Funny how all those “melee” classes dont use melee skills, instead aoe explosion 
Only necromancer uses aoe novas, but yes, every class got extensive aoe, melee usually centers it on itself, while ranged uses cones or explosions.
Demon hunter will for example cover entire screen in arrows and fire few homing missiles with its cone ability.
All those crusaders use the same skill, aoe explosion.
My hero.
hear hear.
most games i go in, it’s the other way around. the ranged can’t keep up with my melee kill speed. i notice that a lot of people tend to whine about this in forums because they aren’t driving the party, and they are content to sit back and wait for their ranged to kill stuff.
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Chaos enemies skating and gliding around when they attack, bosses and lords not taking damage from many attacks, the inconsistency of pushing even in the melee weapon’s angle, the sheer impossibility to avoid some attacks and the uselessness of dodging, your own melee swings often whiffing through many enemies, and the absolute state of class balance to name a few.
This isn’t the closed beta anymore. There are a few weird angles, but most basic stuff is ok.
Enemy pattern is too predictable with only a few moves like the chaos champion sucker punch being somewhat harder.
Bounty Hunter and Huntsman have had their actives shot down to nothing.
Huntsman is pretty fine. A stealth disengage + damage buff in a mild CD skill. It’s only drawside are the visual glitches.
BH does decent damage and he has his own kit. At worst his active is average.
Melee is in a bad state
Melee is pretty great. Often better than ranged depending on positioning.
Weapons like the 2h-hammer, halberd can’t be matched by any ranged weapon if you control the positioning. Melee also has more tools to deal with armored/shielded enemies. Melee attacks go through walls/floors. Melee doesn’t FF.
Practically everyone beating Champion and especially Legend is brute forcing it using these safe strategies because they’re the only things that reliably work in winning
Not every weapon seems to go well in Legend and ranged is a safe bet, but good melee is still very relevant to the team. Not even going with how strong the Ironbreaker is.
Think long and hard about what would happen if penetration was taken out of every weapon. I can see it happening on the Swiftbow because it’s way too good right now (and the hagbane’s AoE crowd control niche is again whited out) but there’d be no fun to range and everyone would be pigeonholed into playing the game in a very sterile manner.
Removing penetration would break projectile weapons into special/elite/boss control only. Yet, Sienna and Bardin wouldn’t be affected. How would that go?
I don’t think it’s good either.
Edit: In fact without pen you wouldn’t even be able to kill specials well. A single slave would deny that packmaster/leech save.
@mookanana
My experience is similar. A melee career played well can control the flow of the game.
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Cant we just have fun abilities and traits that do interesting things other then 2% chance to do X or 5% increased X
i always believed in talents and traits being totally playstyle-changing (like Natural Bond)
but that’s me.
like xcom’s soldier abilities, those change the game so much altho they only have a few options.
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i always believed in talents and traits being totally playstyle-changing (like Natural Bond)
but that’s me.
like xcom’s soldier abilities, those change the game so much altho they only have a few options.
This.
As it is, every career has mostly a single optimal playstyle which is mostly weapon dependent.
Every champion has 3 careers, but, at most, you will only see 2 actually being played.
Mercenary, Ranger Veteran, Slayer, Zealot and Battle Wizard, don’t have enough to really shine. It’s like they are a skin. You play it just for the looks, even though it’s not very effective.
It gets worse as people seem to go for what’s more glitched (old Huntsman/BH/Beam).
also not even factoring in how ridiculously strong his bow is.
I feel if they make ranged ammo even harder to come by then it would push most ranged weapons to being exclusively for specials / bosses and would further complicate infinite ammo weapons like all of Sienna’s staves. If ammo is much rarer then how would one properly balance out drakefire/pyro staves without trivializing their output as well as making the ranged focused classes wholly dependent on ammo regen talents.
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Intentional and problematic are not mutually exclusive. Latter is of course subjective opinion. Take Huntsman Kruber for example. It is very likely that the way his beta active worked was “intentional”; Each number and effect input was implemented with intent. Does this mean it was not problematic? No, it was problematic and it was changed. Sure they can say that it was unintentionally strong. This just means that even if something is implemented in some way does not mean that it turned out how they intended it (not even if they implemented it post release). In other words things can be “as intended” and still work in ways that are not intended or wanted.
Thus it’s perfectly possible that perfect scavenger + haste creates a situation that is problematic; Is the combo meant to completely trivialize ammo management or just make it easier to a limited degree? We can each have our opinions, but without looking at the design docs (if they cover stuff like that) or getting a word from a developer like: “Yes, we thought it would be nice if you didn’t need to keep track of ammo anymore if you got those”, we’re just left comparing opinions.
Personally I think the waywatcher’s ammo regen (level 15 talent) completely trivializes ammo management for me without any other synergizing talents or weapon traits. I can even unload my bow at the boss and in a moment I will have ammo to use on specials (something that scavenger didn’t allow for). I also don’t feel like there is much of a tradeoff, but maybe that’s just me. I also realize this is game style dependent.
Waywatcher has minimal ammo management (currently). That even a blind can see.
Tradeoff is mostly that she doesn’t really have a melee bonus and so will underperform when using a melee weapon.
In legend there are lots of specials and stormvermin which she will require headshots to 1shot. Chaos champions are mostly invulnerable against swift/longbow. Her ranged gets less effective, less dps, more ammo spent.
“But she has so much ammo”. Even the Handmaiden herself with just a +40% ammo can have a great uptime. It’s more than enough for specials, elites and the occasional horde.
What if instead of taking away they just make it so shielded enemies cant be shot by ranged or had more enemies with helmets take even less or no damage from head shots.
I meant to say that the tradeoff for having nigh infinite ammo is not that great compared to other level 15 talents (especially with the way they interact with bloodlust). But yeah, compared to handmaiden there are obvious tradeoffs: 25 less health for starters.
Shielded enemies are very resistant against ranged (except fire) as it is. Increasing armor or decreasing ranged penetration would strongly favour melee, but I think it’s fine as it is. Except for the Huntsman, he is very strong.
I think the regen nerf messed her up. I don’t think that her current ammo regen is entirely intentional.
By that you actually mean YOUR group.
Might want to try that one again, obviously if it were my group it would be MASSIVE! 
Thus it’s perfectly possible that perfect scavenger + haste creates a situation that is problematic; Is the combo meant to completely trivialize ammo management or just make it easier to a limited degree?
Yes, most of the traits trivialized aspects of the game.
let me give you an example.
1)Regrowth (Normal Attack) When hitting an enemy with a normal attack, there is a 3.0 - 10.0% chance to recover 5 points of health.
Note: Melee weapons.
2)Berserking When killing an enemy with this weapon, there is a 5.0 - 12.0% chance to to increase your attack speed by 40.0% for 5.0 seconds. Damage taken reduced for duration of the effect by 50%.
3)Bloodlust When killing an enemy with this weapon, there is a 3-8% (ranged) or 3.0 - 10.0% (melee) chance to recover 10 health.
You now trivialized hordes…not only youll hit extremely fast making crowd control a breeze, occasional hit youll receive will barely hurt due to damage reduction and even if you get hit youll quickly regen it.
Thats just 1 weapon, you can pick ranged which trivializes other stuff.
Or maybe this combo
1)Improved Guard When blocking an enemy with this weapon, there is 10.0 - 30.0% chance that the block wont cost any stamina. Blocks cost half stamina.
2)Off Balance Enemies whose attacks are blocked by the player will suffer extra damage from your allies’ attacks for a brief moment.
Notes: Lasts 4 seconds, during which attacks against the affected target are improved with the same effect as a Strength Potion; effect does not stack with an active Strength Potion effect. Bonus damage does not apply to the person who triggered the Off Balance effect, only to allies.
3)Second Wind 30.0 - 50.0% chance to instantly replenish all stamina if the player’s block is broken. Stun duration of broken block reduced by 50%.
No need to worry about stamina ever again. Also you turn every stormvermin into reskinned clan rat…
Lets also not forget this gem
Heroic Killing Blow (Charged Attack) When hitting an enemy of any size with a charged attack there is a 1.0-3.0% chance to instantly slay it.
yep, 4 ppl with this usually procced boss before half of its hp vanished.
Not everyone reached lvls of ridiculousness you could have with good gear in vt1, but now that everything was nerfed and put into classes themselves everybody sees the end side of spectrum.
2 Likes
Indeed. Many of the traits (and combos you could do with them) went straight bonkers when they added the “secondary” effects, which half of the time felt like the primary effect why one would take it. For example Improved guard went from estimated 30% reduction in stamina used when blocking to 30% + 50% reduction (65% reduction). Same with improved pommel: 40% + 50% reductions resulting in 70% reduction in stamina used. Combine this with devastating blow and you could do silly things with patrols. I am personally of the opinion that they should not be used as a standard how powerful weapons should be.