New WPS buffs made it very enticing to make melee builds. Unfortunately the main problem of melee diversity remains unresolved: few masteries have an autoattack replacer.
We have 4 masteries with AA skill, two skills granted by full sets (Belgo and Rah’zin), one skill granted by the item (Theodin’s scepter), one low lvl relic skill and one component skill.
Beronath’s Fury is very weak and only really works with the classes of exceptional WPS + RR synergy like Infiltrator. Mistborn Talisman is even weaker because it takes up relic slot (no complaints here, low lvl relic).
Say, i want to make a melee build with the new cool 2H aether sword. Its mod and stats imply that it’s a melee weapon for Mystic. What would i take as a second mastery? Shaman has AA and WPS but no aether support and no aether RR. Demo has AA but, again, no aether support, no WPS and its RR is inconsistent for melee. Keeper has AA and WPS but no aether support and no RR. Necro has aether RR, aether support and WPS but… no AA. And CT spam with the aether mace made for CT spam Binder will be much stronger and plays like melee too.
Theorycrafting a new build, I’ve run into this issue more than i can count. Generic AA with some 130-135% WD + XX physical dmg would make so, so many melee builds possible. And it would be a fair trade in terms of power because relic slot is very valuable.
Here is a simple example of a “melee” build made some time ago by Plasmodermic. Very powerful build, but how much dmg was really done by melee attacks, with 114% WD and 155% AS, among all those spells and procs?
P.S. Sorry if i’m repeating someone else’s suggestion. It’s just an idea i had from the first few weeks of my GD life. A year later (and thousands of hours of theorycrafting later) i didn’t change my mind about it.
Agreed.
Main reason of some weapon useless is lack of option for aa (like 2h weapon).
let’s admit - after the nerf beron aa (thaks for this infiltrator) build diversity got worse.
We need some AA for 2h/1h in order to expand the options used weapons
I wouldn’t mind it. Players had fun when Oblivion relic was reworked to have a decent spam-skill. Same with Yugol relic - it found quite a lot of use in a lot of creative builds. So having a relic with dedicated AA skill would be great. Maybe make it so it could only be farmed in a new location that Crate is apparently planning to add (judging from some places in the map), although it might be a dead end. So maybe make it drop at like SR 75 from a special boss or something. In other words, make it really hard to get.
I already posted some examples about BF in the latest 1.1.7.1 build ideas thread.
A have a few theorycrafted melee builds that has no attack skill and the problem with Beronath’s Fury is not just it’s weak bonusses, it also has no aoe. So it’s an +1. I don’t want something huge like runic bolts’ melee version but something better works fine for me. There are a lot of nice 2h weapons that has no use because there is no attack skill for the builds that uses them.
I agree with this, but it should be done carefully.
Namely, the autoattack it provides shouldn’t be too strong, that is, stronger than existing autoattacks in masteries.
They could even make it similar to Cadence, with a wps-overriding attack every three or four blows, and then a buff with bonuses to weapon damage for subsequent strikes.
Alternatively, maybe we shouldn’t be so obsessed with autoattacks. Your lvl1 default attack is perfectly fine if you have enough damage, so maybe they could see which class combos don’t have an aa available, and give bonus chunks of flat damage to items supporting those combos.
I made a topic like this two or three weeks ago here. Of course if I write it then I get a lot of shit in that discussion. If somebody else writes it, it is a fresh new idea…
That’s not possible because those class combos can also be used in casters etc. So those buffs won’t be just for melee or ranged attacks. And any buff to any class would be used in other combos includes that class so it means every build will be buffed so that would create a huge balancing issues.
If I recall correctly, you got a lot of shit because you wanted Mistborn Talisman variants at higher tiers, which is totally unnecessary being as Physical is definitely not lacking for spammable attack skills.
Bolded part isn’t doable on an item. Items can’t have skill modifiers/skill secondary effects, such as Deadly Momentum.
I’d rather just see Beronath’s Fury become better. I agree it is on the weak side. Losing the stats of a 75 component to take it doesn’t help, and the skill is pretty far behind other AA replacers. So a minor buff to the skill and base stat would be welcome. The stats may be appropriate for a lvl 55 component, but if that is a barrier then make the craft harder, require ugdenbloom or w/e.
If it’s the case then lowering the component’s level to 35 to be used in early game builds with no AA and make a new legendary relic with better attack skill is the only option.
I also wouldn’t mind seeing a decent relic AA replacer. I personally think something like a physical firestrike would be good since we don’t have very many of that style of AA replacer.
Most of the legendary relics provides very good stats, procs for the specific classes, so a relix with an AA, mediocre stats and non class bonus shouldn’t be too powerful than other relic. On the contrary, a build that requires that relic to exist would have to compensate the loss from devotions and gears etc so they won’t be op too. And consider that the AA won’t be better than any set bonus skill or class skill, at top it will be something equal to some item skills, at top.
