Guild Wars 2

It seems this game uses the philosophy that ranged weapons should do less damage because they are safer, i.e. risk vs. reward.

But, there are two problems with this -

1. This is applied inconsistently. Some classes have ranged weapons they are much closer in DPS to typical melee weapons (ranger), while others’ (warrior, thief) are so gimpy they are nigh unusable. A couple of years back the Ranger’s longbow was dramatically buffed because of the widespread recognition that it was under-tuned, and the warrior’s was left alone despite having an equally horrendous attack speed, while the rifle was actually nerfed despite already being under-performing.

2. Aren’t there better ways to make melee weapons competitive with ranged weapons? Providing a defense/parry/evade bonus for melee weapon users makes more logical sense than allowing them to do a lot more damage. Also, encounters are typically designed in such a way that you are much more likely to stay alive at range than you are in melee, which is just bad encounter design. Many mobs hit like a truck with poor telegraphing, and just engage whoever is in their melee range. Nerfing ranged weapons to compensate for this seems wacky and misguided, as opposed to just rethinking encounter design and mob AI.

In short, the melee vs. ranged dichotomy is an issue of game design, and making ranged weapons weaker than melee weapons is not the most appropriate solution for it.

I favor ranged weapons because of all the visual noise in melee range. Ground effects obscured by namepl.ates in a zerg, which you cant disable. As well hideously obscuring weapons like twilight or sunrise. I wish you could turn down effects from other players. Blizzard have acknowledged it and turns it down so you can actually can see what goes on at a boss, without being completely blinded.

Well TBH I use melee weapons in most fights.

BUT:

If I know enemies to have a devastating attack in melee which is either very badly telegraphed, or spin attacks which will hurt a lot in melee I might equip a range weapon as secondary but only if I know these attacks are not interuptable.
e.g.: Igniters (flame legion flamethrower infantry) are easily interupted, and on some builds I’ll just take a weapons or skills with interupts and then burn ’m in melee ASAP. sword/pistol thieves can kill igniters really really really fast with little or no risk with daze on #4 and stun on #3….

Some builds are build around ranged weapons anyways (staff Ele, scepter mesmer or necro) and in those cases I’ll make sure to stay in range of the melee groups (240-600 range)so I can receive buffs. The buffs will make your ranged build way way better in all cases, both in DPS and DOT cases.

If you do world bosses and you are really squishy know the boss, do not melee
e.g. DPS the fire elemental in metrica province for example… you’re likely to get burnt.

TeQ and other world bosses are mostly skill dependant, and in some cases ranged weapons will not really be life saving, whcih makes the choice for melee weapons a bit bigger again. In some cases the blur can be really annoying, but the only way to avoid is to seek and empty instance and you’ll not finish your boss (well 10 ppl ae enough for most low level WB’s

Melee weapons cleave. On large hitboxes that’s 3x more damage than normal.

Even with ranged weapons you should stay near the boss anyway. That’s why I don’t agree with your suggestion.

Ananeos.4587:

Melee weapons cleave. On large hitboxes that’s 3x more damage than normal.

On the other hand with piercing projectiles that isn’t as big of a difference since it is still possible to hit two with ranged.

Ranged also end up with much longer time to react to attacks most of the time.

LucianDK.8615:

I wish you could turn down effects from other players. Blizzard have acknowledged it and turns it down so you can actually can see what goes on at a boss, without being completely blinded.

Don’t you mean Arenanet?

Einlanzer.1627:

It seems this game uses the philosophy that ranged weapons should do less damage because they are safer, i.e. risk vs. reward.

But, there are two problems with this -

1. This is applied inconsistently.
2. Aren’t there better ways to make melee weapons competitive with ranged weapons?

In short, the melee vs. ranged dichotomy is an issue of game design, and making ranged weapons weaker than melee weapons is not the most appropriate solution for it.

I disagree that it’s applied inconsistently. And I disagree that it’s absolutely better to make the DPS of ranged weapons comparable to the DPS of melee weapons.

In a game without active defense or with the ability to change mob AI every three months in response to player tactics, sure, it might be interesting to offer other ways to increase the risk to ranged attackers. However, that hardly means it’s wrong to use the tradition design choice where the higher risk of being in an opponent’s face is matched by greater damage. That offers people a choice between safe & slow or dangerous & quick.

Is the balance ‘good’ in GW2? If anything, I think elite specs offer too much damage (for too little risk) generally and ought to be tuned down. Similarly, the slowness of PvE foes means that (for better players), the risk of being in melee range are easily reduced to nothing.

However, any sort of balancing is tricky to get right in the best of circumstances. Changing the fundamental assumptions upon which the current balance is based amounts to a redesign of combat. Thus, I would greatly prefer ANet to spend time on rebalancing the current mechanics more often rather than making a huge, massive change to combat generally.

Khailyn.6248:

LucianDK.8615:

I wish you could turn down effects from other players. Blizzard have acknowledged it and turns it down so you can actually can see what goes on at a boss, without being completely blinded.

Don’t you mean Arenanet?

No, he/she means Blizzard. Arenanet has not dealt with this; Blizzard has.

It feels as if they didn’t factor in the amount of counters to ranged weapons.

You’ve got stealth, gap closers a plenty and a number of reflects.

P/P thief offers near-identical DPS as a longbow ranger, as I discussed with someone some time ago in another thread who complained P/P thief relative to LB ranger did too low damage. Further, the longbow ranger had many more conditional dependencies tied to his damage such as not being allowed to dodge, which the thief did not depend on.

Range doesn’t need to deal less damage so much as if ranged damage is going to be competitive to melee damage, there needs to be substantial risk in dealing said damage.

It seems to me rangers damage is fine. Its offset being that when played right I don’t ever get hit or at the least barely ever take damage on my ranger, where as on my guardian, I spend more time reviving on certain things than I do playing. If anything they need to drastically increase melee classes toughness to withstand absorbing that additional damage from being forced to stand there at that close quarters. I can easily kite around mobs and fire them down with my longbow, I dont mind that it takes marginally longer to kill the mob. I cannot how ever do that with any melee class. Melee strikes me as a stationary target with nominal damage mitigation which is in my opinion a massive deficit. I can do far more on a ranger at any time against any mob than I have been able to do with any melee class.
so to me, no ranged weapons don’t need to be buffed, melee classes need to be tougher, and increased mobility in combat.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Einlanzer.1627:

It seems this game uses the philosophy that ranged weapons should do less damage because they are safer, i.e. risk vs. reward.

But, there are two problems with this -

1. This is applied inconsistently.
2. Aren’t there better ways to make melee weapons competitive with ranged weapons?

In short, the melee vs. ranged dichotomy is an issue of game design, and making ranged weapons weaker than melee weapons is not the most appropriate solution for it.

I disagree that it’s applied inconsistently.

You can’t “disagree” with this. It can be demonstrably shown that some ranged weapons massively outperform others in sustained DPS.

I totally agree, basically.

It’s one of my main issues with the game – especially if you’re trying to do anything, even vaguely, serious.

When one first sees a ranger one does not instantly think “I bet they use a greatsword”. A weak bow on a ranger is the epitome of “not okay” regarding not only classic gameplay and game style but really just classic lore in the universe of “all gaming”. Every game has a class that does exceptionally well with ranged weapons in comparison to others and often that class is either an archer, a ranger, a firearm technician, or something.

I’d be mad if I made my ranger and my ranged weapons were kitten.

I feel like there’s no particular rule for this because it’s done on a class-by-class basis.

I mean, Thief Shortbow isn’t a high damage weapon, but it gives you crazy amounts of mobility. That’s why PVP thieves use it as a secondary weapon. On the otherhand, Guardian Longbow is a pretty hefty amount of damage, but you give up a lot of the defensive and support that Guardians typically have with other weapons.

I don’t think there was ever a rule about “Range does less damage because it’s safer”. It’s not always safer. Going dual pistols on a thief pretty much means you’re going to die despite the huge amount of DPS you put out, while running S/P means you can stun for days or D/D means you have a ton of approach and extra evade/stealth.

Katai.6240:

I feel like there’s no particular rule for this because it’s done on a class-by-class basis.

I mean, Thief Shortbow isn’t a high damage weapon, but it gives you crazy amounts of mobility. That’s why PVP thieves use it as a secondary weapon. On the otherhand, Guardian Longbow is a pretty hefty amount of damage, but you give up a lot of the defensive and support that Guardians typically have with other weapons.

I don’t think there was ever a rule about “Range does less damage because it’s safer”. It’s not always safer. Going dual pistols on a thief pretty much means you’re going to die despite the huge amount of DPS you put out, while running S/P means you can stun for days or D/D means you have a ton of approach and extra evade/stealth.

No, they actually stated it was their design intent on more than one occasion. No ranged weapon puts out as much sustained damage as most melee weapons. They offer different types of utility and some (such as Ranger LB and Ele Staff) outperform others.