Some melee suggestions for Season 5 patch

General Discussion
1

First of all, I will give a perspective on my way of thinking about changes/patches.
I like changes like enabling Throwbarb, FoHdin, terror zones giving variety.
I dislike changes like creating Mosaic assassin clearing /p8 in a blink and cluttering screen with vomit effects.

Short: Please buff Vengeance, Leap attack, Frenzy, melee weapons, Strength stat, heavy armors

Long:

  1. Give Vengeance skill a form of AoE in 3.3 yards or similar (like Fireball/Warcry,… AoE). Either each hit has AoE, or every second or third hit AoEs. That can also be interesting rythm. AoE should deal 50-100% dmg of primary attack.
  1. Give Leap attack skill a bonus AoE dmg that is based on weapon damage. Around 30% bonus dmg from weapon with all modifiers like % enhanced dmg from skills/items and deadly strike. I would go even further and add elemental dmg to AoE if there is source of elemental damage on gear. Just for more options. Imagine Thor landing with lightning hammer on ground electrocuting enemies. This change to build will certainly not become overpowered in comparison with the likes of Mosaic assassin, but will be decent enough to be played.
  1. Remove one synergy from Frenzy, increase attack speed cap to 7 attacks/sec and increase damage per level. Frenzy isn’t too bad, but needs just few changes to be very good to play. I think the path to excelence is through very fast speeds. Create a fantasy of really fast hitting barb. Also has too many synergies. One should be removed, like Taunt for example.
    3.a) Increased stamina should give Health regeneration and increase Frenzy attack speed cap as synergy.
  1. Remove Taunt as Warcry synergy and directly buff Warcry dmg to compensate. This will make Warcry barb get its max damage potential sooner and with less skillpoints invested. The damage on warcry will still be lackluster compared to others, but it has great crowd control, so it should not really be that high.
  1. Remove Grimward fear effect. Let Grimward be created from Undead corpses. Leave just slow, but reduce its slow effectiveness/level to 50% as max cap. Fear is annoying as is, and it exists on Howl if one desires to use it.
  1. Increase damage across all Exceptional and Elite versions of weapons by around 20-30%. One problem of melee in general is their reliance on weapon damage and good weapon in general. No general access to good damage weapon stops progress. For example Throwbarb does not have this issue, because of Javelins having pretty good base damage numbers.
  1. Make Strength stat give 2% bonus enhanced damage per point to two-handed weapons. This should be done for one-handed as well to 1.5% bonus per point. This can incentivise to pump more points into Strength instead Vitality.
  1. Give Medium and Heavy armors either much higher base Defense compared to light armors OR give them added damage reduction bonuses.
    Interesting distinction between Medium and Heavy armor can be by adding Flat damage reduction 1-20 to Medium armors. And 1-7% damage reduction to Heavy armors.
    I think best way to implement it as a mod like Paladin shields has. And those mods to spawn only on Medium and Heavy armors. Reduction numbers regulated for Normal/Exceptional armor versions.

Conclusion:
I think neither of these changes would make any build broken, only better.
Number changes can be adjusted, thats the easiest thing to do after one PTR round.
Only thing that would maybe require one more PTR round is overall weapon base dmg increase.

7 Likes
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i do agree that melee needs love

but even if you remove one
i still have no points to invest in any of its synergies besides blade mastery

1 Like
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Overall I agree melee needs some damage/AR love.

Is the intent that the buff from the proposed attack speed cap would outweigh the loss of damage from removing a synergy, or will skill damage or other synergies be adjusted to compensate? You explicitly state buffing Warcry to compensate for lost synergy, but don’t mention it here.

I agree with DS, Taunt, Mastery, Frenzy itself and then the “barb skills” like FI/PO, and BO the Frenzy barb is especially point constrained. It would be cool to allow someone to choose to go after the Shout/Iron Skin skills to improve defense to compensate for lack of shield/block (The FRW boost would even mean you could choose to walk everywhere and keep full defense!), however given damage is already sort of marginal (unless BiS gear and/or low player count), that’s a tough trade off.

The increased stamina synergy to increase duration is also a cool idea, but on a build that’s already so skill point constrained and struggling, it’s tough to justify investing in it.

Already a bum deal with mastery locking you into weapons, but Frenzy makes that even worse.

2 Likes
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How are you building your character? (So that we understand your point of view on the skill distribution for Frenzy.)

5

the same way every barb outhere
with 40 pts dedicated to FI
whos gonna sleep over 75% more loot/kill?

6

Are the last 10 points bringing it from 71% to 75% so much more valuable than the increase in power they would give when being spent in frenzy synergies?

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mine would drop to 70%

80% more dmg from 10pts into Double swing for example for who already has
+163% from blade mastery
+233% from base frenzy
+370% from lvl34 might
+350% dmg to demons from LoH
is a increase of 4% dps
against non-demons its about 5,8% increase
its even worse if im using coh or fort instead of enigma
this combined with the fact that FI “works better” on council members
taking 10pts from FI to dump into any frenzy synergy is basically a waste of pts

8

Add in a bonus to AR. I’d like to see AR per pt in Dex doubled. 1.5x if the 2x is too much.

4 Likes
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As you mentioned in “6.” but I’ve been advocating for this fix. Give ethereal weapons x2 damage instead of x1.5 and weapons that already have edmg% on them boost the minimum and maximum damage by 3. I mean c’mon. Weapons really need these buffs. Melee is barely viable with grief as it is. Why can’t the other weapons like death and botd finally shine? This needs to happen.

4 Likes
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This is what I wanted to bring: no additional synergy, while giving more %dmg/level to Frenzy skill itself.

More specific: Remove Taunt synergy from Frenzy, change 5% dmg/lvl on Frenzy itself to 13% dmg/lvl, since Taunt gives 8% dmg/lvl as synergy.
Making the skill less heavy on skillpoint investment and stronger and also +combat skills will give more value (which are mostly in vain on melee barb).
Speed cap increase will deepen the fantasy of very fast attacking barb. Giving even more damage potential, but probably with some gear sacrifices for IAS. Still Mosaic sin will be more effective with all my proposed buffs anyway…

I find 5 AR/Dex point adequate when I play Throwbarb. In his case Dex gives 0,75% dmg AND 5 AR / point. BUT for melee char Dex doesnt give %dmg, only Strength does. In that case if Strength gave 5 AR per point, the more reason to put points in Strength and solving AR issues too.

Such change would also have to be tested on PTR if it doesnt overshoot something too much. Probably not.
Now I remember. I forgot to add one change: Indestructible items can roll Ethereal. Also Set weapons be able to roll ethereal.

3 Likes
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that isnt bad tbh
but i thought the point was to make synergies worthier
like this

i like this
but increase stamina and spd should be merged and a new passive skill introduced, maybe something to support the singer build

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The amp damage is tied to the fear of grim ward. No fear, no amp. Grim ward is actually great and even more powerful that its synergy is tied to find potion. It’s fine leave it as is.

Normal weapons need a minor damage bonus too. Everything but maces should be buffed by 10-15%.

2% str buff may be too big. It needs to be variable depending on weapon base as well. 1.5 for maces, 1.4 for axes, 1.1 for swords with 1.3 in dex. 1.3 str in spears and polearms and 1.1 dex.

One handed weapons should not get any str bonuses besides the ones maces already get. They are already too powerful and all this would do is make grief even stronger.

Frenzy’s bonuses are indeed poop. One of the damage bonuses needs to be rolled i to the other (roll it into dbl swing). The new increase stamina bonus is actually nice, its increase stamina itself that needs a redesign.

2 Likes
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How about rolling some “flat” damage (and/or AR) into the melee skills or synergies? As Hanz points out, we end up with a lot of %ed on gear/skills to the point that adding 8%/lvl doesn’t end up amounting to much actual increase. Keep the idea to move Taunt’s bonus to Frenzy skill itself, but maybe the DS synergy gets converted to a flat bonus that scales at the similar 8% per lvl that it has now, but ends up being more effective b/c it doesn’t get so diluted with the other ED sources? Or maybe a combo of keeping some of the %ed with flat damage?

Like the idea of increasing AR received from Dex and possibly even adding bonus to STR, and improving dmg bonus from STR in the way JPRG74 mentions above.

1 Like
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Personally, I’d rather see Vengeance stay a single target ability, but had its synergy count reduced and folded into the skill itself. So Salvation synergy is removed but the skill itself recieves a +40% elemental damage buff.

I don’t really understand this ask. We already have a skill that does this. It’s called Leap Attack. It just sounds like you’re trying to save a skill point.

2-handers definitely need some love.

Something I really wish they would consider is revising the strength/dex requirements for 2-handers. They’re too high. Certainly they are bigger, heavier weapons, but you’re using two hands to wield it! The higher strength requirement only makes sense if we were using a cumulative weight system like Elden Rings.

By the way, this is part of the reason why many caster builds can pump their vitality higher than melee classes. Because their gear has such low str/dex requirements.

Agreed that heavier armors need a buff and some sort of damage reduction mod sounds right.

1 Like
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I’m not so sure about Frenzy. It seems mostly fine to me for PvM. I mean melee does have some distinct advantages also.

It seems to me that overall damage output isn’t the problem with melee.

  1. Mana burn remains the bane of most melee builds.
  2. The physical sunder is really only usable by Bowazons and some Paladins.
  3. Agreed that some melee builds are too locked down by synergies.

I’m not really sure how to address mana burn, as it really shouldn’t be removed, but by the same token I don’t really know of good ways around it for melee, without introducing some entirely new mechanics.

% damage goes to mana helps, and of course there are potions, but too many times you run into a pack and then all your mana disappears, then you stop attacking and you instantly die. It’s hard to stack % damage to mana on top of everything else you need as well. Should be something that can be used to actually reduce/prevent mana burn. Its insane that basically casters aren’t even affected by this. It seems like its something that should affect casters most, yet instead its meleers that feel the sting.

The issue with mana burn is the almost instant death that comes from it. With either WW or Frenzy its pretty devastating. It’s not as bad for Paladins, in part because they have high block, whereas WW usually doesn’t have shields and of course Frenzy doesn’t.

But, one thing that helps Frenzy at least is Double Swing. One thing that could help would actually be to add a synergy from Frenzy to Double Swing. This wouldn’t be OP at all, since it wouldn’t even be pumping up a main skill, it would just make it so when you have to switch to Double Swing you wouldn’t suffer too big a drop in damage and still be able to pull through. Something like just another 10% damage per level, along with Bash, which no one ever gets. Or just change the synergy from Bash to Frenzy.

As for Vengeance, it seems like for all the synergies required, either reduce the needed synergies or add AoE via some of those synergies. For example, instead of the resistance auras adding to the damage of the direct attack, have them add AoE damage, with increased radius and power with more points.

Also agree about the armors. Really the only armor every worth using right now is Archon Plate. Only Sacred Armor if its very high end, and none of the heavy armors are worth using.

1 Like
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Simple fix for frenzy vs manaburn, is to make it cost life, and not mana.

17

Frenzy is absolutely inferior to whirlwind at the endgame. Everytime i play frenzy over ww i’m appalled at the fact that ww gets faster attacks speeds with lower ias investment and from slower weapons than frenzy.

Frenzy only feels ok if you’re using griefpb. Any other weapon choice is vastly inferior. With ww you have many more weapon options.

3 Likes
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Frenzy is absolutely inferior to whirlwind at the endgame. Everytime i play frenzy over ww i’m appalled at the fact that ww gets faster attacks speeds with lower ias investment and from slower weapons than frenzy.
Frenzy only feels ok if you’re using griefpb. Any other weapon choice is vastly inferior. With ww you have many more weapon options.

I dunno, it seems fine to me.

I’ve used it with lots of weapon options. I much prefer Frenzy over WW, in large part because WW doesn’t proc effects.

Frenzy is great because you can use your offhand to choose all kinds of effects, like with Lawbringer, Voice of Reason, Death, Last Wish, Atma’s Scarb (amulet), etc.

With Lawbringer and Atma’s Scarb, practically everything has either Decrep or Amp Dam at all times. I played with Eth Death and Lawbringer in a Legend Sword for a long time. I’d say Kingslayer and above all works pretty well. Of course, if you are talking players 8, then yeah, but that’s to be expected. But still, WW not procing effects is kind of a bummer.

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My main issue with Vengeance is that leech is inefficient with it, not the amount of synergies required for it (Salvation is typically not mandatory, as you already have +200% on each element from the other synergies).

When playing it, I find myself constantly thirsted for mana. I think optimized players tend to solve this by giving themselves some massive amount of mana regen (or constant potion chugging), but I would definitely appreciate a reduction in mana cost (either through salvation synergy lowering the cost, or a direct halving of the costs).

I also can’t rely on life leech to regenerate life during fights, so that’s another place where the character needs to be potion chugging.

Once you’ve solved the mana issue, the skill is ok. Not great, but it’s one of the very few skills that intrinsically don’t have to bother about immunities.
I think that, thematically, you can’t remove one of its current synergies without removing all the others (even Salvation).

An alternative solution would be to have the skill allow leech to apply to its elemental portions, as a kind of special exception.

Even if these changes wouldn’t make the skill competitive, it would at least make it easier to play casually.

1 Like
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Honestly, my biggest problem with Paladin melee is that for all other melee characters I melee from Left-click, so all you do is hold it down as you run around. But with Paladin, since your aura takes up your left click position, you are left having to right click on each mob you want to attack. This alone prevents me from playing Paladin melee builds.

Unless I’m doing something wrong and there is some better way to melee with Paladins. I mean, even single target Vengeance wouldn’t be that bad if you could just hold down left click instead of having click on every single thing to single target attack. As for the mana, I’ve always just used Insight on a merc.

1 Like