I want to like them I do but there are just too many drawbacks…
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you need good gear for them to be effective. Without it they are worthless.
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Attack rating… Oh you can miss enemies ?? why? casters never have to worry about missing.
3)MF is harder because you need good gear to survive the enemy assults you can’t stack it as easily as a caster who can stay at range…
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REPAIR COSTS - I am playing a fury druid and have to spend like 400k every half hour on repairing my gear… WTF why? casters almost never have to repair their gear and can make millions of gold very quickly…
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Basically need a cannot be frozen raven frost ring on at all times or risk losing all efficency… Meanwhile casters don’t care about getting chilled because they can still shoot out their spells the same speed.
I want to like melee builds I do but there is just no point to them … They are pretty underpowered and not very practical.
8 Likes
Having a melee guy that works properly in games with more than one person in is a flex on d2.
You only do it if your rich.
2 Likes
Melee builds do fine once you have the right gear for them. That’s why we mf, is to find gear for different builds to work. The only reason to playing is caster sorc is to endless mf for gear for other toons.
1 Like
I think that the version 1.10 ruined melee builds but I can also proudly say that I just played a single player frenzy+ww barb till lvl 73 and hell act 5 and just finished a fortitude armor and found a heavens light weapon. Using a black runeword tyrant club on the other hand.
Its been a very challenging and fun playthrough even though I always have to use players 1 and magic finding is slow cus I cant afford to use any mf gear. The only easy way is LK runs with players 8.
On the other hand having a challenge is a good thing, I will probably just stop playing if/when my barb starts to kill everything easier. As long as its challenging I have the motivation to continue.
1 Like
Melee is what makes the game fun. Caster is basically easy mode vs a melee build. I consider it a much higher challenge to get a melee through hell and doing well. He’s kindof why I MF in the first place.
3 Likes
hmm? which melee characters are we talking about? werebear/werewolf druids do fine, zeal does good, ww & zerk builds are decent, ww sin, ghosts & kicksins all do fine, even zeal/enchant sorc not bad.
My fury druid is fine (now that I have great gear) but the main problem is the expense… He costs like 400k to repair each time and I have to repair each half hour…
Ontop of that MF for great gear isn’t that easy as swapping out my good gear drastically lowers my effiency…
Casters have an advantage over melee in that they take no damage whatsoever unless they’re hit by missile weapons (spells, arrows, etc.) so they have very few repair costs unless they’re facetanking.
Then on top of it, most mobs will die before they ever get into melee range, whereas melee characters need to be toe-to-toe to do any damage whatsoever, so they’ve got no choice.
This was also a discussion even in OG, and it’s a discussion in almost any game where there’s a caster/melee choice. If you play a melee character, you know what you’re getting into already.
1 Like
git gud. melee is perfectly viable. bad player people are 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% bias upon the sorceress teleport skill and the ability to find a jah/ber for enigma teleport skill (which bad player people feel like they should be able to find within 1.5 weeks or the game’s RNG IS BROKEN).
disregard that and focus on stat points WHICH FAR EXCEED THOSE TO CASTER AND MAGIC BASED CLASSES******************* and build a character with damage reduce and enhanced damage and +to elemental damage and ethereal and enhanced defense and enhanced block chance and etc, etc, etc,… most stats favor defense and melee but all of the impatient fools of this game who think they need to reach level 2000 in their first two hours of the game and hyper focus on TELEPORT**** and misread all of the hundreds of other skills and stat abilities and synergies and etc, etc, etc.
2 Likes
Practical for what? For kicking PVM A$$ and having fun? 100000%
MF? Not so much…
I can clear a mob faster than majority of casters or bows with a properly geared zealot or frenzy barb and never die… the HP bar might to up and down like a yoyo but if your AR is right and you have plenty of leech, you will make it.
They’re fine if you don’t mind doing the same zones 1/3 as fast as a caster with mediocre gear while you have end-game gear.
Everyone knows they broke physical classes in 1.10 (and not just melee but e.g. physical bowazons also), they should all be buffed back to 1.09 levels. The only real “meta” point of melee characters is to kill ubers (and smiter is so far better than the others for this you only make the others for fun). Barbs have a niche doing trav/pit with find item/gold find also. That’s about it.
2 Likes
Well they have their uses. Nothing beats pitzerker barb with Find item or Goldfind barb with same.
Smiter is easy for uber tristram or dclone with quite low-end gear.
Yes for general MF melee builds are not that great since limited Aoe+require better items than caster counterparts.
1 Like
Angelic ring and ammy are very good for extra attack rating and dirt cheap if not free. BiS for some builds. At lvl 90 trade them in for some nice rolled crafted.
Melee builds are way more fun than your cookie cutter tele sorcs.
Nothing more satisfying than running head on into the middle of a pack of cows, then watch as your Tesla drops them like dominos.
1 Like
The catch 22 is you’ll want a cookie cutter tele sorc to gear up the melee char.
Meanwhile lightning sorc, javazon, poison necro, etc. have cleared the entire remaining 95% of the cow level while you dropped a single pack of cows like dominos with your build that requires like 8HR. lol
2 Likes
That’s just because the single player combat system was coded more towards range/caster builds rather than leveling the playing field for all builds in single player. The combat system would have to be completely overhauled to make solo 99 melee builds viable or even fun for that matter.
Involving changes to the demons damage output, how many spawn when melee characters play solo, how many spawn when in groups of 2-8, how much damage melee characters do to demons, how much damage melee character abilities do to demons. Sadly though this also circles back to the broken loot system.
Previously coded dice rolling percentage chance based free-for-all loot in a 1-8 player coop role playing game spells disaster for melee builds no matter what game you try to implement it in but I don’t want to come off like some self entitled child who just doesn’t want so much loot spawning on the ground that my computer monitor literally can’t register it all at once so I’ll just end my input here.
The game was perfectly fine in 1.09 and before when ww barbs, zealots, bowazons, etc. did great damage. No-one minded at all and physical classes were very popular. Even when barbs/bows were more meta people still played javazons, sorcs, necros. It was more balanced between the classes then imo. The uniques were more balanced also, it was great getting grandfathers, windforces, eaglehorns, etc. Even exceptional weapons like were worthwhile to keep/trade because lots of people played zealots, barbs, etc. Even things like martial arts/pheonix assassin were much more viable.
Then they broke the physical classes in 1.10. At the time it was because no-one played elemental specs on those classes so they added synergies, phys resists, etc. to hell to try to get people to play other specs, and just ended up breaking all the physical classes. That’s when they stopped developing/supporting the game seriously, so it just kind of ended with all the physical classes being broken. For most of D2’s life physical classes and melee were great fun and competitive. Now they’re just crushing blow bots for killing ubers. And now all the elite uniques are garbo because they added absurdly overpowered runewords like spirit and insight and oath that cost nothing. The current design is inferior compared to pre-1.10 imo, not that they’ll ever fix it.
6 Likes
So many of you just plain suck at this game lmao. Ignorant and incompetent. Go back to Minecraft in creative mode. Make sure to make the map flat so nothing can be in your way.
1 Like
i want to make a barb but i also think its weird to invest so much just to have to run after things instead of dropping a spell on them from wherever i am.
invest more to be less efficient. i guess it’s more like a fun project.
1 Like