Guild Wars 2

I hate the current punishing of melees in this game. Since i play mostly open world PVE this goes to those guys who do design such things.

The great jungle wurm is pretty anti-melee with its fears and its push mechanics. Its just frustrating to keep getting pushed back and re-run towards that thing for 15min.

Champion ancient rotting oakheart. How many times does it push you back every 5s or something like that.

Or another world event: The inquest golem mark II. Overpowered electric fields depending on the profession and its health. While the golems gun does not scratch you at all as a heavy. If you are in melee you may get thrown into those electric fields while the ranged gets tossed further away.

Now it wouldn’t be a problem if ranged would get punished as well. And mostly these guys stay in a save spot far away and do their damage. Sure as a guardian or a warrior you can roll ranged as well with all the benefits but is that good game design? Its like: Okay i now that foe i have to stay away or i can go all in. Risen priest of melandru to add one to the list. Or the high priestress of dwayna. At melee you won’t see the animation of dwayna due to the effects going on and at ranged you can rather easily dodge your way out of it.

So how to solve it? Reduce the frequency of punishing the melee. And add punishing to the ranged as well.

Here’s my solution as an example how it could be done:
The golem mark II could activate a shield returning all ranged damage. So you have to go in melee as well. After that electric fields will activate so you have to get away. There should be more dynamic in those fights. Why not spam some adds or champions as well?

Stability, dodge, watch for tells, condition cleansing.

I have no idea how you got the great jungle wurm is non melee friendly, its all I ever use, and golem is super easy once you figure out the pattern of the electicity <<

Stability helps tonnes though

Pretty much every mob in the game is able to be fought melee. However, you can’t just faceroll them all. You need to use your skills (stability and condition removal especially), and you need to know how to dodge. Pretty much every problem you listed can be taken care of by careful watching, dodging, and skill use.

So pretty much make it so that melee can just stand there and chop at bosses like a tree? While ranged gets more boned aside from the fact that they’re already dealing less damage?

DigitalKirin.9714:

Stability, dodge, watch for tells, condition cleansing.

+ positioning

The Great Jungle Wurm is a good example to bring up. It’s a huge, threatening-looking boss, but it has all of three attacks, each with a distinctive tell. If it coils low, it’s going to use a condition-inflicting attack. If it stretches high and circles, it’s going to use a knockback push attack. If it flails around, it’s going to use a fear attack.

All three can be dodged.

It just so happens that ranged attackers only need to worry about the fear (and possibly the conditions, I always melee so I don’t know if that attack goes after them too). Once you’ve figured out what the animations for the wurm’s attacks look like, it becomes easy to dodge them all, and to get through a fight entirely in melee range without taking so much as a scratch. Depending on your class, you might need Vigour to dodge enough, or you might need to use a block or two, but it’s far from punishing to melee, especially considering that you’re doing more damage than the ranged attackers and are often able to hit two of the wurm’kittenboxes at the same time up close with cleaving attacks to double your damage beyond that.

It’s the same with Golem Mark II. The electricity does a lot of damage, yes. But the golem’s one knockback attack is its excessively telegraphed ground pounds, the first two of which can be avoided with simple positioning while meleeing (the first is on the golem’s right, the second on the left) or even by inflicting Blind on it because the Golem’s doesn’t have Defiant, while the third hit is a large AoE that hits twice and thus ignores Blind, but is given away by the two ground pounds leading up to it and thus gives meleeing characters ample opportunity to dodge. And there’s less need for Vigour here because of the gun attack phases and the “I’m futilely covering my face for ten seconds” phases, where melee characters won’t need to dodge at all, just move out of electricity. And those melee characters with cleaving weapons are often able to hit three hitboxes of the Golem at once, particularly when it’s covering itself up, giving them an even more massive damage advantage over the ranged characters camping outside the electricity radius (who are still vulnerable to the ground pound AoE there).

Hell, I even still melee the Fire Elemental in Metrica sometimes. There’s a part of its hitbox that extends out of the lava far enough to melee it. It’s just risky because the fire pulse attacks that move along the ground can originate from that spot giving you no time to dodge them, and the AoE from the sky might knock you into the lava, at which point it sucks to be you. But it can still be done!

In short, there’s nothing punishing here for melee. You get rewarded with massive damage, but you take on extra risk in the process. You’ll definitely notice when fighting Golem Mark II when you have people in melee or not. Does the fight take 5 minutes, or 10?

raubvogel.5071:

I hate the current punishing of melees in this game. Since i play mostly open world PVE this goes to those guys who do design such things.

The great jungle wurm is pretty anti-melee with its fears and its push mechanics. Its just frustrating to keep getting pushed back and re-run towards that thing for 15min.

Champion ancient rotting oakheart. How many times does it push you back every 5s or something like that.

Or another world event: The inquest golem mark II. Overpowered electric fields depending on the profession and its health. While the golems gun does not scratch you at all as a heavy. If you are in melee you may get thrown into those electric fields while the ranged gets tossed further away.

Now it wouldn’t be a problem if ranged would get punished as well. And mostly these guys stay in a save spot far away and do their damage. Sure as a guardian or a warrior you can roll ranged as well with all the benefits but is that good game design? Its like: Okay i now that foe i have to stay away or i can go all in. Risen priest of melandru to add one to the list. Or the high priestress of dwayna. At melee you won’t see the animation of dwayna due to the effects going on and at ranged you can rather easily dodge your way out of it.

So how to solve it? Reduce the frequency of punishing the melee. And add punishing to the ranged as well.

Here’s my solution as an example how it could be done:
The golem mark II could activate a shield returning all ranged damage. So you have to go in melee as well. After that electric fields will activate so you have to get away. There should be more dynamic in those fights. Why not spam some adds or champions as well?

I think this is a Learn 2 Play issue. Guild Wars 2 is more of an anti hack & slash game. You need to understand combat mechanics to do well. If all you do is rush in, and ignore the big orange circles of the Great Wurm, 10 times out of 10 you will drop.

Melee is a bit harder and maybe more punishing than standing at safe distance using your ranged autoattack but the hard part is what actually makes it a lot more fun to play. I just love watching where the electric fields will drop at golem mark II, carefully dodging and using my stability at the right time so I don’t get smashed into them. Or using a stunbreaker when I do get smashed in. Dodging and using the right skills at the right time actually makes melee a lot of fun to play not punishing at all.

This game is absolutely the easiest game I have ever played in terms of being a melee character.

Between active defense of dodging. Then add aegis and reflects as well as tons of other buffs and you are actually at an advantage vs a ranged player who is more then likely out of said buffs range.

Also, Add into the fact the enormous DPS advantage (which I don’t agree with) melee has over range and you should not be complaining.

The risk of being in melee in this game is astounding low.

The DPS difference between melee and range is also far to wide for such a low risk.

Great you guys agree. As a melee you have to work and as a ranged you have to camp. So theres is melee punishing. I’m satisfied.

raubvogel.5071:

Great you guys agree. As a melee you have to work and as a ranged you have to camp. So theres is melee punishing. I’m satisfied.

Actually I am of the mindset that ranged dps needs a very large buff to compete with melee since the penalty for melee is pretty much non existent with the current combat system and mechanics.

Azreell.1568:

raubvogel.5071:

Great you guys agree. As a melee you have to work and as a ranged you have to camp. So theres is melee punishing. I’m satisfied.

Actually I am of the mindset that ranged dps needs a very large buff to compete with melee since the penalty for melee is pretty much non existent with the current combat system and mechanics.

Theres also the issues of multi vs single target, range damage is perfectly balance if you have room to snipe, but if your fighting mid-range or the enemy has a way to leap toward you, your range is pretty useless. The range certainly deserves a damage cut for basic attacks, but take the third skill in the mesmer’s greatsword line. That energy greatsword does almost nothing in the end. I’m in not big hurry, but it is noticable in a number of skills

raubvogel.5071:

Great you guys agree. As a melee you have to work and as a ranged you have to camp. So theres is melee punishing. I’m satisfied.

Correction, melee is only punishing if you can’t play it well. To that extent, Ranged players are punished because the damage output is far less than what a Melee user can dish out.

The only time I’ve seen this “punishment” in play is zerging events. This recent one ESPECIALLY. Can’t see a Boss’s big attack winding up (let alone the boss itself) so you can’t even dodge out of the way in time as a melee.

Melee puts in more risk but is rewarded with higher damage output.
Ranger is in less risk but is punished with lower damage output.

This is in pretty much every game in extense! Even FPS have this (insta kill with knife).

Your getting mixed up with punish and risk. Risk is how much damage you could potentially take (which in GW2 can be negated). Punish is to taken away. So Ranged have lower potential of taking damage but their damage output is lowered to compensate.

Based on this terminology Melee is never punished but is rewarded.

This is based on distance:

Long Range: Low Risk but lower Damage
Med Range: Medium Risk and Medium Damage
Close Range: High Risk but High Damage.

The closer you are to the target the higher your potential damage you will take, but at the same time the higher your potential damage against the target.

Edit: Main issue in GW2 is Medium is missing so there is a large divide between close and long range. Long Range takes a massive hit to damage when over 90% of the damage can be negated meaning that close range do not receive the damage 90% of the time even though the potential is there.