I was mostly referring to that awkward gap that mostly comes between the start of act 2 NM and the moment you slap on a Grief. Particularly with light/no twinking.
As I’ve said about a thousand times now, personally I don’t much want them to make any changes to it at all, I’m somewhat of a purist. I’d just rather if changes to a perceived problem WERE to be made… they’d be ones I could tolerate.
I don’t know why people find it so hard to give potential solutions to a problem they themselves don’t have.
The best character that I’ve ever had was a Frenzy barb. He could do the whole game on players8. Took forever to farm the gear offline. He used Death, Lawbringer, Highlords, Enigma, and Infinity on the merc.
Lawbringer allows you to ignore the physical resistance of undead, which means you can kill PI ghosts easy. It also casts decrepify which gives you more damage and slows monsters for more safety. Death casts glacial spike, freezing enemies. Infinity removes enemy defense, which means you don’t need any AR gear.
I’m looking up the attack speed breakpoints for Frenzy. I had my Lawbringer in a Legend Sword, and my Death in a Colossus Sword. It looks like you only need 50 IAS to reach 5 fpa if you equip Legend Sword in the main hand.
Thats fine, really fine late game gear. I should have reworded my topic to late early/midgame/early late game (hope that makes perfect sense).
There is a huge gap in power unless you get lucky and find a decent weapon, or shop a decent weapon.
Literally thousands of damage difference between most elemental/magic users until they find a good weapon. Honestly most weapons are complete trash for any kind of damage dealing.
There is a gap between Endgame gear, and midgame/early lategame gear, when compared to sorcs + skills gear. The character alone with synergies gets like 4k+ damage where melee could be stuck with 500-1k damage.
I understand the ias mechanics, but melee is still heavily gear dependent in that regard too. Everything about melee is harder than casters when it comes to dealing damage (ignoring immunes) Midgame/Early lategame.
I play SSF these days so I know the struggle. The gear progression for barb is pretty good in normal, but terrible in nightmare. There’s no upgrade path for a weapon other than “get a lucky drop”. That’s why I want socketing recipes that give 4 sockets to magic items and 2 to rares. That way you’d only need to find a weapon with high damage, and add IAS/leech/AR with the sockets.
It’s hard enough finding a decent weapon, especially if you want to go into a certain mastery route. The only way to play the GG builds is to already have decent gear, otherwise, you are just playing for survival and sludge along with your mediocre damage.
Imho it should be some flat damage like greif. Also some damage reduction since we fighting close quarters. These can easily be done through skill points amd synergies.
For the record I just want to toss this out here again you can absolutely make an Unbending Will by the middle of Nightmare if you are playing SP/Ladder.
All that matters for the cube socket recipe or Larzuk is iLvL… you don’t have to worry about the NM socket cap. That’s only for drops. So all you really needs is a sword that CAN get 6 sockets and drops in NM(Dimentional Blade/Executioner’s Sword) that drops from a level 41+ area.
I mean you end up with a “decent enough” weapon, just going to take a bit of work. Make another when you have access to elite weapons, or an Oath when you find a Pul/Mal if you don’t get lucky with Lo.
Sometimes I think people forget Oath exists. You can get a 150-450’ish damage weapon with +50% ias out of an Eth Berserker axe for just a Mal Pul pretty much. I mean it’s not a Grief sure… but it’s pretty solid for it’s price.
I would settle for double attack (rating) or something. That i need angelics breaks builds. Whatever happens or doesnt happen, i will be a frenzy barb on day 1 of laddr 2.
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.
