I haven’t really used it so I can’t speak to effectiveness, but if you click on his name to go to his profile, (on mobile you have to hit “view activity”, on desktop it goes right to profile), on the top right (desktop) or center (mobile) you’ll see a drop down that says “normal”. You can change it to “muted” (no notifications) and “ignored” (no notification and all topics/posts hidden).
I agree he seems very focused on the idea that letting melee builds “catch up” in terms of damage will take away all the identify of the classes. I can see that being a concern if huge AoE effects were added to all skills, but I think there’s a happy medium.
Right now melee characters face very real progression and even end game challenges due to their greater item dependence.
Being able to out perform casters in a few extremely niche situations doesn’t make that “worth it”, IMO, and as was stated, before 1.10 there was a lot better balance between casters and melee, while still having individual character feel, so it’s definitely possible.
Name a caster class that does better against Uber Diablo or Uber Tristram than a melee? Melee have different benefits to them.
Melee Pros:
Can leech life and mana, pretty much never need potions and can’t die at a certain point.
Often have tankier builds
Benefit from damage modifiers like Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, Open Wounds as well as most auras
Far fewer monsters are immune to melee, and melee can easily add elemental damage or other sources of damage to prevent immunities stopping them.
Also, melee characters can do great and “screen clearing” and item finding. Especially when you start finding the rare items that have good stats + MF. You really don’t even need a lot of MF. You’ll start finding good stuff around 250 MF.
Thanks for chiming in. By your username and your comments, it doesn’t appear you’ve played much melee. Here are some points to consider:
Melee undoubtedly does better against Ubers than casters. However, that’s an extremely small portion of the game that, even for melee, only niche builds can accomplish reliably and safely. There is no reason to continue the status quo of melee being inferior at 99.9% of the game because it’s better at <1% of the game. Additionally, with Patch 2.5 putting the endgame focus of D2 on terror zones, it’s become even more important that melee is capable of being competitive in general gameplay. Otherwise, they’re missing out on the vast majority of the endgame.
.
While melee can leech life and mana, potions are still used often. Good luck not using potions when facing a doll pack in Durance/WSK with mana burn. By the very fact of being in melee combat, there are also simply times when more damage is taken than can be leeched back (especially against elite packs with any one of amplify damage/fanatacism/might/spectral hit/conviction/extra strength/etc.). The idea that melee doesn’t need to use potions, or can be made unkillable, is definitely not correct.
.
The (slightly) higher tankiness of melee is necessary since, unlike caster classes, they get hit when fighting. That should be an even trade in terms of game balance, but as the systems stand, it still isn’t. You could make melee classes literally invincible, and if nothing else were changed, they’d still be behind casters in virtually every category of the game.
.
On DS/CB/OW, this was already addressed in the OP. It is indeed an advantage on paper, but it’s a meaningless one in practice when everything on the screen dies in <5 seconds to casters. On the other hand, buffing elite pack/boss HP can help make these stats meaningful for parity purposes.
.
Immunities don’t matter to casters. By this comment, I’m assuming you play non-ladder, because sunder charms made immunities a thing of the past for all casters except poison users. Casters can now clear all endgame content without significant investment. Melee cannot.
.
Melee characters do not do great at screen clearing. They don’t even have AOE to accomplish this in the first place. There’s a reason all speed records, farming bots, and ladder winners are casters: melee can’t compete in this arena.
A lot of monsters (especially in Hell) have very low drain effectiveness, and NM and Hell have leach penalties, so Leach isn’t always a reliable source of healing. Definitely helps, but isn’t the end all, be all.
True, but again this is the only thing keeping them viable, the current system still has casters killing most things considerably faster even without those stats.
Adding elemental damage isn’t always straight forward, it isn’t buffed by things like masteries, elemental damage sources isn’t leachable, etc. It’s a potential option for melee to get around PIs, but it’s not without drawbacks that are generally more painful than what casters have to do, especially now with Sunder charms.
Just curious what builds and zones you’re thinking of?
We can do an experiment: create a single player barbarian or zealot, give them 1 small charm that grants +75% all res, +2,000 defense, +55% FHR, +40% damage reduction and +800 vitality, then spec out the rest of their build with standard gear and place 0 points into vitality.
Get them to clear Chaos Sanctuary, Cows, WSK, other areas.
Do the same experiment with a self-wielding infinity nova sorc or a fireball sorc without a sunder charm and without the edited charm.
We can then see how these builds perform against each other.
Again, you fall aback on pointing a finger at sorc, which is a class that lives in its own little bubble. If you put an enigma on any other build, they get to live in that bubble too. Sorc has playing the game in a way that’s seemingly unintended based on how every system functions around them, and its gotten away with it for 20 years. That doesn’t mean that melee suddenly needs equal AoE to casters. It’s asinine to take a game with this much build diversity and begin planting AoE where it doesn’t belong, or damage scaling where it’s not needed.
Ok sure, change the sorceresses to a javazon. Try the test and see how the melee builds fair against the javazon.
I’m not saying equal AoE, I’m saying comparable clear speeds, however these builds achieve that - short of just skipping groups of mobs - is totally open.
Javazonns , hammerdins / fohings …lol mix in trapsins / corpse xplotion necro…( And Many Many more after the new res charms )
All those also live in said bubble don’t ya think ?
Do the xperiment proposed by another fellow forum member … then comeback .
We don’t want equal aOE . We want at least decent , a way to get half a galaxy closer to casters… atm melee is way , way behind casters in general , NOT just the sorc .
The naysayers’ focus on AOE is kind of weird too since AOE is only one of my 11 initial points, and a small one at that (never asked for huge AOE like casters).
That and teleport… he’s off on his own tangent, having a discussion in his own mind while keying in on a word/phrase here and there and missing the entire context whin which it was used.
I want to see him do as Onadroig suggested… and report back… his comment earlier about sorc and zealot being equal (outside of tele) in “normal” was amusing as well.
He’s obviously never played melee if he thinks Zealot with enigma is anywhere near the same league as Caster/Ranged also with teleport.
Something odd with that account as well, last week it was in the mid 30’s post count, and just now it’s at 28.
Yup. Agreed. The goal is parity. If it involves the changes you suggested, that’s great. If it’s what I have in the OP, great too. It can come in many forms.
I liked all your suggestions. I agree that splash damage seems controversial - I can imagine the multiple hit skills like Zeal/Fury/Fend/etc would have to be tweaked a lot, otherwise it could be very clunky, and require a lot of PTR and testing to nail it correctly.
I’d also like to propose that the chance to hit calculations are not completely scrapped, but changed a bit so that the level plays a bigger part, and melee doesn’t need an inventory full of charms to play end game content.
Here’s an example of a build that I used to shred through hell chaos and baal runs that isn’t crazy impossible…
Griswalds set lightning zealer. Legit 1 shot almost everything I came into contact with. Just maxed out zeal and holy shock and went to town. There’s even strong non-set builds that cost more.
Another build I’ve used is Fury druid w/ feral rage buffing. I have solo’d chaos and baal w/ full games pretty fast. Frenzy barb is also pretty fast and just like the druid u can hold down right click and win. Anything Phys immune gets 1 shot by Zerk.
Another thing a lot of melee do that probably fails them is they ignore elemental damage charms in favor of pure phys dmg. Phys is nice but stacking some ele dmg charms kills monsters w/ immunes.
Kick sin also erases bosses, and kills monsters pretty fast. That + trap dmg to help clear out stuff.
Another fun build is dagger necro w/ poison and corpse explosion. U can amp+CE immunes, and dagger/PE w/ lower res vs non immunes.
Then of course there is the bowazon. w/ CB and ele dmg u can screen clear w/ multi arrow and strafe. OR go ice arrow build and delete everything. Use magic arrow or Multi vs immunes. EZ. Ice arrow build vastly underrated.
PSA: You can buy tele charge staves and circlets. Use full melee set and tele w/ charges when needed to speed stuff up. Otherwise I like to get FRW on my melee chars. You can even gamble insane visionary mod helms w/ teleport charges for your melee character. It’s great. I think amulets can roll teleport as well, not 100% sure.
None of the melee builds you posted can compete with even below average caster builds in terms of general clear speed. Some of them are actually downright terrible for overall clear speed. I understand that you were able to successfully clear Chaos Sanctuary and Worldstone Keep with them, but simply beating a level isn’t really the point. Almost any build in this game can beat those levels. What matters is how quickly they do it, and even a below-average caster with a sunder charm will double, triple, or even quadruple the clear speeds of some of the builds you posted.
Also note that some of the builds you posted aren’t even truly melee. Assuming you’re talking about Riftsins with your kicksin comments, 95%+ of their damage comes from frozen orb and traps; Auradins are also basically casters, with screen-wide elemental AOE and further elemental damage in melee range. The fact that many of your citations for melee effectiveness are actually pseudo-casters unfortunately proves the overall point of this thread.
I appreciate your participation, but I don’t think you’ve had much competitive endgame ladder experience where the issues we’re talking about are most pronounced.
I didn’t realize wanting melee to be competitive with casters would turn D2 into D3. By that statement, I guess casters dominating almost all aspects of the endgame/melee being second class is a critical aspect of D2 gameplay?
Weird flex. Appreciate the free bump either way, mate.
That’s the only real point you have. I agreed that weapon progression for melee is mostly flat until a giant spike when runewords are possible, but every point you’ve made revolved around injecting power where melee doesn’t struggle.
The 5% miss chance is irrelevant and changing is going to lead to zero discernible difference in clear speeds.
The running thing already has a solution, albeit it’s annoying to toggle it. Overall, another nothing burger.
Past that, you want more AoE, more skill damage scaling, and for elite/unique/bosses to have more health because it will further push that advantage in favor of melee for clear speed. All of that is dumb, plain and simple.
You managed to do this without once addressing the severe difference in how much damage melee has to take or risk compared to casters; and it has nothing to do with toggling run/walk. Go ahead and add damage reduction to heavy gear. They’ll still be left with relatively huge str requirements to equip. Your list of suggestions isn’t as well thought out as you seem to think it is.
You’re asking for homogenization, which is a great way to kill the build diversity of D2. You won’t find balance if your stated goal is purely farming efficiency, and that’s perfectly fine. Every build in the game exists because someone discovered a reason to use it.
You orovide Zero reasoning or counter any of the OP toughts …
The 5% alone may not be that Big … add in block chance and that 5% becomes 35/40% less hit chances . Funny but casters not Also ignore the AR nuances … they ignore the huge block chances of Many monsters and bosses.
Yes we could use melee Range aOE . Why not ? Once again why is it plain ando dumb ? Elaborate pliz
The innate DR % on heavy armor seems just lógical , the high stre cost would be rewarded , as i said in other reply , if that sorc wants that extra DR (not that they ever need it , but who knows , just for funsies) she must pay it’s stre cost and reduce her Vita … thats called a trade. How fair it would be ? Dunno that depends on the amount of %DR vs Vita Lost and stre damage contribution . I’ll leave those numbers to wiser Ppl .
The OP sugestions arr VERY well tought , i have had em before , long before and AM pretty much sure most melee players agree.
This is not true . We don’t want honogenization , far from it , we want better than crap status vs casters. Arr You refering to aOE? Seems to me that theres this status quo , set in stone tought (on most Ppl against melee buffs) that caster : aOE , melee : single target damage .
Well casters do some idiotic single target damage too BUT baked IN their AOE! . Chill out lets Say You make ww a true aOE (NO it is NOT aOE) … lol Even double it’s damage if You want … Guess what . That sorc/pala/Java/necro/trap…what ever shoots light from their hands Will STILL be superior . No one Will take your candy. (And no 1 here asked for nerfs to casters)
