Guild Wars 2

Terkov.4138:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That means that, yes, when you are in WvW shooting a guy from the walls with a longbow and you see a warrior running at the zerg with an axe, you’re actually hitting for more than he is.

What about our pet, wasting time on wall? The stupid bag of fur won’t help there, and even if it could, it’d die in few secs.

It wasn’t really worth sending them into the enemy force even when we could.

Hell, be happy if you can even stand on the walls. Tier 1 walls are an insta-death zone.

Terkov.4138:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That means that, yes, when you are in WvW shooting a guy from the walls with a longbow and you see a warrior running at the zerg with an axe, you’re actually hitting for more than he is.

What about our pet, wasting time on wall? The stupid bag of fur won’t help there, and even if it could, it’d die in few secs.

That was mostly hyperbole, you’re not always on the wall in a zerg v. zerg. Your pet will also probably still last longer than a warrior will. Pets tend to have pretty good health and armor, which is really the only thing that matters when the game is running at 3 FPS and there’s twenty things firing at you at any given time.

Chopps.5047:

Guang bro cant you get more dps out of 0/25/0/15/30 in a min/max ranger comp? I run 30/25/0/15/0 with companion’s might too (sigil of strength) to cap out 25 stack might on pet but…is that power well spent on the ranger or the pet? Interesing question if you ask me. Bc marks let you stack vuln BUT you could get that with 3 hunter’s shots, assuming you have 3 rangers on your squad.

The ranger will ALWAYS deal more than the pet. Pets deal about 20% of the damage of a DPS-specced ranger, so you’re looking at a boost of maybe 20% to the pet’s own damage (or 4% of your overall damage) in exchange for about 15% of your own damage from power, 10% from Steady Focus, 5% from Eagle Eye (if using Longbow) and 5% from Spotter.

Pet DPS works in PvP where dealing 2-3k/s is enough to kill a guy in a 1v1 provided you can outlast him, but from a pure DPS perspective, it’s pretty bad. Of course, it’s also basically free DPS, so I’m not complaining.

Shiren.9532:

GW2 is one of the few games where melee is clearly superior to ranged. In League of Legends (a game the GW2 devs naively claimed they intended to make combat similair to prior to game launch) there are both melee and ranged carries and there are no “melee is obviously better than ranged” issues. If they can’t balance melee and ranged to be equally viable (or even closely) without gimping ranged DPS, they have no business making a game with ranged combat (the same goes for the pet unfortunately).

I’m surprised few people haven’t quoted this post more, because it seems so very accurate. It is absolutely possible to have melee and ranged attacks deal similar DPS without upending balance, and other games have done it.

Something to keep in mind is that damage is only one element of the equation. I think one way to balance ranged/melee while keeping them similar in overall damage would be that firing ranged weapons while moving substantially decreases their accuracy (or is just not possible in certain cases, since you wouldn’t be able to aim if you were constantly running). However, firing a ranged weapon stationary will end up providing the same, and possibility more, damage potential as a melee weapon (more time to aim = better shot). I think this makes sense from both a logic/balance perspective.