Absolutely nailed it. Iāll back you on this. Melee is fine once you have fortitude and grief.
People donāt understandā¦ā¦ the problem is beforrrrrre you get those items. No it does not have good damage, not even when it comes to single target.
And like Iāve said before, in a game about slaying demons, it should feel GOOD to hit them with weapons.
Like L, nova and FB, right? 
Not really when many enemies have a 50% chance to block which means not only do you have a 80-90% chance to hit, 50% of those hits will be blocked meaning melee has like a 45% hit chance on some enemies, even less on hell baal. This is why multi hit attacks or smite have been the go to because they lessen the impacts of hit rate and block mechanics.
I also made such a suggestion before as well. Donāt nerf casters, massively buff champion/unique/boss hp and damage (melee has leech also for a reason) so that crushing blow becomes more valuable. Casters=good against groups
Melee=good against elites/1 big enemy. This will make group comps more interesting as well.
I strongly disagree with give melee aoe. Itās a poor band aid and goes againstthe gameās design. Instead the game needs be rebalanced around the existing dynamics. Melee is suppose to be better at taking down one to a few big enemies (crushing blow duh).
I pretty much only play melee and after some of the changes insight polearm pure phys builds do work but you also need to find a good insight base which can be annoyingly slow in a fresh self found playthrough.
The problem with melee is that useable runewords like
Honor and insight require difficult to find bases where as casters have norm cow farmable bases. Not only that melee runewords require rarer runes. Hustle fixed nothing for melee because your best chance at a ko is in hell stillā¦
i meanā¦ it sounds like you just need more attack ratingā¦ and yes i agree the attack rating formula needs to change.
get yourself a pair of 2x angelic rings and ammy
another option is to check out things with - defense per hit.
and make sure you have open wound and crushing blow.
everyone knows there is a melee caster gap, but this needs to be fixed with attack rating fixes, AOE and, buffs to base weapon damage in elite and exceptional bases.
the OPās idea is sadly not very well thought out.
and lacks critical understanding of how the % damage modifiers in the game actually work.
in a vacuum yesā¦ having 200 strength would be 200% ED and ādouble damageā
except it doesnāt
because youāre not using your basic attack with no gear and no buffsā¦ your using a skill which lets say had 300% ed
and then your using fort which has 300% ed, and then you got damage buffing auras.
and so on and so forthā¦ so by the time you take all the damage multipliers
your ādouble damageā from 200% ed is really only like maybe 15% more damage at best.
this āideaā fixes nothing. it only introduces crazy % damage number creep as seen in d3
because it lacks and understanding of game mechanics.
if u want to increase melee damage. you need to increase BASE weapon damage found on weapons. as thatās the value all other modifiers act on.
now if everyone is done throwing stupid petty insults like āhow you tried playing without griefā
i stand by what i said earlier. (although i should probably clarify)
melees main issue compared to casters isnāt ālack of damageā.
its lack of aoe.
if you people have a low attack rating and are not properly utilizing, crushing blow, deadly strike, open wounds, and all the other melee mechanics.
thatās from a lack of understanding on your part.
and no, im not going to try to compare melee to things like mosaicā¦ everyone knows thatās busted AF and needs a nerf. thats an outlier
it fixes the early game when the %ed from strength matters.
and no, you said it yourself, in the endgame the change might be somewhere around 15% total extra damage, so what power-creep are we talking about?
early game???
what? u mean in like normal? if u need help in normal or nightmare you should stay clear of attempting to post any balance ideas.
Every1 plays ele like HFire/HShock cuz physical dmg is terriBAD compared to dmg from synergies.
Yes like those. They are not where they should be on the tree. Thatās the point. Thatās also why I used the words āshould expect.ā There should be weaker skills building to stronger skills with more diverse uses as one goes deeper into the tree.
bro, Jesus Christ, whatās with the elitist attitude? no, i donāt need help in normal, Iāve been playing the game for 20 years, but thatās not the point.
the point is that the game has a broken progression curve for physical melee builds, and that needs to be fixed (it should have been fixed on day 1 since launch, btw)
you might agree or disagree but stop with the pointless ad-hom.
except it doesnātā¦ the melee progression curve is perfectly fine. granted the bases for elites and exception weps could certainly use higher damage. and melee could certainly use better AOE. but i dont see any issue with melee progression. ive also played for 20 + years. and melee is perfectly fine, especially in normal as pretty much any rare or unique can get you enough damage to melt enemies. nightmare and hell are much harder for melee becuase now you actaully need to use specific weapons for your build.
but thats the same point where casters start hitting immunes and high res values that without - res gear also slow them downā¦ endgame is where the melee caster gap is truely huge becuase melee has no infinity and no aoeā¦ which means although they deal the same or even higher dps as casters the lack of the abiulties to do it on more thana single target at a time just makes melee clear any room at like 1/3th the speed if that.
and in-case your wonderingā¦ i main a Fury druidā¦ and have for over 15 years which is a physical melee build
but the question is: do you level melee from lvl 1 to 90 or do you level elemental and then switch ?
because i already know the answer; i main druid as well and i can tell you melee is by far the most frustrating way to do it.
also, i will not continue this discussion. i already said my piece and everyone is free to agree or disagree.
I easily get through nightmare and hell with an upped Bonesnap or Steeldriver, itās even easy with a good rare or crafted maul.
err it is easy in LOD, but this D2R abomination I hear it doesnāt work well anymore.
Melee definitely has Infinity (-83% defence), but I also believe melee needs AOE for crowd clearing, and more Amp options. Eg., give Atmaās Scarab a 25% chance to cast Amp, and allow ww hits to activate it. All 3 elemental damages, whether from gear or charms, should do splash damage
Edit: And I agree the base weapon damage needs to be increased, and it could be easy for them to do by just making any weapon with sockets or that get socketed have 25% added to the base damage.
i said i played fury druid for 15 years. specifically since 1.11, so that should give you your answer.
we didnāt have tokens, or skill resets like we do now.
so yesā¦ i played melee the entire way
which is how i still do it
Because
Iām a furry, and Iām going to be a doggo from lvl 2 onwards
once i unlock werewolf.
so u can stop trying to come up with weird theories about how i dont actually play melee the entire time. EVERYONE played their build the entire time in the pastā¦ you mess upā¦ you remade.
everything you said is true,
here were some of my ideas for wolf druid specifically ( other than the attack rating fix)
while i havent played barb in d2:R the new grim ward changes are pretty freaking lit and i think that only druid falls behind in this now
paladin already has no immunes, because they have had everything handed to them in a silver platter since launch, ( i stopped playing them a couple years before d2:R launched)
as for atmaās proc its a cool ideaā¦ butā¦ i dont think its needed now that barb has grim ward and because changing wither or not a proc happens is a binary value current set as āoffā as a zero in the fileā¦ on or off, you cant turn it on for ājustā curses. and i think the rebalancing of if were should turn on all procs for Whirlwind is a topic in an of itself
I think this added to the replay value to the core game. If the build is not working on Nightmare or Hell, would have to remake the character and try a different direction. Granted, weāve been spoiled for a long time that respec was available on 1.13, released on 23rd of March, 2010, and further before that if anyone used PlugY.
I remember getting frustrated with characters that required attack rating, because it seemed the characters required absurd amount of AR, but I canāt say I can complain as much since I know more how it works and how to make it viable. I was too young at the time to piece together what I can do, stubborn to try and get 95% chance to hit on the character sheet.
oh yeah of course. tokens are so freaking nice, being able to respec after i i get a torch and anni. i remember having to literally run half an inventory of 5 strength charms so i could wear my gear before i got those without messing up my final stat distribution.
its also hella freaking nice to just dump points into energy as a caster early on.
they need to bring back firewall stacking 
YOU INTRODUCED MOSAIC FOR GODS SAKE GIVE ME THIS BACK!!!
PD2 solved this with a single fix. Melee weapons do 100% splash damage to all targets in melee range.
The end.
Youāve given me a valid reason to play the game.