Path of Exile

You can make a claw weapon dual wield shadow/ranger with whirlding blades and/or flickerstrike and do something very similar, however as pointed out, it will require very very good gear to be even remotely viable because of the current mechanics.

While the game is great and has a lot of depth in how you build your char, the current balance and mechanics are such that there's a certain main trend to make chars viable, at least for HC, which involves stacking very large amount of health and having as many defensive options as possible. Being melee already removes the best defense in the game, not getting hit, so you can't skimp on the others at all, which is partly why Acrobatics is pretty shitty.

However one plus compared to D3, at least unless it was changed, is you can physically avoid any attack or spells(besides a few exceptions like Arc) by just moving out of the way, so a whirling blade with very fast attack speed can generally get your out of trouble instantly and without fail, unless you're spamming it then you desync(your position server side gets desynced with your client side position and you start rubberbanding around and you don't actually move which isn't very fun). In D3 as far as I remember, once a mob initiates an attack on you, you're getting hit regardless. One downside of PoE however is you can't cancel whatever you're doing to move away, you have to finish your animation, which is why if you want extreme mobility you also need extreme attack speed(dual wield, fast weapons, attack speed gear/passives, frenzy charges).

Assuming you play SC and you don't mind making a char that might be optimal for endgame to test stuff out however, you could probably just make a dual wield claw build from the start and go with that. You'll die every now and then but it's good practice to see what is truly dangerous or not, which safer builds won't prepare you for. Also for at least until merciless act2, even with crappy gear melees tend to be extremely viable if you spend an alch buying decent weapons every 10levels.

If you want to play that, decide on a class(mostly cosmetics, preferably shadow or ranger for claws/daggers, duellist/ranger/marauder/templar for swords/axes) and I can link you a build based on that that should be work for a new player as well as gems you need and how to get them quickly.

Tuco_sl said:

Playing an agile melee dps class isn't really a requirement of mine, just a preference. If it's not a good class for end-game I don't want to play it. Really I guess I'd rather play one of the current fotm builds and if I want to have a less-powerful alt class I'll make that sometime.

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The current fotm strongest specs would be ultra tanky freezing pulse or ethereal knives caster(FP is better imo, safer against reflect, safer in general due to freeze/chill), dual spark totem variations(summoner and traps mixed in) and lightning arrow archers builds. Melees are simply at a big disadvantage in endgame at the moment because of the huge damage the mobs do in general, it's more gear reliant and even with good gear it's still a much riskier play. I wouldn't recommend a melee as first char, besides maybe a pseudo ranged like a ground slam marauder, but really that's like a freezing pulse build, only with a shittier skill and requiring better weapons.

They're adding melee supports though and they have plans to make melees better soon so it'll get better. Also it's not like unplayable, and imo a lot better than D3 at launch as a melee in inferno for example. You just need to be more careful, more aware of all the little details both mechanics and mob behaviour/content and it's generally a lot less efficient at killing shit because of that(and also because well it's melee). I like playing melees, but once you reach maps it gets a bit painful, and especially if you group you feel fairly useless. Since I mostly reroll once I reach maps though I don't quite care.

Krassus_sl said:

What Pyros said about reflect is so true I dont know how you HC guys do it. One moment of lapse of not hovering over a named = one shot from reflect physical mobs. Thats the real bad side to high dps physical builds.

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I find reflect to be mostly an issue when you play EK which can creates super large amount of burst due to the aoe factor and high base dmg per cast. As a melee for example I don't find it to be much of an issue because it's unlikely you'll be hitting as many targets anyway. I guess it could happen though especially if you're going glass canon melee type build but as a melee you probably wouldn't do that anyway so it tends to be less of an issue. Maybe Leap slam physical builds I don't know I don't play these, but never been an issue with a physical cleave for example because it's a lot of smaller hits so even if you hit a lot of mobs it doesn't reflect that much. Also you can evade/block reflected attacks, which you can't do on reflected spells, so that adds an extra layer of defense against reflects as a melee.

Oh and LoH which heals instantly and works on attacks but not spells.

Yeah I posted videos of that build, well my variation which is single arrow with prolif/chance to ignite spreading burns, but the build is pretty fun and very strong.