Please understand that my build originally was a melee, hence why I posted it in here, as this was a melee thread. It involved, from advice, into a throwing build. And I need help completing it, as I am new to this type of game.
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Nope lol 
…
He’s playing a variant of holy smiter paladin, fully invested in flat and % reflect damage, wearing a Palarus + Thornshell, using Vengeance’s Riposte + Iron Blades + Healing Hands + Retribution from passives, all these counting as melee hits to proc infinite loads of Smites, Divine Bolts and Flame Bursts + lots of damage reflected, almost reaching the point of screen-wide clear explosions at 150C, sometimes without even attacking.
Curious fact is that flat and % damage reflect to monsters has no range, and actually doesn’t even show the numbers as normal damage would do. Monsters just hit you and their life magically decreases no matter where they are.
So my husband just figured he’s able to kill Spires without even getting close to them. He can just stand in their missile shootings and they die after 5/6 hits XD
That’s a really interesting build! I’ve not seen Palarus yet, but that’ll go great with my Multistrike Smite build. I also love the chains of explosions and the sight of holy fire raining from above. And the fact that Palarus doesn’t force you into an electric Smite is great!
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That’s my older level 35 one.
I have made dozens of characters in this cycle alone and agree. This game is biased towards range. Telegraphed dance dance revolution isn’t compatible with face-taniking. What is strange is that the devs interpret face-tanking as all melee characters.
Idk what to tell you man, I’ve played almost exclusively melee in this game, and I’ve had a far easier time with melee than I have with my ranged options.
Spellblade was easier than Runemaster
Melee Falconer was easier than Marksman.
And Melee Lich was easier than Warlock
Not that those ranged builds weren’t fun, I had far more fun with Warlock than Lich and my cold Marksman has been a blast. I just feel more squishy on them and couldn’t just turn my brain off like melee counterparts.
I feel like you do, but I don’t think it’s so much about the power gap between certain builds as how much fun they feel to play. I’ve done a lengthy post on this before myself, but let me elaborate a little bit here:
Melee builds on the whole are way more unsafe than other builds by virtue of the fact that you have to walk towards danger. But the tempo of the game for the person using a melee build doesn’t then change accordingly. In general, abilities have a certain amount of time during which you can’t move. There are a lot of situations in which that ends up being fatal. So your options in a lot of encounters get narrowed down to waiting on cool downs and/or just throwing out one very-safe attack once in awhile when you’d rather be doing anything else. And it’s that “rather be doing anything else” that gradually extrapolates into the realization that you’d rather not play a melee build at all.
Mind you, I don’t think that either making melee builds super safe or melee cool downs or animations super short are great solutions, at least not across the board.
What I’d rather see happen is kind of changing of the tempo for melee abilities where certain other abilities can be built to interrupt / animation cancel them, and/or can be buffered to go off immediately after the current ability ends so that they first-frame cancel any danger you might be in because you already planned on avoiding it. Maybe you could give certain abilities an option to have a five second window to recast as some kind of universal dodge roll that can only be obtained on certain melee abilities where they’re needed to facilitate this. All of this together would create a kind of combo system, where instead of planting your feet to attack, melee players are playing a completely different mind game where they’re still planning their movement while their abilities are going off.
I realize this would be a big departure from how the game functions right now, but it’s the only reasonable way I see of giving players more options in melee without creating super safe or overpowered builds.
I’m not sure what melee builds you’re playing, but every one of my melee builds uses a 0s CD “basic attack” (Rive, Multistrike, Mana Strike, Dancing Blades, flurry, etc.) and stutter steps while using that skill by holding down right click. I then use Cooldown skills, or skills that require stacks to be built (Judgement, Flame Reave, shatter strike, explosive trap, lethal mirage, Erasing Strike, etc.) when you can. But there’s no “walk around and wait for Cooldowns” because I’m filling that space with “basic” attacks. These “basic” attacks also almost always provide self healing or ward generation as a form of mitigation dependent on your passive picks. So by not using them you’re actively making yourself squishier.
Edit: sure, I can’t move during the swing for the basic attacks, but they’re fast enough to not be a whole stopped animation. Like I said, stutter step.
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No that’s true, those builds exist. The only problem is that they just aren’t very interesting. I played a Judgement Paladin build that also really didn’t have to do much besides stutter step once I got to a certain gear level.
The reason I say they’re not very interesting is just because the flow chart for what you’re doing is pretty simple and pretty much identical across the board for all of those builds.
On the philosophical side of things, it’s also the game’s job in some sense to differentiate itself from all the other games in which you did pretty much the exact same thing, so how much you can still die while doing that is actually a mark of the quality of the game and how interactive it actually is. You might say if you never die (or never have to change what you’re doing dramatically not to die) while playing those builds, you aren’t really doing anything which means the builds are actually not tuned very well. Those are the kinds of builds I would encourage the devs not to create more of, since we already have them.
Hope that helps clarify what I was getting at.
I’m confused, what’s the alternative? Throwing out a single big hit and waiting 5-10s for it to cool down? That sounds even less interesting than using Multistrike to trigger a hail of smites around me as I use Judgement to create an Aura that explodes at the end and drop a battle standard that also rains down even more smites. That also sounds less interesting than using a melee Cinder Strike to attach explosive traps that explode and drop acid flasks that Shred fire resistance and ignite enemies as well as creating more explosive traps to throw more acid flasks as my Cinder Strike builds up and throws out BurningbDaggers and my falcon throws more acid flasks like a little B2 Bomber.
I could do all of that. Or I could press Earthquake and wait for it to be off Cooldown to press it again.
Edit, and if you want to break them down to the core gameplay, sure they seem the same, but they feel completely different to actually play imo.
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I haven’t invested much thought into it yet, but I want to look into a void cleave / judgement paladin using eternal eclipse, bringing each skill down to about 2s cooldown, alternating between the attacks and then throw in some filler for good measure. Maybe vengeance for the 2s dmg reduction buff.
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I mean, it’s melee. There can’t be much more to the flow chart than bonking stuff over and over again. Not unless you do to melee what PoE did, which is that a melee hit clears the screen in an AoE. At which point it’s not longer melee, it’s ranged, it just triggers at melee range.
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At a glance, Void Cleave gets 30% CDR it’s tree and Judgment gets 33%, so with the base 4s for each that’s 3.08s and 3.01s respectively. By my napkin math, with 55% external CDR you can get that down to: 2.16s and 2.13s respectively.
Or the easier route is find a filler skill for that extra 1.08s and 1.01s. Which, if you start with Void Cleave, should really just be <1.01s after the animations are taken into account.
Maybe adding Divine Flare Sigils of Hope with the instant cast + 1s Cooldown mode would fit. Void Cleave > Judgement > Sigils of Hope (+1) > Void Cleave > Judgement > Sigils of Hope (previous explodes and chains)?
Idk if the Judgement + Instant cast Sigils would cover the remaining CD on Void Cleave though not without some external CDR anyway
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Anyone ever tried this node? Is it decent? I always look at it, think about building around it, then just give up.
It seems really interesting, I just don’t like how clunky Sigils is to use. It doesn’t last long enough and feels like it interrupts the flow of gameplay. The chance on kill helps a bit, but I gave up on it in favor of other skills.
Might have to try the Divine Flare node though.
Edit: so I did some basic testing and the skill is “fine”. It doesnt refresh the current sigil, but removes it for the explosion. Which feels bad. The damage is kind of lacking at base but with the extra chains it can decimate groups of enemies (and your mana). I found two potential use cases. A purely passive one where you rely completely on the 6% chance on kill and the 40% chance to summon a new sigil when consumed. Or a semi-passive playstyle where you make sure to keep up the sigil manually and use it yourself when it’s about to wear off to get the explosion (requires using it twice if you don’t get the refresh). The second playstyle is more consistent, but the first one let’s you get the +10s duration node and use it more effectively. I mean, you have more chances for a natural reset after 25s vs 15s, though it works for both playstyle. The second one does use the +2 damage per second (capped at +40) node a bit better though
I think Perrythepig(youtube) had done something with it. Not sure if it holds up.