Guild Wars 2

So, I have been trying to make different professions work as a melee class. And sure – some of them work fine. But I usually get the feeling that the game is favoring long distance classes, with spells or bows etc.
It feels as if 9 out of 10 monsters and bosses have some kind of “anti-melee” skill, that makes it impossible to stay near them. I know that I can change my weapon every time I want to. But to me it still seems unbalanced, since I do not have nearly as many problems staying alive when I am anything else than melee.
So, do anyone experience a similar feeling?
I do not feel like playing a melee class anymore – and that is a little sad, I think.
Thank you for your time, and sorry about the messy grammar/spelling

Not sure which class(es) your having trouble with, but I don’t have any issues with melee combat. In fact, I greatly prefer it most range combat, especially ranged attacks that require aiming or targetting.

In melee, you often do need to move to stay in range of the target, but that is easy enough to do with slight moves (WASD) during melee combat. Some melee weapons even have skills that help close gaps that may form. For example: warrior axe F1, warrior sword #2, guardian sword #2, guardian greatsword #3, ranger greatsword #3, reaper’s deathshroud #2, revenant sword #3, thief dagger #2, thief sword #2, thief F1, and so forth.

Well, right now my biggest problem is the mesmer
But how do you manage to stay alive? that is my biggest problem. Is it a question about the right gear? Or just moving at the right moments to avoid the damage? (When you used up all of your endurance).
Truth be told, most of my gear is of exotic quality – and it will take a long time for me to upgrade it, but if that is the answer to most of my problems, then please share your knowledge

Lindaklingomat.1253:

Well, right now my biggest problem is the mesmer
But how do you manage to stay alive? that is my biggest problem. Is it a question about the right gear? Or just moving at the right moments to avoid the damage? (When you used up all of your endurance).
Truth be told, most of my gear is of exotic quality – and it will take a long time for me to upgrade it, but if that is the answer to most of my problems, then please share your knowledge

Keep your clones up and keep switching places with them. Sword 2 functions to make you effectively untouchable while still dealing damage. You CANNOT play a mes like you do a warrior – I know, I tried. And failed. Stick and move and shatter, and pop more clones. Once you learn to do that, you can solo the Troll Runestone HP in TD (Soldier’s gear from the instant 80 boost). When I first started mes, I was running sword/pistol and great sword. Now that I finished the elite collection, I run the shield instead of the pistol (most of the time). And I’m still running the default exotic soldier’s gear that I got with the level 80 booster, except for the shield…which I think is Minstrels.

Also, don’t be afraid to jump back, switch to ranged to let a few things come off cool down and then jump back to melee.

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep
Wow thank you, that was some very helpful tips

I don’t use range unless the situation really calls for it. A couple things.

Melee does more damage and hits more targets at once in general. Offense is the best defense, if it dies fast then you need less dodges.
For mesmer in particular you have 2 dodges, sword mainhand has an evade on 2 short cooldown, double block on shield, single block or interupt on offhand sword, double interupthe on shield, interrupts on f3, invulnerable on f4. As long as you time properly, you should be able to stay in melee without a problem in most situations.
Exotic gear is fine, in pve move towards full damage where you can. The shorter the fight, the less chance you have of making a fatal mistake. And learn from your mistakes, if one move seems like it destroys you, pay attention to how the boss moves and save 1 dodge for that moment, soon you will dodge it without thinking.

Hope it helps a bit

Snow
Thank you very much – that makes sense.

The best open world option, unless you’re playing an Ele who has no weapon swap, is to have one weapon set melee and the other ranged. Power Mesmer has this option with Sword/whatever and Greatsword. Depending on your reaction time, vision, and whether you’re doing content with a group of greater than 4 other players, seeing the things you need to evade, block, etc. can be a problem. The flexibility inherent in having both ranged and melee options gives you the opportunity to melee when you can, and still contribute when you can’t. This works fine in open world, but is not good advice in meta groups for instanced content. There’ you’ll be expected to use the weapons for the meta build, and position where the group needs you.

Lindaklingomat.1253:

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep
Wow thank you, that was some very helpful tips

Glad to be of service. I will add one thing – some bosses are just best dealt with at range. Like the skritt queen in dry top. While you CAN melee her, ranged just makes that fight so much simpler – especially with the way she spams out stuns.

Something that can help, potentially, is a choice of food and/or utility buff. Something that adds some vitality, or health gain, to restore health while you dodge, block, or evade can be a nice addition to an otherwise high damage glass build.

Dont be afraid to gear a bit less glassy than is often recommended in pve while learning to melee on a squishy class.

You just have to find what works for you. On some of my characters I use both melee and ranged so that I have an answer to any situation.

However, on my ele I don’t have a weapon swap and use daggers. For ele this produces a long melee range to allow better kiting, but you’re still more vulnerable than range.

Despite that I do my best solo work on my ele. She can solo all sorts of challenges including all of the bandit champions, the legendary executioner, and all of the HoT champion HPs.

I don’t know mesmer well, but you should pay close attention to the skills that allow you to evade attacks, stealth, and utilize your clones. Avoiding damage is key.

Some encounters really are difficult as melee, especially elite or champion monsters, whose damage is very punishing. However most high damage attacks have wind up animations, or tells, which you can watch for and react to. Again, if you are solo this is only going to help until you run out of defensive skills and endurance.

I’m not familiar with Mesmers, but in general you may want to learn a particular skill rotation that emphasises control and damage avoidance, whilst dealing at least moderate damage to your opponent.

For example, I main a Revenant, and my skill rotation switches between weapons and legends in an almost rythmic pattern. My two melee weapon sets both have evasive and blocking skills, and one of my heals converts all incoming damage to health. Revenants also vomit boons, and I can configure my dragon stance to give me protection (33% damage reduction) and regeneration at the cost of dealing less damage while I reposition.

The tl;dr of it is, look at your class and weapon set, and make some more defensive choices. Finally and most importantly: don’t panic! It’s easy to blow all of your defensive cooldowns in one go to avoid moderate attacks. But you need to know what skills you truly need to avoid, since unless you are kiting, you will take damage. The trick is to not take so much that you die

Oh one other thing. If you are fighting against more than one opponent, especially if it’s a group fight where you don’t have focus, you can always just go down and rally off of a low hp mob by killing them in your downed state. It’s risky, but I’ve survived plenty a dungeon wipe by killing some low hp, inconsequential mob shortly after going down. Just make sure you have a heal skill ready for when you get back up.

AliamRationem.5172:

…can solo … the legendary executioner

Just…wow! Color me impressed

Lindaklingomat.1253:

Well, right now my biggest problem is the mesmer
But how do you manage to stay alive? that is my biggest problem. Is it a question about the right gear? Or just moving at the right moments to avoid the damage? (When you used up all of your endurance).
Truth be told, most of my gear is of exotic quality – and it will take a long time for me to upgrade it, but if that is the answer to most of my problems, then please share your knowledge

So just a general thing, in general melee attacks are stronger than ranged attacks, so it makes sense for mobs to be more dangerous in melee range. But a few mobs actually are the opposite, and their most dangerous attacks only happen when you are too far away from them.

Back to mesmer specific gameplay issues, mesmer lacks a solid melee weapon set. We don’t have a single melee offhand for core mesmer, and we only have 1 melee mainhand or 2handed weapon (that being sword). So again, no surprise you seem to find melee much different than ranged.

Mesmer is actually an incredible survivalist, its just that its relies on active defenses instead of passive defenses, and being a light armor class it does take more damage from mobs than say a warrior would. Your core defenses (and for this I will leave out chronomancer line, as I don’t know if you have it or not) are your 2 dodges, sword 2, staff 2, Blink, F3 (also called diversion), F4 (distortion), GS5, and in a few cases Torch 4 (the Prestige).

You are going to rely on a mix of evades (dodging, Sword 2), invulnerability (F4), interrupts (F3, GS5, Focus 4 chained skill), and smart positioning/kiting (Blink and Staff 2), and occasionally stealth (mainly Torch 4, though you have a few other stealth skills). You can also use reflects (Focus skills when traited, and Feedback)

You will always have access to F3 and F4, and you should always be running mainhand sword in PvE, so you will always have access to Sword 2. Its a 2.5 second evade on a 12 second cooldown, that’s incredible for PvE, really. Use it to evade a big attack you know is coming. Most mobs in core Tyria do not have breakbars, feel free to use interrupts on them to interrupt attacks. In newer maps (HoT maps and LWS3 maps), a lot of mobs have breakbars. Use your evades, positioning skills, reflects, and invulnerability as your defenses on these mobs.

The biggest thing you can do is to learn the tells for each mob’s attacks. Learn when you need to dodge to successfully evade the attacks, learn when you can eat an attack to save your defenses for a bigger one that you know is coming later, learn how to best use your positioning skills (staff 2 is excellent for getting out of AoEs, used incorrectly its also a great way to get inside of AoEs….). Don’t be afraid to take the inspiration traitline for extra survivability (healing and cleanse a condition on every shatter). If you want more help with mesmer, I suggest you make a post in the mesmer forum, there are better mesmer players than I am in there that can help you more.

Thank you all for your wonderful help I feel like that I might have a chance to make it work, now that I have so much more knowledge. Again, thank you!