Best solo melee class?

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Spamming Bard songs is not MELEE. It's like calling a Cleric spamming undead nukes a melee class just because they can stand in melee while they do it. Or a Necro with lifetap spam.

What, is your definition of bard melee just autoattacking without playing songs? That's dumb as hell. Bard melee is when you have weapons equipped and attacking. You would still be twisting songs, you just don't (exclusively) have an instrument wielded for the modifier. The alternative would be snare-kiting or fear-kiting with drum dots, or charm killing, or swarming.

This is not to say that that scenario is realistic or illustrative, though. The Monk would be using bind wound and the bard would be using a lute while recovering, for one thing. What that napkin math really demonstrates is how powerful bard recovery is. Bard melee sucks shit relatively speaking, but the recovery benefits outweigh that deficit. Plus the ability to split with lull, cc with mez/charm, and snare runners means you have huge QoL benefits. Bard melee is fine, it's just relatively overlooked due to how powerful and efficient it is to swarm, fear kite, snare kite, or charm. That melee scenario has over four minutes of recovery, but with any of these other tactics it will be close to zero downtime.

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Indeed, instruments will help. I am just not familiar with how the instrument modifiers work, so I didn't include them.

It's pretty simple. Instrument modifiers multiply the effects by the modifier, so an 18 drum results in dots/selos 1.8x as strong, and a 21 lute means your hymn is 2.1x as powerful. But it doesn't apply to every effect, so things like haste, charm, lull, mana regen, maybe snare/slow aren't affected by modifiers.