Because builds have their niches. That’s the point. That’s the whole game.
It still wouldn’t be enough reason to invest that many extra points out of vitality and into Str. There is no lack of physical reduction options already in the game, and it makes any large loss of health for innate reduction on armor types a bad value, unless it’s some high amount that verges on being broken.
That’s how the game played out. If you want to make a screen clear every time a paladin hits zeal or smite, then all you’ve accomplished is making a physical damage caster. Eliminating build weaknesses to match the strengths of other builds is precisely how you end up with homogenization. Take a look at WoW classes during MoP for a perfect example of this.
What a lot of people making this suggestion are forgetting is that they could simply remove the physical damage reduction from monsters. You would be doing 2-3x your current damage without changing anything else.
Also, Cooley made a video suggesting a shield runeword which boasts a 50% chance to cast lvl25 corpse explosion on kill. Go look for yourselves. I think an item like that could easily push some melee builds into A tier if not S.
I like both suggestions. That said, a shield would further deepen the Grief v. everything else divide (especially two-handed). I’d hope if a rune word solution is part of all of this, they still make balance adjustments to bring two-handers up to snuff.
They would also have to allow WW to proc item effects again.
I’m not sure how “cast on kill” is applied. The only time I remember using that modifier is when I was a kid with my zealot using botd. Does it have to be triggered by melee or could a javazon just throw a lightning fury and detonate half of the killed enemies? Could the detonations trigger further detonations? Or nova from a sorc? etc.
Whirlwind not casting “on hit” effects is complete BS. It would make for some very interesting weapon combinations if that was changed. Eth lacerator + ebotdz?
In legacy D2/LoD before 1.10 the builds still had their niches, but melee characters were able to kill fast enough that there wasn’t such a huge disparity between casters and melee. Limited “AoE” in the form of things like skills that hit multiple targets in a small zone in front or around them (like Cleave or Rend from D3) wouldn’t change the identify of the classes. Rescaling the damage of base items and skills, and reworking the “to hit” system so that it wasn’t so difficult to get sufficient AR to be effective wouldn’t change the identity of the classes. I agree the 95% vs. 100% to hit isn’t really going to move the needle much. IMO it’s the extra challenge of giving up damage and defense bonuses on gear to get a ton of AR to have a decent chance to hit, none of which casters have to do. Part of why Grief is so awesome is it combines that +dmg with ITD, which takes AR out of the equation in many encounters.
I may differ with some in this thread, but for me the issue isn’t necessarily that I have to frenzy/zeal/fury/WW a “few” monsters at a time so much as that until you get GG gear you have to make multiple WW passes/stand there frenzy/zeal/furying the same few enemies quite some time before they actually die before moving on. Aside form a few areas the density really isn’t so crazy that you need huge AoE to be competitive, but when a caster can use kill in 1 or 2 hits and do it to 20 monsters, but melee takes 5-10 hits for 2-5 monsters, sometimes missing 30% of the time, that’s where the issue is to me. Leveling up a melee when you can use Oath and Grief super early is pretty crazy how OP it seems getting them mid-NM difficulty, and with Fort, Grief and other BiS gear you can still kill pretty fast in P1 games at end game, but that really starts to drop off in higher player games, whereas casters have enough damage to continue fast kills. That’s what my goal would be to address, TBH I’m okay with how many enemies my zealot or frenzy or WW barbs can engage at a time, assuming I can actually dispatch them in a reasonable amount of time.
A lot of people do just that, or do it long enough to gear their melee character of choice. Why should someone have to spend time playing a class they don’t enjoy as much before they can enjoy the class they do?
Neat idea but TBH that does seem a bit too much like turning melee into a caster equivalent at that point, since you’re literally casting an AoE spell that does damage to a large area. I don’t care for the splash damage suggestions for similar reasons. I agree they would be effective in bumping melee up, but I do think they start to erode character classes a bit too much at that point.
I’ll just echo what others have said. Aside from a few issues and a few underpowered skills, melee is actually in a pretty good place. The problem has always been that many caster builds are way too powerful and easy to progress and equip.
If the devs really wanted to address the issue, they would fix a few of the problems with melee, but mostly just tone down a lot of the BS that makes casters so easy.
Unfortunately this will never happen because there would be an absolute meltdown on social media. So instead, all we get is more powercreep.
The “niche” argument that naysayers make always confuses me on its face. If melee’s niche is being good at 1% of the game, and casters’ niche is being good at the other 99%, there’s still something clearly wrong. Just because both have a niche doesn’t mean they’re both in equally-good niches.
Don’t disagree but would mention that if that amount of power already exists for some classes and builds, catching up under powered builds isn’t really power creep as long as the adjusted classes and builds don’t exceed the current meta builds.
It’s making everything equally overpowered and easy. I really enjoy how self-found with melee builds feel in terms of progression and difficulty. Bringing it up to the level of casters would ruin it for me.
If the devs insist on only buffs, then I hope it’s constrained toward stuff that is under-performing within the melee sphere.
My top 3 melee buffs are:
Vengeance: Ditch the Salvation synergy and add the +20% elemental damage to the skill itself. That will help builds that use it as their primary, and builds that use it as a secondary backup.
Charge: Give it a small AoE at the end. Would make it better and more fun in PvM. (who’s up for some bowling?)
Two Handers: Reduce Strength and Dexterity pre-reqs. When Blizzard designed this 20+ years ago, they were not thinking straight. Bigger weapon = need more strength to wield right? Except you’re using two hands so you’ve got double the muscle power to wield it!
I’d probably change more things bout 2-handers, but that would be my first change.
I am not against bringing OP builds down while bringing under performing builds up, but as you say, there’d likely be a huge outcry. And honestly for a remaster/remake, that’s reasonable if you want to re-live the glory of your OP build from 20 years ago…
Maybe buffing melee up to where casters are then adding a 4th difficulty that makes all builds have the same struggle you enjoy so much is a reasonable answer?
Really it’s the same in the end, except you’re forcing players to sit through 3 additional layers of the same content instead of the 2 additional layers we currently have.
Yeah that’s a good point. Just thought it would let people have “more challenge” and not nerf existing meta builds people have put time and effort into based on the game systems. TBH I’m torn on whether I’d even like that, since as you say, you’re now going through all the same content again.
Either way I don’t feel like having melee artificially under-perform needs to be kept, when they could be improved without adding power creep to the game.
For players that mostly play melee, to them it is power creep. A number of players including myself have objected to what we think are unnecessary buffs.
And while it may seem I’m passing the buck to nerf caster builds, consider that buffing melee builds by say 15% is probably going to feel more impactful than nerfing caster builds by 40% at this stage, there’s more chance to disrupt the play experience of melee builds for those that feel melee builds are already in a good place.
The other consideration that people have not noted is that melee builds perform better in party play. It just doesn’t get discussed because party play hasn’t been fixed to be an attractive option of play.
As I said I’m open to either option, I just think melee can and should be brought up to be closer in parity with caster builds, without overall power creep and while keeping the various class and build identities. If the answer is to nerf casters I’m okay with that. I personally enjoy the meta builds as well, but usually main melee, so for me it wouldn’t necessarily be an overall power creep, but do appreciate your perspective that to someone who exclusively plays melee, or does so purely for the extra challenge, that it could be.
My thinking is that in group games you watch the casters shoot by destroying everything as well, so you are pretty aware of the power imbalance even if you exclusively play melee, and being so clearly under powered comparatively isn’t a great feeling. I totally respect the fact once you hit end game gear the game gets pretty easy, so maybe nerfs or monster buffs are the answer, though.
