Guild Wars 2

Windsagio.1340:

Wethospu.6437:

I still remember soloing fractals up to Mai Trin, practicing it a bit and then putting a lfg so 4 random guys could get a reward for free. No restrictions, no requirements.

Only to have them faceplant in about 30 seconds and me getting kicked in about 15 seconds without any warning because they wanted to retry. And when I asked why would they kick me and destroy the instance when I had spend hours soloing it I get answered “because you didn’t talk to us”. Yeah sure, I will do some casual chit chat when I’m on low health and fighting to survive.

So based on this, I rather keep “elitist” requirements to weed out “non-toxic”, “relaxed” and “respectful” people like these.

I’m sorry, that story just doesn’t parse.

Oh? Why not?

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Windsagio.1340:

Wethospu.6437:

I still remember soloing fractals up to Mai Trin, practicing it a bit and then putting a lfg so 4 random guys could get a reward for free. No restrictions, no requirements.

Only to have them faceplant in about 30 seconds and me getting kicked in about 15 seconds without any warning because they wanted to retry. And when I asked why would they kick me and destroy the instance when I had spend hours soloing it I get answered “because you didn’t talk to us”. Yeah sure, I will do some casual chit chat when I’m on low health and fighting to survive.

So based on this, I rather keep “elitist” requirements to weed out “non-toxic”, “relaxed” and “respectful” people like these.

I’m sorry, that story just doesn’t parse.

Oh? Why not?

Only people with zerk gear can do stupid things.

If you have only 2k ap, nomad gear and play necro, condi mesmer or staff guard you automatically can only do good things, behave well and pay taxes.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Windsagio.1340:

Wethospu.6437:

I still remember soloing fractals up to Mai Trin, practicing it a bit and then putting a lfg so 4 random guys could get a reward for free. No restrictions, no requirements.

Only to have them faceplant in about 30 seconds and me getting kicked in about 15 seconds without any warning because they wanted to retry. And when I asked why would they kick me and destroy the instance when I had spend hours soloing it I get answered “because you didn’t talk to us”. Yeah sure, I will do some casual chit chat when I’m on low health and fighting to survive.

So based on this, I rather keep “elitist” requirements to weed out “non-toxic”, “relaxed” and “respectful” people like these.

I’m sorry, that story just doesn’t parse.

Oh? Why not?

It’s too ludicrously 1-sided. At the very least the safest bet in the world is that if we could dig up the other 4 players their versions of what happened would be substantially different.

The whole thing, to be frank though, is just too convenient.

He just solo-ground for fun, and then just when he got to mai grabbed some random people, and then they just failed immediately, and then they kicked him for ‘not talking enough’.

Most of the individual pieces work, but taken together it’s pretty hard to swallow (and that’s taking the 15 secs/30 secs hyperbole out of it)

Windsagio.1340:

It’s too ludicrously 1-sided. At the very least the safest bet in the world is that if we could dig up the other 4 players their versions of what happened would be substantially different.

The whole thing, to be frank though, is just too convenient.

He just solo-ground for fun, and then just when he got to mai grabbed some random people, and then they just failed immediately, and then they kicked him for ‘not talking enough’.

Most of the individual pieces work, but taken together it’s pretty hard to swallow (and that’s taking the 15 secs/30 secs hyperbole out of it)

If you’re going to try to call into question his character, goodwill, and credibility, keep in mind he’s uploaded numerous videos and is the person who maintains this extremely comprehensive dungeon guide site with strategy breakdowns for organized, melee, and ranged/PuG tactics for most encounters.

Unlike me, Harper, or some of the other people here, he’s the last one of us here that you want to blindly victim blame.

DaveGan.8065:

Windsagio.1340:

It’s too ludicrously 1-sided. At the very least the safest bet in the world is that if we could dig up the other 4 players their versions of what happened would be substantially different.

The whole thing, to be frank though, is just too convenient.

He just solo-ground for fun, and then just when he got to mai grabbed some random people, and then they just failed immediately, and then they kicked him for ‘not talking enough’.

Most of the individual pieces work, but taken together it’s pretty hard to swallow (and that’s taking the 15 secs/30 secs hyperbole out of it)

If you’re going to try to call into question his character, goodwill, and credibility, keep in mind he’s uploaded numerous videos and is the person who maintains this extremely comprehensive dungeon guide site with strategy breakdowns for organized, melee, and ranged/PuG tactics for most encounters.

Unlike me, Harper, or some of the other people here, he’s the last one of us here that you want to blindly victim blame.

Yeah, exactly. Wethospu was the guy that started all of these solos. I think he had the first lupi solo, and showed people what was really possible to a good player in this game.

I know for a fact he has solod fractals in the past, he’s uploaded videos of himself doing it.

It’s completely believable that he’d solo to Mai and then give away the other spots. Also, it’s completely believable that Mai, wiper of pugs, would drop the entire party in a few seconds. And it’s completely believable Wethospu would keep going, trying to solo because that’s what he was doing in the first place. It’s also completely believable that they’d kick him for not knowing who he is and not knowing that he actually could solo the boss.

Windsagio.1340:

It’s too ludicrously 1-sided. At the very least the safest bet in the world is that if we could dig up the other 4 players their versions of what happened would be substantially different.

The whole thing, to be frank though, is just too convenient.

He just solo-ground for fun, and then just when he got to mai grabbed some random people, and then they just failed immediately, and then they kicked him for ‘not talking enough’.

Most of the individual pieces work, but taken together it’s pretty hard to swallow (and that’s taking the 15 secs/30 secs hyperbole out of it)

That would be pretty interesting. I would also like their arguments for joining “free daily” and then kicking the host.

I didn’t solo just for fun, I also collected data for my dungeon site. You can’t really filter who joins you from LFG, so yeah, random people.

Perhaps you don’t know the boss but it’s pretty brutal if you don’t know what you are trying. I didn’t have a timer so numbers can be bit off but rest of the team wiped before we even got the shield off. And I was left with pretty low health for trying to revive them. I didn’t really see what they typed on chat, but they wanted me dead.

DaveGan.8065:

Windsagio.1340:

It’s too ludicrously 1-sided. At the very least the safest bet in the world is that if we could dig up the other 4 players their versions of what happened would be substantially different.

The whole thing, to be frank though, is just too convenient.

He just solo-ground for fun, and then just when he got to mai grabbed some random people, and then they just failed immediately, and then they kicked him for ‘not talking enough’.

Most of the individual pieces work, but taken together it’s pretty hard to swallow (and that’s taking the 15 secs/30 secs hyperbole out of it)

If you’re going to try to call into question his character, goodwill, and credibility, keep in mind he’s uploaded numerous videos and is the person who maintains this extremely comprehensive dungeon guide site with strategy breakdowns for organized, melee, and ranged/PuG tactics for most encounters.

Unlike me, Harper, or some of the other people here, he’s the last one of us here that you want to blindly victim blame.

A questionable story is a questionable story, and personal prejudice is personal prejudice.

I still remember how much it was my kitten bosses fault the first time I got fired, and I totally didn’t do anything wrong.

~~~

I don’t care if it’s the President. A story that very conveniently proves your point AND a story that makes 4 other people act in a bizarrely assholish way (in his version) that goes against most logic or most of our experiences with player activity is worth looking at with askance.

Funnily, I don’t really have many questions about the solo part (except as it being a part of the larger story), his descriptions of these guys immediately failing and almost as immediately kicking him (presumably the guy that DIDN’T fail) out of the group just don’t parse.

I’d put money down that any of those other 4 guys would describe the situation exceptionally differently.

Windsagio.1340:

I’d put money down that any of those other 4 guys would describe the situation exceptionally differently.

Here’s an example.

“We were the 4th and 5th to join, no idea who the instance owner was who offered us a free daily. We thought it just meant we got to skip all the other 3 fractals and help kill Mai Trin. So we went in and started, then kitten hit the fan and 4 of us wiped before the boss hit 75%.”

“This last guy was at low HP and wouldn’t listen to our request that he die so we could start over. I discussed with my friend and decided he was wasting our time, so we kicked him. When it turns out we lost the instance, we realized the mistake we made, but were too proud to apologize to him when he confronted us, so we made something up about him having poor social skills.”

How’s that?

On a side note, given it’s Wethospu and given I’m pretty confident with statistics and expected value, I’ll happily drop my own money down to take yours.

Wethospu.6437:

That would be pretty interesting. I would also like their arguments for joining “free daily” and then kicking the host.

I didn’t solo just for fun, I also collected data for my dungeon site. You can’t really filter who joins you from LFG, so yeah, random people.

Perhaps you don’t know the boss but it’s pretty brutal if you don’t know what you are trying. I didn’t have a timer so numbers can be bit off but rest of the team wiped before we even got the shield off. And I was left with pretty low health for trying to revive them. I didn’t really see what they typed on chat, but they wanted me dead.

Sorry for getting spammy, want to give each response it’s due.

Part of my problem is that it’s hard to wipe on Mai that fast unless you’re in the original story version or a higher level fractal (generally it’s the cannons that wipe a group that doesn’t know what it’s doing).

Maybe the trick is in ‘free daily’. That’s still presuming that there are people looking for literally free and had never done the fight before and were irked it was free, but then, even as you say, the last part doesn’t make any sense.

Them kicking the host and the only person that lived won’t keep them alive and won’t let them win the fight don’t match any model of player behavior I can conceive of, at least not if that’s all there was to the story. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Stories that don’t make sense that just happen to prove a chosen argumentative point on the part of the teller deserve skepticism.

What im trying to figure out is what anything he said had to do with the zerk meta or a dps meter. He solod a fractal. Invited random people in and they kicked him out. Yeah im flat out sure there kittens. But theres kittens in EVERY single aspect of the game. You opened yourself up to that when you invited random people in. I respect you for trying to do a good thing for four other players though. That I one hundred percent can get behind. But at the same time when I try to help out people in game I KNOW theres a good chance atleast one of them is gonna be a kittenbag. In this case it sounds like atleast 2 of them were.

I’m sorry this happened to you. And I have no problem with you not inviting random people again because of this. its your choice. But youl have to explain what that story had to do with either of the topics. (In this case perferably the original topic of a dps meter. Which wouldn’t have helped you at all in that case)

“Note. I choose to assume what he said is true simply because discussion here relies on it. I also havn’t encountered players that stupid before but then I havnt met every single individual in the game and I can’t judge the likelyhood of this scenario except on my own circumstances which would be only a partially accurate response from a single viewpoint”

Shadelang.3012:

“Note. I choose to assume what he said is true simply because discussion here relies on it. I also havn’t encountered players that stupid before but then I havnt met every single individual in the game and I can’t judge the likelyhood of this scenario except on my own circumstances which would be only a partially accurate response from a single viewpoint”

Story is quite believable. There are definitely pugs that can wipe on level 1 fractal Mai. There are definitely players that are dumb enough to kick someone without checking first who is instance owner (when things like that still mattered), and there are definitely people impatient and impolite enough to resort to kicking as soon as something doesn’t go their way.
Thing is, this has nothing to do with the armor set they are wearing. There’s an equal number of stories of two players joining a pug group, and then kicking everyone else (including instance owner) because those other people were not skipping. Even if the dungeon went relatively good up to that point.
The truth is, some people are dumb, some are kittens, and some are both. This has nothing to do with their gear choices. And the only thing it has to do with this thread is that i wouldn’t want to put a dps meter in the hands of those people. Because they sure as hell will use it to kick someone.

posted in wrong thread earlier

Which leads to an interesting point; If you have a DPS meter, and people are used to running very easy content to the meter and maximizing that number over anything else, they’re going to be woefully unprepared when they all of a sudden have to do a Mai Trin or shadow of the dragon fight.

Windsagio.1340:

—
Them kicking the host and the only person that lived won’t keep them alive and won’t let them win the fight don’t match any model of player behavior I can conceive of, at least not if that’s all there was to the story. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Stories that don’t make sense that just happen to prove a chosen argumentative point on the part of the teller deserve skepticism.

It takes only one person to initiate the kick and one person to accept. So one jerk and one sheep. No need for 4 jerks as you mentioned in one post.

If by model you mean nice, then yes, lots of people don’t seem to act nice. If one of the players was looking to maximize his gain then logically it would make sense to kick me. Based on this assumption I would have very low chance to win and just drag the fight. He just came to the group so breaking the instance wouldn’t matter much for him.

Shadelang.3012:

What im trying to figure out is what anything he said had to do with the zerk meta or a dps meter. He solod a fractal. Invited random people in and they kicked him out. Yeah im flat out sure there kittens. But theres kittens in EVERY single aspect of the game.
—

As astral explained and you pointed out, point was that some people are just jerks. I’m bit tired of hearing people justify everything based on “zerk or requirements = elitist jerk” and “cleric/pvt = good guy”.

If you are worried about quality of posts I would take look at that “meta” topic.

It was also interesting to see whether anyone would defend these guys because they weren’t standard elitists.

Wethospu.6437:

Shadelang.3012:

What im trying to figure out is what anything he said had to do with the zerk meta or a dps meter. He solod a fractal. Invited random people in and they kicked him out. Yeah im flat out sure there kittens. But theres kittens in EVERY single aspect of the game.
—

As astral explained and you pointed out, point was that some people are just jerks. I’m bit tired of hearing people justify everything based on “zerk or requirements = elitist jerk” and “cleric/pvt = good guy”.

If you are worried about quality of posts I would take look at that “meta” topic.

It was also interesting to see whether anyone would defend these guys because they weren’t standard elitists.

If it went down the way you say, nobody would defend that behavior, feel assured :p

And seriously, I Hope nobody thinks that ‘zerk player == jerk’ is an absolute truism, because of course it isn’t.

I think we’d find a legitimate correlation between a certain angry, blame-oriented behavior and competitive players, it’s a pattern that crosses over multiple games and styles;

1) The guy that used to yell at people in queensdale for daring to kill a champ out of order
2) The guy who yells at his team in pvp when they lose, talking about how everyone else is playing wrong
3) The guy who blames the other people in his group when something goes wrong in a dungeon, especially that they’ve got the wrong build.

It tends to be competition or optimization oriented, and it’s almost always outward facing.

I’m sure Weth, for instance, isnt’ that guy, but we all know that guy exists, and is unfortunately common.

The only way I could get behind a DPS counter is if it’s built into a training dummy NPC in a controlled environment, visible only to you. At least then you can test out different builds, gather solid data on what actually produced the highest DPS over time or in a burst, and keep improving on your personal best.

But those who want to be able to display a DPS counter in a party for purposes of comparison, don’t even know what they are asking for. Guild Wars 2’s combat system is heavily dependent on buffs and combo fields, most of which will not even be provided by you personally. If that Ranger blows their Warhorn 5 skill, they give the whole party Might and Fury without doing any direct damage themselves. So the whole party’s damage goes up, but their relative DPS number goes down compared to you. Or maybe they put down a field, or did a finisher, that buffs allies.

Or maybe they had bad luck getting aggro or being targeted by an AoE that they had to dodge out of, while you sit there mindlessly doing your DPS rotation. Or they are going out of their way to target the enemies that will help the most and progress the fight the most directly, while you’re just hitting whatever is in front of you to maintain DPS. Or maybe you keep standing in the fire, and the others are throwing out AoE heals and protection to try to keep you off the floor.

Okay, your Thief did more DPS to a boss than a Guardian. So? What does that even mean? Do you know WHY? Do you know how many Might stacks were YOURS, versus how many were put on you by others? Does the DPS counter factor sort out Vulnerability stacks on a per-player basis?

Aiming for the highest possible personal DPS is not only contrary to teamwork and friendly play, it’s contrary to actual party DPS and completing the dungeon more quickly. And if you have no idea whether to kick someone from the party until the computer spits a number out for you, then maybe it’s not something to get worked up over.

I realize that a lot of the “hard core” dungeon farmers freak out if they see anything other than Berserker gear, afraid that it might add a minute or two to the run. But it’s one thing to have that attitude — it’s quite another to be so delusional that you expect Arena Net should share and promote that attitude.

I think a personal dps meter for the sake of build testing would be cool. But that’s all it should be, personal. There’s no way a dps meter should ever be used in group content because it would never be a true, accurate depiction of how well someone performs in a group.

Take scepter eles for an example. In terms of personal dps, I’m sure they’ll always fall below classes like thieves, warriors, or even guardians because scepter skills themselves don’t really deal great amounts of damage. However, because of their ability to easily stack tons of might and endless fury for their party (as well as summoning ice bows, etc), a scepter ele would probably increase the overall group dps more than some other classes in a way that a dps meter would not be able to reflect.

Dps meters simply cannot account for all the different variables and certainly cannot account for player competency. It’s fine if people record their own performance in a dungeon and then compare it with friends if they choose to, but it should not be publicly visible otherwise it will open an ugly can of worms. Also, if you’re going to have a personal dps meter, might as well have other meters as well, like a healing meter so players who want to play support or tank builds in PvP can also test how good their recovery is.

It will never added, so no worries. ANet knows this is not the right game for such tools.

Star Ace.5207:

It will never added, so no worries.

Not by ANet. Community on the other hand…

frifox.5283:

Star Ace.5207:

It will never added, so no worries.

Not by ANet. Community on the other hand…

Not legally, and they’d would risk their account (whether it is you or anyone else.) Not worth the trouble or purported “benefits”, I’d say.

This is why we need patches every 2 weeks… you guys start complaining about trivial kitten when we don’t have content updates.

Lifestealer.4910:

Anet has already commented on reddit that they don’t care if people use 3rd party dps meter as long as it isn’t used in pvp for unfair advantage. Many people already have been using it.

Where? I don’t remember seeing such comment…

They are clear that nothing can interact with the client. Written in the ToS. Overlays that don’t interact are fine. DPS meters would need to interact with the client.

Yargesh.4965:

They are clear that nothing can interact with the client. Written in the ToS. Overlays that don’t interact are fine. DPS meters would need to interact with the client.

Could be recalling wrong, but I seem to have this memory of someone posting film of himself using a DPS meter he’d made on the forums a while ago and getting into account trouble for it.

Windsagio.1340:

Yargesh.4965:

They are clear that nothing can interact with the client. Written in the ToS. Overlays that don’t interact are fine. DPS meters would need to interact with the client.

Could be recalling wrong, but I seem to have this memory of someone posting film of himself using a DPS meter he’d made on the forums a while ago and getting into account trouble for it.

Wouldn’t surprise me.

Astralporing.1957:

Story is quite believable.

Definitely. Anyone who has solo’ed/duo’ed an arah path and tried to give away the extra spots for free only to have some people join, kick you and your partner and then try to sell the path themselves can vouch that this sort of thing happens daily.

In a skilled players world, the time to kill is lessened by a few seconds with a zerk build, in a less skilled team the time drop to kill can be substantial, and it can cause the squishy zerker to go down. I view this fact to be evidence that the zerk build is not optimal for gameplay except when used for speed farming. I think that skilled gameplay with a balanced build (not pure DPS) is far more exciting, challenging and rewarding. My DPS may not measure up to any ones ideal, but my skill in gameplay is very good in my opinion. If you want to only play with speedfarmers and lessen your ability in the challenges present in mechanics, well then, go ahead, it does not bother me, and it should not bother you that I play my way.

DaveGan.8065:

Bernie.8674:

Funny how you accuse me of straw manning and then come up with this. You don’t stack on those fights, do you? Then why would my statement apply to those?

Sorry, but you’re not getting away from this that easily. Not when multiple others in this thread have taken your very point and ignorantly generalized zerker gear to all content in this game. Barring an admission that you’ve not read the thread up to now, or that you fail to understand the significance of context, I don’t think it was unreasonable to assume you held similar or identical ignorant views.

I wasn’t responding to the whole thread. I was agreeing with one guy, and this is what he said:

I would take slowing a group down by 5 minutes every single time if it meant that I spent that entire dungeon having fun. I could make the dungeon shorter, but then I’d be bored the entire time I was playing. In the end stupid reasoning is stupid. I don’t play games to prove that I’m better at spending more time in a game than others but instead want to have fun. Variety is the spice of life. Down with zerker. blah blah blah

The stacking statement that you keep fixating on was just a second example of a way to exploit game mechanics, and the reason I posted it was that I had recently been in a dungeon run that did exactly that. You’re the one that’s taking this out of context and generalizing it to zerker = stacker. My intent was closer to this:

• Zerkers kill some bosses before their abilities can trigger
• Stackers nullify some bosses’ game mechanics

But this argument is completely tangential to the discussion, which is about DPS meters.

DaveGan.8065:

On the topic of easy dungeons, the elite PvE runners in this game have most dungeons on such a robotic farm with near perfect rotations that they could probably write a bot to do things for them. It is these easy dungeons that DPS meters wouldn’t apply to for most of us.

Exactly. This is even more proof that DPS meters are unnecessary.

DaveGan.8065:

And please stop strawmanning DPS meters a position where they are solely used to filter people. It is these tougher fights where things become more unpredictable and rotations more mixed, where it can be beneficial to test different weapons, traits, and rotations.

I’m not strawmanning, and I never said that they’re solely used to filter people. I believe, as a result of spending five years in WoW (where DPS meters are prevalent), that they are frequently used for that purpose. However, the statement you quoted didn’t address that issue. I merely said that by the time you’ve gathered the gear and resistances required to even enter high level fractals you will already have determined your most effective builds and/or rotations. For that reason DPS meters should no longer be necessary.

DaveGan.8065:

We get that some people will try to misuse them, but last I checked ANet does not and should not create its content according to what trolls might do (check Copper/Gold/Silver bosses in the Silverwastes as a prime example).

I agree, but I also think that DPS meters will do more harm than good for this game.

DaveGan.8065:

And just like now, you can avoid all that filthy elitist toxicity by just creating your own group

Thank you for bringing my attention to Nike!‘s Youtube channel. I’ve subbed already, and I’ll definitely check out the rest of his “What to Do in Speed Runs” series when I have the time. At 1:50 of his warrior video, however, he gave the perfect example of why DPS meters are so dangerous:

Warrior is not in the top DPS profession and really is not even in the top half of the professions in terms of personal DPS. But when it comes to buffing everyone else’s offensive capabilities warriors are the best in the game. The standard meta team comp, one guardian, one thief, double ele, if you add a warrior as your fifth member of that party you increase the team’s overall DPS by 23%.

So in the wrong hands (I would contend in most hands), the DPS meter will indicate that warrior is under-powered. In reality, having the warrior adds another player’s worth of DPS and then some, according to this video. Before you accuse me of straw manning again, keep in mind that this is not conjecture; it’s based on years of WoW experience and extensive use of the Recount DPS meter.

DaveGan.8065:

And just like now, you can avoid all that filthy elitist toxicity by just creating your own group

There’s a subtext to this that I kind of hadn’t realized before. To pharaphrase slightly, it’s akin to saying “It’s not a problem that I’m awful to people, you can always stay away from me!” Again, technically true, but not heavy on the self-awareness.

Edited:

Not saying that Dave’s awful to people, I’m sure he’s great to run with, the point is that toxic behavior being avoidable doesn’t make it not toxic.

Bernie.8674:

So in the wrong hands (I would contend in most hands), the DPS meter will indicate that warrior is under-powered. In reality, having the warrior adds another player’s worth of DPS and then some, according to this video. Before you accuse me of straw manning again, keep in mind that this is not conjecture; it’s based on years of WoW experience and extensive use of the Recount DPS meter.

Here’s the thing about most DPS meters: They can track more than personal DPS.

We can also track party DPS and damage multipliers.

That warrior’s (and any player’s) non-direct damage contributions can also be tracked. How much vuln was he stacking on the boss? Did he drop his banners like he should have, and were they in range of the party (or was the party in range of the banners)? If playing PS, how much might did he give the party?

These are things that, while they can be used for evaluation by others, can also be used by the player him-/herself for improvement.

A lot of players know DPS meters aren’t simply about individual DPS, and most meters in most games track far more.

Bernie.8674:

My intent was closer to this:

• Zerkers kill some bosses before their abilities can trigger
• Stackers nullify some bosses’ game mechanics

Part of the misunderstanding might be that your intent was, “some bosses’ game mechanics,” but you said, “all bosses.”

Bernie.8674:

keep in mind that this is not conjecture; it’s based on years of WoW experience and extensive use of the Recount DPS meter.

It is very much conjecture that an element in an old-school raiding game would work the same, or have the same impact, in a casual non-raiding game. Not saying that I disagree with you about the impact, just that it is still conjecture.

Ashen.2907:

Bernie.8674:

My intent was closer to this:

• Zerkers kill some bosses before their abilities can trigger
• Stackers nullify some bosses’ game mechanics

Part of the misunderstanding might be that your intent was, “some bosses’ game mechanics,” but you said, “all bosses.”
—

I’m pretty sure ranging nullifies more mechanics than stacking.

Wethospu.6437:

Ashen.2907:

Bernie.8674:

My intent was closer to this:

• Zerkers kill some bosses before their abilities can trigger
• Stackers nullify some bosses’ game mechanics

Part of the misunderstanding might be that your intent was, “some bosses’ game mechanics,” but you said, “all bosses.”
—

I’m pretty sure ranging nullifies more mechanics than stacking.

Stepping in for a second here again.

Ranged dps does infact nuliffy a few boss mechanics. But many bosses have mechanics that punish ranged dspers. And the game punsihes ranged dps on its own as well.

Ranged dps by the nature of its balancing does less dps on its own than melee in 99% of situations. This has to do with it being balanced due to risk/reward calculations on A nets part.

A couple ranged weapons (Ranger longbow and mesmer greatsword) lose damage the closer they are to the target. Limiting there effective combat area greatly. Thisl tie in later.

Weapons such as the engineer rifle and grenade kit only reach there true effectiveness at close range. or in the case of grenade kits against a very large number of enemies. This limits there effective combat range in the opposite direction.

These weapons as well as the ranger shortbow,axe MH,Axe OH. Warrior Rifle and others all have “strike zones” similar in the case of melee units but a ranged weapons strike zones are generally much more specific. The ranger shortbow can only obtain max dps when behind a target. The ranger longbow only when the target is far away. The axe only when it can bounce between one target to a second and back to the first while still being in nearly melee range for splitblade attack.

This is all not taking into account. Constant monitoring of distance…High likelyhood of attracting adds… Distance from party members…etc…

Ranged players often have to go as glass as possible to even come close to a melee dpsers setup in both there traits and gear and still come up short because of the nature of boon sharing and the limited range of such abilities. Which further limits a ranged players effective strike zone. If they cant self might…there probably SOL.

These are just some of the games natural ways of nuetralizing the inherent strength of ranged playstyles in order to keep them under control.

Then we go into boss specific ones. Everyone remembers the spider queen. It used to be she only shot her heavy hitting poison cloud at ranged players. Players beyond x range. She was altered due to abuse of the stack method negating this mechanic. But her original mechanic still applies. Also her arena isnt really large enough to accommodate free movement of the Ranger Longbow and Mesmer Greatsword.

Some bosses will fixate on a specific target for long periods of time. Lupicus for example is a good example of this. Often chasing down a specific player during his life drain phase. This is alternatingly terrifying and annoying for ranged players. As he chases down a specific player the ranged players effective strike zone moves. Meaning hte player has to move very rapidly to deal with it. As ranged weapons only rarely have gap closers. They either have to use a utility to increase there speed to stay in there ideal range. Or risk losing damage even further behind hte more mobile melee weapons.

Other bosses such as hte charr boss in the aetherpath of TA will negate ranged combat almost entirely. Putting up a reflective wall at the end of his spin around him. cages players inside with him and having any outside attacks nulified. Again. Limiting or even destroying a ranged weapons effective strike zone. Im sure I dont need to remind any fractal runners of hte molten twins. When the beserker dies first his allie puts up a cage effect. Punishing any that leave. This takes away the ONE advantage that ranged players DO have….Freedom of movement and direction. The ability to easily move out of the line of fire.

The reason why ranged players are ok with this is becuase we can have two weapons. Either taking a melee weapon for when our strike zone is destroyed. Or ad ifferent weapon with a different strike zone.

TlDR; Yes ranged combat nullifies a FEW mechanics. But they have alot of there own problems to deal with that more than compensate for that bonus.

I would estimate that a high range nullifies at least 50% of enemy attacks, perhaps even 75%. Add some movement and that number rises to 75% – 90%.

That’s not something I would call “a few”.

Wethospu.6437:

I would estimate that a high range nullifies at least 50% of enemy attacks, perhaps even 75%. Add some movement and that number rises to 75% – 90%.

That’s not something I would call “a few”.

They only nulify attacks if someone else has agro. Meaning there survival is dependent on the melee characters. You will have a hard time doing 5 ranged like we currently have 5 melee. Largely because MOST bosses movement speeds are higher htan a players. Also remember what I said. They have to go as squishy as even remotely possible. Often forgoing most defensive utilities in favor of ones to boost there damage further.

So when they DO get hit. Its gonna be kitten my melee characters I dont believe I have ever truly been one shot. But on a ranged character I can honestly say I have. And when a ranged player goes down on say….subject alpha. Its extremely unlikely that someone will get to them before the next dragons tooth takes them out.

Edit: And also remember what I said about strike zones. Most weapons wont be able to stay at high range…ever… Only the ranger longbow and greatsword mesmer benefit from high range. Each ranged weapon HAS to stay in its strike zone in order to be competitive. There is no choice.

With 5 ranged players if someone has the aggro everyone else is safe. That already nullifies mechanics for 80% of the group.

Wethospu.6437:

With 5 ranged players if someone has the aggro everyone else is safe. That already nullifies mechanics for 80% of the group.

I feel like your deliberately choosing to ignore the whole strike zone thing but okay. Here we go ill try to explain it AGAIN…

Say I have 3 longbow rangers and two shortbow rangers. This is my group of 5 Assumign tehy were attempting to duplicate the dps of a 5 man melee group they would be forced to take 5 bird or feline pets.

Now boss agro in GW2 is based off of two things primarily. Stats and proximity. With the exception of bosses that like to lock onto a single player (lupicus) Most bosses will chase down players in effective range. This effective range changes depending on what debuffs they have on them. A boss with cripple may go after a closer target than when the cripple wears off.

Now with 5 rangers odds are cripple will be on permanently. Assuming the three power rangers are in zerkers and the two shortbow rangers are in sinister (since they and the pets iwll be hte only applications of bleed they should still make there condis worth ticking)

This meens that the boss will decide to go after a closer target that fits its criteria. Next is the stats. Bosses naturaly tend to gravitate towards targets with high toughness and then high vitality. In this scenario the rangers even in zerk will have more toughness AND vitality than there pets. Guaranteeing that the boss will chase after the shortbow rangers.

Immediatly any hope to match a melee groups damage dissapears. The two shortbow rangers HAVE to be behind the target for there shortbow one to apply bleed. AND they have to be fairly close to the target so they can get the boss with all 5 shots of the poison volley skill. So now there in a very dangerous position. They have agro..There close to the boss..and there losing dps VERY rapidly. The shortbow ranger with agro may choose to swap to a sword dagger setup to oftank the boss for the other. But this is a 5 ranged scenario so well ignore that possibility for now.

One shortbow ranger begins to kite the boss. The other begins to move behind him. The first ranger is losing dps shooting into the bosses front. The other lost dps by being forced to move around him but is now adjusting.

The three power rangers might be in trouble though. There constantly staggering in attemtping to stay in there 150 range “sweetspot” for there damage. Past the range of there knockback shot. But not so far away there out of range of there LRS. This is costing htem damage and positioning. Now that one shortbow ranger is forcing the entire group to move with him as he attempts to kite a boss that is naturally faster than him. It gets even worse when he hits the wall of the arena and must move to the side. FURTHER reducing the other shortbow rangers dps as the boss turns. And forcing the longbow rangers to change direction. this is dangerous in fights where bosses produce area of effects that players HAVE to avoid. Further reducing ranged damage dealers dps as tehy leave there strike zones.

using this method. Yes a ranged group skilled enough with kiting and positioning may get by without a single down just as many melee groups do. HOWEVER. Itl be at a MASSIVELY slower pace. Increasing the likelyhood that something will happen to the shortbow ranger kiting. And in this situation there is almost no chance the others will be able to rez him.

Now if a ranger decided to bring a tank pet instead. That pet could hold hte boss fairly still. HOWEVER AGAIN were faced with a massive dps loss. And most pets cant take boss level damage for long. Even bears unless you take utility slots to improve htere survivability. which is yet MORE dps loss.

Get the picture? In order for a ranged player to come even REMOTELY close to a melee dpsers effectiveness in this game. They HAVE to maintain there strike zone 100% of the fight. Whihc REQUIRES a melee player.

With five equally bad melee players, boss would wipe them in 10 seconds which would be a pretty massive dps loss.

Wethospu.6437:

With five equally bad melee players, boss would wipe them in 10 seconds which would be a pretty massive dps loss.

Im sorry but it seems like you gave up here. When did hte conversation become about melee players. What do you meen by equally bad. Are you saying all five melee players are bad? 5 of ANY bad player will die very quickly. Be they melee or ranged so this sentence doesnt really have any weight to it. It feels like you simply gave up on refuting me and just said the first thing that came to your mind.

Besides. A playstyle simply cannot be judged by the worst among its group. Merely the best. And its a fact that the 5 best melee players in a group together WILL out perform the 5 best ranged players in this game. Simply due to the shear number of things stacked against ranged players.

To expand. Lets assume the 5 ranged players WERE bad. The shortbow ranger with agro will die first. Then the other shortbow ranger will die very quickly after. Becuase they cant handle kiting effectively and make simple mistakes like dodging to create distance leaving htem nothing to dodge an aoe with. The three longbow rangers will die within the next minute due to similar mistakes.

Infact assuming that there actual BAD players then even if they start in there ideal areas they will probably lose one of hte longbow rangers to the first aoe. Just to how squishy a longbow ranger HAS to be.

I wish I could just turn numbers off, it’s an interface option in every other game.

I think it says quite a bit when you hear “this isn’t working, let’s range it instead” all the time and never “this isn’t working, let’s melee it”.

For starters, with range you have immobilize, cripple, and “glitch” spots.

Shadelang.3012:

Wethospu.6437:

With five equally bad melee players, boss would wipe them in 10 seconds which would be a pretty massive dps loss.

Im sorry but it seems like you gave up here. When did hte conversation become about melee players. What do you meen by equally bad. Are you saying all five melee players are bad? 5 of ANY bad player will die very quickly. Be they melee or ranged so this sentence doesnt really have any weight to it. It feels like you simply gave up on refuting me and just said the first thing that came to your mind.

Besides. A playstyle simply cannot be judged by the worst among its group. Merely the best. And its a fact that the 5 best melee players in a group together WILL out perform the 5 best ranged players in this game. Simply due to the shear number of things stacked against ranged players.

To expand. Lets assume the 5 ranged players WERE bad. The shortbow ranger with agro will die first. Then the other shortbow ranger will die very quickly after. Becuase they cant handle kiting effectively and make simple mistakes like dodging to create distance leaving htem nothing to dodge an aoe with. The three longbow rangers will die within the next minute due to similar mistakes.

Infact assuming that there actual BAD players then even if they start in there ideal areas they will probably lose one of hte longbow rangers to the first aoe. Just to how squishy a longbow ranger HAS to be.

5 bad melee players would wipe fast. 5 bad ranged players would most likely still be able to succeed. Or at the very least last considerably longer. I think you are overestimating the danger of bosses against ranged players.

Most boss attacks are not ranged or they are easily side stepped/avoided at range. Kiting is incredibly easy. The only boss that is hard to kite is mossman and thats only really when he has loads of wolf adds chasing you at the same time. I cant think of any others that stand out. Especially as many others are quite low on threat to melee players (in terms of damage per hit or frequency of attacks). So they would be even easier while kiting.

Think of it this way. Even with bad kiting you are going to avoid a large number of attacks or spread out the time between when you might get hit. With this it becomes considerably easier to manage endurance or sustain yourself. You can see proof of this when you see some melee boss solos involve a lot of semi kiting to succeed.

DaveGan. Ill ignore the glitch spot thing for now because its largely a dishonest playstyle and one I personally dont approve of in any game for any reason.

Lets start with what you said first. You here more “This isn’t working,lets range it instead” comments partly becuase the vast majority of groups use melee as there first go to ability. This primarily happens to inexperienced full zerk groups where they havn’t learned the boss mechanics yet. This falls into my “don’t judge a playstyle by the worst” category. However ill go along with it for the sake of argument.

Ranged is the second option for the vast majority of boss fighters in this game. And I can honestly say I have NEVER heard a group say “lets range it”. I more often here one warrior cussing out another how he wasn’t stacked tight enough. The ONLY time ranged is prefered in this game by the majority of players is in fact during “glitch” spot encounters. (Which as I said. Are against the game rules…removed from the game regularly…and are rather disgusting to use. A player using them has completely given up on fighting the boss for one reason or another and simply cares only for a fake reward rather than the enjoyment of actually fighting something and learning how to beat it. Id even go so far as to say that those that use these methods regularly aren’t even gamers.)

Entertaining moments aside. This leaves us with immobilize and cripple and ill even throw in chill.

Nearly all bosses are resistant to CCs. Most of extremely reduced durations for slowing CCs. Nearly all bosses have higher than average movement speed. And some bosses are immune to certain conditions entirely.

So what?

Cripple usually brings most bosses to just below average run speed. Meaning its enough for a melee to temporarily get away from a boss. HOWEVER. Many bosses also have ranged attacks. In a 5 ranged party. These will be used quite often. often directly on there internal cooldowns. these attacks often hit significantly harder than melee attacks or have a built in CC. Slowing down the player A player with cripple is usually mUCH slower than a boss with cripple. Meaning that the boss will quickly be on him and will likely kill him assuming the ranged player has also been dodging ambient attacks as well.

Attacks that apply cripple also often have less than stellar damage. Further reducing dps making the ranged player more inneficient.

Immobilize. Immobilize is very difficult to keep on a boss. Its duration is MASSIVELY reduced. Its also very difficult to find on a ranged weapon. I infanct believe that engineer rifle and warrior longbow are the only instances of such. Note that niether has access to cripple. The only cc that doesnt suffer from reduced effectiveness on a boss.

ALSO. The engineer rifle requires you to be close to the target to make proper use of rifle 3 and rifle 5. its primary burst skills.

And warrior longbow isn’’t designed to act as a primary weapon. And ITS effective range is highly decided by the ability to land its arcing shot. Which relies on holding a target in an area long enough for it to hit. OR being close to the target.

Id say that in the above situations these two dont truly qualify as ranged weapons. They certainly aren’t often used as such in game.

But what about chill? Thats even rarer from a ranged players perspective. Only necros and engis have easy access to chill without heavy investment. This is in the form of hte engineer grenade kit and necro staff 3. Necro DS2 does not qualify as it quickly places you in melee range.

Engineer grenade kit ALSO relies on you being close to teh target to properly land each individual nade on it. Something difficult to do if your close enough to grab aggro. The boss will likey be attacking you while your throwing nades.

Necro staff Id also say will never qualify as a dps weapon….ever….

Namely. The only way for a ranged player to EVER utilize what your talking about in a ranged playstyle. Will require significant investment in the form of utility skills (Meaning your losing a damage utility further weakening you behind the melee meta.) A different sigil (doing the same) Or even different traits (the exact same problem)

Yes it can be done. But it FURTHER puts you behind the melee groups. Weve established a SKILLED ranged group can kill nearly any boss if there careful even the ones designed to hamper them. But the only way to do it safely is to do many things that push them further and further away from there melee relatives.

Moving out of there strike zone for safety…to CC…to setup for there damaging skills….to recover from being damaged… All further reduce there damage in comparison to melees. Which is why a melee is STILL 100% necessary for the ranged playstyle to be at its most effective. And even then the meleers will outperform them in situations of high skill.

Let’s assume a 5 ranged party, and also assume this party isn’t full of idiots who can’t keep a boss crippled/chilled and kite said crippled/chilled boss or otherwise use movement intelligently. How about we just take all of the (land) fractal bosses as an example.

Boss (Fractal) – Percent of attacks nullified by ranging

Champion Grawl Shaman (Volcanic) – 66%

Legendary Imbued Shaman (Volcanic) – 50%. Of the remaining 50%, 25% become threatening only to a single player instead of 5 players, and 25% go from “hard to avoid” to “very easy to avoid, although not always avoidable”. I’m still going to call this 50%, despite how misleading calling it 50% happens to be.

Dulfy (Urban Battlegrounds) – 50%

Captain Ashym (Urban Battlegrounds) – 66% on Sword (Practically 100%… Fiery block really shouldn’t count), 33% on Staff (rest made much less threatening to whole party), 20% on FGS (rest made much less threatening to whole party). I’m going to call this 40% (the average of the above 3 phases) even though melee is moderately difficult and range is a complete and utter joke of a snoozefest by comparison.

Rabsovich (Dredge) – 50%

Rampaging Ice Elemental (Dredge) – 100%

Dredge Powersuit (Dredge) – 80%. With the remaining 20% never killing anyone who is ranging, isn’t completely kittened, and has proper AR; really should just use 100% but I’m only using 80%.

Rabbit (Harpy) – 100%

Bandit (Harpy) – 100%

Fire Shaman (Harpy) – 33%. Should really be 66% because the leap is enough of a joke that you can just run away (something you’re doing practically 100% of the time you’re ranging) and avoid it.

Ettin (Harpy) – 75%. This feels extremely wrong to not just say 100%, because the single ranged attack can be sidestepped 100% of the time at moderate range, dodged 100% of the time with even greater ease than sidestepping, and it has a 33 second cooldown.

Old Tom (Harpy) – 100% (not a joke…). But I’ll go with a mere 50%, with the remaining 50% being much less threatening at range.

Snuggles (Harpy) – 50%

Mr. Mittens (Harpy) – 66%

Professor Mew (Harpy) – 100%

Baron Von Scrufflebutt (Harpy) – 33%. Remaining 66% pretty easy to avoid at range, and much less threatening.

Raving Asura (Harpy) – 0%

Subject 6 (Reactor) – 66%

Anomaly (Reactor) – 0% (But hey, ranging is still a lot easier)

Mossman (Swamp) – ???. A bit hard to reliably determine. Obviously much less threatening when not in melee.

Bloomhunger (Swamp) – 0%. A complete joke, so I won’t be including him in my average.

Shamann Lornarr Dragonseeker (Snowblind) – 100%

Molten Effigy (Molten Duo) – 33%. Firestorm much less threatening at range. Fireball also much less threatening. A joke to range.

Molten Berserker (Molten Duo) – ???. A bit hard to reliably determine. Obviously much less threatening when not in melee.

Molten Firestorm (Molten Duo) – 0%. Kind of a joke, so I won’t be including in the average.

Mai Trin (Mai Trin) – 66%. 16% trivial to avoid at range.

Weapons Test Engineer (Molten Furnace) – 40%. Another 40% almost totally trivialized at range; remaining 20% totally trivial at any range.

Archdiviner – First (Cliffside) – 60% (wells are such a joke when everyone is spread out and ranging I’m including them here). Remaining attacks pretty trivial to deal with while at range.

Archdiviner – Second, Phase 1 (Cliffside) – 100%
Archdiviner – Second, Phase 1 (Cliffside) – 50%. I’d personally go as high as 75%, because if you do get pulled it’s pretty obvious what’s coming next and that you need to evade, and if you’re ranging and don’t get pulled you can just keep ranging, but hey, I’ll use 50%.

Frizz (Atherblade) – I’ll go with 33%. One attack is melee only. Of the other two attacks, one is irreverent at range but relevant at melee, and the other is irrelevant at melee but relevant (and extremely easy to dodge) at range.

So the average I get (and remember, I’m being pretty conservative here… I even counted shield blocks that apply trivial burning if you attack through them, which are super telegraphed, an ‘attack’ that hits both melee and ranged players) is 61% of all attacks are nullified just by ranging. That’s pretty huge.

If I am less conservative (and IMO a bit more accurate) and look just at attacks that are going to be threatening enough to cause death to someone who’s ranging, is capable of using movement, isn’t too dumb to use antiprojectile skills, and can dodge obvious projectiles/other attacks, I get 86%.

I’d say Wethospu’s estimates were pretty accurate. I was going to do this for every dungeon boss too, but I imagine I’d find a similar pattern, and honestly this took way more time than I anticipated it would.

spoj.9672:

Shadelang.3012:

Wethospu.6437:

With five equally bad melee players, boss would wipe them in 10 seconds which would be a pretty massive dps loss.

Im sorry but it seems like you gave up here. When did hte conversation become about melee players. What do you meen by equally bad. Are you saying all five melee players are bad? 5 of ANY bad player will die very quickly. Be they melee or ranged so this sentence doesnt really have any weight to it. It feels like you simply gave up on refuting me and just said the first thing that came to your mind.

Besides. A playstyle simply cannot be judged by the worst among its group. Merely the best. And its a fact that the 5 best melee players in a group together WILL out perform the 5 best ranged players in this game. Simply due to the shear number of things stacked against ranged players.

To expand. Lets assume the 5 ranged players WERE bad. The shortbow ranger with agro will die first. Then the other shortbow ranger will die very quickly after. Becuase they cant handle kiting effectively and make simple mistakes like dodging to create distance leaving htem nothing to dodge an aoe with. The three longbow rangers will die within the next minute due to similar mistakes.

Infact assuming that there actual BAD players then even if they start in there ideal areas they will probably lose one of hte longbow rangers to the first aoe. Just to how squishy a longbow ranger HAS to be.

5 bad melee players would wipe fast. 5 bad ranged players would most likely still be able to succeed. Or at the very least last considerably longer. I think you are overestimating the danger of bosses against ranged players.

Most boss attacks are not ranged or they are easily side stepped/avoided at range. Kiting is incredibly easy. The only boss that is hard to kite is mossman and thats only really when he has loads of wolf adds chasing you at the same time. I cant think of any others that stand out. Especially as many others are quite low on threat to melee players (in terms of damage per hit or frequency of attacks). So they would be even easier while kiting.

Think of it this way. Even with bad kiting you are going to avoid a large number of attacks or spread out the time between when you might get hit. With this it becomes considerably easier to manage endurance or sustain yourself. You can see proof of this when you see some melee boss solos involve a lot of semi kiting to succeed.

Spoj. What the discussion was about though was the potential fully skilled ranged combatants in comparison to fully skilled melee combatants in a boss fight. YES if there are 5 bad melees they will die faster. But that is simply due to proximity. Nothing else. In the scenario I put for the shortbow rangers will likely die very quickly if tehy attempt to play optimally without the skill to do so. The longbow rangers have the highest chance of survival. Most likely thought it will take them MUCH longer to complete the fight. As it will be 100% impossible for them to enter there strike zone they WILL suffer from reduced damage for the entire duration of the remaining fight. Meaning more time for them to kitten up get backed into a corner or run out of dodges and die.

Still though. As I said before we cannot judge a playstyle on the worst of its line but along the highest potential of its line. its here where ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time in 99.9999% of situations 5 melee groups WILL have an advantage over 5 ranged groups.

Edit; and thats not even mentioning hte MASSIVE dps loss from there pets all being dead when the pet turned around and quickly kills them. To use tankier pets OR to bring utilities that improve there survival would simply reduce there damage even further

@ Zui. YES I already stated that being at ranged WILL protect you from many boss mechanics. Ive ALSO stated the MANY drawbacks to a full ranged group. You can keep posting all day long how many mechanics 5 range groups avoid. That does NOTHING to deny that ranged dpsers CANNOT maintaint here strike zones except in specific circumstances. One of which is a boss that is being held completely still and facing in specific directions…next to other targets….in certain proximity to and away from..etc..etc…etc..etc..

Edit :The longer there out of theres trike zones. The lower there dps falls. The more dps they lose hte longer hte fight lasts. The longer the fight lasts the more likely that one of the attacks they DO get affected by wacks them or that hte boss breaks free of CC long enough to kill one of them creating MORE dps loss. And the further and further they fall behind there melee counterparts.

Shadelang.3012:

The ONLY time ranged is prefered in this game by the majority of players is in fact during “glitch” spot encounters.

Dredge Powersuit? Rampaging Ice Elemental? Both Archdiviner fights? Jade Maw (tentacles)?

To even suggest that the first two can be meleed in a PUG group will either get people to suggest that you’re an idiot, that melee isn’t a thing for those bosses, immediately kicked from the group, or a group that tries it, wipes almost immediately, and concludes it melee is virtually impossible to pull off.

Oh, and note how none of them have any “glitch” spots.

@shadelang

When did you start playing? Because ranging was the go to tactic for pugs for about a year. Its only more recently that even casual pugs have adopted meta strategies and learnt to melee most encounters. We used to get kicked for meleeing lupi because the norm in pugs was to range and kite him around the room.

Kill speed is irrelevant in this discussion as the whole arguement of range vs melee is that melee is more dps but harder. And range is simply easier seeing as it nullifies over 50% of attacks. x)

Shadelang.3012:

@ Zui. YES I already stated that being at ranged WILL protect you from many boss mechanics. Ive ALSO stated the MANY drawbacks to a full ranged group. You can keep posting all day long how many mechanics 5 range groups avoid. That does NOTHING to deny that ranged dpsers CANNOT maintaint here strike zones except in specific circumstances. One of which is a boss that is being held completely still and facing in specific directions…next to other targets….in certain proximity to and away from..etc..etc…etc..etc..

There are only 3 weapons with such specific strike zones. Unless im forgetting one. They are mesmer greatsword, ranger longbow and ranger shortbow. Both mes gs and ranger lb are pretty easy to maintain max dps. The only times that would be hard is if they had aggro. But thats unlikely if they are staying at max range to begin with. Besides its only the auto attacks which are effected. And the auto attacks of those weapons arent exactly the best source of damage on those weapons.

spoj.9672:

@shadelang

When did you start playing? Because ranging was the go to tactic for pugs for about a year. Its only more recently that even casual pugs have adopted meta strategies and learnt to melee most encounters. We used to get kicked for meleeing lupi because the norm in pugs was to range and kite him around the room.

Kill speed is irrelevant in this discussion as the whole arguement of range vs melee is that melee is more dps but harder. And range is simply easier seeing as it nullifies over 50% of attacks. x)

Spoj I started playing during the beggining of the open beta.

During hte early stage of hte game range was the go to method because people hadn’t discovered the melee meta builds quite yet. Nor was knowledge of proper field blasting…mightsharing…and boonswapping common yet. In other words. People weren’t aware that there was an easier method provided by the game yet that simply took some getting used to. NOW however its second nature to nearly every mildly experienced dungeon runner. Stacking started when players realized there were locations that took large amounts of risk out of the engagement. I already posted earlier in the thread about how the strenghts given to full melee groups far outweigh the risks.

Kill speed is very relevant to the discussion as it is the only thing valued in the dungeon community today. Slowing down the dungeon run WILL get you kicked today in many groups. As a ranged player this happens to me quite often even in situations where im actively helping my group at every turn. As the ranged player is easiest person to target for a slow kill time.

As I said earlier in the thread. The Pros of melee stacking far outweigh the cons…easily so in fact. The simple ability of being able to instantly revive a downed is a VERY good reason to focus on melee. The condencing of boss aoes is another one. But thats something I have already stated and have no desire to type all over again.