I don’t know how many times my ranged characters get involved in either complete slogs or absolute beat-downs when a Rift Beast (or any other Elite Champion) gets my all-time hated “Less Damage from Distant Enemies” cheat. Just tried (again) to beat the echo with the 8 RBs guarding the cache of T8s. Of course, after 4 kills, the next gets the aforementioned cheat, then also gets the Fire pools (which last way too long). So I’m charged with either accepting that the fight just became 10x longer, or I try to find a blade of grass to stand on to actually get my full damage.
Can we please add expirations and/or cool-downs to these types of protections? I’m not encountering anything else that gives the enemy this much of a permanent defensive buff.
I think that the ranged should have some soft counters given how much shit melee has to deal with (& gets complained about). So I don’t think the principle of it is unreasonable.
Agreed. But the current implementation is severely flawed. For example, if I drop a Storm Totem into the bubble, every single lightning strike - even though they initiate from inside - gets nerfed because the original summoning occurred outside of it. That’s so far out of line I can’t even imagine what the devs were (or weren’t) thinking.
Maybe something like this: “We put this in there so that people have to actually move in close. Casting totems from the outside would be cheesing the system that was put in place to soft-counter those who think they can stay out of range all the time.”
I think the principle of it is actually an issue here.
The solution to giving melee a better time is to give melee more options to be equivalent to ranged in a way. This means substantial more defenses as an example with less damage though. Vastly superior movement options to allow repeated dodges in melee range where the count of attacks if vastly higher then at ranged.
This also means that the balancing and game mechanics at the core need to be upholding the integrity of not allowing the option of ‘outdamaging’ enemies to even exist. The second your choice has the option of ‘I can deal enough damage to trivialize defense’ the whole system crumbles by design.
It works as a bandaid… but brings more problems long-term then it solves, even if it solves all issues in the short-term.
LE has the same issue that PoE has in this regard, in that there is no clear “this is melee” or “this is ranged”. Most melee skills can be played as ranged in both games by simply changing the support gems/skill nodes.
Not only that, but both games can let you retain the melee tag while doing big AoEs.
So there really is no clear way to separate “This is melee, let’s give them more defenses/movement” vs being ranged.
For any tanky melee (true melee, which is rare in PoE) build in PoE, you can make the same tanky build with a ranged skill, barring a few exceptions. Same for LE.
LE and PoE have the same issues any diablo-like game has. Even Grim Dawn which handles melee quite well, specifically because they are within a relative margin of balance and the enemies rush down ranged characters a lot.
Also the distinction between melee and ranged isn’t clear, you’re totally right there, 100%
But… Vengeance for example is a clear-cut example of melee, as is multistrike, and similar ones. The only difference from ranged to melee is after all range, and PoE ‘solves’ the melee issue by simply allowing basically all of them to be restructured ranged skills, just that they don’t ‘fly away’ from your character and then hit but just take up the whole space between the target and your character.
If we wanna talk about actual melee then this upholds to a vast degree, but balancing around that hasn’t been done by any game since it has unsolved issues which would need to be worked out to feel good… and bandaid solutions are aplenty comparatively with relatively low downsides. The major downside being that melee looses the identity of melee.
But if we go to ‘actual melee’, hence very close-range only offenses then the respective things I mentioned are the basis to achieve. Ability to tank. Not allowing to do as much damage comparatively as ranged since you don’t need to ‘keep away enemies’ but sustain them and the option to avoid damage through mobility in tight spaces, repeatedly through high-speed motions or abilities which have a built-in movement for a variety of options to engage/disengage combat and avoid attacks directly while staying in range.
And then you got to create all mechanics of the game along the line to support this as a basis.
Basically you get either extremely tanky classes which are rocks in a flood… or you create high-speed moving classes at both extremes of the solution. The middle-ground looks like a mixture though, or you choose a single one of those 2 aspects solely and push it hence into the more extreme ranges.
There’s more needed as much as we know though - since those things were tried over time and didn’t quite feel perfect - but nobody knows fully what would or wouldn’t properly work beyond that.
It’s not an easy solution, to be sure. Maybe a graduated scale based on how far away an attack initiates from. It should be easier to dodge an arrow as opposed to a sword, for example. As it’s been pointed out, melee needs some love. But where do we begin?
Sure. But we’re talking about a melee build being more tanky. That would mean that you get a bunch of defense/movement buffs if you take Vengeance or Multistrike, right?
But what would stop players then using Smite as the main DPS and then speccing into Vengeance/Multistrike purely for the extra buffs? After all, if your build has that skill specialized it’s a melee build and thus should be more tanky/faster, right? Even if you never use it.
Heck, you don’t even need that. If you use mana strike for the occasional mana regen, your lightning blast/meteor build is now melee and tanky as hell as well?
That’s what I mean when I say that it’s not easy (or even possible, imo) to have the game recognize if you’re ranged or melee.
Which means that any buffs you try to give to melee you’ll also be giving them to ranged, which would keep the distance between both styles the same.
The only way to actually buff melee would be to implement defenses based on distance. But even then you could use them by, for example, placing totems/ballistas/minions and then circle strafing close to the boss, since you don’t actually have to hit anything and you can avoid dangerous mechanics more easily.
Sure. But that would only buff ranged/minion builds that already use a melee component to it. Like Beastmaster using swipe to buff companions, or sorc using mana strike for mana regen.
You’d still have non-melee builds using the melee part just for the defensive buffs. Melee skills would all be able to be converted into a support skill for ranged/minion builds.
You can’t really make bonuses that will affect only pure melee builds because ranged/minion builds would still be able to make use of them and stay tanky, especially minion/totem builds.
Yes, but if you have to stick close to your target, you are in inherent danger anyway.
The melee beastmaster who goes in close is a melee build with the disadvantages of a melee build.
The ranged character who occasionally does a melee attack does not benefit from damage reduction during the melee animation.
Even if you would keep benefits as a ranged character - to get those benefits, you’ll have to give up the inherent bonus of a ranged character - having a comfortable distance to enemies.
But you’re giving defensive bonuses for staying close. You’re even giving offensive ones. This would inherently just turn every minion/totem/ballista build into a proto-melee build. They can keep their minions in range, if necessary, while you’re getting more defensive bonuses than you do now.
Even pure ranged ones would likely also benefit greatly from the extra buffs. After all, you’re using the same class/passive trees as you would have used if you went with a main melee skill.
Honestly, the only way I see this working is if melee nodes in both passive tree and skill tree also provide you with defensive bonuses. Something like a node giving “+2 melee damage” becoming “+2 melee damage, +1% DR when in melee range”.
This way, ranged/minion builds could still spec into those nodes by sacrificing others, while melee doesn’t need to sacrifice anything and can get a bigger boost from them.
No, those bonuses are inherent to the use of melee skills. It’s not a passive tree bonus. It only works with a melee skill while you actually use the melee skill at a short range.
Even for minion builds, your minions are worthless if your character is dead.
One massive defensive layer of a character that can stay at range is… being at range. If you trade this defensive layer for being close, you give up one advantage for another. It’s not like it’s a free gift.
I guess you’re missing my point.
Currently, beastmaster already will always stay at melee range to use swipe. It’s not a melee build. It doesn’t need to stay at range. However, it will get the exact same defensive bonuses that a pure melee build will have, even though it’s the companion that’s actually doing the DPS.
Likewise, if you have a totem/ballista build, it pays to spec into a melee skill. You place your totems, then you move into melee range to get defensive bonuses.
Your suggestion only works to differentiate from pure ranged and pure melee. Minion/totem builds would be able to actually get both bonuses and they would be the tankiest.
Then combine upsides for melee in close quarter to downsides for ranged in close quarter and the other way around.
Also a option.
But ultimately?
EHG did ‘a bit’ of every option available and used counters to those being used as well.
For example if you maked the range-based bonus/malus system then a teleporting enemy going into melee range would cause severe damage to ranged characters, and a mobility based evasive ranged enemy would screw over melee.
That’s why I say ‘it need to be cohesive designed for it’ and that is simply lacking.
Something has to be given up for it.
Wanna give up mechanics from enemies and yourself to enforce the difference? Like the teleporting bear assholes not being able to teleport anymore (and hence be a hard-counter to ranged suddenly since they’re forced in such a system to ensure range via CC or mobility or simply die)
Or do you wanna give up the class identity to change it to something completely else? (Like allowing free skill choice in total and a hefty reduction in passive and skill power for a scaling fixed ‘archetype scaling’ of the class/mastery chosen for example)
The issue is that you cannot fix it currently, you’ll always run into major issues.
Those are things which are as fundamental as ‘how to design our defensive system’ for the game and is in the preparation stage done commonly.
We got what we got and it’s by far not perfect… but it’s also not awful.
Is it, though? After all, you’re giving melee enough buffs so they can actually survive while staying in melee range. Why would that not work if you’re a minion player?
I again point to the example of all beastmasters using swipe and staying at close range. With your proposed changes they would suddenly get super tanky, even though swipe is doing barely any damage.
I believe that the only way to actually buff melee defences without just giving free bonuses to everyone else is simply to change melee nodes. Both in passives and in skills.
If a node currently gives a buff to melee (meaning only melee builds currently take that node) then change it to give a melee bonus plus a defence/movement bonus.
This way melee builds are automatically buffed defensively. And if a ranged/minion build wants to use those defence bonuses, they’d have to sacrifice nodes they’re currently using to be able to use half the node melee gets “for free” because they would have taken it anyway.
As far as melee defenses go, I’m really surprised that 2-handed weapons don’t have some kind of inherit block chance, or at least the option to add blocking affixes; same goes with 2-weapon fighters. My dual-Jelkhor’s Rogue would greatly benefit from this.
