Guild Wars 2

It is not IMPOSSIBLE to melee, however melee is at a clear disadvantage and that’s always bugged me. My main character is a ranged necro however I’ve always been baffled and frustrated at how obvious and big the difficulty difference is for ranged and melee.

There are many enemies that will only be able to use half of their available skills against you if you’re ranged, while if you’re melee you’re vulnerable to everything they have to throw at you. I always thought “well these guys will give a hard time to melee players but I’m sure I’ll find something that will just be horrible for ranged players” yet that never happened.

At most there is I think two enemies out there who deal more damage the further you are from it, but that doesn’t actually hinder a ranged player at all. There is no boss that will be easier if you’re a melee player and harder if you’re a ranged, that simple doesn’t exist. And to top it all off, the sheer vast number of areas in the game while penalize you for being melee is ridiculous.

It bugs me reading all these people saying “well vet players don’t have those issues, well I’m a vet player, well people that actually know how to play are fine” when that doesn’t do any good to the argument other than licking your own kitty hole and trying to boast your own ego.

You may be able to play melee (though I doubt you’d be able to run a party of ONLY strictly melee players with no ranged attacks through Arah or TA) and may be good at it, but that doesn’t change the fact melee is at a huge disadvantage.

I’m able to fight Lupicus easily without dying once in the entire battle, that fight is a ridiculous breeze for me yet I don’t go to people who find it hard and say “well YOU’RE wrong because I can beat him easily! So clearly I’m better than you, learn to play!”.

I also play melee and range switch back and forth constantly in dungeons, every class can do both, my guardian actually uses greatsword/hammer/shield/scepter/torch/staff/1h sword regularly in fractals, switch traits around here and there, melee is hard sometimes, dont do it all the time if you’re not into hardcore dodging.

On the topic of Scepter Guardians they can do great damage, you can swap in your full berserker on alot of fights and use unscathed defender and 1h 15% crit trait and do tons.

well, i feel 200% more comfortable with my guardian with only melee weapons for 95% of the content. and that means; i die less.

dunno what else to tell you.

im into “hardcore dodging”.
trait for it, get some stamina, make it heal you, drink your protein shake, and youll realize melee are clearly not at “disadvantage”.

Avatar.1923:

well, i fell 200% more comfortable with my guardian with only melee weapons for 95% of the content. and that means; i die less.

dunno what else to tell you.

Well, I feel 200% more comfortable with my necro with only ranged weapons for 100% of the content, and that means; I die less.

Even you who are clearly a godly player admit that even for the best of the best of the best, there is still that 5% that just kicks melee’s kitten while doesn’t really bother ranged.

As I said it’s not about one’s personal experiences, it’s not about one’s own skills – it’s about the game, the balance, and the difficulty in general. Get two players of equal skill, both of them above average players, give one ONLY melee weapons, give the other ONLY ranged weapons – the ranged will undoubtedly have a much easier time – THAT is what is wrong, THAT is what is unbalanced.

imo, subject alpha is a boss that you should melee.

and in pvp amd wvw ? melee arent suitable also ?

and for pve, melee is often better than range, if you play right.

and i agree, range is probably easier.
but not better.

Delryn.7235:

Avatar.1923:

well, i fell 200% more comfortable with my guardian with only melee weapons for 95% of the content. and that means; i die less.

dunno what else to tell you.

Well, I feel 200% more comfortable with my necro with only ranged weapons for 100% of the content, and that means; I die less.

Even you who are clearly a godly player admit that even for the best of the best of the best, there is still that 5% that just kicks melee’s kitten while doesn’t really bother ranged.

As I said it’s not about one’s personal experiences, it’s not about one’s own skills – it’s about the game, the balance, and the difficulty in general. Get two players of equal skill, both of them above average players, give one ONLY melee weapons, give the other ONLY ranged weapons – the ranged will undoubtedly have a much easier time – THAT is what is wrong, THAT is what is unbalanced.

You answered yourself in a sense. Someone has to have the boss’s attention. Often it will be the melee. Dying and reviving is part of the game. Ever factored range would usually be in a good state to revive others?

In PvP I think melee outshines ranged easily (EASILY) given the right player. In WvW melee is as rubbish as it could ever get, throwing yourself in the middle of a zerg trying to hit someone with your sword will get you killed so fast. In PvE ranged is better than melee.

There’s many reasons but a big deal is that there are so many bosses that can kill you in some 3 hits, and being melee will make you vulnerable to these so much more. A glass cannon ranged and a glass cannon melee can do virtually the same damage, but put a glass cannon melee in the feet of a boss and he won’t last a second.

Uncle Salty.6342:

Delryn.7235:

Avatar.1923:

well, i fell 200% more comfortable with my guardian with only melee weapons for 95% of the content. and that means; i die less.

dunno what else to tell you.

Well, I feel 200% more comfortable with my necro with only ranged weapons for 100% of the content, and that means; I die less.

Even you who are clearly a godly player admit that even for the best of the best of the best, there is still that 5% that just kicks melee’s kitten while doesn’t really bother ranged.

As I said it’s not about one’s personal experiences, it’s not about one’s own skills – it’s about the game, the balance, and the difficulty in general. Get two players of equal skill, both of them above average players, give one ONLY melee weapons, give the other ONLY ranged weapons – the ranged will undoubtedly have a much easier time – THAT is what is wrong, THAT is what is unbalanced.

You answered yourself in a sense. Someone has to have the boss’s attention. Often it will be the melee. Dying and reviving is part of the game. Ever factored range would usually be in a good state to revive others?

I play a tank necro, I make sure to pull as much aggro as I can, I’m able to dish out a steady strem of damage, take hits, kite, move around, dodge, evade, get close to the enemy and move away all while being ranged. I’m easily able to deal damage close and far while being able to kite, and tank.

A pure melee character will not be able to keep on attacking no matter what, and if he never moves away he will die, simple as that.

I have a tank guardian that I play melee with 80% of the time, however there are some places and some bosses where I’m just gonna have to keep my scepter and focus up for the majority of the battle – I have to sacrifice what I do best because the game didn’t take melee into consideration as much as it did ranged. While with my ranged necro tank I’m able to do whatever, be fine, no matter where I am.

melee toons have ranged weapon for that 20% (i think its less but anyway).

and running dungeons without melees, is hard.

my guardian is almost all berserk gear.
greatsword and mace/focus.

(actually mace focus is for the blocks, give you that little for the cooldowns to pop up)

and greatsword is simply op…

Avatar.1923:

melee toons have ranged weapon for that 20% (i think its less but anyway).

and running dungeons without melees, is hard.

I beg to differ, I’ve run many MANY a dungeon without melee and it was fine and dandy.

Now see it doesn’t MATTER if I’ve had an easy time or not running dungeons without melee because that’s not the point, the point is that you’re not entirely wrong, having a melee or two in the group will make things easier for everyone – doesn’t matter my personal experiences when it comes to fact.

And as you said, melee classes have ranged for when melee classes can’t melee, and I think that’s wrong – I think EVERY area should be possible to melee. Go fight claw of Jormag as melee and let me know what happens. However tell me of a fight where it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to fight as ranged.

I wouldn’t mind having some fights where melee would be at a horrible disadvantage IF there were some fights where ranged would be at a horrible disadvantage, however that doesn’t exist – thus unbalanced.

Guild Wars (one) had a better balance between melee and ranged, you had your melee characters and you had your ranged – it was all fine and dandy. Your melee would run in and and do what they did while the ranged stayed back doing what they did.

Though Guild Wars had a better balance for melee and ranged there were still some places where melee was at a horrible disadvantage. Me and a friend were doing a mission and we had a few henchmen in the party, the mission was insanely difficult because when we did it we were under leveled. We kept on trying again and again and again and failing again and again and again.

Our henchmen kept on dying no matter how fast we tried healing them, they’d just get wiped out too quickly because the enemy had some powerful melee attacks that surrounded it (I think said skill is called Double Dragon, it’s an elementalist elite). We decided to throw out the melee henchmen and replace them all with ranged, EVERYONE in the party was ranged… the very first time we tried doing that mission with only ranged, BOOM done, we won – first try.

Now in Guild Wars I found it to be a LOT more rare finding encounters where melee had a horrible disadvantage than I find in Guild Wars 2 – SO many places in GW2 are so unfriendly to melee – and this is clearly obvious and shown by the simple fact ALL melee classes have ranged weapons… because you’re not meant to be a 100% pure natural melee for all the content, yet being 100% pure natural ranged for all content is completely acceptable.

THAT I think is wrong.

Again, I never said the raised points were flawed but neither did u say I did. But again, when you say some fights are like this and some fights are like that when all fights should be like those…

Isn’t that what you call a varied fight experience?

Delryn.7235:

Avatar.1923:

well, i fell 200% more comfortable with my guardian with only melee weapons for 95% of the content. and that means; i die less.

dunno what else to tell you.

Well, I feel 200% more comfortable with my necro with only ranged weapons for 100% of the content, and that means; I die less.

Even you who are clearly a godly player admit that even for the best of the best of the best, there is still that 5% that just kicks melee’s kitten while doesn’t really bother ranged.

As I said it’s not about one’s personal experiences, it’s not about one’s own skills – it’s about the game, the balance, and the difficulty in general. Get two players of equal skill, both of them above average players, give one ONLY melee weapons, give the other ONLY ranged weapons – the ranged will undoubtedly have a much easier time – THAT is what is wrong, THAT is what is unbalanced.

Well my guild leader is a necro who runs short range wepons and she has easly the most servivabuilty of any one i know. Life steal i think helps with this alot.

Also its not realy that unbalanced its true its often easyer to stay alive at range but you also do massively less damage and other than maybe nockback and cripples you loss alot of control

Top it off. My sword 1 skill hit 3 targets at one time most range 1 skills are only single target.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Delryn.7235:

Avatar.1923:

well, i fell 200% more comfortable with my guardian with only melee weapons for 95% of the content. and that means; i die less.

dunno what else to tell you.

Well, I feel 200% more comfortable with my necro with only ranged weapons for 100% of the content, and that means; I die less.

Even you who are clearly a godly player admit that even for the best of the best of the best, there is still that 5% that just kicks melee’s kitten while doesn’t really bother ranged.

As I said it’s not about one’s personal experiences, it’s not about one’s own skills – it’s about the game, the balance, and the difficulty in general. Get two players of equal skill, both of them above average players, give one ONLY melee weapons, give the other ONLY ranged weapons – the ranged will undoubtedly have a much easier time – THAT is what is wrong, THAT is what is unbalanced.

Well my guild leader is a necro who runs short range wepons and she has easly the most servivabuilty of any one i know. Life steal i think helps with this alot.

Also its not realy that unbalanced its true its often easyer to stay alive at range but you also do massively less damage and other than maybe nockback and cripples you loss alot of control

Top it off. My sword 1 skill hit 3 targets at one time most range 1 skills are only single target.

Necro can get up to around 35-36k health, then there is DS. Compare that to the thief getting around with 10k health, its quite high. Even the average class builds to around 20k health. Its not so much the lifesteal, but the vitality and toughness.

I agree with the OP, at least in the case of PvE. Most of the major open world events and dungeons, your better off with a ranged weapon. WvW and PvP I think the balance is fine between ranged and melee.

If you are talking about PvE, then I think you need both.
There are moments where its better to melee and moments where is better to range.
Its like complaining that AoE is not as good as ST against single target bosses.

Each encounter has its tricks. I always bring different sets of melee and range weps to change according to the situation. Same goes for utilities.

I myself find melee mostly better against non-defiant mobs, as you can blind/daze/stun them so much. Difiant, depending on their attack mechanics you have to stay range or just time you melee burst against their own bursts.

Like someone said a while ago, you need to know yourself and know your opponent and then you can beat the kitten out of them… or something like that.

That’s the reason why I use rifle so much on my warrior. I might as well rename my warrior to rifleman.

You can indeed melee. But most of the time, it is much safer to just rifle away. So I only melee when I know I’m donig easy things because I know I won’t die.

Avatar.1923:

my guardian is almost all berserk gear.
greatsword and mace/focus.

(actually mace focus is for the blocks, give you that little for the cooldowns to pop up)

and greatsword is simply op…

2 of the GS attacks are ranged AOE attacks…

Melee is ok in PvE… when its got AoE. The thief has neither reliable melee aoe nor the health to survive for long in short range combat. Cloaking does more to reduce your DPS then it does to protect you.

My guardian and warrior are excellent with melee in pve. My thief is so not.

Avatar.1923:

well, i feel 200% more comfortable with my guardian with only melee weapons for 95% of the content. and that means; i die less.

dunno what else to tell you.

im into “hardcore dodging”.
trait for it, get some stamina, make it heal you, drink your protein shake, and youll realize melee are clearly not at “disadvantage”.

That is EXACTLY why melee are at disadvantage! If it means we need to trait for something in order to survive and consume special food, while ranged can just do whatever they want there clearly is something wrong with the balance between ranged and melee.

Avatar.1923:

i think theres some video of a greatsword warrior soloing lupicus.

google it.

and to all guards and warriors who feel “kitten” by playing range; l2p

That video was shot before reckless dodge was fixed. It’s very likely that he wouldn’t be able to repeat that video now.

On topic: I feel like subject alpha is the only boss that gets it right. Every time I run CoE, I tell my party to melee subject alpha. Those that don’t, are usually the first ones to kiss the floor. Thieves and mesmers are the exception to the rule though, since they can teleport out of crystals any time they need to.

Imprisonment crystals aside, alpha gets an earth wave that gets larger and deals more damage the farther out it goes. He also spams dragon’s tooth on any players that aren’t in melee range (depending on which path you choose). His large overlapping ice/earth AoE tends to get worse if everyone is clumped around him, but: it’s easy to dodge.

Subject alpha is probably the only boss in the game that’s easier to melee than to range.

I totally agree with you im always having to go ranged to avoid those 1 hit kill attacks. melee have so many disadvantages to maintaaining there dps in this game. its not about how well you play either. For example even if you play well your still having to do at least 50% more work than a range charcter does just to stay alive. also its almost impossible to match the dps sometimes.

Avatar.1923:

and in pvp amd wvw ? melee arent suitable also ?

and for pve, melee is often better than range, if you play right.

and i agree, range is probably easier.
but not better.

Many mobs are programmed to preferentially target ranged enemies. Any ranger who’s played a while can tell you, because we see it in how quickly some mobs will break agro with our pets and bee-line for us, while others will obediently stay where they are and get pincushioned. Just about all Risen have this behaviour, making Orr and absolutely slog.

When you have a character that is built specifically for melee, this behaviour isn’t an issue. In fact, you hardly notice it exists, unless you’re grouped with a ranged buddy and have to go chasing their mobs all over. That makes it much, MUCH easier for melee characters because kiting mobs that are faster than you, even when crippled, isn’t necessary. And then there’s Warriors, the roflstompers of Orr. It doesn’t get easier than that.

Melee deals much more damage than ranged in this game. A lot more. On my thief, when I go in melee, I can see my DPS increase almost 2 fold but, it is a lot more dangerous. On my Elementalist its the exact same thing. Keep your eyes on the boss at all times and use dodge.

In short, learn to dodge.

Jezath.7395:

I totally agree with you im always having to go ranged to avoid those 1 hit kill attacks. melee have so many disadvantages to maintaaining there dps in this game. its not about how well you play either. For example even if you play well your still having to do at least 50% more work than a range charcter does just to stay alive. also its almost impossible to match the dps sometimes.

There’s no such thing as a ranged or melee character in Guild Wars 2. All classes have ranged and melee weapons. If you’re going into a gun fight with a knife, you’re going to have a rough time.

There are a couple things to keep in mind when trying to melee and enemy, especially in dungeons.

1. You do a lot more damage in melee then you do at range. A good group where everyone melee’s the bosses will down them about twice as fast as a ranged group.

2. shared skills are all melee range. Boon sharing, venom sharing and other utility builds where you get buffs from your allies only have a short sharing range. If everyone is spread out at range you will not get the benefits of those utilities, where a melee group will further increasing the damage disparity.

3. When trying to melee, stay behind the boss. Bosses preferentially attack people who do more damage and people who are closer, meaning one of the melee players will almost always have aggro. Once the boss turns to attack someone move behind the boss. Many boss attacks are in a line, or in a cleave meaning you can avoid the majority of damage by staying behind the boss.

4. Aggro dropping. If you attract the attention of the boss you will only be able to take a few direct hits before dying. When you get low on health switch to a ranged weapon and dodge back to a distance. The boss will switch to another melee target 99% of the time allowing you time for your heal to recharge before you get back into melee range.

5. Watch the boss. Every boss has some large wind up animation that tells you when he is going to do a massive attack. You will probably get hit by it the first few times, but once you know the tell you should dodge through the boss when he does the attack. The game was designed around the fact that you will be dodging, and this is particularly true in melee range.

FWIW I have an 80 ranger and an 80 warrior and in most cases the ranger does feel much easier to play. She’s much more likely to survive simply because she does have that headstart on mobs for kiting and getting out of the path of projectiles, and the pet soaks up some of the damage and effects that would otherwise hit her. In dungeons the pets often do go down quickly to the nasty boss melee effects, but the ranger herself is fine as she is too far to be hit by it.

That said, in open-world ordinary PvE at least, the warrior feels like she can put out more damage than the ranger. A group of 3-4 ordinary mobs goes down quickly to hundred blades, etc. whereas the ranger would likely be shooting one and kiting a couple since the pets struggle to keep aggro on multiple mobs and auto-attack hits only one target. Basically, in situations where the warrior’s regen signet can balance out the incoming damage, she’s superior in terms of efficiency. In cases where she’s taking a lot of big hits, the ranger is. Unfortunately, in instances, the latter seems to be rule rather than the exception.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

4. Aggro dropping. If you attract the attention of the boss you will only be able to take a few direct hits before dying. When you get low on health switch to a ranged weapon and dodge back to a distance. The boss will switch to another melee target 99% of the time allowing you time for your heal to recharge before you get back into melee range.

If only. I have also seen bosses being pulled off melees by ranged attack and come rumbling across the room to feat on the ranged attacker. Never mind the counter intuitive design that apparently stacking on toughness for the little extra defense it gives you (thanks PVP bunkers) you suddenly become a red cloth to every mob within aggro range. The incentives in this game, on the PVE side at least, are all whack to say the least.

Melee is hard when you’re in there alone because every mob is going to target you. If you’re entire team melees, the game becomes “easymode”.

Delryn.7235:

Guild Wars (one) had a better balance between melee and ranged, you had your melee characters and you had your ranged – it was all fine and dandy. Your melee would run in and and do what they did while the ranged stayed back doing what they did.

Though Guild Wars had a better balance for melee and ranged there were still some places where melee was at a horrible disadvantage. Me and a friend were doing a mission and we had a few henchmen in the party, the mission was insanely difficult because when we did it we were under leveled. We kept on trying again and again and again and failing again and again and again.

Our henchmen kept on dying no matter how fast we tried healing them, they’d just get wiped out too quickly because the enemy had some powerful melee attacks that surrounded it (I think said skill is called Double Dragon, it’s an elementalist elite). We decided to throw out the melee henchmen and replace them all with ranged, EVERYONE in the party was ranged… the very first time we tried doing that mission with only ranged, BOOM done, we won – first try.

Now in Guild Wars I found it to be a LOT more rare finding encounters where melee had a horrible disadvantage than I find in Guild Wars 2 – SO many places in GW2 are so unfriendly to melee – and this is clearly obvious and shown by the simple fact ALL melee classes have ranged weapons… because you’re not meant to be a 100% pure natural melee for all the content, yet being 100% pure natural ranged for all content is completely acceptable.

THAT I think is wrong.

I found GW1 to be full of melee hate. Ranged in GW1 had to worry about very little. Casters had to watch for Backfire. Then there was Spiteful Spirit, and maybe a few other things, most of which also affected melee. GW1 was also full of cripple, knock and blind. Blind affected rangers (but they did not get targeted if they were using longbow or flatbow with a terrain advantage. Blind did not affect casters’ spells. If you were avoiding melee, knock and cripple didn’t even get applied a lot of the time. Yes, cripple and blind can be removed, but since most mob groups have multiple members who can apply them, they would often just get re-applied.

On the flip side, there seems to be less melee hate in GW2. Mob cripples tend to last a long time, but if I remove it, is not immediately re-applied. Blind is a small bump in the road. Knocks can be dodged. The biggest issue for melee in GW2 is the heavy hits put out by mobs in dungeons (and some Champions and Event bosses in open world).

Melee is higher risk but higher reward (more damage = faster clears).
Every RPG is built the same way.
I used to be terrified to go into melee range. But now that I understand the mechanics, it’s much more fun to play in melee range since it directly rewards player skill.
If you look at top-tier dungeon runners (check out strife025’s channel on youtube), they full-melee basically everything in the game due to melee’s inherent higher damage. Even giganticus lupicus. I’ve never seen any team take out GL faster.

^

i tried to tell them, but they dont listen, they keep complaining that it’s unfair!

again;
melee is superior in most cases, but harder.
ranger is easier, but less rewarding. (aoe is debatable.. ranged toon with a lot of aoe are kind of op too!)

I’ve never had any problems in melee (on my elementalist), try dodging sometime.