It’s absolutely out of control and needs to be reworked for the new difficulty levels.
Using WW without the +Ignore Defense attribute on a weapon is completely Toxic.
It was bad before, I have a 15,000 AR and I’m still only at a 91% chance to hit monsters my level. I have the blessed aim Merc and the Angelic Combo and it’s still not enough to hit 95% of the time???
There needs to be a hotfix on this garbage AR calculator.
Im kindof shocked a melee is concerned about AR when they are using whilewind. That ability is barely considered useful even if every attack landed all the time.
Melee just isnt viable as long as casters of all kinds exist as they are.
Like we dont even get close to their ballpark. Currently the best shifter is one that uses hurricane ontop of melee skills. Legit AoE is needed that badly.
Not sure i would even call whirlwind aoe.
Just my 2p
Also there are tons of ignore defense runewords. I use ICE bow on my werebear over DOOM because of the ignores defenses… and the goldfind is helpful too. (Werebears make use of bow/xbow runewords)
Melee needs help overall, only good melee is horking barb, and thats because he makes up being slow for his horking. Btw ignore def mod wont work on bosses or uniques so dont bother to much with that mod. Id rather they nerd casters rather than buff melee
As a person who has just made a ssf hc run with a ww barb to lvl 72 hell act 1 I can agree that this game is badly balanced at the moment.
You are ultimately dependent on gear but you cant even farm gear effectively because you cant kill monsters fast enough. You need to get super lucky to find items with ar, ll/ml, cb, right weapon bases, right runes to make effective weapons.
I like having a challenge but it has taken me a full week to reach hell act 1 with two tyrant club black runewords as weapons.
There are times that you cant advance because you need to find certain gear but it takes ages to find that gear because you are so slow.
Melee needs help and casters need nerfing.
Gear a blizzard Sorc first, farm the gear, problem solved.
You people make the game hard all by yourselves.
Does melee need help? Sure. Do I care if your playthrough journey sucks? Nope.
Sorry, not sorry.
It sure is a good thing no one asked you if you care. Sorry, not sorry.
I think its just further evidence of a poorly balanced game if the game requires you to first play a caster in order for you to be able to play melee 
Say that to my fury wolf that can play forever without ever touching the potion button. Can kill diablo in terrorized zone before one fury is done, etc.
Melee at the top end is almost broken already. Learn to make a decent one.
Most of the rest of this thread, my responses would be the same.
Sorry, but you can’t build a melee char worth a fart.
Fully agree with OP. The formula is poorly tweaked, you need both levels and ludicrous amounts of base AR (because most AR sources are multipliers) to not have a crazy penalty to your already moderate damage.
You’re not going to find much sympathy on this forum tho, it’s full of idiots who think they know better than you because they can put a runeword together or farm mephisto 5000 times per week.
Not much point to gearing anything else after gearing that blizz sorc though. It already farms everything thanks to sunder charms lol. And can do so with high amounts of MF, and the best FCR break points for teleport due to being a sorc.
I can say the same for my lvl97 fanata-zealot… but that is at the top end, and specifically talking about tanking and boss’s.
OK, fair enough, that’s what melee excels at…
Until casters/ranged players join the game (to Toddwick point), then, good luck keeping up, much less actually getting a hit on much of anything as the screen is obliterated just as you are getting into position.
Yes, I’ve play’d plenty where zealot/tesladin(if that’s melee)/barb/wolf/bear are leading the charge… but when the caster/ranged players are serious… melee is little more than a spectator.
I think top end melee is where the game is best, they can do all, but it takes effort/strategy… and sometimes retreat/regroup.
Casters/ranged just obliterate without discretion…
I agree with the others above, I think the OP caster/ranged builds need a serious look(nerf) before the game needs made any “harder”.
Having the character sheet say 95% is still not enough to hit 95% of the time. Look up monster block rates (especially on bosses) and how it is not included in those listed %
You are hitting even less than you thought you were
You mean the class that cant tele in form being permanently gimped in terms of clear speed due to mobility?
I have quite a few 90+ shifters both bear/wolf. I definitely know you dont know what you’re talking about A. Wolves/bears get no tele in form and bc fury is garbage, it roots the player meaning enemies walk away. Blizzard tried to fix this but 2.4 it just didnt work all the time. Using an ability that slows down your FRW… the ONLY mobility a shifter can use to get around? My wolf shifter uses an inventory full of 3% FRW + AR charms, even before using feral rage has 100%+ FRW. After… hes pretty fast but guess what? No where near as good as any class with teleport to target farm terror elites, bosses, dungeons with walls, rivers etc
B. You use sustain/never drinking a potion as evidence of broken??? What broken caster class (fohdin, hammerdin, cold sorc, poison necro, lightning sorc, light javazon) ever uses mana/health? Mobs never come close?? Its like you are just speaking to speak without any logic/thoughts.
I champion for shifter mobility constantly bc if you bust out a stopwatch and compare ANY of the above classes to a gg 200 ber perfect equipment hurricane shifter (the actually good shifter, if you are real person not an RMT bot identity troll switch to hurricane hybrid), that shifter is miles behind the stop watch target clear time of even a barbarian, who is ALSO miles behind casters. Simple bc barbs can use A. Leap B. Teleport. But their monster clear slower, but they still beat running around every wall adding many seconds/minutes to times. Shift TP shift painful/unrealistic and adds a lot onto the time as much as running around does.
Not sure your angle, but you are uninformed to say the least
Melee are the last challenge in the entire game. Blizz cant buff appropriately, id let it be.
Nothing new, the chance to hit is primarly based on monster lvl. There is a formula but I don’t remember what it is.
The same thing happens with your defense, monsters higher lvl will have a good chance of hitting because the formula makes it impossible to have significant enough defense vs higher lvl monsters.
If P8 existed on battlenet all melees would be significantly challenged.
My favorite way to play is the 1-2 minutes i get on p8 bnet baal games where monsters are actually hard. I go to halls of dead and have a blast… until its back to p1-2 ez sauce a few minutes later.
We need p8 nl bner for difficulty. Its the most realistic way to hope for a harder difficulty level
Good melee characters have ZERO danger to them. There are only a few builds that can truly outpace them. And for the cost…it is not even a contest.
From your statement, no melee can ever be good, ever. So stop complaining about it.
When was the last time you saw any of your examples do uber trist? Maybe now they can with the new blunder charms…But ya how often you see your pretty ele druid farm trist?
Melee characters have a vastly easier time there.
Their clear speed is not as good early, but is competitive with many casters late game.
If you haven’t tested this with an actual melee worth a fart, then I have no more to say.
Once you stop teleporting passed monsters and fight them all, tell me how often you potion.
Even on a trap sin with 3500 life I still have to potion now and again.
PS. Tell me when you have made a barb that has been repeatedly asked to SLOW DOWN in a full game (especially in Chaos runs) with everyone else being teleporting hammerdins, sorc’s, etc etc.
Then I will say you can make a melee worth a squat.
What you are speaking of is a tank barb. My barb tank is actually tankier than my werebear.
But the point evading you? This isnt world of warcraft where the group has a tank/dps/healer.
What is the point of D2R? Farming for items for a better build. Tanking helps that how???
Dont get me wrong i wish the game was harder and tanks were required or considered useful enough to need their presence. I play tanks for the reason that my 70 year old father can totally deer in headlights not know whats going on and forget to use his mouse then still be fine.
Guess what happened in reality when he got max geared? He straight up didnt need me around. Got completely bored with game bc its too easy. He wants to play but not if screen is deleted when he walks onto it in 2p.
This is why i champion for a harder game (quickest way for devs is p8 in bnet game creation). Those mobs give my full tank barb that nearly 1 shots anything a fun tustle. I frequently join baal runs just to have 2 minutes in hall of dead with P8 mobs. Its actually fun compared to lazy delete mode.
But even so… barb still not fast. Its single target -gotta click every mob. Again whats point of game? Kill speed/farmspeed. Not tankability.
I wish it was useful. But it just isnt. Play with 8 friends sure. WHO THE HECK HAS 8 FRIENDS ON COMMAND?!? Im not talling about some ladder discord signup team. I mean any given night you got 8 friends (w/o multiboxing)??
We’re on the same side dude, but you are off point anf focus needs clarifying. Melees are bad for the “point” of this game.
I would die for WoW like additions to come to D2R, but it aint happening. The bots/multiboxers/RMTers wont have it. They control the majority of voices here through bot account identities (despite being fewer humans) so not much can be done. Thats check and mate. Doesnt mean ill stop. Justice on horizon somehow. Crime should never go ignored. Things like changes to IP gating anni charms give me hope their days are numbered.
(You hear that cheater trash???)
No, I am not talking about a tank barb.
I will repeat that I was told to slow down by all the casters.
Think on that, and come back when it actually sinks in.
The only reason why Whirlwind is useless right now was because of a change made waaaaay back that nerfed Whirlwind’s probability to hit down to a 1/3 of the time you’re actively spinning.
Granted, a change was necessary to Whirlwind because it was the single most powerful skill in the game, the change they made was the wrong way of going about it. Now that we have better insight as to the workings of the game and have a new crew working on it, I’d wager now’s a good time to make a meaningful change to Whirlwind and revert its chance to hit back to where it was back in the day, and balance it more carefully.