Melee ~ Long road to no where

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by NZguzzi, Oct 16, 2016.

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  1. Pikegirl

    Pikegirl Avatar

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    Think u lulled the troll with some timely songs and lute choruses too. :)

    On a serious note, 75% miss rate is most likely player side construction. More Dex maybe?
     
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  2. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    Here is some melee vs mage data (Earth) from a run in Sequanna colossus today:

    133 Str buffed
    80 Dex buffed

    Melee:
    100 blunt (+58.1% damage)
    95 knockdown
    81 Breaker (+50.6 str Damage)

    Earth (726):
    91 Stone Fist
    88 Obsidian Arrow


    Heavy Armor:
    95 Body Slam





    Ebon Cultist Marksman (5 skull with 600+ hp)



    Auto attack:

    Normal 77 15.45
    Normal+ 22 32.7

    Melee miss: 49

    Stone Fist:
    73.9

    Stone Fist+
    142.2

    Obsidian Arrow:
    89.8

    Obsidian Arrow+
    174


    Knockdown:
    58

    Knockdown+
    131

    body Slam
    59.9

    body Slam+
    131.6



    Clearly Earth is a far better then using any blunt skill and Earth hits 100% of the time while melee wiffs all the time.

    Conclusion: play a mage.
     
  3. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Sounds like you've got the inside track there, @EMPstrike ;)

    When you say things like "you will soon be dissapointed", it makes me wonder how you can be so certain.... :confused:

    Mind sharing your sources ?
     
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  4. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    very recently, it has been asked if melee damage need sto go up or magic damage needs to go down. And I was one of several folks testing damage and realized that only earth and air, becaus eof their dual stats, deal more damage than melee does, but melee can be mitigated by earth passives, skill level, dex, damage resistance, damage avoidance, block, dodge, and spell shields liek death shield, ice shield, and air shield.

    Magic damage, on the other hand, is only mitigated by block, air shied, death shield, and dodge, and block and dodge only mitigate the fist and projectile spells with Block actually mitigatign VERY little of most spells it claims to block (that may be broken atm). And he is looking to balance this more in R35. The resistance changes he was talking about for the past few months that are coming may also come in R35.

    What's actually doen to balance it is still open-ended so theres no detail as it could change, the resistance changes i have no real detail on other than they will be different. And since allt he feedback has been that melee isnt good enough, the educated guess is that spells will be EASIER to resist.

    A PvE example may be that you will see more of the elemental immunities for mosnters that seem liek they should have it, but dont. Purely as example (not sayign its gonna happen) but thigns liek Artic creatures resisting ice damage, and undead immune to death damage may show up.

    Take it with a grain of salt, but know that this is what is being discussed and considered. Nothign is definitive until its implimented, tho. Which is why im reluctant to provide many details given the "this is how it is and it sucks forever" nature of most forum posters.
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2016
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  5. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    Auto attack is intended to be a weaker, supplimental hit. Melee skills should be used vs magic skills. Earth and air deal mroe damage than melee due to their dual stats so int needs to be displayed as well.

    Comparing your melee skills vs the earth skills, the damage difference isnt huge, but many agree that fist spells in particular should not out-perform thigns like Crushing Blow. Others believe that it's stone fists bread and butter sicne it has no additional effects liek slow or stun.

    Earth and air deal more damage than melee onyl because of their dual stat bonus. I wouldnt be suprised to see them both take some of hit during balancing. The base damage of magic vs melee is almsot the same. The bigger issue is still mitigation. Those misses fromy our auto attacks are largely due to the high level and high dex of the creature you are fighting. Magic is not mitigated by dex, and therefore rarely misses
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2016
  6. Damian Killingsworth

    Damian Killingsworth Avatar

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    referring to charged melees and auto attacks (the polearm glyphs are hitting same as spells)
     
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  7. Harclubs

    Harclubs Avatar

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    I've swapped my 2h sword for a wand and shield (the wooden one you can buy with no fizzle) and haven't looked back. Did you know you can use ignite weapon to give your wand some DPS in melee range? And you can put on a gem (necro for me) that gives a 10% chance of drain health? And you can use the low focus/high damage fist spells to do melee damage and the high damage/low focus arrows to do range damage. And that's before you even figure in the high damage reagent using spells. All while hiding behind chain armor and a shield. So, yeah, melee is a little screwed at the moment. And wands are considered blunt weapons, so you can even build up melee skills while fighting as an armored and shielded mage...
     
  8. Val Ravar

    Val Ravar Avatar

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    Those that havent seen magic miss, try the demon in the catacombs. With 60 unbuffed int and adv lvl of 81, nearly half of the spells miss - fine this is NOT verified and it could be only 1/3 that missed. But considering that magic should not be missing atm... it was interesting. Another point was that you miss even if you have the demon stunned (AND you attack with magic to the back of it) :p - But I agree that this would be even more interesting on melee character.

    One thing that I have noted is that adventure lvl vs. mob lvl is quite dominant in the calculations in hit and specially for dodge. This has been improved on the last monthly patch (dodge was really broken before that).
     
  9. NZguzzi

    NZguzzi Avatar

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    That's a good video, thank you.
    I am in New Zealand so ping may be an issue, will try again.
    Thank you for taking the time to post this.
     
  10. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    Shield spells no longer are going to stack with each other. Example, you cant use immolation and death shield, and shield of crystal and ice shield all at the same time. Only one of those at a time
     
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  11. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    You keep saying that they are going to basically nurf the spells. That would be a terrible move. I actually think they are fine. The issues is not only just damage.

    Ive posted on this several times but the issue is also that melee must use this "focus" stat that is either Int derived or heavily derived from bonus's on armor that melee also dont have access to (unless they want to run around with cloth or a staff and wand). The average adv lvl 80 melee has ~500-~600 focus and the average mage I have to fight in PvP has 800+ focus. So not only can they damage for more but they can damage for a lot more through their focus pool as the melee person runs out of focus. My entire blunt tree is absolutely reliant on STR, its primary passive is "STR bonus to damage). You would think melee would then get some kind of damage bonus on cloth and leather.

    To boot, the mage *does* damage for significantly more normally (you said it isnt huge, it is huge), but then factor into that fact that the melee person is wiffing a lot. Now, I have raised my dex to 80, sacrificing some STR on my stats to try to hit more. I've also had to sacrifice my STR for some int to try to bring my focus pool up so I can fight a mage without running out of focus.

    the key is that my Earth is fine, its where its at for PvE and PvP. They need to work heavily on melee... Melee needs some mechanics for raising "focus" and they need to have damage constistant with equal levels of a mage that includes calculating in wiffs.

    I have played around you since I started 10 months ago EMP, and you have never been a high adv level player (being more into the social things of this game, one of the best bards in the game). But this is a reality of what its like at adv lvl 80+ (which I had also been pro-wipes).
     
  12. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    Spell damage isnt getting nerfed. Resistances are being changed so that its more easily mitigated. And shield spell buffs arent going to stack with each other
     
  13. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    Ive now raised all of my resistance passives in every spell tree to about 60.

    The problem is that there are so many trees and so many "shields" now that I have to cast to resist one spell. Just look at the water spells against fire, there are two of them. Yes, resists melee are ridiculous look at the death shield. One master spell that can defeat any melee player. To make this equal, they would need to create one or two master skills like"

    Skill:
    "Mage thumper": Return 40% of damage received by magic back to the caster
    "Mage protector": mitigate 40% of damage from any magic.



    Its near impossible for me as a melee to pick an opponents spell types and magically have one of the 10+ shields against it in my deck

    It gets a little bit easier when you are playing league and you know the guy coming up against you uses death magic and fire. One can then do a ton of deck swapping, get +fire and +death resists skills on the deck and then switch out a bunch of melee skills out of earth to avoid the damned death shield (which everyone runs). But how would you do this out in the wild in open PvP?

    But the at that point... a melee person is forced to be a mage and the whole focus pool comes back and you have a mage with 600 focus vs one with 800+
     
  14. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    The resist changes havent went in yet. And only 1 shield spell will be able to be activated at a time. Water isnt a damage focused tree its more of a defensive set of skills, fire's bread and butter is supposed to be high damage over time. Right now, theres no squishy drawback to being a mage,, in the future there will be. Youll have to choose which shield spell to use instead of just using them all.

    Shield spells dont have elemental resistances. Death shield negates 10% of physical damage (im told), ice shield gives fire resistance and raises avoidance, immolation offers no protection but increases damage, shield of crystal boosts your HP so its protection against all damage, Air shield protects agaisnt all damage. The ice shield is the onyl shield spell that offers any type of magic resistance specifically but also protects agaisnt physical damage like allt he others do, so no, you wotn have to swap from shield to shield

    As a pure melee right now, i have 0 focus managment issues.
     
  15. Sixclicks

    Sixclicks Avatar

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    All very high level boss-like creatures have a chance to be missed even by spells. Back when I killed the Phoenix the first time, I was missing with Chain Lightning, Lightning, and Obsidian Arrow at least 50% of the time. As your AL gets closer to their level however, that miss chance drops drastically. Everyone says adventure level doesn't really matter, but it actually does make a big difference in your hit rate. Including with spells.

    Death shield works on all damage sources, including elemental sources. It isn't actually damage resistance though, although it functions as damage resistance in a way. Upon taking damage from any source, a percentage of that damage (based on the level of your Death Shield) is converted to healing for yourself. It doesn't reduce the damage of the actual hit you take though. It just gives you back a percentage in health. So a big hit can still outright kill you without the Death Shield having any effect since the damage is applied first before the returned healing. Currently mine is at approximately 23% at level 80 in the skill. It lasts a little over 30 seconds.

    Also, I believe Earth is resisted by your physical damage resistance. Whereas Fire, Water, and Lightning each have their own resistance innates in their respective skill trees. So resists are already in the game. You just need to train them. Fire happens to be the easiest to resist if you also use Douse and Shield of Ice.
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2016
  16. Jon B

    Jon B Avatar

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    mages shouldn't be able to wear chain or any plate or shields at all, back to cloth with your nappy spells you glass cannons!
     
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  17. Sara Dreygon

    Sara Dreygon Avatar

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    Hmmmm...

    I know I'm high level but I regularly kill three elite skellies at once in Wyrmsands (2h sword with many masterworks and high str, dex, int on character). In Eastreach my pure melee build (read no spells or healing) did 91k damage during the trip and second was a high-level fire mage with 39k. I do not use auto attack and always use free attack charged full however 95% of my attacks come from glyphs (mainly thrust).

    Melee can pump out a TON of damage - more so than a mage - it just takes putting most/all XP into melee and not 50% of XP like some "melee" builds. That said, a good argument would be how much XP it took to make this an effective build and whether polearms, bludgeons, and swords are "balanced" against each other because I don't believe they are.
     
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2016
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  18. Sara Dreygon

    Sara Dreygon Avatar

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    Wyrmsands is great and I'd you friend me I'll show you the ropes... positive thoughts would have to reign supreme, though :oops:.
     
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2016
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  19. Vaentorian

    Vaentorian Localization Team

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    This has been my experience so far, perhaps because I'm relatively low level and using an odd combination of abilities (mostly ice with base polearm skill). Anyway my polearm auto attack seems to carry me through most fights, I really struggle when I can't swing my weapon if the game is running a bit slow, spamming fire and ice just isn't enough. Polearm and heals with no weapon specials does just as well as pure casting in my experience. I really get the impression that success or failure of any build is situational, we all can excel in different areas and do terribly in others.
     
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  20. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    Super short on time at the moment but melee is under balanced right now with the possible exception of haste stacking archer crowd. Melee will come up a bit in power in the next few releases. The real issue though is we've been postponing magic resistance work since before final wipe and that will pull down the magic users a bit as some spells will be resisted by creatures and other players.

    Resistance will REALLY happen in R36 so hopefully this will get resolved.
     
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