Feedback and Suggestions - Poe.ninja stats for top 7500 SSF HC players - 85% spell, 15% melee - Forum - Path of Exile (2024)

https://poe.ninja/challengessf/builds

This is the approximate breakdown.

And 50% of these builds use one of five skills:
Arc - 22%
Winter Orb - 9%
Storm Brand - 8%
Blade Vortex - 8%
Vortex - 7%

Although the game isn't balanced for SSF or HC, this data suggests nevertheless that there is a major imbalance between spell and melee/ranged builds.

And that out of dozens of possible skills, only a few are being widely used.

So my suggestion is the next league should be about promoting diversity.

(The data is dynamic so the figures change slightly all the time).

it wont change

GGG clearly does not value melee playstyle AT ALL (open skill gem vendor and check how many 'red' gems you have compared to 'blue' etc) from the design point of view

meanwhile GGG creates a game environment that simply cannot be 'easily' beaten with low AOE, close range, non-proxy damage (uber elder as melee.. lol. it is like 10 times easier as ranged..)

additionally - monster density is crazy high and most effective defence is to kill stuff before it can react

this results in.. exactly what we have here. what is the common denominator of these 5 skills? auto-targeting and/or aiming-less gameplay

with 1000 mobs per map it is simply tiresome to think about them, to click them. the mob density is beyond what players consider 'pleasant for the brain' (the drops that come from mob density are great - but im 100% sure if we can get the same rewards from 50% less mobs people would enjoy it IN THE LONG RUN)

so here we are. auto/no aiming, high-AOE skills. it doesnt help that these very skills also have ABSURD damage potential (BV does like 4-500% MORE damage than some other spells AND can be further scaled with stat sticks and conversion). but even if they had lower damage..

why pick fireball that you have to aim when there are skills that aim for you?

not to mention that entire 'melee' in this game is one (vaal)totem + 3-4 OP skills. you CAN make stuff like Ground Slam 2h RT work.. maybe. but why bother if you can get the same tankyness with higher damage as caster?

note - even as SELF caster you make melee players cry

"

InsiderTradingX wrote:

https://poe.ninja/challengessf/builds

This is the approximate breakdown.

And 50% of these builds use one of five skills:
Arc - 22%
Winter Orb - 9%
Storm Brand - 8%
Blade Vortex - 8%
Vortex - 7%

Although the game isn't balanced for SSF or HC, this data suggests nevertheless that there is a major imbalance between spell and melee/ranged builds.

And that out of dozens of possible skills, only a few are being widely used.

So my suggestion is the next league should be about promoting diversity.

(The data is dynamic so the figures change slightly all the time).

This has been the way it is since long before today. GGG is notorious for sh*tting all over melee with every update. As soon as a melee skill is discovered to be competitive with spells they delete it. Every spell with few exceptions has been viable since release but about half of the melee gems are unusable trash.

They've promised to fix melee before and usually did nothing worth mentioning, if anything at all.

"

sidtherat wrote:

...not to mention that entire 'melee' in this game is one (vaal)totem + 3-4 OP skills. ...

Actually, the multiple totems-support gem allows you to use both melee totems now. Not always worth it, but anyways.

I think the problem is a combination of fast recovery options, boss vs mob hp differences, high monster damage values and super fast movement speeds. These are all balanced with regards to each other.

If you can one-shot mobs from a distance, melee will always be bad. If boss damage has to be balanced with respect to almost instant recovery, the best defense will be to not get hit at all, thus ranged.

I don't see how they can fix this without major balance overhauls. Of course, skill gems could be balanced better rather quickly, but that won't really change the situation that much.

Me and my friend recently started this game, both as melee, and we are about at the point of rerolling. Seems like most bosses are designed to do AOE right near them, to the point that we cant really play our class. The way to kill some bosses is to spam totems untill they kill boss for you. Using our abilities (Flicker Strike and Molten Strike) might lead to us getting killed, which is 10% of experience we will never see again. With how much projectiles are on the screen, going from the boss, the only way to avoid them is to not be in melee. But spamming totems or ranged attacks also seems like a waste, might aswell reroll into something that is designed to do that.

Are we just massive noobs and not seeing our advantages? Do melees get significantly higher life pool or way stronger attack, like in WoW and other games? I see vids on people 1-shotting bosses with traps or mines, no way for our characters to do that...

there are NO advantages of being melee

all you can do you can do better as ranged (caster, archer, wander)

access to leech USED TO BE an advantage but right now leech is trivial to get, there is no reflect to worry about and fortify can be obtained by pretty much any character

if you play melee - youve fallen into 'noob trap'. reroll ASAP

play Arc Trapper or Arc totems. youll see the difference

POE is pretty TERRIBLE for build diversity. best builds are like 20 or 30 times better (stronger, cheaper, faster) than 'normal ones'

and btw - Molten Strike is THE BEST melee single target skill

I did more analysis of the poe.ninja data. Turns out, a good portion of the melee is spell-like melee options:
1. molten strike/cyclone/static strike/rain of arrows/etc to proc herald of agony. The herald is auto target, ranged, aoe killer
2. cyclone/etc crit build using the new cast on crit to cast - u guessed it - arc, vortex, or an outlier like cold snap, arctic breath, or ice spear. Again, uses melee to cast spells. There is no inverse, such as attack on critical spell gem...

If it wasn't SSF we would also expect poets pen type build, which is non-crit version of two, using melee to trigger spells (poets, asenath chant, new trigger crafting on weapons, etc).

So, in fact, probably 90%+ of builds use spells in a major way.

In another post which I can't find, someone else points out that the melee scaling as % of base dmg for melee is a big problem. So one suggestion would be to improve scaling dramatically or make spells scale too (!). That would reshape the whole game in one dramatic change...

Well, TencentGGG pidgeon holed themselves by granting everything and above to ranged + cast playstyles...

Want to survive end game -> nuke everything so you don't get hit, and if you get hit, as a caster you're having most of the time a large enough EHP pool so you'll survive...

Meanwhile, "melee" gets improved by reworking (read nerfing to oblivion Static Strike's single target) melees skills, gaining AoE and ranged "attacks" like Tectonic Strike, Smite, Blade Flurry, Sunder, Ice Crash and so on...

Until melee as a playstyle gets a real purpose, you won't see any kind of improvement, unfortunately...

PSS: Our almighty TencentGGG overlords are very scrupulous regarding criticizing their abilities to take proper decisions and consider everything "needlessly harsh and condescending"...

Good to know "free speech" doesn't apply in any form or manner on the forums these days...

SO? Thats just because top represent fastest clearing not beefier. Champ or juggs are most tank but slower with melee skills. This game has gotten so easy at low level where they mainly play to level you dont need tank and can focus on clear is all this means.

Bring back old syndicate and orgial invasion and not nerfed 4x malichai. Triple HP of monsters. You wont see hardly any casters. Game simply moved towards a more consumer friendly clear meta not defensive one is all this means.

I think a lot of this is due to people jumping on the bandwagon. People hear from other players you shouldn't go attack based builds in SSF so they don't even bother to try it out.

You absolutely can play an attack based build in SSF. I did this in Delve and I had no problems at all. Glad I didn't do it in Betrayal though since the amount of loot in this league is so scarce. I quit in SSF delve when I was about to start farming Shaper and I could've farmed some atziri for her flask as well. Would've eventually gotten some decent unique flasks that way.

Unless you join into a league race for first lvl 100 or first shaper or whatever there is little to no reason to not just play whatever you want in SSF or any other league for that matter.

With that being said if it's due to the player base loving to play spellcaster variations I'm fine with it.