Guild Wars 2

I just came back to the game, jumped into HoT content on my thief and every single mob in every zone is spamming aoe crap, running around and over you etc.

Who the hell thought it was a great idea to make the game 20x harder for melee characters while every single ranged can just run around in circles without any danger at all?

This is just garbage and no, it’s not a “l2p” issue, I’m not dying constantly or anything, it’s just unnecessarily harder to play melee, especially a squishy one like Thief. No wonder no one wants Thiefs in groups because playing one well is easily 10x harder than an Ele or Engi just standing there without a care in the world while doing the occasional dodge.

Stupid game design is stupid.

Thief harder to play than Ele or Engi ? Is this April’s Fool or something ?
If you’re standing there with Ele and Engi, your problem is definetely a learn to play issue.

Thief is about positionning, don’t get me wrong, I love thief, but there is almost no rotation.
Ele and Engi are about rotations, you’re not good throwing grenades at max range. If you thinkl you play well those classes and find thief harder, you have a lot to learn.

And with thief in open world, Invigorating precision = easy win.

Wish I knew. I also think it’s ridiculous to force players to go ranged just to properly deal with the new mobs. Sure, every class does have a ranged option, but that doesn’t mean every player wants to use it exclusively.

I’ve no problems going melee with new mobs. You can do the same thing that ranged players do, by circling and engaging and disengaging. The problem I see most of the times when it comes to new content is that there are a large number of people who mostly faceroll and facetank and wonder why this system works in so many other games and not in this one.

Moyayuki.3619:

Wish I knew. I also think it’s ridiculous to force players to go ranged just to properly deal with the new mobs. Sure, every class does have a ranged option, but that doesn’t mean every player wants to use it exclusively.

This has ticked my friend off to no end. There’s a number of critters, and bosses especially, that have [can’t melee me] zones. The wyverns have a bad habit of doing this, and the floor damage is excessive to where melee can’t even consider going in.

I realize that melee is higher-risk/higher-reward, and that’s fine, but HoT is especially guilty of skewing the risk/reward for melee completely out of value.

Rauderi.8706:

Moyayuki.3619:

Wish I knew. I also think it’s ridiculous to force players to go ranged just to properly deal with the new mobs. Sure, every class does have a ranged option, but that doesn’t mean every player wants to use it exclusively.

This has ticked my friend off to no end. There’s a number of critters, and bosses especially, that have [can’t melee me] zones. The wyverns have a bad habit of doing this, and the floor damage is excessive to where melee can’t even consider going in.

I realize that melee is higher-risk/higher-reward, and that’s fine, but HoT is especially guilty of skewing the risk/reward for melee completely out of value.

Nope, not true. HoT combat (especially for melee) has a learning curve of sorts that you have to overcome before you can properly melee enemies. As at least one previous poster said, it’s about positioning. You can’t expect to just walk up and kill something, you need to be prepared for what it will do in return. This means you should probably be prepared to evade its attacks or crowd control it so it can’t fight back. Take the time to watch and commit to heart the things HoT enemies are capable of and you’ll be fine. Wyverns are actually one of the easiest enemies to kill as melee because they only have 1 attack that can hit you when you’re behind them (in the correct spot, of course).

EDIT: I actually played my Engineer as Scrapper (melee) through HoT content and it was really fun.

Aren’t there like only two mobs that are counter melee? We have wyverns and smokescales. The rest of the mobs can be killed in melee without issues.

Weapon swap if your friend.

However, the Itzel frogs >_> HALP!

Ramethzero.3785:

I’ve no problems going melee with new mobs. You can do the same thing that ranged players do, by circling and engaging and disengaging. The problem I see most of the times when it comes to new content is that there are a large number of people who mostly faceroll and facetank and wonder why this system works in so many other games and not in this one.

Yeah I played a Warrior and Slayer mostly in TERA and I don’t know if you’re familiar with that game, but facetanking in TERA is NOT an option with said classes. I know how to play an action MMO quite well. It’s not about not knowing how to deal with things at all and I even said as much in my OP.

In fact, this game is TRIVIAL to TERA’s hardest content. My point was that it’s BAD design to make mlee so much harder compared to ranged. At least in TERA ranged had to actually DO something because shots required actual aiming and positioning.

well melee has always been harder than ranged(fotm arch diviner,mai trin,world bosses etc, all reck you if you melee), HoT just follows suit, that’s why ranged weapons have lower dps than melee (except staff ele i guess)
If it’s any consolation, that disparity is equalized in raids xD

Daredevil dominates in the jungle. It is among the most powerful and most straightforward playstyles out there for open world. You’re just trying to force a “melee only” playstyle on the class. I know because I did exactly the same thing and found it a distinctly frustrating experience.

I gather that you’re an experienced player and you know what you’re doing, but this just sounds so familiar to my initial experience that I had to comment. If you’d like, I’m always down to run around the jungle. Maybe we can compare playstyles or something. I leave it up to you. Feel free to contact me in game if you like.

Hex.8341:

Ramethzero.3785:

I’ve no problems going melee with new mobs. You can do the same thing that ranged players do, by circling and engaging and disengaging. The problem I see most of the times when it comes to new content is that there are a large number of people who mostly faceroll and facetank and wonder why this system works in so many other games and not in this one.

Yeah I played a Warrior and Slayer mostly in TERA and I don’t know if you’re familiar with that game, but facetanking in TERA is NOT an option with said classes. I know how to play an action MMO quite well. It’s not about not knowing how to deal with things at all and I even said as much in my OP.

In fact, this game is TRIVIAL to TERA’s hardest content. My point was that it’s BAD design to make mlee so much harder compared to ranged. At least in TERA ranged had to actually DO something because shots required actual aiming and positioning.

Except that’s another game, and not this one. I’m not devaluing your experience, but you posed the question like its a developer fault that melee is challenging. Its meant to be. There’s a good reason to go melee on many mobs. Raid mobs are in a different category because there’s very specific methods to deal with those mobs, and that is part of their challenge. It’s hard? Of course it is. Its supposed to be.

I posit that its good game design to give mobs each a type of challenge. Don’t waste your blinds on the Dredge. Don’t waste your burn stacks on Embers. If you choose to go melee in with a difficult mob and you’re not entirely familiar with how that mob operates, then perhaps you shouldn’t be in melee with it to begin with. That’s the challenge of that mob is to get people to think and act differently.

I’m not so ignorant of the fact that even the best melee players can have off moments or just got gotten the hang of a particular type of mob or situation yet. It could be any number of things that aren’t working in someone’s favour. What else have you tried other than ranged options? These are the questions I’d be asking myself.

Maximus.8376:

Aren’t there like only two mobs that are counter melee? We have wyverns and smokescales. The rest of the mobs can be killed in melee without issues.

Weapon swap if your friend.

However, the Itzel frogs >_> HALP!

Those veteran mordrem vine thrashers or whatever they are called are annoying for melee too. The ones that constantly swoop up in the air to drain the health of everything in their rather large circle. The only way to avoid healing them is to stay ranged.

I don’t know if things are unfriendly to melee, but I do find a lot of enemies in HoT, mainly in the TD map, to be much more annoying then fun to fight. Almost everytime I get in a fight in that map I find myself getting kittened off because I don’t think any of those encounters are fun, they are all just a pain in the kitten to me. I don’t die from the mobs, I just kittening hate them. Hate the chak. Hate the mushroom bullkitten mobs. Hate smokescales etc…

Put Signet of Malice and use the Invigorating Precision trait and you should be good against most things. HoT was designed really to be all group content so you’d have people around helping you. It’s not solo friendly at all.

OriOri.8724:

Maximus.8376:

Aren’t there like only two mobs that are counter melee? We have wyverns and smokescales. The rest of the mobs can be killed in melee without issues.

Weapon swap if your friend.

However, the Itzel frogs >_> HALP!

Those veteran mordrem vine thrashers or whatever they are called are annoying for melee too. The ones that constantly swoop up in the air to drain the health of everything in their rather large circle. The only way to avoid healing them is to stay ranged.

The thrasher has two attacks. One is the regen AoE where you need to stay ranged and then It has a second attack which is the vine attack. You can avoid it by standing next to the thrasher or you can try and range it and find the edge of the attack. It’s not a good idea to stay ranged on them If it’s champ as the chances of getting downed is big. I normally just melee them and dodge out of the aoe and then get back in.

SirServed.5693:

Rauderi.8706:

Moyayuki.3619:

Wish I knew. I also think it’s ridiculous to force players to go ranged just to properly deal with the new mobs. Sure, every class does have a ranged option, but that doesn’t mean every player wants to use it exclusively.

This has ticked my friend off to no end. There’s a number of critters, and bosses especially, that have [can’t melee me] zones. The wyverns have a bad habit of doing this, and the floor damage is excessive to where melee can’t even consider going in.

I realize that melee is higher-risk/higher-reward, and that’s fine, but HoT is especially guilty of skewing the risk/reward for melee completely out of value.

Nope, not true. HoT combat (especially for melee) has a learning curve of sorts that you have to overcome before you can properly melee enemies. As at least one previous poster said, it’s about positioning. You can’t expect to just walk up and kill something, you need to be prepared for what it will do in return. This means you should probably be prepared to evade its attacks or crowd control it so it can’t fight back. Take the time to watch and commit to heart the things HoT enemies are capable of and you’ll be fine. Wyverns are actually one of the easiest enemies to kill as melee because they only have 1 attack that can hit you when you’re behind them (in the correct spot, of course).

EDIT: I actually played my Engineer as Scrapper (melee) through HoT content and it was really fun.

I’m not talking about the baby wyverns here. Matriarch and any of the legendaries fill the battlefield with so much standing fire, you can not position effectively. You must weapon switch.

Which is fine if you see it coming, to be honest. I keep extra bows/guns for just that reason, and will switch out builds to my bowzerker for it.

Granted, I’d be less irritated overall if certain enemies had more than one attack and would not just run away from me at top speed so I can whap them with my hammer. There’s some pretty big offenders in the why-bother-melee group:

• Stoneheads. Don’t do anything but run/KD with pretty hefty damage, and their charge doesn’t get blocked by Immobilize/Cripple. It’s their one attack.
• Mushroom chargers. Same lame crap. It’s as bothersome as it is lazy in design.
• Mushroom bombers. Ranged can kite their huge aoe rings decently (if it’s not on some narrow mountain pass), but melee get immediately bombed.
• Arrowheads. Stay in front, and you have to dodge every three seconds or get hellmurdered. Try to flank-kite, and.. you still have to dodge every three seconds or get KD-spammed. Strangely irrelevant with a Mesmer…
• Wyverns. The normal class of them aren’t so bad if you manage your aggro around the others, even if their huge fire field is problematic. It’s mostly just boring to wait it out, and then it’s stomping time. Matriarch/Patriarch/etc, they drop so much lingering burning that it’s excessively difficult to find a clean spot. Worse, they don’t move, so they sit in their fire fields until it’s time to fly away again.
• Frog Leapers. …Huh? But they punish ranged with their cheesy automatic dodges! They also jump away and leave big poison fields or arrow-fan for huge damage. You spend more time chasing them than killing them, and they very frequently bumble into other enemies. (Granted, this is a mob type I consider “almost” perfect for HoT, but they make the list of melee-unfriendly.)

So, yeah, there’s offenders. Somewhat lengthy list, too, which is enough to turn off a rather large swath of players. But, it’s also not a majority, and part of being prepared is knowing when to kite, so I’ve grown used to it.

OriOri.8724:

Maximus.8376:

Aren’t there like only two mobs that are counter melee? We have wyverns and smokescales. The rest of the mobs can be killed in melee without issues.

Weapon swap if your friend.

However, the Itzel frogs >_> HALP!

Those veteran mordrem vine thrashers or whatever they are called are annoying for melee too. The ones that constantly swoop up in the air to drain the health of everything in their rather large circle. The only way to avoid healing them is to stay ranged.

I don’t know if things are unfriendly to melee, but I do find a lot of enemies in HoT, mainly in the TD map, to be much more annoying then fun to fight. Almost everytime I get in a fight in that map I find myself getting kittened off because I don’t think any of those encounters are fun, they are all just a pain in the kitten to me. I don’t die from the mobs, I just kittening hate them. Hate the chak. Hate the mushroom bullkitten mobs. Hate smokescales etc…

Thashers take more damage from behind. You can also stun or knock them down because it resets their ability to siphon health. Menders operate the same way.

Chak are hard because each of them has a unique ability and not everyone has really shared information on how to deal with all of their defenses and defenses at once. If you get caught in the Chak Tunnel surrounded by 3-4 different kinds of Chak.. its difficult to learn which mob has what abilities or mitigate many of them all at once. Its at this point that mobility, utility, and defensive skills put an attrition spin on fighting them all at once.

Mushrooms feel like faster/deadlier Risen mobs from Orr. You can kite them, circle beat them, but keep your condis cleared while doing so. Other than that, mushrooms are easier to deal with when you pull small numbers or one at a time. Watch out for their social agg.

Im shocked people still have problems with Wyverns. You can pound them through the floor if you wait to exploit their main attacks.

Smokescales are just annoying. If you are quick enough to CC them out of their zones of threat, they can be dealt with. Most of the time, I just skip them because outside of that zone of threat, there’s no real point in engaging them unless you’ve made a critical error.

The mobs of Auric basin all have one critical design flaw in their combat AI. They are extremely predictable. Anything that charges can be dealt with by using your environment to your advantage, and there’s so much of it to use. Anything that has a field or template attack, then you shouldn’t be standing on that field. If there is one thing that HoT has taught me is that you really shouldn’t rely entirely upon damage to save you. That’s an uphill fight all the way. If you’re in a group setting, things get easier, and damage will always happen and you will always get credit. In a solo situation, its smarter to pick and choose your battles.

Ok so the answer to “content is pretty badly designed for melee characters” is “Use ranged, faceroll with a group or abuse terrain so they can’t reach you at all”.

You people crack me up. Do you not realize that such “advice” only proves my point? I can switch to my shortbow and solo every enemy given enough time, however, I shouldn’t HAVE to. Why have melee in the game at all if that’s the only way to do things?

Anyway, I got my answer so I’ll just play my Necromancer instead and pick my nose while playing.

munki.6402:

Hex.8341:

Ok so the answer to “content is pretty badly designed for melee characters” is “Use ranged, faceroll with a group or abuse terrain so they can’t reach you at all”.

You people crack me up. Do you not realize that such “advice” only proves my point? I can switch to my shortbow and solo every enemy given enough time, however, I shouldn’t HAVE to. Why have melee in the game at all if that’s the only way to do things?

Anyway, I got my answer so I’ll just play my Necromancer instead and pick my nose while playing.

So edgy. I melee with my chrono/scrapper/Daredevil/Reaper and as others have concluded, this is an l2p issue. What’s wrong with using terrain/los’ing an enemy? What’s wrong with learning how to defeat an enemy? Are you seriously suggesting those are design flaws? Since you didn’t find the answer you wanted and decided to take your toys and go home, might I suggest you find a nice quiet tree in Queensdale to beat on?

Just let him be, okay? No need to go “L2P” and tell him to beat on a “quiet tree in Queensdale”. Such toxicity. Yes, I get it, the OP was frustrated. But maybe, just MAYBE, it’s not as easy for them to do the same things you do, even if they’ve had experience in this and other games. Not everyone is the same. Being a jerk is nothing to be proud of, just because you find it easy and he doesn’t. Grow up. Not like it is hurting how YOU play, right?

Besides hero points, thief is probably the best class exploring. Because of stealth and mobility.

I don’t like thief for events though.

munki.6402:

Hex.8341:

Ok so the answer to “content is pretty badly designed for melee characters” is “Use ranged, faceroll with a group or abuse terrain so they can’t reach you at all”.

You people crack me up. Do you not realize that such “advice” only proves my point? I can switch to my shortbow and solo every enemy given enough time, however, I shouldn’t HAVE to. Why have melee in the game at all if that’s the only way to do things?

Anyway, I got my answer so I’ll just play my Necromancer instead and pick my nose while playing.

So edgy. I melee with my chrono/scrapper/Daredevil/Reaper and as others have concluded, this is an l2p issue. What’s wrong with using terrain/los’ing an enemy? What’s wrong with learning how to defeat an enemy? Are you seriously suggesting those are design flaws? Since you didn’t find the answer you wanted and decided to take your toys and go home, might I suggest you find a nice quiet tree in Queensdale to beat on?

Yeah, I’m such a bad player. I mean, I only soloed the three frogs and vampire hp without abusing bad ai or terrain. Just my stick of doom.

Hex.8341:

munki.6402:

Hex.8341:

Ok so the answer to “content is pretty badly designed for melee characters” is “Use ranged, faceroll with a group or abuse terrain so they can’t reach you at all”.

You people crack me up. Do you not realize that such “advice” only proves my point? I can switch to my shortbow and solo every enemy given enough time, however, I shouldn’t HAVE to. Why have melee in the game at all if that’s the only way to do things?

Anyway, I got my answer so I’ll just play my Necromancer instead and pick my nose while playing.

So edgy. I melee with my chrono/scrapper/Daredevil/Reaper and as others have concluded, this is an l2p issue. What’s wrong with using terrain/los’ing an enemy? What’s wrong with learning how to defeat an enemy? Are you seriously suggesting those are design flaws? Since you didn’t find the answer you wanted and decided to take your toys and go home, might I suggest you find a nice quiet tree in Queensdale to beat on?

Yeah, I’m such a bad player. I mean, I only soloed the three frogs and vampire hp without abusing bad ai or terrain. Just my stick of doom.

If you can do that I’m honestly wondering why you struggle with most mobs; they blow up before they get to do much, too…

I just came in to say I hate rolling devils.

That is all.

The smokescales, those kitten smokescales… especially the vets and up. I don’t mind the little ones as i will move or run once they start there attack rotation, but I wouldn’t stand a chance against any of the bigger meaner versions.

<— plays melee

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Hex.8341:

munki.6402:

Hex.8341:

Ok so the answer to “content is pretty badly designed for melee characters” is “Use ranged, faceroll with a group or abuse terrain so they can’t reach you at all”.

You people crack me up. Do you not realize that such “advice” only proves my point? I can switch to my shortbow and solo every enemy given enough time, however, I shouldn’t HAVE to. Why have melee in the game at all if that’s the only way to do things?

Anyway, I got my answer so I’ll just play my Necromancer instead and pick my nose while playing.

So edgy. I melee with my chrono/scrapper/Daredevil/Reaper and as others have concluded, this is an l2p issue. What’s wrong with using terrain/los’ing an enemy? What’s wrong with learning how to defeat an enemy? Are you seriously suggesting those are design flaws? Since you didn’t find the answer you wanted and decided to take your toys and go home, might I suggest you find a nice quiet tree in Queensdale to beat on?

Yeah, I’m such a bad player. I mean, I only soloed the three frogs and vampire hp without abusing bad ai or terrain. Just my stick of doom.

If you can do that I’m honestly wondering why you struggle with most mobs; they blow up before they get to do much, too…

Not once have I said I struggle with any normal mobs, that’s just what you assume because I voiced my criticism of mobs in HoT. I think they are poorly designed and overly punishing for melee compared to ranged, but that does not mean I struggle with them.

I tend to disagree with poorly designed and overly punishing. I have no issues … wait for it … with my heavy armor characters.

In playing an alt staff ele that had not yet unlocked tempest fully, I found that to be extremely punishing. I think it’s the poor design only comes in when dealing with under powered light armor professions. I have no experience on medium armor professions in HoT. But heavy is a cakewalk. i can basically run right through most enemies without a care in the world.

Rauderi.8706:

Matriarch/Patriarch/etc, they drop so much lingering burning that it’s excessively difficult to find a clean spot. Worse, they don’t move, so they sit in their fire fields until it’s time to fly away again.

The Legendary Wyverns are able to be meleed with experience, especially as a Daredevil. It’s impossible for the Matriarch or Patriarch to lay down enough fire to fully block out melee. It simply doesn’t last long enough.

The trick is to get right underneath the Wyvern. There’s a red circle at the center of the Wyvern that appears when targeted, get right up and hug that circle. When you see the big critter preparing an attack, just move through the circle to wind up behind it, and the fire breath/claw swipe will miss you harmlessly while you keep meleeing. It can only lay down two big fire fields at once, and they’re cone-shaped, so if it sprays them in opposite directions, then there’s still room for you to move between them to the Wyvern’s side to keep meleeing. The only way there can be too much fire at the Matriarch event is if you’re failing to CC and thus have the extra lines to deal with, or the last part of the fight where random extra Wyverns will be spraying lines around. And even then, the Matriarch will occasionally use her dash attack to charge a player far away, which removes her from whatever fire fields she’s near and lets you start over with a clean slate.

The Patriarch doesn’t have extra fire from taking off or from bonus Wyverns, so it’s impossible for the whole ground in melee range against it to be covered in fire. It does, however, have the wing buffet attack, which you have to be aware of as a melee. To avoid it, you need to pull out to max melee range at its rear, standing underneath it isn’t enough. If there’s fire at max melee range at its rear, then simply get out of range entirely for the five seconds it flaps its wings, then get back in underneath it where it’s perfectly safe and you can’t get hit once you master your technique.

The problem is a pretty thorny one. Anet is kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.

For PvP and WvW, melee skills deal more damage because getting and staying in melee is hard when fighting players. Thus, the melee skills have to hit harder because they have limited up-time. Ranged can pretty much reliably hit unless the target is blocking, dodging, reflecting, retaliating, confusing etc, most of which are also available v. melee attackers. So, ranged damage is lower.

So, what can ANet do?

• They could divorce the skill coefficients for PvE from those for WvW/PvP and have melee attack kitten like wet noodles. This would punish players skilled enough to get away with melee and encourage most players to go ranged.
• They could leave melee skills doing more damage and reduce/eliminate a lot of the PBAoE, knocks, etc. What this does is trivialize the encounters. Those skills are the mobs feeble attempts at offering a dollop of challenge. Take them away and the alternative would be making the mobs just do more damage, and/or more unavoidable damage. You think melee hate is generating complaints? Imagine the kittens flying if Anet did that.
• ANet could reduce the number of PBAoE stuff. This would be easy if the game did a better job of staggering the types of mobs that appear in encounters. If you look at core, for instance, sometimes Risen packs will be all Nobles. Holy AoE, Batman! This solution might be the best option because it preserves the melee damage boost which offsets its up-time issues, while maintaining some degree of mob challenge.

Never once had any issue with melee in hot.

I think this comes down to personal skill level differences though.

Rauderi.8706:

Moyayuki.3619:

Wish I knew. I also think it’s ridiculous to force players to go ranged just to properly deal with the new mobs. Sure, every class does have a ranged option, but that doesn’t mean every player wants to use it exclusively.

This has ticked my friend off to no end. There’s a number of critters, and bosses especially, that have [can’t melee me] zones. The wyverns have a bad habit of doing this, and the floor damage is excessive to where melee can’t even consider going in.

I realize that melee is higher-risk/higher-reward, and that’s fine, but HoT is especially guilty of skewing the risk/reward for melee completely out of value.

But the big wyverns like Matriarch are actually safer in melee. I stand under them with my mess and poke it in the belly. They don’t drop fire under themselves and with patriarch, it gives you more room to save yourself when he stars blowing you off the platform.

And the arrow frogs are easier in melee than ranged. They’re frozen on the spot when they fire. You just dodge behind them and they’re at your mercy.

But why stick with just melee anyway? I always have a melee and ranged option on my mes. Each has its place. You switch as needs change.

I play melee thief in HoT and have since launch. None of these mobs are impossible to melee, you just have to counter their mechanics, usually by way of learning the big, obvious tells and having stun breaks just as you would in any of the harder core content.

Hex.8341:

Ok so the answer to “content is pretty badly designed for melee characters” is “Use ranged, faceroll with a group or abuse terrain so they can’t reach you at all”.

You people crack me up. Do you not realize that such “advice” only proves my point? I can switch to my shortbow and solo every enemy given enough time, however, I shouldn’t HAVE to. Why have melee in the game at all if that’s the only way to do things?

Anyway, I got my answer so I’ll just play my Necromancer instead and pick my nose while playing.

You aren’t playing a “melee” class. You’re playing a GW2 class. ALL GW2 classes are both melee and ranged. That’s why you are able to swap weapons in combat. The design isn’t the problem. Your expectations are.

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

Maximus.8376:

Aren’t there like only two mobs that are counter melee? We have wyverns and smokescales. The rest of the mobs can be killed in melee without issues.

Weapon swap if your friend.

However, the Itzel frogs >_> HALP!

Wyverns you just walk around to their back and as they turn you keep moving. The big wyverns up in VB only throw aoe in 1 direction, you stand behind them you can easily melee and I’d argue it’s even easier to melee since you barely have to move compared to range kiting.

Smokescales melee is far easier, you just lure it out of their smoke and then when they do their UA attack just dodge and then melee it down since it does no damage after that. You literally have to dodge 1 single attack chain and it’s free food.

Itzel frogs, they evade when you range. Melee is a far superior option.

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

I’m not sure how you got that impression. Your complaint seems to be that melee isn’t viable. I, for one, offered my experience on viable melee, with a mesmer no less. Other people have done similar. What more would you like out of this discussion?

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

I do map completion on every class. People been complaing about thief forever.

The reality is if mob is easy, just pistol whip them. If mob is hard just stealth through them. Hero point and big events don’t really matter because you can’t solo them anyway. And weather you hit hit for low damage or high don’t matter anyway because you get credit either way.

Hex.8341:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Hex.8341:

munki.6402:

Hex.8341:

Ok so the answer to “content is pretty badly designed for melee characters” is “Use ranged, faceroll with a group or abuse terrain so they can’t reach you at all”.

You people crack me up. Do you not realize that such “advice” only proves my point? I can switch to my shortbow and solo every enemy given enough time, however, I shouldn’t HAVE to. Why have melee in the game at all if that’s the only way to do things?

Anyway, I got my answer so I’ll just play my Necromancer instead and pick my nose while playing.

So edgy. I melee with my chrono/scrapper/Daredevil/Reaper and as others have concluded, this is an l2p issue. What’s wrong with using terrain/los’ing an enemy? What’s wrong with learning how to defeat an enemy? Are you seriously suggesting those are design flaws? Since you didn’t find the answer you wanted and decided to take your toys and go home, might I suggest you find a nice quiet tree in Queensdale to beat on?

Yeah, I’m such a bad player. I mean, I only soloed the three frogs and vampire hp without abusing bad ai or terrain. Just my stick of doom.

If you can do that I’m honestly wondering why you struggle with most mobs; they blow up before they get to do much, too…

Not once have I said I struggle with any normal mobs, that’s just what you assume because I voiced my criticism of mobs in HoT. I think they are poorly designed and overly punishing for melee compared to ranged, but that does not mean I struggle with them.

Well, I worded that badly: I meant that most things should die so fast that they don’t even get the chance to be annoying.
Only mobs that kitten me off are those who decide getting iframes or something similar is a great idea (looking at wyverns, froggies and smokescales in particular) so that they can waste my time by having to wait before I can blow them up. Such a thing works for champs/boss-fights, but not what is considered trash-/basic-mobs

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

There is a mastery for the stealthed frogs and snipers.

As for the wyverns … who the hell thought it was a good idea to have the wings obscure some much stuff? -_-

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

Or it could be the classy tantrum responses. The fact that people are giving you advice and their experiences that you asked for, and here you are getting all knotted up about it. I posit you have yet to display the skills necessary to maintain a discussion.

Or did you want to create and manage a thread where everyone agrees with you?

The only mobs that annoy me in HoT melee wise are the Mushroom King near the entry to TD and the bigger Arrowheads. The former has an annoying AoE damage ability that lasts through most of his fight and the latter roll around too much for your endurance to keep up. It leads to boring encounters, especially on my Daredevil, whose ranged options are crappy. It feels like they promote boring “11111111” gameplay instead of dynamic combat. Strangely enough, the shroom king spawned by the HP is much better than the one in TD.

While we’re discussing HoT mobs, how do people deal with Veteran Bristlebacks? They’re uncommon outside of Bristleback Chasm, but I find them really annoying to fight, since they just spam you to death with their ranged volley attack and have a ton of HP. You can reflect their attacks, but is there a way to deal with them without that? Their design seems to be lackluster.

You can walk behind them when they start doing their volley attack, same as PvP. It stops attacking you once you’re behind them.

Oh, that’s good to know. They seemed to turn around for me, but I guess I wasn’t running fast enough.

ArchonWing.9480:

I just came in to say I hate rolling devils.

That is all.

I will, without shame, mercy, or disguise, find the nearest rock-perch and club the kitten out of them.

But hey, ‘working as intended’.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Rauderi.8706:

Moyayuki.3619:

Wish I knew. I also think it’s ridiculous to force players to go ranged just to properly deal with the new mobs. Sure, every class does have a ranged option, but that doesn’t mean every player wants to use it exclusively.

This has ticked my friend off to no end. There’s a number of critters, and bosses especially, that have [can’t melee me] zones. The wyverns have a bad habit of doing this, and the floor damage is excessive to where melee can’t even consider going in.

I realize that melee is higher-risk/higher-reward, and that’s fine, but HoT is especially guilty of skewing the risk/reward for melee completely out of value.

But the big wyverns like Matriarch are actually safer in melee. I stand under them with my mess and poke it in the belly. They don’t drop fire under themselves and with patriarch, it gives you more room to save yourself when he stars blowing you off the platform.

And the arrow frogs are easier in melee than ranged. They’re frozen on the spot when they fire. You just dodge behind them and they’re at your mercy.

But why stick with just melee anyway? I always have a melee and ranged option on my mes. Each has its place. You switch as needs change.

Thanks for the wyvern input. I’ll see if I can replicate your results. Science!

Shadowleapers are conditionally difficult. They’re annoying in melee if they have room to jump away, but if you can coax them into a wall or narrow area (and dodge the poison cloud), they get smacked down pretty easily. I don’t care for their always-on auto-dodge for ranged, and I think it should have an internal cost for better counterplay, but overall, I almost like their combat design.

I’ll be honest, if I could go Pistol/Warhorn on my warrior, I probably would. >.> But, my normal travel is Pistol/Warhorn with Hammer as a swap. (Granted, that’s one character out of 20+, so…) And I hated HoT for having way too many critters that didn’t work for. I’ve adjusted, of course, but I can very succinctly understand the OP’s salt about some of the mob designs.

I can understand OP’s sentiments too. But they speak of a singular way to play the game, instead of adapting to circumstances. Life is the same way. If you refuse to adapt but instead do it the way you want it to, it won’t always succeed. HoT was a smack in the face first time I entered Verdant Brink. I adapted and now it’s a walk in the park (so to speak). If you are adamant about sticking to a certain way of playing the game and that no longer works, don’t blame the game. Blame your inflexibility. There are still a few dozen other maps for which this style of playing works perfectly.

And for good measure, I mostly avoid ranged weapons, even in HoT, because of the decreased dps. And somehow, I still managed to complete all 4 HoT on 2 rather squishy classes (Mesmer and Elementalist), I finished the HoT story on 7 or 8 classes. I adapted to it and it became a lot easier. I now know I shouldn’t deal with Mordrem the way I dealt with the enemies in core GW2 maps. Part of the game evolved, I evolved with it. It’s as simple as that.

TheNecrosanct.4028:

I can understand OP’s sentiments too. But they speak of a singular way to play the game, instead of adapting to circumstances. Life is the same way. If you refuse to adapt but instead do it the way you want it to, it won’t always succeed. HoT was a smack in the face first time I entered Verdant Brink. I adapted and now it’s a walk in the park (so to speak). If you are adamant about sticking to a certain way of playing the game and that no longer works, don’t blame the game. Blame your inflexibility. There are still a few dozen other maps for which this style of playing works perfectly.

And for good measure, I mostly avoid ranged weapons, even in HoT, because of the decreased dps. And somehow, I still managed to complete all 4 HoT on 2 rather squishy classes (Mesmer and Elementalist), I finished the HoT story on 7 or 8 classes. I adapted to it and it became a lot easier. I now know I shouldn’t deal with Mordrem the way I dealt with the enemies in core GW2 maps. Part of the game evolved, I evolved with it. It’s as simple as that.

Overall, yup.

I’m really wishing we had build templates, because of HoT’s demands. I run double-melee, and that shouldn’t be excluded just because, sometimes, I “need” a bow to handle a particular mob. Swapping weapons means swapping builds/talents, which is slightly troublesome right now, so I can see why players don’t want to bother.

Though, it does make the request for build templates very salient, so that players can be much more flexible in how they roam in open world. Would have to be handled differently in wvw/pvp, but that’s not a discussion for this thread.

If I remember correctly, there was a great outcry from a portion of the community, who felt “forced” to melee Everything so I think HoT was actually designed to give greater balance such that the risk/reward ratio for melee and ranged would be more balanced.

So… I Think the OP is on to something here, and the answer would be that it was a very vocal set of players who convinced Anet that it was indeed a good idea to shift the balance a Little in favor of ranged.

That said, it’s still not that hard to melee most of HoT, including but not limited to Mama Vywern. D/D thief (not even Daredevil, and not even zerk) works great on mama!

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Your difficulties are due to misunderstanding the way the mechanics work.

The smokescale teleport attack doesn’t work the way you think it does. It is not instant damage, but a series of rapid hits that occur only at very close range. The proper response to anticipate the move and block/evade most of the damage. The moment the smokescale teleports to you, dodge away. It will teleport again. Dodge away. After a few seconds the assault will end.

The smokescale’s next move is to drop a red circle on the ground. Attacks will miss while the smokescale is inside the circle (Note: Attacks will also miss when the smokescale is just outside the circle, too!). The move is to get out of the circle and force the smokescale to follow.

Smokescales have very low health. Once you’ve countered their moves you can take them down almost instantly (in fact, if you have a move that reliably hits for 10K plus you can just 1-shot them right off the bat).

For the stealth frogs, until you have the mastery unlocked you can’t see them. However, you can observe what they do when they reveal themselves.

One attack is an arrow volley, which you’ve seen unstealthed frogs and mordrem snipers use. They remain stationary and slowly rotate toward their target. Once they lock on, they fire in that direction a moment later. If you continuously move, the arrows will either miss or you may take one or two hits on the edge of the cone if you happen to be fairly close by.

The other attack is the close range stun, followed by insta-jib. They have to get into melee range to hit you with this attack, but their movement speed is slower in stealth. Stay moving and they won’t be able to catch you.

Once they reveal themselves, the frogs are much like the smokescales. They have low health and you should be able to take them down quickly.

Many enemies in the jungle work this way. You need to understand the mechanics, the timing, the animations. Once you get that down these guys are fodder.

Zohane.7208:

If I remember correctly, there was a great outcry from a portion of the community, who felt “forced” to melee Everything so I think HoT was actually designed to give greater balance such that the risk/reward ratio for melee and ranged would be more balanced.

So… I Think the OP is on to something here, and the answer would be that it was a very vocal set of players who convinced Anet that it was indeed a good idea to shift the balance a Little in favor of ranged.

That said, it’s still not that hard to melee most of HoT, including but not limited to Mama Vywern. D/D thief (not even Daredevil, and not even zerk) works great on mama!

Mission accomplished, I think. In the core game I basically went 100% melee. In HoT I enjoy weapon swapping and using the right tool for the job. Many enemies, champions in particular, I’m swapping in and out throughout the encounter as needed. I think it’s great, personally. I’m still able to play primarily melee, but I’m so much more versatile for actually having need of a ranged set in combat.

Rauderi.8706:

TheNecrosanct.4028:

I can understand OP’s sentiments too. But they speak of a singular way to play the game, instead of adapting to circumstances. Life is the same way. If you refuse to adapt but instead do it the way you want it to, it won’t always succeed. HoT was a smack in the face first time I entered Verdant Brink. I adapted and now it’s a walk in the park (so to speak). If you are adamant about sticking to a certain way of playing the game and that no longer works, don’t blame the game. Blame your inflexibility. There are still a few dozen other maps for which this style of playing works perfectly.

And for good measure, I mostly avoid ranged weapons, even in HoT, because of the decreased dps. And somehow, I still managed to complete all 4 HoT on 2 rather squishy classes (Mesmer and Elementalist), I finished the HoT story on 7 or 8 classes. I adapted to it and it became a lot easier. I now know I shouldn’t deal with Mordrem the way I dealt with the enemies in core GW2 maps. Part of the game evolved, I evolved with it. It’s as simple as that.

Overall, yup.

I’m really wishing we had build templates, because of HoT’s demands. I run double-melee, and that shouldn’t be excluded just because, sometimes, I “need” a bow to handle a particular mob. Swapping weapons means swapping builds/talents, which is slightly troublesome right now, so I can see why players don’t want to bother.

Though, it does make the request for build templates very salient, so that players can be much more flexible in how they roam in open world. Would have to be handled differently in wvw/pvp, but that’s not a discussion for this thread.

A very big YES to this. Personally I find it illogical that in a game like GW2 you have to manually reset everything if you want to change tactics. Build templates seem like the obvious thing to do. Here’s to hoping we will get it soon!