Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[Bizono]

I'm cruising through Hell SC with a defensive spec'd Barb. Only thing that has given me any trouble at was one elite pack with a particularly unfriendly set of mods (extra fast, shielding, those flame rope thingies, iirc) and I skipped them after dying a few times. Bosses are trivial - I just sit there holding the attack key and spamming revenge when it procs. I have over 40k health at level 57, and I try to find gear with life on hit, ele and phys resists, stam, vit, and +life %. Killing stuff is slow, but I generally just drag as many mobs into one spot and blast them down with revenge procs, occassionally using a health pot for elite/champ packs.

Now, it's probably true that offensive oriented Barb (or Monk) specs are struggling to stay alive in Hell and Inferno. Can't speak to that. But defensive spec'd Barb through Hell is fairly easy (only deaths through Act 2 was to previously mentioned elite pack).

My current spec: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...Veb!accbZY

Going to switch to Impunity for Inferno or at level 60, and might drop Threatening Shout for Earthquake to help speed up killing bosses etc. But I wanted to play a defensive juggernaut, and that's what this spec does and does well.

[Hocus_]

Hi all,

I used to post here a long time ago under the name Hocus. It appears that name is still registered here but I've long since lost the password and don't have access to the email account it's registered to, hence the new account.

From the outset let me say that so far I've only read Sirian's initial post and Bolty's reply.

To give some context, I solo killed Inferno Belial on my Barbarian a couple days ago.

I share your frustrations with the state of melee in Diablo 3, Sirian. It seems that there is a disproportionate amount of melee unfriendly affixes on champions compared to ranged unfriendly affixes. You're also right in saying that, at least initially, you are forced to run away a lot, which would seem to be the antithesis of the Barbarian, the master of melee.

But there is hope. It does change. As was the case in Diablo 1 and 2, the melee classes are extremely gear dependant. I went from getting my arse handed to me in Act 1 Inferno, to now having Act 2 Inferno on farm status, thanks largely to several gear upgrades, as well as a major rethink of the skills I was using.

To explain more, my current build is the following:

Frenzy w/ Sidearm
Revenge w/ Provocation
Ignore Pain w/ Iron Hide
Leap w/ Iron Impact
Furious Charge w/ Dreadnaught
War Cry w/ Impunity

My passives are Nerves of Steel, Tough as Nails and Superstition.

The premise of the build is simple: I cycle through Leap and Ignore Pain cooldowns to tank all the incoming damage, then use Revenge to keep myself up. If the situation gets dicey, I have Furious Charge for a health top up or an escape. Leap can be used in the same way. In using this strategy, I am able to overcome the immense damage thrown my way, at least up until the end of Act 2 Inferno. Champions with Arcane Enchanted still wreck me, but I'm prepared to accept that.

I thought much the same way you did initially, but the answer really is, "It's the gear, stupid!" I managed to pick up a String of Ears with 17% damage reduction on it tonight and the difference is immense. The same applies to a buddy of mine who went from being killed repeatedly in Act 1, to picking up a Justice Lantern, Stormshield and String of Ears and putting Belial on farm status.

Anyway, don't give up hope, it does change later. There are many examples of supremely geared Barbarians clearing Inferno Act 2 and 3 with 2-hander builds, so you won't be forced to play a tank forever if you don't want to, as I have little interest in doing. Unfortunately it seems the optimal way to gear up is through being an AH Baron, (I made about 3 million today in sales) which I think should definitely change -- if Blizzard insists on making rares the be all and end all, then there should be some way to progressively obtain your goal, rather than having to endlessly farm Act 1 Inferno over and over, or get lucky with a drop. But I don't think it's as bad as people are saying it is, and with time, it will only get easier.

[kandrathe]

Well to me it isn't just beating, it also shouldn't be tedious. Ranged characters didn't have tedium for me in D2, and with the exception of some Paladin builds (including, yes, POST-LoD Zealots of several kinds), melee always did. Mind you I never played a Pikebarb when they were the done thing. I've tried every kind of mastery, dual wielding, two handing, sword-and-board, and I've had every skill except Increased Stamina, Natural Resistance, Leap and Bash at 20 at some point. And every time I ended up with a tedious build. Paladins at least had their utility belt of auras for fixing a lot of dismal situations. I even enjoy Weredruids (of either kind) to a point. But melee 'Sins and Barbs are just plain tedious, and that shouldn't be. The Warrior was never tedious. Might be your experiences were different, though. Games should be fun.

So maybe it is not that Melee was wrong (difficult), so much as it was that ranged classes (and meat shielders) who kite had it easier. What was missing then were enough challenging (difficult) mobs for the ranged attackers. So, I see this more as a balance issue than a melee issue. The nature of melee is to have the fortitude, armor, resistances to go toe to toe with the worst. But, because a ranged glass cannon could prance through naked in DI or DII doesn't make melee broken, it shows the imbalance of H2H versus Ranged. Hopefully in DIII, if this games balance is not broken, ranged classes should be more fearful of physical attacks and we will not be able to merely kite ourselves out of danger.

But, aye, my lewt farming characters in DII were a level 80's Sorceress and an Amazon, where I could swap all their gear for high magic find gear, and kill entire zones quickly safely from a screen or two away. There are many things that were "broken" with ranged characters. To name a couple, the unreality of being able to spam ranged attacks, then without terrain acting as a barrier and consummately the inability of MOBS to have an even chance to hurt or close (due to bad AI) with their ranged attackers. Going back to even paper and pencil RPG basics, melee classes have an advantage in narrow twisty "dungeon" type spaces, and ranged characters were always better in fields, or large rooms. In order to make a game like Diablo work, you need to give the ranged character some meat shield to enable them to solo the twisty passages.

For my Barbarian's hireling, I prefer the Enchantress, (brain dead banter aside). If hireling killing power were on par with a player character Wizard, or Demon Hunter my Barbarian could focus on tanking (and healing myself), to let her kill the mobs. They can tweek alot of little things to even things out. If the potion cool down were a little less I could heal myself better, or if each hireling had an option for party healing it might also help. Or, maybe it is just accepting that the melee classes need for gear is normal, and that other classes lack of need for gear is what may be unbalanced and broken.

All in all, I'm hopeful they will get to a good balance on all this.

Afterthought: I was thinking also about what is done well in WOW for comparison. Certain mechanics, like only certain attacks can be done in Melee distances, and that mostly ranged attacks needed to be made against ranged targets. There really aren't any spammed "Spray and Pray" AOE skills (except possibly Barrage which I don't really use). They can make some mobs harder to hit (dodge, ranged dodge) with game mechanics too. The mechanics are such that for Hunter, melee is only really used to apply cc, and allow to kite to range where you can do much more damage. But, it is a vastly different game. I CC targets with traps, and use a Pet to off tank, while I focus on the ONE target I want to kill. Diablo's game style is to have lots of mobs rushing at you where every class needs some form of massive AOE (For my Barb, it's Rend and Earthquake). The pressure on balancing the Diablo character is that they need to have it all. They need to be able to tank (or CC/dodge), heal, have enough single point damage for champion/boss, and also some type of AOE for plowing through trash mobs.

[Hocus_]

Yeah, the Enchantress is the objectively best hireling for the Barbarian for her armour buff alone. 15% armour buff? Yes please.

[ErickTheRed]

I've lurked forever, and it's fun to see names from way back again.

For what it's worth I'm enjoying my Barbarian through the beginning of act 1 Inferno so far. I've been able to keep the style of play I want even though I've been forced to pick some runes or skills that I didn't initially have in mind.

I decided I wanted to play a defensive oriented build with some mobility and crowd control that has the ability to go in and fight for a while then break off and engage again as necessary. I'm not trying to make a pure tank and I don't feel that I've been forced to. In particular I use leap most often to get away from trouble, I don't like Ignore Pain which seems very popular and I insist of using a fury dump skill for my secondary attack since I want the fury mechanic to be part of my character.

Not all Barbarian skills that give life back are equal, and refusing to use one of the better ones probably would make a build not viable. Early on I was using Rend with the life return rune to take care of crowds. At some point I decided I needed to swap in Revenge which does that job so so much better. I'd prefer it if I could use life gain from Rend or Whirlwind instead, but oh well.

I use the AH, but I don't think I've bought anything so rare that would support a claim that it would only be on the RMAH. I make about 100-200K gold a play session including selling of a few items I find, and I use that to shop for one item to upgrade for next time. If I put filters for Vitality, Strength, and Resist All and a limit of 50K I see a bunch of items listed. So while I'm not personally finding many upgrades they can't be all that rare.

I have many interesting pack fights. I certainly can't stand my ground against packs, but I don't feel like I'm kiting an excessive amount, and lots of interesting tactical situations arise. I like drawn out battles where I don't die but am rarely fully healed either, and I'm constantly having to think about when best to use my charge to get some more life back.

I know I'm going to hit a wall sometime, either at the start of act 3, or earlier. Although not ideal, I'm ok with that for now. It will be pretty far in, and I will have had a lot of fun along the way. There are certainly some warts, but I haven't found things to be completely broken.

[ViralSpiral]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...XeV!aZbcZY That's what I was looking at for a defence-oriented Barbarian. Perhaps you, Sirian, and/or Bolty can critique that.

[kandrathe]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...XeV!aZbcZY That's what I was looking at for a defence-oriented Barbarian. Perhaps you, Sirian, and/or Bolty can critique that.

My .02... I haven't been too thrilled with Sidearm. I use Vanguard now, and will try out Maniac later to see if thats the rune I really want. I have the same secondary. In Defensive, I switch most between Leap for everyday use and Ignore Pain/IIB for Boss battles. I use Revenge, VIM now... I might go Retribution Rune for more dmg... I don't know that I need it to proc more often... but maybe... In Tactics, I used only do what you have, but I'm playing with War Cry/Hardened Wrath sometimes now. Invigorate and Impunity looks interesting for later. I haven't messed with WOTB since I have no Runes for it yet, but it looks interesting. ForPassive I also like Nerves of Steel, and Bloodythirst.

[Nystul]

Diablo's game style is to have lots of mobs rushing at you where every class needs some form of massive AOE (For my Barb, it's Rend and Earthquake). The pressure on balancing the Diablo character is that they need to have it all. They need to be able to tank (or CC/dodge), heal, have enough single point damage for champion/boss, and also some type of AOE for plowing through trash mobs.

I can't help but feel that games of this sort became less interesting when we moved away from dividing the monsters and limiting exposure to attack and moved towards killing everything at once with AOE skills. DII and a lot of it's clones seem flawed in this aspect. And it's the melee characters who really suffer the consequences. Sometimes in these games it feels like either you are guaranteed to win the battle or guaranteed to lose it. Turning a bad hand into a good one through mild use of the brain was sorely lacking.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah, I remember one of the mods from 1.09...Wheelman's. My friends and I called it the "crowd control mod" because it upped the monster density so high that it was pointless to use any single target form of attack except against act bosses. Gobs and gobs of monsters would spring from every crevice. But I guess the ultimate goals of the game encourage this sort of product; if, ultimately, your goal is harvesting monsters for experience and/or rare items, then killing the most possible monsters yields the most chances for those shiny rare drops, and thus AoEs are rewarded and realistic (i.e. non-weapon-mage) style melee attacks are punished. D1 had sturdy mobs in smallish packs, compared to the weak hordes we see in D2/3. Of course half the good items in D1 came from Wirt, too. So yeah.

[ErickTheRed]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...XeV!aZbcZY That's what I was looking at for a defence-oriented Barbarian. Perhaps you, Sirian, and/or Bolty can critique that.

I'm not quite sure what this build is trying to do. Rend and Inspiring Presence make me think you want to hit enemies and then get away and let the bleed tick while you heal, but there aren't any other skills to help you do that. Do you want to play solo, in a group, or both? Are you restricting yourself to not use elective mode?

War Cry with Impunity is one of the power skills. If you aren't using that because you feel you don't have enough resistance for it to be worth it, then get more resistance. Resistance, Life and Armor all get better when you have more of the rest.

[ViralSpiral]

Well the idea was stacking on almost all the life leech options, combined with neutering the enemies as much as possible. I'm trying to see if I have a hold on the flow of gameplay proper and understand which skills are more defencive or offencive (note: you may be missing some context here - I don't currently own a computer which can run D3, I'm mostly trying to get a grasp of strategies involved for my own future use and advice purposes. I devised a couple of D2 builds and was one of the first Clone Hunters in 1.10 - actually the first Lurker to kill him. So tactical discussions are endlessly fascinating to me. I'm working in theoreticals here. )

[Concillian]

Some DOTs proc the life per hit skills, so that's a possibility. The issue is the gearing. Starting inferno you're scraping up gear to survive some of the bursts. You don't necessarily have the luxury of having both gear that will let you survive the bursts and that also have decent amounts of life per hit. That issue may get some resolve with 1.0.3, as they've said they're looking at balancing some of the bursts.

[ErickTheRed]

Well the idea was stacking on almost all the life leech options, combined with neutering the enemies as much as possible. I'm trying to see if I have a hold on the flow of gameplay proper and understand which skills are more defencive or offencive (note: you may be missing some context here - I don't currently own a computer which can run D3, I'm mostly trying to get a grasp of strategies involved for my own future use and advice purposes. I devised a couple of D2 builds and was one of the first Clone Hunters in 1.10 - actually the first Lurker to kill him. So tactical discussions are endlessly fascinating to me. I'm working in theoreticals here. )

Then you may not know that you aren't limited to picking one skill from each group. Some of the best life gain skills are in the Might category and you can pick multiple of them at the expense of something else. That is what I was referring to when I asked about elective mode, which is the option that allows this.

Also, Nerves of Steel as well as all the all the skills which give a percentage of their health encourage Barbarians to stack lots of vitality. This makes effects like the Rend percentage of damage dealt as life relatively weaker.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah, I know about Elective Mode, but the site skill calc only allows me to work with the per-category option so far as I can tell.

[ErickTheRed]

Yeah, I know about Elective Mode, but the site skill calc only allows me to work with the per-category option so far as I can tell.

There are right and left arrows to let you switch categories after you click on one of them.

[ViralSpiral]

Ah, neat. So then with http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/ba...XeV!.YbcZb I could generate a lot of fury, and spam Thunderstrikes for the stun effect?

Also found out that my mum's computer could run D3 with a video card upgrade, just have to make sure her video card isn't an on-board one. Most likely it is, but there may still be an AGP slot - if so, I ought to be able to install a more modern card there and have the computer use it instead of the (potentially) on-board one, yeah? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814161337 looks sufficient to the task.

[Archon_Wing]

I would also like to point out that the game seems so much easier solo. I tried to finish hell act 2 in solo and not even a single potion was needed against Belial. Everything else crumbled easily. My thinking is that the damage and extra health in multiplayer games for monsters just doesn't scale well enough and is too much for many characters to survive. In this case, it might be that multiplayer scaling is broken and doesn't offer the rewards to keep up with it-- I mean the bonus exp is moot after 60.

I never noticed this because I played exclusively public games since level 1 practically and most monsters just seemed like a brick wall even with all 4 of us beating on it. The lack of followers to compensate isn't very helpful either.

It is true that I AH'd 150k-200k worth of stuff over the levels (this points to item drops being broken). I did not seriously look for deals other than "this looks really shiny" so I wouldn't be surprised if bargain bin hunters found it for less than 1/2. I wasted the rest of my gold on buying novelties. Honestly by hell this amount is fairly trivial. And my weapon is merely just some 5k bargain bin stuff-- I barely break 4k dps. 45k health goes a long way though.

[Apostolic]

I would also like to point out that the game seems so much easier solo. I tried to finish hell act 2 in solo and not even a single potion was needed against Belial. Everything else crumbled easily. My thinking is that the damage and extra health in multiplayer games for monsters just doesn't scale well enough and is too much for many characters to survive. In this case, it might be that multiplayer scaling is broken and doesn't offer the rewards to keep up with it-- I mean the bonus exp is moot after 60.
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The lack of followers to compensate isn't very helpful either.

I'm finding this the case on my monk (mid-way through Act 1 Inferno). I do decent/pretty-ok solo, and often get wtfpwned with even just one other person in the game (note: I'm also basing this on experiences in Act 4 Hell after hitting 60, not just Inferno).

I've hit up the AH extensively and my gear is quasi-decent at this point (shield with 1-hander, 63% DR from armor, 27% resists, just a tick under 50k health, 9632 damage in the character window), but it seems like it's just a penalty to play with friends after 60, which pretty well sucks They need to either rebalance multiplayer mob health and damage output, or add some other incentive for max-level characters to group.

[Apostolic]

I would also like to point out that the game seems so much easier solo. I tried to finish hell act 2 in solo and not even a single potion was needed against Belial. Everything else crumbled easily. My thinking is that the damage and extra health in multiplayer games for monsters just doesn't scale well enough and is too much for many characters to survive. In this case, it might be that multiplayer scaling is broken and doesn't offer the rewards to keep up with it-- I mean the bonus exp is moot after 60.
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The lack of followers to compensate isn't very helpful either.

I'm finding this the case on my monk (mid-way through Act 1 Inferno). I do decent/pretty-ok solo, and often get wtfpwned with even just one other person in the game (note: I'm also basing this on experiences in Act 4 Hell after hitting 60, not just Inferno).

I've hit up the AH extensively and my gear is quasi-decent at this point (shield with 1-hander, 63% DR from armor, 27% resists, just a tick under 50k health, 9632 damage in the character window), but it seems like it's just a penalty to play with friends after 60, which pretty well sucks They need to either rebalance multiplayer mob health and damage output, or add some other incentive for max-level characters to group.

To clarify, my stats above are with the enchantress out. I had forgotten about her 15% armor buff, which is pretty substantial (63.04% DR with her, 59.73% without, which works out to ~8.2% less damage taken). I don't think any of my fellow players offer anything comparable? Maybe another monk running Mantra of Evasion for added dodge? *shrug*

[kandrathe]

I've hit up the AH extensively and my gear is quasi-decent at this point (shield with 1-hander, 63% DR from armor, 27% resists, just a tick under 50k health, 9632 damage in the character window), but it seems like it's just a penalty to play with friends after 60, which pretty well sucks They need to either rebalance multiplayer mob health and damage output, or add some other incentive for max-level characters to group.

I've been thinking about this too.

Why are human players better than %15 armor buff?

The dialog is sometimes better.

But, seriously. Even with playing non-complementary characters, damage output should be better, and target coordination as well. Ideally, yes, you'd want to coordinate for optimal party support.