Guild Wars 2

I’m a veteran player who is really looking forward to PoF and anticipate playing the crap out of it. This is a great game with a lot of really good content, but there are a few basic and far-reaching serious flaws that have gone on for years without being properly addressed. Here’s a list of things I would have changed years ago, and I still think need to be changed pretty badly:

First – melee/ranged is not well balanced. Melee is over-favored in organized play while ranged is over-favored in solo and zerg play. I’m not convinced that giving melee way more damage with the same utility is the right way to balance them. Maybe some, but a better way is to give melee better defense and mobility (i.e. armor bonus, deflection mechanic, etc.), not way more damage.

Second – offensive vs defensive stats are way out of balance. Because so much damage avoidance is tied to dodging, and dodging is limited, it becomes disproportionately important to end fights quickly – meaning that offensive stats not only make the game more fun, they increase your overall attrition relative to defensive stats, which is silly. I think that Vitality should increase endurance regen in addition to health, and either toughness or agony resistance should have an impact on condition damage ticks. I also think toughness should mitigate damage in a subtractive rather than a divisive way, so that weak attacks are severely minimized while heavy attacks still need to be dodged.

Third – BLW skins are handled somewhat poorly, and after 5 years we have no new weapon types. Too much emphasis is on making same-theme skins for all weapon types when there should be a greater focus on just making unique skins for individual weapon types. This would not only be more interesting & exciting, but it would help remove barriers to adding new weapon types (such as polearms), which I think is badly needed (I’m pretty miffed at the missed opportunity of adding land spears with Elona content).

Fourth – Dungeons need to make a comeback. We should at minimum get one new complete dungeon every expansion. The open world content in the game is really solid, but it can’t replace classic 5 man content no matter how fun it is (and neither can raids, which target an entirely different section of players), and FoTM simply isn’t enough on its own.

Fifth – Since it can be replayed anyway, LW progress should be account based rather than character based, simply because of how large it’s going to grow and how daunting it is/will be to play through with multiple characters. Rewards for completing scenarios can still just go to individual characters.

Sixth – elite spec acquisition is very awkward and needs to be changed. You can’t experiment with it before mastering it without gimping yourself, which means that, even though you unlock it right away, you just have it on the backburner for the entirety of new content until you master it, which takes a while. Some kind of change here is warranted that allows you to experiment with the new weapon and skills without having to use an unfinished trait line.

Seventh – all of the leveling revamps that happened a few years back were bad. The system worked much better at launch – unlocking weapon skills by use; no per-level rewards (they’re just tedious at this point), traitlines were more well defined, and skills and traits were separate systems that didn’t compete for the same resource, which was a particularly awful change.

That’s all I have for now! I may edit to add anything I forgot later.

I do not want to comment on most stuff, mostly because I am in no mood for an essay (I agree mostly but not 100%).

What I wanna note is HELL YEAH dungeons deserve to have more meaningful rewards.
By that I mean like double the amount of gold to make it worth your while to do them.

I wholefully disagree with your first point, and as a main warrior, even.
You have 2 dodges, use them. Learn to use them, master them!
And if you’re short on dodges, carry a signet of the dolyak. And if the enemy doesn’t have a multipoint breakbar, use quick stuns like Wild Throw and Headbut to stun your enemy.

As for your 4; that won’t happen. The dungeon team has been disbanded, and anet have actively said they don’t want to contribute to it, anymore. So you’ll have to make do with raids and fractals.

I’m not sure what you mean by 5; there’s not really much to be shared between characters. It’s really just story instances. and masteries are acountbound already.

And by 6 you mean you can’t use an elite spekittenil you’ve unlocked it 100%? well, thats personal. When I played HoT, I immideately used my Berserker, unlocking things 1 by 1, never felt any trouble. But as I said, thats personal, you can choose not to use the elite spekittenil it’s fully unlocked. Alternatively, you can ge play wvw casually, every chest contains 6 heroic points, which can be traded for Hero Points 1 to 1. So 250 coins is 1 full HoT elite spec, (no guarantee PoF is also 250)

Amaimon.7823:

I wholefully disagree with your first point, and as a main warrior, even.
You have 2 dodges, use them. Learn to use them, master them!
And if you’re short on dodges, carry a signet of the dolyak. And if the enemy doesn’t have a multipoint breakbar, use quick stuns like Wild Throw and Headbut to stun your enemy

And I disagree with your disagreement. If you were correct, you wouldn’t see a huge number of players switching to ranged for big fights, which is exactly what you see anywhere you look in the game.

It’s especially a problem since there’s way more visual clutter in melee range which makes it difficult if not impossible to see when you’re getting hit and when you need to dodge. That’s probably the main reason players do it.

Just because the anet has said it won’t happen doesn’t mean that’s a good idea. They’re wrong and it needs to change.

Just because it’s a personal choice whether to use it or not doesn’t mean it isn’t a systemic problem. it’s a systemic problem that should be addressed. I shouldn’t have to kitten myself to play around with an elite spec before I master it. This is almost entirely a product of the fact that skills & weapon unlocks are tied to the same unlock track that traits are. It doesn’t need to be that way. It isn’t that way for core specs.

Seriously, none of your counterpoints hold much water.

Einlanzer.1627:

Amaimon.7823:

I wholefully disagree with your first point, and as a main warrior, even.
You have 2 dodges, use them. Learn to use them, master them!
And if you’re short on dodges, carry a signet of the dolyak. And if the enemy doesn’t have a multipoint breakbar, use quick stuns like Wild Throw and Headbut to stun your enemy

And I disagree with your disagreement. If you were correct, you wouldn’t see a huge number of players switching to ranged for big fights, which is exactly what you see anywhere you look in the game.

It’s especially a problem since there’s way more visual clutter in melee range which makes it difficult if not impossible to see when you’re getting hit and when you need to dodge. That’s probably the main reason players do it.

I can again disagree,

there are 2 types of fights:
Mass Malice and Organized.
MM are like world bosses, where everyone is a disco ball. Here it doesn’t matter if you range or melee, the boss is so week, ambient healing from players around you render you immortal.

Organized fights, like fractals and raids, as well as story bosses are not such disco balls, and you have plenty of time to study the animations of your enemy.

“If you were correct, you wouldn’t see a huge number of players switching to ranged for big fights, which is exactly what you see anywhere you look in the game.”
I think this is you being positively coerced. You believe something, and therefore see evidence for it. I for one cannot agree to this typical behavior, and still see plenty of people in melee combat. Also note that the further away from the boss you are, the less mobility you have relatively.

1. Melee is too punishing. This is more in monster ability/AI design than in the mechanics. Build better encounters. Trying to finagle ‘melee viability’ through stat manipulation isn’t the way to go.

2. Vitality could use a buff. Wouldn’t be amiss to have 1% increased Stamina recovery per 100. As for condition mitigation, that ought to be handled more through skills. And I don’t mean generic “Removes Condition” stuff, but more targeted kinds of condi clears sprinkled rather liberally through utilities. One could be used to break stuns/movement effects, another could remove damaging conditions, etc. We have examples in some skills, but there ought to be a pass to filter that in more.

3. It really seems like Black Lion skins are moving away from the ticket model and into the more exploitative RNG-chest model. That ought to be the more infuriating thing here. But if we’re talking fashion, then the skins should be aligning with armor skins or outfits that are released, to let those match better. The set approach is fine, since the unique skins are available via the Mystic Forge or randomly attained as loot.

4. Fractals. Thing is, FotM isn’t getting enough new content. Some, but not enough. And the way it’s filtered in, if the number of fractals exceeds 25 . . there’s a problem in the UI and organizaton. Otherwise, Fractals are Dungeons, but faster and with less need to shoehorn lore.

5. As someone with a ton of alts, I’d like to be able to work through LS2+ content without having to plow through previous entries, but . . it’s not a “need” kind of thing.

6. They almost tried to fix this issue in HoT. Since vanilla Tyria is pretty easy, one can world-explore their way to almost full viability into an elite spec. And Verdant Brink / Auric Basin / Dragon Stand have some fairly easy commune points to get to, which is also a huge boost. And now, there are so many loose points that a fully explored character could just outright buy the next elite spec to completion (probably). Might have been nice to have that build flexibility in HoT, but past is past.

Rauderi.8706:

1. Melee is too punishing. This is more in monster ability/AI design than in the mechanics. Build better encounters. Trying to finagle ‘melee viability’ through stat manipulation isn’t the way to go.

I favor both, and I also don’t think there should be such a large gap in damage potential between melee and ranged. This is in part, though, simply because having increased deflection on melee weapons makes conceptual and thematic sense, not so much because I think it’s mechanically necessary.

Rauderi.8706:

4. Fractals. Thing is, FotM isn’t getting enough new content. Some, but not enough. And the way it’s filtered in, if the number of fractals exceeds 25 . . there’s a problem in the UI and organizaton. Otherwise, Fractals are Dungeons, but faster and with less need to shoehorn lore.

But see, I think we need larger dungeons with lore tie-ins from time to time. I think FotM feels hollow and repetitive after a while, even when new Fractals are introduced, which, as you said, doesn’t happen enough anyway. There’s an atmosphere of immersion created by world dungeons that FoTM doesn’t really replace.

Rauderi.8706:

6. They almost tried to fix this issue in HoT. Since vanilla Tyria is pretty easy, one can world-explore their way to almost full viability into an elite spec. And Verdant Brink / Auric Basin / Dragon Stand have some fairly easy commune points to get to, which is also a huge boost. And now, there are so many loose points that a fully explored character could just outright buy the next elite spec to completion (probably). Might have been nice to have that build flexibility in HoT, but past is past.

My only counterpoint here is that it’s not ideal to fully unlock it immediately, either. We need to have a way to play around with it viably while still allowing for advancement and progress in refining it as you play through new content. Not sure what the best answer here is, but I still think it was a mistake to put traits and skills both under the umbrella of HP. They shouldn’t compete for the same resource.

Thanks for the feedback!

Einlanzer.1627:

First – melee is too punishing. Too many enemies target too many players in melee range too frequently, making being in melee range too big a liability, and defensive stats don’t really help (see below). The AI here needs to be addressed, but I also favor giving an armor bonus (or a new mechanic) to melee weapons to represent deflection – it’s only logical.

Melee isn’t punished in this game, in fact melee in this game is king in most small scale content. Raids, fractals, dungeons and sPVP are all about staying in melee range and using melee builds to better share buffs, to better cleave and to help each other. Mesmer Wells, Guardian traps, Warrior “Empower Allies”, Ranger “Spotter” and all other buffs are only useful in very close range, so staying in melee and hitting the enemies together is important. In sPVP we have point control so melee is the obvious choice there too. There is a reason that the majority of meta builds on all the above are in melee range and even those that use ranged weapons have melee skills (Ranger traps for example)

Melee has issues in world bosses and when event mobs scale too high. But that shows us the difference between an organized group that makes sure everyone is buffed, and a disorganized blob. As an example, the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink is really punishing for melee builds when doing the meta with a lot of other players, however, if you go and fight her with 4 others (so a party of 5) you can stay in melee for pretty much the entire fight and don’t have any issues with it at all. She is much easier to CC to prevent her from flying while at the same time party buffs and heals help the team stay alive even if they take damage by her area of effect flames (Which in a large blob would down you instantly)

Just how a good Chronomancer can distort Slothasor’s shake attack (and make melee really easy on Slothasor) they can distort the Wyvern Matriarch’s flamebreath and give players that extra opportunity to move out of it while dealing damage in melee. But that can only work with fewer people, the fewer people, the easier it is to melee, as the number of players doing the same content increases, melee starts feeling punishing and ranged becomes the weapon of choice.

Before I forget: following a random tag to play WvW means going ranged is the better option to stay alive, however in guild groups there is a “melee train”, a group of players buffing each other (stability is important!), cleansing and rushing the ranged characters of the opposing team to crash them quickly. While roaming in WvW there are a lot of melee range good builds.

I should have specified that I meant melee is a problem specifically in larger scale content, but larger scale content is kind of the norm in this game, so it becomes a problem.

Einlanzer.1627:

I should have specified that I meant melee is a problem specifically in larger scale content, but larger scale content is kind of the norm in this game, so it becomes a problem.

The problem with large scale content is that buffs have a 5-man limit and also you can’t make sure the people you want to get your buffs actually get them, like those standing inside the flame breath area of the Matriarch. It’s really impossible to save/help specific other players and that’s what makes melee punishing in large scale content. It doesn’t help when some enemies get leveled and can 1-shot even characters with more defensive stats, like the little wyverns around the matriarch, at 20+ players they get to level 82 and one shot anyone while their attacks aren’t clear and visible at all.

The problem with your suggestion of giving a new mechanic for melee is that it will obviously be used in content where melee dominates already. A better scaling algorithm, better AI, spawn more enemies instead of leveling them so much, 1-shot kills by regular attacks are never fun (see high level Fractals pre-toughness update) they fixed it in Fractals maybe it’s time to fix it in the open world too.

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

I should have specified that I meant melee is a problem specifically in larger scale content, but larger scale content is kind of the norm in this game, so it becomes a problem.

The problem with large scale content is that buffs have a 5-man limit and also you can’t make sure the people you want to get your buffs actually get them, like those standing inside the flame breath area of the Matriarch. It’s really impossible to save/help specific other players and that’s what makes melee punishing in large scale content. It doesn’t help when some enemies get leveled and can 1-shot even characters with more defensive stats, like the little wyverns around the matriarch, at 20+ players they get to level 82 and one shot anyone while their attacks aren’t clear and visible at all.

The problem with your suggestion of giving a new mechanic for melee is that it will obviously be used in content where melee dominates already. A better scaling algorithm, better AI, spawn more enemies instead of leveling them so much, 1-shot kills by regular attacks are never fun (see high level Fractals pre-toughness update) they fixed it in Fractals maybe it’s time to fix it in the open world too.

I would also suggest that ranged damage be increased, because I think making melee do a lot more damage is the wrong way to balance it (maybe slightly more, but the gap should be smaller)

Uhm, I think I disagree on just about all of your ideas…

1) Melee is punishing, oh yes, but it’s also rewarding in that you do a lot more damage. There’s dodges, blocks, reflects and such, plus most big damage attacks are well telegraphed so you can always move sideways out of harms way. (Myself I’m not good enough to pull this off so I take a bit more damage than I should but that’s my shortcoming, not the game’s.)

2) Basically same opinion as for previous – damage avoidance is key.

3) I don’t really have an opinion here.

4) I liked dungeons, but according to Anet they took too much resources/time to develop, so they went for fractals instead. I can support that, but I agree that they should probably be coming at a slightly faster pace.

5) Wholeheartedly disagree – I like running the story sequentially. If they were pick-and-choose everyone (me included) would just run the fun/rewarding ones and skip the rest – eventually they would all be null and void.

6) I don’t have this problem; I’m always wading in hero points so I have no problem unlocking elite specs.

The difference between well organized group play and poorly organized / solo is pretty significant for melee. Maybe they could make toughness scale higher when not grouped and melee weapon equipped.

Zohane.7208:

Uhm, I think I disagree on just about all of your ideas…

1) Melee is punishing, oh yes, but it’s also rewarding in that you do a lot more damage. There’s dodges, blocks, reflects and such, plus most big damage attacks are well telegraphed so you can always move sideways out of harms way. (Myself I’m not good enough to pull this off so I take a bit more damage than I should but that’s my shortcoming, not the game’s.)

2) Basically same opinion as for previous – damage avoidance is key.

3) I don’t really have an opinion here.

4) I liked dungeons, but according to Anet they took too much resources/time to develop, so they went for fractals instead. I can support that, but I agree that they should probably be coming at a slightly faster pace.

5) Wholeheartedly disagree – I like running the story sequentially. If they were pick-and-choose everyone (me included) would just run the fun/rewarding ones and skip the rest – eventually they would all be null and void.

6) I don’t have this problem; I’m always wading in hero points so I have no problem unlocking elite specs.

Most of these points above misunderstand the problems entirely – in particular #2, #5, and #6.

Einlanzer.1627:

Zohane.7208:

Uhm, I think I disagree on just about all of your ideas…

1) Melee is punishing, oh yes, but it’s also rewarding in that you do a lot more damage. There’s dodges, blocks, reflects and such, plus most big damage attacks are well telegraphed so you can always move sideways out of harms way. (Myself I’m not good enough to pull this off so I take a bit more damage than I should but that’s my shortcoming, not the game’s.)

2) Basically same opinion as for previous – damage avoidance is key.

3) I don’t really have an opinion here.

4) I liked dungeons, but according to Anet they took too much resources/time to develop, so they went for fractals instead. I can support that, but I agree that they should probably be coming at a slightly faster pace.

5) Wholeheartedly disagree – I like running the story sequentially. If they were pick-and-choose everyone (me included) would just run the fun/rewarding ones and skip the rest – eventually they would all be null and void.

6) I don’t have this problem; I’m always wading in hero points so I have no problem unlocking elite specs.

Most of these points above misunderstand the problems entirely – in particular #2, #5, and #6.

Ah yes, for #2 and #6 I see that my reading skills needed to improve.

2) Don’t really have opinion on this; I guess the fights are ok enough in my book – although I admit to being a scrub (see #1).

6) I now see that this isn’t so much about elite spec (or any other spec for that matter) acquisition but about the tearning curve to master them. I can agree to this.

For #5 I still maintain that I don’t find this to be an issue. I still enjoy running through the entire story, from level10 personal all the way through to One Path Ends. I can understand that others may not like it.

Point taken on #1 above from different posters. I realized I didn’t accurately describe the problem, so it’s been edited. I still believe there’s a balance problem here and that the solution is to reduce the damage gap and make melee attractive in other ways.

Do be aware that Trait lines will fill completely, Adept to Grandmaster, in PoF, rather than level-wise (all Adepts, then all Master, then all Grandmaster) as in HoT. So, that should help in learning and using the Elite Specializations.

Not sure how Personal Story can be account-wide when there are branching and separate arcs.

Good luck.

Dungeons should just be made soloable at this point, it’s dead content that’s still required for some very specific things (first gen legendaries). I don’t think it would have much economical impact either to just leave the rewards as is.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Do be aware that Trait lines will fill completely, Adept to Grandmaster, in PoF, rather than level-wise (all Adepts, then all Master, then all Grandmaster) as in HoT. So, that should help in learning and using the Elite Specializations.

Not sure how Personal Story can be account-wide when there are branching and separate arcs.

Good luck.

Living world, not personal story. Doing this with the personal story wouldn’t make much sense, heh. Fortunately, there’s no reason they need to, since there’s no interdependency between the PS and LW (you can play through the LW without ever touching the PS).

Ahh, well, I suppose that would make more sense. I would really like M.O.X. in my Home Instance on the character that is ‘parked’ there. That’s the only advantage I can think of. But, it’s not really a big concern.

My thoughts:

1) I actually like that melee is punishing in this game. One of the first things I noticed about GW2, having come from a more traditional trinity MMO, was the balance between mobs being faceroll-easy to kill, but dangerous if ignored.

I like the fragility because it just feels more meaningful to me that my guardian has to do something to survive 3 measly bandits rolling up on her, but that something isn’t a high bar to reach. I find it takes away a little of the grindy feeling in various quests and achieves. This feeling extends to large scale battles as well. In many other games the high effectiveness of readily available defensive techniques essentially turns world bosses into gigantic HP sponges. It totally detracts from any tension, and just turns into rotation practice for me, and I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of impatience with the encounter. I feel more engaged in large-scale battles I participate in GW2, and I like it that way.

2) I’m fine with the current offense-defense balance, but I agree more defensive options would be nice. I did martial arts for a goodly amount of my youth, and the vast majority of my sparring opponents were larger and stronger than I was. So guess what? I rather organically learned that I had to (1) avoid damage and (2) end encounters quickly to better facilitate point (1) in order to win. I guess that’s why it doesn’t rub me the wrong way that the game values fast kills much more than defensive counters.

That being said, I agree that the upscaling we see in large battles really makes even our current defensive responses nearly meaningless in many situations. I really enjoyed tanking in other games, and I do miss it when I’m in Tyria. A Vitality tweak along the lines already suggested would be cool, along with making toughness more meaningful.

3) No substantial comment. I do, however, TOTALLY agree that there’s a missed opportunity with PoF about land-based spear combat.

4) I want new dungeons, ONLY if they are nothing like Arah. If I had to guess, I spend the most amount of time in HoT meta chains, followed in a close second by dungeon frequenter runs. You’ve elaborated in other posts already what I like most about dungeons – they’re tied to lore, and I really feel the dungeon experience has enriched my overall attachment to the game.

However, if continuing along the progression set by Arah is a remote possibility, I say forget about new dungeons. Pretty much every other dungeon (and path therein) I have no problem with, as they hit a sweet spot I mentioned in point #1 above: “you have to do something to win, but that something is not a high bar.”

5) No opinion

6) We already have this. In the PvP lobby, your toon can access the full elite spec even before unlocking a single piece of it. There are dummies and even responsive NPC targets to try things out on. Of course it’s quite different than trying it out in your favored PvE environment, but you can definitely get a feel for how it works and what your preference is right in the PvP lobby. The only thing you truly miss any opportunity for in solo-testing your build in the lobby is boon sharing, I think.

4) I’m okay with the fact we need new dungeons, and also take cares about old ones too. I spent a lot of time at Caudecus’s Mansion, Sorrow’s Embrace and Crucible of Eternity, they make the story more and more living, more living than running around with trahearne… These places are filled with lores. A special note about CoE; Some paths seem a bit long for me, I remember of an 5 hour run for not so many tokens.

→ Just increase gold reward/token reward based on path time length can make a comeback for old dungeons. Add somes new things monsters etc inside..

Einlanzer.1627:

Second – offensive vs defensive stats are way out of balance. Because so much damage avoidance is tied to dodging, and dodging is limited, it becomes disproportionately important to end fights quickly – meaning that offensive stats not only make the game more fun, they increase your overall attrition relative to defensive stats, which is silly. I think that Vitality should increase endurance regen in addition to health, and either toughness or agony resistance should have an impact on condition damage ticks. I also think toughness should mitigate damage in a subtractive rather than a divisive way, so that weak attacks are severely minimized while heavy attacks still need to be dodged.

I think that toughness works relatively well as implemented. If you want to defend against conditions, you have to diversify the defense of your build through runesets/traits/food that reduce incoming condition duration or damage, or cleanses that remove them entirely, or resistance to mitigate the damage they do completely. It makes sense to have conditions as a counter to high toughness builds, just as direct damage is strong against builds that go all in to vitality to provide better defense against conditions.

Third – BLW skins are handled somewhat poorly, and after 5 years we have no new weapon types. Too much emphasis is on making same-theme skins for all weapon types when there should be a greater focus on just making unique skins for individual weapon types. This would not only be more interesting & exciting, but it would help remove barriers to adding new weapon types (such as polearms), which I think is badly needed (I’m pretty miffed at the missed opportunity of adding land spears with Elona content).

I pretty well agree that I would like to see more skins for individual weapons appear rather than entire sets of weapons… I actually don’t mind the full sets but would rather see them appear less frequently in favor of even more frequent BLTP individual weapon skins, which I regularly buy when new ones release. That said, I like the complete sets that have a lot of variance between individual weapons (Beast Slayer and Improvised come to mind) within the set as well. More of that would be nice.

Fourth – Dungeons need to make a comeback. We should at minimum get one new complete dungeon every expansion. The open world content in the game is really solid, but it can’t replace classic 5 man content no matter how fun it is (and neither can raids, which target an entirely different section of players), and FoTM simply isn’t enough on its own.

I love the dungeons and would definitely like to see new ones released, but I would also accept just a re-work of some of the existing dungeons to fix long term bugs and maybe an update to some of the boss mechanics to make them both more reliable and more interesting. New fractals on a slow release schedule are fine too, as long as not all of them are at the same scale/tier of difficulty as the Shattered Observatory and some of them are released that are more “normal” and less boss rush oriented.

Fifth – Since it can be replayed anyway, LW progress should be account based rather than character based, simply because of how large it’s going to grow and how daunting it is/will be to play through with multiple characters. Rewards for completing scenarios can still just go to individual characters.

I can back this.

Sixth – elite spec acquisition is very awkward and needs to be changed. You can’t experiment with it before mastering it without gimping yourself, which means that, even though you unlock it right away, you just have it on the backburner for the entirety of new content until you master it, which takes a while. Some kind of change here is warranted that allows you to experiment with the new weapon and skills without having to use an unfinished trait line.

They actually have made some adjustments to this… now as you dial in the new elite spec and put points in to it, it runs the traits straight down the center of the trait line first, rather than making you unlock all the adept, then all the master, and then grandmaster traits in a group. This allows you to hit a full viable build for each elite spec much faster, rather than waiting all the way until the end of the unlock.

If they make melee combat any easier than is, we’ll end up with hot – knife – butterfights and i really don’t think they game should be getting any easier.
Melee is often combined with high levels of evasiveness due to dodges and being close to the target, so warriors are already pretty much immortal in pve.

And why is melee combat a problem in big fights?
Bosses are so weak do you rarely need to dodge and most people around you spam ambient healing.
If you die at a world boss like tequatl or svanir shaman that’s entirely on you. Got nothing to do with being melee

Einlanzer.1627:

First – melee/ranged is not well balanced. Melee is over-favored in organized play while ranged is over-favored in solo and zerg play. I’m not convinced that giving melee way more damage with the same utility is the right way to balance them. Maybe some, but a better way is to give melee better defense and mobility (i.e. armor bonus, deflection mechanic, etc.), not way more damage.

Melee is fine imo. Some bosses favor melee, some favor ranged. Just like some enemies use ranged attacks (and thus reflects are incredibly useful) and some use none (making reflects useless). Pick the right tool for the job, that is why classes have flexibility. Luckily both ranged and melee work in most situations.

Second – offensive vs defensive stats are way out of balance. Because so much damage avoidance is tied to dodging, and dodging is limited, it becomes disproportionately important to end fights quickly – meaning that offensive stats not only make the game more fun, they increase your overall attrition relative to defensive stats, which is silly. I think that Vitality should increase endurance regen in addition to health, and either toughness or agony resistance should have an impact on condition damage ticks. I also think toughness should mitigate damage in a subtractive rather than a divisive way, so that weak attacks are severely minimized while heavy attacks still need to be dodged.

I tend to agree that defensive stats are a bit lacking (in PvE). It’s definitely easier to kill a mob quickly while my control/defensive skills can protect me than it is to try to outlast its attacks. However in my case, this is mostly a learn to play issue as I have a very hard time discerning enemy attacks and my dodges tend to be predictions on when I expect to be attacked, rather than reacting to a tell. Still I do think making defensive stats useful in some other way would be welcomed. It would be nice if they could help mitigate the frequent ‘little damage’ more, as you suggested.

Third – BLW skins are handled somewhat poorly, and after 5 years we have no new weapon types. Too much emphasis is on making same-theme skins for all weapon types when there should be a greater focus on just making unique skins for individual weapon types. This would not only be more interesting & exciting, but it would help remove barriers to adding new weapon types (such as polearms), which I think is badly needed (I’m pretty miffed at the missed opportunity of adding land spears with Elona content).

New weapon types are always nice, I would like to see spears (and others) but I’d imagine there’s a -lot- of work that goes into making them so I’m not surprised either. I think there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to adding new weapons and that their best bet would be to add multiple new weapons at the same time and ensure that every class gets access to at least one. After all, it would feel kind of bad if a new weapon were tied to an elite spec or if only 2-3 classes get access to it, while being equally silly if every class gained the same new weapon. Still, I think you’re right about individual weapon skins vs sets. If they choose to make individual designs it would free up some of their design decisions instead of feeling forced to design it a certain way to match the rest of a set (presuming they’ve ever felt this way). I don’t dislike the themes/sets but I wouldn’t want it to limit their creativity either.

Sixth – elite spec acquisition is very awkward and needs to be changed. You can’t experiment with it before mastering it without gimping yourself, which means that, even though you unlock it right away, you just have it on the backburner for the entirety of new content until you master it, which takes a while. Some kind of change here is warranted that allows you to experiment with the new weapon and skills without having to use an unfinished trait line.

When unlocking my first elite specs I had fun playing them without all of the traits. In fact, only in the case of Daredevil did I feel hindered by not having GM traits (for obvious reasons). It may not be ideal but I mean really, you’re unlocking the elite spec not maximizing your dps in a raid. It’s okay if you’re not at 100% the moment you step inside PoF. As for testing the specs out, I’d say that’s what the PVP lobby is for. It’s enough to get a feel for them. In fact I’d suggest any new/returning player go into pvp and try out classes before deciding which to level, and then to try out both elite specs before deciding which to unlock first.

Melee vs. Ranged Damage in Large PvE Content

This is unlikely to change. I can’t see ANet being willing to use different coefficients for skills in PvP/WvW vs. PvE. In the two PvP modes, it’s a lot easier to hit characters bouncing and juking all over the place with a ranged attack than it is a melee one. Since it’s harder to get a melee hit in, melee needs to hit harder.

Also, in large-scale PvE, melee needs to hit harder than ranged, for a similar reason. The cause is different. Mobs don’t move around like player characters do. Instead, mobs have area denial. If you think about the older large-scale content, there was a lot less threat to ranged characters than melee. With HoT and later, we see more AoE delivered further away, but ranged builds can still remain on target longer than melee, unless melee uses a lot of their skills for mitigation, which ranged needs to do far less.

What I would like to see is a bone thrown to melee players in the form of a real option to reduce or eliminate for the massive eyesore of particle effects. These effects not only make it harder to see attack tells, they are an eyesore. I still haven’t seen the models for some of the large event bosses in full detail. I also believe that being able to see better will increase the number of players who will be able to melee in these large events, without changing game balance.

It’s one of the inherent problems of so much content being so zerg-oriented in the game. It’s one of the reasons I think they need to put more energy into creating more classic organized/instanced content.

Einlanzer.1627:

It’s one of the reasons I think they need to put more energy into creating more classic organized/instanced content.

Or try their best to split the players. Forcing players to defeat bosses at the same time is an excellent way to keep the boss in the open world but at the same time reduce the amount of players (and the scaling) when fighting the boss.

Octovine, Chak Gerent, Dragon’s Stand, Night-time in Verdant Brink, Triple Trouble and Silverwastes all do this. If you get 50 players in one map, splitting them in 5 groups of 10 in order to complete a meta is a great way of dealing with scaling issues.

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

It’s one of the reasons I think they need to put more energy into creating more classic organized/instanced content.

Or try their best to split the players. Forcing players to defeat bosses at the same time is an excellent way to keep the boss in the open world but at the same time reduce the amount of players (and the scaling) when fighting the boss.

Octovine, Chak Gerent, Dragon’s Stand, Night-time in Verdant Brink, Triple Trouble and Silverwastes all do this. If you get 50 players in one map, splitting them in 5 groups of 10 in order to complete a meta is a great way of dealing with scaling issues.

Not even mentioning that these tend to be the most mechanically entertaining fights. The marionette is also another historical example of this, and it was praised as the best event of LS1 by a lot of people.