1) rebalance the ratio of importance between skill vs Gear
Meaning that if you give more power coming from skills, it’ll open up more item options to build
That’s why I think melee skills should have flat damage added to them which increases with levels, making stuff like +skill somewhat desired on melee build. Ie: barb combat gc
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2) increase melee ability to reach many targets in a shorter time
splash(ie: Knockback hits generate a conical areas of damage)
multiple sources of hits (ie: blood crescent reworked upgrade grants it copies of its weapon as flying scimitars on kill)
buff to movement and attack speed (ie: stamina shrine reworked as Velocity shrine and now grants attack and movement speed)
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3) improve the sources of damage modifiers
poison damage added to attacks is now set at a fix duration of 5 seconds. It’s damage is also greatly buffed. That way a melee poison build can play tag
stamina being a vector of “enhanced damage” based on how much you have left.
add damage modifiers to open wounds
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4) Improve it’s itemization
indestructible can spawn eth
crafting rework
item quality is expanded to blue/rare/Unique/set allowing them to spawn with cracked/lower quality/superior/pristine(set/unique exclusive). Which gives them the same perk as runewords. (Ie: Botd can be made in a superior weapon, Gf can spawn superior(15%) or even pristine(25%))
2handed weapons are allowed to have more sockets (ie: larzuk GF is 1-2 sockets
2handed weapons have improved affix table with values 25% increased from the regular one
That doesn’t help bow builds, or throw barbs, or melee assassins, or zeal paladins. I am aware of the new runeword, it is nice if you play a barb for anything but throw.
I am not worried about those things, its the part of the game where you are completely dependent on RNG to have a weapon to deal any kind of damage, vs sorcs, bone/poison necros/light zonz etc…
Once they get to hell, they all have their niche to farm, Melee gets the pits, with 1k damage vendor shopped items, and even then going to nightmare cows have 3k hp in 1 player games, jump it to 8 and they have like 20k, no melee character is going to be doing any damage in 8 player nightmare games.
Call it 2k with crit strike, compared to 4k/6k/8k with nothing but what you found on your way.
I dunno, Blizz sorc is just so good in the early game its not even viable to play anything else if you want to find items quick. The next best thing is hammers, then id say bone necro with CE, followed by light zonz, light sorcs, trappers, fire sorcs have a niche. As soon as they finish in a group, they can go solo play. Melee can forget about it.
Harmony or Insight Bow is perfectly capable in lasting you until you can drop a Windforce or make a Faith.
Zeal Pally can easily go through the game with just an Honor in a Knout/Scourge/Pally Scepter with a swap to a Black to easily 1 point smite bosses down. He’s be just fine until he can pick up an Oath/Grief… and has a pretty decent assortment of Uniques that can work as well.
As for throw barb ehh beats me. Wasn’t even considered a real build until recently.
Melee assassins I know nothing about, so no comment there. Hate the class.
100% agree.
And is what needs fixed.
Melee simply does not have the kill-speed to get good drops… but built correctly can kill everything… so, why not have a chance to drop rate that rewards content cleared?
Zoom-Zoomers can still wave a wand or throw a billion projectiles and clear the screen, or skip content and go straight to the boss… and us simple melee characters get to enjoy the struggle we enjoy while killing all… but not get the same drop rewards for having killed all.
Normal melee builds shouldn’t be using vendor items at lvl 56, enough low end runewords that are cheap and function fine.
Thrower, yeah that one might have an issue, easiest fix without danger of unbalance is few new Horadric Cube recipies (not crafting) that make some useful thrown weapon to get you started and power of these could be capped at hell viable but not good or so.
Basically 2 each DC, one for start and one for mid game normal/nm/hell if done in true playthrough manner, so last one would take you to end of hell were it should be meh if rolled decent.
Not a craft because those are very unstable and expensive to do, these are more endgame things, so not the power of a craft either more styled like 1 Diamond + 1 Staff + 1 Kris + 1 Belt –> Savage Polearm Class Weapon, but then for throwing weapons and based on what you need to survive at certain levels adding an easy to comeby rune.
Don’t think crafting recipies would be a bad move for the endgame either, but think it would be simply best to remove a specific weapon type from the recipies anyway.
I think some people are missing the point here. You can have maybe decent runewords early on…
You might have some top end stuff, but that dont make you a killer like the rest of the builds. Melee vs Spells have always been the toe rag and the lesser.
What was suggested is all this ehanaced damage it does not help as much as we would like. Then their is the upclose fighting so lots of defence or reduction is needed is needed. Casters and projectiles can easily outclass melee and they can easily hang back. With melee it requires alot more effort and slower to kill.
Lets say for example another difficulty was to arise. You know hammers, Java, infinity mercs would just rule again. Melee would be left in the wind. An amazon you could afk with a sheild and survive every now and again. The barb with all his buffs would just get beaten up. My barb or druid should be able to tank for awhile.
Anyhow to get back on point the same gear for melee is always needed. Gface, laying of hands, highlords, gore riders, verdungo and a fortitude.
Thos needs to change too. Enhanced damage is good but not great. This is why i said some flat damage and damage reduction can solve this.
Take D3 for example they give barb and monk damage reduction as default. You know they going to tank if need be.
Then theirs the curses to deal with liken amp, decrify ect and chase down projectile idiots.
agree with this, gear is so standarised. Precisely i would want skills to give some flat base damage increase (like grief), carefully calculated not to be unreasonable, which would increase value of skill lv. Small dmg reduction like 10% maybe through already used in those meele builds skills would also be nice.
The problem is not melee so much as casters just being badly imbalanced. If you’re playing self-find, getting a melee character through Hell difficulty presents an interesting and challenging experience past Normal difficulty. If you’re doing the same with a caster, it’s just kind of boring.
If I could make two changes to caster balance I would:
Make caster item type (such as wand vs bone wand) and item quality (Normal/Exceptional/Elite) actually matter like it does for melee.
The skills are the things that give the casters damage. So you would have to tweak this but lets be honest nerfing dont really work unless they are waay to OP.
Im not quite certain what you mean here but end game items will just destroy stuff fir casters and melee gets left in the wind.
The main problem is not a lack of damage for melee characters. The main problem is the low chance to hit severely limiting the builds and equipment choices.
What is needed is multiple sources of + Attack Rating, so that all the skills that give % increase in AR can actually have a base AR to work off of.
For example, currently a Superior Weapon can give up to 15% Enhanced damage, but only gives between 1 to 3 plus Attack Rating.
How does that make any sense?
You need at least 100 to 300 Attack Rating to make any kind of difference.
I guess everyone just found it too boring to bother reading or responding to. But seriously, if you actually want to help the non-caster builds you are going to need to do something boring and basic to change things so that we can actually reliably hit the monsters in Hell difficulty.
Yep, weapons lack so much diversity of affixes and mechanics that it just a linear itemization, which makes it basically “pick the highest dps”
Add diversity of affix and mechanics and you’ll have people pick a variety of weapons
For example:
Make Pompeii wrath 20% chance to cast lvl 50 volcano on striking instead of a mediocre 5% lvl8 and you’ll solidly increase the odds of people to pick it up and use it, like fire claw druids or enchant sorc
It’s effect mechanic allows it to be usable while not having to be all about dps like the others
i guess to answer this question you need two answer one pve and one for pvp
nvm let put everything there pve and pvp
i think melee make good dps using a grief with a Fortitude and a Phoenix shield . the issue there
1- grief having 5 socket runeword mean already delete a lot of weapon too select , also this rune word is design for 1 hand , also the +400 get more dps from fast weapon mean pb very limited option , the game need a 3 strong socket runeword for 1 hand but also 2 hand
2- Fortitude is a great dps armor but compare enigma you lack of mobility (45% frw) and also the big 8% dr mean you can not reach 50% dr without a shield
3- 2 hand are screw and so underpower for amost every class exception of the 2.4 change for the werewolf druid
4- Phoenix is a great dps shield for pld but cost so much dex for other class
let hope the dev make 2 hand more relevant
i think very easy all unique weapon can have a buff of 100ed% and will still be underpower same for crafting weapon to start with 160 ed ,
Grief will and always overpower everything , mean change will be only quality of life
By diversity i mean more viable weapons dps wise, because it is always about dps in weapons. Dont like the idea of giving weapons high chance to cast high level spells, at least commonly, this is not “diversity” i like to see. Meele are mashers not casters. They have to hit harder than casters and not have aoe (in general design of diablo2).
Btw Pompeii wrath have knockback it would still be bad with volcano.
Then you don’t know what diversity is and would be horrible at balancing
Your view of itemization is unidimensional… Dps
Which is exactly what’s the main issue with D2
If you don’t diversify, if you have a monoculture, you are vulnerable
Having your weapon itemization solely based on dps makes choice easy… “just pick the highest dps”
9 times out of 10 grief
But if you add a diversity of effect to melee weapons, you create horizontal diversity
One item isn’t better than another because they don’t provide the same thing
That’s the main goal of my Unique upgrade rework
To make them all endgame viable but all bring something different that isn’t invalidate by other items
https://ibb.co/vh5DTSg
But it’s not just ctc
Here’s Another example:
The gnashes Normal
+8 to Strength
50% Chance of Open Wounds
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
+60-70% Enhanced Damage
The gnashes Exceptional
+20 to Strength
50% Chance of Open Wounds
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
+100-200% Enhanced Damage
100% Increased open wounds damage
The gnashes elite
+40 to Strength
50% Chance of Open Wounds
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
+150-300% Enhanced Damage
200% Increased open wounds damage
open wounds effect stack up to 5 times
So you can make builds around a weapon which no other weapon could allow you or have a different factor than dps to consider when you choose your item
I know, i know, sky dragon breath or rainbow nova etc for all weapons . What you edited is showing ideas of effects increasing dps so…Sorry didnt read linked post.
I agree with this, the problem is lack of ways to increase chance to hit. I mean, look at Superior weapons, they get +1-3 Attack Rating? How is that useful?
Make it 100 to 300 Attack Rating and now superior weapons with only increased attack rating can be valuable.
I’m gonna copy my post from another thread since it would be more appropriate here:
What I think needs to happen for melee is:
#1 Increase base weapon damage
Increase base weapon damage for elite weapons, especially 2H weapons (I think normal/exceptional weapons are fine where they are at, maybe exceptional could use a small increase). How much exactly, I’m not sure. Probably somewhere in the range of 15-25% but that’s just my feeling, it’d probably be best to do it on a per base basis.
#2 Increase durability of base weapons
Increase the durability of some base weapons. You’ve got elite axes and swords with 24 durability that just fall apart too fast for quick attacks like Frenzy, Zeal, Whirlwind, Fury, etc. I think 40 durability would be a good minimum baseline, or allow weapon durability to be increased somehow (maybe a cube recipe or allow Charsi’s imbue reward to improve the durability of non-imbueable items). Mainly a QoL improvement similar to the quiver and throwing weapon stack increases in 2.4.
#3 Reduce Act Boss block chance
Reduce the block chance of Act Bosses (and maybe Ubers) because it’s already hard enough to hit them with their high level and the way Attack Rating is influenced by diminishing returns.
Andariel has the lowest block at 40% meaning you can only ever have a 57% maximum chance to hit her with a physical attack (assuming 95% chance to hit which would take an insane amount of Attack Rating and/or defense reduction) with no way of counteracting that (excluding use of skills that always hit like Smite/Impale/Lightning Bolt).
It only gets worse, Duriel/Mephisto/Diablo have a 50% block chance and Baal has a 55% block chance, giving you a maximum chance to hit of 47.5% and 42.75% respectively. It just sucks that you whiff so many hits with no way to counteract it while casters happily cast away and always hit their targets even when they’re underleveled.
I’d drop Andariel from 40% down to 30%, Duriel/Meph/Diablo from 50% to 40%, and Baal down from 55% to 45%.
Having said that, I wouldn’t mind if they buffed bosses a little to compensate. Allow Duriel to charge once again, allow Mephisto to float over the moat and either increase his melee damage or his charged bolt/ice ball casting frequency, allow Diablo’s Lightning Hose to hit targets in melee range in Nightmare/Hell and increase his frequency of casting Bone Prison, and fix Baal getting cheesed by slow.
#4 Buff set and unique weapons
Buff set and unique weapons. Many of them simply don’t have enough damage or bonuses to compete with runewords that are more easily acquired like Honor, Insight, Obedience, Unbending Will, Oath, etc.
The very rare set and unique weapons need buffed too to compete with late game runewords like Grief or eBotD. I want to see the Grandfather and Doombringer be used, Stormspire and Steel Pillar, Earth Shifter, Astreon’s Iron Ward, etc.
Not to say that every single set or unique has to be buffed or useful because some just won’t be, there’ll always be underused or never used items and that’s okay.
. What you edited is showing ideas of effects increasing dps so…Sorry didnt read linked post.