Comprehensive feedback

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Baron01 escreveu:

Initially, I wanted to post a stand-alone topic regarding Endurance charges and Enduring Cry but I decided this topic is now gathering lots of good input and attention so I post it here instead.

Spoiler

Playing melee class in Path of Exile can be frustrating and unrewarding experience at times. It is possible to build functional melee character but the amount of chores connected with such endeavor is way too high in my opinion.

I would like to focus on one of the more annoying requirements that are placed in front of melee character/player in order to succeed: managing Endurance charges.

The way Endurance charges interact with other means of mitigation, and overall lack of other solid mitigation means in PoE, Endurance charges are simply required in order to survive in this game as a melee character taking hits regularly. The fact that there are only 2 ways to generate Endurance charges, one limited by CD and the other requiring to kill monster with a chance to obtain a charge, is very limiting to playstyle. Adding to the hassle of acquiring Endurance charges, they also have limited duration, which is rather short as well.

There are other classes that utilize charges, Frenzy or Power, however, the major difference is that those other 2 mentioned charge types are used for offense and offense only. Endurance charges on the other hand play pivotal role in melee's ability to survive in melee combat for even shortest of time. Not having Endurance charges up means every melee character is in permanent threat of dieing.

Main culprit of this situation is in my opinion Enduring Cry. This skill is dysfunctional and unintuitive in its use and purpose. Cooldown prevents quick acquisition of Endurance charges. The wording of the skill is catastrophic--I admit that after playing PoE for several months I still do not understand it. Finally, the fact you can only acquire Endurance charge by using Enduring Cry in vicinity of monsters is the final insult.

My suggestions to change Enduring Cry are following:
1. Add additional functionality to Enduring Cry that would allow acquisition of full stack of endurance charges on a prolonged internal cooldown. This should only activate whenever player has zero Endurance Charges and could have 45 to 60 seconds internal cooldown--internal cooldown would not impact standard 4 second cast cooldown.
2. Change Enduring Cry to a passive buff similar to Bloodrage and still maintain its original functionality of acquiring Endurance Charges. The buff should refresh Endurance Charges timer whenever player is hit by melee/AOE ability. Side benefit would be that such buff could be modified by support gems and passive talents to last longer--not the charges themselves.
3. Additionally to one of the above changes, I would love to see duration of Endurance charges to be increased. I base this on the fact that while there are other types of charges, only Endurance charges are required by melee characters to keep at all times. The rest is just reduction to damage output of impacted character without any harsher repercussions.

You should do a separate thread. This is good stuff and I agree completely but you are buried on page 20 and using a spoiler with a wall of text. People will just pass by as you can see there's already a bunch of replies and none addressed to you.

Also part of the problem with making end cry better is discharge. If you can generate charges too quickly you have a nuke ready often. I think your suggestions are on the right path, things that allow you to hold them longer rather than generate them quicker.

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deteego escreveu:

I think its not that GGG wants to make factanking impossible, just that you need to commit to it in your build

Which is a fine proposition, but by the same token you cant just scale health and damage. Other aRGPS can get away with it because they have flat DR, that isn't the case with PoE

No its not fine when you have ranged build tank with skelly/decoy/icenove/incinerate totems much better than melee without sacrificing anything

New melee support skills wont change anything in survivability department albeit they might widen possible range of melee builds because you wont be shoehorned into cleave/slam builds

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dark_madmax escreveu:

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deteego escreveu:

I think its not that GGG wants to make factanking impossible, just that you need to commit to it in your build

Which is a fine proposition, but by the same token you cant just scale health and damage. Other aRGPS can get away with it because they have flat DR, that isn't the case with PoE

No its not fine when you have ranged build tank with skelly/decoy/icenove/incinerate totems much better than melee without sacrificing anything

This has nothing to do with the armor formula though,its a seperate problem

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dark_madmax escreveu:

New melee support skills wont change anything in survivability department albeit they might widen possible range of melee builds because you wont be shoehorned into cleave/slam builds

They will help, but not enough

What needs to happen is GGG needs to stop scaling just through damage/health, and do something more imaginative. Like give mobs in maps random active abilities.

In terms of dynanism there you have a lot more to room to fight against a bear ranged mob with some random ability (that also has less health and damage) rather than what we have now

@Moos: Was it in your op I read the idea about a PB Armour keystone? Lol, been 20 pages, I can't remember :P At any rate, what I proposed was to make this a fundamental mechanic of armour, and not an "option." Why? Partially because such a thing would essentially "bandaid fix" armour, and like IR/WS, would not really be an option at all. It would also skew the Str tree's primary defense into melee range for it to be useful. This would give something mechanically unique to melee, as the heart of the issue is to find something that makes melee stronger without also making ranged stronger.

Add on top of that your suggestion to reduce the life nodes available to the Str tree, increase the armour nodes available, and my suggestion to add a (small) flat % DR to armour while slightly reducing the returns on its scalar formula. The flat % DR will be necessary against spike damage given the relatively smaller life pool, and decreasing the scalar portion will also be necessary to prevent AR builds from being nigh immortal to swarm packs like monkeys and tentacle rape monsters.

When its all said and done, I think melee would be in a much better place. Inherently weaker versus ranged mobs, and so would want to close the gap fast, where they have adequate defenses to actually absorb hits without immediately melting (or requiring 9million life nodes). Melee improves, build diversity flourishes, everybody wins.

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deteego escreveu:

GGG are hesitant bring the damage down because they always want a risk of dying and they dont want facetanking in the game to be too easy

Its a reason why armor is they way it is for example

That's great :) The result is what I described in my previous post: all variables are now effectively Boolean. They either work or they don't, with little to no middle ground. You either absorb hits and flask all day long, or you melt before human reflexes can respond to a threat.

What I am proposing does not need to be a significant change (while I admit I'd prefer all numbers be significantly reduced such that the relativity is the same, but there is more room for variation), only enough such that ranged will kill packs in 3-5 hits with aoe, and single targets in 2-3 hits; melee will kill packs in 2-3 hits with aoe, and single targets in 1-2 hits. The effect will be to reward melee for their limited threat range, added required travel time between packs, and added risk, and nerf ranged for their relatively easy safety and extended threat range (something that is otherwise not taken into account in the numerical balance of things).

To the poster who implied this would make PoE an MMO.... Right. No. It would make PoE a functioning game where diverse play styles are rewarded and punished according to their inherent properties. As it stands, due to the entire design of PoE, ranged gets 110% of the benefits and melee gets shafted. Why? Because in this completely unrestricted skill and build environment, ranged can do everything melee can do, and they can do it in half the time while facing half the threat.

Edit: And adding new melee skills and supports will do nothing to fix the flaws mechanically inherent to the game's design, which right now is what is most damning to melee.

They don't want face tanking and yet, they give us arctic armor so we can face tank.

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c2games escreveu:

They don't want face tanking and yet, they give us arctic armor so we can face tank.

Please provide video evidence of you face tank maps.

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Tomorrow escreveu:

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c2games escreveu:

They don't want face tanking and yet, they give us arctic armor so we can face tank.

Please provide video evidence of you face tank maps.

Do you not understand what the message means? You don't take it literally. It means the direction of adding arctic armor is towards face tanking. So easy to forget there are people who don't read between the lines on the internet.

best thread ever here

bump

i play a melee templar. i use zombies and skeletons combined with a rejuv totem. it works great. build and play around difficulties. dont' ask the game developers to babysit you.

edit: i'm not a melee summoner. i use sweep and glacial hammer as aoe and single target

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scrtwpnx escreveu:

i play a melee templar. i use zombies and skeletons combined with a rejuv totem. it works great. build and play around difficulties. dont' ask the game developers to babysit you.

Ah, the truth is, you don't want them to make your special snowflake build obsolete is?

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scrtwpnx escreveu:

edit: i'm not a melee summoner. i use sweep and glacial hammer as aoe and single target

But you use a totem and skeletons and zombies.

Which pretty much negates your statement. No, you ARE a melee summoner. DEAL WITH IT.