Path of Exile has a Melee problem
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- Hello folks,
I recorded another Path of Exile video that is essentially just one long rant. I am interested in game balance and I've found myself struggling to retain my interest in POE due to the weakness of Slam builds (my favorites). Thus as a result I discuss game design and game balance as it relates to melee builds in POE.
As an off meta player I enjoy the slams playstyle even when slams are not particularly strong. However I can't help but feel jaded by the lack of awareness of the real problems facing the archetype. Hopefully this reaches an audience that is interested in discussing balance solutions for what feels like the weakest build type in the game.
For context, I am really trying to target the early-to-mid league progression for the average player. I am not specifically interested in the ultra late game builds that are likely to be posted on YT
Thanks team. Have a good week,
Jesse
I think the core issue is that the way PoE is implemented, you character can strictly "either" use an ability "or" move. In the case of self-cast or melee, you also need to keep moving your mouse between where you want to attack and where you want to move to make your character turn. And to top it off, you also need to know "where" the thing you want to attack is.
So it's no coincidence that the most popular and well-performing builds are those that bypass these exact problems using some kind of proxies: Totems, minions, brands etc. All these allow your character to only stop moving to cast the ability and to never have to turn or aim. Most of the time, you don't even have to know where a mob or the boss is, since all these will auto-target.
Melee doesn't really have those. You have to stop moving to attack, you have to manually put your mouse pointer over your target, you have to know where the mob or boss that you want to attack is, and you often have to spend at least one action moving to them or away from them.
That said, I love playing slams, Cyclone, Bladestorm etc. (with Precise Technique), and they kind of mitigate some of that with AoE. Still, melee is hard these days.
Well, not all melee skills require you to stop to cast the ability and not all of them require you to aim. Any build that uses multistrike aims automatically. Skills like cyclone, rage vortex and so on doesn't require you to stop to cast. Melee builds are often more tanky and can take u punch. They often have more attack speed and they can scale the dmg better. It's a tradeoff. Not a problem. I used to play bow builds before but this league im going all melee and I'm having the best season in years.
Biggest problem is the power spike, I go from smashing things to pieces to getting 1 hit. I actually make more xp offline as melee.
2 leagues later and they nerfed melee, nerfed warcries for melee and gave ez warcry access to ranged builds
They have never been able to balance meele vs ranged. Im hoping POE2 fixes that.
It won't. GGG loves ranged. They literally have shown the "Ranger" character 3 times now, but not a single time have they shown sword and shield gameplay.
Probably because it's an afterthought to them.
I think all melee classes should have a "charge" ability to close the distance. It doesn't have to be separate skill but an action available to all like the dodge roll except you're "rolling" towards the enemy. And you're not really rolling but doing a running charge at double speed.
The problem with buffing warcries base stats would be that if they do that any build besides melee would just try to put warcry in it
if the base stat effectiveness was based off Str stat then it would focus on those builds
Its not just a ggg thing, the arpg genre in general has never been able to do melee properly. Its quite baffling to be honest. A big step in the right direction seems to be the emphasis on forward movement in all melee skills, as theyve shown in POE2. That would go a lot of way
90% of mob combat code isn't even triggered from a ranged build one shotting it from a distance. Meanwhile melee has to deal with all of it. The game at a foundational level is completely unbalanced. The only way to buffer this is to give melee attack gems a defensive % Global damage reduction as a bonus for using the skill and the passive tree shouldn't be made by the janitor. Also accuracy stat should only be for ranged.
They literally haven't shown a single second of footage of PoE2 with basic sword and shield gameplay/skills. They have however shown Ranger and crossbow and spell gameplay like 8 times now.
Infact, they recently announced they upgraded ranged even further by letting you move while shooting/casting etc.
Melee has NO CHANCE of competing with that. Melee might be EVEN WORSE than ranged in PoE2. I feel like that's actually safe to assume despite what GGG says, they have not shown a single piece of proof to back up their claims of improved melee. Everyone at Exilecon1 said melee felt just as bad as PoE1. Exilecon 2, same thing, people said melee was just as bad still.
Melee has been a problem for years, and GGG's actions indicate that fixing it is not something they care about. It would require massive numerical changes to all stats, a rework of ancestral totems, a rework of explode on death, a rework of all rare modifiers to balance them targeting/impacting ranged and melee equally, a rework of nearly every single melee skill's functionality and area, removing additional projectiles from the game then fixing the skills broken by that, and about a dozen other massive changes.
GGG just doesn't care enough to do that in POE1, but it can at least be somewhat addressed in POE2.
How about we simply cut the global damage of ranged and magic by like 50 %, at least now I would have a good reason to get in a melee range to do more damage
You started with general gaming concepts, and then just jumped into the weeds with your rant about slams. Melee has problems, but problems of slams are specific to slams. There are two most basic problems that make melee characters in PoE hard to control. One is having to keep mouse pointer over the enemy, which means it cannot point at where you want to dodge. Second is the mismatch in coordinates of the 3d model and the ground behind it, which upon a slightest misclick causes your character to start swinging at the ground. Your character is unplayable if you cannot just point in the general direction. It is not like projectile spells are smooth to play, just try playing plain Fireball. The game just "fixes" this immediately with extra proj supports which lets you ignore the faults.
The most common problem which melee builds really suffer from is the dependence on buttons in general and totems in particular. Temporary buffs that you have to press and keep the track of. The only playable melee builds are those that either automate the buttons or can afford to use them only on bosses.
Now, regarding slams. Accuracy and mana are especially easy to fix in the left side of the tree: Blood Magic and Resolute Technique. If you don't want to use BM, just get Lifetap. If no RT, get an accuracy cluster. Yes it feels like the game shouldn't create these problems for you in the first place, and that warcry and slam scaling should not lose to maxing attacks per second. In the current state of PoE, with multiple sources of IAS, fast weapon bases, ancestral totems, berserk and tailwind, attack speed is just a superior option.
Thank you for the feedback! Yes I do tend to talk about Slams a lot in my videos
Warcries should be duration buffs that give a small less attack speed downside, completely doing away eith charges. This solves the garbage "cannot exert travel skills" mechanic as well. Buff their base speed a bit and give warcry speed on every single warcry passive skill.
why are they so tilted against melee? their concept of skill seems to be "moving around non stop avoiding stuff builds are the way", which is pretty childish and boring in a hurry
This game has melee problems since day one of launch years ago . They know it. Just don't care to fix it