Just wanted to open up this discussion because dungeons seem to favor the “kite and smite” kind of gameplay.
In most of the dungeons that I have been in, many standard melee based enemies hit INCREDIBLY hard with their abilities. Any class without full toughness of vitality stacked on their gear is going to be one shot.
This is most evidenced against thief players who stack a ton of rampager and “damage” stat gear. Most of the time, I see thieves with classic damage setups spend 90% of their time faceplanted and kissing the floor.
The current best form of mitigation against mobs, is simply to not get hit by kiting and dodging when they get close. This heavily favors ranged playstyles. Just about any sane dungeon player current has a build that is either fully ranged or ambidextrous between ranged and melee.
Also when playing melee, mobs tend to have very difficult tells for 1 hit kill attacks. This is namely because huge particle effects and hit animations on mobs cover up mob tells. This can be seen in Howling King path of AC, where players are frantically trying to burn down breeders and nests and can barely see the charge up and one shot lunges from the scavengers.
Melee players can’t see anything at all in that mess, and will usually die.
Additional factors include mobs that have targeted AoE attacks. When there are multiple melee in the group, mobs tend to place overlapping circles on the melee. Even if you dodge roll from one attack, you can land right into a circle targeted on another melee player.
This is evidenced by Test Subject Alpha in CoE, where he plants huge amounts of AoE circles on players. In my experience, my spec involves a sword mesmer. This results in the boss with several of my images next to him, melee players, and me. This causes him to consistently drop AoE circles in an undependable pattern around himself, making it a melee death trap for any player who is insane enough to go near him.
Ultimately these mechanics, for the most part make melee not really worth it.
Normally, in groups that die the least, I see the following trends:
-Experienced players stack heavy amounts of toughness and vitality in order to survive targeted mob strikes (like those from Ascalonian archers). Any class that builds “glass cannon” usually spends most of their time dead and contributes very little to the group, become a danger to other people who try to res them. At most, a normal ranged mob can kill a glass cannon player in 4-hits. When there are multiple ranged mobs, a glass cannon player can be killed near instantly from focus fire. It is unrealistic for this kind of player to dodge EVERY attack. Thieves that jump into melee with high damage gear and little defense have an even larger death ratio, causing some groups to flat out not invite them, or force them to use a shortbow.
-Dungeons favor builds that can cripple, kite, or otherwise debilitate mob movement and shoot them while on the run. This includes clone mesmers, engineers with supply drop and net guns, elementalists with support builds, and etc. Most classes, even those specced heavily into survival, cannot face tank the damage a standard melee mob can output. Multiple melee mobs result in death. For the most part, I find myself using my mesmer staff the most and only swapping to my sword to finish off foes or to take damage advantage of time warp. I found that generally there are less windows for melee favorability, especially when multiple mobs with crushing melee attacks are stacked. Melee is usually the first to die.
-As stated above, kiting and dodging is the single best method of damage mitigation. This compels players to run smite and kite and focus ranged mobs with targeted high damage attacks first. This is why you see people screaming to kill eles, necros, and rangers first in AC explore. This applies to nearly every dungeon.
-Also as stated above “pure damage” type characters with very little vitality or toughness is very detrimental to the group UNLESS placed in the hands of an extremely skilled player that can take full advantage of CCs and dodge perfectly. Even then they will still die from a stay shot or two.
-Thieves seem to have the hardest time in dungeons unless using the shortbow due to their advanced dodge mechanics and the mindset of many thief players to run melee builds without stacking defensive stats. Most thieves I see are simply lemmings that require constant rallies.