Guild Wars 2

The Icebrood Wolves are guilty of that too but slightly less strong. What is weird is that in the combat log, their pounce attack does two hits instead of one with no visible correlation why it would be so. And it’s a PBAoE too. Maybe they do double damage by mistake?

The way that skill is anti melee is definitively one of the standard patterns for all anti melee fights :
- pattern A : mob got a delayed attack that hurts, travel time is the delay, melee = no travel time
- patter B : mob does a cone attack, melee gets hit by multiple projectiles while ranged can easily fit between two
- pattern B2, subject alpha variant : melee is highly more likely to get hit by two circles of his cone AoE for double damage. Ranged aren’t immune to that though
- pattern B3, AoE variant : attack is a small AoE so you not only have to avoid it when aimed at you but also when aimed as other melee fighting with you which can be harder to spot

And we often get pattern A + pattern B. For example the cliffside boss Ring of Warding attack which throws confusion bolts. At least the hammer windup animation he does isn’t THAT fast (but still very fast)

Kevin.2176:

.5 second casts exists in PvP in WoW, but those are harder to predict, and most of those interrupts are cherry picked as highlight movie footages.

Well, I was playing pvp in gw1 and you had to interrupt 0.75s skills but your own interrupts were activating in 0.25s plus flight time of arrow (even 0.3s). And you had to do it really reliable, it wasn’t something to be proud of, you had to do it on a regular basis.

Yea but at least the normal IceBrood Wolves jump in the air, the Champion doesnt.

haviz.1340:

Kevin.2176:

.5 second casts exists in PvP in WoW, but those are harder to predict, and most of those interrupts are cherry picked as highlight movie footages.

Well, I was playing pvp in gw1 and you had to interrupt 0.75s skills but your own interrupts were activating in 0.25s plus flight time of arrow (even 0.3s). And you had to do it really reliable, it wasn’t something to be proud of, you had to do it on a regular basis.

But GW1 had cast bars, spells that increased cast time to make interrupts easier and even preventive interrupts that would proc on next skill. Also, there was no fights that I remember were such interrupts were that important and if so, taking a couple interrupt heros with their computer brains would do the trick.

Absolution.2851:

Yea but at least the normal IceBrood Wolves jump in the air, the Champion doesnt.

I do seem to remember normal IceBroods as not doing the jump either when they use that skill in melee range. But at least they don’t hurt that much, only 4k per hit for two hits XD

haviz.1340:

Well, I was playing pvp in gw1 and you had to interrupt 0.75s skills but your own interrupts were activating in 0.25s plus flight time of arrow (even 0.3s). And you had to do it really reliable, it wasn’t something to be proud of, you had to do it on a regular basis.

It just really depends on the context of the situation. If everything else builds up to that .5 second cast coming up, obviously it is easier to interrupt. Compared to something with no pre-emptive warning/no consistent rhyme/semi-frequent appearance etc, then it would be totally different.

Regardless, consider normal reaction time is around .2 seconds, and you are not distracted by anything else, with almost perfect latency, .5 second interrupts are something to at least smile about.

stof.9341:

haviz.1340:

Well, I was playing pvp in gw1 and you had to interrupt 0.75s skills but your own interrupts were activating in 0.25s plus flight time of arrow (even 0.3s). And you had to do it really reliable, it wasn’t something to be proud of, you had to do it on a regular basis.

But GW1 had cast bars, spells that increased cast time to make interrupts easier and even preventive interrupts that would proc on next skill. Also, there was no fights that I remember were such interrupts were that important and if so, taking a couple interrupt heros with their computer brains would do the trick.

I was talking about pvp

haviz.1340:

I was talking about pvp

Well excuse me if we didn’t pick up that part when posting in the PvE dungeon subforum on a thread talking about dungeon fights (dum dum dum!)

New record today, got hit by 4 of the Ring of Warding bolts for 2×2400 damage and 2×4800 damage (two crits I presume) for 14800 damage in total.

stof.9341:

Well excuse me if we didn’t pick up that part when posting in the PvE dungeon subforum on a thread talking about dungeon fights (dum dum dum!)

Well, I was answering to Kevin description of WoW PvP.

I’m just encoding video about our last duo-run, will take a while (actually had some focus this time).
Just 9 kicks though.

haviz.1340:

So let’s all play ranged hm? We gonna do so much dps that way. Melee is high risk, high reward, unexperienced people will bring your team down, that’s obvious.

/outofthisthread. Probably a mesmer talking high on immune buttons.

Editted to remove the part where it seems i was lowering myself to your position.

Strifey.7215:

Zenith.7301:

Go Caudecus Manor exp and tell me you can melee 100% of the time as a non-Guardian or without a class spamming aegis for you.

You don’t have enough dodges for autoattacks that do 2k+ damage a pop and are cleaves that can still hit you from the side. You have to rely on someone else having aggro to stay behind a mob, and that said mob is not accompanied by ranged mobs that will gladly roast you from a distance.

Go melee the ascalonian groups in fractals without reflection bubbles or your charr warband taking aggro, I’d like to see how long you last.

Here you go, full melee CM 1 & 3 speed runs under 15 min each, every normal dungeon outside of fractals can pretty much be melee’d 99% of the time. Whole point of guardian is to relieve pressure off other melee classes to go full dps. That’s why 2 guard, 2 war group is so good and why they are used in most speed run videos. Of course any class isn’t going to survive if they are in melee and 4 people are ranging, but that’s why a dungeon is suppose to be 5 people working together… I have a bunch of vids from my berserker axe/mace warrior perspective as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoWhasHltgM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDRJg5OJJAE

Feel free to check out all of the other speed runs on my page where we pretty much have 4/5 melee since that’s what you need to do for speed runs.

Of course fractals are unique because they have infinite difficulty, so eventually you need to range. But up until the 20s you can melee most of the time. Obviously Ascalon is balanced to use your Veteran NPCs which is the whole mechanic of that fractal so it’s a bit different.

Now try that melee setup without guardians. They said classes wouldn’t be required, but surprise! The 2 classes that can afford to melee are the high base HP warriors and the boonheavy guardians. This proves nothing other than you’ve stacked the strongest classes in PvE.

Guardians in this game are seriously spoiled and have a skewed viewpoint about how things actually are through their rose-tinted glasses of inflated survivability relative to other classes.

Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vod_q58CN8M

No idea if I can post it somehow fancy.

Kellie.3687:

have meleed every encounter in game, apart from Phase one Lupi, have meleed phase 2 and 3. You cannot afford to melee phase one becuase it screws over your group if grubs spawn on you.

Not really true. The “warning” before a grub spawns on you is very long. If it is going to spawn on you, using swiftness or a teleport to get to your ranged group (or maybe relying on them for an extra snare after it spawns) is fine. Even without swiftness I can usually get to max range… it’s a very long warning.

Phase 3 is definitely the harder of the lupi phases to melee.

WoW initially had their own version of this problem. Most boss fights were not melee friendly, and you even had rogues using bows for specific fights. So they made a decision that all subsequent fights had places where melee could be without much risk and had more abilities that targeted the ranged players. While that may be within the design of a trinity based party system, its not as if there are design decisions in this game that would better favor melee play over ranged play, to the point that neither should be more complicated to play in comparison.

tyu.9470:

/outofthisthread. Probably a mesmer talking high on immune buttons.
Editted to remove the part where it seems i was lowering myself to your position.

You probably won’t read that anyway, but I’m mostly playing ele with almost full zerker running with a variety of weapon sets (except d/f). So good guess there!

And you failed to understand what I had meant as well.

Wethospu.6437:

Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vod_q58CN8M

No idea if I can post it somehow fancy.

Perfectly shows melee is not even viable but on par with ranged weapons (in viability, not damage). It’s also more fun to dodge everything than to just kite around, wouldn’t you agree?

D/D elementalists are hardly what I’d call a melee class. Your dagger 1 attack range goes from 300 range (earth and air) to 400 (fire) to 600 (water). Try playing with 130 range attacks like the thief and necro dagger 1 skills and we’ll talk melee.

Zenith.7301:

Now try that melee setup without guardians. They said classes wouldn’t be required, but surprise! The 2 classes that can afford to melee are the high base HP warriors and the boonheavy guardians. This proves nothing other than you’ve stacked the strongest classes in PvE.

Guardians in this game are seriously spoiled and have a skewed viewpoint about how things actually are through their rose-tinted glasses of inflated survivability relative to other classes.

I’ve melee’d most encounters in the game on my Ele using d/d as well kitten f + lightning hammer. Generally speak, the only time I actually use staff is if I really want to have access to water fields for blast finish heals or if it just makes sense to (ex. staff fire 5 + frost bow 4 = stupidly massive damage against anything with a decently large hitbox, like CoF p2 crystal or TA nightmare tree).

I pretty much only use d/d on my Thief as well, with the only exceptions being when i need to facetank stuff for whatever reason with bp (s/p), or i really want to aoe stuff (sb).

So far, meleeing on my 75 Mesmer has been quite a bit harder in dungeons, but you also have to take into account that I’m wearing outdated gear by 20+ levels. My shoulders are level 40 greens, and my pants are 60 blues. And even so, I still usually don’t have too much trouble as long as I balance my skills correctly. Any ranged mob is still a joke in melee range as a Mesmer as long as I chain TC/iWard/Feedback, and with melee mobs I have to balance rolls + blurred frenzy + TC pulls. The fact that I can’t even rely on my vigor on crit trait with my current craptastic crit rate means things are a lot harder than they should be right now anyways. Though tbh I switch with the GS a lot so I can make more clones as I don’t have clone on dodge yet.

stof.9341:

D/D elementalists are hardly what I’d call a melee class. Your dagger 1 attack range goes from 300 range (earth and air) to 400 (fire) to 600 (water). Try playing with 130 range attacks like the thief and necro dagger 1 skills and we’ll talk melee.

Fire 1 attack range might go to 400, but nobody actually tries tossing those out at range unless they feel like missing 2/3 of the attack. Hardly anyone actually sits in water autoattacking, either, unless they like doing subpar damage. Air’s autoattack is weird and while you can do a lot of damage, half the time you have to be on something’s nuts to get it to hit while other times you need to be at max range to get it to hit, otherwise it misses.

If you’re facetanking a ton of hits as a thief using d/d, you’re just simply playing it wrong, honestly. You can drop aggro so easily, and lots of stuff will just turn around as soon as you do so unless the mob is actually channeling something at that point.

I’ve got no clue about necros in general, but I do know that they’ve got the highest base HP in the game, as well as a second form that they can slap onto themselves as a sort of temporary invuln, so I imagine you could probably make it work if you really wanted to.

On the topic of the champicebrood wolf, it only does the weird aoe once every 15 or so seconds (never really counted, but I feel like its probably somewhere around there). Just let it use it once, then smack on it in melee for a while, then back off for a bit, repeat. Or just man up and eat it anyways! Although yeah, it really probably should have a better visible tell, as I can’t ever tell when it’s about to do it.

stof.9341:

D/D elementalists are hardly what I’d call a melee class. Your dagger 1 attack range goes from 300 range (earth and air) to 400 (fire) to 600 (water). Try playing with 130 range attacks like the thief and necro dagger 1 skills and we’ll talk melee.

Have you ever seen d/d ele spamming water or fire attacks? Because I still haven’t.

Zenith.7301:

Strifey.7215:

Zenith.7301:

Go Caudecus Manor exp and tell me you can melee 100% of the time as a non-Guardian or without a class spamming aegis for you.

You don’t have enough dodges for autoattacks that do 2k+ damage a pop and are cleaves that can still hit you from the side. You have to rely on someone else having aggro to stay behind a mob, and that said mob is not accompanied by ranged mobs that will gladly roast you from a distance.

Go melee the ascalonian groups in fractals without reflection bubbles or your charr warband taking aggro, I’d like to see how long you last.

Here you go, full melee CM 1 & 3 speed runs under 15 min each, every normal dungeon outside of fractals can pretty much be melee’d 99% of the time. Whole point of guardian is to relieve pressure off other melee classes to go full dps. That’s why 2 guard, 2 war group is so good and why they are used in most speed run videos. Of course any class isn’t going to survive if they are in melee and 4 people are ranging, but that’s why a dungeon is suppose to be 5 people working together… I have a bunch of vids from my berserker axe/mace warrior perspective as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoWhasHltgM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDRJg5OJJAE

Feel free to check out all of the other speed runs on my page where we pretty much have 4/5 melee since that’s what you need to do for speed runs.

Of course fractals are unique because they have infinite difficulty, so eventually you need to range. But up until the 20s you can melee most of the time. Obviously Ascalon is balanced to use your Veteran NPCs which is the whole mechanic of that fractal so it’s a bit different.

Now try that melee setup without guardians. They said classes wouldn’t be required, but surprise! The 2 classes that can afford to melee are the high base HP warriors and the boonheavy guardians. This proves nothing other than you’ve stacked the strongest classes in PvE.

Guardians in this game are seriously spoiled and have a skewed viewpoint about how things actually are through their rose-tinted glasses of inflated survivability relative to other classes.

I have 5 80s, and my first 80 was a Necro. Yes Guardians and Warriors are very strong in PvE. Instead of QQing about it on boards I choose to take the 2 days it takes to level one because it’s so ridiculously easy to level. If they get nerfed, I’ll just use one of my other 80s. I do dungeons to complete them as quickly and efficiently as possible with dedicated friend and guild groups where everyone knows what they’re doing, not to whine about melee and how it’s not fair if you use a Warrior or Guardian.

Welcome to MMOs, certain classes and team comps are better at certain things. I use my Necro and Thief for WvW, and my Guardian and Warrior for dungeons. This and my videos of nearly every other dungeon in the game proves that you can melee, which is the point. Being a whiny scrub saying it’s not fair because you used 2 heavy classes is dumb, I’ll keep doing efficient dungeon runs and you can feel sorry for yourself.

GW2 is still way more lenient on what you can bring into dungeons and complete them compared to almost every other MMO. Every single game always has more efficient builds and classes for certain things, that’s never going to change. Want to melee? Stop being a terrible ranger or necro and man up and pick a class that is viable in the current meta. Guardian has terrible ranged, if this was a discussion on ranged damage and usefulness then guardian would be low on the list. That’s the way it is.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

On the topic of the champicebrood wolf, it only does the weird aoe once every 15 or so seconds (never really counted, but I feel like its probably somewhere around there). Just let it use it once, then smack on it in melee for a while, then back off for a bit, repeat. Or just man up and eat it anyways! Although yeah, it really probably should have a better visible tell, as I can’t ever tell when it’s about to do it.

I was often facetanking (as in the only “melee” in party) that champ on ele, sometimes on guardian. It’s pretty hard to avoid that but not impossible.

As a thief, there isn’t a single encounter I haven’t done as melee. You just need to build for survivability and control/support across your entire team for it to work. Dropping aoe aegis, protection, regen, aoe blinds, aoe weakness, aoe petrify all make a huge difference in the survivability of a melee group.

Even on lupicus phase 1, all I do is stack on my group and melee mobs while my group ranges down the boss. Lupi isn’t even close to being a dps race anyway, so I don’t see why people try to have max dps at all times.

soulcakeduck.7036:

Kellie.3687:

have meleed every encounter in game, apart from Phase one Lupi, have meleed phase 2 and 3. You cannot afford to melee phase one becuase it screws over your group if grubs spawn on you.

Not really true. The “warning” before a grub spawns on you is very long. If it is going to spawn on you, using swiftness or a teleport to get to your ranged group (or maybe relying on them for an extra snare after it spawns) is fine. Even without swiftness I can usually get to max range… it’s a very long warning.

Phase 3 is definitely the harder of the lupi phases to melee.

Thanks for this, I can now say that I have meleed every encounter in game did all three phases tonight ^^, Group was a little worried about letting me melee, but had no issues Dodge+Swiftness worked out well for me on Guardian.

However after tonight I have go full support now, going to be leading a life of Staff/Mace&focus in full cleric gear, will miss my heavy melee brethren but I love to heal people!