Game Design Spellbound and Melee

Let me start with the ones that I love first.

Archer: Probably best use of melee in ability tree. Tierstack can go Triple shot + Homing arrow to deal more damage closer. Heavy Melee can go Twain's arc and fire deathrays with massive damage, with risk that you have to stand still charging it.

Shaman: Simple yet great. Distant grasp lets you play with more range, and Hands of Shaman lets you deal more damage closer. It'd be better if there was also heavy melee suppot, but it's still fine.


Now onto a bit more problematic ones...

Warrior: Fallen is the only archetype that remotely mentions main attack. For tierstack, maximium +120 raw damage. For Heavy melee, +4% corruption for every time you hit. that's it. Really..?
Of course, Enraged Blow is still busted and there are still various buffs to defense. But I still think it can use some buffs. For example, more ways to connect paladin and fallen.

Assassin: Oh boy.
Heavy melee is good with Shadestepper, with surprise strike, mark and satsujin. But the problem is that melee still consumes satsujin when playing spell build, and it's effectively wasted. So please make Satsujin togglable with shift or something.
And tierstack... it's effectively killed at this point. Shadestepper's surprise strike only triggers on a single hit, Trickster is too unreliable. But honestly, I think it can be solved with just trickster rework because delirous gas is good.
Lastly, I suggest Acrobat's shurikens should be considered main attack. First of all, it can solve the problem that mana steal is nearly worthless on acrobat because it's constantly flying. It can be busted with Ricochet so the steal will only trigger on the first hit. It can also open possibility for shuriken melee build. It won't be broken because you need to constantly recast dash.

Mage: Mage melee was always considered one of the worst, and this update did not change it.
The only perk it got is Pyrokinesis, which increases the main attack damage by 50% (it was 100% before, why did it get nerfed when it's not even that good) and makes it explode when your mana bank is above 30. Seems good, but in order to get it you need to give up 2 only perks of mage melee: Heal ability and piercing through enemies.

Of course mage is 'canonically' not meant to be focused on melee, but that does not mean you can have build diversity. So I suggest some ways to fix it:
Arcane Restoration: Now switches place with Pyrokinesis. Your main attack will add +2 mana to mana bank when hitting agressive enemy every second.
Pyrokinesis: When you cast arcane transfer, for next 10 seconds your main attack will deal 1% more damage for every 1 mana restored.
Time Anomaly: During Timelock, your attack speed is fixed to normal, overriding any attack speed modifier. (For ultimate heavy melee)

 

Yeah I agree with basically all of this. Ironically, the class deemed the worst for melee before the update turned out to be the ome of the best ones now. One quick tiny detail I want to mention is that Trickster's clones' melee tstack damage is apparantly extremely good on... guild towers because all melees from clones can hit the towers at once.

I also want mention that the admins tried to deemphasize endgame melee builds in order to put more focus on spells with the new spell system as 1.20 tierstack and heavy melee can deal huge damage and be potentially very tanky, even without mythics or really any skill:

• Pre-2.0 Assassin heavy melee was basically the go-to option for less experienced players to easily solo bosses.
• Assassin, Warrior, and Mage(specifically singu) melee tierstack before 2.0 were also solid and easy options that can demolish many end-game challenges (especially raids), especially the tanky builds.

We can clearly see that the above options have taken huge hits and nerfs in 2.0 with most spell builds eclipsing their power.