“Oh no, yet another whinge about melee”. Kind of, although it’s more of an amateurish attempt at analysing the difficulties I’ve encountered with melee builds compared to ranged ones. And to make it clear from the outset, I don’t have a problem with some things being more challenging for melee as long as they’re balanced with some things being easier and the challenge isn’t massively greater. I just don’t think that balance is there.
I’ve been contemplating this issue since the Imperial Uprising event when I simply gave up playing my Flame Reave Spellblade and started a ranged build. I got so frustrated with having to run away from mobs and then still dying to them. I had a similar feeling recently with another melee build in which I gathered a swarm of adoring Desecrated Flesh fans that chased me around the echo because I simply couldn’t attack them safely (I did eventually kill them all, but it was a long process).
I think the major culprit in both cases was the Nearby Allies Take Much Less Damage mod. When this aura covers weak enemies, there’s no real issue as your character can generally stand in place and take out the aura holder without taking much damage. But when the aura is combined with hard-hitting enemies, trying to take out the aura holder from melee range is often suicidal. Enemies are often finely balanced between tankiness, damage, speed and numbers, but this aura mod completely upsets that balance. Ranged builds generally don’t care because they can safely kill the aura holder without getting into a dangerous range. Minion builds can be tricky because it’s often hard to A-click the aura holder, but they still have fewer problems.
The danger of this mod for melee builds is conflated compounded by:
- Reduced stun chance, since enemies take less damage and stun is an important defensive tool for melee builds
- Anti-melee enemy design, where being melee is much more dangerous than ranged (Desecrated Flesh, Smoldering Lithrac, Volcanic Pyromancer*)
- Defence that relies on hitting enemies (leech and Spellblade ward), which just leaves you so much weaker if you need to jump in, hit once or twice and then jump out again
(* Volcanic Pyromancers have the mod More Damage to Distant Enemies, which sounds like it’s an anti-ranged mod, but I’ve found it much more difficult to deal with as melee. Basically it’s hard to approach them in melee range without getting hit by those huge balls of flame that hurt badly. Each additional Pyromancer makes the situation exponentially worse. I find ranged characters can just side step the balls and pick the pyromancers off fairly safely)
As a side note, I like having dangerous enemies in the echoes that will kill me if I’m not careful, but I find it a bit much when an echo is full of them. An echo swarming with Ruby Captains is not fun.
In general, I really appreciate that the majority of my deaths in Last Epoch are “fair”. It’s usually down to being complacent or reacting too slowly or not seeing something or not being familiar with an attack. And with the last of these, I can at least learn what to look for. I used to die to Covenant of Dominion frequently, but I think I eventually learned about the Explosion attack when the cause of death was added to the death screen. From that point on, I managed to deal with them much better (still die very occasionally to them).
I hope this is useful feedback and I look forward to April!
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