I love to play melee but feel like we always get the short end of the stick in aRPGs because of how hard it is to balance. Diablo 3 release tried balancing melee by giving monk/barb 30% DR (damage reduction). The problem I have with this is it limits the kind of skills that you can design into those classes. If you try adding range skills to those classes, they need to be neutered. Now, Last Epoch isnt bad but i think it is fair to say that range is consistently stronger. One of the problems is that the extra sources of DR that melee get are things like â10% less damage while near enemiesâ or â30% less damage for 2 seconds after hitting an enemyâ. These do a lot but often melee dies trying to get into range of an enemy. Situations where these sources of DR arenât taking effect that range characters still get to avoid. So what is a possible solution to this problem?
My thought is to have every character, every class have a default buff. Lets just call it the âDefenderâ Buff. This buff would give you some set amount of DR, lets say 15%. However, certain skills when used would make you lose your defender buff. Obviously most of the sorcerer skills would make you lose your buff. Use fireball? its gone for 4 seconds. However for spell blade you can keep your defender buff because flamereave doesnt cause it to drop off. Lets say you are playing a melee paladin but like still like the idea of using shield throw on its CD. Your build is still a melee build but for balance it isnt fair to have shield throw drop defender just cause it is used ever 5 seconds. Well make it so that only if you remove the CD does it result in dropping your defender buff. You can do the same thing with avalanche. Default avalanche doesnât make you lose it, but when you spec into the targeted avalanche node, it has the side effect of losing defender because now you can take advantage of range. It also has the advantage of range classes not just specing into a DR on a melee skill that they put into their rotation and use every 4 seconds just to get DR.
I think this kind of system could do a lot for balance and removes the necessity and frankly boring design of something like vengeance where you feel required to take so many points just to get the DR and any melee skill that doesnât have DR just feels bad. Iâd love to have a talk around melee and its balance in an aRPG and look forward to people poking holes in my idea or proposing their own.