Melee Survivability Changes - Some First Steps

[Capricorpus]

We have periodically seen traffic on the forums from melee players complaining they’re having trouble surviving. Folks often posted counter to this, stating this could be overcome.

This comes down to who you're talking to. It's absolutely the case that less geared/optimized/skilled players have a difficult time surviving in reaper as melees, particularly on higher skulls. However, the current meta (which I'm sure you're aware of) is very heavily melee-oriented; a high percentage of skilled players play melees in the end game, because as a skilled player with an optimized character it's generally considered to be a top tier choice.

As we watch players play the game, we've noticed melee dps was under represented on high difficulty. Not gone entirely, but, noticeable more uncommon. I'm talking mostly about raids, or
reaper 6+ skulls.

The majority of the players capable of contributing in high skulls on Cannith are melees. In both high skull questing and reaper raids we try to fill our groups with mostly melee dps characters.

When the team would run play days on elite/reaper we would often experience some of what the forums seem to be talking about. "Random" deaths on our melee dps due to stray shots, even
when the tank was on top of aggro. While better builds help, it took noticeably more work than say a ranged dps build.

It's likely more difficult to play as a melee than it is to play as, say, a shuriken build. Melee builds have higher skill ceilings at the moment.

Don't melee have tools to solve this already? Yes they have tools, but... 1> The best ones require a shield or heavy armor, so that leaves some folks out

The best tool for surviving in high skulls is damage avoidance (as opposed to damage mitigation) given the fact that even with damage mitigation any non tank won't be able to survive if they're getting hit.

I think I understand what you're trying to do here, but given the fact that people are already completing r10 and raids on mid to high skulls with groups in which melees are heavily represented, I'm slightly concerned.
Assuming the goal is to make melee more approachable for less skilled/optimized/geared players, how do you plan on achieving that goal without trivializing content for players who are already able to contribute on melees that don't have 3-4000 hp?

[noobodyfool]

This would be to powerful out of reaper only if players who only play reaper were to play elite again.
For newer ish players it's perfect.

[Edwinge]

The concern, I think, is that then it's basically free bonus HP for a lot of caster builds. The whole point of the mechanic is to provide more HP for melee characters without giving that same boost to anyone else.

Increasing cooldowns or gradually stacking increased SP costs makes it unattractive to characters that are more focused on casting, while having a minimal impact on melee characters that just use the occasional spell or heal.

Another idea would be to disincentivise casters in a similar way that they suggested for ranged characters. When toggled on make non-positive, non-repair spell powers and spell DCs be zero. Then they can leave the spell ranges alone.

[noobodyfool]

Another idea would be to disincentivise casters in a similar way that they suggested for ranged characters. When toggled on make non-positive, non-repair spell powers and spell DCs be zero. Then they can leave the spell ranges alone.

I like your idea but this is not a melee only buff unfortunately, if you play a close courtiers healer I think it will be just fine. But not sure.

[macubrae]

From what I've seen, this may be a well thought out plan. They didn't increase melee DPS, so they aren't upsetting the balance they are going for. The saves and skills are untouched so traps are still an obstacle. Melee CC is based mainly on tactics, which means there is no change. As it's been said, extra HP is of very little help in most reaper only delaying a death by one or two hits. It sustains life without adjusting DR, SR, PRR, MRR, or anything else.

I play melee characters mostly and I was slow to warm up to the TR mechanics of the game. If I wanted to try a new build, class or combination I made a new character. So now I'm playing catch-up with half a dozen toons that I have become attached to since '09 and who play very different. I've come to realize that maybe I might eventually have a completed (for me) character or possibly two, but it won't be this year and likely not the next. So, even though I play almost every day and have capped characters with end game gear and weaponry, the high reaper quests are still beyond my horizon. If +50%hp help in my current content difficulties, then let's try this out.

[Tilomere]

Balance problems are primarily an artifact of the inability to group with like-powered players. Cross server grouping, or server merging, or hireling enhancement is the only way I see to address that.

[Thar]

I have to say the fact this invalidates a core part of fighters and paladins defensive stances with a free feat for every melee class is really bothersome it should stack or those tress need to be redone to make up for the points spent on the tree for a part that becomes pointless at level 20 and cant be worked around as its a core and that its linked to so few feats which none really seem to work with shield builds to well

agreed. tanks are getting the shaft again. they give up like everything now including dps to get to where they are and now all melee gets 5x hp buffs that they can't use cause they take shield feats. so now others can hp sponge tank, do dps, keep agro better and be healed better than the tank.

[cave_diver]

This is such a bad idea....can you please explain why you are balancing for reapers, when reaper came out it was explicitly for the challenge and we were told you would not balance for reaper?

[btolson]

Seriously, the solution to "mobs can't damage kiters well" isn't "buff melee," it's "nerf kiting and then nerf mob dps down to a sweeter spot."

For once in this game's development I wish you guys would actually target the root problem instead of one of its symptoms. This is going to have unintended consequences, because that's the universal law of DDO - buffs always bring unintended consequences.

[PsychoBlonde]

I don't like this idea at all. The sheer number of provisos and exclusions involved should be a flashing neon sign that this is the wrong direction.


Ultimately the problem with balance is due to kiting - melee characters get hit 10x more than ranged ones do, and in effort to make mobs non-trivial to those ranged characters in the rare case they actually *do* manage to hit them, they are designed to do lethal (1 or 2-shot) damage. This creates a bad situation of spiky survivability for just about everyone.


The desired fix here is not a clunky buff to melee hp, but to provide mobs with more (or any whatsoever) tools to combat kiting.

Give them Charge abilities. Maybe even Dire Charge in Legendary. Give them long jump abilities, like Shadar-kai have. Give them teleport/blinkstep abilities like Bearded Devils have (those guys are pretty effective at dealing damage to would-be kiters).

Give them "get over here!" abilities. Chain/rope lassos for physical types. Bigby's Hands spells for caster-types. This would largely solve the issue of perch spots as well, which seems to be a high priority for you guys.

Give them root abilities. We have thrown nets in the game, let mobs have some of them.

Or if all of that is too complicated, just give melee mobs a +50% movement speed action boost clickie.


After you get melee mobs to a place where they can actually hit ranged characters more than 1x per minute, then you can scale back their damage to non-1-shot levels. And they will be dangerous to everyone.

Not to mention that when individual mobs have more capability to be a hazard, you don't need AS MANY mobs to provide a threat, so you can scale the QUANTITY down and actually do some ENCOUNTER DESIGN.

There are some quests in the game that *have* encounter design and those fights can be really nasty even with relatively few mobs that just happen to have good positioning, particularly if one of them happens to be a champ.

[Bobby88888]

Now, I'm not a Dev, but I am curious as to what you think is wrong with Dodge?

J1NG

I don't know exactly what is wrong with dodge, but haven't you noticed that the amount of attacks you dodge seems to be lower than it should be? And the higher your dodge gets the more the disparity becomes noticeable.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes it seems to work just fine, but not always. As testing I have raised my dodge to up to nearly 350% and gone to mobs that I am fairly confident have no dodge bypass, and even if they did they would need over 250% bypass at that, and was killed by attacks that are all dodge block-able whilst my dodge rating was >/=100%. I have also run that test several times over the past couple of years on different difficulties and in different quests.
Do I know what is wrong with it? No. Is something wrong with it? I would say absolutely.
Unless there is an internal limiter that caps the amount of dodge you can actually benefit from no matter how high it lets your dodge go. and even if a natural 20 ignored dodge I still don't think that would account. Even if dodge caps at 100% and dodge bypass starts from 100% dodge no matter how high it goes, things still don't add up. But I haven't done any in depth testing, only enough to know its not working as advertised.

[Captain_Wizbang]

A few people hit on a key point.

Maybe you (SSG) should look at giving certain mobs more offensive capabilities.

Maybe my idea of a difficulty revamp isnt such a far-fetched idea after all?


We all know you only have limited access to certain personnel and resources being an open platform studio. But this is by far the best avenue you can take to bring the classes to a more even playing field.

Reaper is where your issue starts that you're trying to address , And REAPER is what needs to be adjusted.


https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...h-more-options

[roninkitsune]

While I don't agree with what seems like a balance focused on reaper difficulty, I think that the hp increase should be tied with melee feats, as someone suggested before. That will address the issues in toughness between melee and ranged characters and the massive tooltip that the feat would have otherwise. Another advantage of doing it this way is the possibility of tweaking the numbers on future balance patches based on different fighting styles.

[FuryFlash]

Summary: I think that melee DPS are in a good place and have a distinct, important role in Reaper gameplay. The "Epic Defensive Fighting" buff seems built to improve melee DPS' survivability in tougher (Reaper) content, which not only goes against the Reaper design philosophy of not buffing characters around Reaper scaling, but also does so in a poorly thought-out manner which homogenizes classes and weakens party play.

****

Before even considering changes like "Epic Defense", I think it would make sense to address the things that still need to be done for general balance. This may include (but is not limited to):

• AI/Aggro changes
• Remaining enhancement passes (Sorc, Wiz, Clr)

After which point it would make sense to look at the bigger picture and what balance should look like overall. This may include (but is not limited to):

• Updates to spells/caster DPS scaling
• Stealth QoL and viability (depending on the results of the AI/Aggro changes)
• Tweaks and general design consistency with enhancements
• Overall balance of party roles (melee DPS, ranged/spell DPS, tanking, healing, CC, etc.) <- this is where I view the current discussion

Now, since this discussion is about balancing melee DPS characters' defenses with respect to the other party roles, lets talk about that.

Dare I say that it started with some folks complaining?

Isn't that how most forum discussions really get started? :P

We have periodically seen traffic on the forums from melee players complaining they’re having trouble surviving. Folks often posted counter to this, stating this could be overcome.

I've seen a lot of these posts too. Melee players can struggle with survivability in many scenarios, and while the individual player can overcome this somewhat with gear, past lives and build choices, I think its often a matter of group composition and the role this type of character has in the group. This conversation in particular seems to be leaning heavily towards Reaper, in which party composition and filling roles is often more important. A player with strong DPS who struggles constantly to stay alive may get some benefit from personal character improvements, but will likely feel significantly stronger if supported by a well-balanced party. Tanks pull aggro off the squishier melee DPS, CC characters lower/stop enemy DPS and healers can greatly extend the melee DPS' life (with the exception of oneshots).

As we watch players play the game, we've noticed melee dps was under represented on high difficulty. Not gone entirely, but, noticeable more uncommon. I'm talking mostly about raids, or reaper 6+ skulls.

I'd be curious to know what "watching players play the game" includes - are you watching groups from each server, different timezones, different quests, lfms vs guild runs, etc. The observation that melee dps is under-represented certainly does not match my own experiences.

I play mid-high reaper legendary content on Thelanis in the late evening (Pacific time) almost every day. Typically I'm playing in a group of regulars mixed with PUGers doing mostly newer content. I play a pure Tempest Ranger. The most common builds I see are Warlocks, melee DPS (monks, rogues, some fighters or barbarians, rarely paladins or rangers) and ranged DPS (artificers, rangers, rogues). There are also a fair amount of CC casters (I'm including instakillers in this role for simplicity), with a pretty minimal amount of healers and even fewer tanks.

When getting a group together for harder content, often the biggest thing we're missing is a healer (tanks are so rare I don't even consider them a role to look for outside of raiding). In any given group we might have 1 or 2 good CC casters, 1 or 2 pure melee DPS, 1 or 2 tankier melee DPS or ranged DPS, and hopefully a healer or rarely a tank. This does not seem to match what you are saying above, even if you are only considering pure DPS builds (DPS first, everything else second) in your observations.

When the team would run play days on elite/reaper we would often experience some of what the forums seem to be talking about. "Random" deaths on our melee dps due to stray shots, even when the tank was on top of aggro. While better builds help, it took noticeably more work than say a ranged dps build.

Even with great group coordination, CC, healing and tanking, you're bound to see some deaths in the higher difficulty settings. There's too much randomness at play for there not to be. That said, the survivability difference between a well balanced, coordinated group and 6 people in a party who act like they're solo is massive. To me, the fact that smart group play is actually rewarded in Reaper is one of the best things about it.

As for your comment about [building? gearing?] a melee being more work than doing so on a ranged DPS, I suppose I would agree in the sense that between a poorly geared melee and a poorly geared ranged, the ranged will be much more survivable due to the nature of ranged combat. Both will still be more effective than a caster who can't hit his DCs, which is mainly a gear/past life investment. To get good results in Legendary Reaper, any character has to have decent gear and a strong enough build, which I think makes total sense.

So... We have concluded that melee dps (not counting tanks) is at least much harder to play, from a player skill point of view, if not needing some help in general.

I agree that playing a melee DPS in harder content can be challenging. If you ignore gearing and building requirements (which is actually a big deal), I would rate difficulty of play for the basic roles in mid-high reaper as the following:

Hardest
> Melee DPS
> CC Caster/Instakiller
> Tank
> Healer
> Ranged DPS
Easiest

I'm sure others will disagree. Also, gear required to do well in harder content changes the list fairly significantly. Of course, we're talking about the hardest difficulties in the game, where player skill is more important - Melee DPS is one of the easiest roles to play on lower difficulties in my opinion.

- Melee "physically dodge" less attacks than Ranged To be clear I mean avoiding the mobs swing detect or projectile outright, no hit roll even. Not even talking about static defenses yet... less distance to threat equal less time to react. We realize some players are exceptionally good at doing this even in melee, but it's much harder.

A problem which will exist in balancing any game with melee and ranged combat. DDO offsets it somewhat by giving melee more DPS and better defenses. One of the best parts of DDO in my opinion in the mobility in combat; while this does allow ranged characters easy damage avoidance, it also allows any character to make more meaningful tactical positioning decisions.

- So monster damage, why not lower it? The thing is to challenge a melee character, and a ranged character equally, you really need a different ratio of hits to kill. Our ranged characters, "kiters", can be really hard to catch, so killing them in something like only two or three hits is probably about right for high difficulty, but for a melee getting tagged three times in close succession is much more likely unavoidable. We want to support really hard difficulty, but it's hard to do with these two groups being too "similar" in toughness

This is a fair point. The difference in damage mitigation on a melee vs a ranged does not offset the difference in incoming damage the two are taking. I think this has to do partly with the fact that character hit dice have such a small range compared to the number of hit points a character gets from other sources. My Ranger with a hit dice of d8 gets 160 hp base at level 20, compared to a level 20 Wizard who gets 80hp (correct me if I'm wrong). Both our hit points are over 1000 by level 30, so that difference is not even noticeable when we get into Legendary Reaper content.

This type of balancing was built into D&D. The problem is that DDO uses the exact same system, meaning it doesn't scale at all with the powercreep in this game. This wouldn't fix the issue of ranged vs melee survivability (my tempest gets the same base hp as an arcane archer), but I think making hit dice/hit point progression more significant would be a step in the right direction since it makes classes feel different. Having unique character choices is really all I'm interested in here, since I'm of the opinion that melee DPS are fine where they are right now.

- Don't melee have tools to solve this already? Yes they have tools, but... 1> The best ones require a shield or heavy armor, so that leaves some folks out 2> Many of these tools are generally available, and we need a durability difference in the two play styles or the monster damage is going to be wrong for someone. It's why this feat has so many odd rules to it.

The "problem" is in mid-high Reaper, as pointed out by yourself earlier. Since Reaper enforces group play, I think it's reasonable that the melee isn't able to do both the highest DPS and get "all the tools" to solve their survivability problem. The tank, healer and CC have those tools and it becomes less important if everyone gets them. I'm not against making classes and roles more distinctly different; I'm all for it! But as all the restrictions this feat has should show you, this is not the right place to do it.

Roles are determined largely by classes, enhancements and feats - if you want to make these roles more distinct, any changes should be made there, not in the form of a general toggle that gives way more benefit than actual significant build choices.

- But melee does more damage! "Technically". But opportunity cost is a thing, and many ranged builds have really good burst via many shot/fury of the wild, so unless the fight goes so long, often the melee don't have a significant dps lead.

In a group environment like reaper, you often have CC making everything helpless and a tank making the boss a non-threat. Unless one is soloing or running a weak party composition, there is fairly minimal opportunity cost, and even when there is an opportunity cost the melees tend to lead in DPS. Melee DPS is much higher than almost any other build can achieve (there are exceptions as with everything), which is a key balancing point I don't think is fully offset with opportunity cost.

- Isn't 50% too extreme? Really depends on the difficulty you play on. We could see this buff going down to 30%, making it a cheap semi alternate to the defensive stances, but when you look at 7+ skulls, it's probably only buying you a couple of hits. It will make things easier, but in our view it means certain builds will play on higher difficulties than say some other builds which were already up there.

Frankly, the buff is just weird. Making it not stack with competence bonuses makes it amazing on some tanks compared to others. Even melee DPS builds like Fighters and Paladins that have invested in competence bonuses to hit points from their defensive trees will end up with the exact same overall hp bonus as other inherently lower-hp melee DPS like Ranger, Rogue and Monk. Nerfing group healing makes this counter-productive in Reaper, which seems to be what the buff is mainly meant for (which in itself is silly because the original design around Reaper was that characters would *not* be balanced around it). Not to mention the number is huge compared to other defensive investments, making those less important by comparison.

- Why HP? Couple of reasons. 1> HP works on every damage type 2> It pushes healing gearing/trees to be more useful 3> Because its being done in a lump sum here it'd be really hard to do it as PRR/MRR which is better delivered piecemeal because it's more effective at lower values.

HP makes sense. But consider what I said about hit dice - if you really want to give more power to melees (which I don't think is needed), at least do it in the classes themselves and make each class more unique rather than homogenizing them.

- This will make things too easy! Yes, but hopefully in a way that lets us make it harder in a more balanced way going forward. Epic defense is really about creating a toughness difference between melee & ranged so we can challenge them correctly.

I like this premise, but you're going at it wrong. We clearly have different views on the state of melee DPS right now - personally, I think they're in a good place.

- Don't Panic Buff panic! Is that a thing? In case it is, we are still in the feedback phase, and this will be on Lammania, and all level 21+ characters will find it in their feats list on the preview server. I hope many people try it out and see where it puts their melee builds against the current difficulty settings.

Too late... Panic... PANIC. PAAAANIIIIIC!!! _{Kobold remember waterworks!}

No, honestly, I don't think this even needs to go to Lamannia. It's just a bad idea.


Thanks,
Furyflash

[Dark_Helmet]

If you were just adding it as an option for melee, I wouldn't mind. People are complaining that it doesn't help in reaper since in prevents them from healing back, but that is exactly the point to limit it to a melee-only play style which I support (tanks should tank, divines should heal).
But, you said it was the first step which worries me that you are completely killing the normal game for the sake of Reaper mode. I hope you consider just adding different options instead of making changes to existing capabilities.

1) Quit messing with the game just to appease your messy Reaper mode (not everyone runs reaper 10 so it is okay to leave it hard/impossible for certain builds to solo).

2) Fix reapers - when in a 3 dimensional dungeon, they agro mobs everywhere when they fall down (WW2 as an example when one falls off the ledge, you automatically get red alert).

3) Fix monster agro so that you can actually play in stealth mode again and not just certain dungeons (VON3, make it so you can pull each named separately).

4) Get rid of dungeon alert. So many people quit the game over how ludicrous it was (I talked to some GENCON people and they "checked into the game again and said DA ruined the experience").

[wolffboy]

Does it work for rogues?

[lyrecono]

Dare I say that it started with some folks complaining?

Though it was probably more like three things...

• - We have periodically seen traffic on the forums from melee players complaining they’re having trouble surviving. Folks often posted counter to this, stating this could be overcome.
  Yes, i often asked for that high reaper dps melee build, i never got one, or send one in a private message
  
  
• - As we watch players play the game, we've noticed melee dps was under represented on high difficulty. Not gone entirely, but, noticeable more uncommon. I'm talking mostly about raids, or
  reaper 6+ skulls.
  thank you, we can now close the book on this and move foreward
  
• - When the team would run play days on elite/reaper we would often experience some of what the forums seem to be talking about. "Random" deaths on our melee dps due to stray shots, even
  when the tank was on top of aggro. While better builds help, it took noticeably more work than say a ranged dps build.
  

So... We have concluded that melee dps (not counting tanks) is at least much harder to play, from a player skill point of view, if not needing some help in general.


...

...

...

WARNING - WALL OF TEXT AHEAD - DESIGN LOGIC - ABANDON ALL REASON:

This change, Epic Defense, is really about the relationship of ranged and melee DPS in DDO, and how it works out in our higher difficulties. Our current thread of logic goes something like this...

- Melee "physically dodge" less attacks than Ranged To be clear I mean avoiding the mobs swing detect or projectile outright, no hit roll even. Not even talking about static defenses yet... less distance to threat equal less time to react. We realize some players are exceptionally good at doing this even in melee, but it's much harder.

- So monster damage, why not lower it? The thing is to challenge a melee character, and a ranged character equally, you really need a different ratio of hits to kill. Our ranged characters, "kiters", can be really hard to catch, so killing them in something like only two or three hits is probably about right for high difficulty, but for a melee getting tagged three times in close succession is much more likely unavoidable. We want to support really hard difficulty, but it's hard to do with these two groups being too "similar" in toughness

- Don't melee have tools to solve this already? Yes they have tools, but... 1> The best ones require a shield or heavy armor, so that leaves some folks out 2> Many of these tools are generally available, and we need a durability difference in the two play styles or the monster damage is going to be wrong for someone. It's why this feat has so many odd rules to it.

- But melee does more damage! "Technically". But opportunity cost is a thing, and many ranged builds have really good burst via many shot/fury of the wild, so unless the fight goes so long, often the melee don't have a significant dps lead.

- Isn't 50% too extreme? Really depends on the difficulty you play on. We could see this buff going down to 30%, making it a cheap semi alternate to the defensive stances, but when you look at 7+ skulls, it's probably only buying you a couple of hits. It will make things easier, but in our view it means certain builds will play on higher difficulties than say some other builds which were already up there.

- Why HP? Couple of reasons. 1> HP works on every damage type 2> It pushes healing gearing/trees to be more useful 3> Because its being done in a lump sum here it'd be really hard to do it as PRR/MRR which is better delivered piecemeal because it's more effective at lower values.

- This will make things too easy! Yes, but hopefully in a way that lets us make it harder in a more balanced way going forward. Epic defense is really about creating a toughness difference between melee & ranged so we can challenge them correctly.

- Don't Panic Buff panic! Is that a thing? In case it is, we are still in the feedback phase, and this will be on Lammania, and all level 21+ characters will find it in their feats list on the preview server. I hope many people try it out and see where it puts their melee builds against the current difficulty settings.

A few clarifications....

- Epic Defense won't affect the range of Point Blank AOES centered on the caster. It will effect cones.
- This stacks with other HP sources that are not Competence typed. So while you can still run a defensive stance like Stalwarts for AC/PRR etc, you don't get both HP bonuses, just the highest.

-T

Thanks, this is amazing work, glad to have you working on this!

This is the problem right here. You're stating this as if it is the general state of affairs, but it just isn't. It's very possible to play a melee even in mid to upper reaper right now without "dying all the time". People do it every day on my server, and I'm sure there are people on yours who do too.

There have been some threads on the forums from melee players asking for adjustments. Those complaints are very hard for me to take seriously after learning how to contribute effectively in harder content on a melee myself. If you do a decent job of building and gearing your character, play intelligently, form parties that cover key tasks, and select an appropriate setting, the additional difficulty of reaper largely disappears. You do not have be an exceptional player to do any of that.

So because I know it is possible for an ordinary person to play melees in reaper effectively without dying all the time, I am suspicious of people who claim that it isn't possible and ask for the game to be made easier. The most likely explanation seems to be an unwillingness to adjust their approach coupled with a desire to get the excessive rewards offered in reaper difficulty. If it were up to me, I would be looking at ways to reduce the incentive to play reaper relative to other difficulties, so people can get back to doing whatever best suits them without worrying about missing out.

Thanks.

Thanks for the strawman,
I never said it wasn't possible, i think torcs post explains it better then i could, melee is under represented in uper tier reaper.

This is a great continuation of observance and sound reasoning.
You will get push back from the usual suspects and that's ok the game is not for them only.
If compromise is needed I'm also good with that.
Please remember the forums are unrepresented by new and mid level players.
Also please continue to observe and balance according to reality and not emotion.
If time allows could you take a look at AC,Tactics,Glancing Blows,Stealth.


GREAT JOB SSG

THANK YOU

+1, sadly i can't hand out anymore rep.
Nice to hear from someone that has new and mid level players in mind.

Or, you could not make these changes and they could try playing a LOWER difficulty.

Hahahahahaha, is that what melees told you when they dragged casters through content?

This is such a bad idea....can you please explain why you are balancing for reapers, when reaper came out it was explicitly for the challenge and we were told you would not balance for reaper?

Not true, if reaper was meant to be a challenge, there wouldn't be reaper enh trees.
How ever you seem to skip over something.
EE isn't a lot of for a lot of melees, let alone reaper and as torcs post demonstrated, melee is under represented.
That has a reason, people noticed that playing from a distance is way easier
In my neck of the woods, melee is often looked down upon in the end game meta an end game&tr community and due to those reasons caries consequences. Only a handfull of capable pure melee dps toons currently reside at cap, with pure i mean non tank and non "oh **** this is too hard, lets perch on a high surface and pew pew pretend melees".
Player dps melee skill doesn't mean, wait for cc and cheating the mob ai.

[Franghasea]

By no means am I a melee expert, but I see repeatedly it mentioned that there is an issue in High Reaper and Reaper Raids for melee. Rather than buff EVERYONE at level 21 that is melee, what about the following:

1) Split the Reaper Dread Adversary offensive tree into one melee tree and one ranged tree. Taking any points in one will lock you out of the other.
2) Insert the Epic Defensive Fighting into the Melee Reaper Tree, still at level 21, but at the 4th core or 4th Tier with the same lock out restrictions as the proposed epic feat has.
3) Given this tree is now melee only, for example Core 5 could become XX% Dodge, and XX% Dodge Cap increase, Core 6 could be 100* PRR/MRR if additional support is needed.
*100 only provided as an example.

This would limit these new effects only to Melee and only in Reaper.

[lyrecono]

Does it work for rogues?

From the post torc made, i assume it does, assuming you took feats he posted

Though i hope they add shield to the list (and add 2 new shield feats in the line)

[Morroiel]

This is the dumbest idea ive heard/read about this game in the entire lifetime of the game.

This reads as: devs dont understand game at all not even a single % and are making radically uninformed decisions.

The fact that this is even being suggested has led me to cancel my sub.