Question for melee players

[Mican17]

Having been on the official d3 forums, I've seen the massive bitchfest by melee (in particular, barbarians). I understand that you guys want to stand toe to toe with monsters because that's what you rolled melee for. Have you considered, though, that if you could stand toe to toe with elites, where would skill come in? I mean, if you could not kite monsters and beat them, there would have to be an element that would make it somewhat difficult. Say, for example, a very precise timed rotation of skills you must use. But that seems impossible with the way D3 is designed. Therefore my question is, how else would blizzard balance undergeared melee if not require them to kite?

[Mnevis]

No one's saying that kiting shouldn't occasionally be necessary (with monster-appropriate gear), or that melee shouldn't need to ever move out of anything, or that melee should get to ignore effective health. Just that stacking survival stats and still having to usually kite, spending 90% of the time moving out of some crap or other (at monster appropriate gear) is pretty lame. Many monsters have some sort of extra-dangerous move; avoiding/countering that would still take some skill, right?

And if this is just troll-bait, well, where's the skill in 'burn rares before they can get to you', which is specifically the advice given in a DH thread I just read?

[Xothic]

They could start by having dedicated servers in Australia so that its actually possible for me to dodge projectiles and time attacks.

[Darsithis]

Most melee have ranged abilities. For instance, as a barbarian in hardcore, I always use Seismic Slam as my secondary ability. It hits up to 40 yards away for 202% weapon damage and knocks enemies all around. I've killed dozens of enemies without even once hitting them directly.

If you wanna succeed at a higher level, you'll need to learn to kite and strategically attack. I'll dart in, smack them up a bit, build some fury, leap back out, and slam.

[Cairhiin]

Most melee have ranged abilities. For instance, as a barbarian in hardcore, I always use Seismic Slam as my secondary ability. It hits up to 40 yards away for 202% weapon damage and knocks enemies all around. I've killed dozens of enemies without even once hitting them directly.

If you wanna succeed at a higher level, you'll need to learn to kite and strategically attack. I'll dart in, smack them up a bit, build some fury, leap back out, and slam.

You will indeed have to kite and dart around packs. Technically you already had to do this in Diablo 2 with an Assassin for instance. Also if you can find choke points in the map like doorways, and stairs, etc you should fight boss packs there. But I agree with Mnevis people are talking about skill if melee could just stand there and take it but even if we could live through desecrate, arcane beams, plague, and molten a lot of mobs have special hard hitting attacks that still need to be dodged. Ranged on the other hand just stands there and nukes before it gets to them.

[Darsithis]

You will indeed have to kite and dart around packs. Technically you already had to do this in Diablo 2 with an Assassin for instance. Also if you can find choke points in the map like doorways, and stairs, etc you should fight boss packs there. But I agree with Mnevis people are talking about skill if melee could just stand there and take it but even if we could live through desecrate, arcane beams, plague, and molten a lot of mobs have special hard hitting attacks that still need to be dodged. Ranged on the other hand just stands there and nukes before it gets to them.

They do. And this is why we stack resists and have a lot of cooldowns meant for dealing with that issue. I'll save my Ignore Pain for the last bit of the enemy so I can stand in his crap rather than run. I'll switch to Superstition for 20% reduce of magic damage. I'll use my War Cry for the life regen.

I don't think there is a way for melee to stand through that kind of damage, even with the best resist you can get, and I think that's good. It makes it strategic. I think it'd be insanely boring as a barbarian if I could just stand in one spot and smash faces all the time. I like that I have to rotate my cooldowns...leap out of the way, and try to corral my enemies into bottlenecks. It's the reason I haven't gotten bored even after losing my hardcores at 39 and 48.

[lordjust]

Having been on the official d3 forums, I've seen the massive bitchfest by melee (in particular, barbarians). I understand that you guys want to stand toe to toe with monsters because that's what you rolled melee for. Have you considered, though, that if you could stand toe to toe with elites, where would skill come in? I mean, if you could not kite monsters and beat them, there would have to be an element that would make it somewhat difficult. Say, for example, a very precise timed rotation of skills you must use. But that seems impossible with the way D3 is designed. Therefore my question is, how else would blizzard balance undergeared melee if not require them to kite?

There's nothing wrong with having to kite some mobs but for a lot of people the problem isn't that melees are hard to play and require a lot of skill and more important the right gear to progress through the game but that ranged classes have a much easier life. As a ranged DPS you still need a lot of skill on higher difficulty settings because you can maybe take a hit or two before you die but you don't really need good gear to progress through the game. You can simply go for full DPS and that's it. As a melee you have to take 1-2 hits when you plan on doing some damage (seismic slam and so on need rage that you have to build up first) because that's how they were designed. So you are forced to gear yourself up so that you can take 3-4 hits to do some damage, eat 1-2 hits and have enough life to get into a safe distance to regain some life.

People aren't bitching because melees are bad but because melees have to farm for days or spend some millions of gold in the AH to get the right gear and play a combination of tank and DPS and ranged classes can just play as a DPS and can beat the game without farming or buying gear.

So what should Blizzard do to balance this problem? They started to address this problem by giving melees a 30% physical damage resistance so that normal mobs aren't a problem anymore and Blizzard already said they plan on tweaking how much resistance you need and how stats are distributed on gear in inferno. So it will be a little bit easier to gear up in inferno and I think with these tweaks melees should be ok (because at the moment it's all about the gear). As for the ranged DPS Blizzard already nerfed some defensive skill from them so that they need to be at range and with tweaks to loot and resistances I think it will get a little bit easier for them because at the moment some ranged DPS bitch that they can't get enough resistances to take more hits and are forced to play a glass cannon where they have a zero tolerance.

[Ferocity]

and Blizzard already said they plan on tweaking how much resistance you need and how stats are distributed on gear in inferno.

Could you please add source on blue post stating this? I believe it could be stated, but trying to not miss a single blue on D3 so far, and didn't see anything about this, perhaps missed it.