Anyone have any success with a pure melee build?

[Katah]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but after many characters I've pretty much decided that a pure hack n slash type character is a no go. Build guides on the topic pretty much don't exist and when I do find one it's so outdated that most if not all of the skills have changed.

I've tried several times to make my own, but even with high glancing blow and block/dodge stats with life on hit I've barely made it past stage 25. The only character I've got that is even close to playable is a aura of decay wandering spirit build and basically its just running around trying not to get hit until everything dies.

Anyone have any melee builds or tips that might help me turn this around?

Thanks in advance!

[TaTo]

The problem is that some of the mob deal way too much damage so melee doesn't quite work well with all the one-shot non rare mob. Even i tried the druid in Werebear form with 1300 hp
80% armor, high glancing blow , 50-60% element resist but still get killed easily by a ton spamming projectile it either i kill them first or i get bombarded to death.

[AtmaShinobi]

best bet would be the mages spellblade master class. Mages can generate good ward which save you from speccing hp. they have good defense skill and teleport which is great for gettin the hell out of mobs that start overpowering you.

[AtmaShinobi]

they have flame reave (fire melee attack) shatter strike (cold melee attack) and run enchant weapon buffing melee dmg, run flame ward or ice ward or both for defense, teleport. or something, def some possibilities there

[Ban885]

I have a paladin 58, that has 87% reduced physical damage, 74% elemental reduction, but out right killed by void and necro damage,

[Katah]

Yeah I think I'm going to give up.

With some epics I got I can take a little more of a beating, but there are just too many mobs that one shot me - heck this happens with every character I've made actually. I'm thinking that it's going to be very hard to ever get out of the epics I'm wearing. Nothing I can craft is good enough to replace the huge damage loss I'd suffer. Crafting is also a bit frustrating as it seems I always fracture way too early and I can't get enough guardian materials to help get me to at least T3 although even using those it seems fractures happen way too often.

Anyways thanks for all the replies. Maybe closer to release there might be more balance and/or some changes. Was still a good purchase as I did have fun playing.

[matke587]

In my opinion fracture is weighted towards failure. The other night I had 12 items all shatter after placing 1 shard into it, using the rune of stability. Which left items on 99%. Used rune of stability on the next shard, ever single one fractured!

Do you know the odds of that happening? Based on rolling 100 on a 100 sided dice 12 times in a row? I worked it out. 1 in 1e24 chance...that's the same as one in one trillion trillion.

The odds of picking the winning jackpot lottery ticket, is tiny by comparison! Something like 17 million to 1 chance...

[Werric]

Have you tried getting to 100% glancing blow? I'm not anywhere close to being there yet but some stuff I've read (somewhere) suggests this helps heaps.

I definitely feel that melee is the poor cousin here which is unfortunate as I prefer playing melee and definitely suck at mages. I've played around (in lower levels) with beast master, druid and necro but basically they're all about running around trying not to step in anything or get hit while your pets/minions/totems kill stuff.

I'm currently level 37 with a Void Knight and I know what you mean about not seeing a path out of epics. I have gloves that give 100% to throwing damage and 51% to dodge rating, armor that amongst other things gives +12 strength and 70% to void damage, a helmet that gives 80% increased void damage and a shield that gives 70% less void damage. Can't seem me crafting anything to replace those.

I'm just an average gamer and will never make it high in any ladder rankings but that doesn't stop me enjoying the game. It's just a pity that my preferred game play is the poor cousin.

[Katah]

Originally posted by Werric:

Have you tried getting to 100% glancing blow? I'm not anywhere close to being there yet but some stuff I've read (somewhere) suggests this helps heaps.

I definitely feel that melee is the poor cousin here which is unfortunate as I prefer playing melee and definitely suck at mages. I've played around (in lower levels) with beast master, druid and necro but basically they're all about running around trying not to step in anything or get hit while your pets/minions/totems kill stuff.

I'm currently level 37 with a Void Knight and I know what you mean about not seeing a path out of epics. I have gloves that give 100% to throwing damage and 51% to dodge rating, armor that amongst other things gives +12 strength and 70% to void damage, a helmet that gives 80% increased void damage and a shield that gives 70% less void damage. Can't seem me crafting anything to replace those.

I'm just an average gamer and will never make it high in any ladder rankings but that doesn't stop me enjoying the game. It's just a pity that my preferred game play is the poor cousin.

I'm sitting at 80% glancing blow and a good 50% of that is in totems - every totem I'm using has glancing blow on it. As for my gear that I can still roll on I'm left with only the helm and the book looking slot forgot what its called. Other than that its all epics and there would be no way to craft anything to even think of replacing them - actually just heard the shattering glass fracture sound in my head while writing this.

I'm not sure if its going to help, but I've decided to branch out from the shaman tree and grab the melee life leech nodes so we shall see.

[Katah]

Originally posted by matke587:

In my opinion fracture is weighted towards failure. The other night I had 12 items all shatter after placing 1 shard into it, using the rune of stability. Which left items on 99%. Used rune of stability on the next shard, ever single one fractured!

Do you know the odds of that happening? Based on rolling 100 on a 100 sided dice 12 times in a row? I worked it out. 1 in 1e24 chance...that's the same as one in one trillion trillion.

The odds of picking the winning jackpot lottery ticket, is tiny by comparison! Something like 17 million to 1 chance...

Wow! You better buy some lotto because you are due with those odds. I do agree that the 25% fracture chance is way off. I'm not even sure if the 25% chance goes up or not as I shatter before being able to see.

[AtmaShinobi]

i use stability to get to T2 then guardian glyphs after that. i have mult. gear with my affixes up to t4 t5 on all four. shatter gear that has affixes you like to get the shards. crafting is for later game though, id say once youre past lvl 50. anything before that can be a waste both flame reave and even mana strike can do melee dmg in a large area. flame reave does well against mobs

[matke587]

@Katah...Yes that did cross my mind. Shame we're in lockdown. I don't think going to shop for lotto tickets is essential travel :(

[Hakimoto]

Melee builds never really work in ARPGs compared to their ranged counterparts because no matter how you slice it or dice it, melee ALWAYS takes more damage by virtue of being in melee range and being ranged means you can avoid a ton of damage.
You can't ramp up the ranged damage that mobs do because that will still hit the melee as they try to get to melee range. The only way to fix it is to either make melee users dish stupid amounts of damage to compensate, or make monsters deal less melee damage.
I've tried a lot of melee builds and the only one that worked was werebear. However, it has a very specific rotation and if you pop out of werebear form yer in trouble.

[Werric]

I agree @Hakimoto melee is never a good choice if you want to be top dog at end game or sometimes even make end game.

Instead of tinkering with mob damage another option would be to give melee a damage mitigation skill or skills specific to the class. Something that actually works because obviously glancing blow and dodge aint cutting it and they are not melee specific. All the current design/situation/balance/status quo means is that not enough thought is put into designing a viable melee class.

I read on another thread here that the devs went five skills to add diversity to play style and to make people think about their builds and how they want to play. With the way things are at the moment everyone might as well go necro with 1,000's (slight exaggeration) of minions killing everything in sight and no real effort needed by the player.

Just my 20 cents (inflation).

[Katah]

@Hakimoto and @Werric I disagree here. As most of us more than likely have, I play a lot of ARPG and I don't find melee builds lacking at all. One thing we have to establish right off the bat is my initial question of are melee builds viability was meant simply for playing not leader board pushing.

In Epoch melee builds are not a good choice for casual playing and here is why I believe that to be true.

IMO there are simple too many mechanics at work and not enough ways to successfully build mitigation. You have glancing blow, dodge, block, damage reduction and all manner of elemental resistances PLUS another set of resistances that also need to be addressed that don't scale with elemental resistances. This is just to survive and damage isn't even touched on yet. So the question begs - How do you get enough of the above at a high enough amount to actually mitigate damage? The short answer is you don't... you can't.

If you could craft whatever you wanted on any of the gear you had, say I wanted to get my block to a high enough amount that it would actually offer real protection then it might be doable, but as it is now you don't have that freedom. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only equipment I can craft block on is the shield. That is it and with fractures being the norm and not the exception, well, block is not worth it. I understand there are passives that give block chance, but from what I've found the % to block is so small you would have to invest in every block passive to even hope to make it work.

The above example applies to everything. You simply cannot get the numbers high enough to make anything work thus mobs appear to be OP.

Don't get me wrong I'm not down on the game. I'm here right? I'm going to keep trying to push the build just to see if tweaking one thing over another might be some miracle that brings it all together.

[Werric]

To answer your initial question I believe they are. I classify myself as casual and I'm finding my VK to be a lot of fun and fairly resilient to play. However I have two different ideas of melee, the ARPG type and the MMO type. Put simply and very basically - ARPG don't stand still or you die. MMO stand toe to toe and live.

That being said with my VK and the epics he has my shield throw skill does a ton of damage. I'm prioritizing damage, block and glncing blow through skills, gear etc. I guess I'm playing a sort of guerilla warfare type character. Throw, lunge, reave, warpath and back out. Often warpath is the skill I use to clear a path out. Rinse and repeat. I certainly don't see him as a toe to toe tank even though he is sword and board. I tried Juggernaut for a short while but it didn't suit this guy. Maybe I'll try another sentinel go Pally with Juggernaut and see how that goes. I have a feeling I know but it doesn't hurt to try.

As a side note has anyone found an epic one hander suitable for melee class? So far the only one hander I've found is a wand all the rest are two handers.