Melee Needs some Love

I have seen mages mining silver just face tanking the earth elemental's and having just as easy a time as me in my full plate, so I really have no added survival over said mages. Really is no benefit being a melee other then not using any reagents, and mages can build decks that use hardly any and still do good.

 

I've invested in melee/blades and ranged, and will say that I find the ranged far easier and far more effective than the melee. I've more points in blades (about 550 vs. about 500 in ranged), and find the ranged does more damage, more reliably, and is far more easy to land hits with. Also, my experience is that melee quickly burns through focus in a "real" fight (meaning you are not just slaying trash, but something with potential to kill you), faster than archery at least. I've not invested in enough magic this release to compare fairly from personal experience, other than on low-end spells.

DPS aside, I feel the inherent advantage of being able to hit foes from afar is often far underrated in mmo/rpg type designs (less so in wargames where ability to strike without return attack is well appreciated in general). In most wargames at least, once melee reaches the archers, those archers can no longer fire the bows and must flee or resort to secondary melee weapons instead, while here (and in many MMO's) ranged/archers/mages can continue to fire at closer than point blank range, while being attacked in melee. In effect, advantages of ranged classes (range! nevermind superior damage as well here in SoTA) exist, but disadvantages (you cannot really fire a bow while being carved in melee; and in say old school d&d could not really cast spells once in melee) do not.

Upshot of this, although I am still swapping back and forth between ranged & melee for testing and variety, the ranged is far superior at this point. When I want to "win" I go to the bow over sword, hands down. Melee is supposed to have an advantage in hitting more than one opponent at a time, but I've found (and posted in bugs) that this does not work with most blade glyphs at least - I've not seen double-strike hit with more than two hits (both on same opponent) yet since two releases ago, for instance, nor seen reposte hit more than one foe, etc. (While whirling blades does work).

Melee is just inferior at this point in my opinion, and basically falls down in serious fights while being an alternative for variety against weaker foes. As for magic, I've dabbled in most low-end forms thus far this release, but yes it does more damage than melee, and has advantage of *not missing* unlike melee or archery. Armour may protect some from arrows, and dodge may make some miss, but spells never miss. I personally am not advocating for nerfs in general, but more forms of counters that actually work would be appreciated. Cover systems once introduced may help, perhaps shields could be improved vs. ranged and spells, but I hope not to see archery and/or magics neutered to make up for melee being lackluster.

 

I think the biggest enemy melee has is the sheer amount its hits miss, some of my attacks are in the 50's and my blades is 86 and I miss things that con white to me.

 

Yes, you are right. However, does melee have a better chance of survival due to armour, compared to mages?

 

One of the easier thing that can address some of the issue of melee right now is to introduce some "Real" burst dmg capability from melee tree. (I came out with an unarmed combat tree when I was bored few weeks ago and has other way of handing the issue but I shall leave it in other thread when I find time to clean it up a little to post)

Main problem right now is how melee is not feared when they get in range of a ranged character, or not enough time in range to do anything useful to a boss mob without taking way too much risk. Consistently

Reliable burst damage can potentially solve some of the immediate issues, have high burst but doesnt sustain as much damage over time will keep the balance in check. When melee is in range of e.g. archer or mage, they should have the ability to burst it down before the range find some way to escape (there is way too many ways to get away, such is the nature of the current skill system), or just get in for enough time to do a burst before running out on a boss that may be flying or run away at some rather extreme speed (e.g. Dragon, Phoenix etc).

 

Melee has very poor performance per skill Lvl. It's very sad that once melee Warriors try to catch an archer an archer can either root, slow or do so many things to melee classes before they can reach the target.

Melee needs a serious buff.

 

Melee needs a buff on low levels, not once you are high level imo. Anyway, I always recommend to use a magic school with melee, the problem is the fizzle with heavy armor.

For that reason the best melees right now (pve) are those ones with light-cloth/shield/fire. The aoe spam (Ring of fire needs a nerf tbh) is massive, and I saw already two guys soloing CPs with this build.

 

I have blink too. Not sure if any pure melee builds would stand a chance.

Body Slam stun/knockdown is all time I need to finish the job (with the +20% buff) Blades can do huge quick damage when built right.

Although, so much is still up to luck, quality of player and strategy.

 

To the original post, I feel the exact same way. I actually thought this was isolated to polearms, I figured it wasnt done yet. But my base attacks to nothing unless I crit and miss roughly 50% of the time.

Also polearm glyphs miss frequently as well. No reason I can think of to not just play a mage with never miss spells. Melee should not just be a supplement imo

 

Melee auto attacks got nerfed heavy. The damage now is almost inconsequential, even with hitting 3 mobs in an arc with high strength + 2hander that can make good use of it.

Charge attack, at full, still blows. I could land 2+ glyphs in that time for much more effect. Sure it's 'free' though and does need to be balanced as such.

At L65, L93 blades, and glyphs around L85 plus 46 buffed dex, my hit rating is pretty solid against yellow mobs. Had em locked for a week focusing necromancy tho. (and L63 crafter which is a huge timesink)

They changed hit rating some months after r18 to be modified by base skill + glyph skill lv. Did they ever change it again? I took 6 months off b4 launch

 

Very nice and sure your 2nd tier spell hits perhaps more but your bludgeons hit more than one, can hit faster, not not interrupted . . . . so DPS to one target should balance out if you hit more than one. Now this is one of the problems I see is that if it one target dmg does not go up it is flat rate. 1 target getting hit should be 2x the damage than hitting 2 and but if they knee jerk like they do they will nerf the dmg and not just increase it from base :-(

But now we always get to the game is still in balancing issues so hopefully they look at all these and fix it. In the end one side will ALWAYS complain . . . . . . .

 

From what I've seen in my experience playing alongside my brother who is currently a blades melee character that is currently transitioning to bludgeon, we have about the same effectiveness in PvE (I'm an air mage). I hit for larger numbers than he does, but he attacks much faster than I can cast spells. His cost for adventuring is gear repairs, mine is a ton of reagents.

Also, comparing Obsidian Arrow's damage to melee is the issue here. Obsidian Arrow does not even come close to representing the damage of other mage abilities. Obsidian Arrow hits for absurd amounts, especially if you happen to be an Earth focused caster. My guild leader (an Earth Mage) has an Obsidian Arrow that when stacked 5 times reads 247 max damage on the tooltip, non-critical. That's just absurd. Especially considering it costs no reagents and can ignore armor. In comparison, my level 75 lightning with 115 Air attunement and nearly 70 intelligence and 65 dexterity only adds up to 130 max damage with 4 stacks (don't have the fifth yet). Personally, I think Obsidian Arrow could use some looking at in terms of a nerf. Fire arrow isn't really strong unless you stack a few of them on the enemy since each one will apply a separate DoT.

The biggest issue for melee is actually in PvP where it's very hard to close the gap with a ranged character and air mages are able to keep you stunned a lot. Air mages are still too powerful in PvP, the stun chance needs to be reduced against other players. That said, I really hope they stop nerfing it in PvE too. There needs to be separate balancing for using these spells against other players. Air has been nerfed enough now that I've started leveling the Earth tree. I don't really see a reason not to be an Earth mage now for PvE. It's direct damage is by far more powerful than any of the other magic skill trees. Sure, I can stun things... but why stun things when I could just outright kill them with massive damage?

 

i love love love love melee playstyle. and i absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE tank builds.
that being said..as it stands in this game, i will not use traditional melee again until some major changes have been made. i am a staying a tank mage because no other traditional melee build even comes close it.

does melee work? sure it does. is it fun? yeah i guess so.

but it is limited. big time. a mage will FAR out perform a melee. there are a lot of other statements i quoted below...most of these quotes will be responded to with my experience using melee and why i switched to the FAR superior mage build

melee certainly does get a lot more effective. of this, there is no dispute. however, melee never really closes the gap. and there is literally nothing that a melee can do that a mage cant do better.

Mages are effective at low level. and they too get more effective at high levels. MUCH more effective.

only a newb mage will die to melee in a 1 vs 1. mages can only die to a melee if they are stupid enough to fight to the death...they can easily escape a melee. even a smart melee cant keep up with blink spam + speed boosts.

Knight's Grace is pretty handy. cant argue that one and wouldnt try. But Body Slam only works against an inexperienced mage..they can easily stay out of its range and even when knocked to the ground can blink out of range. /smdh

this is honestly a build issue. i can survive death throes of these things.

this is how it SHOULD be...this is not the game we play. Mage has MUCH better mitigation. MUCH MUCH better. armor does VERY little in this game. passive skills + active skills add at least 90% of the survivablity to a build. a melee can attempt to use the same shield spells but will be severely stymied by the fizzle rate and will blow most of their focus on fizzles most of the time even when casting a spell with high skill level AND high follow through...i know this from personal experience.

as stated above, mages are far better tanks and take FAR less damage from melee once they get their mitigation buffs going.

nope. not even close. mages avoid damage better. they mitigate it better. and the heal from it better. this is why i have abandoned melee and moved to magery. and until more of us do the same, the devs will not want to address it.

the problem is, burst damage is available to melee thru magery. adding it to their melee trees would add even MORE burst dps. the devs have painted themselves into a corner with this one. the system basically demands that you use magery.

this simply is not an accurate. I can absolutely SPAM stone fists. NO cooldown. INSTANT casts. they hit MULTIPLE targets. they almost NEVER miss. and they CRIT constantly for great damage. my stone fist can out perform a 2 handed melee any day of the week; easily.

see, this is a misconception. your guild leader is using earth magic...well over 100 strength, and almost as much int as you.

Earth magic damage is GREATLY adjusted by Str + Int while Air Magic is greatly augmented by Dex + Int
your guild leader is getting a massive bonus to his damage because of his over 100 strength...
you are getting a much smaller bonus due to your low comparatively dex.

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from my experience the OP is not wrong.

Melee peaks early in the game. and falls flat later on. you need to augment melee with magery.
Magery is good early on and continues to grow rapidly. once you get your spell shields up to 30-40ish and throw on an actual shield and get those innates up to 30-40 (seriously doing all of this will cost you like 25k XP!!!) they far surpass melee in survivability...and they pretty much always do better DPS, as per their design

 

Survivability is definitely better on a mage. The shields provide quite a bit of survivability. Death shield alone is a flat 20% damage reduction to all sources of damage for me (heals for 20% of damage received). Shield of Air makes me completely immune to damage to my health, although it does come out of my focus then at 1.2x the rate.

As for the Earth vs Air and the Strength and Dexterity part, yeah, that's true. It is so much easier to raise strength than it is to raise dexterity though. This is why Earth is by far the strongest spell school for direct damage. I'm not expecting my Air spells to hit as hard as the Earth spells, but 247 damage on the tooltip just seems insane to me. His Earthquake is about the same, although it's not as much of a concern to me since it's damage is offset by its long cast time and short range. I don't think Air is underpowered in PVE, but I do think it is still overpowered in PVP. Especially against anyone that isn't ranged.

A guildy and I were testing some PvP stuff in some friendly (return gear on death) duels yesterday. He is a melee bludgeon character, and, as I've said, I'm an Air mage. He literally couldn't catch me the vast majority of the time. This is because I have +78% movement speed (Dash 40%, Sprint 30%, and 8% Passive from light armor) plus a level 62 Blink. He caught me one single time out of the many duels we had when I got a little greedy with casting time. He instantly knocked me down, stunned me, and drained all of 600 my focus since I had Shield of Air active and also cut through about half of my health before I was able to get away from him via Blink. In the end, I still ended up surviving just by keeping my distance. So melee certainly need some more accessible gap closers for PVP in particular.

 

Torpid Torment is likely a PITA for magi

 

You have two innates for str you right but the heavy tree innate (Endurante) is really small buff (+7 at 50 skill or something like that). The difference are on buffs from Earth, Sun and Heavy tree (inner str). Dex only has Air and Moon buff.

I don't think dex is harder to raise but with buffs you will always have more str, maybe they should take a look on that (same for Int).

 

That's exactly it. The buffs in particular push Strength way above what's achievable with Dexterity. Strength has: Strength of Earth, Bulwark of Earth, Sun Worship, Inner Strength and Endurance if wearing a heavy chest piece, Train Strength from Tactics, and technically you can get even more via Berserker's Stance, although it carries a heavy penalty to defense. Dexterity only has Air's Embrace, Train Dexterity from Subterfuge, and Moon Worship. Maybe adding a Dex buff and/or innate to the light armor tree would help alleviate this.

 

Realistically, with passives, gear, and active skills...

210 str is obtainable. and easily 90 Int in the same build

now imagine THAT obsidian arrow

 

Then they arent exactly the melee tree skill people having issue anymore isnt it? and I do consider fist spell a melee attack right now, get the GCD on melee/spell skill adjusted will make people actually bother to even equip a melee weapon for those rare moment when they can get close. With current system it does make spell a requirement, but let people pick what they want to focus on for the same situation - cast a stone fist (that scale way too well atm) or a melee attack (that has adjusted burst).

 

Yes, this is exactly the issue I'm facing with Bludgeons as well. It's true that we can spam our melee skills rather than auto attack, but even the melee skills miss a lot more than magic spells. Imagine painstakingly stacking melee skills/glyphs only to have them miss? Much frustration.

Yes, this is a point I observed as well. Melee does indeed get more effective as you level up. However, the magic spells scale even better and far surpass melee in every way. Better Damage mitigation? Check. Better Damage per second? Check.

I gave my two handed Axe with 520 bludgeon invested another shot last night. Using purely melee skills nearly cost me my life several times at Twins Hills. Once I threw in a few Magic resistence boosts like Ice Shield and magic arrows from Earth and Water, I was breezing through the mobs. It's pretty clear that the game is designed to favour a mix of magic and melee, rather than a pure melee build with only physical attacks.

Once again, I must stress the main point of this whole discussion. I do NOT seek for Magic or Ranged to be nerfed. I only wish for Melee to be buffed up to match their damage output. Yes, I would even go so far as to wish for Melee skills damage output to be buffed BEYOND the damage Magic or Ranged offers. Why? Because Melee fighters take a huge amount of risk running right into the face of mobs and PVP players soaking up damage that Ranged and Magic fighters do not have to sustain. They should be rewarded for their Courage to do that.

Thank you everyone for your constructive feedback. Much appreciated! I love this community.