5 Reasons why Melee is superior to Ranged.

I'm tired of seeing people online insisting that you shouldn't play melee.
Here, I will try to save some players from this very bad advice.

5 good reasons to play close range melee:

1-You feel more powerful. You don't summon destructive forces, you are the destructive force. You're not throwing things at your enemies, you're throwing yourself. Once you've tasted this, ranged attacks will seem terribly bland.

2-You can look at the center of your screen... Yes. Playing ranged forces you to aim at enemies from afar, which means that 90% of the time you're looking at the edges of your screen. In melee, you can fully enjoy the immersion without tiring your eye muscles.

3-You're really learning the game. You're not like those ranged glass cannons who can breeze through the game without knowing a single defensive stat or boss patterns. In melee, you'll see all facets of the game; you have to balance your damage and your defenses, you can't just rack up damage hoping to kill monsters before they hit you.

4-You become humble and courageous. You must get close to the monsters, even the scary ones. This strengthens your courage and allows you to truly visualize the size difference between your character and the monster. Ranged characters always think they are bigger than they are because of perspective, and they perpetuate their cowardice by fighting backward.

5-You can loot while moving forward. Ranged have to retrieve loot dropped on the other side of their screen, which partially negates their cherished clear speed advantage. In melee you can loot without deviating from your path.

If you see other advantages to playing melee close range, please contribute.

"

Vergoth42#2613 wrote:

I'm tired of seeing people online insisting that you shouldn't play melee.
Here, I will try to save some players from this very bad advice.

5 good reasons to play close range melee:

1-You feel more powerful. You don't summon destructive forces, you are the destructive force. You're not throwing things at your enemies, you're throwing yourself. Once you've tasted this, ranged attacks will seem terribly bland.

2-You can look at the center of your screen... Yes. Playing ranged forces you to aim at enemies from afar, which means that 90% of the time you're looking at the edges of your screen. In melee, you can fully enjoy the immersion without tiring your eye muscles.

3-You're really learning the game. You're not like those ranged glass cannons who can breeze through the game without knowing a single defensive stat or boss patterns. In melee, you'll see all facets of the game; you have to balance your damage and your defenses, you can't just rack up damage hoping to kill monsters before they hit you.

4-You become humble and courageous. You must get close to the monsters, even the scary ones. This strengthens your courage and allows you to truly visualize the size difference between your character and the monster. Ranged characters always think they are bigger than they are because of perspective, and they perpetuate their cowardice by fighting backward.

5-You can loot while moving forward. Ranged have to retrieve loot dropped on the other side of their screen, which partially negates their cherished clear speed advantage. In melee you can loot without deviating from your path.

If you see other advantages to playing melee close range, please contribute.

haha nice thread. i love playing melee builds and as you said its more challenging and lets u learn the game.

Nice thread :)

As ranged player, I claim my side :

5 Reasons why Ranged is superior to Melee.

Disclaimer: If you're the kind of player who wants to progress as slowly as possible, even if it means sacrificing all your long life, just to showoff to your reals no nerdy friends, go went your lack of wisdom elsewhere; the text just above mine is right for you.

5 good reasons to play distant ranged:

1-You feel more sparkful and speedful. You summon your dexterity and smart destructive abilities, you are a perspicace shadow and the unamed danger. You're not smashing huge slow unpotently heavy weapon things at your enemies by hours, you're evaluating how to shred all of them yourself at once by using the smartest skill. Once you've tasted this, meele attacks will seem terribly bland and all the most unrealisticly unrewarding and frustating.

2-You have a paranomic vision of the action... Yes. Playing ranged allows you to aim at enemies from afar, which means that 90% of the time you're evaluating how can my AoE reach at the edges of the screen, the screen center is just a starting spot for detonating spells nothing else. In distant range, you can fully enjoy the immersion without tiring your eye muscles, as you are not always fixing a single spot, the screen center.

3-You're really understanding the game. You're not like those sturdy meele who can painfully crush the game without knowing a single elementals combo stat or even worse that they did not figure out that boss are just hit box. In distant ranged, you'll see all facets of the game; you have to take into account that you offence is your defence. Why should I invest tons of defence to feel strong while my ennemies have been shredded ? hope to kill monsters before they hit you, no way, no hope here, it is just a certitude. This one is named quick strong offense.

4-You will become tactical and efficient, and you will certainly never fall asleep in front of your screen during the action. You don't need to prove your courage; your results will speak for themselves. Tactical intelligence is the way.

The true value of modesty is the silent contemplation of hardly issued results; you will never have to claim for being humble. You are, by your choices made, your results will be your claimants.

5- As your are fast and efficient, you can loot while having a cup of tea or any other prefered drinking. Even if you have to retrieve loot dropped on the other side of your screen, take this time to comtemplate the battlefield and ask yourself :

If it couldn't have been done in half the time, perhaps my lightning lacks ice?
The time you have, allows you to play two moves ahead; use it to enhance your destructive potential. Don't just react to events. Anticipate them.

In ranged you can loot by allowing you to deviate from other paths because you already known that every path lead, you have already observe it and evaluted. As contrary to melee focused center spot that fear to be lost outside this center.

If you see other advantages to playing Range, please contribute.

"

Hexmxm#0804 wrote:

Nice thread :)

As ranged player, I claim my side :

5 Reasons why Ranged is superior to Melee.
...

Haha, I appreciate the effort, but you haven't convinced me. ^^

"

Vergoth42#2613 wrote:

"

Hexmxm#0804 wrote:

Nice thread :)

As ranged player, I claim my side :

5 Reasons why Ranged is superior to Melee.
...

Haha, I appreciate the effort, but you haven't convinced me. ^^

;-) AhAh, I suspected as much, I'm sure it's because of point #5; I didn't mention coffee as a favorite drink. That'll be the death of me.

Thanks so much for your thread anyway, because even though I don't like playing melee, I understand better why others enjoy it.

IF melee is superior, why do all melee builds have ranged attacks?

Wierd my melee build has no ranged attack

What's the exact distance cut-off to qualify as melee or ranged?

Is it different if you use a bow attack from 1M away vs Sunder from off-screen?

I feel like this whole melee vs ranged thing is a remnant of PoE1 build mentality or a generic ARPG archetype comparison that doesn't really fit into Poe2.

This isn't PoE1 where you need to pick one "main" 6-link melee or ranged skill.

We get 9 full skill slots and two weapon sets. There's lots of room in the toolbox for ways to do damage from many different ranges all while playing one character. There is no need to choose melee over ranged.

Even "traditionally" ranged character archetypes like archers will find themselves within melee range of danger quite often just because of all the denial-of-area or various other style of attacks, ambush mechanics, and hazards that many monsters and bosses have in this game.

"

karsey#2995 wrote:

What's the exact distance cut-off to qualify as melee or ranged?

Is it different if you use a bow attack from 1M away vs Sunder from off-screen?

I feel like this whole melee vs ranged thing is a remnant of PoE1 build mentality or a generic ARPG archetype comparison that doesn't really fit into Poe2.

This isn't PoE1 where you need to pick one "main" 6-link melee or ranged skill.

We get 9 full skill slots and two weapon sets. There's lots of room in the toolbox for ways to do damage from many different ranges all while playing one character. There is no need to choose melee over ranged.

Even "traditionally" ranged character archetypes like archers will find themselves within melee range of danger quite often just because of all the denial-of-area or various other style of attacks, ambush mechanics, and hazards that many monsters and bosses have in this game.

What I consider "melee" are skills used at close range (as described in the game's tooltips = within two meters of the character). That's why I specified "melee close range," because indeed, skills tagged "melee" can have a fairly long range, which is confusing (like a lot of other things in this game ^^).

I think that when creating a build, it's still best to know which archetype you want to go for; More of a melee tank or more of a ranged glass cannon. These are very distinct playstyles:

- If you stack defense while playing at range, you'll quickly see that your defense investment is overkill because your toolbox is designed so that monsters can't reach you.

- If you stack mostly damage while playing in melee, you'll quickly realize that you simply can't survive.

If you alternate between these two playstyles, you risk lacking the defense to survive in melee or the damage to destroy mobs before they reach you... So you're very likely to suffer from both weaknesses. It's perfectly playable, but I'm afraid it will become disappointing at some point.
That said, it is probably quite possible to alternate between these two playstyles when Weapon Skill Sets are used to their full potential.

"

Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

Wierd my melee build has no ranged attack

Your skills cover a large portion of area, without holding a 18ft or so sword straight out of Sephiroth's arsenal.

This game is just a load of magery, if I was doing skills from the PoE2 Warrior class on Ultima Online I'd be the greatest mage to have ever existed.
"I even leave big sticks on the floor and there's copies of me attacking", dude are we mirror imaging from Baldur's Gate?