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The original was posted on /r/pathofexile by /u/NugNugJuice on 2025-01-03 18:51:15+00:00.

There have been a lot of posts on this subject. What I’ve noticed is that people have many different opinions about what the problem with melee is.

Some think that the problem is that ranged is too strong, some think that melee should be given more damage to compensate and others have many different opinions.

Ranged, overall, feels good to play and, in my opinion, better than in PoE1. Some builds are overpowered right now, but ranged as a whole is not overpowered. Making it feel bad to play so melee players don’t feel as clunky is not the way.

Giving more damage to melee to fix the problem is also not a good solution. Melee can already deal great damage, the problem is that there’s so much more risk in getting that damage off than there is when playing ranged. Just compare %attack damage numbers of skills and base weapon damage on melee weapons vs bows and crossbows. It makes or pretty clear that damage is not the issue here. Also, it’s PoE, endgame builds could measure their damage in bosses per second. A little damage boost won’t be a game changer. There would also be the consequence of them balancing enemies around that damage increase, then making ranged feel weak.

I think melee’s bad state comes down to 5 core problems.

1 - Survivability

Ranged has an innate advantage of being able to kill from a distance and to see some projectiles coming sooner. Melee needs to get into the battle first, which means melee will get hit. A solution to balance this out would be a mechanic like fortify, where melee characters are made tankier to compensate. However, I don’t think PoE1’s fortify is enough to help the clunky feeling of going in killing a pack and then using a life flask every single pack. Therefore, fortify would also need to provide %life regeneration.

2 - Stun

Melee does get one advantage in PoE2, 50% more stun buildup. That sounds great… if stun worked like in PoE1. In PoE2, stun is strange. It doesn’t last very long at all and you cannot scale the duration. This is weird considering electrocute and freeze both last much longer and don’t require much investment to build up quickly. Sure, stun builds up alongside the other ailments, so it could be seen as a nice extra, but stun is inconsequential if you’re already freezing or electrocuting. I think the solution here is to simply buff stun. Let us invest into stun duration and make its effects more consistent on rare enemies (many rares’ skills seem to bypass stun).

3 - Mobility

Ranged characters could move while attacking. This feels good. Why can’t melee move while attacking with strikes at the very least? Sure there are some attacks like rolling slam, but even then the control you have during it is not as fluid as Ranger. Not only that, but melee needs that mobility to deal damage on top of defenses… maybe melee should be able to move while attacking with a lower penalty than ranged.

4 - The “Gap” (Mobility Part 2)

Enemies are usually far and most have ranged options. This is not an obstacle for ranged builds, but it is for melee. The fix: gap closers. We have gap closers already, like leap slam, so what’s the problem? Leap Slam is slow and damage can be taken during it. Make it faster and give damage reduction during it (its damage could be lowered to compensate for the DR).

5 - Animation Times (Mace Skills)

This one is pretty obvious, but what were they thinking when adding invariable animation time. It looks nice, but it’s 2 seconds of getting hit and 2 seconds longer to kill a pack of monsters. There are 2 solutions. Either make it scale with attack speed (or skill speed at least) or lower the time and give a way to add damage reduction during animations (molten shell support?).

Now, I didn’t mention Life vs ES or how weak armour is because I think those are separate issues even if they are heavily related to melee. I wanted to focus more on the melee fundamentals and how to make it feel better to play.

EDIT: I say melee because I think Duelist, Marauder and Druid will also have similar problems to Warrior. Many of these points only apply to Warrior/Maces for now, but it will affect more later because these are fundamental issues with some game mechanics. Monk has convenient solutions for all these problems, but it’s unlikely the others will.

Survivability - ES is currently insanely strong with built-in recovery, if it gets nerfed, monk may notice this more.

Stun - Monk relies on freeze and electrocute instead.

Mobility - Combo skills have good mobility built in.

Gap Closers - Monk (Staves) has multiple.

Animation Time - Warrior specific for now.