Nerf Armed

[Kazuki]

Agree

[TheHopscotch]

I'll agree with Jesse and Hated, Armed and Unarmed both seem in a pretty decent place.

Plenty of battles I've seen/played with these have been pretty even, buffing and tweaking up some other stuff would very well be a better solution.

(Also move phantom strikes to intermediate.)

[Sokkxx]

If you're a mage having issues with basic armed then it's likely that armed isn't your issue. Mage requires less risk for the reward that Armed gets for diving in most cases. 

I can't really compare it more then mage vs swordsmen. Kiting, Controlling the field, and debuffing into burst is the mage M.O. while melee is about damage mitigation/dodging and trading up close. There are cheesy armed builds but that's mainly on the issue of the game's current balance at times then on Armed as a tree. It deals damage, and this couoled with a few other trees makes for some truly monstrous combinations. But then again you have Golden Bolt, and Bang and even Wither to an extent that are unanimous in power, but not exclusive to Armed. Phantom Strikes honestly isn't bad anymore. If you think it's fair to take away a decent damage and one of the few mobilities the tree has when it's main weakness is literally the CC and AOE meta rn then you may as well make the icon a prison jumpsuit. 

Hundred Cuts is terrible, Cleave misses alot, dash strike now can misfire, fatal is a skillshot, and Double Strike is a meme. I think the issue is more on demons popping up with so many stacked stats and styles making it seem like they're the average melee when they're on par with some of the strongest regular PCs with way more benefits that have yet to reach their height in complication as they haven't reached 220rpl yet. Trust when they do there's gonna be a "Fuck Demons" thread when they start chainverbing nations.

[Prestige]

You cannot excuse lowest cds in the game, some of the highest damage + the lowest costs for a tree with 'but they have to be close to you'. Yeah, newsflash... Most trees now require you to be close to the other person. We no longer have homing memes (or rather, they're a small amount so an entire build of them isn't possible anymore).

The tree does need to be balanced, as well as Unarmed.

The other trees, for the most part, do not need buffs.

[Esmeraude]

Nerf Shadow and Explosion.

[TheHopscotch]

Nerf Shadow and Explosion.

[Esmeraude]

[Gold]

Why does unarmed not have a one two punch.. ?

[Hated]

its as simple as a mage dropping an aoe. if a melee aims to win, they must take the risk of either standing outside of it while waiting for longer range spells to hit them, or dive in take the damage and come out with a higher trade. i will excuse lowest cds in the game because you need to be right next to a player or simply within a few tiles to actually make an impact. also theyre still around 8-10 second minimum. the exception being dash attack or jab, both of which do little damage and are the gap closers.

EDIT: Not to mention you can fucking miss armed spells!

At the moment a long range homing spell that we all know very well? Bang. 9 range or so, and if you overheat someone first it does even more damage. Slows.
Another homing meme, Eviscerate. Yeah teleports you to the player with high damage, but what else does it do? fucking knocks you back as the player can instantly move away when doing so. awesome for balance right?
another homing meme. illusion flurry. what the actually hel LOL this thing sits you in place, ticks three times and imagine the poor soul getting hit with this in occult aoe. god damn. (occult aoes doing like 2k ticks when standing in them.)
another homing meme. glacier. nuff said.
another homing meme. goddamn cosmic meteor.
i can go on about all the homings in the game really, but let me put it like this.

investment into armed is 65-80, second attunement for either elements or a special tree would be 60-75 and leaves very little wiggle room for anything else. god help the crafters cus the costs will basicly lock them into 2 trees, maybe just a bit into an advancement like ice, sand (actually impossible cus of high costs unless doing just that.) explosion, shadow etc

Let's not nerf melee cus if we do no one will pick up melee anymore. ive seen plenty of viable mage verbers who don't need no melee crutch. melee has caught enough nerfs ill say it again. lets look at other trees to tune up to meet the demand.

[Mouse]

I’m actually going to side with Hated on this one. Maybe it isn’t that armed and unarmed are that good. Maybe other trees are just underperforming. Raw numbers don’t really mean anything in a vacuum, outside of the costs associated with investing in them, but the fact that armed abilities (might, as someone who doesn’t play it) actually feel worth it doesn’t mean that they’re overturned.

The balance philosophy in this game is far too punitive. People often go “fuck that guy” without realizing that maybe the things they use just aren’t up to par. But making people regret their choice to play something is just not the way to go. All it does is appeal to people who want revenge more than they want a good game.

i don't have a dog in this fight but i just wanted to say that, jesse, what you just said, that maybe those two trees aren't overperforming but the rest of the game is underperforming?
that's literally the definition of overperforming. what you just described is exactly what 'overperforming' means.

anyway, there's a few things in the game that are kind of crazy. melee is meant to be high risk high reward but at the moment its just.. high reward. oh no maybe i'll accidentally dash into a water beam.. good thing that dash is back up in 4 seconds alongside the rest of my tree hehe.

i don't have a huge problem with most of the trees, aside from one or two spells in a couple. melee in general, though, just feels.. oppressively strong. day one vampires strong.