Guild Wars 2

So the paradigm has always been to let melee weapons do more DPS to balance out the “safety” of ranged weapons, but I think that’s not the best solution. Not only does it just leave ranged weapons kind of gimpy in most situations, but there are some benefits to staying in melee range, most importantly easier access to heals and boons. In some situations melee range actually ends up being safer. It really just results in poor balance.

It would make more sense if, instead, melee weapons reduced your incoming damage by a certain amount relative to ranged weapons. This would make sense because melee weapons allow you to more effectively parry and deflect attacks than a ranged weapon would. I’m not necessarily arguing the game be made easier, mind you – I would suggest something like increasing incoming damage while using a ranged weapon by 10% (5% for melee OH) and reducing incoming damage while using a melee weapon by 10% (5% for ranged OH).

Discuss.

Well, if you’re using a ranged weapon and someone isn’t drawing fire, the enemies will generally charge you. Considering here melee weapons can hit in a small distance, there is some balance in that respect. In contrast, some of the ranged enemies when you get close with a melee weapon will switch to a melee weapon in turn. So I’m not sure there needs to be the same balance in damage vs range.

To be the one to point out what should be obvious…

Those weaker ranged weapons you are complaining about will burst you down extremely fast in PVP (often before you can even get close enough to hit if they also have knockbacks and you only have a melee weapon yourself.)

PVP is a hugepart of this game.

Range weapons do NOT need more damage than what they already have.

As far as pve is concerned lower dps is also debatable. Melee often (except zerker only groups) will have more tanky builds to survive and therefore less damage.
And you know that time those glass cannon melee are spending downed they’re doing less DPS as well. Seems like a pretty good balance to me.