Melee just got left behind in RoTW

This generation might not know, now that I just turned 40 lol (dangit that must mean I'm old now >.<) but I used to play Diablo/Hellfire and Diablo from 1.08, to 1.10 update, and was an active member on diabloii.net from '04-'2011 till I as well as most walked away since it turned into a huge ad and bot farm. So D2R is an absolute miracle and I'm happy they brought it back. So it's been a long time in the making.

There was a lot of anticipation of "what should be added or improved upon" and I was very happy to purchase RoTW and see a Brand new class that I've played through and beat the game now through hell, and the Uber Ancients and new

Terror Zone design, these have been all good things.

However, now that I've done several different Worlock builds, it's been fun (a little too much like the Necro imo, but still has some interesting skills that are fun)... I've been falling back to my original love which is melee

Werebear/

Werewolf and Barb builds. And the realization over the last month has hit me... there's just really not much added for melee or any of the other styles of play. There was a promise of all these new unique, set, and runeword items, but when you really break it down about 90% of them are Class designated to the Warlock alone. I think the Horizon's

Boots/gloves seem to be the best option, they offer some very UNIQUE %magic resist which I LOVE to see (especially PvP, take that Hammerdins, now we just need sorb). But when you just go down the line, from most of the helms, amulets, rings.. its just caster, caster, caster items, etc. Its like the entire Exansion was designed by a team of Hammerdin, Bone Necro, and Sorc players, most the rings and jewels and helmets, etc. its like whoever designed them was obsessed with making every item some caster item with built-in +/-% facet and Sundering charms.

What's missing? Where are the new Unique javelins, bows, swords, maces, axes, etc. or tweaks to the REALLY garbo items (that were NEVER good, lets be honest, since 25 years ago they even sucked then) like

Corpsemourn,

Steel Carapace, even weapons like

The Grandfather and

Hellrack. Or maybe provide ways to like cube or imbue Uniques, only uniques, to empower them with more stats similar to how you can do with the "crafted"- basically you can only do it once but you can craft Safety, blood, or caster traits imbued onto your uniques, that have probability rolls too... that would seem to add a lot of replay value and give a strong INCENTIVE to use Unique items versus just using Runewords till the end of time, just an idea. But long story short, I feel like many of the other classes and melee builds have been mostly ignored, again I've looked through the new items, I see a couple that might provide some use but most of it is just molded for the new Worlock and maybe a couple of the caster characters, but if you're more on the melee or physical side there's really nothing new for you in RoTW, you're not gonna find like 4-5 new Swords, or an

Axe that has chance to cast corpse exposion, or new aurus, it's just gonna be the same 1.10 like it's always been.

It makes perfect sense that most of the new gear is focused on the new class and very much tailored to the needs of a warlock, seeing how a lot of the old gear simply isn't.

Same way the old gear already includes plenty of pieces specifically tailored towards one of the old classes each.

That said, I would challenge that claim regardless.
There was quite a bit added that really isn't warlock specific but works for multiple/any class(es). And a fair bit of it instantly became BiS for multiple classes/builds. It added some much needed better options for builds that were missing some more proper gear (e.g. Bone necro) and it actually very specifically amplifies the power of tons of melee builds.

Opalvein introducing an ED ring is a decent boost for a few builds. Even more so since it comes with FCR for those Enigma melee/phys builds.
Zerkers in particular got a few new and improved item options.
Phys classes in general benefit MASSIVELY from the new jewel and renewed sunders. Probably more so than any other class/build, simply because they can finally get targets below 95% phys res without having to wait for an amp/decrep proc, opening up all sorts of alternatives. The same is true for magic dmg albeit to a lesser extent specifically for jewels/sunders as they now also get additional gear pieces with -magic res on top of that. Naturally, the same jewels/sunders also help the elemental classes but since they already had tons of -res gear, Infinity, rainbow facets and whatnot, the relative new boost is a lot less for them.

I won't sit here and pretend like melee builds are in any way up to par with the more meta area-clearers but to claim they got left behind in RotW is imo pushing a false narrative. The truth is they got left behind 20some years ago. RotW actually closed the gap at least a little bit for many melee and phys builds. It merely wasn't anywhere near enough to make up for the neglect of old.

That's excluding heralds at least..on those, melee really did get the short end of the stick yet again, seeing how the occasional rare 1-shot

Herald is fairly impossible to

Dodge when your build forces you into melee range to endure that "1-shot or not? Place your bets!"-RNG.

It was expected that the new itens, runewords and etc was planned to the Warlock builds. But I aggree that the game should bring new ways to play, or at least make some melee builds strong again. It's been a while since the meta is basic the same.