Guild Wars 2

If you look at the meta currently, things that are dominating are builds with range.

D/D ele, which currently has more than 2x the range of melee.

Thief has ports which effectively make them ranged melee.

Engineers are almost competely ranged, and their melee abilities are supplemented with a pull.

Necro is mostly ranged, except for the dagger set on the power build.

Ranger is self explanatory even though it’s not exactly meta, even on power ranger the offset is typically used for survival until you can get back into longbow. Also, notice that ranger greatsword range is greater than regular melee.

Mesmer meta builds are obviously ranged.

Guardian seems to be falling out of the meta, perhaps because of it’s lack of a strong ranged option. DPS guard is strong in 1v1 scenarios because of it’s 20k or so healing chains, but 1v1 is not conquest.

Warrior has also been struggling in the meta (possibly due to it being heavily melee), the recent shout build is even very ranged especially it’s ranged support.

Ranging and LoSing is currently noticeably superior to melee, and it feels imbalanced, and you can see it in the meta. I think many people would like more viable melee options, but again the strength of ranging and LoSing simply doesn’t allow for it.

I think its because of AoE damage that melee looks weak. In gw1 for exemple there was not much AoE damage besides from staff elementalist so both melee and ranged was stong . In this game everything has AoE cleave which either forces you to be ranged DPS or have enough sustain to survive in melee.

Also D/P thief counters most pure melee specs. The blind uptime is impossible to counter without AoE damage , ranged options or AI.

Well, I play every class and maintain a decent position on the leaderboards I think. I’ve never done that in any game, so i think right now the classes are relatively balanced.

would it hurt the ranged professions if more obstacles are placed near the capture points?

some maps like legacy of foefire is very ranged profession friendly as the capture points are mostly open fields with not much cover to hide against ranged attacks.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

would it hurt the ranged professions if more obstacles are placed near the capture points?

some maps like legacy of foefire is very ranged profession friendly as the capture points are mostly open fields with not much cover to hide against ranged attacks.

Would actually agree with this.

Placing some pillars in there could help quite a bit.

Another thing that could help allot is looking at how melee specs actually can stay in melee.

Looking at warriors they have cripples, knock downs, leaps, charge effects, stuns in abundance.
A couple of the leaps/charge effects could be looked at & have their Cd’s adjusted or how far they move adjusted.

Thieves have lots of ports & stealth. They also have some cripples if you go for main hand sword. Perhaps they could add a cripple onto dagger somewhere? (maybe a short duration 1 second one on heartseeker)

Guardians have, well they have Judges Intervention on a 45 second CD (which is also their stun break). They also have a short range port on a 10 second Cd with the sword & a moderate leap on a 15 second CD with the greatsword.
They have no cripples to speak of, the only weapon they have that can chill is hammer when traited (which has no mobility but can immobilize).

So maybe guardians could have a short duration (say 3 second) cripple added on to the sword number 2 & greatsword leap.

If only rangers had a decent secondary option to heal (like a strong pet heal you can control, not 750hp from fern hound), so rangers could actually play full melee, then you’d see more melee rangers. Which would be nice, but annoying (zerk quickness sword AA, constant 2, 5-3k hits every 0.5 sec)

There’s lots of ways to make melee more viable. I just wanted to point out how significant the disparity is in risk reward between melee and range currently.

Not only is range lower risk, but there’s a lot that’s also AoE. And the range AoE’s are often bigger than melee AoE.

I would agree that there is currently no point in going melee from a ranged perspective.

why run melee when you can spam low cost massive aoe onpoint
why run melee when you can sit safely on some spot and pew pew while avoiding all that massive aoe spam

it would be nice if aoe came at high costs and wouldn’t be as powerful as single target spells
it would be also nice if ranged attacks had some kind of requerements as well like melee does

Yeah I agree with this, and I think aoe spam is the culprit. It was something devs talked about changing just after launch, but never did.

Hopefully additional game modes outside of conquest (which naturally promotes AoE) will swing builds. And with the wishful thinking of broader weapon access among professions, the support for those builds will be there.

why going melee if you can just spam nades?

#esports

As others have said it is the aoe that is the problem. Most classes can close the gap but then your opponent just farts aoe all over the floor and you take as much damage as they do.

I agree with OP.

As people learn how to play and kite around points, melee becomes less powerful.

Low level melee is borderline OP; high level melee is underpowered.

I’d actually argue that d/d ele is technically as close as we have gotten to a viable full melee spec in quite some time.

Melee specs need to be balanced by having higher damage, more upfront healing/sustain, and generally a bit more team support. It’s hard to do this though with Guild Wars 2 system, because if you buff a melee set a lot, it will immediately also get paired with the other strongest ranged set (example: hambow).

I feel like warrior is the best example of a class which should be able to go full melee without losing much effectiveness. Longbow is an absolute staple on that class right now when it really shouldn’t be.

maybe some of the current builds dont really allow for one to be full melee…

warriors with the right weapons and build can be mobile, cc, and deal good damage. personally i dont think Hambow or Shoutbow really bring out the best a warrior has to offer.
rangers are another under rated melee class. full of blocks, evades, condi, and ok damage. the only thing they lack is ability to takes lots of damage, but with the right build and skills they can be decently tankey.

dont get me wrong tho i definitely agree there is WAY TOO MUCH aoe in this game!

I feel like warrior is the best example of a class which should be able to go full melee without losing much effectiveness. Longbow is an absolute staple on that class right now when it really shouldn’t be.
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This /15 char

There is definitely more than one way to look at this.

Maybe melee isn’t rewarding enough or maybe range is too rewarding.

Dustin.2793:

I feel like warrior is the best example of a class which should be able to go full melee without losing much effectiveness. Longbow is an absolute staple on that class right now when it really shouldn’t be.

This /15 char
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Longbow is the best choice for reliable condi removal due to cleansing ire safe proc compared to other weapons…and pin down, might from fire field + arcing arrow, blind….all those things make lb the best weapon for warriors and a must have for any spec, pretty much like sbow on thief…it’s just too good for not using it, expec in this random condispam meta. Problem with melee is that you don’t actually get benefits for going melee compared to aoe…a nade engi can deal indecent amount of dmg and condis just spamming nades from 1k range, same goes for staff celestial ele….mesmers and thieves are a different story since they MUST stay out of teamfights, getting into aoe spam is gonna rek you in seconds on a glass cannon (With no condi removal too like mesmer) but celestial bunkers being able to deal insane damage from range while alternating on point is terribly broken, ranged damage on bunkers gives them way too much survivability, if you watch ANY esl match you will see the usual nade spaming engi randomly throwing kitten on point 24/7, being able to survive forever when focused and ready to jump on point when someone needs backup holding it, also having nonsense cc on demand and if things start getting wrong you can just go for crate (I win button) and it’s gg. No wonder why the best cancer teams out there are running double engi…bunkers spamming nades while another bunker godmode ele standing on point cleaning all condis like if there’s no tomorrow (Compensating for engi’s only weakness that is heavy condi pressure)…esl is dominated by ele+engi combo, 2v2 finals were ele+engi vs ele+engi too….and the only ones not finding problems watching those are anet’s devs