Attunement vs Melee

Yeah i wrote this cause it feels like this is the only thing they are doing. We get zero information about other stuff then items we will get soon.
They say ranged ammo gets rework? Where are the information about that?
How many changes have you seen the last ... year? I would say not rly much. I heard "soon" way to often.

When i read suff like this:
Q4 2016: Combat: We plan to refactor how Damage Types and Resistances work to better balance different weapon types, spell schools, and creature types against each other

i think wow this is something big! Weapons become damage types, maybe Slash/Blunt/Piercing!
But then i see no refactor on resistances (only a bit higher on some mage Mobs) or any kind of Damage Types or "creature types against each other" stuff like water against fire elemental.

 

Yep, my earth skills are pretty high as well. I used to augment blade and heavy armor with Earth, but with the changes to %fizzle, I found myself trying out different skill combinations and learned that melee is in need of some work. Earth on its own is pretty potent.

 

you're looking at one side of the equation which is very much two-sided.

you're saying a dump truck needs love because it gets smoked by a sports car off the line.

plate armor is so much better than cloth.

if melee dps were equivalent to mage dps, what's the point of being a mage?

as a mage dps, it isn't the amount of damage i do is limited by how much aggro i can take before getting stomped well before any damage limit.

 

The sad thing is that this will probably be nerfed and then back to the drawing board.

 

i can cast n Obsidian Arrow in Full Plate without any problems

 

In any other game, the tank can hold the agro. Try it times in sota. that's impossible. Every mage/ bogi steals you immediately the agro, because they do much more damage in the shortest time!!! It's really frustrating to play a melee, but I love it too much to give it up. The devs need to think a lot about the damage output of each class, is the most important in my eyes. The armor must also be considered. One carries plate or cloth. Both at the same time is impossible... Why do I regain myself again .. Has no sense. It is not changed anyway.

Grab his hammer over his shoulder and go back to the mine

 

I expect it to. I also think people should hold of on melee a bit. Earth is powerful now because I think they do it on purpose to get people to switch over and test it. I expect it to get nurfed, but when melee has a pass, it will probably be uber for a while to get people to test it. I fully expect to have to start dumping skills back into blunt down the road.

 

It is normal for the DD to steal aggro. They should use the anti aggro skill.

 

Yeah then you have to spend COTOs to move points to other trees and lose 10%. I tried all the weapons and all the magic and finally settled on blades, earth and ranged and plan to stick with them.

 

... not all melee wear plate...

 

Unfortunately, the protection offered by armor is pitiful compared to that offered by the shield spells. And you can wear chain chest piece and cloth the rest to get all the benefits of the heavy armor tree without the high fizzle rate. Melee just plain old sucks. You can't tank, the cc spells to get and keep enemies in range suck. If you wear full plate, then your healing will be crap because healing potions aren't up to scratch.

The problem is that you must use magic if you are to be effective in this game. And if you must use magic, then you must be wary of your fizzle. And if you must worry about your fizzle, then you must consider the armor you wear. And if you must consider the armor you wear, then you might as well just become a mage. And to top it all off, mages are better at close combat than melee thanks to focus friendly and instant fist spells, and they are also better tanks because they can hold aggro better.

In short, melee is for roleplaying only. When it comes to actual fighting, a mage is the way to go.

 

I don't know what you base this on. It's wrong.

 

agreed, my melee build was fine for PvE, not as good as my mage but still perfectly fine.

 

This is all a more or less moot debate anyway, since any character can pick up and mix all skills, but we're stuck thinking in the old "class X vs class Y" mindsets.

 

The way they have stuff right now is def class specific, especially gear. To be a great Earth mage, I need to have the magic specific chain armor and 2 hard core earth wands that cost me probably a total of 200,000 gold to make after all the normal crafting deaths. This makes it hard to think we are truly classless right now.

 

Yes, it costs some gold, but you can basically "respec" anytime you want. I just finished GM'ing my air tree, but I also have 700 pts in Blades, Bludgeon and Ranged to try stuff out. So i'm a "mage" but I can mix and match whatever I want, or start leveling "fully" another tree. I can also wear any armor with any spec until I find something that works for me, all without having to restart from scratch with a new character from X other class. It gets even more fluid with main/alternate deck switching on the go. I personally love the system.

 

I started as a blade fighter, and spent most of my time in game with an archer. The crappiness of taunt meant that I couldn't take or keep aggro from my buddy, and the short range of melee meant that I was chasing targets all around the place as they chased the archer.

After many hours, we have both morphed into mages wielding wands. My friend uses 2 wands and I use a wand and a shield ( a wooden one to keep fizzle down but it's not the most effective piece of kit - I should swap it out for another wand but I like the look). I went from wearing plate to wearing a chain shirt, pants and hat, with cloth gloves and boots, while my friend wears a chain shirt with everything else as cloth (yes, his set up is more effective because he pvp's and I just grind). It was just easier than chasing mobs for me and carrying around a ton of arrows for him.

I hate to say it because I've played a tank in every MMO I've ever played, but as a close range fighter, an earth/death mage is far more effective than a straight up melee fighter. The aoe life drains are amazing at keeping a player alive, and earth is great dps (I have high strength because I was once a blade fighter...). And when you throw in the fact that mages can do range with magic arrows, as well as close range instant damage with fists, then melee simply doesn't stack up.

 

This may be true, but its part of something an earlier comment reminded me of. In a class based game a Melee based character would also have more hit points than a mage, sometimes a LOT more. Hence the concept of tanking for your squishy range users, thats something you just cant do in SOTA, trade offense for defense.

I guess the only idea that strikes me as a solution (and not one a lot of people will like) is to either give full set heavy armor +all damage types resistance or +HP, in large amounts

I WANT to be a melee character, but much of my defense and buffs comes from spells, not armor or melee skills.

 

Lets not forget that my air magic which can do very good damage against many mobs and in pvp is almost useless against dragons and daemons etc. So there is a trade off that needs to be remembered. The "balance" is not simply making melee, bows and magic do the same amount of damage.

 

I have been melee from day one of play. It's been extremely difficult to get anywhere as a melee player. I don't use melee at all in PVE. It's just too weak or should I say not nearly as effective as magic. However I don't believe the concept of a magic-less class/ play style was ever really considered to be viable in the game's Construction.

Taking PVP into consideration melee in my eyes appears to be lackluster on an equal play level. 9 out of 10 times over the last year and farther back Mages have been Kings of PVP. For good reason magic has more versatility one of which being able to kill your opponent before they can even reach you in some cases.

This does bring up an excellent point with everyone being able to do everything. Coinciding with the non-stop leveling system. You can have cloth wearing Mages with twice or more the health pool of some quote on quote tanks.
Well that can be chalked up to shear level difference it is quite odd at times.

I'm still a bit unclear the overall point if it's melee doesn't do enough damage overall. Or magic just too much, all in all I'm not satisfied with melee as it stands.

However to be clear my main issue still with the game is the never ending leveling system that seems impossible to balance. Which most of my issues with the system stems from. Not much has changed mages are still God mode in every role. I just don't see how a melee Focus build can compete.