Below is a post from Jon Peters on the GW2 forums. I have copied the entire post as there has been no clear indication as to how long the beta forum will remain accessible between test. A link to the dicussion thread can be found below.
Hey all. I wanted to talk about this a bit since it is a hot topic here and also on the internets. The intention is that both styles are viable. Certainly right now Melee is more difficult than ranged. There are some things we will try to do to address this, but I think the more you play you would find they are closer than you think.
First what’s already there:
1) Melee does more damage. Melee damage is simply higher than ranged damage across the board.
2) Melee has more control. With a few intentional exception Melee has a lot more control than ranged.What Melee needs:
1) defensive tools on more weapons, particularly on lower armor professions.
2) ai needs to favor Melee a bit less than it currently does.What else:
Finally because of the more action based nature of combat Melee needs to be taught better. Effective Melee requires skills that translate over from FPS games which are notoriously harder on casual players. You have to wasd to move, constantly aim with your mouse camera, and hit skills on 1-5.Some tips:
If you have learned any good Melee tips that you think we should pass on to newer players feel free to post them here. I’ll start with a few tips of my own.- If you don’t have mouse look on when using a skill you will turn to face. I sometimes let go of mouse look as I activate to help me aim through the chaos and then click it back down in between attacks.
- Melee has a lot of hard hitting skills and good setup. Utility skills Can really help set up big Melee attacks. Bulls charge on warrior, scorpion wire on thief, judges intervention on guardian.
- know when to run. No matter what you are not a tank. You have to move in and out avoiding damage. If you have to soak damage try and bring boons like Protection and Regeneration or conditions like Blindness and the very undervalued Weakness.
Thanks for reading this all. Rest assured we will keep working on this and just keep in mind the subtle differences in GW2 combat that take a while to sink in.
Jon
Source Thread: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Melee-vs-Ranged/page/1#po...
I'm really looking forward to the next BWE and getting more involved with melee combat. I didn't do a ton of it this past weekend.
"He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire" --Winston Churchill
I found melee fine in PvP, but it was a bit tricky in PvE. In PvP dealing damage faster than the enemy can heal is important and no-one is going to 1 shot you, but in PvE all that really matters is staying alive and eventually wearing down the enemy. Besides, all I had to do was spam skill 1 with my thief's bow and watch the arrows bounce between the enemies and hit skill 3 a couple of times whenever something was about to reach me or I could just spam skill 2 (If you detonate the cluster bomb as soon as you fire it you can fire another one very quickly afterwards. It allowed you to burn all your initiative and do nice aoe damage around you in the process.) for quick finishing move if they were low enough on health.
With melee I actually had to actively try not to get 1 shotted by stuff when dealing with PvE mobs (I figured out going like 6 levels ahead of your level in personal story will just give you more xp.
I admit though, I had to rely on climbing on top of a cart at one point and raining death on those stalkers you fought in human personal story from a safe distance. Going to stealth and then performing some charge attack that 1 shot downed me was just unfair when there were 2 of the bloody things )
Are you a guardian? Let me introduce you to my Flesh Golem, he's getting a bit hungry.
I didn't mind melee in PvE, actually. My only complaint (which has been talked about before) is that the incredible amount of particle effects makes it tough to actually see what your target is doing. If I was 1v1 against veteran enemies I could kill them easily as melee, since I could dodge and move appropriately.
"He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire" --Winston Churchill
I tried out a melee Ranger and a Guardian over the BWE1 (in PvE), and found them both tough to use. The fact that you have to stick close to the foe to land your blows, meaning they are also close to you landing their blows, was annoying. If you kite as a melee profession, you're not dealing damage. It was a lot easier to kite and attack as a ranged profession. As Yski mentioned (post #3), it's hard to stay alive in PvE when mobs one-shot you in the face. I didn't try out PvP melee at all though, so can't comment on that.
I think what Jon Peters mentions is all valid, and I would definitely like to see the AI favour melee less than it does.
Might be a bane, but make it so that circle-strafing with melee doesn't mess with the AI.
PvP melee is okay (Probably might need more mobility debuff skill synergy), but PvE melee does need to not be so risky, especially against larger targets that are hard to see with particle effects stacked on it.
Deadpan snarking isn't.
Only thing I had a problem with the melee was in WvW every body and thier grandma was throwing speed debuffs on me. So It was really hard getting ahold of anyone. Lol I was looking for my trinket :P
I did love playing around with the Staff Guardian making a line on the ground that no enemy could cross was awesome right in front of their keeps portal while we were taking it.. It was so funny watching them jump and strafe just trying to get through while our whole force just burns them down.
http://pluginpodcast.enjin.com/
I had no real problems with Warrior. The particle effects were annoying - I'll give you that. The main issue was learning to move and hit, and to be patient. I didn't have many one-shot issues unless a dynamic event got leveled up suddenly, or if I was in a dungeon with a boss much higher than my level. Getting some mobility traits earlier on might have been nice though...
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