The same immunity breaking charm that also exists for physical damage? What angle would you like to discuss for caster/melee parity? Leveling? Gearing? Endgame only? Put your goal posts down and we’ll play on that field, but please pick one.
I’m not arguing against that. Projectile based skills always have a chance to miss, it’s more about in practice in the hands of a competent player will they? As I hinted, monsters can move to avoid attacks but in practice the monster AI is very predictable and easy to abuse to minimise missing almost altogether.
No it doesn’t. Melee characters still need a boat load of attack rating and/or ITD to potentially achieve this 100% chance to hit. I really don’t see what the big deal is?
The melee based skills (ie, damage is based on the weapon) that bypass hit checks are exclusively single target skills.
And once again, melee based builds still have to contend with monster block %.
The sarcasm here clearly suggests you’ve never actually sped run Diablo 2 or watched any of those runs. Mana potions are used to steam past content with magic spells and for the cast of a sorc, teleport.
8 potion slots? You have a whole inventory to fill mana pots with, and 50 mana is really not hard to exceed before level 6.
Did you watch the video of a sorc clearing Ubers from a brand new character in under 4 hours since I first raised this?
This guy seems like a cool guy too so definitely deserves a shoutout, so here it is
You’re missing the point: It’s not that it potentially buffs everyone. It’s about seeing how impactful this buff is comparatively between different characters. A defense boost on caster base BIS gear is in actuality a small survivability boost that in the face of much better options is not worth the Zod socket, where as ethereal weapons are as clear as night and day in seeing its impact.
I’ll believe it when I see a whirlwind barb, frenzy barb, fury druid, zealot or bowazon clear players 8 hell cows in under 3 minutes. Until then again, not true.
Sunder charms pretty much erase this obstacle, and dual element sorceress builds can still do exceedingly well.
Magic immunes are so rare, and even in those scenarios they can lean on their merc, minions or corpse explosion, so it’s surprising that this is even raised.
Melee has the least issues with physical immunes I give you that, but that doesn’t translate into comparatively equivalent clear speeds between casters and melee.
You can argue players 8 content is a bad benchmark to compare against, but equally so, melee builds are much harder to gear up from the perspective of how rare their best in slot gear is, such as 40/15’s, ethereal rare weapons, superior runeword weapon bases, and GG charms which melee need dual stats on each charm to be perfect moreso than caster builds need perfect stats on dual modded skillers.
They don’t scale as hard because melee based builds start from a much rougher place. They have room to scale.
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Stop. Seriously. Yet again, you very clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Physical sunder is meaningless because there is no further way to reduce physical immunity beyond the 5% from the charm. Casters, on the other hand, have multiple ways to continue reducing immunity beyond the 5% reduction once said immunity is broken by a sunder charm: Griffon’s Eye, Ravenlore. Phoenix, Cold Mastery, Facets, Crescent Moon, and a bunch of other items.
This post is a systems discussion, and you don’t even know how a key game system works because you very clearly don’t play the full game. You also clearly didn’t read the OP, where much of this was already addressed. Stop derailing the thread. Leave.
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How about seeing them clear uber trist? Builds have their niche, that’s the whole point of them being different. That’s the appeal. You’re not going to farm as hard on a zealot as you will on a some Holy Fire sorc build with an infinity merc, and why should you?
“Oh gee wizz, you don’t know what you’re talking about, just trust me. You should just stop talking please, don’t talk anymore so that I don’t have to avoid addressing you.”
Casters have resistance piercing. Melee has deadly strike, crushing blow, open wounds. Melee builds can also deal elemental damage. You’re deliberately looking at only one side, YOUR side, of an argument, and then have the gall to tell anyone that they’re not informed.
Hahahahahaha. Hahahaha sunder charm is useless for melee . My barbarian rather have a other Ar / damage /skiller than that crap …
Sir You don’t Know what You are talking about .
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In an argument about parity, that’s still parity whether or not you’d use it to kill ghosts.
Yeah, he definitely lacks game experience. Not worth replying to him anymore. He’s not here for a good faith discussion, especially when his knowledge of game systems is obviously low.
Just ignore him.
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Niches do exist once you eventually get to that point, though we’re for the most part talking about general playthrough and farming which melee characters lag behind in by a margin. There is of course that speedrun I linked to as well.
As I mentioned, part of the reason why melee characters lag behind is due to the lack of appeal for party play. If party play was a viable competitive option, then we’d see more melee based party combinations, but we don’t.
That really another grab at straws to be honest. Physical sunder charms are so niche in their use cases, it’s hardly impactful.
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But you can’t say that it isn’t parity. If the same immunity breaking charm offered to physical is less substantial than the elemental or magic breaking charms, then that must mean that those physical builds were less inhibited by the immunities to begin with. I agree.
I recently did ssf normal through hell on a zealot build and then a sorc. If not for teleport, the sorc wasn’t much less strenuous. Both classes had different portions of the game where they struggled or excelled. Outside of turning every melee build into an as efficient farmer as these top end casters, what’s being asked for? And why shouldn’t builds exist in their niches? Does every build need to reach a point where they pulse damage onto the whole screen and everything dies? Put double dream and an enigma on any class in the game and set them up with an infinity merc, mission accomplished.
About the only decent suggestion was smoothing the power progression of melee weapons from uniques to runewords. Ironically, nothing mentioned about the greater vulnerability of melee builds outside of defense being shut off when running, and even that can be toggled off with a single hotkey. You want to buff two handed weapons, but maybe offer alternatives to the insane value of a shield for melee builds as a starting point for using a 2h weapon.
Crescent Moon, Infinity, DF, DWEB, Griffon, Ormus. Just to name a few. You could also name things like Sunder charm, maybe even Spirit/Insight.
Which is absolutely useless on phys chars. You don’t want to hit a target with 5% damage and get massively increased damage for it.
It’s an absolute fail of an argument.
Sorry, but I agree with the guys. You have no clue about the game and are not good enough to discuss those topics on the level that is necessary.
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Were yes, because prior to sunder charms physical builds had a means to spec into say magic arrow, berserk and so on without too much trouble just for that purpose. Physical immunes are also less common as well.
With the sunder charms together with resistance reduction gear on single element casters however, it allows them to use their existing high AoE/DPS attacks and completely ignore immunes altogether, where as physical characters, while they still can handle immunes, will always be slowed down by them.
A holy fire zealot is actually comparatively quite decent in early parts of normal with the pulse plus the added weapon damage. He also has access to charge earlier than the sorc has access to teleport, and has vigour as well which makes runs with him fairly breezy.
In terms of playstyle it’s a melee character but in terms of how the skill mechanics work in damage scaling and how it can be scaled, it’s much closer to a caster based build.
Fire/cold bowazons are like this too and therefore play very differently to a multishot bowazon, and are very noticeably faster in a speedrun playthrough.
That’s essentially it: melee builds should not be relegated to being only niche builds (holy grail barb, travincal gold find barb, uber smiter) while being surpassed by casters in otherwise most general gameplay.
People here know that I’m not in support of most buffs, and certainly not buffing on the basis of “because casters are just faster”, but balance is still a valuable thing and with sunder charms introduced, it’s quite obvious that synergies for example need to be nerfed down if we want to preserve some semblance of balance.
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You’re clueless if you want all builds too lose their niche so you feel less compelled to make a sorc at the start of every ladder season. Builds are meant to be different, and there isn’t any great gap between classes aside from Teleport; and that’s its own bag of worms.
Why? If you start pushing every build into each other’s lanes, you end up with a game where all builds feel the same to play.
Not at all. You’re still using different gear, different characters, different skills, all of which have different strengths and weaknesses and despite doing the same content, different play experiences.
As important, it’s about making skills align with their design intention and have a roughly consistent play experience in terms of power curve.
- Whirlwind is a skill that spins the character, swinging the weapon in a very fast circular motion, so monsters in the path of a whirlwinding barbarian will be punished.
- Nova casts a burst of energy around her, punishing enemies that are somewhat near her
- Multishot allows the character to shoot a fan of arrows that blanket a large area in front of her, punishing monsters anywhere in that area
There’s no sound reason why it takes so much more effort to make whirlwind and multishot strong (because these skills are entirely gear dependent), where as nova can get strong with each skill point and synergy, along with relatively little effort in gearing.
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They should find a new mechanic instead of Attack Rating/Defense mechanics. It’s outdated and archaic. Missing monsters/players in pvp/pvm SUCKS period.
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I agree. D4 looks to be doing something like this as well. Unfortunately, I think to get away from defense/block/AR would basically come down to rewriting the entire combat system, and I don’t think Blizzard Albany has the time or desire for that. 
Instead, I’d just be happy to have the current combat system work as best as possible.
You have to assume that D2R is going to keep the defense/attack rating/physical reduction system. I don’t understand why the OP is so focused on melee damage output when the real gap is the amount of damage melee has to stand in, and that’s the bulk of the reason that they need so many high end items to be effective.
You fail to counter any of my arguments, so it really shows that you are the clueless one.
Maybe you should play a little more and get better at the game and come back afterwards to discuss
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I wouldn’t bother replying to him anymore, though that’s totally up to you. He’s here in bad faith at best, or is trolling/derailing at worst. He won’t address all of your points, and/or will just move the goalposts again (like admitting in the latest post that there actually is a competitive discrepancy between melee and casters, but that it’s strictly a defensive problem? 
).
You’ll never get an honest response from him.
I particularly like the bit about throw dual dream on any melee build and clear the screen - LOL.
Even fully synergized Tesladin does not do such… now throw the gear on a Barb with no synergies… yikees.
It hurts.
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Yeah, he’s made a lot of really clueless comments on game systems. Dual Dream without Paladin synergies, physical sunder being viable without further physical-resistance-reducing gear, defensive issues being the only discrepancy between casters and melee, Zod rework somehow helping casters when all they do is fill sockets with facets anyway, immunities being an issue for non-poison casters post-2.5, and probably a few other bizarre items I’ve forgotten at this point. I have no idea why he’s so committed to being in this discussion, which is almost solely focused on systems tweaks, when he doesn’t even understand how multiple game systems work.
That’s why I’ve written him off as a troll at this point. I wish we had an ignore button, but since we don’t, simply not replying to him anymore is the best strategy I think.
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