Fixing Melee (Warrior/Mace)

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golanov#0674 schrieb:

I haven't seen 2 possible suggestions here:
1. Increase attack speed on mace bases. I generally think that it would bethematically wrong to have many AS nodes in the red part of the Skill Tree, but increasing AS specifically for maces (items, not skills) might solve the clunky feeling partially.
2. I think, we might have some actually good implicits on Armor bases (items). The people were saying, that armor has nothing to do with elementals/chaos. This might solve it. Like, 30% fire resistance on body armor or something like that. Or having + max resistances on armor bases.

The problem is not so much the attack speed, but lack of tools to make it work. Mace SHOULD be fairly slow. I mention one thing that would help, though, and that is how hard coded animations seem to be, you can't break animation lock after completing an attack which makes it very clunky to use other skills after. They need to speed up the "end" of many mace attacks by a few frames, or let you begin attacking/moving sooner. Other than that, Wind Up would fill in the rest. As for Armor being bad, more tools like passives and persistent buffs would help fix Armor's issues. I wouldn't say no to more base armor implicits (though that means other armor types should get some, too) but passives and other tools to give us more damage reduction and improve Armour's effectiveness along with a significant red side Life boost would go a long way.

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I completely agree with almost everything said here. 2 main points about mace skills seem very important to me for "good gameplay":
a) Let me use WASD movement while I'm using all the skills, not just slamming my shield with a mace.
b) I like the idea of Wind Up and Pay off. But I don't think we need those tags. Generally, just make some Skills to generate power charges and others to spend it. Because mechanically this is the same thing. One thing is a "starter" and another is a "finisher". The same "binary" system is on Endurance charges (generate/use). I don't think we need additional tags on skills, because we can simply use existing ones.

WASD to turn during skills, sure, gotten quite used to using mouse to move Rolling Slam myself. We definitely need Wind Up IMO, not only would it impact more than just mace skills as most skillsets have some "wind up" time skills (Pay Off is already a tag), it would open up a lot more options such as Sunder as a main skill and give us some of that critical extra speed we need with some Wind Up improving passives and support gems. We should remain "slow" but it needs to be able to keep up with map mob speed, and simply reducing the wind up across the board isn't enough and shouldn't be the fix. As a game built around build variety, Wind Up tag expands it.

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I also have an issue with the current armor in general. The thing is, all the other "defenses" multiply each other. So, having ES multiply your health BUT it is also affected by resistances, so not only do you have much more "health" than actual "health-stacking" characters, but you also can survive MUCH more elemental damage. Same for evasion. You can increase your health AND resistances AND evasion (with Acrobatics). Tailwind on my Deadeye also gives me "30% less damage taken" so I just don't die, except for Damage over Time effects (like bloody tornados in Ritual or Burning Ground).
The thing with armor is that it has a crazy scaling formula. Like, why can't you just block a certain percentage of physical damage without any dependency on enemy damage on hit? Overall most Armor must be reduced accordingly, but I see this as the only solution long-term. Let armor scale the same way evasion does but with a guarantee instead of a chance to negate all the damage.
Another global issue with armor is that it just doesn't protect you from anything BUT physical damage. So, there is no multiplying here either. Something like "+max resistance percentage for a piece of armor worn" (up to +5%: +2 for body part and +1 for head/hands/boots) or some other ways to boost multiplicatively all of those other sources of damage is a necessity if armor-based builds don't feel like a paper in the endgame.

True, ES is just flat out superior EHP, and Evasion has a ton of power and benefit cranking it out. Armour does not. Hence my various other recommendations. It's biggest problem is its lack of tools, followed by lack of Life, so as said above I doubt we need to touch Armour itself all that much if they'd give us more DR options and enough Life to survive the bigger hits. Another flat buff to improve scaling for bigger hits would be nice, though, but it wouldn't need much if we have good tools.

1. Ok, I agree that maces should be very slow. Not THAT slow, though! I agree with your solution as well, BUT I don't think GGG would do it. Too much work at the moment. You can simply change a bunch of numbers on mace bases and we'll get a much better feeling. Sure, not as good as yours, but yours involves the intensive work of the whole animation team, mine could be done with a single person changing some values. I think that this "patch" solution should be implemented kinda right now, but it would be best to implement yours in the long run. So fix it now, please, so that we can play AND then start to make it better mechanically.

2. I generally believe that WASD should work in combination with the mouse. So, IF you use only a mouse, you move very little distance, BUT you're very precise. If you use WASD AND the mouse, you move larger distances but are less "agile" on the corners. Moreover, let me attack forward (cursor in the upward direction) while pressing my S-button, so I basically would stay in place. Mechanically it would feel much better. Because right now in every other class (looking for sparks >_>), you use the mouse to aim AND movement command at the same time. I'd like to do the same on Melee skills, please (if it's not a blink).

3. I haven't noticed the Pay Off keyword. Then, sure, we need a Wind Up one. Like, giving to the next skill better attack/cast speed or something, sure.

4. I mean, it's like in the first part of this post. Generally, you think that they should "patch" Armor to work right now and I believe that they should rework it with significant efforts. But I mean, yeah, in the short term put some nodes in the tree, but don't call it a day, start working on revisioning the mechanic itself.

5. And finally. I really like implicit on various armor and weapons. Sure, add more of those, please. It might be just me, but there is a crossbow with a shorter reload time. PLEASE make the base reload time the same (0.8 base) and add these sweet sweet letters, telling me that THIS crossbow reloads, like, 25% FASTER. It is basically the same but I want to see it in a separate line, not looking for every number the base has.