Blade fury is pretty strong now if you hybridize it with other sources of elemental damage. The enchant change affecting ranged attacks works for all ranged attacks now. Meaning all elemental skill damage buffs ele ranged attacks twice (think facets).
So an eth crescent moon with lightning facets and dual dreams can be used to make a strong lightning bladefury sin now. Especially because -res works on traps (inc blade fury) now.
Paladin is in dire need of skill support for 2 handed weapons. Charge, Sacrifice, Conversion are almost useless for PVM. Vengeance has too many synergies, you’re correct. As a melee Paladin it feels like you always end up using Zeal and a 1H weapon. Absolutely depressing.
I’ve said it many times before, Paladin need an equivalent buff skill for 2 handed weapon support only, that is a direct counterpart to HolyShield. It would promote 2h weapon use.
At this point I think they should completely rework Sacrifice or keep it but add either a cleave/splash effect or PhysToMagic damage conversion - which would actually further lower “damage to self” by converting phys to “x”. Also, allow Sacrifice to Crit/Deadly Strike.
Charge should be affected by the stat “% chance to pierce” so you damage all enemies you run through. If pierce doesn’t trigger, you stop at the enemy like normal. This would be an awesome skill for melee builds, trying to clear packs of enemies.
Damage should be based on 2h weapon damage and Shield damage only - if you aren’t equipped with any of those two, you do no damage with charge. This way a naked pala can still use charge as a movement skill.
Vengeance, should be able to roll Crit/Deadly Strike before the elemental damage calculation takes place.
Conversion has to be reworked. I think Paladin deserves some kind of minion/summon skill, so a complete removal would be sad. I’ve always thought it would fit the Paladin, if he had some kind of skill, that could summon/create flying Swords to fight for him, similar to those flying Scimitars we see in Act2.
D2R - 2.4 PTR - Paladin - Replace Conversion Idea - YouTube
I think we should try and promote more usage of Defensive Auras if possible. For example:
I don’t think so. The whole is choked out by synergies killing hybrid builds. This isn’t a full hotbar style of ARPG. Players use 1 or 2 maxed skills and then 1 point wonders, most builds only use 1 maxed active skill. Forcing points into skills that are either useless in their own right, or are useless to the rest of the build, is bad. 60 points of investment, over half of total points, for a main damage skill, which is what any build is going to use as the vast majority of their gameplay, is adequate. The classes have a lot of underexplored and ignored skills because of synergy investment siphoning away points.
If not reduced, most skills need either/or synergies. If you’re making a Frenzy barb, you can max out Double Swing or Taunt at 16% per level instead of 8%, but not both. Skills like Frenzy, like Vengeance that haves 80 or 100 hard points required to max out their damage need to be adjusted. Skill damage striated across bloated synergy counts is the worst design problem currently in D2. The majority of skills should be optimized at 40 hard points, with some requiring 60. Let players build hybrid again.
In terms of Defiance, how about this…
Agreed. How about this…
Updated OP based on your feedback…
Melee’s problem:
subject to AR and hit rate
enemies block/evade attacks
melee is single target
poor weapon damage scaling. This is why grief is BiS. It bypasses most of it.
most melee attacks are interruptible.
builds like fury druid need decrepify to work. The physical sunder is too much of a risk for an already squishy build(s). Most builds can’t afford to gear for phys damage reduction. Only flexible slot is belt.
Those fundamental problems you listed for melee are mostly addressed in the thread below for improving itemization. This thread is more geared towards buffing melee skills as I’m not convinced they will touch uniques, base weapon damage, adjust chance to hit formula, etc.
always a treat to read these. Sadly no real balance changes have been added by blizzard in previous patches 
they should let werebear use fury, i wanna hit like a truck with it even if its slow
They should lower physical damage resistance across the board in hell.
I hope they consider a few more balance changes in 2.7, I’m not expecting anything close to 2.4.
Tldr
Im sure theirs some logic in the skill changes.
Melee really needs more damage, more damage reduction. Those can be achieved through skills.
2h weapons need a massive upgrade in damage and speed.
Agreed, that was the reason for the proposed changes below (and should help counteract the physical sunder charm):
Increased Stamina - rename to “Increased Resilience,” and now adds +1% FHR per level and add new Iron Skin synergy of +1% physical damage reduction per level
Defiance - now adds passive +0.5% physical damage reduction per level
Agreed, 2H-weapons would receieve a massive upgrade in terms of speed from the proposed change below…
Why synergy to a passive skill? DR could stay at Iron Skin (with a formula based on hard skill points) and it would work the same and be less confusing.
I’m trying to add much more value to arguably the most useless skill in the game, namely Increased Stamina. That benefit could be added to Iron Skin, but thought it fits nicely with new take of “Increased Resilence.” Having just +FHR might not be enough to make it a solid choice. Iron Skin having DR is also a great idea, and either one could work.
Adding a synergy from Iron Skin wouldn’t make Increased Stamina better. I could just put one point in Increased Stamina and dump the rest into Iron Skin. And Increase Stamina would only show the DR bonus, which is actually provided by Iron Skin.
Do you think this could work and would promote putting points in Increased Resilience?..
Yes, this way investment into Increased Stamina/Resilience is reasonable.
But still, DR bonus could stay on Resilience instead of a cross-skill synergy, since both skills are passive.
Agreed and updated OP with your recommendation.
I have this mission… about stun … pliz update the OP yo cast off the godsamit invisiblility spell onnthat useless thing .
That’s not the point of Vengeance. It doesn’t need to apply CB and DS any more than Smite needs to apply elemental damage. Vengeance needs splash or cone damage and to lean further into being an elemental attack.
Physical damage reduction is the strongest defensive stat in the game, and it’s very easy to have an overwhelming effect by planting chunks of it as passives onto skills.