Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[Sirian]

Diablo had only one melee class, and it was generally the most gear dependent of the classes. I greatly enjoyed playing the ranged classes in D1, with teleport positioning and all manner of finesse, but the most fun of all was playing melee and getting in there toe to toe. When I would pull more than I could safely handle, the strategic fallback would begin. Use this corner to reduce the number that could swing at me to two, until some could walk around, then fall back to the next corner, or to that barrel, or use the impaled villager briefly, and so forth. Tactical bliss!

Diablo 2 had zero melee classes, because melee itself was not viable. The mobs hit too hard, compared to the health recovery options. You could not stay in toe to toe. As Barbarian you would whirl whirl whirl your way through them. Paladins would throw a lot of hammers. Etc. You stayed at range or you died. This was Epic Fail on behalf of the designers -- the worst shortcoming of the game, bar none.


I pinned most of my hope for Diablo 3 on the talent, experience and skill of Blizzard designers -- with the lessons of Diablo 1 and 2 on hand, plus their successes with World of Warcraft, where melee is eminently viable.

Well the verdict is in, and the grade? Fail.

This is D2 all over again, as far as melee mechanics. There are some significant differences (mainly the addition of crowd control mechanics) and some minor improvements, but at the core of melee design lies one simple principle: Basic Math. If the incoming damage per second overwhelms the character's available healing per second, the character cannot remain engaged at melee range and must retreat or die. A little of this is good, as I described with my tactical fallbacks as a D1 warrior -- but too much is fatal. D2 was fatally unbalanced, rendering melee unfeasible -- and D3 is almost as bad, or its even worse, depending on whether you are talking about Hell or Inferno. The balance is fine in Normal and Nightmare, but that was true in D2 as well.


So how do I draw this conclusion? What's my evidence?

I am playing mostly coop, with my wife and a few select friends who have been progressing at about the same pace as us. My toon is melee, a barbarian. My wife's toon is wizard. The others have been demon hunters. No one in this group is using the AH for gearing up, as yet. I'm leading most of the time, and I've been able to tank for the group (which varies from two to four in number) through Normal and Nightmare. Some boss packs in Nightmare were a strong challenge. We are playing casually, not taking any extreme care, but deaths in Nightmare were quite low.

Skills I am using are almost all defensive in nature. I used Frenzy at first, but as the game forces me ever more increasingly to disengage from melee and "Run Away Little Girl, Run Away", I switched to Bash, because it works better if there are frequent time gaps between my swings, and it has some knockback inherent to it. Right mouse button is the Slam, which rumbles the ground and knocks trash mobs (but not bosses? wtf) back and controls them briefly. When it came available, I started using the glyph that cuts the Fury cost of the skill in half, because being able to chain more of these in a row is more valuable than the other options, at least from a tanking and fighting-from-range perspective. Defensive skill is the AoE stun, glyphed for double range and pull-them-to-me effect. War Cry for maximum group incoming-damage reduction, which was 40% Armor boost most of the way, but recently switched to 20% Armor 15% Dodge, and perhaps switching to 50% Resists when I get to it. (Not 60 yet, but that's not important to my argument here). For a hard hitting cooldown, I was using the ground-based AoE, but since I can no longer tank for that, I have switched to calling in the three heroes instead. My last skill was underutilized for a long time. I tried a few things there, including a second long cooldown power spell, but that left me too weak between cooldowns. I finally settled on Overpower, with the glyph that gives Fury for each enemy hit. This helps me power more Slams, which has become my most-used skill. Passives are all defensive: extra health globes and double health from them; longer shouts and self-heal for first minute; 20% reduction of all non-physical damage. Gear is not great but is decent. Health around 17k, DPS quickly climbed to 3k with a 315dps 2h weapon (works a LOT better than lower DPS 1h and shield), and is up to 3.7k by the end of act 1. That may sound ridiculously low to DH and Wiz players, but kill speed isn't really a problem here. It's playable -- and more vitality/health and general gear isn't actually going to change the core mechanics in play in Hell difficulty.

So here is how it works for us in 4player Act1 Hell with a modestly geared group. CC, CC, CC, CC. If the Crowd Control runs out and stuff is not all dead, our line collapses and it turns in to a chaotic retreat, with healthier players trying to cover for the wounded while they wait on health orbs to drop and/or healing potions to cool, or occasionally healing wells to refill. I can take a lot more licking than the ranged toons, from higher armor (Str stat focus), more defensive passives, general 30% damage reduction for being a melee class, and plenty of past experience playing Diablo melee.

Nevertheless, regular trash mobs are hitting me for 3k a pop. If I take as many as four hits, I'm already almost dead. (Four hits? Are you serious?) If I had higher vitality or thicker armor, we could add a couple of hits to that, but this would not make an iota of difference in the wider perspective. The math, the Basic MATH of melee combat, is unbalanced and unsustainable. The only way to play is not to get hit -- even as a melee class! This is patently ridiculous. ... Yes, it can be made to work. Yes, I can stun everything near me, pulling it all to me and Controlling it for four seconds while my DPS Corps blasts away at it. Yes my wizard can Slow Time to further help with this, and present some mirror images to lure away some attackers briefly. Yes, for trash (trash ONLY, because the skill does NOT work on bosses, champs or minions) I can Slam the ground over and over and over and over, controlling ANY size pack of trash mobs if they are reasonably grouped, for as long as my Fury lasts. Yes, I can refresh my Fury a bit with a new War Cry if it is cool, or an Overpower hit (which can fully refill my Fury globe in a crowded situation) and Slam a bunch more. But Slam does not work on bosses. Why the hell not? Damages them, yes, but no CC effect. Boss packs blow through our line like it isn't there. I get off one stun and summon the Three Stooges, then it's "Run Away Little Girl, Run Away" all over again.

The boss packs get a few too many immunities, a little too much speed boost, and hit a bit too hard -- but these are tweakable. Trash should not be killing me in six blows. I SHOULD be able to go toe to toe with two or three of them for several seconds, but I cannot. If I melee even one of them with Bash, and there's no CC from my teammates, it will hit me a couple of times and my health is down near half already. Health globe drops could be increased a bit for Hell and probably Inferno, and that too could help, but isnt enough cure by itself.


I have thought about this extensively over the last 24 hours. Is this really so different from D1 Warrior? If so, in what way?

D1 warrior could be badly undergeared, while progressing through Nightmare. Especially if one did not farm a bit for levels and gear along the way. When undergeared, the game could be almost unplayable, melee unviable. You'd have to resort to some elite tricks and tactics to get by. (For a clinic on that, see King of Pain's epic Ironman run.) ... Is my D3 barb similarly undergeared? Perhaps, but only up to a point. D1 also had mobs that could never outrun your toon, and tons of doorways and other choke points, the likes of which mechanics do not exist in D3. So D3 melee NEEDS a bit more sturdiness, to make up for the lack of tactical options other than CC.

The main difference, though, from D1, is the healing.

This where Basic Math applies. In D1, your incoming damage rate could spike very high at times, but you had a belt full of instant-effect potions you could chug one after the next. If you couldn't overcome the immediate threat before your belt ran dry, you could technically open inventory and click potions from there, but that was not as quick and easy as hotkey use, and this was never done in casual, general play. So the belt capacity was the limit of your healing. It was NOT unlimited, but it did allow the player to choose when, where and how much of that limited healing capacity got applied.

I agree with the D3 devs that healing options must be limited, but they have limited them WAY WAYYYYYYYY too strictly. It's Basic Math. If you can't pull out enough health recovery to stand toe to toe with a few trash mobs for a small period of time, you cannot call it melee. Melee is as dead in D3 as it was in D2, as far as high difficulty goes. The CC options make things significantly better, but this is short-range CC-chaining, NOT melee. And I do not think it is recoverable under the current model of 30-second cooldown on potion use.

I don't need to see Inferno difficulty to know that melee isn't viable there, because it isn't viable in Hell. The class is viable, but it's viable as a CC master. Monk has to be the same, as they have no more ability than barbarians to take a hit. Monks have more self-heal power, but overall I think they're in the same boat. CC or die.

Mobs hit too hard. Characters' options for health recovery are too thin. Both must be addressed for melee to become viable. The math has to be aligned to a sustainable level. Yes, you should have to retreat some of the time. Yes, you should be out of health recovery SOME of the time, but not like this. This is almost all of the time.


I am having fun as the main tank and CC enabler for my group. It is tactically interesting to blow all our CC cooldowns and chew through trash mobs. Enough stuff cools quickly enough for us to progress without heavy waiting around... unless we have taken damage and no health globes drop. Then it's another useless run to town to see the healer, because hey, these health pots are NOT full heals like in D1, and they cost a pretty penny, and it takes less time to run to town than it does to stand around waiting. Plus, it actually costs us LESS to die than it does to buy ONE healing potion. Go figure. We still buy the potions and use them every time they are cool when a boss pack is on us, because dying is less fun and we're here for fun, but still. A LOT of tedium attached to health recovery: runs to town, and with EVERY Hell boss pack, lots of running in circles waiting for health pots to cool down or health globes to drop. This tedium surrounding health recovery is only going to get worse as we advance to the end of Hell and if we move on to Inferno.

D1 had the tedium of loading your belt and reloading it and reloading it, which was subpar. But that was between fights and only took a few moments. It was a cost worth enduring for the benefit of being able to spike your healing potion use when incoming damage spiked, instead of being forced to run in circles and kill time waiting on cooldown mechanics. THAT is patently NOT FUN, the running in circles waiting on potion cooldowns. I can do without that. And if I must endure it (and endure is the right word, because it is most clearly a punishment mechanic), my patience for it will wear out and the frustration will drown out the fun, sooner rather than later. Months or maybe only weeks, then it will be time to play something where most of my time I'm having fun, not running around in circles unable to play my class the way it ought to play.


- Sirian

[Bolty]

I know your extensive post deserves more than a terse reply, but I'm short on time. You're making the same mistake I did. CC isn't the answer.

You're going to take hits. It's going to get worse and worse because CC effects last for shorter and shorter periods of time. In Inferno difficulty, a "stun" is really just an "interrupt whatever the mob is doing" because it doesn't last more than a blip.

You have to change your approach. Assume you will get hit. A lot. And find a way to heal through it. Ditch Ground Stomp, ditch CC effects. Get Revenge and heal the damage. You're either able to heal through it (gear is everything here), or you run around holding the mobs' attention while your ranged partners kill things.

That's about it.

[FoxBat]

If this was Inferno you'd have something, but as for Hell there's something you are missing. Trash is rarely a threat to a mediocre geared monk, crazy elite packs are the only thing I had to run from. On the other hand I pack alot of healing, such that globes and pots were my backup rather than main sources. Haven't played Barbarian yet but my understanding is their healing is attached to particular attack skills and runed variants, and it's more or less essential that you carry some.

Of course even if it was Inferno, the answer is still gear. (and progression is no object, right?) Your ranged friends will be bowled over pretty fast without something to hide behind, it's not quite like D2 where the summoned tanks are plentiful, and things like vortex, jailer, waller, teleportation, mortar etc. don't exist. Even if melee needs to shoulder most of the responsibility for surviving in a team, glass cannon builds will require that melee to progress against elite packs, so it's not as if ranged toons are that much more viable.

[Athenau]

I don't need to see Inferno difficulty to know that melee isn't viable there, because it isn't viable in Hell. The class is viable, but it's viable as a CC master. Monk has to be the same, as they have no more ability than barbarians to take a hit. Monks have more self-heal power, but overall I think they're in the same boat. CC or die.

I just got through playing a very offense oriented monk through hell:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/mo...UYg!aZcYba

I used very little hard CC (stuns, knockbacks, etc). I did have soft CC in the form of crippling wave + concussion (snare, attack speed and damage debuff, interrupt) but mostly I relied on positioning (thunderclap's teleport helps here), mitigation, and self-heals. Gear was by far the biggest factor in getting through it. I had an extremely difficult time with boss packs in Act I until I swapped to the "one with everything" passive and stacked a single resist. This did require me to go AH shopping--if I had to rely on dropped/crafted loot it would have taken me much/much longer.

I have to agree with Bolty. In Hell you should rely on mitigation and heals. The barb is a little worse off than the monk in that his heals are less flexible but potentially very powerful. So get revenge, stack resists and vit (for more revenge healing), and put the rest into offense.

I don't know how melee will fare in inferno. All reports so far point to "not well". It may be that melee will just be broken unless you rely on buying AH gear one or two acts ahead of where you are. Which really sucks, but maybe if we scream loud enough Blizzard will do something.

[Sirian]

I know your extensive post deserves more than a terse reply, but I'm short on time. You're making the same mistake I did. CC isn't the answer.

The answer for Inferno. But you assume I'm heading to Inferno and planning to stay there. I'm not sure that's true.

By all accounts I have heard, Inferno is an unfun slog, a chore, a terrible grind, through which only the powergamers finding the uncorrected holes in the game have progressed, by exploiting said holes.

You know, I never had a character in D2 pass level 70. And as you may recall, I pitched the entire thing in the waste bin a couple months after LoD came out and never touched it again. I don't care about The Ladder, or what somebody else defines as the end game. All I want is that sweet spot where the actual PLAYING of the game is the most fun, and do what I have to do to make that most of my gaming focus and experience. Normal difficulty is too easy for that, barring variants. Nightmare with variants might be the ticket, as Hell is already heading in to stupid-land with the base game mechanics and balance.

D1 has its share of crap, too. We worked around it. Most of what was wrong in D1 was little stuff, though. It's harder to work around flaws that root down in to the core gameplay.

Just because they added this Inferno thing, and think themselves clever about it, with their pronouncement of "You WILL die!" doesn't mean they have hit upon game design genius. The only defense they can point to for this is the sales figures. I'm with King of Pain on this one: one hit kills and mobs hitting too hard and fatally lethal boss ability combos are not the stuff of greatness.

If Hell difficulty with little or no AH is more fun than the Inferno grind with the AH, why would I bother with Inferno?

I believe what you say about CC becoming less effective. It was like that in D2, too. Just shows how little they've actually learned, or paid attention. They DO get a bunch of things right, though -- and those carry them on to the big sales figures, which doesn't lead them to fix what remains wrong, but that is only preventing them from moving on to even more epic profits. Oh well.


You rather missed the point, though. My post isn't a statement about CC at all. It's an analysis on the failure to produce a viable melee game, yet again. And on this score, can there even be any argument?


- Sirian

[Athenau]

You rather missed the point, though. My post isn't a statement about CC at all. It's an analysis on the failure to produce a viable melee game, yet again. And on this score, can there even be any argument?

What's your definition of "viable"? I can say for a fact that monks are viable in hell, and from what I've read so are barbs. So in three out of four difficulties melee is viable (when played as melee rather than kiting everything and pretending you're a ranged class).

If you don't plan to slog through inferno (and I don't blame you) then that sounds like a viable melee game to me.

[Sirian]

I pack alot of healing, such that globes and pots were my backup rather than main sources. Haven't played Barbarian yet but my understanding is their healing is attached to particular skills and runes, and it's more or less essential that you carry some.

I tried the Revenge skill. I was not having fun with that skill. Don't like the mechanics of it. Not going to switch to it. If that alone makes the class unviable in Hell+, it's Blizzard's fault and their design is SORELY lacking.

If only a handful of builds are viable, that's epic fail at the design level.

We were promised by developers that D3 would be simple to play, but rich with tactical options. That seems to be the case through the first two difficulty levels, but starts breaking down later, more so the farther you go. There is a core math deficiency, with too much monster damage output (especially spiking with certain boss mobs) combined with not enough health recovery. OK, so maybe a couple of builds do have the health recovery. We're all to adopt these cookie cutter builds and everybody's toon looks the same? That isn't what I signed up for, and I'll be damned if I accept THAT answer happily or quietly. They talked up this product. Where's the beef?


- Sirian

---

What's your definition of "viable"?

Did you read the first post?

I described my experiences and conclusions in some detail.


- Sirian

[Bolty]

You rather missed the point, though. My post isn't a statement about CC at all. It's an analysis on the failure to produce a viable melee game, yet again. And on this score, can there even be any argument?

I shouldn't have brought up Inferno. My point was that CC isn't the proper style of play here, even in Nightmare/Hell modes. Melee is quite viable from Normal to Nightmare to Hell difficulties. I ran into the same brick wall you did, and asked for help. It made a big difference, so I'm suggesting that to you as well. The simple fact was, I was Doing It Wrong.™

[Athenau]

Did you read the first post?

I described my experiences and conclusions in some detail.

I read your post. The only statement speaking to your expectations for viability was this:

Diablo 2 had zero melee classes, because melee itself was not viable. The mobs hit too hard, compared to the health recovery options. You could not stay in toe to toe.

That doesn't tell us whether you expect that to be the case for all difficulty levels or not, or whether you expect it to be the case for all (or most) builds, or twinked vs untwinked, etc.

You can stand toe to toe with enemies in hell difficulty, with sufficient healing and mitigation. You can play melee like its meant to be played in hell, properly geared and skilled. I don't know if revenge is the only option for barbs or not, someone with a high level barb can chime in there, but if it is that's a problem with barb class design.

I do agree that enemy damage is too high, potion cooldowns are too high, and increasing difficulty by just pumping up the numbers is not interesting. What melee needs, more than anything else, is a way to selectively engage a few enemies at a time. In D1 you accomplished this though terrain and advancing slowly. In D3 there are too many open areas and super-fast enemies for this to work.

[ViralSpiral]

I have to admit, I see a LOT more posts about successful WD/AH/Wiz characters in Hell/Inferno than Monk/Barb. But like I said just a couple of days back, Blizzard has historically been pretty bad at balancing melee, outside WoW. And I'm sure that it's a fine line to walk between a melee class that can tank all day and one that won't last ten seconds against six random enemies, but these are supposed to be professionals. This one franchise has been around sixteen years. They should have their stuff together by now.

Offhand, the best I can think of is a skill that increases your damage resistance if you're struck X times in Y seconds - good for tanking mobs, where you'll get hit the required number of times, but useless against bosses. Or perhaps the inverse, if bosses are the bigger problem - a skill that causes the first attack every 2 seconds to automatically miss. Ignores around half the hits from a single target, but nearly useless if you're swarmed.

[DeeBye]

Diablo 2 had zero melee classes, because melee itself was not viable. The mobs hit too hard, compared to the health recovery options. You could not stay in toe to toe. As Barbarian you would whirl whirl whirl your way through them. Paladins would throw a lot of hammers. Etc. You stayed at range or you died. This was Epic Fail on behalf of the designers -- the worst shortcoming of the game, bar none.

This is absolutely not true. I played and extensively enjoyed a Zeal Paladin and a Werewolf Druid both in the 90 range. I'm also not sure why you can just dismiss a WW Barb in the way that you did. You actually had to get into melee range to do damage. Why is that not a melee class?

Health recovery was as simple as equipping enough Life Leech to offset incoming damage.

[Athenau]

Offhand, the best I can think of is a skill that increases your damage resistance if you're struck X times in Y seconds - good for tanking mobs, where you'll get hit the required number of times, but useless against bosses. Or perhaps the inverse, if bosses are the bigger problem - a skill that causes the first attack every 2 seconds to automatically miss. Ignores around half the hits from a single target, but nearly useless if you're swarmed.

Well, I would prefer that they give melee an additional passive bonus rather than making certain skills mandatory. Melee has a 30% damage reduction already, maybe they should get a 50% CC reduction as well? Jailer and frozen lasting half the time and vortex pulling you half as far would go a long way towards evening the playing field between melee and ranged when it comes to boss packs.

If they are going to buff skills, they should remove the difficulty scaling on stuns and make melee snares much better. If you're able to control enemy movement you're able to fight on your own terms, which is imperative for melee characters.

[Elric of Grans]

I always hated melee classes: smart people use bows, in all games (even when archery sucks, like it does in most games). As such, I have next to no experience to relate with you on this. I just accepted what you had to say and was with you, until I read this:

Nevertheless, regular trash mobs are hitting me for 3k a pop. If I take as many as four hits, I'm already almost dead. (Four hits? Are you serious?)

Are you serious? My Demon Hunter is also in Act I/Normal. She is taking 1K damage per hit from trash and can take 18 of them before death, which is never even the slightest threat. Now, Elites are a completely different story (though I *did* tank an Electric/Mortar/Extra Health one earlier, because his melee damage was dramatically less than the Mortar damage). I cannot help but think you have made poor decisions equipment wise. I also have only used what I found or crafted, but it sounds as though my Demon Hunter can melee better than your Barbarian, and this can *only* be gear-based (especially when melee characters take 30% less damage than ranged ones *before* equipment is factored in).

I am *certainly* not going to disagree that there is a basic math failure at work, however. Take the Demon Hunter's Shadow Power Defensive Skill. 20% (or 30%, with a Rune) Life Leech. Sounds disgusting. Imagine a Diablo (1) spell that did that! In practice, utterly useless. Enemies hit so much harder than you do that you need a barrel load of health, which means my health:damage ratio is something like 30:1. 20% is such a small amount that you do not notice it. This comes down to a very basic math fail.

This is not just Blizzard, however. I have noticed most RPGs (especially Action RPGs) playing the `big number game', which has been on the rise since the Playstation allowed more than 999 HP It seems to play a psychological game where the average player does 14832324623804 damage at level one and feels like a total badarse, but anyone who gives it half a moment's thought realised they are still having to swing four times to kill a rat, so the big numbers are utterly meaningless.

EDIT:

If they are going to buff skills, they should remove the difficulty scaling on stuns and make melee snares much better. If you're able to control enemy movement you're able to fight on your own terms, which is imperative for melee characters.

I sooo agree with this. Stuns and Snares seem almost meaningless in Hell difficulty; I can imagine they must be completely meaningless in Inferno. Completely invalidating skills goes against their policy of allowing as many builds as possible to be viable.

[Chesspiece_face]

I tried the Revenge skill. I was not having fun with that skill. Don't like the mechanics of it. Not going to switch to it. If that alone makes the class unviable in Hell+, it's Blizzard's fault and their design is SORELY lacking.
- Sirian

Wait a sec... First of all you have limited the possible builds you want to use with your barb right off the bat. You don't want to play a short range caster character, you don't want to play a frenzy terror/WW type character, you want to play a strict melee character that stands next to someone and bashes them. Then you turn around and say that the skills required to play that very limited style you want don't feel good to you thus it's Blizzards fault?

There may be many issues with "melee" characters in this game but you have started with a very limited scope of what you designate a true melee and at the same time you reject the skills that make that limited build viable.

Seems sort of like if you were to have posted back in D2 that you wanted to play an Inferno Sorc and then complained that Inferno wasn't a fun skill so it's Blizzards fault.

[FireIceTalon]

All I can say to the OP is, you haven't seen ANYTHING yet. Nightmare is challenging, but perfectly playable. Hell is where things start to get a bit hairy, but if you make a few decent gear upgrades relative to where you are, you can get through it. Inferno on the other hand, is just....I don't really know how to describe it. A commonly used term for it is "overtuned", which I think its pretty appropriate. With Inferno, you have to have quite solid gear from the get-go, and it is probably wise to farm gear AT LEAST one full act in advance of where you are trying to go, though Act 2 is likely a special case, since it is the hardest of the 4. I am still in Act 1, but most people in the later acts are saying they had to buy Act 3/4 gear from the AH just to be able to get through Act 2.

Overall, I don't think us ranged people have it much better. With all the immobilizers and gap closers that elites/champs have, we are pretty much in the same boat as you guys most of the time. In fact, it may be even worse for us, because we (especially DH's) cannot tank whatsoever. Inferno just plain sucks, thats all there really is to it. I'm starting to figure it out some, and one day I will beat it, but it doesn't really make it anymore fun - and I am not sure I have the energy or will to take it on with 5 different classes.. It just plain TEDIOUS - and way too much of a grind to be enjoyable. Because I simply just want to farm the best gear and play high end PvP anyway, I am strongly considering beating Inferno with just by DH, leveling the rest of my chars to 60 but keeping them out of Inferno, and using just my DH to farm gold/items and use the AH to buy top notch gear for my other chars. When they are fully geared in their final suits, or close enough to it, then I may consider going through Inferno with them, but PvP will probably be my primary focus.

[Roland]

Seems sort of like if you were to have posted back in D2 that you wanted to play an Inferno Sorc and then complained that Inferno wasn't a fun skill so it's Blizzards fault.

Not arguing your other points, but technically it IS Blizzard's fault. We didn't design the skills, and EVERY skill in the game should be fun and viable. Otherwise, what's the point?

That's why I've made such a sticking point with my DH to have no Evasive Fire, no Vault, and no Smoke Screen. I can full-clear Act I Inferno (barring some boss combinations) without problems, never setting off a Berserker timer (which I think is a complete bullshit mechanic on its own), and most importantly: having fun. My skill choices have been virtually unchanged since Normal, minus a couple swap-outs and rune changes, and the only thing I've truly had to adjust along the way is my gear - and to a lesser extent my tactics. Blizzard set the bar for themselves, saying any build should be viable. It's a hell of a challenge to properly balance that, but that's solely on Blizzard. They sold us this game with that line, now it's time for them to live up to it (especially if they intend to milk us on the RMAH - we don't deserve to be cash cows and get nothing in return).

Frankly, I won't speak to the rest of your post Sirian except to say one thing: I had higher life, worse defenses and worse damage than you, and I managed to make it through Hell without much fuss. There are tools to allow you to thin the herd against you (though I agree the reduction on timers is irritating, and plain lazy design), but mostly it sounds like you are flat-out under-geared. Spend some more time farming and crafting, and up your Life and defenses (Armor & Resists) a bit. Also, remember the golden rule: if something's dead, it can't hit you back. That's not an excuse to build a glass cannon, by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is it an open ticket to build flat-out defense and let your damage suffer for it. Blizzard's design choice, I believe, is for players to strike a balance between damage and defense. For ranged classes, damage wins out over defense, but for melee I think the opposite is true. I guarantee you with ~30% damage reduction from armor, ~20% from resistances, and almost doubling your life pool you'll be able to tank just fine. I say this from experience as a ranged class, which I know doesn't fully qualify me to judge but it does allow me to see things from the other side of the coin. If my DH with ZERO escape skills and only TWO CC skills (a stationary AoE slow, and a single-target chance-based Stun) can survive Hell better than you with probably much less defenses (but a much higher life pool), than you should be surviving just fine - provided your gear is up to snuff.

If you don't want to play the gearing game, I'm sorry but D3 is not for you. D3 is an item game, plain and simple. Everything else is just dress-up. I agree with some of your points, and disagree with others, but frankly I'd rather you spend a bit more time playing, properly gearing yourself for the encounters you're up against, before making a final judgment call. Also, one more thing to keep in mind: from Nightmare through Inferno, adding players not only increases monster health, it increases monster damage. IIRC, Nightmare adds 5% per player, Hell 10%, and Inferno 15% - at least for the first player. I don't think it's quite that linear (I think it increases slightly faster than a linear progression). Lazy design? Perhaps, but they needed something to combat the fact that more players = more skills, damage, health pools, etc. I do not want D2, where more players = easymode. I equally do not want D2, however, where mobs = cheese instead of challenge (and D3 does have a bit too much of that at the moment).

[Sirian]

Wait a sec... First of all you have limited the possible builds you want to use with your barb right off the bat. You don't want to play a short range caster character, you don't want to play a frenzy terror/WW type character, you want to play a strict melee character that stands next to someone and bashes them. Then you turn around and say that the skills required to play that very limited style you want don't feel good to you thus it's Blizzards fault?

I rejected one skill.

Melee may seem to you like a "very limited" build, but it was one third of the game in the original iteration of this franchise. That's the game I enjoyed more, by far, and I believe it is perfectly fair game to desire more of that type of experience from the franchise.

D3 has made many nods to D1. Blizzard has gone out of their way to make sure D3 isn't just a D2 clone, but draws on D1 lore, atmosphere and gameplay for inspirations. To me, the leap from there to wondering if they actually managed to reproduce anything at all resembling D1 Warrior play seems like fair game as well. But alas, if that was part of their intent, they have so far come up short -- and they need to know it, so they can work toward their goal. If they don't care, then much of their talk turns out to have been nothing more than marketing BS. The jury is still out. My criticism has more behind it than complaining for its own sake.


- Sirian

[Ell_man]

I agree that healing for the barbarian is limited. Revenge + lots of armor and vit is very easy and the other healing options come later in the 50s or just suck or both.

Ancient spear + dread spear rune sucked when I tried it against NM Diablo. The tooltip says its healing is based on weapon damage which is far inferior to the % of your health heal of revenge. Its available at 32.

Overpower + Revel rune comes at 59 and looks like it would be just like revenge but reliable and with a cooldown.

Furious charge + dreadnought rune that heals you for each monster you hit comes later in the 50s sadly. I've heard its great though since you get healed on a % of your health and it can help you get out of being surrounded.

Frenzy with Triumph is alright for helping you regen but its not a burst heal that can keep up with massive damage. Its good for the revenge build as it may put you over the line where you can survive to continue revenging. It comes at 22.

Rend with bloodlust is okay. I've used it a few times but haven't noticed too much of an effect. 9% of 210% weapon damage is ~18.9% weapon damage as lifesteal. You might want to try this one out although it sucks to be in melee range to have to cast this. Its earned at 19.

Whirlwind with blood funnel can make an interesting build. You need lots of crit and lots of incomign damage to increase fury generation or other skills like battle shout with fury on crit. I've heard this works pretty well in inferno since you take so much damage you'll gets tons of fury to fuel the whirlwind. You can use it starting at 37.

Ignore pain with Ignorance is bliss rune gives you 20% lifesteal for 5 seconds in addition to 65% damage reduction. You can spec it at 36.

There's some options for getting more life but nothing like revenge. Revenge has no cooldown which helps so much. It scales with incoming damage( the more monsters hitting you the more revenges you can use). And it deals a ton of damage. I hope blizz nerfs it and buffs some of the other lifesteal skills because it is pretty much mandatory in hell and beyond. Revenge with the rune that increases critical strike for a short time is the most popular rune effect for inferno barbs btw.

[MongoJerry]

Hi, Sirian. Thank-you for giving the issue some thought, but I don't think your first post in this thread really added much information to the discussion. Your post basically boils down to "the Melee classes need a lot of fixing to make them viable and fun in the higher difficulties," and I think most people's response will be "Yeah, we know."

What really needs to happen now is a serious discussion of how the situation can be fixed. I do think the current classes form a good base on which to build. The question now is how can they be altered to make them better -- both in their survivability and in their gameplay?

So, let's first talk about the more "successful" ranged classes. And, since I've been playing a Wizard and know more about them, I'll talk about the Wizard specifically. Why is the Wizard successful in Inferno? I don't mean just why can they kill monsters. I mean, why is the gameplay itself fun? Playing a Wizard solo in Inferno means kiting. Players who play melee characters sometimes use phrases like "Wizards can just kite the mobs" as if it were easy. It's not easy. Kiting is a very intense process, where you have to be constantly aware of your surroundings and be ready to counter all of the crowd control abilities that champion and boss packs throw at you. I know when I'm done kiting a big boss pack, I let out a huge sigh relieving all of the stress of the previous couple of minutes. That's a sign of good gameplay to me.

But there's another issue with kiting that I think people often forget about. No spell can be cast while running. Thus, every moment you are running, your dps drops like a rock. If I had to guess, I would say that a Wizard typically does half to one-third the dps while kiting that he or she does when he or she is able to stand still and unload. (Hydra is a somewhat exception to this rule in that at least it deals some dps while you are running around, but even with Hydra, the amount of dps the Wizard can deal is still far less than if the Wizard is able to stand still and deliver attacks unimpeded). The Wizard has to second by second decide if he or she can safely get a shot off. The more the Wizard runs, the less dps he or she deals. The less the Wizard runs, the more dps the Wizard deals but the more risk the Wizard takes on as well.

So we have to keep both of these factors in mind -- fun gameplay and dps/killing speed -- when we are talking about possible solutions to the melee dilemma.

BAD SOLUTION #1: Simply give the melee classes more damage mitigation so that they can just stand there and tank a group of champion and boss packs. This is a bad idea on two fronts. First, the gameplay would stink. The person would just stand there and smash a few buttons until everything died with no situational awareness required. There wouldn't be any moving needed or stategic planning needed. Just as bad, if nothing happened to the melee players' dps output, that would mean that their killing speed would completely outstrip the killing speed of ranged classes. That's because the melee classes could just stand there and use all of their special damage skills, while ranged classes would have to continue to constantly fight on the run. Thus, this solution would end up with a class that is both invincible and a high killing speed class. This is a bad solution.

BAD SOLUTION #2: Increase the damage mitigation for melee but greatly reduce their ability to dps. This is essentially the WoW tank solution, where someone in a party chooses to focus on damage mitigation and surrender dps output in the process. But, this is a bad idea simply for gameplay reasons. D3 is not WoW. WoW is designed with parties in mind, while D3 is a semi-solo game. I think that most people playing melee classes in D3 would hate playing a tanking style class -- even more than most players playing melee classes in WoW hate having to tank. Besides, the gameplay would still be boring -- just stand there and mash buttons until something finally dies.

GOOD SOLUTION: ?

I don't have a cure-all specific solution, but I do have the beginnings of some ideas. I think the general solution revolves around improving the crowd control abilities. First of all, why is it that barbarian stuns have such short durations in the later difficulties? You have these great skills that are so useful in Normal and Nightmare and suddenly they become nothing more than "interrupts" as Bolty puts them in the late difficulties? That's just silly. If the listed stun durations are too long for late difficulties, then adjust their lengths down but make them consistent across all difficulties.

One possible specific solution I'll put out there is to change one rune in Ground Stomp to make it have this effect: Increases radius to 24 yards, stuns enemies for 4 seconds (even in Inferno), but only has a 50% chance to affect a mob.

This may sounds strange, but think about it. If half of the mobs are stunned, then you could use that four seconds to lead the ones that aren't stunned away. Thus, the Barbarian can string out a pack of mobs and over time (it may take a few casts over a long boss/champion fight) isolate one or two minions that the Barbarian can then take down. Thus, you end up creating a kind of Barbarian version of kiting. This gameplay would be intense, you wouldn't have to buff damage mitigation, and the dps would suffer during the process of isolating mobs -- just the way that the dps of ranges classes suffer while they're kiting.

So, there you go. There's one suggestion I have. Feel free to criticize it, if you wish. But more importantly, please make some other suggestions that would make for fun gameplay and would be balanced with the other classes in the game.

[Sirian]

Also, one more thing to keep in mind: from Nightmare through Inferno, adding players not only increases monster health, it increases monster damage. IIRC, Nightmare adds 5% per player, Hell 10%, and Inferno 15% - at least for the first player. I don't think it's quite that linear (I think it increases slightly faster than a linear progression). Lazy design? Perhaps, but they needed something to combat the fact that more players = more skills, damage, health pools, etc. I do not want D2, where more players = easymode. I equally do not want D2, however, where mobs = cheese instead of challenge (and D3 does have a bit too much of that at the moment).

Keep in mind that on this toon I've never soloed. Since hitting NM, most games and most gaming hours have had three or four in the game.

Mobs hitting harder with more players is news to me, but not a surprise. It certainly feels harder to take a hit in a group than it does on my Monk, solo, but the monk is only starting NM, so I didn't feel I had enough to judge there.

I won't even argue that that's the wrong mechanic. It's probably for the best, for reasons you cited. But having more health does NOT change the balance of incoming damage vs healing options. So I will still be left with tedious runs to town to the healer when the red orbs get scarce.


I decided to give the AH a spin, spending about 50k to upgrade my four worst item slots and the weapon. Nothing outrageous on spending, and nothing perfect that I bought. Just using gold to complement drops. Bolty's right about the AH becoming a trap if overdone, but the game is clearly designed to give you a worse per-kill rate of decent drops than D1 was, and that's the last time I was willing to farm for drops. D2 I would play toons one pass through then reroll. Well that is getting tedious here, on the back half of Act 2 Hell, so I will do as you suggested and gear up a bit and see where that goes. The farming for items I could do and enjoy, IF the combat was fun. But this really isn't, and getting worse by the day.

I do want hard, but D1 had the right kinds of hard for me. There was a nice even pace like properly tuned strength resistance training. D3 does not feel properly tuned, is not currently as much fun at higher difficulty, and seems to have a poorly trained strength coach running the show.


RedRadical's point about ranged having it just as bad seems valid. Vortex or Teleport, Jailer or Knockback, Fast or Shielded. Most of the D3-new boss abilities they've added seem aimed at defeating the Ember-style gameplay of just maintain distance, you can burn through anything eventually if they can never corner you. That MIGHT be for the best if they gave us back D1 style health potions and let the player burn through healing (limited healing, like the D1 belt, but much less limited than D3 is now) when these crazy boss mobs use their new tricks to prevent ranged toons from maintaining distance gaps. But without the healing, you just drop dead when some of these factors overlap on you -- including the wonderful new possibilities of packs greeting you at the bottom of dungeon ladders or on fresh waypoints or checkpoints when you enter the game.


- Sirian