Path of Exile - Melee Rebalance

A forum post on the Path of Exile forums talks about how the developers will rebalance melee in the June expansion.

How We're Approaching the Melee Rebalance in 3.7.0

In Synthesis, we performed an extensive rebalance of Spellcasting throughout Path of Exile. A lot of this work focused on a numerical rebalance of most skills.

We have indicated that the June 3.7.0 expansion contains a similar rebalance of Melee skills, and while we certainly do intend to numerically adjust them to make sure they're viable, the actual scope of Melee changes planned is a lot larger than we have indicated so far.

Players from other Action RPGs have occasionally criticised Path of Exile's melee combat for being "clunky", especially early on before players get a lot of attack speed. We are making various experimental changes to the animation system that should help resolve these concerns and really tighten up the feel of melee combat.

In addition to animation system improvements and melee skill rebalances, we are experimenting with changes to systems such as accuracy, melee splash, leech, fortify, various Ascendancy classes, the passive tree, hit/miss feedback, melee base types, movement skills and melee damage availability on items.

This post has been intentionally light on specific details because all of the above potential changes are ongoing experiments that evolve as we try new stuff. We'll post more information in the news over the coming weeks (with the majority of it after 3.7.0's announcement in May). We are very excited about these changes and look forward to sharing more information with you.

Edit: And Cyclone is now a Channelled skill.

Thanks Couchpotato!

More information.

Oh, nice, they rebalanced the melee ski…. *one-shot*.

You know this is big news,when its on RPG Watch.
Hope it gets some love. However,probably it will not be nothing mayor. We shall see.

Originally Posted by Black Rune
You know this is big news,when its on RPG Watch.
Hope it gets some love. However,probably it will not be nothing mayor. We shall see.

Agreed. I'd say councillor or Reeve at best.

We'll see.

Enemy damage and effects are deadly in PoE; the greatest mitigating factor will likely remain distance, and melee skills will likely remain pseudo-ranged as they are now.

Originally Posted by Drithius
We'll see.

Enemy damage and effects are deadly in PoE; the greatest mitigating factor will likely remain distance, and melee skills will likely remain pseudo-ranged as they are now.

I also don't quite see how melee can ever keep up with ranged in PoE. Combat is just so deadly that the safest bet simply is not being close to what deals damage to you.
While with melee you always have to get to the damage source, which can continue dealing damage in the meantime.
Of course, in a game as fast as PoE, all this is in milliseconds, but those tend to matter a lot. Sometimes there's not even two seconds between "I should get out of here" and "I'm dead".

The only way I can see for melee going on par with ranged is for melee skills to somehow up the defenses more than would be possible with ranged.