I just started leveling a dual-wield blademaster, with Fluff’s Belgothian’s Slaughter build in mind. I wanted to have a very blunt melee character: just rush in and slice everything.
I went through Act 1 veteran without any problem, execpt for some bosses. Basically, I got killed 3 times: twice against Gutworm and once against Salazar. I have been playing mainly ranged and never had any problem with those build because you can dish massive amount of damage and kite.
Maybe I am just bad at melee character and need to practice more. But my feeling so far is that at low level, you can’t just tank everything and hope to kill them first. Bosses will kick your butt if you don’t kite a bit, but that’s not what I expect from a melee style.
So I am doing something wrong? Is it going to improve later, with better gear? Maybe I am also missing some basic principles on melee in this game?
In my opinion, it strictly depends on your playstyle. To me, melee builds are way stronger than anything else, because I love tanky stuff. For others, ranged characters may be way stronger, as they can kite and therefore be way more tanky by that. If we’re talking all-in-one, standing in front of an enemy and just hitting it, ranged builds are (mostly) weaker as they don’t have as much armor or physical resist as melee builds. Melee builds usually have a skill(s) that helps them in their weaker defense, if they equip light armor (not caster armor), while ranged builds usually get nothing much because they’re ranged and can kite. You’ll (most likely) never make a heavy armor ranged build that has decent armor and/or physical resist.
So it strictly depends on your playstyle. To me, ranged builds are the most trash our of everything else (well, this is aside of dual-wield melee characters) because they can’t take any hit or they die. To you they might be way stronger because your hand is fast and you can swing your mouse left, right, up, down, middle, left etc. in a blink, while my hand is pretty slow. I also like getting hit (pain fetish right here), so I would not play a ranged character because I could not afford that. Whenever I make a character I try to get as tanky as possible and I managed to make a ranged Death Knight with about 3.5k armor and 51% physical resist, while having medium damage and almost 20k HP.
No, some of the most powerful builds at the moment are melee.
What you’re doing wrong is impossible to know without the grimtools link of your character, but your number one problem is you assume that every high end build out there is efficient on lower levels. Pierce Blademaster with Belgo set and Pierce Blademaster without Belgo set are two different builds.
I leveled a gear dependent melee character that relies on mythical legendary items as a caster up to level 94 then completely respecced the character. It’s best to find out what the best leveling skills are for each mastery and build around those skills until you have the gear. I have not done a blademaster since my noob days so you would get better advice from someone else but supposedly forcewave is the best soldier leveling skill. I usually go with cold when leveling a nightblade but I have always focused on the other mastery that goes with it. Same with soldier.
I dont understand, just because you got raped in act 1 veteran does not per se mean that melee builds are weaker. I do not either understand why end game builds with sick gear is even mentioned in the replies.
I am not assuming this. In fact, at lower level, there is no Belgo set. So how would you build a pierce blademaster in the leveling process? I bet you can build an efficient blademaster before hitting level fifty, no?
The title was a bit provocative to attract people. I guess it is just confusing. Maybe I should change it
My point was, why do I get “raped” (by our own words) in melee while it was so easy at ranged?
Ranged builds do more damage before getting to the enemy. Imagine this, an enemy runs to you, a ranged build will hit it few times before getting hit and a melee builds will only go even with the enemy, this means you’ll take more damage than with a ranged character. This is why ranged in early levels where everything is weak is better than melee.
Efficient is a relative thing, but yes, it’s playable at least. Get Cadence, get Deadly Momentum, get Oleron’s Rage, get Dual Blades, get Night’s Chill. Devotion-wise you need to rush Blades of Nadaan since w/o them you’re doing mostly physical damage, not pierce. With Blades of Nadaan your weapons are obviously swords, the bigger pierce ratio the better.
Because when you play ranged you can neglect the fact that your gear is terribly outdated, at least until you’re swarmed by quick enemies for the first time. Typical mistake is to keep pieces with low armor because of some sweet bonus they provide - it’s not good for melee, you need to prioritize updating your armor value.
But yet again - why don’t you upload your build to https://www.grimtools.com/calc/ and give us a link? Would be much better than exploring various divination systems in hopes to have an insight on what’s went wrong for you.
I am relatively new to the game but for what it’s worth (if anything) I use hit & run tactics with my soldier in the early levels, relying on Forcewave and Blitz and Slam (Chipped Claw) to do the main damage. It’s a very active and tactical playstyle; you could say it’s a kind of kiting melee fighter.
I take very little damage.
I Blitz in on my chosen target usually on the edge of the group then forcewave in the direction of the main group; then a few swings with my main weapon with Slam (Chipped Claw) and retreat. Then Blitz back into the lead pursuer and forcewave the stragglers.
So I need to be tactically aware of the local terrain and the direction I will be moving in - dont want to retreat and run into another mob.
With bosses I Blitz into them, then Warcry, then Forcewave, a few swings of my weapon then Blitz and Forcewave again. I keep that up until my health begins to drop; then I retreat until my constitution replenishes my health then Blitz back in - etc.
Keep moving; you dont have to stand and tank it as a melee fighter.
rather surprised no one mentioned that but to defeat Gutworm you either need very good sustain or evade his skills carefully (bleed/stun are most dangerous). He can hit like a truck as well. About Salazar, he is around level +35 when you encounter him first? No chaos and vita resist in act 1, curses you as well, so phys hits hurt more, no wonder you died. Melee classes always come in second, it is far worse with games that have a pvp setting.
in my experience, caster builds are by far the strongest at low levels. they get most of their killing power from skillpoints, so you can simply frontload a huge amount of damage by maxing out a spammable spell and oneshot most stuff basically all the way through veteran.
weapon based builds are weaker early on, but they catch up with casters since they have more effective ways of damage scaling. most caster skills have no or very low % weapon damage and only scale with higher skill ranks, % damage modifiers cooldown reduction/cast speed (depending on whether the skill has a cooldown or not) and endgame item skill modifiers. weapon damage skills also scale with all those values (except for attack speed rather than cast speed in most cases), but they also scale with weapon damage (base weapon damage and flat damage bonuses from gear, buffs, devotions etc.)
that being said, a blademaster shouldn’t be terribly hard to level. just get cadence and max out deadly momentum and max out dual blades. gives you a ton of flat damage that makes all your melee swings hit like a truck (relative to the low HPs of enemies on veteran, that is). since you get so much “free” damage from those skills, you can easily stack up defenses on items (armor, resists, DA) and still kill everything within seconds while being nearly immortal.
ranged weapon damage builds actually kinda suck early on. rifles are ok-ish, but pistols just suck. takes an awful lot of bonus damage from other sources to get a pistols build to a decent kill speed. it’s easy to dodge dangerous stuff as ranged character and you can mow down most trash before they even get to hit you back, but in my experience ranged toons can’t compete with melee or casters until much later when stacked up bonuses from gear and devotions level the playing field somewhat.
Ah ah! That was very informative. Thank you.
Maybe I neglected the armor. I try to always get good armor value, but I might focus on +health and resist. To make it simple: you would make armor value the priority on any piece of armor?
Skill-wise, I tried to get WPS first (and also slowly maxing dual blades). Maybe that was the mistake. Cadence could have been more brutal with so few skill points.
Hereis my current Grimtool. I was a few levels lower when I went on Gutworm and Salazar. THat’s why I did not post the Grimtool earlier, I thought it would not be so much informative as I have gained levels suice then.
I honestly don’t remember my DA and resists at that point :o. I tried to keep them up as much as possible. As I said, it was my priority (with health).
Indeed, I had an inquistor (Infiltrator) as a ranged toon. No need for seal really: just blast those bloody bastards, and kite. Gutworn went down at level 16 or 17 with ranged ABB alone
I would disagree with you on that last statement. Actually, this is why I started this thread. I can level gunslinger in veteran without any problems. Ok, I was mainly using Inquisitor in those builds, maybe that’s why
But maybe I made a big fuss about this for nothing. I was not trying to say by any means that melee characters were weaks, even at low level. I just had the feeling that ranged were superior. I wanted to know if everybody had the same feeling or if it was only me missing something.
You’re talking about the inquisitor class though - a class famous for having everything in its tool kit.
6 different kinds of RR, flat absorption, on-demand heal + DA + HP, 5 different kinds of resists, racial damage, flat damage, etc. etc.
I could go on. But it’s not a question of ranged vs melee, but rather class-to-class inequality.
EDIT: Admittedly, that’s just from my own perspective. I could very well be wrong, and the inquisitor could be on the same tier as say any other class. Just doesn’t feel that way to me.
2nd EDIT: It’s also the reason why I tend not to build with inquisitors. :rolleyes:
i can see why you’d use weapon pool skills just for fun, but frankly, you’d progress faster and more easily with a plain “max out flat damage first” approach. ie. if you started as nightblade, just max dual blades,save remaining skillpoints until level 10, unlock solder, get 1 point cadence, 1 point fighting form, 12 points deadly momentum (all points in between into soldier mastery)
perhaps 1 point in blitz along the way (nice for mobility). all the other skills can wait. i’d also get olerons rage next and then afterwards fill out the rest of the build (nightblade mastery, more points to base cadence, WPS, pneumatic burst, veil of shadow etc.)
devotions wise, you work towards blades of nadaan and once you get to homestead you get yourself a pair of dermapteran slicers. between those 2, you have 100% armor piercing, so it’s officially a pierce build (converting all of cadence damage to pierce, too). later on you just farm new higher level slicers when the old weapons start to feel outdated (and you passed a level threshold for the next better item/affix version)
I usually like to play range too but I am leveling 2 melee classes right now (DK and Commando) and soldier mastery is super powerful for leveling. This is the build I am following for leveling soldier: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2d5P58V
… completely self-found … I am almost done with elite and it’s a cakewalk so far… Everything melts…
RR and the defensive devotions are the key to face-rolling through campaign.
