05-29-2012, 06:36 PM
Like Mongo, I find that not having a melee in the party is very detrimental to progress, although I'm not yet to Inferno and play a defence-kitted wizard that is very similar to chesspiece. Our standard play typically involves splitting up into two pairs (4-player) or two solos (2-player) to divide & conquer more manageable bits. Ideally, a few "hard" targets (the boss itself, or two of the champions) head to the melee/other pair while the ranged/ranged pair kites off most of the "chaff" (whites & most of the minions).
This completely breaks down when you don't have a melee, because you don't have anybody that can really take the "hard" stuff and you just end up with four players all spending 95% of their time running around with a lot of OH-MY-GOD moments. You can try to substitute in a dedicated "control" player with a heavy emphasis on snares, stuns and other CC at the expense of damage, but it's a subpar substitute for a melee character in my opinion.
To that end, for group play (as I don't play solo), I think more aggro manipulation abilities that allow melee to pro-actively "split the herd" would be an excellent addition to their toolkit and go a long way towards balance. It's kind of the reverse of WoW/MMO tanking - they want to peel a few targets off into a corner while their teammates kite in circles. If they're able to pare things down to solos/duos they completely wreck its face (pair the tank with a zombie bear WD for maximum hilarity). Then they come help the ranged deal with the rest of the pack, because lord knows we haven't managed to kill anything while we're running laps around the map.
This completely breaks down when you don't have a melee, because you don't have anybody that can really take the "hard" stuff and you just end up with four players all spending 95% of their time running around with a lot of OH-MY-GOD moments. You can try to substitute in a dedicated "control" player with a heavy emphasis on snares, stuns and other CC at the expense of damage, but it's a subpar substitute for a melee character in my opinion.
To that end, for group play (as I don't play solo), I think more aggro manipulation abilities that allow melee to pro-actively "split the herd" would be an excellent addition to their toolkit and go a long way towards balance. It's kind of the reverse of WoW/MMO tanking - they want to peel a few targets off into a corner while their teammates kite in circles. If they're able to pare things down to solos/duos they completely wreck its face (pair the tank with a zombie bear WD for maximum hilarity). Then they come help the ranged deal with the rest of the pack, because lord knows we haven't managed to kill anything while we're running laps around the map.