Some melee suggestions for Season 5 patch

I just rana quick test using my level 87 Frenzy barb vs level 89 Cold Sorc. Both are comparably geared.

Brab has Grief and Lawbringer with Fortitude and other typical stuff.

Sorc is using full Tal Rasha’s with 2 facets and 2 SoJs. Sorc is Bliz-Orb.

Both take about 4 minutes to fully clear Chaos from the time of entering the door, P1. Not skipping anything, just killing every mob and Diablo, without teleporting or leaping.

Now sure, there are faster builds and these aren’t the best by any means. But the point is, for two typical and comparable builds, one being a Cold Sorc and the other a Barb, not using every trick to max out speed, like teleporting to each seal, their kill speeds aren’t radically different.

Yes Sorc has the advantage of teleport, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with melee vs casting damage.

Here is a compare of Javazon vs Frenzy Barb on P8: ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0n3UL0G80I&t=92s

They clear at almost the same speed, but the Jav kills Diablo faster.

So it just doesn’t seem to me that Barbs are lagging way behind and are insufferably bad.

Obviously, teleport is huge, meleers don’t have it, and they have to gimp their attack power to use Enigma. But Barbs do have Leap and Paladins do have Charge, which are decent alternatives.

I would also say that a highly geared Barb is a heck of a lot cheaper than a highly geared Javazon or Sorc. Bascially, Lo rune is the max you need along with a bunch of stuff you’ll likely find on your first pass on the way to defeat Baal.

Max Javazon and Sorc have lots of very rare and high end stuff and need multiple Ber+ runes.

i don’t get what your point is.
are you trying to argue that melee is not at a disadvantage???
try clearing a full dungeon (any) as barb and compare the time to a javazon or a sorc.

and no, leap and charge are by no means a decent alternative to teleport. teleport is instant, leap and charge is not.
teleport goes through walls, neither leap or charge does that.

you are correct on one thing; a barb is cheaper to gear than a javazon or a sorc, and why do you think that is??? could it possibly be because the latter two are WAY more popular in the playerbase compared to the former for some reason?..

Strongly opposse this. I know its tied. Can be “untied”. It should be made practical in use - go get one corpse, drop grimward, start cutting fast everything down. Doesnt work like that now, when monsters run from you, specially extra fast ones for which the slow doesnt seem to affect at all. I tried it many times with throwbarb on cows. Its poop. I rather pick up Atma amulet and get Amp dmg from it while cows are following me so I can hoard them in line to pierce. Similar would be much better for WW, Leap att., Warcry - the hoarding aspect if fear is replaced by just slow (decrepify like).

And the other things. I think every melee weapon should be brought up to level of dmg by Javelins on throw. When you check one-handed melee weapon its damage is lower than javelin throw. To mention that throwing is ranged, therefore safe, therefore should deal less dmg imo, not the other way around.

Thats very interesting idea. If synergy gave straight flat dmg bonus to skill, it could make build less dependand on weapon early on, which is good. Pumping points into synergies happens around Nightmare time, thats exactly where the problem of lacking good dmg weapon starts. Nice one.

Since they fixed the manaburn dmg bug I havent notice any problem with that. Other than getting surrounded by ghosts which you cant leech mana from, there is no problem with one % mana leech item.
Even with skill like Vengeance I made a playthrough vengeancer and he did not have a problem with manaburns - simply chugging potions and have some %mana leech. Problelm really is only when surrounded and cant escape. But thats player bad play.

Ye hit/miss calculations are pretty lame. I mean if 95% attack chance REALLY represented that chance, then I would be ok. But what I hate is the BLOCK chance of monsters. Like Even if you hit then it has 20-30% block chance, which cant be countered by ANYTHING other than always hit: smite, guided arrow, impale. Thats it. Lets together imagine a patch where caster missiles can be blocked by monsters like that - thats 30% less hammerdin dmg, blizz dmg, javazon cows so many missed, mosaic sin detto.

This is more an advantage of double-wielding in general, not specifically Frenzy. Even WW with double-wielding gets you more damage, then 1 big dmg two-hander. Not to mention its faster.

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Nail, hit on the head.
I enjoy the challenge of melee… so much so I melee a Zealot, who btw does not keep up with my Barb pals… despite being higher level, and wearing all dang near perfect gear… and yet here we are asking for Barb specific Boosts, when he’s already king of melee.

Barb can stay king of melee, I’m cool with that.
I’d like to see “melee needs help” threads not always turn into “boost the barb” threads.

IMO, we should be talking about global melee items… not 1 specific character.
Attack rating.
Physical Damage Scaling with health/mana whatever.
Physical Damage scaling as a general overall deal, like they did over the holidays… make it permanent.

We get into specific character/skills and it no longer feels like a “melee” discussion.

One of my suggestions to help melee out is overlooked any time I mention it but here goes:

Make weapon strike effects actually useful.*
They are useful in normal difficulty, but were never balanced for the bloated HP pools in nightmare and hell difficulty. You’re polluting the screen with effects anyways, they might as well be doing something worthwhile.

Suppose in hell difficulty, a weapons effects had equivalent level in its synergies.
So the lightsaber has level 14 chain lightning which does 1-143. Absolutely pathetic.
But if you make all of its synergies level 14, now we are 3-1705. That’s actually pretty good AOE now.

Let’s look at breath of the dying. Level 20 poison nova when a target dies. 400-500 damage over 2 second. Barely scratches the target. NOW, Put all its synergies also to level 20, now we’re about 2200 AOE poison damage. Which is enough to actually wipe out some act 1 monsters on its own.

——What does this accomplish?———
This gives melee some really cool elemental diversity, makes the effects actually pack a bit of a punch rather than just tickle the enemy and look pretty, and gives melee the much needed AOE everyone is crying for. But in a way that aids the melee play style and doesn’t make it totally broken.

So in normal difficulty: zero synergies added
In nightmare: synergies are half the level that the strike effect is.
In hell: synergies are equal level to the strike effect.

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LOL!! I like it, that would be amazing! Casters would lose their effing minds!

That, or we could just get rid of monster blocking altogether instead of triple mitigating physical attacks (Defense THEN Block THEN DR) vs spells (DR only).

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Just to reiterate that. Attack Rating isn’t what causes most of your misses. Monster Block Chance is.
The Attack Rating issue is almost inexistant, that is absolutely not a place where we should focus our discussion.

Ok, and where should we be focusing then?

Dude, I am telling you attack rating isn’t what’s causing your misses, block chance is what’s causing them.
So what you should be focusing on, if misses are what’s bothering you, is block chance.
If it’s not what’s bothering you, then focus on what’s bothering you.

Cool, so how do you overcome monster block chance?

Dude, stop trolling. I am just telling you what’s the main source of failed attacks in the game. You can achieve very high to hit chance (usually the attack skill has built in attack rating buffs), and still miss a lot due to block chance.

Ok, you stop double speaking, and I’ll stop “trolling”.
I’m asking pointed questions… with sincerity.
If I understand your previous response, you are saying to use skills which have built in attack rating buffs… but you are telling me attack rating is not my problem, that the monster is.
Do you see why I am confused?
You say monster block chance is the issue, not attack rating, I ask how to overcome monster block chance and you tell me to use skills which boost attack rating…
I’m struggling here.

You can’t bypass monster block chance bar specific skills (Smite, Impale, Lightning Bolt, Charged Strike [the physical portion of CS can be blocked but not the bolts]) and that’s the problem.

Hell Baal has a 55% chance to block meaning the absolute highest chance a physical attack can hit him is 95% * 45% = 42.75% chance. It’s not easy to get a 95% chance to hit him either given that he’s level 99 and has a fairly high defense of 2847 (not taking into account skills that bypass the hitcheck calculation like Guided Arrow). Really stinks that physical attacks have a guaranteed 55% chance to miss with no way of counteracting it unlike defense.

In my mod I reduced the block chance of bosses to 30% at most (meaning you have a 95% * 70% = 66.5% maximum chance to hit) but buffed their defense an equivalent amount so that it’s not just a free buff to your hit chance, you still need a lot of AR and/or defense reduction to improve your chance to hit but there’s less of an “uncounterable” cap.

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thank you.
20characters

I’m pretty sure all physical attacks can still be blocked. I see blocking Xs with Guided Arrow and also even Tornado. Actually blocking probably hurts Windy Druids more than any character.

But to my knowledge, when mobs block they don’t have a blocking animation, so they can’t get block locked. It really just counts like missing them.

try clearing a full dungeon (any) as barb and compare the time to a javazon or a sorc.

I just did that. I said when full walking, no teleporting involved, the time to clear P1 Chaos was about the same between comparable Cold Sorc and Frenzy Barb. I then posted a video of a Frenzy Barb and Javazon, both using Enigma, where both clear P8 Chaos in the same time, but the Javazon kills Diablo faster, practically a OHKO.

Indeed this goes to a lot of what’s being talked about here regarding blocking.

could it possibly be because the latter two are WAY more popular in the playerbase compared to the former for some reason?

Not really. The highest runes needed for a Barb is Lo (not counting Enigma, which isn’t even BiS for a Barb anyway).

Java & Sorc both need Infinity. Some builds need Phoenix. Uniques like Griffin’s are way more rare than G-Face. The drop rate for them, is way, way, way lower. Rainbow Facets, again, way harder to come by than anything a Barb needs. Mang Song, super rare. The Oculus, Death’s Fathom, both way more rare than anything a Barb needs.

It’s not just because “prices are high” due to demand.

My Frenzy Barb is in pretty much all BiS gear, all of which was self-found simply by getting to Baal on my first playthrough. The only things that really took me any additional time to acquire were Fortitude and Grief, to get the LOs.

I’d say the only thing not actually Bis on my Barb is that I don’t have a Cham in G-Face, which forces me to wear Ravenfrost instead of something better in the ring spot, but most guides just claim Ravenfrost is BiS, tough I don’t consider that to be true, especially since it forces you have still shatter and thus ruins Horking.

So yeah, technically to be max, max IMO you need a Cham in G-Face. But that’s quite a minor issue that has minimal impact on your actual clear speeds.

But running lightning or fire without stacking up a whole bunch of -Enemy Resist is pretty dreadful and all of that -Resist gear is pretty costly and much harder to get.

When compared to a Bowazon, I’d say again that high end geared Bowazons are right up there with Sorcs and Javazons, except when it comes to Boss killing, where Bowazons suck pretty hard. This again has to do with Blocking. Even Guided Arrow gets blocked. And actually Bowazon against Baal is a pretty horrible matchup. Even well geared Bowazons struggle against Baal. Again, blocking.

But when it comes to clearing, not counting teleporting issues, just if all characters walk/run, then Bowazons can hang with anything else.

And as for Paladin physical clear speeds, well it’s fair that they are slower, given that they are basically unkillable with all of their defenses. I mean you are trading off either a two hander or a second weapon for a shield.

In addition to that, they release obedience to be used on all weapons or at least all melee weapons.

i disagree that Lo is the highest rune you’d need for barb.
if you want to do certain things faster (such as mephisto runs) you get an enigma no matter what class you are, if anything you get it just for the teleport and then switch it out with fortitude when you reach where you need to be.
besides, no matter what, you’re gonna want an enigma eventually, unless your plan is to only play barb and only do trav runs.
and thanks to the shared stash, making an enigma as barb will never be a waste, since you can pass it between characters.

basically, when i think of itemization, i think about the net benefit of all my characters (and friends) with only a slight focus on the one i play the most.
i’m currently leveling a necro as well, who is lvl 68, so enigma will come in handy no matter what else i get for my barb.

oh, and besides, if you got an enigma you no longer need to spend 2 skill points to get leap, so that’s 2 extra skill points to spend elsewhere as well.

Thanks DarkMaster for managing to make the point more clearly than I was able to.

Monsters do have a block animation, though for some of them it can be very short.

Right, which is why I’m not counting that as “Barb gear”. Enigma is just a thing that all classes (except Sorc) get. But its not really part of a build.

In terms of the actual class specific items, being a top geared Javan is WAY more “costly” than a top geared Barb. The class specific items the Javazon need are way more difficult to obtain.

Enigma doesn’t count, its the same for everyone.

I don’t agree with this. I think you are either over-estimating the damage output of a few points into skills like Vengeance vs physical immune, or you are under-estimating the damage output of a sorceress putting minimum points into a second tree.

And with the mercenary, that is backing you up with a big physical damage output, casters have another source of non-primary damage type.

I think you’re also discounting things like the fact that caster skills are typically AoE and that melee has to work through block chance (which is more common on monsters than many people realize).

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