Melee feels so bad... just a little rant...

[Hubbfrosch]

I am now at lvl 27 in act 2 and struggle hard to beat the giant Zalmarath... a boss who is like 20 times the size of my avatar and the fight has all kinds of graphical glitches and $hit. I find my avatar bashing his hand until I run out of mana and give up because of boredom.

Instead of killing stuff with my mace, I am contstantly jumping around (leap slam), shield charge and similar garbarge to do some noticable damage. I have to use 4 or more skills some of them timed. Most laughable idea so far is 'resonating shield'. My avatar is standing there hitting his own shield with his mace making graphical effects... I know it is a fantasy game but imagine this in reality.

The passive skill points are nebulous: E.g. one node says '+5% block chance'. Sounds great... but it is 5% of 'something' and turns out to be just 1%? So 5 = 1?

Overall it is like in POE1: a casual gamer cannot play the game without using a guide.

Diablo did it better... 30 years ago.

[donut32]

It's pure trash even for extremely intelligent and high skilled gamers such as myself.

Just one of the worst games I've ever had the displeasure to play through.

[ApertureRiot]

My warrior had no problems getting to Act III. I breezed through Act I and II with very few roadblocks. I will say the difficulty progression is very uneven, depending on the class and skills you invested in.

I started with mace and shield but quickly changed to two-handed maces for more damage. I focus on applying fire and stun damage, then wiping half the screen with broken bones skill due to the large AOE on death.

I'm curious, care to share your build? Maybe you made some mistakes in your skill tree.

[opAw←G]

You are already sufferring now, how much more at the end game. Melee is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in this game, good luck with the trials. The bosses are crazy with so many AOE attacks that you will regret going melee in the first place.

[RodHull]

Warrior is very poor atm, there is like 1 decent build people seem to be rolling with, which is fairly strong (though clunky) but honestly atm warrior is bad, partly cause armor is just completely broken (its basically useless)

That particular boss fight is buggy af as well, but its under 1 month in early access beta so maybe park this character for a while come back when they add some changes

[wulfster42]

Ok, seriously, get a decent weapon. You must be using some insanely low damage weapon. At that point, with the right support skills, your leap slam should just kill the entire group of enemies you jump into. Just hop like a rabbit through areas till you get to a boss.

Set up your basic melee attack with faster attacks, and an infusion (cold is great). You want a high damage 2 handed mace + cold infusion for your melee attack and then put on herald of ice. You don't actually NEED that because of leap slam, but it works well on bosses (you can switch to the wind buff before a boss fight for more evasion if you want, only takes a second. If you have extra spirit from equipment, toss on vitality if you can..though it's doubtfull it'll matter much at this point.

But yeah, get a decent damage 2 handed mace, you can make one yourself, don't even have to use poe 2 trade (though if you do, you can get a high damage one for an augmentation orb probably, not top tier for the level, but like 90% of it, which is way more than enough and more then you will probably see drop).

I don't know what level you are, but I had a 93-147 base physical damage two handed mace by the end of act 1, that I made myself. It was initially white with 1 slot in it. I pumped it up to 20% quality first, and then I added 2 magic bonuses to it, and then used a regal to make it rare. That was it. I lucked out and got physical % damage (43% or something like that) and I forget the other 2. I then added 2 20% physical damage runes into it and BAM base damage was 93-142 or something like that).

That was enough base damage to destroy everything in act 2 easily, and I didn't upgrade it till act 3.

You just need damage and you will walk through the game. Leap slam takes care of everything. Try and pump your strength and get aftershocks in the tree. I highly recommend going Titan as well, first ascension get 15% more hp, second reset that, and get the 50% more from small nodes bonus, it's insane.

Head over to giants blood, you can even take it for now (but eventually it's not worth it to me). Tons of good mace abilities/bonuses, focus mostly on damage and try and get rage on hit and eventually max rage as well (don't waste time with the slower rage degen and longer before it starts nodes). Rage is a MORE multiplier and with the 50% smaller nodes bonus from titan you end up with around 50 max rage and 5-6 rage per hit. Means you get to max rage FAST, and can keep it going pretty well.

That should make getting to end game a snap, just keep upgrading your weapon and you don't even need to worry about defenses etc much until end game when you wo't be upgrading your equipment that much anymore.

Seriously it's cake. Yes, it's easier with a bow (personally think bow is easiest period), but you can totally rock with melee if you want.

[Backstabber 2008 Homosapien Karl]

Mace performs just fine. It bothers me though how few of the skills you can build around are actually, y'know, attacks with your weapon. Most "mace" skills are actually magic (not "spells" per the game's description, but thematically, they're pure magic).

Magical totem, magical shout, magical slams that sunder the earth, magical lava balls.

Asisde from Rolling Slam (clunky and downright silly looking), Armour Breaker, and Boneshatter, none of the mace skills are actually about the mace. That's ridiculous. And Armour Breaker and Boneshatter feel kind of bad, with the former just being a utility skill to shred enemy armour that no build will ever actually use because you can break armour through support gems on other, better skills. And Boneshatter has zero use outside of "primed to stun" and seems to have an awkward hitbox that whiffs point blank as often as it connects.

Maybe it's just me, but when I picked the Warrior and expected to use hammers, I kind of had this crazy idea that I'd actually hit enemies with my hammer.

[RodHull]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Backstabber 2008 ♥♥♥♥ Karl:

And Boneshatter has zero use outside of "primed to stun" and seems to have an awkward hitbox that whiffs point blank as often as it connects.

Maybe it's just me, but when I picked the Warrior and expected to use hammers, I kind of had this crazy idea that I'd actually hit enemies with my hammer.

I thought I was the only one who noticed this, its so annoying. I even specced into the node that means you can't do crits but never miss to test if it was an accuracy issue and it still whiffs like 30% of the time.

As it turns out the best mace attack, is the default mace attack. It auto becomes a high link skill and you just slam damage supports into it and do like 10xs more than other high tier skill. Weirdly

[thestile]

I tried a warrior and monk and couldn't stand it. I'm all Merc, sorceress, ranger and witch.
It feels like too much work to go melee.
I've had fun with the other classes though.

[Kisama]

I destroyed the campaign personally with an untwinked Warrior. The problem with them though is once you get to high end maps, armour is basically useless. Every ES/Evasion character will be far tankier than you will be. The only way I've found to make this less impactful is to use high block and 2h in 1h.

Being a warrior and being the least tanky character in the game is one of the dumbest design "choices" I've ever seen in any version of any RPG.

I suggest before anyone continues warrior, look up some info on how armour works (and blows chunks).

[Pencillus Sedatus]

monk is very strong, you can easily get through act 1 very quickly, but will meet some challenge on act 2, act 3 is easier since your character is stronger by then.

but comparing to range, like ranger and minion witch, it is not the same though.

[Plum]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Hubbfrosch:

I am now at lvl 27 in act 2 and struggle hard to beat the giant Zalmarath... a boss who is like 20 times the size of my avatar and the fight has all kinds of graphical glitches and $hit. I find my avatar bashing his hand until I run out of mana and give up because of boredom.

Instead of killing stuff with my mace, I am contstantly jumping around (leap slam), shield charge and similar garbarge to do some noticable damage. I have to use 4 or more skills some of them timed. Most laughable idea so far is 'resonating shield'. My avatar is standing there hitting his own shield with his mace making graphical effects... I know it is a fantasy game but imagine this in reality.

The passive skill points are nebulous: E.g. one node says '+5% block chance'. Sounds great... but it is 5% of 'something' and turns out to be just 1%? So 5 = 1?

Overall it is like in POE1: a casual gamer cannot play the game without using a guide.

Diablo did it better... 30 years ago.

Cant beat the second tutorial zone boss without a guide? You arent a gamer, stop lying to yourself.

[All Day I Dream About🪓]

Just hang on, brother, it will get better eventually. Had ton of fun dropping big hammer and pretty much deleting bosses in cruel, when I started maps it got even more ridiculous, here is a little demo:

https://youtu.be/fOoJGLTwMzs?si=tu_3jX9KU_JaLqTP

[thestile]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ding Chavez:

I destroyed the campaign personally with an untwinked Warrior. The problem with them though is once you get to high end maps, armour is basically useless. Every ES/Evasion character will be far tankier than you will be. The only way I've found to make this less impactful is to use high block and 2h in 1h.

Being a warrior and being the least tanky character in the game is one of the dumbest design "choices" I've ever seen in any version of any RPG.

I suggest before anyone continues warrior, look up some info on how armour works (and blows chunks).

I'm amazed that they didn't give toughness to the warrior. Truly bizarre design choice, or oversight

[wulfster42]

Warrior can be extremely tanky actually, he can use a 2 handed weapon in 1 hand and a shield or sceptre in the off hand. There are people who make titan minion only builds out there because the titan 50% bonus to small nodes is so freaking strong.

That can work for any defense, eshield/evasion, whatever, you can boost most things a ton with the titan ascension, get 15% more health (or go with the crushing blow/surprising strength combo).

Armor isn't the best ever in the game since it's so limited in what it reduces, but warriors are not forced into using armor. They are better with evasion and eshield then many of the other ascensions....and one of the best if using both (again...because of the titan node).

Not many ascensions can beat the versatility of hulking form. Others have more defense, some have more offense....but that one keystone adds around 40 extra nodes worth of bonuses on your passive tree, and you choose what they are. It's pretty huge.

Meanwhile melee rocks but...you need to know how to use it. There are good melee attacks for warrior, but I ALWAYS used both monk and warrior attacks for my melee characters. Why? Because they work so freaking good together, both bring so much to the table and there is no reason not to have a mace in one weapon setup and a q-staff in the other. It also works well with your weapon slot skill tree points. One specs in stun buildup/armor break and aftershock/mace bonuses, the other specs in cold buildup/penetration/attack speed etc.

You auto switch to the weapon you have a skill set to, so you can quickly ice strike a monster till it's frozen, drop a bell, then switch to your 2 handed mace and thrash themonster/bell and use perfect strike to finish it off.

Warrior (titan basically) is one of the strongest bases for builds in the game currently. There may be better options if you wanna specialize, but you can make a titan good at ANYTHING. That is it's greatest strength especially since you can now reset your whole passive tree pretty easily as many times as you want.

You can basically make one warrior character, choose titan, and end up playing every kinda build and specialize in every kind of weapon you want, with that one character right now.

While other ascensions may be better at certain things, and personally I think bow centered builds are the easiest to start with currently, Titan is the....well Titan of builds, able to do everything good.....not a jack of all trades, but a master of all trades that only gets beat out by other ascensions slightly in their specialties.

[Chris]

you are 100% miss reading whatever you are doing.

if it says +5% block chance, you are getting 5% block chance.
if it said 5% increased block chance, then yes, that is how percentages work.. you are getting an extra 5% ontop of what you have, which might be 1.

and anyone can play the game, if they are willing to read tooltips. noone needs a guide.