Will melees ever get a break?

[melodramocracy]

I don't really know how monks work but maybe has a lot to do with the fact that DHs have stronger damage passives? Not sure about that, so don't quote me, but seems logical. With that, keep in mind that the classes are not directly comparable. From the top of my head, I don't think DHs have a single defensive passive in their arsenal. Also, if you run into a DH with the same stats as you; 850 resist and 30k HP, you as a monk will still have better mitigation overall because you get a free 30% damage reduction. DHs don't have that.

The problem with monks is they do have plenty of self-heal tricks up their sleeve. But this game is somewhat of a drag race as far damage. The toon that can damage the fastest will generally do better, even if it comes at the cost of survival in most situations. And going pure offense as a monk seems more or less out of the question.. maybe it's possible with very high end and specific gear, but certainly not beforehand.

The problem with the upcoming patch is that it doesn't really balance much of anything, given what we know so far. Yes, mobs are going to be slightly less absurd in inferno, but attack speed is also taking a significant hit (which in turn will hurt monks a lot), as well as repairs going up (which was probably the worst solution to the zerg problem that they could have chosen.). So really, it seems like little is going to change, and ranged will still have a very big advantage.

[Deleted]

Your constantly saying i am overlooking things, that i am not overlooking, while you make an obvious misquote of me. "some of the best possible gear" and "the best possible gear" is far from the same sentence. The only way i am overlooking what your saying is, if i agree price is not a factor.

Right... 'cause some of the best gear is so far from the best gear. It's a tomato and tomatoe sort of phrasing. The point that I was trying to make was that the guy in the video, has maybe slightly better than average survival gear, for someone playing act IV. As I've said couple of times now, there are DHs with far, far better gear them him, and you don't even need as much as he has to play the game at the later acts.

The threshold to make survival gear work is high, as I also said before, but it is not so high that you need to have 800 resist and 50k HP to get started. You can clear acts I and II with less than that, incrementally increasing as you go forward and it does not cost 100mil gold as you claim.

You insists that price is no factor, which is stupid on its face. We are talking about how viable one approach to gearing is compared to another. So if a full set costs 5-10mill or 100mill is a huge factor. There is no way in hell i will be able to match his gear set, any time soon, unless the gear becomes significantly cheaper. even if i buy 1 item at a time after i bought a glass cannon set, and the only thing he has that my dh does not, is the ability to stand in fire on diablo fight. Which again, really means nothing

Odds are if he can take a hit from Diablo's fire, melee and whatever else he did, he can take hits from a lot of things. The only time that DH gear is cheap, is when you are first gearing up for acts I and II. That is the part that doesn't cost a lot. I was able to get up and around 50k DPS, by buying smart, with maybe a 4mil gold total. Sometime after that however even DPS gear will begin to cost millions and is where it evens out with survival gear. As I said before, I am currently able to spend between 1-2mil gold on a piece and get not only a significant boost to my survivability but also an increase to my damage. That's not a lot, when any good DPS piece like Andariel's Visage for example goes for 4mil on the trade forums, at minimum and increases fast depending just how good stats it rolled. You can maybe get one for 2-3mil gold if you're lucky but even then it is around the same price as my current survival gear.

So, I will reiterate for the last time now; at high end, survival gear is not drastically more expensive. You only need to be patient and diligent in looking for good bargains.

So the reason i insist on arguing it, is because you think you can just dismiss my my view, by simply pointing to people in insanely expensive gear standing in the fire on a boss fight, simply because you dont think gold is a factor. It is kind of insulting really, to disagree is one thing, but the attitude your showing.. geez.

The only view that I am dismissing, or more accurately debunking is that using a defensive build as a DH is a bad choice or is in any way gimping your character, as you've claimed on this thread. If anything, those who've been successful in building a balanced survival/damage set are thriving.

If some people want to continue playing glass cannon, I have no objections. In fact, I would welcome such diversity. I would however like to see die-hard glass cannon players stop insisting that survival builds don't work or you're gimping yourself by using one.

---------- Post added 2012-06-19 at 03:17 AM ----------

The problem with monks is they do have plenty of self-heal tricks up their sleeve. But this game is somewhat of a drag race as far damage. The toon that can damage the fastest will generally do better, even if it comes at the cost of survival in most situations. And going pure offense as a monk seems more or less out of the question.. maybe it's possible with very high end and specific gear, but certainly not beforehand.

The problem with the upcoming patch is that it doesn't really balance much of anything, given what we know so far. Yes, mobs are going to be slightly less absurd in inferno, but attack speed is also taking a significant hit (which in turn will hurt monks a lot), as well as repairs going up (which was probably the worst solution to the zerg problem that they could have chosen.). So really, it seems like little is going to change, and ranged will still have a very big advantage.

Aye, I do agree that it isn't the best solution Blizzard could have come up with. Sure it might maybe deter some glass cannons, particularly those who aren't necessarily very good with it and only play it because the initial gear up was cheap ... or because someone convinced them that it was the only way to go.

I don't necessarily agree that the difference between the two is that bad though. Ranged, at least demon hunters, are designed for very high damage but less survivability, while melees are designed to deal less damage but have higher survivability. As long as melee are able, within reason, to reach a level of damage where they can kill mobs without hitting the enrage timers, I don't necessarily see the problem. It will take a little long but so what? Even at 50k damage I can kill elites in act III pretty comfortably, so the damage you need to reach isn't as high as one might think.

Big problem with common perception is that it is marred by all these 100k, 150k, 200k DPS demon hunter streams and videos that people are putting out. It makes people think they need to reach such ridiculous numbers or they are some how flawed.

[Deleted]

If you're going to defend an asinine comment, at least have a reason why it's a good idea. They actually said that increased repair costs would help melee.

Defend that.

The other changes WILL help melee. I don't dispute that. Increasing death penalties helps no one.

IDK what death zerging even is. As if this is some tactic we OP ranged like to use. It's something that just happens when you get one-shot by OP combos, OP damage, and unavoidable garbage. And yes, even melee get destroyed by that stuff. How is increasing repairs helping other than to discourage players from even trying to progress? Or encouraging them to skip things?

In short: less fanboyism please.

Death zerging is dragging a elite pack close to a spawn point then dying as many times as required to kill at least 1-2 of the mobs, then kill it. This works far better for ranged because they can jump right into kiting with their short cooldowns, and even if the mobs aren't that close to the spawn point, ranged can re-enter combat before the health reset.

This will help melee because it won't be a good thing to death zerg on a ranged character, evening out the potential progress of the different classes in the hands of the same player. So we might also see less farming on ranged characters to boost their melee chars, assuming ofc that they want to actually farm with their melee in the first place.

They have also said in the past, they'd rather nerf the higher down to a medium (or balanced) position, in line with what they feel is working properly, i certainly wouldn't have wanted them to increase damage on anti-range affixes or something.

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

No joke, just gave in and unloaded about 4 million gold so that act three would be doable (after already spending a culminative total of about 6 million to get to where I am in act three). Currently on my Barb i have 1200 resists (with impunity buff) and 980 LoH. 9885 armor; and 57k health. I still get stampeded by white mobs like a grape on train tracks. Shit is honestly stupid ridiculous at the present moment. The first time in my life I can understand the need for some form of nerfs.

[Deleted]

No joke, just gave in and unloaded about 4 million gold so that act three would be doable (after already spending a culminative total of about 6 million to get to where I am in act three). Currently on my Barb i have 1200 resists (with impunity buff) and 980 LoH. 9885 armor; and 57k health. I still get stampeded by white mobs like a grape on train tracks. Shit is honestly stupid ridiculous at the present moment. The first time in my life I can understand the need for some form of nerfs.

with those stats you are doing something wrong sir.

[Deleted]

I really dont see how it will help melee more. What ranged class death zergs anything other than rare random shit packs, most people I know skip them. Not saying it doesnt happen of course, but why bother banging your head against one pack when you can skip and kill another.

Because on Inferno these shit packs get an enrage timer added as well. It starts when you engage it and it persists through death. Eventually your health will just start going down inexplicably.
So if you engage a pack, decide it's too much work and run on, you better be going down a floor in the cathedral or leaving a random spawned cave. If you stay on the same 'map', you will die to it.
Now imagine an Extra Health one a long way away from the checkpoint D:

[Thaendra]

I don't necessarily agree that the difference between the two is that bad though. Ranged, at least demon hunters, are designed for very high damage but less survivability, while melees are designed to deal less damage but have higher survivability. As long as melee are able, within reason, to reach a level of damage where they can kill mobs without hitting the enrage timers, I don't necessarily see the problem. It will take a little long but so what? Even at 50k damage I can kill elites in act III pretty comfortably, so the damage you need to reach isn't as high as one might think.

Big problem with common perception is that it is marred by all these 100k, 150k, 200k DPS demon hunter streams and videos that people are putting out. It makes people think they need to reach such ridiculous numbers or they are some how flawed.

I don't find this to be true at all. My main is a monk and my alt is a DH: my monk has killed inferno diablo with a group, but soloing on it is so so painful. My DH has progressed solo through inferno further than my monk, and the places my monk has progressed though solo, my DH has progressed through those places both more quickly AND successfully, meaning I was able to clear elites in those acts on my DH 9 times out of 10 when my monk was either not able to or it became too frustrating. I would also say that I did not die significantly more on my DH than on my monk, because most of the deaths that could potentially happen to me on my DH are generally controllable by me and I just messed up.

I think people also forget, monks (and probably Barbs too) have a very strict requirement as to which abilities they can use because they will not survive otherwise. My DH, on the other hand, has quite a loose build. Other than Prep and Smokescreen, I've seen a whole range of abilities being used. Even while farming act 3 I find occasion to test out new builds, whereas on my monk even trying to DO act 3 is rather rough if I'm not using something near-cookiecutter.

Btw, I would say my DH's gear probably cost, I dunno, maybe 1/3rd or less of my monk's gear. I haven't even been arsed to progress the DH further because I simply "like" my monk more, so I use the DH as a farmbot. The real problem is that a lot of ranged (read: not all) can beat things by "playing better" and have the opportunity to utilize their abilities to the fullest because they are not forced to receive damage if they can find a way around it (with the exception of reflect packs, which is why a lot of glass cannons complain about these). On my monk, you can definitely get further by playing better, but simply playing better won't make you win vs the elites if the gear isn't there. This isn't quite the case for ranged (DH especially), except maybe with Azmodan. That is one fight where you do have to try pretty hard if you don't have the DPS yet.

[Anjerith]

Imagine back when D2 came out, the internet was a much more remote place and people pretty much had to fend for themselves.

The answer to being unable to complete a difficulty was to dupe items or to buy them or to keep farming. Two of three options remain.



As a melee-exclusive player, I feel the pain of having to chase stuff down and constantly run away. I can confidently say that that is how Diablo 2 was with melee as well though; hit as long as you can stand it and run like hell.

[Kronik85]

with those stats you are doing something wrong sir.

He's speaking the truth, what he did wrong was fail to overexaggerate his success's unlike the retards that tell you they are farming with shit gear in A3 or whatever but cherry picking elite packs, skipping certain tile sets (Barracks I'm looking at you) and dying all the fucking time.

The only time you can DPS shit in A3+ as a Barb is during the Iron Impact buff. Seriously man try running into Soul Rippers, Skull Cleavers and Tremor's without Iron Impact running and tell me what happens. Hell most of the stuff in the out doors tile sets is bad enough, the Plague Harbringers will fuck you if you ever get pinned in and Molok damage is rofl worthy, not to mention power strikes from Blood Clan or Fallen Leader's will take off 1/3 of your HP with the sort of gear he's talking about.

So ye, actually experience A3 Inferno as a Barb before you start telling them they are doing it wrong.

[Keile]

With 1.03 hitting today and Act2-4 being nerfed in Inferno, we melee might just be getting the break we need. But this cannot be confirmed until the servers come back up...

Patch notes were vague about the nerf, they simply state that the damage from the mobs was reduced, but not by how much. This makes me think that not all mobs damage was reduced, or if they were not by the same amount, which makes sense since certain mobs were fine whereas others hit you like a Mac Truck doing that was being propelled by a jet engine down the highway....

[Firecrest]

Because on Inferno these shit packs get an enrage timer added as well. It starts when you engage it and it persists through death. Eventually your health will just start going down inexplicably.
So if you engage a pack, decide it's too much work and run on, you better be going down a floor in the cathedral or leaving a random spawned cave. If you stay on the same 'map', you will die to it.
Now imagine an Extra Health one a long way away from the checkpoint D:

False. I park elite groups fairly often on Inferno. I don't know exactly how the elite enrage works, but I can tell you for certain that you can park a pack and leave it there all day with no problem.