Haha yes this does look familiarRE: how useful are melee classes in this game.
Guild Wars 2
- Thread starter bushmins
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Haha yes this does look familiar
Doesnt to me, notice all the green portals in this video, and me dying to the mobs from one of them, yet being able to stand right next to the boss and spam skills for the rest of the fight:
Exactly the same thing happened everytime I fought him.
It really is so rhetorically lazy to constantly infer from our critical discussion of the game that we are trolling. One minute we are "easy WoW noobs", the next minute we are "trolling". Please, give it a rest! It sidetracks the discussion into personal ad hominem rubbish and doesn't profit the discussion at all. Do we really need 2 pages of credibility-establishing every time someone wants to make a point that isn't the standard-fare applause? Many other people are vocalising the same things as me (see above). Are they trolls too?
I'm saying just as many positive/helpful things about this game as I am discussing possible negatives. I've just been invited by Gaile Grey to help give constructive feedback and test more of the game - personally handpicked from the official forums, ffs. Why are you still going on about me being a troll? Grow up and take off the fanboy specs, please. You are retarding the discussion with your constant personal inferences.
There's a simple solution for melee's current lacking: stack melee items with vitality/stamina/health-pooling stats and make ranged weapons focus more on crits and power and the like. Very simple way to balance out melee/ranged gameplay using itemization. Make ranged classes more vulnerable to melee attacks and give the melee classes - despite them not conforming to a 'tank' archetype - a bit more of a healthpool.
I just provided a link in a follow-up post to one of the most viewed recent threads in the official Suggestions forum with 2-3 pages of people chiming in with the sentiment. How am I trolling? Honestly get a grip and discuss things properly.
I'm quite tired of having to bat off constant accusations of being a noob/WoW player/troll every single time I want to discuss a possibly negative aspect. This is a 'discussion' thread, not explicitly-stated as a 'praise' thread. Stop being so sensitive and dragging the talk down to poster vs. poster personality wars instead of talking about the point at hand. It's tiring and irksome.
I'm quite tired of having to bat off constant accusations of being a noob/WoW player/troll every single time I want to discuss a possibly negative aspect. This is a 'discussion' thread, not explicitly-stated as a 'praise' thread. Stop being so sensitive and dragging the talk down to poster vs. poster personality wars instead of talking about the point at hand. It's tiring and irksome.
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Because you making up false information to try and back up your claims.
Lets make one thing clear again:
MELEE IS WEAK, INEFFECTIVE AND LESS DESIRABLE TO USE THAN RANGED IN GW2 AT THIS POINT IN THE GAME
Ok, we understand that, I understand that and have agreed with it. However your summary of boss fights is 100% inaccurate. Please tell me how did you manage to fight the opening earth elemental boss and not notice all the spawns that occur in the 'ranged area' of your picture easily killing the casters? How did you fight the shadow behemoth and not see a single one of the green portals popping aatxes and shades all over the 'ranged area' and killing off the people standing there?
When you stand in melee range of these bosses, I found that I survived more (Thief with a dagger fighting the elemental boss, easy. Elly stood right next to the shadow behemoth, easy).
Making stuff up to try and further prove an already proven point is pointless. For general solo play and fighting veteran mobs, melee is entirely useless. It doesnt seem to be at all for the DE bosses though.
Then make your point without repeating it in everysingle post you make, and without making up silly inaccurate pictures.
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I wouldn't mind as long as it didn't effect pvp. It's pretty balanced in Structured PVP at the moment with all classes having their Pros and Cons.
It's a lot harder keeping things equal in WvWvW and PVE though as whatever you do will directly impact the PVP Battlegrounds which they are trying to make competitive.
I have to say that Warriors/Thiefs in Battlegrounds have no problems at all, they are very balanced in that respect so if you did any changes that gave them more surivability it would directly imbalance them.
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On my warrior i use my warhammers mostly.. I always have the rifle ready but I love jumping into the battle with my stuns and knockbacks.
In an event with groups of 5-6 centaurs running in it is a lot of fun to charge in and use the AOE knockback skill.. it is very effective.. Also the AOE damage skill has a very big range so will still hit in range of everything you knocked back. They will have a significant amount of damaged done to them but from then on you are just hoping other people are actually going to help or you are dead.
In an event with groups of 5-6 centaurs running in it is a lot of fun to charge in and use the AOE knockback skill.. it is very effective.. Also the AOE damage skill has a very big range so will still hit in range of everything you knocked back. They will have a significant amount of damaged done to them but from then on you are just hoping other people are actually going to help or you are dead.
He might have drawn a "silly little picture", but for a lot of the time (for me anyway) it rang true when fighting a boss. Within melee range, most of the time you just cannot see what is going on.
Fighting a giant spider in the human starting area:
There wasn't a problem with dying here admittedly, but I couldn't see what was happening, and there was no way I would have been able to dodge if it was needed.
From the end of beta:
Here, that diagram was quite accurate. Melee fighters died a lot, and you couldn't see what was going on.
I kept trying to go close range probably a bit more than most people in the area, resulting in:
By the end, everybody was using ranged weapons (ok, apart from the person with the double handed sword who is standing at the back anyway). Now, I loved melee in PvP (and for most of the time actually), but get in a medium/large group, and you're just totally blind. That silly little picture of Inkursion's, while not true all of the time, was for me annoyingly accurate for a significant proportion of combat.
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Yeah, in this sense it does make more sense to go a traditional route and have separately itemized sets of gear for PvE and PvP. I really don't see how you can create a 'one size fits all' to solve all problems. PvE gear just needs more hp pooling for melee-focussed classes.
Oh and of course the complementary changes need to be made to the camera-options (zoom and FOV) so that people up-close in the fray can actually assess just wtf is going on
Yeah, in this sense it does make more sense to go a traditional route and have separately itemized sets of gear for PvE and PvP. I really don't see how you can create a 'one size fits all' to solve all problems. PvE gear just needs more hp pooling for melee-focussed classes.
Oh and of course the complementary changes need to be made to the camera-options (zoom and FOV) so that people up-close in the fray can actually assess just wtf is going on
If they done it that way it would be fine in my eyes, having a PVE set with increased stats for WvW and PVE and a seperate set for the competitive PVP.
I do feel melee needs a bit of love in PVE, maybe it gets better at higher levels. It's not the damage they do which is the problem, it's the damage they take from the mobs.
In an event with groups of 5-6 centaurs running in it is a lot of fun to charge in and use the AOE knockback skill.. it is very effective.. Also the AOE damage skill has a very big range so will still hit in range of everything you knocked back. They will have a significant amount of damaged done to them but from then on you are just hoping other people are actually going to help or you are dead.
So:
1) Charge in with AoE knockback skill
2) Hit foes while they are down
3) When they get up, dodge back and equip rifle
4) Shoot them off while straffing
Learning to play normally helps more than all the complaints I say in the the thread inkursion linked such as:
'melee is useless because I cant even hold agro from 5 mobs at a time'
'how am I meant to know when to dodge or block with my blocking skills'
Theres actually a blocking training range in one of the cities too, I tried in on my elementalist and learned how to block incoming attacks
Im beginning to see a trend, explaining why I ended up never playing with any melee classes in GW1 as well, its not that class thats flawed, its the players with leeroy mentality.
The particle effects are the issue, not whether or not melee are more or less survivable during the boss fights than ranged.
Also I found this post on the guru forums:
So most complaints are simply players who havnt learned to play their class yet within such a short time frame as a 2 day beta. You cant really expect them to, but just because melee players dont seem to understand how to dodge and / or use their CCs yet doesnt mean that melee is weak at this point.
You played for 2 days, and probably only reached around level 20 max. This wasnt enough time to yet fully learn how to play your class.
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Caporegime
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RE: how useful are melee classes in this game.
That is pretty much how WOW, rift etc etc all are like so what is your point?
Bhavv I think it's simply lazy reasoning to dismiss a pretty widespread complaint as people being "Leeroy's" or somehow lower-skilled than you. Maybe - just maybe - they are making a valid complaint? Perhaps it is easier to be ranged than melee, quite simply? For no reasons to do with their personal ability or intelligence? Just a thought. You seem awfully hung up on establishing your high-skill superiority over the mere whiners and trolls of the world. Such unfortunates!
I've played melee classes all my life in MMO's and have done very well with them in PvE and PvP. However a system simply isn't working when all melee classes - in absence of a tank archetype - can be killed in 2/3 hits, whereas ranged obviously have the benefit of being out of the immediate auto-attack damage of most boss mobs (special attacks and abilities/spawns notwithstanding). Learning to dodge and how to maneuver around is certainly part of it, yes, and it is certainly made worse by the absolutely terrible particle-effect overload and rubbish camera settings... but there is a fundamental difference in difficulty when you give ranged and melee the same health pools, but put melee in the potential danger-zone 5x as much and thus make them far more vulnerable.
I've played melee classes all my life in MMO's and have done very well with them in PvE and PvP. However a system simply isn't working when all melee classes - in absence of a tank archetype - can be killed in 2/3 hits, whereas ranged obviously have the benefit of being out of the immediate auto-attack damage of most boss mobs (special attacks and abilities/spawns notwithstanding). Learning to dodge and how to maneuver around is certainly part of it, yes, and it is certainly made worse by the absolutely terrible particle-effect overload and rubbish camera settings... but there is a fundamental difference in difficulty when you give ranged and melee the same health pools, but put melee in the potential danger-zone 5x as much and thus make them far more vulnerable.
So:
1) Charge in with AoE knockback skill
2) Hit foes while they are down
3) When they get up, dodge back and equip rifle
4) Shoot them off while straffing
Learning to play normally helps more than all the complaints I say in the the thread inkursion linked such as:
'melee is useless because I cant even hold agro from 5 mobs at a time'
'how am I meant to know when to dodge or block with my blocking skills'
Theres actually a blocking training range in one of the cities too, I tried in on my elementalist and learned how to block incoming attacks
Im beginning to see a trend, explaining why I ended up never playing with any melee classes in GW1 as well, its not that class thats flawed, its the players with leeroy mentality.
The rifle is just not all that effective when faced with 6 centaurs and evading them is not exactly going to keep you alive.. no matter what you will always rely on others in this situation. It ends up being better to stick with the hammer because almost every hit is AOE. I have 2 stuns also which buys me more time.
Really if you want to do the damage you are capable of you have to take risks in events with lots of people.
On your own you do play differently and would need to get out of there and go ranged some but you wouldnt take on a pack of 6 alone.
Can't speak definitively for RIFT but I can certainly say that in WoW is it clear what is going on in a boss-fight and melee classes can change positions or run away VERY easily when the time needs be. You only die in melee boss fights in WoW if you make a forced error / player mistake. In GW2 the visual and audio information simply is not there so you can't make these on-the-fly changes and adaptations to react to a boss-fight: animations are vague and indistinct, visual pollution clutters everything, and the audio cues are non-existent.
Furthermore in WoW the up-close melee classes normally have the gear and talents for increased survivability over the ranged-DPS classes.
Have you ever done a raid boss on WoW? It's most certainly not like that.
They're (melee) often challenging for top DPS spots on a lot of bosses and have done for years. Playing melee puts more emphasis on movement and positioning, that's all.