How do you make combat good? Melee absolutely sucks.

[Leiraion]

Title.
This is one of the most melee unfriendly games I've ever seen. It seems like you are forced to play summoner builds or you are just shooting yourself in the foot.
I'm up to Pirate Captain playing in a group of 2.

Am I missing something? The bosses legitimately seem straight up impossible with any melee / low range weapontry. They move around rapidly and the projectiles are significantly easier to dodge at a distance. Every boss.

?

[ElDudorino]

I'm kinda with you about melee and that's how I feel about Terraria as well. But then certain "melee" weapons end up firing projectiles so they're useful at a distance as well. I do use melee-class weapons but mainly the ones that have a ranged attack.

I don't really even know what a summoner build is, though. Summoning seems too weak on its own to be the only thing you rely on. I do keep summons active but I focus on ranged or magic as they're really powerful.

[SebbyPhantom]

the sabre kinda melee weapon you can get from the pirates is a really cool weapon imo. i've been using it so much in dungeons etc :D

[ElDudorino]

The dungeon is earlier progression-wise than pirates, though. The next quest spot after pirates is the deep forest cave which has a tricky teleporting boss, not super ideal for sabers.

[Fair]

"True" melee is pretty hard, but possible. For some bosses you pretty much have to use spears. And even then a few bosses like the Pirate Captain will be hard.

But yea, like many other games like this, melee is going to be tough. Melee works great for exploration though :)

[Leiraion]

Originally posted by Fair:

"True" melee is pretty hard, but possible. For some bosses you pretty much have to use spears. And even then a few bosses like the Pirate Captain will be hard.

But yea, like many other games like this, melee is going to be tough. Melee works great for exploration though :)

I think there needs to be something to make melee beneficial in boss fights though.
Summoner builds straight up do more dps and are playing from half a screen away.
In exploration the non-melee builds still have the edge.

For example, if you are fighting archers the projectiles are far more difficult to dodge when close than when ranged. If you hide around a corner with a greatsword they'll almost always get a shot off before you can 1 shot them as they fire instantly (unlike the mage apprentices for instance).
If you are playing from ranged this is never an issue. You are just always significantly more safe while also still doing more dps (and damage overall as you pretty much have full uptime vs a melee who only has uptime when in melee range)

I'm sure it's not a super simple cut and dry EZ fix but there needs to be something...

It feels very bad to have no actual edge over a ranged or summon build. You could maybe say you are tankier as the melee oriented gear gives a bit more armor but that really doesn't matter at all considering you are substantially more likely to take damage if playing as melee. Either way you'll be dead generally in 4-6 hits from just about anything if it is around the progression zone.
Now if the melee gear made you twice as tanky as the non-melee gear... sure that'd be significant (if it was dmg reduction and not just HP) but as it is right now it doesn't make you nearly beefy enough to be worth mentioning imo

[ElDudorino]

What if melee weapons had a pair of free dashes - one to move forward and one to move backward - that use the same cooldown as the current dash/blink trinkets (and benefit from the same accessories) without using a trinket slot? So you could still wear zephyr boots or use a shield in addition to being able to dash forward or backward.

This would allow you to get into or out of range more easily and even sort of serve as a bonus for using melee but only if you're skilled enough to use it.

[Fair]

Melee does have more DPS than other builds. They just have a harder time keeping it up during boss fights etc. And they are a bit tankier.
Maybe they should do even more DPS and be even tankier. But saying that there is no advantage is definitely not true.

If you stand around a corner and wait for a ranged mob to come around, they will always get a shot off on you, yes. That's not how I deal with ranged enemies as melee, and they rarely get a hit on me :/

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Fair:

Melee does have more DPS than other builds. They just have a harder time keeping it up during boss fights etc. And they are a bit tankier.
Maybe they should do even more DPS and be even tankier. But saying that there is no advantage is definitely not true.

If you stand around a corner and wait for a ranged mob to come around, they will always get a shot off on you, yes. That's not how I deal with ranged enemies as melee, and they rarely get a hit on me :/

Higher DPS you can't utilize without killing yourself is, like a dead dps, pointless.

[Leiraion]

Originally posted by Fair:

Melee does have more DPS than other builds. They just have a harder time keeping it up during boss fights etc. And they are a bit tankier.
Maybe they should do even more DPS and be even tankier. But saying that there is no advantage is definitely not true.

If you stand around a corner and wait for a ranged mob to come around, they will always get a shot off on you, yes. That's not how I deal with ranged enemies as melee, and they rarely get a hit on me :/

For sure I agree on the archer point, I'm just pointing it out.
With archers I just use zephyr boots and juke the arrows as they don't have crazy tracking. They usually don't land hits. But it is undoubtedly harder to deal with them as a melee.
However, that doesn't work in raids. The archers in raids do have good tracking and will generally hit you at least 1 time if you try going melee with them.

What I was trying to point out was that those dps and armor advantages are meaningless.
Around my current progression area we are doing 300~ dps.


I'm getting these numbers from the "hard" setting, so +30% dmg taken.
Say a summoner is doing 300 dps. Their uptime is extremely high. They are probably doing nearly 250-280 dps by the end of a boss fight.
A melee user, tbh, I'd be very surprised if they were even at 150. Bosses move... A LOT. Usually constantly. And the greater danger you are in means you're much more likely to take some hits.

5-10 armor may let you live for at most 2 more hits. But this is meaningless because you aren't playing at ranged. It is far easier for enemies to hit you when you are in melee range. So being able to die in 5-6 hits instead of ~4 is really not a big deal.
Take the Swamp Guardian for example:
Not only is it shooting constant projectiles and bombs but standing close means the boss's body will loop back to hit you again and be close. This leaves opportunities for the boss to juggle you between 2 sections of it's body. You have to be close in order to deal dmg though...

Say everything goes fine and you're dodging the boss like a god, well those projectiles are spawning non-stop in your face the entire fight. You will not dodge them that close.
Some? Sure.
Most? Possibly...
All? No.

But from ranged dodging all the projectiles becomes a lot more feasible. Especially if you can just run away the entire fight and not be slowed by your own auto-atks (summons).

So does it really matter that you have 10-20% more armor than the ranged guy?
The benefit is relatively insignificant

Also, Fair, I appreciate you being on the boards and engaging. Whether you agree with me or not.

[Fair]

I agree that playing true melee you are at a disadvantage. But I honestly don't see that as a bad thing. It gives the option to limit yourself to a harder and different playstyle. Definitely not something you have to do.
There are also bosses, like the Swamp Guardian and other multi segment bosses where melee is the best build.

Playing on hard or brutal also makes it significantly more difficult, because your armor doesn't scale with the difficulty. Maybe you can do a little bit of tanking on hard. But on brutal your only option is to dodge, which will be super hard as melee.

I guess it comes down to my philosophy on the playstyles. Which is that I don't think it's a bad thing that melee exists as a different, but harder playstyle where you have to think more about your movement, build etc.
That would be a problem if for some reason you only want to play melee. But in that case you can always just reduce the difficulty :)

[ElDudorino]

Yeah, swamp guardian was kind of a weird example to use as an argument against melee because it's like the most melee-friendly boss.

For DPS are you taking into account that a melee build will have 1-2 summons in play as well?

[Leiraion]

Maybe I'm missing something but melee is the best build on Swamp Guardian?
How so?
Sure, getting to hit the thing 3-5 times per swing with a Greatsword is nice
but... you're going to get hit while charging that.
Or if you aren't using GS at all, again you are in closer to the projectile spawns so they are much harder to dodge all fight.

[Leiraion]

I think for the higher difficulties some builds being non-viable is fine but I'm not sure it should feel like it falls off a cliff just because you go from normal to hard.
The problems I've described before will still be true in the lower difficulties, it will still be notably easier to just play non-melee.

[Fair]

Are you only using Greatswords? Usually spears are the best for boss fights

[ElDudorino]

I've honestly never used a spear because I hate how they overshoot the only enemies who are a danger to me (i.e. the ones who are next to me about to hit me). But against the Swamp Guardian I like the lightning hammer you get from the dungeon. It's super fast and its dark lightning projectiles can hit multiple segments, and the range is more or less that which you'd get from an early-game spear.

The thing is that this boss is pretty much always next to you and you mostly only have to worry about the head not smacking you so you can stay next to it and keep hitting it with pretty much whatever.