Why i m hyped for POE2 (MELEE)

I hate to be the wake up call but melee in PoE 2 will still be the lowest ceiling.

From the latest gameplay you see that the overworked the monk gave him huge AoE and damage buffs but he still tends to die left and right.

Warrior got none of the AoE or damage buffs he just dies a lot and there wasnt really a direction provided if there is a supposed niche where melee will shine.

Based on the gameplay/imterviews I assume melee will be the luxury gameplay style where you have to invest more to achieve the same spells/ranged builds do similar to PoE 1.

If you want to experience actually powerful melee i recommend Diablo 4.
No joke, Barbarian is htting it out of the park.

Dont get me wrong (D4 bad still) but at least they get the melee gameplay somewhat right. A few people in this forum claim its "impossible" to get melee in a good state.
All that changed about Barb was mostly numerical things btw.

Melee in PoE is lackluster due to multiple causes, and can, and should be further improved by the devs.

Remember how Static Strike used to be that awesome delayed explosion (instead of the current puny zap - which should have been a different skill), and the explosion wasn't usually as damage loaded as the melee hit?

That's what TRU MELEE lacks.

The feeling of "OOMPH" - e.g. Boneshatter is such a great TRU MELEE skill for 2 reasons:

1 - Has easier time scaling damage
2 - Has baked AOE

Those 2 lead to the "OOMPH"

No one should argue that in the current PoE "cookie cutter zoom is life" era TRU MELEE should always remain a bonking stick hit as close to an enemy to smell his arm pits.

But no one should debate that currently TRU MELEE doesn't lack SOMETHING / ANYTHING to make it on par with other playstyles...

We lack easier access to damage scaling, lack access to some defensive options - if damage is to be kept up to par - or we lack crowd control opportunities.
To make it disheartening, we don't even get the "OOMPH" as TRU MELEE these days...

Devs should bring back the previous Static Strike behaviour as a transmute gem "of Dynamo"... At least that had the "OOMPH" and let us be proper Thunder Gods...

Same should apply to all TRU MELEE skills - add the "OOMPH" so even if nothing else changes, you feel the FUN playing TRU MELEE ..

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Melee in PoE is lackluster due to multiple causes, and can, and should be further improved by the devs.

Remember how Static Strike used to be that awesome delayed explosion (instead of the current puny zap - which should have been a different skill), and the explosion wasn't usually as damage loaded as the melee hit?

That's what TRU MELEE lacks.

The feeling of "OOMPH" - e.g. Boneshatter is such a great TRU MELEE skill for 2 reasons:

1 - Has easier time scaling damage
2 - Has baked AOE

Those 2 lead to the "OOMPH"

No one should argue that in the current PoE "cookie cutter zoom is life" era TRU MELEE should always remain a bonking stick hit as close to an enemy to smell his arm pits.

But no one should debate that currently TRU MELEE doesn't lack SOMETHING / ANYTHING to make it on par with other playstyles...

We lack easier access to damage scaling, lack access to some defensive options - if damage is to be kept up to par - or we lack crowd control opportunities.
To make it disheartening, we don't even get the "OOMPH" as TRU MELEE these days...

Devs should bring back the previous Static Strike behaviour as a transmute gem "of Dynamo"... At least that had the "OOMPH" and let us be proper Thunder Gods...

Same should apply to all TRU MELEE skills - add the "OOMPH" so even if nothing else changes, you feel the FUN playing TRU MELEE ..

its real hard to make "tru melee" feel good without also buffing "melee that hits the entire screen 100 times a second" or "melee that deletes enemies in seconds".

i actually feel glacial hammer has the oomph factor, but the way it is in poe, you just need to kill fast. whatever oomph we have will lose meaning when oomphing 5 times a second is required to feel good.

there was a guy who came in to give his feedback on his initial playthru. he got stun cancelled out of his melee animations multiple times very early.

ive experienced that too many times before. its really a bad experience.

Im worried because I havent seen a representative of GGG thats like the "melee Guy" yet. Well maybe the guy who did the art for models at last Exile Con he seemed passionate but JR, no way he doesnt seem to like melee at all. Hes all about the Ranger, Druid and Witch. So to me Im like wheres the guy standing in the corner at GGG for melee. What we have seen of Warrior looks sluggish and its supposed to be big meaty hits but I can tell you a minion Witch will mop the field after that Warrior dies. Monk looks cool fast , the Bell works but again low HP gets rocked in melee range. Melee players have less time to react to stuff and need "something" to compensate for that to have balance, time will tell how this plays out.

"

Hammerhorn_Oathsworn wrote:

Im worried because I havent seen a representative of GGG thats like the "melee Guy" yet. Well maybe the guy who did the art for models at last Exile Con he seemed passionate but JR, no way he doesnt seem to like melee at all. Hes all about the Ranger, Druid and Witch. So to me Im like wheres the guy standing in the corner at GGG for melee. What we have seen of Warrior looks sluggish and its supposed to be big meaty hits but I can tell you a minion Witch will mop the field after that Warrior dies. Monk looks cool fast , the Bell works but again low HP gets rocked in melee range. Melee players have less time to react to stuff and need "something" to compensate for that to have balance, time will tell how this plays out.

Has there ever been a melee guy at poe? Not in the 5 years I've been playing. Don't expect that to change here or in 2.

I see exsea crossed the line in the sand...come back soon

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Melee in PoE is lackluster due to multiple causes, and can, and should be further improved by the devs.

Remember how Static Strike used to be that awesome delayed explosion (instead of the current puny zap - which should have been a different skill), and the explosion wasn't usually as damage loaded as the melee hit?

That's what TRU MELEE lacks.

The feeling of "OOMPH" - e.g. Boneshatter is such a great TRU MELEE skill for 2 reasons:

1 - Has easier time scaling damage
2 - Has baked AOE

Those 2 lead to the "OOMPH"

No one should argue that in the current PoE "cookie cutter zoom is life" era TRU MELEE should always remain a bonking stick hit as close to an enemy to smell his arm pits.

But no one should debate that currently TRU MELEE doesn't lack SOMETHING / ANYTHING to make it on par with other playstyles...

We lack easier access to damage scaling, lack access to some defensive options - if damage is to be kept up to par - or we lack crowd control opportunities.
To make it disheartening, we don't even get the "OOMPH" as TRU MELEE these days...

Devs should bring back the previous Static Strike behaviour as a transmute gem "of Dynamo"... At least that had the "OOMPH" and let us be proper Thunder Gods...

Same should apply to all TRU MELEE skills - add the "OOMPH" so even if nothing else changes, you feel the FUN playing TRU MELEE ..

Numbers have very little to do with the 'OOMPH' you're referring to.

You're right - most of the complaints about melee, once you boil out all the whinging from people who just want to kill every build that isn't whack-it-with-a-hammer, are complaints that melee doesn't feel good to play. Blows are too light, characters are too stiff, skills don't have weight or impact. Effectively, there's no sense that you're smashing something with a hammer rather than just waving a damage stick in their general direction.

Here's the thing - you can't fix OOMPH with numbers. OOMPH is all about the visual and audio feedback for the skill. The way to fix OOMPH is with improved animations, improved sound effects, improvements to enemies' reaction to the blows, and similar. For heavy, OOMPH-y blows like those from a two-handed hammer, you generally want there to be a wind-up on the skill's animation. A visual, however brief, of the character bracing and visibly gathering themselves, as if to collect the energy needed to move this massive weight in their hands around, prior to a swift and explosive release. You also need to nail the sound design, sound is way more important to a sense of weight and impact than many people realize. You need some reverb to the sound, depth and bassy crunch to it, to aid in conveying that sense of mass and momentum. These are the things that give a skill a sense of weight, impact, and power.

They're also things that are largely impossible to do in Path the First. Again, if this was just a matter of numbers? Numbers are easy. Any melee skill can be scaled to whatever numbers you feel like by just throwing enough exalts at it. Again, setting aside the whinging of people who just want everything else to be unplayable levels of suck out of petty vindictiveness, numbers can be tuned without issue. Capturing that feeling of weight, impact and power is a much different kettle of monkeys however, and it requires the sort of ground-up rework they're doing in Path 2.

i cant speak for all melee players in poe1 but for me, melee gems have for more than enough oomph to it. so i would say for ggg the hardest problem is the numbers.

ofc since their design relies on outlier gems, i dont see any solution to it, unless poe2 designers stop with this way of balancing. i dont see why they would but who knows. and even if, content > balance (for me also) so i dont see that happening anytime soon

"

Glorfndel01 wrote:

"

Hammerhorn_Oathsworn wrote:

Im worried because I havent seen a representative of GGG thats like the "melee Guy" yet. Well maybe the guy who did the art for models at last Exile Con he seemed passionate but JR, no way he doesnt seem to like melee at all. Hes all about the Ranger, Druid and Witch. So to me Im like wheres the guy standing in the corner at GGG for melee. What we have seen of Warrior looks sluggish and its supposed to be big meaty hits but I can tell you a minion Witch will mop the field after that Warrior dies. Monk looks cool fast , the Bell works but again low HP gets rocked in melee range. Melee players have less time to react to stuff and need "something" to compensate for that to have balance, time will tell how this plays out.

Has there ever been a melee guy at poe? Not in the 5 years I've been playing. Don't expect that to change here or in 2.

I see exsea crossed the line in the sand...come back soon

im back! to reply, lol

in a sense, i kinda have faith that GGG has enough feedback on how to make melee work.

to put it simply, mechanics is not enough. POE1 evolved in a way without considering "trumelee". the devs "got away" with it as they washed their hands by giving melee skills that could technically hit full screen and a gazzillion times a second.

by introducing such skills they doomed tru melee as any buff towards trumelee would also buff those "fakemelee" skills.

you cant buff trumelee without changing fakemelee as they are melee too.

a lot of us have given 1001 suggestions. GGG IS listening. just that i have zero investment in POE1 anymore.

i've waited too many years playing poe1 hoping for the fabled "make melee great again" patch via poe2.

it could still happen but by then i ve moved on to poe2. as a trumelee andy i really think poe1 is a gone case and i've stopped taking in any copium/hopium for poe1. how many years do i need to keep taking copium? is 10 years not enough?

also it doesnt stop there. digressing a little but i m sick and tired of poe 1's archaic gem socketing system.

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Melee in PoE is lackluster due to multiple causes, and can, and should be further improved by the devs.

Remember how Static Strike used to be that awesome delayed explosion (instead of the current puny zap - which should have been a different skill), and the explosion wasn't usually as damage loaded as the melee hit?

That's what TRU MELEE lacks.

The feeling of "OOMPH" - e.g. Boneshatter is such a great TRU MELEE skill for 2 reasons:

1 - Has easier time scaling damage
2 - Has baked AOE

Those 2 lead to the "OOMPH"

No one should argue that in the current PoE "cookie cutter zoom is life" era TRU MELEE should always remain a bonking stick hit as close to an enemy to smell his arm pits.

But no one should debate that currently TRU MELEE doesn't lack SOMETHING / ANYTHING to make it on par with other playstyles...

We lack easier access to damage scaling, lack access to some defensive options - if damage is to be kept up to par - or we lack crowd control opportunities.
To make it disheartening, we don't even get the "OOMPH" as TRU MELEE these days...

Devs should bring back the previous Static Strike behaviour as a transmute gem "of Dynamo"... At least that had the "OOMPH" and let us be proper Thunder Gods...

Same should apply to all TRU MELEE skills - add the "OOMPH" so even if nothing else changes, you feel the FUN playing TRU MELEE ..

This post could be the backing track for some seriously sick spits, yo.