Guild Wars 2

What do you think about the current balance between them in PvE and PvP (reward/risk)?
Do you think that melee are taking higher risks at the moment being melee? Or is that ranged/casters are less riskier but less rewarding? Perhaps ranged/casters takes more damage ? Share your thoughts.

Remember in the beginning when Anet was talking about how melee was being risky with monsters targeting them and so; And was trying to find a way to make it more rewarding being melee and monsters doesn’t aggro melee first or something. Do you think they succeed in doing that?

All CC is far too short, gap closers have 1/10th the cooldown of gap creators, and ranged damage is significantly weaker than melee. Add to that the complete lack of risk inherent in the “stacking” approach to 99%+ of the game, and yeah, ranged damage is at a huge disadvantage over melee.

Essentially, if you’re playing at range, you’re doing it wrong in GW2.

In PvE I think it works to an extent.

With most encounters you have the choice of doing it slow with ranged DPS, or with more risky, but faster melee DPS. Lupicus is a great example of this. You can melee him if you know how and it will make the fight much faster, but most pugs and inexperienced players will find the ranged approach more accessible.

So in general I think it works, but once you get to specifics it really falls apart.

Mob-targeting is too erratic and random, their attacks against melees barely visible a lot of the time. Stacking is an issue and being able to ignore or power through boss mechanics with raw DPS.

It’s ok for the game to ask a bit more of melee players in return for their higher DPS. But in GW2 the trade-off is completely borked and is either too easy or involved instant-gibs and opaque mechanics.

PvP and WvW is another matter entirely. I’d say here the major problem is that a lot of spells and ranged attacks are poorly telegraphed or even animated, compared to their melee counterparts. A lot of spells are nothing more than a casual wave of the hand in terms of animations and nothing as obvious or “in your face” as say…100 Blades.

Casters aren’t inherently Ranged though.

Sword Mesmer and Dagger Necro are both Melee builds, and Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).

Neko.9021:

Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).

Have you seen dagger ele recently? I haven’t.

Katran.9186:

Neko.9021:

Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).

Have you seen dagger ele recently? I haven’t.

I play MH Dagger Ele in PvE.

It sucks that many originally called ‘’melee-classes’’ can outrange some ranged-classes. Hambow warrior is at the top with that. Above that, I started playing this game as a ranger because it was unique to be able to use a (long)bow. Now, ranger does not feel unique at all anymore.

HeadCrowned.6834:

It sucks that many originally called ‘’melee-classes’’ can outrange some ranged-classes. Hambow warrior is at the top with that. Above that, I started playing this game as a ranger because it was unique to be able to use a (long)bow. Now, ranger does not feel unique at all anymore.

In gw2 bow as never unique to rangers…

On top of all the other issues with being a ranged fighter in this game that have already been mentioned, I think the biggest imbalance is the conquest type of spvp.

Ranged fighters are forced to fight on point or they lose the point. This means that, no matter what your build, you’re going to have to fight in melee in order to not give the enemy team an advantage. I mainly play a staff elementalist, and while I can do a great deal of damage by standing off point in team fights my limitations are always thrown in my face when it comes time to capture a point.

I see that warrior on the point about to capture it. I know that if I try to stop him from capturing the point I’ll have to fight him in his preferred range. The value of having a ranged weapon is completely negated by the fact I have to run into the warrior’s range in order to stop him from capturing the point both our teams need. At the same time my damage and passive defenses are significantly less than the warrior simply because I have the option to attack from a distance, even if that choice is being punished by game design.

So I do less damage overall, less passive defenses, and cannot kite unless I want to give up the point. Where is the advantage I get from choosing a ranged weapon again?

Neko.9021:

Katran.9186:

Neko.9021:

Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).

Have you seen dagger ele recently? I haven’t.

I play MH Dagger Ele in PvE.

In PvE you can play any set, any weapon, any build. Just what you like. But the fact is – scepter is better in all respects.

A lot of the imbalance here comes from the fact that strafe and especially ‘run backwards’ are slow as balls. If you could cast and run back a little bit here and there, it would be a lot more effective to be ranged.. check any good player guide, it tells you not to run backwards because that is death.

They should remove ‘run backwards’ entirely. So tired of being ‘ranged’ character and only being at range for one second in battle.

You all bring some nice points but some are missing out that you cant melee while being away from your target, while you can cast/hit-bows-stuff in melee range. About running backwards, I think that running with E,Q isn’t hard to learn.

From balance perspective, if ranged did have all the tools and the damage of melee; You are gimping melee.

All professions are capable of both short and long range attacks depending on weapons and utilities. Long ranged attackers have less skin in the game than short range so dps is less.

Small imbalances can occur when AoE or conditions come into play either reducing single-target dps or increasing the sum of dps on multiple targets. Attacks with CC can also do less dps than those without like cleave.

True, all professions are capable of both short(melee) and long range but they capabilities varies.
On the other of the spectrum, in games like wow. They suffered from people choosing “ranged/casters” over their melee counter-part. So they gave melee interrupts and so, but end up having to decide if its fair to make it requirement to interrupts casts. But tanks interrupt as well. After a while they decided to “screw” the idea, since it was going downhill.

This comparison makes no real sense. There’s no pure melee or pure ranged class. There’s not even one with a large preference.

And hrm, dragging WoW into this is tricky. The original design balance was this:

• Melee is subjected to cleaves/AEs.
• Ranged drop to 0 healing/damage if they have to move.

This design fell apart especially during TBC/WotLK, as casters gained more and more and more instant-cast spells, removing their original downside. Likewise, most 360° melee cleaves were removed, so melee no longer had their original downside.
Then once everyone was the same, ofc ranged was better due to opportunity cost. They added interrupts, but had to rebalance that again due to PvP issues. Etc.

In hindsight, though the EJ people would cry bloody murder, maybe the original design – which wasn’t based on numerical DPS output capability at all – was the smarter design.

GW2 has a wholly different thing to tackle, as opportunity cost is the issue here, but for different reasons.
Some classes have easy access to mobility, stability and cleansing. Others have very little. The combination, the mixture and the availability decide whether you can escape tough situations or not. A class which is more sure they can get out can much more readily commit to a dangerous situation, meaning they can engage in more cases than someone else.

This can be balanced, by making the more risky classes stronger once engaged (PU Mesmers come to mind, they cannot run away, they have very little stability and they cannot chase you well, but woe if you try to kill one directly). Only, this works somewhat in 1v1 and ok in 3v3-5v5, but falls apart above that because Stability and Cleansing rule the larger encounters.

I would fix this by first reducing frequency of these tools but improving power. Then see how the balance settles.

In PVE, I think that the range/melee mechanic works alright. In ideal circumstances, you would melee enemies until you were in trouble, and then when you are nearly dead/in danger you would back off to lose some of the aggro. This does work. However, currently many enemies in PVE aren’t dangerous enough to really do damage to meleers, so there is no need to disengage a lot.

Likewise, range was meant to be an option when fighting melee enemies that are way too strong to fight back in melee. Again, in rare circumstances this is true, but most enemies aren’t dangerous enough.

I can’t say much about sPVP, since I haven’t played it in forever.

@Carighan: True, there is no pure melee or ranged class, but varies between professions (some might be extreme * good or bad* in one side thou). Add, that some likes playing certain things (ie. Melee or ranged). Using WoW as an example cause of how turned out, since some wanted ranged to have all the tools that melee have and the damage. You have an interesting idea also, does it applies to PvE and PvP or?

@Blood Red Arachnid: Think one of the problem is that monsters are dying too fast to actually pose a threat or danger. But in regard of that, I know that many doesn’t like taking their time killing things and so. How many plays TA Aetherblade path these days?

We don’t want everything one shot killing you but it would be nice if it pose a threat. But that’s another discussion for different topics.

I like how it balanced for me as a Mesmer running Triple-Swords. I can either hit targets from long range, and due to Berserker have a fair chance of getting closer. Then, so Leap willing, I am much more dangerous in melee but ofc I can’t get out easily, especially because I just swapped away from he weapon with the knockback.

@xFx
Everything.
I think too many systems in GW2 are “too spammy” (I hate how overused that term is, but it actually fits here).
By that I mean, they’re individually not meaningful enough, but in turn you have frequent access. Examples are on-crit bleeds, dazes, stealth, stealth on thieves, stability, etc.
In a fantasy game, I just feel that the more skills “feel overpowered”, the better. If I get stability + protection, I should feel like this unstoppable tank running into the enemy lines. Ofc, the effect should last only 5-10 seconds, I shouldn’t be able to stack some super-powerful offensive effect on top and I should have rather infrequent access to this, so the enemy knows that if they get away from me again I cannot immediately repeat it.

Likewise, Cleansing should be the bane of conditions and boons (which in turn should be much more powerful but quite rare, making you panic when you get a 10s poison applied to you because all healing is essentially useless for a while). But if I bait a cleanse, and then a teammate applies a new effect, I should have *some *assure it’s not immediately removed again.

It’d need to be a game-wide change though. To be fair, it’d also fix a lot of PvE issues.
Infrequent but powerful conditions —> condi-limits are virtually no issue any more.
Infrequent but powerful boons —> all buffers have a space in a party.

That’s somehow balanced (it sounds at least), but how would you implement it on another professions? Like Guardians for example, since their range isn’t in the top ranks.

Edit:
Yeah skills are too spammy at the moment indeed. There is threads about auto-attacks applying “conditions” and so on, so that need to be looked at too. Also, some professions has many soft cc and so while others lacking them.

Edit2: Removed something about torment and Engineer, sorry.

Katran.9186:

Neko.9021:

Katran.9186:

Neko.9021:

Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).

Have you seen dagger ele recently? I haven’t.

I play MH Dagger Ele in PvE.

In PvE you can play any set, any weapon, any build. Just what you like. But the fact is – scepter is better in all respects.

That isn’t true at all. Unless you’re using Scepter for Might Stacking and then using Lightning Hammer, the sustained damage of Scepter is completely awful. MH Dagger is a good general weapon of choice for Eles in difficult instanced content like Fractals:
http://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwQtsq8Rv5LUqwXRm3xOYnr1oYsitaiSi

to bring some PvE relevant notes:

even if melee got enough engage/disengage i still feel that in uncoordinated events there is still a huge gap between the balance. while a ranged player can almost react to everything (especially projectiles) slower and still have the possibility to dodge all of them, while a split second to late as melee is certain downstate (due to zerk meta).

As ranged player you can go afk and might deal more damage than a melee who have to chase the target around because the aggro system is the most stupid thing ever in GW2 and might have to disengage and than reengage and all this while being in the danger of maybe become the next target.

Of course you deal way more damage theoreticly as melee but it isn’t worth the risk of getting downed/killed. therefore armorerosion, repaircosts (which will be gone at least), time to get the armor repaired etc.
All player i know personally play range in PvE because it’s much more simple and less risky in almost every situation. the only ones who play melee does this because they have no range weaponset that works similar to thier build/playstyle.

I think it should be a question of what you want to play instead of what is easier to play with which decides your weapons. Even absolutly newcommers shouldn’t get forced to play range until they know the game good enough, if they want to play melee they should do and and be as effective as ranged imho.

While I wouldn’t say that they can do more damage being afk, but yeah sometimes trying to reach targets can be a waste of time. You have some good points. Monsters in dungeon usually dies too fast to pose a threat (as mentioned before). In living story, usually its more chaotic than organized event, but it is getting better in a way.

Ehecatl.9172:

On top of all the other issues with being a ranged fighter in this game that have already been mentioned, I think the biggest imbalance is the conquest type of spvp.

Ranged fighters are forced to fight on point or they lose the point. This means that, no matter what your build, you’re going to have to fight in melee in order to not give the enemy team an advantage. I mainly play a staff elementalist, and while I can do a great deal of damage by standing off point in team fights my limitations are always thrown in my face when it comes time to capture a point.

I see that warrior on the point about to capture it. I know that if I try to stop him from capturing the point I’ll have to fight him in his preferred range. The value of having a ranged weapon is completely negated by the fact I have to run into the warrior’s range in order to stop him from capturing the point both our teams need. At the same time my damage and passive defenses are significantly less than the warrior simply because I have the option to attack from a distance, even if that choice is being punished by game design.

So I do less damage overall, less passive defenses, and cannot kite unless I want to give up the point. Where is the advantage I get from choosing a ranged weapon again?

for example a sword pistol (psitolwhip) thief
bursted in mellee two -three times and is low life
either u run away out of fight (or to any other point) or you stand to the side of the point let your mates stand in the point while u fire with your shortbow which clearly does less dmg… but this wa u dont die..

the only place where i feel range is underrated is pve
just because the usual mobs dmg is a bit too low ai often crappy etc
but in wvw u need ranged aoe attacks ind pvp almost every build got 1 mellee and 1 ranged weapon

this is just like eles were when gw2 was still in the beta and newbs in the first few weeks like “i want to play a fire mage” u dont just play on one attunement u want to use all of the skills the frequently weapon swaps etc

jus because there is a class called ranger does not mean that he does only have ranged weapons (okay the axe which usually is mellee is ranged..) and the greatsword does way less dmg than the warriors greatsword but keep in mind that the ranger does also have a pet which deals dmg..

To make a sensible comment and go back to the OP…

PvE : Ranged classes have the advantage and take much fewer risks. Some of them may do a bit less damage but doing damage and staying on your feet is better than doing some damage and then dieing for the second half of the fight.

WvW: Again goes to ranged, who again, take fewer risks and are also more useful in any large encounter.

PvP: Goes to Melee, who run the current meta due to capture points. a few people touched on this but when all players are forced into tiny areas, this defeats the purpose of being ranged and gives professions which are primarily more melee oriented a massive advantage, specifically those that have a higher CC / Self sustaining nature to them. I could go on for hours about how to change all that but i’ll avoid it.. it needs its own topic.

Swish, your WvW comment doesn’t match what’s going on ingame. Right now all of WvW is dominated by Hammer/Melee trains on pretty much every server. The only time a ranged spec has a real advantage in PvP or WvW is when on a wall or some other form of unpassable terrain.

In GW2, from a PvP/WvW standpoint, the range advantage only holds true for about 1 or 2 seconds before your target closes into melee range. Once there, most every melee spec in the game has more tools at their disposal to maintain melee range than ranged specs have to maintain a ranged advantage. There’s also very little real kiting in this game given the tools Guardians, Warriors, and Thieves have at their disposal.

So in that 1 or 2 seconds of having a range advantage, you’d expect the class to be able to front load enough damage to offset the fact that they can’t escape. But ranged in this game has no real burst either.

On top of that, ranged weapon sets in this game actually have a rather large damage gap compared to the melee alternatives.

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated game.

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

Felices Bladewing.3914:

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

melee is better in pve too , sometimes you may need to use ranged weapons, but the best dps is always from melee .

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

melee is better in pve too , sometimes you may need to use ranged weapons, but the best dps is always from melee .

depends on the situation.
i agree on soloing, leveling in generel etc.
in cases of mass-events and dungeon bosses i keep my point from my previous post

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

melee is better in pve too , sometimes you may need to use ranged weapons, but the best dps is always from melee .

depends on the situation.
i agree on soloing, leveling in generel etc.
in cases of mass-events and dungeon bosses i keep my point from my previous post

The key is cleave damage, any attack or autotack of a melee weapon will hit more than 1 enemy, if all your group use melee weapons you have a x3 or x5 “damage boost” against groups of enemies.

80% of GW2 bosses are easy to kill with melee.

And, if you use a ranged weapon you will lose a big amount of groups buffs/heals.

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

melee is better in pve too , sometimes you may need to use ranged weapons, but the best dps is always from melee .

depends on the situation.
i agree on soloing, leveling in generel etc.
in cases of mass-events and dungeon bosses i keep my point from my previous post

The key is cleave damage, any attack or autotack of a melee weapon will hit more than 1 enemy, if all your group use melee weapons you have a x3 or x5 “damage boost”.

what does cleave dmg against single targets because i was refering to bosses and boss-like events? i never said it’s the dmg thats make range better. i did already agreed that the dmg output of melee is superior i still think that range is way less risky and the reduction in dmg isn’t reason enough to switch to melee if you don’t need to because of your build/playstyle. the greatest issue why the risk of being melee is too high imo is because nobody actually tank the boss so every melee even if he is a glasscannon is taking the risk of becoming the next target due no indication of aggro whatsoever.
So kiting is the playstyle in this whole game regarding PvE and this is ofcourse more handy for ranged players addionally.

tl;dr i don’t think a weaponclass is better than another i just think the risk/reward ratio isn’t balanced in PvE

Generally speaking, melee weapons are capable of much higher damage than ranged ones even on single target.

Take Ranger longbow for example. Even at max range, it does much less damage than their sword skills, which in turn do much less damage than every other class’ melee weapons (due to the pet).

Generally speaking (and WvW), there is a limited of number that can be hit with things/skills. Making it much harder to kill targets when they are in organized “zerg/blob”.

In sPvP, standing on the capture point while the enemy raining you (Elementals or Engineers) will usually leave you a corpse before you even know it since most capture points are small. Only someone capable of “bunkering” and tanking damage are going to sit on that madness. I don’t know how many bunkers do you see everyday.

PvE, yeah monsters usually dies too fast to pose a threat. But long range have it safer in more situations than melee. I’ve seen a lot of people not dodging or rolling away from damage also.

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

melee is better in pve too , sometimes you may need to use ranged weapons, but the best dps is always from melee .

depends on the situation.
i agree on soloing, leveling in generel etc.
in cases of mass-events and dungeon bosses i keep my point from my previous post

The key is cleave damage, any attack or autotack of a melee weapon will hit more than 1 enemy, if all your group use melee weapons you have a x3 or x5 “damage boost”.

what does cleave dmg against single targets because i was refering to bosses and boss-like events? i never said it’s the dmg thats make range better. i did already agreed that the dmg output of melee is superior i still think that range is way less risky and the reduction in dmg isn’t reason enough to switch to melee if you don’t need to because of your build/playstyle. the greatest issue why the risk of being melee is too high imo is because nobody actually tank the boss so every melee even if he is a glasscannon is taking the risk of becoming the next target due no indication of aggro whatsoever.
So kiting is the playstyle in this whole game regarding PvE and this is ofcourse more handy for ranged players addionally.

tl;dr i don’t think a weaponclass is better than another i just think the risk/reward ratio isn’t balanced in PvE

You should take a look at how the dungeon meta works in this game. Speed runners do go melee in glasscannon builds pretty much exclusively. They use tricks like pinning to mobs/boss into a wall so they can maximize their dps. They survive on active defenses such as blocks, aegis, blinds, stuns and reflects, and as they’re all stacked up, they share theirs party boons and buffs without needing to call everyone together. At the top level of PvE, ranged is considered essentially useless along with defensive stats, to the degree that the meta players will consider you a leecher, looking to for a free ride just for investing in them. The old mantra “A dead DPS is no DPS” doesn’t apply to them as they’ve learned how to erase their need for passive defense all together.
Go in the dungeon board and you’ll find them complaining about the run they did with that, bearbow ranger, or that camping staff guardian.

Dual.8953:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

melee is better in pve too , sometimes you may need to use ranged weapons, but the best dps is always from melee .

depends on the situation.
i agree on soloing, leveling in generel etc.
in cases of mass-events and dungeon bosses i keep my point from my previous post

The key is cleave damage, any attack or autotack of a melee weapon will hit more than 1 enemy, if all your group use melee weapons you have a x3 or x5 “damage boost”.

what does cleave dmg against single targets because i was refering to bosses and boss-like events? i never said it’s the dmg thats make range better. i did already agreed that the dmg output of melee is superior i still think that range is way less risky and the reduction in dmg isn’t reason enough to switch to melee if you don’t need to because of your build/playstyle. the greatest issue why the risk of being melee is too high imo is because nobody actually tank the boss so every melee even if he is a glasscannon is taking the risk of becoming the next target due no indication of aggro whatsoever.
So kiting is the playstyle in this whole game regarding PvE and this is ofcourse more handy for ranged players addionally.

tl;dr i don’t think a weaponclass is better than another i just think the risk/reward ratio isn’t balanced in PvE

You should take a look at how the dungeon meta works in this game. Speed runners do go melee in glasscannon builds pretty much exclusively. They use tricks like pinning to mobs/boss into a wall so they can maximize their dps. They survive on active defenses such as blocks, aegis, blinds, stuns and reflects, and as they’re all stacked up, they share theirs party boons and buffs without needing to call everyone together. At the top level of PvE, ranged is considered essentially useless along with defensive stats, to the degree that the meta players will consider you a leecher, looking to for a free ride just for investing in them. The old mantra “A dead DPS is no DPS” doesn’t apply to them as they’ve learned how to erase their need for passive defense all together.
Go in the dungeon board and you’ll find them complaining about the run they did with that, bearbow ranger, or that camping staff guardian.

ok seems legit as long as you are in a coordinated group, but i guess in a lfg-goup or at the events which you do with random players it isn’t the same isn’kitten

I agree with this. I think a big source of this issue is that there is way too much condition removal that affects all conditions. If control conditions and damaging conditions were removed with different skills, or at least differentiated more, it could address this issue and the condition issue at the same time.

A lot of you here forget, trough casters can cast at melee range, they are not “melee”. Whitch means they are not ment to cast at melee range, for a reson…they have less tools to use them melee.
For example, armor, healt, heals, boons, gap makers, condition removers ect…
So playing melee is still more rewarding in pvp.

“You should take a look at how the dungeon meta works in this game. Speed runners do go melee in glasscannon builds pretty much exclusively. They use tricks like pinning to mobs/boss into a wall so they can maximize their dps. They survive on active defenses such as blocks, aegis, blinds, stuns and reflects, and as they’re all stacked up, they share theirs party boons and buffs without needing to call everyone together. At the top level of PvE, ranged is considered essentially useless along with defensive stats, to the degree that the meta players will consider you a leecher, looking to for a free ride just for investing in them. "

This is not how the game should work…atleast it was not intended to work this way. .. Ubusing the system to prevail is WRONG !!! If you cant win normally rip the game…or atleast pve.

Right now i am considering in going a class that can be Range or Melee at will. I utterly hate pve as melee, the terrible absolutely broken mechanic of Mobs attacks destroyed pve for me. So i prefer pure range – support or extreme tanky (that does not exist anymore) character for pve and a decent stand alone melee for pvp.
Any tips?

Atherakhia.4086:

Swish, your WvW comment doesn’t match what’s going on ingame. Right now all of WvW is dominated by Hammer/Melee trains on pretty much every server. The only time a ranged spec has a real advantage in PvP or WvW is when on a wall or some other form of unpassable terrain.

In GW2, from a PvP/WvW standpoint, the range advantage only holds true for about 1 or 2 seconds before your target closes into melee range. Once there, most every melee spec in the game has more tools at their disposal to maintain melee range than ranged specs have to maintain a ranged advantage. There’s also very little real kiting in this game given the tools Guardians, Warriors, and Thieves have at their disposal.

So in that 1 or 2 seconds of having a range advantage, you’d expect the class to be able to front load enough damage to offset the fact that they can’t escape. But ranged in this game has no real burst either.

On top of that, ranged weapon sets in this game actually have a rather large damage gap compared to the melee alternatives.

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated game.

You’re making some mistakes here.
Yes – melee attackers can close fast but there are conditions in game ( cripple, chill) designed especially to keep them off you.

Some people posting there don’t realize that all classes have melee options and that an enemy closing into melee range with you should not necessarily be the end of the game.

Ranged is also maintainable if you know what you’re doing.

Regarding PVE – there’s really no reason melee shouldn’t reward the player more – every boss attack that he’s going to do will be at point blank – so the time you have to react is much lower than the time a ranged player has to react.
You have to stay on target and manage your evades while a ranged player can just spam 1 to win and run around with almost no risk.

If in a dungeon run/meta event/you name it i need to go afk i’ll just switch to range and afk – that’s how carefree range is in this game. As long as some people are in melee you can just cruise control to win.

Felices Bladewing.3914:

tl;dr i don’t think a weaponclass is better than another i just think the risk/reward ratio isn’t balanced in PvE

Also – to those saying that PVE wise range is not rewarding enough vs melee – remember when the game came out – a million posts erupted saying that melee is suicide and range is the only way to play the game – until players got good.

At melee range you have to actually play and be a reactive player to survive the more difficult content.
At range you can just spam 1 for an easy win. Bosses are affected by cripple and chill and between 5 ranged players a boss wouldn’t even connect.

Don’t believe me? Go in FOTM 49 ( or 50) and fight the legendary archdiviner ( 1st spawn) first as full melee ( all 5 in melee) then kitten range and tell me which fight is easier.

If melee wasn’t more rewarding than range then why would people choose it? Why wound’t we all be ranged casters?

Nekroseth.5186:

This is not how the game should work…atleast it was not intended to work this way. .. Ubusing the system to prevail is WRONG !!! If you cant win normally rip the game…or atleast pve.

Right now i am considering in going a class that can be Range or Melee at will. I utterly hate pve as melee, the terrible absolutely broken mechanic of Mobs attacks destroyed pve for me. So i prefer pure range – support or extreme tanky (that does not exist anymore) character for pve and a decent stand alone melee for pvp.
Any tips?

Who are you to say that this is abusing the game? Using blocks, reflects, and fighting in specific areas, stacking to share boons and reflects are all viable parts of the game.
If you feel these are an abuse that’s your opinion but it doesn’t make it true.

Please understand that just because you choose to play and see the game one way doesn’t mean that’s the only way.

Ranged option is just flawed and rotten to it’s core in GW2. Couple reasons for that:

1. Dungeons:
-If your party numbers are restriced already to 5, why some brilliant designer did think that to get boons and benefits from Combo finishers like blasts, you have to be either melee or very, very close to it? I mean, whole thing completly wrecks the idea of ranged, you don’t get your heals, boons, so = you’re even more kittened sometimes than melee. Why don’t make it like 1200 range so everyone can benefit? I don’t mean like buffing someone on the other end of the dungeon, but current system benefits melee only

-We all know that clever AI, but if range is a problem for them, why not restrict all range to max of 1200 (since you don’t even need more in dungeons), add them leaps, teleports, faster movement, Long-range attacks, sometimes even more punishing (because of more time to react), pulls or such? It’s not hard to do

-Everyone knows that we don’t have dedicated tanks or aggro, right? Then why Ranger’s pets hold the aggro on every single mob in the game if the player is ranged and the creature is not risen, causing the flood of newborn “Bearbows”?. I mean, you can laugh about this spec, but players come from other games, pick up GW2 where there’s no tanking or trinity and right after they see that woot, there is! Same goes for mobs in dungeons attacking melees. I mean, even in GW1, game which has been released almost a decade ago, mobs were often switching targets to most dangerous ones, targeting healers, supporters, dpses. They were also able to support each other, sometimes nearly focus(!) targets, step out of AoEs. It wasn’t the most intelligent AI but it worked and with current techonology it could’ve been improved by a ton. [i]So why not make AI which switches it’s targets not only depending on amount of toughness they have, but also if someone is healing, reflecting maybe.

-Poor Range counters – I mean, constant reflections of projectiles. Wth? Instead of adding some good mechanic and deal with problem let’s just force everyone to play PbAoE or direct effects like Necro’s scepter. Your class has none? Too bad, go back to melee. It’s okay when it occurs from time to time or in rare, specific places. But all around the content, permanent? Come on

-In this game, with all the clutter and shining effects on your screen, only the Ranged player can often see any telegraphed attacks of the boss. So why don’t just reduce the amount of them, maybe make things more visible, allow to zoom out further. If you can’t deal with that, add cast bars.

2. World Bosses – Since they don’t even tend to move or do anything in particular, everything is viable. They’re even considered by the game as structures.

you see the problem with this “o the time you have to react is much lower” is, that the game is utterly broken at this part (for my taste) and is killing pve instances.

Why? Boss attacks are hardly visible at all. I dont even want to mention all that kitten effect going araund makes it IMPOSSIBLE to spot (exluding some cases).
I remember that howler kitten in Ac, that has a scream attack…that is supposed to be frontal, yeah easy to dodge…i did…in fact i was standing behind it and got insta gibbed. Not once but like constantly anywhere anyone in my team was standing.
Melee in instance…you are joking right….no kittening way i would play it.
Look at Terra, the game might be second rate (to some) but this is clearly working a LOT BETTER there.

Chill and other cc yeah….you can use it on melee in pvp after they used gap closer, but you didnt read all the posts : they have 10 times more closers then “range” have makers. Not to mention there are clense skills, OR not to mention melee also have those cc-s to counter your cc basically…Or more likely a hammer warr will perma cc you and chill wont even be any use to you at all -_- your argument is invalid.

Rym i totally agree with you.
And to add to that i would like to say Anet : Taking away trinity, to lessen the time on LFG, was like cutting of your arms because of a bruise.
It was NOT the root of the problem, and it did NOT help at all. We are still waiting for players (in the past A LOT MORE then in other mmo-s). And no destroying “combat roles” did not improve the gameplay or classes, it only left them crippled and boring (to my taste)

Solution : Instead of taking aways all roles, give all classes all roles, but make them pick 1 for each battle….

stale.9785:

All CC is far too short, gap closers have 1/10th the cooldown of gap creators, and ranged damage is significantly weaker than melee. Add to that the complete lack of risk inherent in the “stacking” approach to 99%+ of the game, and yeah, ranged damage is at a huge disadvantage over melee.

Essentially, if you’re playing at range, you’re doing it wrong in GW2.

Pretty much this, at least in PVE. The banzai nature of most mobs makes ranged futile unless you have access to long duration AOE hard CC, allowing you to focus down one of them while others are seeing stars. That, or a control scheme that allow you to “circle strafe”. And IMO, GW2 offers neither.

From a WvE roaming perspective, personally I think the balance is right. I am someone who likes to fight at range and kite / evade people as much as I can (on both ranger and mesmer), but honestly I dont like the idea that you could kite someone indefinately. That, to me, sounds like a game breaking idea.

There are plenty of tools on most classes (all the ones which are likely to be fighting at range) to keep people away from you while ranging. Even if you only keep them away for ~30% of a fight that is plenty enough to mean you are killing them much more than they are killing you.. and thats all you need.

EDIT: There is an issue in PvP where because its conquest, the balance is all messed up because of the need to fight on points (which also makes AoE spam from necros and warriors artificially OP).. but thats more a sPvP issue than a balance issue.

First off, you have to remember that “melee” and “ranged” are not as clearly distinguished as in some games, which I actually like. I don’t like classes being designed around a dichotomy of “melee” and “ranged”, because it’s frankly just kind of thematically dumb (“oh, my beastmaster woodsman archer can’t fight his way out of a paper bag? okay….”).

Secondly, I do think there’s a bit of a design mistake in melee/ranged wherein ranged is intended to do less damage than melee due to risk vs. reward, but it fails to take into account many other balancing factors, like:

- some classes are more dependent on avoiding face-tanking than others due to stupidly massive attrition gaps.

- melee range tends to put you in a ‘protective bubble’ of buffs and healing while ranged attackers are left out in the cold, meaning some fights are more dangerous for ranged attackers than they are for melee.

I’m not necessarily opposed to ranged doing less DPS overall, but the execution often feels both excessive and haphazard.