Ranged is still superior to melee in most every ways.

The best “melee” characters at the moment are basically a caster who swings a weapon to launch a “spell” at the enemies.

Spin to win invoker and shield wall warrior were fun at endgame for me, without much investment. Once you hit 15ish with invoker and 22 with warrior for shield wall, it’s pretty comfy.

I’ve played melee class every league. Love it! Just gotta find the right build.

Wolf was fun you can shred everything in the game no sweat except carry a 6 man temple.

playing Bear Druid has been super fun. I have not felt disadvantaged that much tbh. I cleared Sekhemas floor 4 no prob for 4th ascendancy, although noticeably harder than my Merc or my .2 Lightning spear build. (ToS is laughably easy on Merc/Huntress)

I can farm trial of chaos pretty easy.

I beat all citadel bosses very easy. Maxed my atlas and am currently lvl 97 running 45+ room temple(working on getting it larger but rng be rng)

Once I got decently tanky with life leech things got a lot easier, but I am having a blast.

Besides my Fury of the Mountain skill I am 100% melee, no ranged spells.

Trying to address your wider concern, I think that POE2 can be really demanding in terms of build. If you mess around without planning out your build, you get wrecked, if you follow a meta build guide by a streamer who plays 18 hours a day, then everything around you explodes.

I too played Witch as Sorceress first season and ended up useless. I switched over to a meta frost wall corpse explode build and ended up one-shotting pinnacle bosses.

So I think it comes down to how much you want to YOLO a build. Of course with more experience you’ll naturally make better builds. But if you just want to experiment and mess around, in my opinion POE2 is a pretty tough environment (IMO the campaign is the toughest out of all the ARPGs).

So ya GGG hates melee. Most if not all successful “melee” builds are effectively ranged

They’re fun and that’s all that matters really. Any class can clear any content, and any class can struggle with campaign if it has shit gear.

You should just learn more about the game It’s almost always “what am I doing wrong?” And not “is this viable?”

I’m pretty new to the game and managed to beat the campaign pretty easily with a rolling slam warrior (smith of k). Insanely tanky but low dmg. But never really hit a wall. Didn’t follow any guide.

It’s probably not endgame worthy due to the low dmg but that’s not my intention. Just want to try different builds in the campaign for now.

I’d say melee is probably not as good as ranged/spellcaster (especially in endgame) but the campaign should be doable

true melee sucks ass. fake melee its aight but cannot rival ranged/spellcaster

I would say wait for next patch. Should be in may or something. Hopefully more melee options by then

The devs seem to hate melee. The fact that ascension alone is locked behind a trial you fail if you take too many hits means they really don’t want you to be able to play the game in a way that utilizes armor, or cqc combat.

Rolling a thorns warrior with board and mace…. Just started, it kind of stinks up front. Def have had more fun as archer and cross bow dude.

Hoping later investments helps the play through to be better. I just wants a fat chunk of meat to be tenderized by the baddies.

Still hate trials of Sekma fuck that honour system…. I’m was playing as a beer druid and didn’t take a single hit until floor 3 to unlock 3 set of ascensions…. Got hit with 1 attack from a blue not even a yellow lost half of my honour….

Best melee is Amazon imo, can just use both Melee and Range, and they reward you for it.

They’re meh-lee

I played Ice Wolf this season and it worked. However this is probably due to the skills I used rather than because the ranged/melee balance has been fixed.

Previously I played “melee” where I used long range AOE skills that were tagged as melee, but I wanted to do it properly this time.

The wolf has Pounce as a gap closer and Cross Slash to disengage, so you can reposition really well. The wolf pack draws away aggro and the ice abilities reduce enemy threat and give you windows to safely use damage combos.

I’ve never gotten a warrior or monk to endgame. The bear Druid was my first good melee character. I suck at building melee characters

Another vote for Wolf druid. It feels like playing the Doom Slayer in PoE2.

Aside from the Armour issue in comparison to ES alone, melee are actually doing great, may it be from Chonk / Invoker down to slams and shapeshifters :)

Yes it’s fun and much more rewarding than range at least for me. Just really need to find the right build.

Still waiting for axe, swords flails, daggers

Virtually every mechanic in the game is harder to deal with as melee because so much stuff is countered by simply being farther away from the target.

I feel like GGG knows this because the game shipped with mostly ranged or ranged-capable classes. All that’s left are the melee classes like duelist, marauder, paladin, and shadow.

Despite many ppl say “All builds are viable”, This game is very build dependant. If you are new and no idea what you are doing, all class would suck. And that sounds exactly like your problem with the game. I’d suggest find a build you find fun and follow it, until you know what you are doing.

But to your question Melee is much better now (this league they added Druid, shapeshifting is really fun), But it’s way inferior to Ranged, both firepower and survivability.

GGG have made a lot of small changes to enemies that made melee dreadful in 0.1, armour and block has been buffed. Also there’s been some changes to essences and new omens from abyssal depth that has made gearing easier which helps a lot. It wasn’t the best but I wanted to play slams without shield this league and I managed to make it work, going without shield in 0.1 was impossible. So yes it’s more “viable” now and ranged is still easier.

You will be playing hard mode. But it’s fun

Not great

if youre getting one shot especially in the campaign you need more resistances and life on your gear.

Wait until .5 patch and make sure you follow a build guide.

Whirling Assault Chayula, no CI or Original Sin. Strongest monk I’ve built so far and I’ve rolled a chayula each league since launch. I haven’t come across a boss I haven’t been able to melt down in seconds to include all T4 bosses, calamity pinnacle bosses, and Arbiter (haven’t tried uber yet).

I’ll caveat that by admitting I have some very expensive gear. I got a cultivated Soul Tether for about 300 divine 2-3 weeks into the league that is now multi-mirrors in price. Rocking all the chase lineage gems as well. Monk builds are very strong this league but it’s hard to compare them to the ease and safety of ranged. But hey, risk makes the game more fun right?

Everything is viable, always has been. Mace & shield skills dominate speed runs. Bear slams absolutely crush the campaign, bosses are lucky to last 15 seconds. Standard mobs get trampled. Wolf builds are fast as fuck. Monk is good. Armour lets you tank a lot more now. Probably getting more melee weapons/classes with the next update.