Fixing the AOE Problem with Melee Character, D2R - Sweet Phil and GGM

I really wish they would do something to fix melee like that. Not make it like a sorc just add something besides one by one killing. Melee is just so limited.

what kind of animal is that

I am modder and its not that hard to mod it, you basicly add invisible missile to your attack in short range and in certain angle, kind of like invisible shock wave which will use oyur weapon dmg

Thanks for sharing to both of you! I'm really not sold on the runeword approach. Its a rather lackluster approach to fix baseline flaws by adding more borrowed power to the game. Not even mentioning that theres a ton of elite uniques that could be re-designed to offer these effects. And for those "aoe-runewords" themselfes, the cost factor will be a huge problem. What do you wanna place as an adequate effort for an item that offers CE on kill? If its affordable, the effect itself is way too powerful compared to simmilar runewords in that range, therefore turning some other runewords into dead ones. If its too expensive, youre in fact timegating the necessary melee buff, or effectively paywalling it for casual players. Thats why imho they NEED to overhaul the melee skilltrees instead. And change some fundamentals, like reducing the impact of attack rating, and removing the enemies ability to block and dodge incoming damage. Whirlwind for example needs to hit any target it touches for the # of hits provided by the breakpoint. And its a rather easy fix to sort of emulate this. Give each whirlwind hit a small area effect, thats absolutely possible. Frenzy mechanically is good as it it, it just desperatly needs large buffs to its baseline, along with increasing the synergies and giving smoother synergies (skills you actually use) in the first place. Leap attack needs to have its aoe not be a flat portion, but weapon scaled instead, thatll do the trick. Crybarbs need a range increase, plus a baseline buff of ~50% and/or a significant mana cost decrease to catch up with similar effects like frost, lightning or poison nova. And generally, to fight the lack of physical resistance lowering effects, they could redesign the weapon masteries to not add a minor amount of boring %ed, but instead give physical resistance reduction . By mastering a weapon, you not necessarily learn to hit harder, but more accurate and at better timings, which this change would reflect. So tldr: Baseline Buffs! Please! :)

corpse explosion on a grief or similar wepon runeworld would by GG

Be pretty sick to get a rw that gives death sentry

If they add a corpse explosion prefix on a melee kill, that would be great. Right now the only splash we have is any skill proc gloves on hit, elemental damage on weapons.

In PD2, I liked the splash effect of melee attacks. It was just enough to kill faster bunch of enemies. In fact, lots of very nice feature in PD2! The unique item corruption concept is really interesting. I'd like to have that in D2R! The maps also, nice end game alternative.

Just adding runeword to fix a fundamental issue is dumb. Adding a mandatory melee runeword is like Engima. It is bad game design because it is bandage fix to an issue. Melee sucks because of gear dependency and efficiency.

Gear dependency: Physical attack can miss and spells can't. Just triple the effectiveness of Str and Dex. Add base damage to melee skills. Change how armor type work while running. Heavy/Medium/Light: -100%/-100%/-100% to -50%/-75%/-100%
Efficiency: AoE and mobility is overpowered. Just do a 25-50% nerf to all synergy bonus for spells. Also consider nerfing teleport. They have to slow down Ranged gameplay in order for melee to be good.

corpse explo merc would be entirely way too powerful

easy fix is to do something like u guys said, make new runewords that proccs aoe spells. It just have to be high enough procc chance and high enough lvl so it deals real damage OR base the spell dmg of ur AR or something. Or yea CE is simple fix but sounds like it could be too strong compared to like a Frost nova procc or chain lightning or Fissure etc.

Decent splash damage could also boost the use of two handed weapons if it was based on the range of the weapon too. This could take away dependency on one handed grief

I do like the idea of a weapon proccing high level area skills, but please not as a runeword. Rather have existing affices get a higher level skill. Also, skills with low synergy values are preferred. Fire wall, hydra, meteor are fine. Frozen orb actually works pretty well for a rift sin. Blizzard would be good. Hammer should be okay. Molten boulder would be fun, but that one needs like level 50 or something. Corpse explosion would be great if it finally got nerfed. This skill is really dumb... static is great already, chain lightning or lightning would be fun, but they also needed level 50+ to actually do something without mastery and synergy.

I still think WW Barbs need CTC already

I think adding a percentage of weapon damage to the AOE of leap attack akin to how assassins have it in their blade shield might bump that number up to acceptable levels and make an actual build. Maybe make two handed barbs viable with it.