how good is melee in this game?

[Terra]

so in path of exile melee builds are mostly dead except maybe 3 skills and the rest is just spells or minions etc. because devs doenst like melee.
last epoch doesnt have a big skill variety so some skills are really fun but something is not for me.
back when d3 released i played barbar with berserk, hammer of ancient and whirlwind and somehow this was the most melee fun i ever had.
now im looking into grim dawn becase im bored.
i will look into some starter builds later but i thought some of you maybe throw around some build names i can look into. cheers

[Maximilian17]

Newbie here. I read that melee is punishable in this game. So I picked vitality caster conjurer as my first character.

Then I tried blademaster as my second character. It is a pierce auto attack build of nightblade and soldier. His dps is way higher than my conjurer so this blademaster is farming skeleton key dungeon.

Nightblade was squishy at the start but I like this squishy gameplay. Soldier is more tanky but I find it a bit boring. Currently I'm playing my 3rd character on hardcore using soldier / necromancer (Death Knight) build.

[BeerdedPhantom]

As a disclaimer, my experience with this game is limited to two characters at max level and a third on the way on ultimate, and I'm chipping away at crucible and SR when I feel like it... I still Iike to just tool around the world clearing totems and the locked dungeons over and over again mostly.

First character was/is my own take on a 2h pierce no-set blade arc / ring of steel blademaster (I'm kind of gradually moving him into more of a bleed build with 3pc bloodrager but the same skills, will work on devotions as I continue to experiment) so not exactly "optimal" for the class combo, and he deals wicked damage and survives very reliably for the content I'm playing. Same goes for the second, a TSS / wind devil druid (closer to a cookie-cutter build, but mixing Trozan's set with Iskandra's, and with some liberties taken in the devotions).

The druid is good at placing damage all around the screen and weaving around enemies, and the blademaster just charges into and through packs blowing them up, as one would expect. They're both a lot of fun to play and neither of them dies unless I get lazy or careless (standing still and not watching the health bar or not expecting a nemesis spawn). I'm also aware of ranged and caster builds out there for the blademaster, and melee and ranged builds for the druid, and though I haven't spent much time on those yet, I'm saving up the gear to really kit those out because I'm sure they're fun too.

I really appreciate that this game allows so much freedom to mess around with different skills, devotions, and gear, and doesn't really lock you into one or two sets per class and a strict skill/devotion allotment to be able to have fun and clear stuff. You have to be able to recognize synergies and know certain numbers to shoot for, but there's enough wiggle room and more than enough builds to choose from to keep it fun, for me at least. YMMV of course.

[Safarel]

Originally posted by Terra:

so in path of exile

it is not poe and/or d3, and their similarity lies in that they share the same genre, and that's all
melee could be an extemaly powerfull, if it builds right

[ಠ_ಠ]

Originally posted by Terra:

so in path of exile melee builds are mostly dead except maybe 3 skills and the rest is just spells or minions etc. because devs doenst like melee.
last epoch doesnt have a big skill variety so some skills are really fun but something is not for me.
back when d3 released i played barbar with berserk, hammer of ancient and whirlwind and somehow this was the most melee fun i ever had.
now im looking into grim dawn becase im bored.
i will look into some starter builds later but i thought some of you maybe throw around some build names i can look into. cheers

I pretty much only play melee. It's good. Forgotten Gods adds a bunch of movement skills, which makes movement nicer for both casters and melee. A good starter melee class is Warder (Soldier x Shaman), and it's available without the expansions. This class primarily uses two-handed weapons (melee or ranged), and can excel at either physical or elemental damage.

Blademaster is also quite good, and one of my personal favorites, and it can be played in many ways. My current build is two-handed cold based, but it's also easy to go dual wield, or sword and board.

I've even got a dual wield melee Spellbreaker (Nightblade x Arcanist) that uses the Arcanist skills for buffs, and removing debuffs (very useful for a relatively squishy build). My primary damage skills are from Nightblade.


There are plenty of other class combos that excel at melee. If you like spin-to-win, then you may want to grab the expansions and play an Oathkeeper class. One of their skills, Eye of Reckoning, is basically a Whirlwind style skill.

[KG]

Strong and varied. Patches where melee had some reason not to be among the most competitive (? ... in a single-player oriented game) build types were the exception.

GD's currently complete - patches are pretty much only for bugfixing and relatively small balance tweaks - so melee isn't exactly going to get wrecked by some surprise change at this stage.

[DirtyMick]

Melee is very viable and very strong in this game. In fact, there will be many times where you really don't have a choice. Monsters will dash to you and get on top of you no matter what. Melee is inevitable, even if you're using guns.

[Vriska 8/8 Waifu]

literally anything is endgame viable, and high-end in performance, if you build right.

[Shellbie]

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[Shaman King]

Melee is strong because there is more honor in it. But ranged has more damage and can kite...

[KG]

Originally posted by Zakys:

Melee is strong because there is more honor in it. But ranged has more damage and can kite...

Any DPS advantage a pew pew ranged build may have is obliterated if you spend much more time kiting than a melee build would spend dodging nasty stuff.

In my experience ranged builds don't really have a DPS advantage over equivalent melee builds anyway. They can be better/easier for a new player but at endgame they're consistently slightly behind the curve.

[Faust Wither]

melee is good, just dont bite more than you can chew, you must know what u can tank or not.
https://youtu.be/HJ8G9k91Da8

[Wolfram]

There is nothing wrong with going melee. Just take care in checking your resistances and armor values. In my experience melee builds are quite reliable and can be combined with different spells, depending on your (second) class. One that I can recommend would be the witchblade using cadence with the chaos mods from gear. You got spells to heal yourself, weaken or damage enemies with cooldown from the occultist class and the main damage skill in the soldier class.
Generally only few melee builds are "melee-only".

[Vriska 8/8 Waifu]

correctly built melee builds are capable of facetanking and shredding through endgame content as well as any caster can. casters might generally pull more DPS, but because most sustain in this game comes from lifesteal, which doesn't trigger on skills that don't have a weapon damage component, martial builds usually have much higher sustain.
there are exceptions to everything, i've made glassy melee builds and i have a pure caster that can facetank ravager, but melee is very viable in this game. like i said above, build quality and player skill matter, not what the core idea of the build is.

[imfratman]

i have made a dervish which is a nightblade / oathkeeper . dual wielding using poison and acid . he melts everything near him and can face hug most bosses. melee is very viable in many different ways .

[Forbidden Knowledge]

My melee Witch Hunter is amazing. Cleared all content on ultimate, including soloing the roguelike dungeons.