Melee is CONSISTENTLY worse than Ranged, something needs to change

they should do an event with increased drops but melee only gems allowed.

Light stun
Freeze
Ignite
Shock
Bleeding
Poison
Covered in oil
Armor broken
Maimed
Slowed

This is what you getting when you entering melee range. This is basically suicide mission. Especially in the endgame.

It's been an issue that hasn't changed at all in years..

They're either incapable of designing balanced melee, or they think it's balanced.

Yup, tried melee in 0.1 and felt like the game was super hard. Tried it again with druid in 0.4 and same issues.

Melee is just bad in this game.

Im just bumping cause i went melee and yeah it sux and has no real benefits over a ranged build except if u like dying a lot.

the only melee that kind of works is when you get aoe effects or other attacks coming out of attacks that hit screen wide.

You already got the armor vs ES debate, accuracy of attacks vs spells debate, then just close range vs far away debate.

Reminds me of the old street fighter game of the grappler Zangief where Capcom buffed his defense and health to compensate for the slow movement and needing to get close to opponent. In PoE2, does anybody really think Melee has big advantage to range?

1) Remove the life penalty from Giant's Blood, what I've already posted. It will give melee mace build at least 500 HP.
2) Make melee skills less clunky. It is not about zoom-zoom, but about smooth gameplay. For example, Stampede. Using this skill shouldn't force hero to stop, mark time for few moments and than go. But smoothly accelerate from walking to sprinting. And ofc, there shouldn't be 180 degrees turning, when hero collides with urn, rabbit or monkey. I am a freaking titan, I should run throw them all.

I do not agree that melee has a tanking issue. I play Amazon wolf all evasion and I reach level 97 and finish all content. I also played mercenary with armor and it was the same, just take some defensive nodes

The only thing I agree with is that many melee skills have very long animiations which hinders the melee experience (leeps, moving backwards....)