And most/many melee skills in PoE.
Yeah, I’ve seen this video, I’m in love with Warpath 
But still, Sentinel is a squishy af, and this guy runs on 530 corr 
Yes, but the point is that you couldn’t simply give defense bonuses to the strength part of the passive tree, because you can be a red class and still use a red ranged/minion skill. So you’d still be as tanky even though you’re not melee.
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Yeah, so squishy … that he literally stands in Aberroth’s DoT and stays alive 
I wonder what is the common melee gamer more likely to do:
- delete Abby like shown in your video
or - take some damage before killing him, like shown in mine
Look, I play WP myself, and I can say for myself that it's damn vulnerable. The maximum I climbed was about 850 corr. Farther it's very hard and painful.
Although on EQ I calmly clean 1300 corr. Sentinel is the weakest character in terms of defense.
Yes, I know Holy Flame totem… Jeez, that tone.
Got 2k hours, still a noob but yes I know the basic skills.
On the 58 red active skills gems, there is a few minions, totems, auras and banners, which are not melee skills, sure. But you can’t deny it’s mostly strikes and slams. You know that those skills are melee, right ?
And yes, of course there is a lot of green and blue melee gems. They have STR requirements in addition of their other stat-req. They are often skills used by Duelist and Templar, the two strength-hybrid classes. Makes sense, they are still kinda-close to the bottem left corner of the tree.
I’ll repeat myself : I don’t say it’s impossible to get to those tanky-nodes, but it’s not worth it in many cases and the people that really want them needs to know what they are doing, and sacrifice other things to. The opportunity cost remains. You know what an opportunity cost is, right ?
To be honest, I don’t even know what’s your point anymore.
Nothing stops you… except the limited amount of passive points and the starting location of classes on the talent tree. And except the fact that some ascendancies don’t have access to the same synergies that makes some defensive layers really shines. And except the fact that some of the new juicy-tanky nodes specify melee (like some of the leech ones).
But yeah, sure, nothing stops a ranger to spends 40 passives points to go get the new very good tanky nodes. So, you’re technically right. Happy ?
Since the melee rework, I’ve facetanked some attacks from endgame bosses that I was never able to facetank before. I was able to hug monsters without fear. And I don’t think most range builds can say the same (nor uses the new survivability techs implemented in Settlers league).
Yes, because you’re killing faster on EQ than on WP. It isn’t a mark of survivability. Even if it was, we also have WP Sentinels running higher corruption than 530 too.
Okay-okay, I don’t want to argue so much, I really love Senti (especially VK), but I don’t love it so blindly that I deny the obvious weaknesses.
Yeah, I realized that came out more as snarky, but my intention was to be sarcastic funny. Sorry if that grated on you.
Actually, blue doesn’t seem to have any melee gems, so that would work for blue.
My point was that, for example, for a green class, you can be ranged and still take the tanky nodes. Because the starting point is the same.
Which ties in to what you previously said:
Which isn’t true. There are lots of melee green skills that are pure dex. Double strike, Frost Blades and, most notably, Flicker Strike, among others.
And since there are also plenty of green ranged skills that are pure dex, you can’t make melee more tanky than ranged for any green class, at the very least. Because green ranged classes wouldn’t need to sacrifice anything to get the same nodes.
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Don’t want to speak for Psojed, but Sentinel is far from squishy, if it is it’s not built correctly.
No class in this game is capable of being squishy unless intentionally built that way to be a glass cannon.
Yeah, that felt condescending, sorry for clapping back. 
All good.
And yes, you’re right about no melee blue gems! I’m not sure why I assumed there was. Maybe I was misremembering wild strike and a few other elemental ones being blue.
You’re also right that flicker strike is a pure green skill… but it’s only used by hybrid classes (mainly slayer at the moment, coincidently the one closer to the bottom left section of the tree).
And stats requirements are only one of the tools to limit and balance the accessibility of defenses. It’s when it’s added to the distance on the tree, the synergies (or lack of) with uniques, the gear used in general (wether or not using a shield, for example), the necessity to use certains support gems or other active skills (like warcry, banners, stances), etc… It’s the sum of that that makes it hard for a range character, no matter which, to fully benefits from the same defensive layers than a melee one. They also built-in melee requirements for some of those tools. Vaal Pact node (the big leech one) is melee only. Stone and flesh stance gives buffs based on the proximity to the target. Sure, any range character can use it, but they’ll need to be at point blank to fully benefit from it. GGG also vastly buffed endurance charges and makes it easily accessible to generate them in the bottom left of the tree.
I agree that range characters have access to some of the buffed nodes and benefited from the melee rework. But it was mostly beneficial to melee characters, as intented. I mean, numbers don’t lie : there is a good amount of melee skills played right now, according to poeninja. A lot more than previous leagues. There’s the novelty but there’s more than that. GGG must have done something right on that front, don’t you think ?
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Yeah, it’s fine. Tone is hard to convey in written form and misunderstanding happen.
I’m just going to condense things, since that’s easier.
I don’t think it’s because GGG gave melee more tankiness that more people are using melee skills. There have always been melee builds that were super tanky and were used as bosser builds.
The main problem with melee builds in PoE was clear speed, where they lagged behind ranged ones by miles. And they “fixed” that by making melee skills have AoEs so big that they clear entire screens.
And that, personally, doesn’t feel like a melee build to me. I know that when I played there really wasn’t any viable melee build (meaning doing most content) that was close to barb builds in D2.
Now, I’m assuming that when you talk about melee rework you’re talking about a recent thing. I haven’t played PoE in 2 years, so I don’t really know the latest changes in that regard. So I’ll admit that it’s possible that they made it a way to balance that via the tree as you describe. Although I’ll press X to doubt for now. I think it more likely that the current power creep simply made everything so tanky that it kinda blurred the lines.
Either way, there’s no way to do this in LE. All masteries have access to the same tree. So you’d either have to add the tankiness to the melee skills or to the melee nodes, as was suggested above.
I just swapped my gloves and now I run 620 corruption pretty casually. And there is still room for improvement…
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So you based your opinion on your experience 2 years ago, in a game that has major update each 4 months ? And you ignored the 3 times I mentionned the newest update that drastically rework melee ? Imagine I’d argue about some Last Epoch mechanics but I’ve not played since 0.8.5 (0.9 was less than 2 years ago), and refuse to listen to people saying that there’s Factions now and that have impact on the game. Yikes.
Press X to doubt all you want; as I said many times, including in the first message above that you replied to, GGG really improved melee and partially fixed its inherent problems. They made it a big part of their content reveal. Strikes, slams and some signature skills (like cyclone and lacerate) are some of the most played skills right now. Most big poe streamers were very hyped by the rework and, from what I saw, most were not disappointed. The game had the best player count and the best retention of his existence. I saw a lot of people saying that the game was in the best state it was ever in, mostly thanks to the rework.
But yeah, I guess you’ll probably just continue “to press x to doubt”. What a stupid waste of time.
To be fair, I only noticed that in this last one.
And I do try to keep up with the changes, though I don’t delve too deep into it. I even play for a few days every now and then. I just don’t do leagues regularly anymore.
The thing I doubt isn’t that melee plays nice. The thing I doubt is that ranged isn’t still superior. Which is the whole point of this topic.
And also, as I pointed out, most melee skills in PoE are AoEs that clear screens, which really isn’t melee to me. But I did make it clear that that was my opinion.
According to lastepochtools.com, you have two characters - one which is level 13 and another which is level 20, unless you have a different in-game name. I wouldn’t really trust you on the balance of health regen in lategame. From my experience you usually sacrifice too much to get it to a proper number, especially since it doesn’t help you not getting one shot like increased health does.
Besides my warpath void knight I now have a Frostquake Shaman. Both clear 500c easily. The FrostBoink actually kills so much so easily… 500c Lagon dies before Phase 2 starts (still have to finish the phase tho), 500c reign of dragons boss dies before first AoE attack. Aberroth cant even start his last phase prior to dying… AND I use 2 set items…
So melee works just fine for me.
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Not everyone plays online. But you probably looked at the wrong person anyway, because it was me who laughed in HP regen.
HP regen can help against getting oneshot via the Vessel of Strife. HP regen also isn’t the only solution to the problem called Damage over Time. You didn’t specify what “sacrifice too much” means in your eyes, so i’ll just say that if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
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