[2.6 Suggestion] Melee can't compete with casters. Here are some simple ideas to fix that

[Hanz-1979]

@usz-21515

yes. make this easy game even more easy because melee classes should use 1 autoattack instead of 2 to kill monsters in hell. pathetic

even with OHK on mobs, melee would still be behind casters
multi target + fcr + tele is unbeatable in this game

[CleanLX-1524]

@anon47458115

You know there is a problem when the best spec of the prime melee class is a pseudo caster build.

Which build would that be… DualDream Zealot?

[ODT-21469]

and cleave for two-handeds.

[Crescendo-1948]

I’d guess Hammerdin, but then again, I’d consider that a full caster build.

[usz-21515]

they could nerf casters and not buff melees. this game is just too easy

[Crescendo-1948]

Appreciate the free bump, mate.

[Nokkternal-1784]

This is why I enjoy PD2 more, it just has the QoL people have wanted forever. In my opinion, I think Blizzard should “copy” PD2.

[Crescendo-1948]

I’ve never played PD2, but many of the things I’ve read sound awesome. I’ve read that the melee/caster parity is much better too.

Here’s hoping Blizz fixes at least the latter.

[Tohki-1314]

@Crescendo-1948

Get rid of the hit cap for melee.

Casters have to aim when melee do not, and therefore they can miss. I don’t see this as an imbalance outside of amazons/ranged physical weapons, which suffer from both drawbacks.

@Crescendo-1948

Remove the no-hit-check system from running.

Dealing with this is as easy as hitting your run hotkey. Thematically, if you’re fleeing, then you’re not dodging attacks as effectively, same with blocking. It adds some depth to playing melee to toggle off run when you engage the enemies. The chad retreating strut vs the cringe panicked fleeing.

@Crescendo-1948

Provide greater AOE to melee.

Melee builds already have the damage output advantage, and it would cause a real imbalance to give them AoE as well.

@Crescendo-1948

Buff base weapon damage across the board.

This I agree with. Non runeword weapon options are pitifully weak, and all physical builds become reliant on crushing blow for hell mode.

@Crescendo-1948

Buff melee skills so that they provide their greatest scaling increases at low levels.

Casters are heavily mana dependent at the start of the game, and it’s not easily solved without gear.

@Crescendo-1948

Give elite mobs and bosses more HP

I don’t see the correlation here. Clearing bosses is already an advantage for melee, they don’t need even more of a lead.

@Crescendo-1948

Make Zod runes add ethereal status along with indestructible.

This buffs everyone.

@Crescendo-1948

Remove the ladder stats-buff for mobs

If those few other things are increased resistances, then fair’s fair.

@Crescendo-1948

Buff two-handed weapons.

Citing Grief when it belongs in its own transcended rank doesn’t prove much aside from that Grief is broken and bis for all melee. Moving a tier down to other strong options, two hand is competitive with 1h, where two hand would be used. You can’t expect a paladin to favor a 2h weapon for their builds, for example.

@Crescendo-1948

Give medium and heavy armors/shields some type of damage reduction buff relative to their speed penalties.

This is a good idea. There’s currently no reason to equip heavier armor types than light onto your character. Losing the walk speed and investing additional str to gain a small amount of defense is a bad design.

[rod-1442]

Sounds like alot of QQ to me. The only caster vs melee problem I see is magic vs physical pvp. Hdin and necro will always have the advantage unless more magic resist or absorb is introduced. Speaking of caster vs melee for pvm, no one seems to care about how broken javazon is.

[UExtraBad-1503]

@Crescendo-1948

Get rid of the hit cap for melee. Casters never miss. 5% of all melee attacks are guaranteed to miss, no matter what, due to the hit cap being 95%. Allow us to achieve 100% hit with enough attack rating. I’ll leave whether that’s a linear or logarithmic curve to your systems designers.

Agree, but for missile classes too

@Crescendo-1948

Remove the no-hit-check system from running. As it stands, when a character runs in D2R, armor does not apply to physical attacks because the hit check against a character’s armor is completely skipped. This almost exclusively benefits casters. Casters very rarely get hit by physical attacks due to being ranged classes, and if they have to move, have tools to do so without running (teleport). Melee classes, however, get hit all of the time whether that’s the initial charge into a group of mobs, or repositioning in the middle of a fight to continue attacking. Make armor count while running to help close this divide. (Bonus points: tie % of armor effectiveness while running to stamina so it’s not a pointless stat. )

Agree

@Crescendo-1948

Remove the reduce-block-chance system from running. No further elaboration. Same reasons as #2.

Yep

@Crescendo-1948

Provide greater AOE to melee. Casters can wipe out entire screens in a few seconds due to the massive amount of AOE they have. Melee builds have no such AOE to use, and even if they did, would still likely be behind casters due to the need to close distance to enact the AOE. This has lead to a dramatic lack of parity between melee builds and casters, as evidenced by the majority of players being either Sorceresses or Paladin caster builds. On top of that, for virtually every class, the “caster” build is usually superior to any true melee option (Hammerdins/Auradins, Elemental Druids, Trapsin, Javazon, etc.). There are plenty of ways to fix this, but the easiest way is to simply make the currently-useless physical sunder charm also provide AOE. (NOTE: this AOE may need to be tied to weapon range (1-5) for balance reasons, especially to prevent Bowazons from clearing TZs as fast as they can move)

No. Game is already too easy. Instead of buffing melee, we need to bring other classes back down to where they should be.

@Crescendo-1948

Buff base weapon damage across the board. When 1.10 was implemented, monster health and other items were adjusted to make mobs more survivable. Melee weaponry was never adjusted to compensate, and this is the exact patch when melee took a backseat to casters. I don’t know what the % should be, so I’ll also leave that to your systems designers.

Neither was missile, but this is still a bad suggestion. Not because it wouldn’t balance things, but because again, games too easy already. We don’t need buffs, they need nerfs.

@Crescendo-1948

Buff melee skills so that they provide their greatest scaling increases at low levels. No matter what happens with further melee buffs, leveling a melee character will always be worse than leveling a caster. This is because casters are nearly-item-independent at game start when it comes to offensive power; all of their offensive power comes from skill points, with items only providing marginal buffs to this in the form of additional skillpoints. On the other hand, melee builds are nearly-100%-item-dependent for offensive power, leading to long stretches of artificial leveling walls. Eventually, melee builds just can’t keep going without finding or trading for the right drop. By inverting the scaling curve for melee skills so that the biggest scaling jumps are at early skill levels, it dramatically lessens the importance of finding GG weaponry just to reach endgame and removes leveling cliffs/walls. (NOTE: in order to prevent melee builds from only investing a few points into a variety of skills to get maximum benefit, have the decreasing scale still stay appreciable from 1-20, and only fall off more-dramatically after 20. Also make synergy bonuses high. Both of these will encourage and preserve build specialization that the game seems to strive for now.)

I see the benefit to this, but it trivializes end game talents. Your explanation here is sound though and I agree.

@Crescendo-1948

Give elite mobs and bosses more HP. Casters don’t have crushing blow. Melee does. This is one of the few advantages melee has in current game systems. By making elites and bosses stronger, it makes mechanics like crushing blow even more important. This will help bring clear-speed parity to even for casters and melee.

Casters don’t have crushing blow because basically the only caster played is a sorc, and it has static, which melts crushing blow out of the park. Again, not an instance I really think we need buffs for, but an instance that is great testament to the fact that casters have had it way too nice for way too long.

@Crescendo-1948

Make Zod runes add ethereal status along with indestructible. Casters don’t care about their weapon damage, nor whether their weapon is ethereal or not. An ethereal Oculus, for example, is just as good as a regular. However, in order to remain even moderately-relevant, melee builds require ethereal weapons outside of Grief. This dramatically limits item options for melee characters compared to casters, making it much harder to reach endgame relevance. Even worse, so many of a melee character’s options (Grandfather, Immortal King’s Stone Crusher, etc.) are immediately off the table because they cannot be ethereal. By the introduction of sunder charms, it appears the D2R developers prefer item solutions to system problems, so allowing Zod to turn indestructible items (which cannot drop as ethereal) into ethereal items will be a big buff for melee. It will make it easier to find a GG weapon that is necessary for melee competitiveness by expanding the pool of options. This also has the bonus of making Zod runes more useful, because right now…they’re not very useful for being the rarest rune in the game.

I’d agree if it also worked for bows and throwing too, and a few more rune words were created around the zod rune to compensate, but then we’d be creating basically a necessity to use a runeword with a zod, which makes all the other ones useless. Weird catch 22 scenario. INSTEAD of this, I’d simply propose that melee and ranged weapons BOTH receive the ability to be ethereal, and that if and when they’re ethereal, they automatically come equipped with the modification of crushing blow, with a varying %.

@Crescendo-1948

Buff two-handed weapons. Grief is and always will be a problem when it comes to melee relevance, as there is virtually nothing that can compete with it when placed in a Phase Blade. AOE based on weapon range (via sunder charm?) will help this. Buffing base weapon damage will also help since Grief is a static buff not based on weapon damage. However, because of the ability to wear a shield and various other factors, even with such buffs, I’d bet two-handers will still fall behind Grief. Providing some benefit, like unstoppable attacks (like Druid bear form), would be a nice way to address this issue that, while not directly-related to caster/melee parity, is a tangential, systemic issue affecting melee relevance.

There will always be that one best weapon. Remember that. Always. Bows actually need this buff more than swords sadly, but this proposed change is way overdue.

@Crescendo-1948

Give medium and heavy armors/shields some type of damage reduction buff relative to their speed penalties. As with #2 and #3, armor is a more important stat for melee than casters. Implementing this change will help melee more than casters, and it will also help break the Everyrunewordisinamageplateorarchonplate status quo that plagues the game, as other armor types would finally have a reason to be worn and justify their speed/strength penalties. I don’t know if the damage reduction buff should be 1:1 for the reduction penalty or some deeper fraction, but I’ll leave that decision, like previous issues, to the D2R systems designers.

This is great on paper, but there are already builds with existing gear that are so tanky they basically have no mobs in the game that can kill them. This would further complicate this issue. Maybe instead, add a penalty to recovery time. If your speed is greater, your recovery time is worse. This change is also almost meaningless though without your #2 proposed change.

@cdgodlike-1939

One more suggestion: Caster rate should be affected by cold and slow effect.

Yes, and teleport should gain only a % of your FCR based on HARD applied points.

[Crescendo-1948]

Tohki:

Casters barely aim due to their absurd AOE.

We’ll have to agree to disagree on running penalties. Thematically, there is no dodge in this game other than for Amazons. Armor isn’t dodge despite it negating an attack. Armor is armor. It doesn’t disappear when you run.

Melee builds don’t have a damage output advantage other than on paper, as evidenced by clear speeds being dominated by casters. They also don’t have cold-immune FCR, use Fortitude over Enigma (no teleport), and have far more movement required to do damage. Small AOE wouldn’t cause any imbalance; casters would still have nearly every advantage regardless.

The whole “casters are heavily mana dependent at game start” argument doesn’t hold water. You can buy mana potions. However, you can’t buy GG weapons from vendors unless you want to WP > Charsi > WP over and over for 2 hours for a weapon you’ll replace in 15 minutes. Casters still have the advantage in leveling and gear dependence, especially as evidenced by casters taking a dominant leveling lead every early ladder.

Clearing bosses is indeed an advantage for melee. I said as much. But they also indeed need more of a lead because even if literally every single of my suggestions were implemented other than this one, because of cold-immune FCR, Enigma, and less movement being required for damage, clear speeds would still be higher for casters. Some other changes are needed to bring parity to the game, and since 99% of the game is an AOE bomb-fest that casters dominate, the 1% that melee can dominate needs to have a little more relevance.

Zod granting ethereal status does not buff everyone. When it comes to weapons, it doesn’t buff casters at all, in fact. If you’re talking armor, I’d love to see what Zod-socketed-armor casters would start using over Enigma/Shakow/ Facet/Griffon’s w/ Facet/Stormshield w/ Facet/Phoenix/CoH etc. Besides, as already established in earlier points, casters barely get hit as it is; 30% bonus armor won’t make a real difference in terms of power parity.

Increased resistances are not part of the ladder buffs. There is no “fair’s fair” here. If you’re going to wade into a debate like this, at least know what you’re talking about.

Two-hand still wouldn’t be competitive with casters even if Grief were comparable. 2H would still need a buff. Nearly everyone in this thread agrees.

Rod:

Magic damage from Hammerdins and Necros (seriously on Necros?) isn’t as much of an outlier as it used to be due to sunder charms. Now every caster other than poison can clear basically everything just like a Hammerdin. Immunes aren’t an endgame problem anymore (…for casters).

And for the purposes of this discussion, Javazons are casters. They deal majority elemental damage, do it via ranged AOE, and the elemental portion of their attacks can’t miss.

UExtraBad:

You’re right that the current systems environment creates a game that’s likely too easy. If casters were brought down to the level of melee and the game were made more challenging, that would indeed be an equally-viable solution. That said, it would take a lot more coding work to make that kind of change happen, I think (entire systems overhauls vs. tweaks), and I really do not think Blizz is interested in nerfing classes at this point — only shaking up the meta via buffs like they did in 2.4.

My suggestions aren’t bad because they try to bring parity in the current systems environment. Yeeeeeesh. It’s just a different way to bring parity given the realities of the game industry and state of D2R. Your suggestions aren’t bad either for seeking parity in a different direction. I just think they’re less likely, so I focused on what I thought would be more likely given the above.

Also, note that Static is capped at 50% of boss health in Hell. Crushing blow is not capped like that. At some level of boss scaling, crushing blow will outpace casters even given Static.

On teleport, I always thought a cooldown that decreases with level would be a nice balance element. It would tone down Enigma’s overpower for non-Sorceresses, and would require Sorceresses to max the skill rather than drop a single point into it, thereby causing some type of damage opportunity loss somewhere else in their skill tree. That said, I don’t want to derail this thread with ways to nerf casters. Just looking to bring melee as close to their power as possible.

[Tohki-1314]

@Crescendo-1948

We’ll have to agree to disagree on running penalties. Thematically, there is no dodge in this game other than for Amazons. Armor isn’t dodge despite it negating an attack. Armor is armor. It doesn’t disappear when you run.

But toggling off run, which you don’t need to do while hitting things in melee range, already solves this. Casters also lose all of their armor while kiting.

@Crescendo-1948

Melee builds don’t have a damage output advantage other than on paper

You’re marrying AoE potential into the damage output. Yes, caster builds have more AoE potential, but the melee builds have much higher single target. The melee builds also tend to scale harder. Casters have to jump through hoops pumping up their skill levels through gear and charms, and still not accomplish the top end of a decked out melee build.

@Crescendo-1948

The whole “casters are heavily mana dependent at game start” argument doesn’t hold water. You can buy mana potions.

It’s still a very slow grind to 25 when you can put on a Spirit weapon and attempt to speed things up through gear. 27 for an Insight merc, and 29 for Lore, and then you can really get pumping. Melee also hit power spikes with gear, the only real gap is if you’re referring specifically to sorc and teleport, which is a teleport problem.

@Crescendo-1948

Casters still have the advantage in leveling and gear dependence, especially as evidenced by casters taking a dominant leveling lead every early ladder.

Sorcs take a dominant lead, followed by any build with an enigma. That’s a teleport issue.

@Crescendo-1948

Zod granting ethereal status does not buff everyone.

It buffs armor as well as damage. It’s not really going to help melee out if they have to find a Zod to turn some unique elite weapon into an ethereal version that’s unlikely to outpace runeword options; Zod isn’t exactly common. On the other side, I can think of an MF sorc build that could use the same new Zod to get a bunch of extra armor to buff with Frozen Armor, so the build gets stronger. Weapon isn’t the only slot in the game, and runewords aren’t the only gear in the game.

@Crescendo-1948

Increased resistances are not part of the ladder buffs. There is no “fair’s fair” here. If you’re going to wade into a debate like this, at least know what you’re talking about.

Yeah, I said “if” for a reason.

@Crescendo-1948

Two-hand still wouldn’t be competitive with casters even if Grief were comparable. 2H would still need a buff.

I guess I’m missing which class/builds this is aimed at. I can’t think of anything that isn’t a degenerate PK build. There aren’t many reasons for most classes to use 2h even if they were much stronger than they are now.

[Crescendo-1948]

None of your points make sense to me at this point, and with some of your moving goalposts, I’m now skeptical of your motivation for opposition. We’ll just have to part ways on discussing this with each other.

[Onadroig-1677]

@Tohki-1314

Casters have to aim when melee do not, and therefore they can miss. I don’t see this as an imbalance outside of amazons/ranged physical weapons, which suffer from both drawbacks.

How often do you miss as a caster class really though? Nova doesn’t miss, static field doesn’t miss, pummeling mobs repeatedly with fireball is not that hard when they are continuously in hit recovery (if they are even still alive after getting hit once…). Your Merc draws mobs like a magnet which makes them easy targets. Or just teleport 2 steps away from mobs so that your chances to miss are low.

Melee classes have to run up to monsters to even hit them, exposing themselves to danger and then have to pass a hit check AND a block check.

Amazon’s don’t have much the same problem with multishot having a large AoE and guided arrow.

@Tohki-1314

Casters are heavily mana dependent at the start of the game, and it’s not easily solved without gear.

Mana potions. Not too hard. Why else do sorceresses and to a smaller extent other casters hold the world record in pretty much all speedrun categories? Have you seen someone start a brand new sorceress and clear the Ubers all within 4 hours? Other classes can only dream to achieve this.

@Tohki-1314

@Crescendo-1948

Make Zod runes add ethereal status along with indestructible.

This buffs everyone.

Try putting Zod into your staves and orbs to increase your sorceress skill damage.

And no sensible sorc is going to Zod their Ormus robes for higher defense under this change when they can use a facet.

@Tohki-1314

Casters have to jump through hoops pumping up their skill levels through gear and charms, and still not accomplish the top end of a decked out melee build.

Not true. It’s not about sheet damage but also considering things like infinity and that charged strike has the single highest DPS vs single targets in game and charged bolt, fireball/meteor combinations not far behind. Frenzy is up there as well, but that is squarely a single target skill unlike the options that casters have to apply good single target damage.

And you make it sound like it’s more difficult to deck out a caster with top end DPS gear, which is a misrepresentation.

@Castlevania-1410

I really wish people like OP and several people in the comments would either quit or get banned

The horror - making suggestions to address the caster vs melee balance!

[Crescendo-1948]

Uh…this game had melee/caster parity for years. One patch and a few runewords then killed melee over the course of a few years after.

There is nothing game-destroying about making half of the available builds competitive, just like the game both originally intended and originally had.

All these people talking like they’re the real Diablo fans when they clearly didn’t even play D2 at launch and LOD release.

[Castlevania-1410]

@Crescendo-1948

All these people talking like they’re the real Diablo fans when they clearly didn’t even play D2 at launch and LOD release.

All the people claiming they played the game 22 years ago wont admit that the game changed for the better 20 years ago XD. I doubt 90% of these forums played D2 before D2R, and you cant prove that you did XD

[Onadroig-1677]

@Castlevania-1410

wont admit that the game changed for the better 20 years ago XD

Depends on which exact point you’re talking about and on what people view is “better”… which is a rather 1 dimensional way of looking at something like this anyway.

Calling for people to be banned for expressing their views in a respectful setting however makes you a moron.

[Tohki-1314]

They make sense, you’re choosing to ignore them instead of contest them. It makes me skeptical of how much thought you really put into your own arguments. You’re looking for this massive gap between melee and casters, and without citing Teleport, which is to point a massive finger at sorc. Yes, Sorc is broken for farming relative to any other build on any other class if you factor in that any other build needs to build Enigma to match their speed. If everything you proposed went through, physical builds would be insanely strong.

@Onadroig-1677

How often do you miss as a caster class really though?

Anything aimed can miss if the player has bad aim. Melee builds are click and hold, and the attacks will land on that target. Bumping melee hit chance up to 100% makes them too strong for no reason at all. Several builds have skills that bypass hitcheck, and several skills hit multiple times per second to compensate for the 5% miss. All of this ignores that for most of the game, until the mid level 80s, melee will only have 85% or so hit chance in hell mode farming unless obscenely geared. So the impact of this missing 5% is trivial in practice.

@Onadroig-1677

Mana potions.

Yeah bro, pump minor mana potions with a pool of 50 mana and only 8 potion slots and see how far you can get spamming spells at the start of a ladder.

@Onadroig-1677

Try putting Zod into your staves and orbs to increase your sorceress skill damage.

Try putting it into your MF set and then hitting Frozen Armor. Buffing a rune that anyone can use offensively or defensively still buffs everyone.

@Onadroig-1677

Not true. It’s not about sheet damage but also considering things like infinity and that charged strike has the single highest DPS vs single targets in game and charged bolt, fireball/meteor combinations not far behind. Frenzy is up there as well, but that is squarely a single target skill unlike the options that casters have to apply good single target damage.

And you make it sound like it’s more difficult to deck out a caster with top end DPS gear, which is a misrepresentation.

Decking out anything is an expensive grind. But a decked out melee is going to crush through mobs as hard as any decked out caster build. The specialized sorc builds are going to be limited by immunity outside of lit builds with infinity mercs, and necros and hammerdins will run up against magic immunes with no real solution for it. A decked out melee with a few weapon swaps for physical immunes can crash into any zone and farm it out. Does it suck to have to carry enigma for teleport? Yeah, but every non-sorc has to deal with that.

Casters are less gear reliant but don’t scale as hard. Casters also don’t have obscene runeword based power spikes outside of non-sorcs picking up engima for teleport. Find me any caster upgrade that competes with grief+fort onto a physical build.

[Crescendo-1948]

I think it’s pretty clear you haven’t played endgame, competitive ladder content. The fact that you mention immunities as a limiting factor on casters when sunder charms exist is extremely telling. Since 2.5, immunities don’t matter for any caster build outside of poison. You clearly don’t know this, and yet here you are.

Please leave the discussion. Thanks.