Some melee suggestions for Season 5 patch

General Discussion
61

No. I never use alt skills as backups. Firstly there re relatively few physical immunities. Secondly, physical immunities can be broken easily with Amplify Damage and Decrepify, as well as dealt with by using items that include elemental/magic damage.

Casters can’t deal with immunities through items, OTHER THAN Sunders and and the very expensive runeword Infinity.

So as I said, prior to Sunders this was a bigger advantage for physical attackers.

As a Frenzy Barb physical immunities are trivial. You can break 100% of the general monster physical immunities with Lawbringer, and the vast majority of physically immune Super Uniques.

Same goes for Strafeazon using Atma’s Scarab and other items that proc Amp Damage or Decrep.

The handful of physical immunes you can’t break you can just skip over.

If that doesn’t work for you then you also have access to high elemental weapons like Voice of Reason, Rift, Hellrack, etc.

So there is truly no reason to rely on “fall back” skills, they are unnecessary. All you need is to have items that are capable to dealing with physical immune mobs, of which there are many to choose from. And they don’t even have to be main weapons, you can just have them on switch.

I’ve never had any issue killing everything in Hell as a physical fighter for that reason. It really wasn’t until Sunders that I started getting heavy into Sorcs and Javasons. Before that my casters largely sat in NM farming NM Mephisto.

Even a dual elemental Sorc is a hassle getting through Hell compared to a physical fighter. Yes, you can do it obviously, but its more complicated and you have to skip more content and skip over quite a few Super Uniques.

As a Barbarian or Paladin, you can pretty much make Lawbringer in early Act 1 every time an that solves 90% of your immunity issues. Or you can go for other options, like Flamebellow, Gimmershred, The Vile Husk, etc. A Bowazon can get all the way through Hell and kill every mob with Witchwild String.

A Javazon without Sunder and without Infinity is not easy to get through Hell with. At least not for me. A lot of running way and avoiding areas. Whole maps where almost everything is immune to you, and forget Gloomes or whatever those lightning things are called.

62

It’s really simple, melee is plenty strong enough. The issues is caster builds are too strong. Buffing melee just removes what little challenge is left to the game.

Solution, nerf caster builds. Melee is fine.

Remove sunders. Nerf conviction scaling so Infinity is worse. Reduce all AoE elemental damage by 30%. Increase Teleport to a higher frame breakpoint, then give it a radius of ~ the vertical height of the screen. Change Torch to +2 skills. Reduce spirit shield to +1 skills. Remove MF from Enigma. Increase lightning immune mobs light res by 10-15. Remove Mosaic. Buff MA skills. Add more magic immunes on animal types. Convert Bone Necro spells to do partial physical damage.

That would be my starting point.

The game is about the right level of challenge for the worst builds in the game, but a joke for everything else. Either we start making the game harder, or we stop buffing everything.

3 Likes
63

make barb one hit chars again

64

Very solid points.
I think devs clearly go with buffs only mentality. So no path forward with such big nerfs.

65

Sanctuary alone sets undead phys resistances to 0. That alone makes it better than 99% of other weapons to put in the offhand. They also fixed the undead ed on it. So with a grief in your mainhand you’re giving it 660% undead ed and 0 phys resists and 12 hits (for purposes of proccing CB). Since you’re using grief and lay of hands you already have like 600% demon damage too. No other melee build in the game can do this. The KB isnt annoying on ww either.

Go and test it out. At least in CS, Tombs, or WSK there’s no other better option other than dual grief. I just find LB better just because most phys immunes are undead and makes clearing areas more consistent. You dont even need the decrep proc. Plus for the purposes of clearing grim ward is 10x better than decrep. Use grief/phoenix to berserk down pit lord, grim ward, swap to grief/lb and rip and tear p8 easily.

1 Like
66

At max AR ‘No-one’ should be missing that many times in a row, regardless of block chance. I just think it is very unfair and unbalanced how spell casters can hit at will and not worry too much but a melee build has to get pretty much lucky with each swing.

I believe that if they will not make AR reach 100% in the future, then at least make the Barb reach/break that due to the fact he is supposed to be the weapons master.
Act bosses and elite packs should be the only real monsters to stop us from 100% hitting if anything. Honestly, most of my melee class setups die due to missing so many attacks in a row on even the weakest of mobs in hell difficulty.

I know everyone has their own experience with this game and I respect what people say but melee builds are heavily punished by this games’ AR and by the fact they need endgame gear to be on the same level as a caster who can use just a spirit sword/shield and use any build in hell and even against ubers. Melee needs more attention than any caster build/skill.

67

if monster block chance is the major issue, they should add something like “+10% chance to break through block on hit” stats to a bunch of items in the game, and depending on the item add between 5% for the “poor” items and 15-20% for the end game stuff.

i can live with the 95% max attack rating, even if that’s a bit stupid, but the deathknell of melee is really that enemy block chance you cannot play around in any way.

Baal obviously being the worst offender in the game.

fix this problem, and you’ll somewhat fix melee… but they need some more AOE viability too.

necro minions need to scale with something, because they become pretty useless on late hell, no matter how much you min/max them (mainly talking about skellies and golem here, since revives are fine damage wise).

thorns (damage reflection) in general is a joke as well, only viable until mid-NM difficulty.

barb’s whirlwind obviously just need overall buffs so it can actually kill things and damage what it needs to be damaging.

i’m not too sure about paladin and druid, since both have access to some nice AOE but still lack in the “purely physical” department.

oh, and the fact the only amazon you ever see is a javazon should also set off some alarm bells… when the only reason people ever buy a spear is if its good for merc, there’s a problem… when was the last time you saw an amazon that used a 2h spear?
yeah i can’t remember either…

people need to stop turning this discussion into a caster vs. melee debate, because this has nothing to do with casters - they work as they should - the problem is that melee doesn’t even get close to the same level of efficiency, and that is unacceptable.
we don’t need to drag down caster classes to the pathetic level that melee works at, we just need to bump melee up to 75-80% of the effectiveness of caster classes, preferably 100%, but i’m trying to be realistic here.
currently melee feels like it works at about 20% or less, of said needed efficiency.

1 Like
68

The problem is, as many have said, that there is really nothing wrong with melee. Melee can play through the game just fine.

The only issue is that “clear times are faster for casters/ranged”.

The only reason people are complaining is because Javazons, Sorceresses, FoHdins, and to some degree now even Bowazons, can clear screens in like 1 second, so are capable of doing things like clearing chaos in 1 minute, etc.

But really, it takes comparable melee builds like 20% longer. Oh no! Instead of 1 minute it takes my Barb 1 minute and 20 seconds!!! And if you add up all the time, it means that a Sorceress can get like 20% more loot in the same time invested!!! OMGGGGG!!!

So, its kind of at a point of absurdity. Almost any end-game build now is capable of clear P8 screens instantly. End-game Barbs can OHKO almost everything they touch. Javasons wipe out whole screens and what’s off the screen with single attacks, etc.

But since melee chars have to physically touch everything, its inherently slower.

I mean, at this points is all ridiculous really. Melee doesn’t need to be buffed. And quite frankly, casters shouldn’t be nerfed. Best thing would be to buff the mobs with more health and resistance.

69

Another suggestions I forgot to mention:

  1. Indestructible and Set items can roll Ethereal.
  1. Crafting and similar cube recipes will keep Ethereal mod on items.
1 Like
70

its much longer than “20% longer” bro, even if you compare a bis geared barb to a bis geared [anything else] the barb WILL clear A LOT slower, especially at certain parts like baal or chaos sanctuary due to decrepify and amp damage.

i really don’t care how much you attempt to justify this, or that you’re arguing that its not an issue when it clearly is, because if it wasn’t, nobody would point out that its a problem.

this is why you don’t get threads asking for sorc buffs, because everyone agrees that they are stronger than they have any right to be, and thus it is not a problem anyone would point out, like is the case for melee (barb in particular) specs.

like go on and count the threads asking for buffs for the ‘known’ overpowered classes, and then compare that number up against all the threads that are asking for melee spec buffs/changes.
once you’re done, you should come to the conclusion that one is obviously a commonly acknowledged problem, whereas the others aren’t.

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71

The never ending righteous claim from melee players , unheard , ignored from blizzard devs and denied by the caster overlords …

Ill leave THE melee sugestions here… 99.9 of the arguments here we alrready put them to blizzard knowledge… their judgement was silence…

By the way , while most ppl talk about ww /frenzy… then there is this utter useless crap skill using the name of …stun … delete usless skills , rework em and add melee cleave via niche skills .

In the case of my beloved barb. Destroy stun : add cleave = 2 weapon only , hits in an arc in front of the barb… fellow meleedins could use something like vengeance exploding in an x radious from contact … and so on…

Delete useless skills , melee needs weapons reach aoe .

Edit. Before any nay sayers…NO … WW is not aoe.

Deletr thst dammed thing (stun)

72

that was a good read.
seems super simple for blizzard to implement 90% of the stuff on that list.

i particularly like the medium/heavy armor suggestion of buffing them with extra damage reduction since the stamina drain / movement speed penalties that comes with these armor types immediately rule them out as good options for runewords.

it is true that mage and archon plates are basically the only viable options in the game, which sucks tbh.
if the movement/stamina penalties were compensated for by 5% damage reduction (in case of medium) and 10% damage reduction (in case of heavy) that alone would put these armor types in the realm of viability, even sought after, by melee specs.
drip is 90% of the game, and being ‘forced’ to use archon plate or leather as a “heavy melee” class is just downright depressing.

getting rid of the defense nullification while running also has to happen, because ironically, casters benefit more from defense than melee classes does under the current system, since guess what; in order to melee you continuously need to move, whereas in order to cast… well… the opposite is the case… hell with an enigma (or as Sorc) you never have to move manually, and thus you will never drop your defense as a caster.

some barb skills i would nominate for deletion/replacements/change would be:

Combat Skills Tree

  • Leap; delete this, put Leap Attack in its place at level 6.

  • Leap Attack; since this is being moved to the lvl 6 spot, put new ability; “Cleave” as the level 18 skill as replacement.

  • New Skill Cleave; does exactly what it sounds like. simply cleaves everything in a cone in front of the character with each swing, ignores enemy block chance (but not their defense rating). add bonus dmg%/AR% as needed. make it synergize with Whirlwind.
    (Each 2 points in Whirlwind would increase cone width/length by 0.1 yards per point for a total of 1.0 yards at 20 points invested).

  • Whirlwind; remove curse/slow vulnerability on the barb while spinning, increase rate at which mobs are hit while spinning, increase the damage output of the skill flat out, increase the baseline radius of effect (double that improved radius for 2 handers), make it ignore enemy block chance (but not defense rating) and make it synergize with Cleave.
    (Each point in Cleave would further increase Whirlwind’s AOE radius by 0.1 yards per point for a total of 2.0 yards at 20 points invested)

There, now we got a viable barb “AOE” melee spec with proper damage, radius and synergies that’s somewhat on the level of caster AOE.

  • Bash; a joke of a skill that sees no use after lvl 6. delete it. replace it. literally the only reason to invest any points into this, is to improve damage of Double Swing in the early game which is a very optional thing to do anyways.

  • Stun; a joke of a skill. delete it. replace it.

  • Berserk; remove defense negation from this skill, it doesn’t need to come with a downside that happens to be severely detrimental to your core role as a melee class. make life/mana stolen and procs (like curses on striking) work for this skill.

  • Double Throw; Bruh like why is this a thing?.. delete it, replace it with nothing, just get rid of it lmao. deleting it completely would actually be a net buff as you no longer need to invest a point in it to get to Frenzy. what an absolute meme… i’ll make a suggestion for a replacement further down below, in the next section.

  • Frenzy; replace synergy with Taunt for Concentrate or Berserk, keep the effect the same.

In the case of Bash, Stun and Double Throw i’d replace those skills with the following:

  • Rend (replaces Bash); Rend target for [x]% damage on hit and causing it to bleed for [x]% of monster’s total health in damage over [x] seconds - stacks with Poison and Chance Of Open Wound effects.

  • Crush (replaces Stun); Sunder target’s defense completely and inflicting [x] damage on hit, and causes it to take 100% increased physical damage for [x] seconds (so basically a poor mans amplify damage but still much more useful than “Stun” for single target dps, essentially a 1-point wonder, as it should be).

  • Brutality (replaces Double Throw and Moved to “Combat Masteries” tree at the lvl 30 tier); adds crushing blow, deadly strike and chance to open wounds by 1% per point invested, 20 points = 20% to all. after 20 points, adds 1% every 2nd soft point. (so 21% at 22 points, 22% at 24 points etc.).
    Synergizes with all weapon masteries.
    (i.e Sword Mastery; damage increased by 2% per point in Brutality, Attack Rating increased by 2% per point in Brutality, 1% Crit Chance per 2 points in Brutality, hardcapped at 20 points, for a total of 40% damage, 40% increased attack rating, and 10% crit chance.)
    in return, all weapon masteries likewise synergize with Brutality, offering 1% increased attack speed per point in a given weapon mastery, hardcapped at 20 points per mastery.
    (i.e 20 points in Sword Mastery = 20% attack speed bonus on Brutality, and another 20 points in Axe Mastery = another 20% attack speed bonus on Brutality for a total of 40%)

There, now people have an incentive to pick more than a single weapon mastery since all of them synergize with another very good passive skill.
this bonus (atk speed from weapon masteries) would ONLY be achievable through hard points investments though, as otherwise people could cheese the design by investing 1 point in each mastery and gain up to 50% IAS (assuming throwing master is removed, otherwise it would be 60%) if the barb has, say +9 to all skills through his gear. this limiting factor is vital for balance in a world where something like this would be implemented, otherwise it would be way too strong.

Combat Masteries Tree
Aside from the suggestion above to remove double throw and throwing mastery and replace them with “Brutality” at the level 30 skill tier in Combat Masteries tree, there’s some minor buffs i’d provide to this tree on top of that.

  • Increased Stamina/Speed; simply combine these into a single skill at the lvl 18 tier. keep bonuses the same.
  • Iron Skin/Natural Resistance; same treatment, simply combine these and put it at the lvl 24 tier. keep bonuses the same.

now the tree would look like this:
[sword][axe][mace]
-.[polearm][spear].-
[Increased Speed/Stam]
[Iron Skin/Resistance]
-.-.-.-.[Brutality].-.-.-.-
in a nice straight centered line in the middle of the skill tree panel.

Warcries Tree
Imo, this tree is mostly fine, save for a few skills that are quite worthless except for their synergies with other skills.
some examples being “Howl”, “Find Potion” and “Grim Ward”.

  • Find Potion; Combine this with Find Item. 40 points investment just to (properly) hork is atrocious and is way too expensive. combine synergy between Find Item and Find Potion and make that synergy bonus baseline for the skill. move it to lvl 12 tier.
  • Grim Ward; tweak this ability a bit by simply removing the “causes monsters to flee” effect, keep its synergy with Find Potion/Item and leave it as is.
  • Howl; now slows mobs movement speed by [x]% for [x] seconds instead of applying a “fear” effect (does not work on bosses, elites and super-uniques).
    now barb has a proper useful kiting tool that might actually see some use with certain builds, because god knows you and i haven’t seen a barb use “Howl” even once this season or the previous one and the one before that.

And that’s really the long and short of it.
the majority of barb abilities have been buffed to a level that can somewhat compete with casters, he has an AOE spec, his combat masteries are cheaper pointwise since some of them are now combined, and hork spec won’t prevent you from playing the game, as you now have 20 extra points to invest elsewhere since you no longer need to invest 20 points in “find potion” just to make “find item” viable.
these 20 “bonus” points you’ll have left over could then be invested elsewhere, such as in another combat skill (such as Berserk if you are whirlwind spec, or vice versa if you are Berserk spec and want some AOE) or another Weapon Mastery for further increased IAS bonuses to Brutality.

Barb has finally been fixed.

73

Do you mean 2 weapons or 2H weapons only? The 2nd makes much more sense IMO. I (and many others) have suggested a cleave skill as well. I think it could function by adding increasing the number of enemies hit int he arc, or potentially increasing the swing arc length with more points, but a set number or arc length and purely ar/damage would also work.

74

Hmm, since they already have dedicated dual weapon skills, it would’ve been kinda nice if there was at least one dedicated 2-handed weapon skill.

1 Like
75

yeah that was my thought as well. I was wondering if he just missed the “H” when he said “=2 weapon only”, since we already have DS/Frenzy tree that requires 2 weapons, having Cleave require 2H made sense to me.

76

I was reading calmly till I got to this point:

You can’t be serious.
After they removed quantity issues Double throw is a fun barb build that actually works well in high player settings too!

Back to your other points. Too much of changes for my taste. Because of so many and big changes, those won’t happen.
Ones I like are: new Cleave attack instead Stun. Combine of Increased stamina+speed.

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77

What build are the devs considering targeting. As long as this question is not answered by them, this whole discussion is useless. I particularly think that the hammerdin can be the landmark and the mosaic be rebuilt, increasing its cost (Ber Jah Sur of cost maybe).

Physical builds need power ups compared to casters this is like saying the sun rises in the east. And the game has an endless list of things to improve.

78

2h weapon only… the reason : it makes sense , puts tht big 2 hander to good use and …

Creates build/ weapon divertsity (hate that word nowdays) . At the moment 2h ww is DEad for anithing not a sword. We have a total of 5 skills either requiring 2 weapons (double swing, souble trow, frenzy) or pretty much vastly superior if used with 2 weapons instead of juat 1 big wep (ww and berserk : missing out MF of a shield and the block chance vastly otuwieghts using 1nbig 2hander)

Just f ing d e le t e sTUN … add cleave ! (Same of other classes like the proposed vengeance thing…)

79

Agreed but you just said 2 weapons (not 2 handed) in your post that I responded to, so was just making sure!

80

My bad , tiping from a cellphone wich uses spanish (my native language ) …

1 Like