fortify bonus is miniscule and alternative cost enormous. this is a noob trap.
- Essence Surge is EXTREMELY STRONG. check what we can craft nowadays. you can get sub 1sec ES recharge start on occultist. I have a melee CI build WITHOUT leech. doing just fine. Essence Surge is BONKERS

what else is there around Mara/Duelist? what that would make Shadow just WANT to go there? nothing. go poe.ninja and explore build heatmaps. it is depressing how worthless the south-western part of the tree is. it is GARBAGE and a noob trap at the same time.

at the same time it is the part of the tree seeing LEAST reworks. the node density is the lowest on the entire tree. are all people blind missing the great value? doubt it.


oh and ofc people are using Aspect of The Spider the most (if they even use the other 3. i seriously doubt it. Cat has its spotlight in DEEP delving combined with Phasing but that was fixed). 15% MORE damage. no conditional bs, no rotating crp, no intangible values. it just gives what is important - damage (and extra slow to boot) is consistent, always on, no strings attached. remaining aspects are traps. they promise value and give you fools gold.


check the price of that Fenumus chest. it is one of the most expensive items out there. i wasnt even able to buy it in standard 2 weeks ago, so little of them dropped.


anyway. got HS char to 92. time to delete it and forget about this melee fiasco. the clear speed was depressing and you still die to random bs elemental burst (martyr ghosts say hello). N>E>V>E>R A>G>A>I>N

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- several nodes around that part of the tree have %armour. was there anyone EVER who wasted their points on that? AR scaling is - by design - bad idea. you get enormous benefit from first 1-2K and after that the diminishing return is real. these nodes might as well give 50% per point. noone would go for them

i couldn't even read beyond this.

poe 2019 - pretend armour is worthless.

also poe 2019 - constantly complain about dying to the syndicate that's been nerfed like 33 times.

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鬼殺し a écrit :

I won't discuss 3.7 because it's not here yet. Bex casually dropped it as a possible focus for melee review. That's not even a guarantee. But it is a possibility and I'm content to wait for that.

But are you REALLY content to wait for that? You're completely 100% ok with a spell-focused patch with things the way they are because Bex made an offhand comment that they "might" be doing something vaguely melee related in 3.7, unconfirmed, and having seen all the previous "melee reworks" and with the builds you want to play being pretty much nonsense since basically beta? (I think you said you like to play melee shadows right?)

Maybe you are, I'm just curious to know what you thought when you heard Ziggy tell us all that they decided to focus on spells in 3.6.

BTW your description of your area of the tree is something I've been complaining about vocally for literally years without so much as a vague looking at from anyone in even pre-tencent-GGG.

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鬼殺し a écrit :

This to me is a fundamental question: why do we have a largely static passive selection when the rest of the game, and I mean literally every other aspect of character building, is considered fluid from expansion to expansion? It honestly doesn't matter how large that selection is if it's comprised of options that best suit a version of the game that doesn't even exist anymore. At most, we see a few clusters added to fit new metagame elements (e.g. the new Brand clusters), but the Skilldrasil doesn't need mere addition. It needs to be as relevant and complementary to this breakneck meta-shift TencentGGG have embraced as any other aspect of the game.

And it. is. not.

I remember back when we had skill tree changes and everybody was just HYPED about it ( I don't mean brand-like changes of course ).


Now .... they pump in new content, new content and new content, completely turn some old skills to ashes and replace them ( @flame totem 'rework' lulz ) and add more content on top of it.
That's their way of doing things now, I'm not even sure if Chris has control over that, it must be quite some experience to be at the head of such a fast growing company, there might just be no way to not loose track of what is what.

It's mind blowing to me that they just add so many new skills while so much could be done with what's already there, instead of living it on the ground and covering it with new shiny stuff :/.

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sidtherat a écrit :

- several nodes around that part of the tree have %armour. was there anyone EVER who wasted their points on that? AR scaling is - by design - bad idea. you get enormous benefit from first 1-2K and after that the diminishing return is real. these nodes might as well give 50% per point. noone would go for them
- Soul of Steel + Warcry node: they are 'ok' but.. you ask me to spend 4 passives on 4% phys reduction? (%armour is worthless for me. on classes with armour I already have enough, classes without it wont benefit from them). same with warcry notable. melee builds are already f.. starved for points to get their damage AND survivability.

LOL, Robmafia really replied the best here: it's so much the meta to claim "Armour is worthless because (insert something about math)" and then turn around and bitch about constantly dying to something doing physical hits.

It's hilarious that Minotaur is consistently considered the hardest shaper guardian by community consensus, yet he's the one you can 100% trivialize through defense alone. I swear I should upload a video: "how to beat him with your DPS is so low it takes 10 minutes." (this happened once; in fairness, it was some REALLY bad mods) Mind you, the entirety of that fight is just "hold down one button for my attack;" no movement, no other abilities, no flasking. If you actually bother to build armour, (rather than bitch that the 931 on a Kaom's heart and no investment doesn't stop you from getting one shot) then he just plain doesn't do damage to you. (and this applies to a LOT of boss mechanics; Chimera's cloud stage doesn't do damage, and slams from everything from the Vaal Vessel to Shaper can't kill you)

Like... I'm not dumb enough to think that the Soul of Steel is a matter of "grab BOTH node paths to it and you get nothing but 4% PDR." The PDR isn't everything; it's just part of what sweetens it. You're also getting 58% increased armour, too. And all for just 3 passive points.

Hell, I don't even have to invest MUCH into armour: the only sections I tend to take are Soul of Steel, Armour Mastery (movespeed!) Juggernaut (also life!) and Combat Stamina. (life+regen!) Those 13 nodes provide you with 184% increased armour, alongside 19% life, 2.3% life regen, 4% PDR, and 20% increased life recovery from flasks. (also massively under-rated, since it applies to instaheal flasks, too)

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sidtherat a écrit :

oh and ofc people are using Aspect of The Spider the most (if they even use the other 3. i seriously doubt it. Cat has its spotlight in DEEP delving combined with Phasing but that was fixed). 15% MORE damage. no conditional bs, no rotating crp, no intangible values. it just gives what is important - damage (and extra slow to boot) is consistent, always on, no strings attached. remaining aspects are traps. they promise value and give you fools gold.

Um, you clearly didn't bother to read that, and rushed to screech "YOU'RE WRONG!" when I was pointing out some actual facts.

Farrul's Fur sees far more use than all of Fenumus' items combined.

Remember, "Aspect of the Spider" is a 25% mana reservation. With Farrul's Fur, Aspect of the Cat is a free skill. And no, it's not about "Rotating buffs;" players grab it because it works out to one simple effect: "grant maximum power and frenzy charges every 4-6 seconds." It's not a rotating between different effects, it's something that refreshes itself. You can ignore the actual properties of the Aspect of the Cat skill; all that matters is that you suddenly have free power and frenzy charges just for equipping a piece of armour w/>2000 armour+evasion and up to 100 life.

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sidtherat a écrit :

check the price of that Fenumus chest. it is one of the most expensive items out there. i wasnt even able to buy it in standard 2 weeks ago, so little of them dropped.

Um... It's currently 1 exalt in Standard, and a nice 69c in Betrayal.

"Most expensive items out there" my ass.

Farrul's fur? Try 45 exa and 23 exa, respectively.

But again, you ARE the one that was arguing that Craicean's Carapace was somehow the epitome of "tanky melee."

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sidtherat a écrit :

time to delete it and forget about this melee fiasco.

You mean, try to forget how you embarrassed yourself in this thread? ;^)