Fixing Melee for PvM P8

I would tend to think smaller circle would work ok (I really like the size based on weapon though) maybe hitting 2-3 extra monsters would work, but I’d like to see 100% damage for all enemies hit and if you were also getting more out of CB you could be getting something like 10x the damage output compared to current builds (for example more like 250,000 dps out of my frenzy barb with 25% CB)

I think any sort of cleave in a situation where the circle is small is going to wind up having less effect in keeping up because of how mobs work. I also think that having cool differences will bring in a good choice, maybe one defaults to being better, but at least choice of weapon might become a thing. Obviously I don’t have full ideas, I’m sure the melee main players on this forums could come up with something that is interesting as well as good. Maybe it is that 2 handers get double the AOE cleave area or instead of the cleave area being a piece of pie it winds up being a bigger half circle.

But limiting it lower will still leave it behind, because ranged targets don’t move much, some mobs run away, some don’t group properly. And the micromanagement of trying to clear like a nova/hdin etc will wind up leaving you behind because you have to chase everything rather than just cast on top of micromanaging the cleave area.

Back in the days melee was much closer to caster / classic before 1.10. Let’s have a look what happened

  1. monster health got buffed a lot
  2. synergies bumped up those numbers for casters
  3. LoD already buffed players and especially casters with OP new items like charms and single items that gave you close to the amount you had on a full char
  4. cow and chaos were the best zones and easy to reach / cows got nerfed and baal took over
  5. breaking immunity wasn’t an easy feat

I wonder how that could have gone wrong….

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Which was fine due to having the skill points to invest in multiple damage avenues since there were no synergies. For physical damage dealers, having elemental damage charms as well as a secondary attack (Barb Zerk, Pala auras/vengeance, Zon ele arrows/javspear) were enough to handle these, which iirc, there were not as many of as were added in 1.10.

Monster health was balanced around the synergies, which required weapons to take advantage of for physical fighters, where casters got that equivalent weapon power at high end with a 20 point skill investment then got multiple synergies where weapon based damage skills got 1 or none.

Don’t post half truths… also read my post again

For the AOE I was just picturing a circle around the target that you hit but maybe that would upset people who want their very fantasy game to be “more realistic”. It’s also amazing how most of these comments are completely off topic, having nothing to do with the current (melee builds in p8(in the current game client)).

Maybe not every melee class is supposed do too much dmg. Thinking about melee in /p8 they can be very usefull, the Barb for example has nice crowd control and strong buffs, the Paladin comes up with nice auras to support. And these are not the only classes that haves good support abilities.

The game was never designed of the standarts we have with bots/rmt.

Ofc some classes got so much dps output with good gear that they can solo in /pX.
A good organised team can move mountains in /p8 hell even without the OP gear.
It’s not always about dps, well should not be better said, but everyone is just about “DPS DPS DPS”.

Some friends and me we did pretty quick ubers with bad gear on /pX. Bard and Necro been insanely good supporter in these runs and everyone had their fun.

I guess the main reason is that people don’t want to share the loot.

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It is hard to say which is better. Cows? Circle. Facing a mix of melee/ranged a cone is better. Though honestly that could be a part of the mechanic based on weapon choice as well.

As for topics and getting off topic, that is like 99.999999% of threads here. People derail the subject at hand to make supporting points and then they do some weirdo cross comparison or talk about things completely unrelated to the subject at hand. Can’t stop it.

I think melee are fine. Melee are good for tanking, support, stuns, and for support damage.

THis game reminds me of dungeons and dragons. Need a barbarian for tanking and shouting, paladin for auras and defense, druid is a good jack of all trades. amazon and sorcoeror should be top dps, and necromancer curses are extremely powerful along with pets and specialized skills. I think the weakest party character would be assassin*.

We are talking about parties right ? I hate that d2 is trying to make people be all about damage. There is useful skills in those tree lines that are amazing.

Any ways, if you want to be a good melee, you need - GOLD or Gear. There is a meme that barbarians are warcraft warriors are money classes. I mean the mages and casters depend on their spell ranks while melee and ranged physical depend on strong gear.
Better swap that cc hehe $ or gold tokens.

Any ways thats my opinion on class stuff.

  • EDITED
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I guess it’s just the mindset of the dps fanatics, be able to clear everything solo but want the benefits of online functions like “trading”.

Not sure that is a proper takeaway from why people want a change. I think it is somewhat valid to want more things to be equal in ability, they’re not asking for the game to be easier. If the easiest solution was to nerf casters I think they’d go with that as well, and accept that the game was harder for everyone.

Melee does have the best option for magic finding higher end items in the hork barb. But that doesn’t mean that most strictly melee characters aren’t inefficient and simply blown out of the water by even weak caster characters.

D2/D2R is not designed to have “group” content. It’s not like WoW or MMOs where you have mobs that usually can’t be solo’d in a dungeon or raid and defined roles that specialize into supports etc.
Since everything is basically solo content, the only thing that counts is how effective am I when I don’t have a party around, since the least of us have a group that only plays together. You see all those support skills used at ladder resets and speedruns, but you wouldn’t be viable with any of those specs in hell solo games.

I don’t get what half truths you are talking about. Everything I wrote is what I can recall my experience was back then. I also get the sense that you think I was attacking your pov, when I actually agree with it, but wanted to further expand on the reasons I felt that breaking immunes being harder was not really an issue.

I didn’t have time to reply in full but immunity was added before 1.10. Synergies and monster buffs just broke your builds.

Sorry if I was too harsh.

Yeah, i remember. There just was not as many immunes before 1.10. Phys immunes could be dealt with easy enough with ele dmg charms for physical characters, where with the hp bump the charms dont keep up now. And the synergies made it harder to diversify your damage types and stay competitive on dps, where before you could easily have a skill to switch to. That is what i was meaning.