Melee Rework - When???

[Troy Muni]

I thought the devs were working on this as the top priority, but I don't see it in the patch notes. we have 7 casters that differ in name alone because melee isn't viable. I skimmed through the patch notes and did not see any mention of it. I can't believe a game with so much thought put into it would even release an alpha demo with such a massive gap between spell casting and melee, considering it has multiple melee focused classes.

[Varyn [GER]]

- "Each point of Strength now gives Armor Penetration"
- "Trinkets, debuffs (like bleed), etc now scale with spell power"
- "Lowered curse armor/resistance penalty from 4 + 1*NG+ to 3 + 0.66*NG+"
- "All weapons above tier 1 now also do damage based on character attributes, so for example swords now do a bit more damage depending on your Strength"
- "Weapon masteries increased to 5% bonus damage per point instead of 3%"

Sounds like some more or less serious buffs for melee and/or weapon focussed builds to me.

Wish they would increase the reach of melee weapons a tad. It always feels like 1 or 2 pixels short.

[𝑅ottenfruit11]

My first character was a warrior. I ignored everything but vitality and still managed to steamroll the first couple cycles of the game with no issues. Maybe people are just getting filtered? I'm hoping by the later cycles I won't be able to just hold down m2 and walk through every encounter. If anything melee needs to be nerfed as once you slap hungering onto a WA you are basically immortal unless something can hit you for your entire HP bar.

Omw to NG5 after another loot run and ill report back on if avatar can instakill or not.

[Celgaming]

Just did a NG4 alone with STR warrior. Level 35. Hit 39 at the end of it. Did full run, killed everything. Had 60 curse at some point. With final items normal hits did 12k crits at times and Avatar literally melted away and almost skipped the final phase. Used 2H axe and did the Citadel with sword and shield to avoid most projectile damage (blocks it entirely).

200 STR, 40 or so DEX and rest in HP. Ignored MP entirely and roll with the mana drink that gives mana off of melee hits. Basically meaning no mana cost when spinning. Had 1.5k health at the end. Only came close to dying in the 2nd last stages due to lightning bowmen hitting hard with 60 curse.

Had positive armor the entire run, around 400-600.

[Tsuru]

I play two handed axe berserk warrior. This patch was a HUGE buff to melee. Damage output was 2x-2.5x then before the patch.

[Ketec]

Curse penalty reduction is irrelevant - as a melee you will hit 100+ in no time.
Armor doesn't feel like it matters much - majority of the enemies seem to be elemental damage or poison/bleed.

I have yet to see how trinkets scale - nothing in their tooltips. Unless they only meant 1-2 specific trinkets.

[Troy Muni]

I'm glad it's working out for putting the results on par. However, I was really expecting to see something that actually balanced skills with % vs. flat damage AND reworked melee in a way that brought more variety to the way melee classes play.

After rereading I can see how you might be able to now wear different gear across classes for a change, but are you playing melee classes differently? It seems like you're still playing each class as a caster, except now strength gear just does more. Aren't all the skills with flat damage #'s still usesless by comparison?