What's considered Melee?

[DefyGravity]

What's considered melee cuz people accuse me of using WW and smiting saying that they aren't melee. So... I thought anything that does damage (Not from spells and stuff) count as melee. Some help please. THanks.

[Ethereal.Grizzly]

What's considered melee cuz people accuse me of using WW and smiting saying that they aren't melee. So... I thought anything that does damage (Not from spells and stuff) count as melee. Some help please. THanks.

this question has been brought up many times in the pvp forums before. but people could never agree here, just as on bnet. just see it as a personal preferance thing. if you think it is, it is, if you think it isnt, then it isnt.

the problem with this question is that some people know what melee is, but they dont consider it melee. take charged strike and smite for example:
unblockable damage, high damage. the fact is that they do get up close to the enemy and they do use thier weapon and strike the person, but it isnt considered melee in d2 because it requires 0 ar and it is unblockable. as for me? i think anything that isnt a projectile or spell (like orb fireball bs, etc) is a melee attack.

[insane_knights]

Ww not melee thats the first i heard of that. Smite i can understand cause no ar is require and many peopel differ on views. Dont beat your sefl up over it. If they complain just mute them and continue owning them.

[Slavian]

in the real world, anything that has a physical link between the 2 people fighting is considered melee.

example: a man is holding a sword, which makes impact on the enemy, they are all connected to each other physically (excluding air lol), in a link.

an example of something that is not melee is an arrow.

example: the arrow which hits the enemy is not connected to the person who shot it physically at the time of impact.

in D2, the ideas of melee are a tiny bit twisted, because some melee involve magical damage. even normal melee attacks could have magical dmg from items/charms, and that stuff doesn't exist in the real world. so now the deffenition of melee in D2 has to be redefined.

any physical connection hit which doesnt involve magic?
any physical connection hit which involves magic or not?
any physical connection hit which checks for attack rating/defense rating?(besides projectiles like thrown javelins and arrows)
any physical connection which could involve magic dmg and doesnt necessarily have to check for ar/def?

the definitions are many.

most people would like to consider a skill a melee skill if it does not have a magical component to it.

example of a melee skill : zeal. it doesn't have a magical component. ww. it doesnt have a magical component. concentration. sacrafice. jab, fend, etc.

example of a non-melee skill: charged strike. it has a magical component poison dagger. it has a magical component. vengence. it has magical component. berserk.

i hope that clears things up for ya.

altho another very popular definition is = if it involves a swing of a weapon, its melee, which i think its kinda naive and stuborn given the environment of the game.

- Ruler

[RainofChaos220]

WW is melee by all definitions:

Requires AR
Requires to be close to hit
Does Physical Damage
Affected by Iron Maiden and Thorns

[Ethereal.Grizzly]

yes but people still dont consider it melee simply because it is "cheaP"

[RTB]

example of a non-melee skill: charged strike. it has a magical component poison dagger. it has a magical component. vengence. it has magical component. berserk. If an attack is affected by Iron Maiden/Thorns the game considers it melee. Berserk, if it had physical dmg, would also be affected.

altho another very popular definition is = if it involves a swing of a weapon, its melee, which i think its kinda naive and stuborn given the environment of the game.Which is a quite accurate description of a melee attack in D2. An 'exception' is Whirlwind, but instead of swinging a weapon, the character is spinning for the momentum needed. Your body is the weapon when kicking :)

Of course, if an attack kills quickly, you don't want it against you, so it's somehow not melee anymore. :rolleyes:

[dys0r]

[opinion]

Charged strike isn't melee. You have to be close, yes, but it requires no AR; hence, it always hits.

Smite isn't melee for the same reason. No AR, unblockable, stuns, always hits.

Berserk IS melee. I don't care what you guys say. Considering that berserk completely leaves you defenseless (other than a shield), it's melee. It requires AR to hit, and also involves the swinging of weapons. Berserk simply converts all physical damage into magical damage.

WW is sorta melee/sorta isn't. Depends on who you talk to.

[/opinion.]

- Terry

[darius_paul]

I agree with Dysor.

Only I think that WW is melee, however, used in a "melee duel" game its bad mannered unless the 2 parties agree it can be used. But none the less, it IS melee. Just a moving melee attack. Same as charge. Charge is melee even though the pally is running extremely fast, he still needs AR to hit. Berserk is melee. Blah blah etc etc

[Rauth]

I don't see what people's problem with CS is. Its not horribly overpowered. Throw on tgods and stack some res. Odds are you will outtank the zon if you do decent damage. Gangel works great too. Not like zons have huge amounts of def to deal with, although max block+dodge is somewhat hard to hit.

Smite I can see as overpowered vs other melee(except ww) since it stuns so well. It STILL is melee, although annoying. Just like mind blast is still a spell, but annoying as hell. Bottom line is, hes smackin you with his shield. Thats melee.

Funny thing about ww is, its been nerfed so many times and yet is still the strongest melee skill, and one of the strongest skills period. :)

[Cod]

well, i just joined a melee dueling game (i'm toying with a full aldurs fireclaw bear which does better than it should) and it consisted of 3 sorcs (1 dueling normally, 1 mfing, and 1 hardcore townguarding), 1 ww barb, 2 smiters (1 doom smiter, 1 exile) and a wind druid. so out of all of that, i'd consider the barb and smiters to be melee. be prepared though, most pubby "melee duelz" games will have a similar composition of players.

[DefyGravity]

Cool. Next time they tell me I can't WW I'm just gonna WW up their asses and take their gold. :lol: Ty guys.

And yes I consider all noncasting stuff (Stuff with AR and no AR) as melee and WW to me isn't cheap, Smite is cheap cuz it's annoying. Heh.

[RainofChaos220]

Is Blessed Hammer Melee - you know it's called Blessed HAMMER (hammer.. melee.. get it) and if it is why do those melee guys get so mad when I join Melee Duelzz with hammerdin?

Also what about bone SPEAR (once again spear.. melee), is it also melee if you fire it from close range?

[Jarulf]

Reading some of the answers makes me wonder. Obviously we don't deal with the world outside the game, there, melee can be looked up in a dictionary and someone allready mentioned it.

Looking at the game, I see a few trying to list some criteria for it to be "melee". Why those criterias? How are they related to anything in the game mechanics? And more importantly, why is the question asked and what will the answer be used for? That is actually the most important. I feel the issue is in regard to rules used in for example duels. In that case, the answer is basically, anything goes that one agree upon and is generally accepted. HOWEVER, that does not mean there is a link to how the game works and its mechanics.

Looking at the game itself and how it works, the game has NO concept whatsoever about melee and non melee. None. What the game can be said to have is missile attacks which includes spells, and other such effects, even if they are not nessecarilly a moving missile, a firewall flame is a "missile" for this purpose, basically look at missile.txt to get a list of them all. They all attack through the missile attack function (although various variants and special cases can exist). Then we have the non missile attacks which are pretty much the rest. The whole attack code is broken up into several subfunctions were there is seperate functions for the whole "tohit" issue which should include stuff like blocking, avoid, evade and other such things. There is a damage calculation and a damage modification routine (resistance, absorbtion and a bunch of such target related things). Then we have the actual resolution routine that deals the damage which can be called directly or (normally) through a function that handle stuff like IM, Thorns, Cold armors and so on. There are slight changes and stuff moved arround in 1.10 but basically that is it.

Each skill will call these functions seperately. Usually all of them are called in order although some skills skip some or do it in a slightly unique way. But that is it. I would say all are melee from the game point of view. Do note that only the missile attacks has the flag set for being ranged/missile, no other have, so that is a further point to realise that all the others are non missile (or melee if one want to call it that, I would say close range).

Have fun, whatever one want to use the answer or definition of melee for.

[darius_paul]

RainofChaos220 <---- Haha smart@$$ :lol:

Anyways, Smite is melee. But most of the time its BM to use in melee games. Same with CS. Its melee to but BM in melee duels.

[theBlackKnight]

Is that THE Jarulf?

Melee attacks in my opinion are attacks that have to meet some criteria that I set up

1) you have to be up close to the target
2) you have to use attack rating
3) your attack has no effective area of effect ( such as in whirlwind, which I consider a " physical damage w/ an area of effect )
4) and your attack must require a weapon for damage to be inflicted.

[RTB]

Hello Jarulf, long time no see :)

Looking at the game, I see a few trying to list some criteria for it to be "melee". Why those criterias? How are they related to anything in the game mechanics?If I look at what you said, anything that is not a missile is melee. But yes, melee is just something players thought of to describe anything not melee. Blizzard did differentiate skills by range with that column in skills.txt, which is just a comment field AFAIK.

Most players (including me apparantly) do not understand enough of the game mechanics to know that the game does not have a definition of melee.
But they do want to create one, to make duels more fair.

Have fun, whatever one want to use the answer or definition of melee for.I'd rather kill some monsters instead of trying to come up with a definition of melee for those who kill players. :lol:

3) your attack has no effective area of effect ( such as in whirlwind, which I consider a " physical damage w/ an area of effect )Zeal can be considered similiar to whirlwind in that way. Whirlwind can still only hit one target (two with two weapons equipped, and two targets in range) per 4 frames. Zeal does the same, but without moving. IMO if an attack hits multiple targets in one frame I consider it an AoE attack. Again, Whirlwind can do this, but this is almost impossible in PvP games.

4) and your attack must require a weapon for damage to be inflicted.You're anti-punchbarb! :lol:

[Mehatesmaphack]

Is Blessed Hammer Melee - you know it's called Blessed HAMMER (hammer.. melee.. get it) and if it is why do those melee guys get so mad when I join Melee Duelzz with hammerdin?

Also what about bone SPEAR (once again spear.. melee), is it also melee if you fire it from close range?

According to you whirlwind is a natural phenomenon in d2.(wind... get it?) Those attacks you mentioned are projectiles that can be fired from up close and are spells that depend on your fcr and do not require you to swing your weapon. Just because you can kill someone with a gun from point blank range doens't mean it's not a ranged weapon.

[HandofElysium]

Basicaly you have two definitions at what people define "melee"

Websters version

D2 B.net version

I choose Websters version :D

[Rauth]

Websters all the way. Complain about bm all you want, but they are still essentially melee.

[Jarulf]

>1) you have to be up close to the target

Seems natural.

>2) you have to use attack rating

Huh? What does that have to do with anything? Why would an attack that simply hit automatically (for example) turn non melee?? And what would you call it then, Ranged? Missile?

>3) your attack has no effective area of effect ( such as in whirlwind, which
>I consider a " physical damage w/ an area of effect )

Area effet? What area effect? There is no area effect in Whirlwind? Whirlwind is basically a skill that moves your target to a specific location on the screen (it can also be a taregt that it will move to and if the target move you can end up moving a whoe long distance). DUring theis movement, the game will at regular intervalls make a normal attack at targets within your weapons range. Those attacks doesn't differ in any way from those that you would do if you clicked directly on a target. There is no area effect at all.

>4) and your attack must require a weapon for damage to be inflicted.

So your fists are not enough? :)

[Jarulf]

Stupid question. Can't one even edit a post for a short while after posting it? What a stupid system!

[Rauth]

I'm pretty sure the limit is 1 hour. Otherwise arguing would be kind of wierd(quote-wise), since people could just edit whatever they said 2 days ago.

[Jarulf]

I'm pretty sure the limit is 1 hour. Otherwise arguing would be kind of wierd(quote-wise), since people could just edit whatever they said 2 days ago.

I tried to edit it 2 seconds after I posted it and I did not have the edit option.

For the record, for this post I have the edit option, but did not on the other one.

[RTB]

It could be that you were magically logged out on that thread for a short moment. Then you don't see an edit button, because the forum doesn't know it's your post.
So your fists are not enough?And neither are feet apparantly. :)

[osidon]

i personaly consider cs melee b/c it required ar to actually hit the person it just releses the bolts every swing. i consider fireclaws melee for the same reasons.i consider ww melee. i consider anything that hits sum1 melee . if u think its cheap just cry and learn a new way to deal with it.