JK
BUT!
Melee already suffers enough compared to most casters… Leave Grief alone but simply buff Last Wish, Death, BOTD, Fury, Beast, Doom, etc…A slight bump to mid tier runewords like Oath would be nice. But let’s buff them in unique ways.
As for what unique buffs? Not entirely sure but something that would make them competitive without a boring damage buff. Make them interesting. Like…give Last Wish or Doom Cannot be Frozen freeing up a ring slot. Maybe give Death a chance to proc Amp damage or decrepify…What about giving Death a 2%-5% chance to cast corpse explosion?…etc…Too OP on that last one? Okay I’ll chill.
These are just ideas and are not meant to be the answer. I just hate the idea of nerfing Grief. The other runewords are meant to be powerful due to the many HRs they require. SO LETS MAKE THEM POWERFUL. Make them better or at least competitive with Grief in a unique way that would make the player think.
Nerfing Grief would just increase the power gap between melee and casters. Also, nerfing Grief is just going to make anyone that rolled a really good Grief or a perfect Grief really upset. However, adding something unique to bring the other runewords up as to not effect the existing stats? Probably safer.
Anyone have any ideas? Let’s discuss.
Lol first thought was, oh no not one of those #@$% again, k you got me 
Personally think the best way to make melee better is actually nerfing Grief, sounds awkward I know, but you need the rest for it to become logical, but if anything Grief should not be the strongest weapon out there based on rarity/price, Grief should still remain good, however the bonus damage should be lowered (evenly so for example *0.5) and no longer affect smite.
Nerf Grief and few other melee weapons, then rework the melee system so + skills impact the damage outcome a lot more, how this is done is not a 1, 2, solution, I would expect increased % damage per rank, but possibly add base damage to skills as well, rework/replace of skills that are (and will remain even when just buffed) useless like Stun.
Note weapons should definitely not become stat sticks and weapon damage should matter, just create alternatives to loading pure damage on the item slot and attack as fast as possible.
Also nerf the most powerful caster builds (sometimes buffing their single target damage a bit) so a bit more balance between casters is created as well.
Another change I would like to see which would matter here, is increased effectiveness of defense, no more 0 defense when moving, lowered defense but not 0, more in the direction of when moving 75% and when running 50%.
A change in Hit Recovery, give the monsters Faster Hit Recovery, the amount is most fun if it varies but even if not that’s fine, it should however prevent some AoE caster of basically sending everything into HR so dealing damage is what’s keeping them save.
Possibly a change in the amount of frames needed from 0 to max FHR.
But of these will also affect the balance between caster and melee (and as a bonus might make heavier armour a bit more useful).
But I guess there is much to do if you really want to fix the balance between these 2 styles, 1.10 botched the balance here and hasty buffs will imo never end well.
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I agree with the overall premise. Melee definitely needs help, and it doesn’t make sense that Grief out performs considerably more expensive RW in many cases.
For Last Wish, in addition to other buffs (maybe IAS or something?) I recently saw someone mention how Hit Blinds Target from the Sur kind of screws you with the life tap proc. I’ve never had one to play with myself, so I’m not sure how big of an issue it is in practice, but it definitely seems problematic. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a RW that didn’t also inherit the “base” benefits of the rune though, so I’m not sure the best way to get around that. Swapping Sur for something similarly rare comes to mind, but that might be too big of a change for some.
Oath I’d like to see them tighten up the min range a bit, but maybe it’s better to leave it alone since it’s fairly cheap, already gives a indestructible, IAS and good damage. Just feels so scary making it worrying you’ll get a low 200s roll though haha. Early game you don’t necessarily have the runes to re-roll it, even though it’s cheap, and late game you’re probably looking to Grief or something else anyway, so seems like making the range 275 - 340 vs. the current 210 - 340 might be reasonable.
Another idea I’ve seen mentioned on the forums that I really like as well is simply rescaling all the weapon base damage upwards. Grief’s main bonus is the “flat” damage add, and the way it maths out, so it seems like it would raise %ED RW more than Grief, which would be the overall goal, and wouldn’t nerf Grief. Maybe less fun than making some of the high end RW even better, but if the weapon base damage was improved enough to make some of the more expensive RW better than Grief, it accomplishes the goal while also making melee progression overall better, since the base weapon damage would help everywhere.
Whether through skills or changing the calculation formula, AR should also probably be looked at.
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Absolutley no reason to touch Grief except to give it more utility. I would like to use it in all melee weapons, not just axes or swords. A Grief caddy with staff mods would be sick and a Scourge would make an excellent weapon for Barb or a great option for 2h java. If anything, the damage needs to be upped! 400 - 600 would be a good range.
Also, other items should be adjusted for D2R especially set items. Upping a set item should add more stats, not just higher requirements. Set items have very limited use.
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They could just increase min max dmg of base weapons.
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I am still waiting that BotD WW Barb procs Poison Nova PoD and PD2 with their 2-3 men teams got it done, how can’t you blizzard and whats the point of finding/lucky cube a 6s eth warpike in the 1st place? 
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Nerf Grief, and buff base damage on weapons. Thats where i sit.
Grandfather needs eth, lots of sockets, and something else - as do all uniques. You cant really get through Den of Evil hell without anything short of an Oath, but then you get that Oath and can clear all of hell. Thats the significance of damage for melee.
BTW - as things stand, An Eth Grandfather with 3 50% runes in it would still not outdamage Grief. Imagine that - insanity. Also consider the odds - Eth is 1/20, Grandfather is ultra rare, and if it was 1-3 sockets, rolling that perfect eth GF would be like winning the lottery twice.
Also, you need a bajillion more strength, a bajiliion IAS and loads of dex.
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Azurewrath and Lightsabre are also pretty good mid game weapons.
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Poison Nova is kinda worthless although Voice of Reason could be good!
I can agree that base weapons need a buff, but Grief as a Runeword is fine as is. It offers medium damage for a rather low cost although it is currently the best most accessible weapon. It never made sense to me how the + damage can transfer to smite but not kicks. Anyway, I would prefer an eth Astreon’s Iron Ward over Grief in most melee builds, it’s just too good. Eth rare weapons are the true end game and I have seen a few that made me drool like a 440% 2 skill 2 os 40 ias fools modded eth repair Warfist on us.west nl, and a 550% eth 2os fools moded Balrog Blade again on nl us.west.
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“50% Chance To Cast Level 20 Poison Nova, when You Kill An Enemy”, so tell me how is WW not “killing” something 
?
It wasn’t meant to proc is why. Nothing to fix.
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I dislike this as runewords are already the norm you almost need an enigma if you are a non sorc class.
If you buff those melee runewords rare berserker axes/weapons and uniques become useless.
What melee classes need is a splash AoE effect. The point is for PVM targetting 1 monster at a time when mobs are super large is inefficient, dangerous and not rewarding at all. SO what that project diablo 2 mod did was add a small splash to all melee. Frenzy, wolf druids and made them completely viable for pvm
you don’t wanna give melee weapons a chance to proc corpse explosion, as that is an insanely powerful spell since its damage output is based on a percentage of mob health and not a fixed number like most other spells… also, how would that even work in practice??
it requires a corpse in order to function, and you can’t exactly swing at corpses.
I dont think they are willing or able to change existing runewords, so talking about it is pretty much pointless.
We can only hope for new interesting and powerful melee runewords like Metamorphosis.
Buffing the base damage of elite weapons would buff the high-end runewords and also high-end rares. High percentage enhanced damage would actually compete with or potentially exceed Grief. That’s what we need to start with for helping melee builds while also increasing variety in weapon choices.
I think it would help a bit, to make weapon effects actually matter.
Like when a weapon says “10% chance to cast level 15 poison nova on striking”
That’s like 270 damage lol.
These effects should be fully synergized.
Imagine if that poison nova was a maxed out 10k nova. You’d be hoping for that proc every other hit.
It would help give melee characters some good AOE options. And grief could stay the same as the single target king.
For last wish The blind on hit in practice isn’t a big deal because usually it is just used for ubers. And ubers are immune to blind, so only the life tap will proc.
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Thanks for the additional insight. I do wonder if a hypothetical buff to Last Wish to make it better than Grief in more/all situations (justified for higher rune cost) would then make it used in other situations where Blind On Hit would be more problematic. Thoughts?
Yes for all the runes it takes to make Last Wish it should be the best melee weapon. Remove blind on hit and add 50 flat increased damage mod onto it and 20% attack speed and that should make it best in slot for most situations.