It’s very obvious that there is a huge imbalance between casters and melee attackers in D2 in term of clear speed.
While melee characters, including Zealot, can only attack one target at a time, and some of those hits might be missed, Casters can hit multiple targets at once an they don’t even need Attack Rating to successfully hit their targets.
This creates an unfair advantage to Caster and gives players much less incentive to play melee builds.
I think Area Damage is a good way to improve this balance. Melee attackers can hit one target and the monsters next to it can get some of the damage as well. This would give those melee builds a faster clear speed and offer the players more incentive to play those build.
Thank you for reading this. I hope you guys can make proper changes for this skill to be useful.
Update: Some of you pointed out that Melee has other perks like: Open Wound, Crushing Blow, Critical Strike, Life/Mana Leech…
Yes, that is a very fair point; however, it still does not change the fact or the outcome that Casters can farm or clear map much faster than Melee. That is a fact and we all know it. All I am asking is to improve that balancing.
Also, beside the fact that Casters can hit multiple targets at once and without the need for Attack Ratings, they generally deal a lot more damage compared to Melees as well.
Many games have implemented Area Damage successfully. Even D3 has it as well.
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But casters need to deal with immunities, and spells can be dodged/missed? Melee has crushing blow, open wound, life leech, mana leech, casters can’t do these things?
Crushing Blow, deadly strike, open wound and leech still very gear dependant. High end gear for casters and melee don’t even come close. You can get caster budget gear and do lots of damage.
I would balance it out with survivability. Why would casters go near monsters when melee has to.
It’s well understood that melee is the ‘challenge mode’ for D2, Caster is easy mode while melee has a ton of things it has to deal with just to make it viable. This is as it is and I would not change it. Anyone who is arguing otherwise hasn’t made a melee toon. There is a certain level of ‘prestige’ when you can take a melee char through Hell, and when you can run ubers with something other than a smiter.
I do not want to see some sort of ‘melee splash’, it just isn’t D2. If you want some sort of ‘balance’ I would say add DR with upper levels of Def rating. Say every 250-500 Def you get 1% DR. This gives incentive to get those higher Def items and get your Def up there. As is Def over a certain level is useless.
The answer is a better AR calculation.
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Area dmg on melee is dumb, and counter intuitive.
What melee needs is to do enough Single Target dmg to compensate for their lower AoE. Starting with attack rating (as a big part of the problem is how many hits you miss), but also better weapon bases (because otherwise only Grief phaseblade is good enough due to the flat dmg increase).
Casters have their own issues: early level mana management is attrocious. There’s no reason why a soceress would ever feel the need to whack a minion with her staff instead of using a low mana spell. All lvl 1 spells should cost 0-2 mana (and cap there) and casters should start with more mana.
Improving melee endgame and caster early game would go a long way to making the game more balanced.
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You know, it’s not a crime to put points early into energy, and then respec out of it later. I never understood people who just refuse to put points into energy, and instead chug mana pots all the way, running back and forth to town when they are out. They think it’s noobish or something? Because if that is the reason, and instead they suffer, that’s a stupid attitude. Specialy through normal, that’s just dumb.
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I do spec full energy early on. It does not change the fact that early game is unbalanced for casters.
Just like the existance of Grief does not change how unbalanced end game is for melee.
As others have stated, melee area damage is not the answer.
One idea that has promise is to add an Energy requirement (much like Strength req. for weapons) for items that have %FCR on it. Without the Energy requirement being satisfied, %FCR would show up as red on the item and provides no benefit to faster casting.
For example, for a Sorceress that wants to benefit from the %FCR on a dual Spirit sword/shield combo would require energy points invested to essentially “unlock” the faster cast rate on the runewords.
This would force casters to invest points into Energy to reap the benefits of faster casting.
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I also agree to what Wyrmheart said. Melees have to be good in there own way, not in the same manner as casters! They should be distinctive and therefore should have there strengths and weaknesses! Splash damage is not the answer!
Than casters will cry that they are going to be glass canons. Which originaly they should be, but the back lash from fans would be devestating. Melee needs to be less reliant on AR. A melee build needs dmg(from Str or other sources), attack speed(from skills, external buffs and gear), AR(from skills, external buffs and gear). That’s all good, but you also need vit, high all res., defense, FHR, block chance, Crushing Blow, Open Wounds, Deadly Strike, more str and dex to gear up, and if you actually want to find anything some MF chance is also needed on top. All the while caster put on FCR, some all res, tons of MF and can lay waste to entire screens.
So imo AR needs to be reworked.
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Let the casters cry about adding the requirement to invest energy points to unlock faster casting. Having casters simply dump the vast majority of their points into vitality doesn’t make sense for “magic-users.”
This would level the playing field for casters and melee while staying true to the lore and fantasy and ultimately the best direction for the game.
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I do agree adding an energy req to caster weapons would make the casters ‘more balanced’ as they actually have to invest in something other than Vit…But it doesn’t help the melee player, it only makes casters work harder.
I also thing AR is ok as is, perhaps just adding more AR for pts in Dex, but I don’t want it hit much.
I’ll point back to the survivability issue and I think they can do something with Def to make it actually mean something rather than just being a number most don’t care about.
Yes well I actually like your idea. And if the majority of AR could come from melee skills, that could also benefit melee, not to bother whit AR that much.
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Yes, that is a very fair point; however, it still does not change the fact or the outcome that Casters can farm or clear map much faster than Melee. That is a fact and we all know it. All I am asking is to improve that balancing.
Also, beside the fact that Casters can hit multiple targets at once and without the need for Attack Ratings, they generally deal a lot more damage compared to Melees as well.
As for “spells can’t be missed/dodged?”, let me put it this way: if a monster doesn’t physically run/walk away from its spot, and you didn’t aim at somewhere else, there is 100% hit chance for it, even when that monster is far away from you. However, for Melee, even when the monster is right in front of you and neither you or him move away from the spot, there is still chance for you to miss that hit
It’s that nonsense lvl difference in the AR calculation.
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If we want AoE dmg, then i see only 1 solution.
Barb needs some kind of cleaving attack skill.
Strictly for 2 handed weapons, since 1h got frenzy etc.
U jump in and cleave the shi’t outta mobs.
Paladins could get reworked ‘Holy’ auras to instead of area pulse damage, to apply an elemental splash upon hit.
Assassin already has her reworked skills that do splash ele dmg.
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The biggest problem melee has is early game attack rating issues, but a lot of that is getting addressed and may further get increased, they are also item dependent, moreso than casters, and that’s looking to be less so with these new patch notes.
I mean, melee have access to aoe anyways. Barbs get whirlwind, druids can spec into ele tree pretty successfully now, paladins get auras, sins get finishers, zons get charged strike/lightning strike, dagger necros get corpse explosion…
I really, really don’t want to see innate cleave/melee splash. I think that’ll turn d2 down a path that makes the game feel like a grinder/modern hack and slash that won’t keep me invested past a week. I like the challenge that spell casters are faced with, and melee characters are faced with. The only exception might be werebear, I think from a fantasy perspective of having a massive bear just slap down swaths of enemies would be pretty sick, lol.
Melee survivability and damage is balanced at end game. They just need to add some more weapons for variety at end game and buff mid game weapons so that getting there isn’t as much of a struggle.
Power level should not be increased. If melee did as much damage as a glass cannon DPS, then you’d have to remove some survivability.
Because melee don’t die when they’ve been built correctly. Casters can still make a bad teleport and die w/ no access to leech, lower hp per level, lower block chance, less access to high defense armors with reliance on fcr, less benefit from %absorb etc.
There’s a lot more elemental immunities than physical, and generally melee is doing at least some elemental damage in addition to physical so pretty much dual element just for dealing physical damage with a weapon.
It’s balanced… Just add some new weapons. No need to reinvent the wheel imo.
For example just go into any pub pvp game and look at what classes are able to dominate and bad manner the easiest. It’s not any class that relies on elemental damage because it is so easily tanked. And it’s not low hp heroes who do good damage but die once they are eventually caught.
No it’s tanky classes like barb and paladin who can stack resists, block, hp to unholy levels and literally cannot be killed due to the way itemization benefits their kit as a whole.
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The problem is not that melee’s single-target abilities are too weak. The problem is that casters’ AoE spells are too strong versus single-target.
This is the big problem with Diablo 2 balance. AoE spells tend to range from good enough to very good in all scenarios except vs immunes (a problem physical damage faces as well). Boss and Champion fights should be where single-target abilities shine. Mowing through trash is where AoE should shine.