Stop giving us weapons with 10-90 ED% give us 100%+ ED minimum, maybe then grinding a melee character wont suck so much donkey doo doo.
3 Likes
I have no Problems with melee dmg. 100% not. I have problems with some builds and the attack rating.
Theres no need for MORE dmg.
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I would rather single targets were hit for more than a cleave or AoE mechanic. A frenzy barb should be a 1vs1 killer better than everyone else, just like a Java is a cowkiller. I would settle for a nerf to sorcs/ hammers/ javas to balance this.
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I was referring to the damage gap when leveling. Melee 100% requires a weapon, and i’d say 90% are complete trash during the first stages of playing the game.
I am still using vendor items at level 56 in nightmare river of flame. This is absurd. The best weapon I have found has been a gull dagger. Too bad I am a throw barb.
This goes along with my vender refresh option, either give me the option to shop more efficiently to actually deal damage (this is player 1 btw, singleplayer no help, no fg, no trading just find some stuff.) I have well over 50 hours so far, farming andarial nightmare, farming trav, farming countess, I mean I am progressing, but it’s a snail pace compared to anything elemental. (I am aware of immunes, this isn’t my first rodeo) So maybe my opinion will change eventually, but man this is so sludgy. I couldn’t imagine even trying to help in a multiplayer game with my current throw build.
Just been trying to get my damage up. 20 in mastery, 20 in double throw 9 in double swing. The rest in 1 point wonders. Leap, Zerk, Iron skin, Natural resist, Howl, Increased speed, Battle command, Find potion, Find item,
I only have one point in shout and battle orders. I just lack the damage to even get more life yet. Rocking 1k though, barb life 
My spear zon is really slow too, but I love the difference in play style and don’t feel the need to complain about it.
To each their own
2 Likes
I’m here to complain and enjoy. I wont say I don’t enjoy my barb that is online with multiple greif/botd, among other cookie cutter stuff. Thank god I started with a sorc/paladin though.
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It is indisputable that your barb will suffer until late game because of gear where sorcs etc will not. Agreed on that.
I mean TBF if you are playing Ladder or singleplayer then you can slap an unbending will or two on by the middle of act 3 nightmare. That’s 300-350% ED.
Also almost all the exceptional quality uniques are over 100% ED. Some around 200%.
The frustrating thing is that I actually think melee is in a fairly decent place balance-wise. A few skills could use a buff and Grief could use some competition, but otherwise, I like the difficulty curve as you go into Nightmare and Hell. It feels right.
It’s the casters that are way too easy to gear up. A magic wand and some insultingly easy to make runewords and you’re suddenly efficiently blasting through hell’s hordes without a care in the world.
If casters had to work more for power, I’d be happier. I’m just not sure how to do that without all the farmers freaking out that they can’t easily clear Hell with gear they crafted in Normal difficulty.
6 Likes
Yeah I started with a sorc with teleport and blizz damage. Farming was SUPER ez compared to ANYTHING on that. Especially online, where you can just leech quests.
I should change mercs now though, I havent been using might aura since act 2 nightmare. 
Edit: Welp he lasted all 10 seconds. 
I mean to be fair they can do it naked to. 
Best you are walking out of normal with is a spirit sword from normal cows (which is really more “post” normal), a stealth, an ancients pledge or rhyme shield, a lore helm, and some random rare rings with 10% FCR and maybe a plain +1 skill ammy. That’s still only like +4 skills.
It’s not the normal runewords that are doing it.
TBH the EASIEST way to fix low level melee… is to give their skills + flat damage bonuses. That way they aren’t 100% weapon rng reliant. As long as you keep the bonuses rather low it doesn’t effect endgame much… but it would make solo leveling worlds less painful.
So like grief damage modifiers, so to speak? Flat damage plus % damage?
Maybe 10-15 per level? 20-30 per level? Spitballing here.
They would hit like a truck late game, not sure how that would work.
I think the weapon ED idea is better, I mean getting the right stats alone on an item can sometimes be 1-50k. Then you factor in the different weapon types, then the different stats the item modifiers can be and it can be like 1 in X,XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX of a chance to be supreme better than runewords level good. Ok so you dont get 100% perfect rolls, then its just 1 in XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX to be fantastic or 1 in XXX,XXX,XXX, to be viable. 100 thousand to even be considered, then you have to factor in if it even rolled rare/unique/magic/white/set.
At most like probably more like 2-4 damage a point as a ballpark. rank 20 in a skill would be in the order of 40-80 extra weapon damage. Which is quite a bit when you think about weapon damage values in the lower levels.
It doesn’t need to be some insane number to make a very large difference early game. Melee doesn’t generally stack a ton of +skills either so the late game scaling wouldn’t get out of hand.
Let’s assume a level 46 barb with 20 Frenzy using blootletters (just completely random that’s what he got.
That would take the base damage of those Bloodletters from 31 To 97 to 71-177… that nearly double for a barb at that level. For a barb rocking griefs and a few + skills it would be more like a 10% buff which frankly… I don’t think could hurt lol.
It’s the kind of buff that would make a barb not feel terrible in nightmare/early hell without overbuffing their late game.
Unbending will etc requires a base with 6 sockets, and a good one to take advantage of that ED. Whilst you can get that in NM via trading at this stage of the ladder, you cant really at the beginning of ladder.
Dont get me wrong though, when ladder 2 starts i will roll a barbarian and like it.
I think nerfing is the way forward at this point.
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We can quibble over the precise moment or whether normal cows count as normal, but I think loosely we agree that casters can easily get very good gear very early. It can then take you through most the remaining part of the game with relative efficiency. What bothers me a lot about caster gearing is that unlike melee, quality of gear doesn’t matter much if at all.
With most melee builds, you really need to bump your gear up. Whether it’s going from a short sword to a long sword, or going from Normal quality to Exceptional and then Elite. You can’t just pick up some trash beatstick from Normal and expect it to carry you through much of the game. Yet with casters you never hear about a necromancer on the hunt to upgrade his Bone Wand to a Lich Wand.
If Blizzard just turned around and made melee spells all flat damage, all that would be doing is creating the same problem that makes caster gearing so brain-dead-easy.
TBH the biggest buff they could do for melee… would be making upped weapons come with higher ED. Adding 100% for each upping would making upping weapons viable. People keep coming up with crazy unique items reworks… but that one is the most simple lol.
For the most part there just isn’t a reason to up most unique weapons as the ED on them sucks. Just a simple “add 100%ED” would make so many of them at least useable until you find something better.
Also I just hate the thought of changing every blasted item into something else. At some point it’s just not d2 anymore. Something like that though… just makes sense to me.
Thats what I am saying though, get rid of some of the lower tier enhance damage modifiers on rares or magic items, hell if they left it on rares alone it would resolve a lot of issues.
Minimum damage % modifier on rares increased to 100%ed baseline, and up to the cruel modifier still at 300% ed.
You still then have 3 tiers of items, normal exceptional, and elite. So it wouldn’t completely rule out having to upgrade from drops, or cube upgrade. Make 100% ed on rare items only.
I dunno, that might make normal mode trivial though, unless it had a level requirement change.
This is a whole can of worms.
Maybe they could make a new crafting recipe that added % damage to melee weapons.
Cost a Gem, a couple runes, a jewel, and the weapon itself.
Maybe the ED% could be based on the level of jewel used, as well as the tier of gem used, where flawless could net the best benefit, and jewel could increase the % damage on certain level of items.
So something like low level weapons could turn viable, but the recipe would be useless in late game?
More spitballing.
100% per upgrade doesnt fix the elite stuff though. Grandfather would be one of the less good uniques in the game, behind a double upped unique starter weapon. Bonesnap would end up 600% ED or something !
For endgame - i like the idea that indestructable weps can roll ethereal with multple sockets.
Barbs are always going to suffer before they get end game loot.
I agree with the OP in that attacking characters have a really hard time getting a good weapon. My solution for this would be to add socketing recipes that allow easy socketing of items. You’d still have to work for your weapon but there would be more options.
When I play melee, I typically gamble for a rare weapon and upgrade it to exceptional. It takes a lot of str and dex to equip exceptional weapons in normal but it’s worth it.
The bigger your character is the more crushing blow they have. That way soyboy paladins get to suffer in their g-face while burly barbs get 110% CB without putting on items at all.
Scales with your level too, so you get chunky as hell at level 94, like you’ve been on the roids.
Casters BTFO i guess lol