ArenaNet's Jon Peters Talks Melee Vs. Ranged In Guild Wars 2

http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Turner/1393966691 Brian Turner

I honestly don’t see a problem here. Every class has access to ranged weapons in GW2. It’s not like other games where you have a pure melee class. Simply have one weapon set for ranged and one weapon set for when you are in peoples faces.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Carlos-Moreno/100000967473108 Carlos Moreno

The thing is, is some people only wish to melee, but they can’t , melee is so weak in events, so melee is forced to switch to range because melee is just not an option if you know don’t want to die 10 times or so. Arena net has said that you should be able to play how u want to play , sure that doesn’t mean everything should be viable, but people should at least be able to play melee without having the need to feel they need a range weapon, because if they don’t they will just get slaughtered.

Kicknpups

I think they need to add some minor tutorial to help those who “have a hard time” I can speak from experience I couldn’t get the warrior done at all.The thief np.. Warrior I just couldn’t and I got a Elementalist to 30. There a glass cannon without a doubt. Great dmg get hit twice and your dead. I felt that with the warrior thou also.Two hits I’m dead.. Even with shield. and I got the whole dodge moving etc down I loved it! I just think some of the AI needs work along with sustainability just a small bit.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Richard-Goins/100000504590300 Richard Goins

I played the beta & this was one of my main complaints, but not because of some damage difference or something.

This main issue is combat confusion! In melee range, you have like 50 mobs running at you, you have 50 players running around. The UI health bars are TINY. You rarely know if you’re even in range or a target or even what target you’re trying to hit. There a TON of spell effects going on. It’s so confusing!

Meanwhile if you’re ranged it’s more like “there’s a battle going on OVER THERE…” You get to stand out of the chaos and you’re able to tell what’s going on. It doesn’t really matter what you’re aiming at as long as it’s in front of you you’ll shoot at it. There aren’t a ton of spell effects going on.

They need to allow more zoom out and, somehow, make the combat easier to discern what’s happening.

http://twitter.com/callmebradeh Brad

No offense Jason, but using the Keep reasoning for why range is better isn’t the best example. In the instance where you’re fighting to attack or defend a Keep gate the majority of the time you’re going to be using range or hitting the door with melee anyway.

The problem with melee vs. range is the fact that ArenaNet wants melee classes/builds to be rolling around and running back to heal up while you’re fighting, in comparison, the ranged classes/builds don’t have to do none of this. The problem is the fact the the mobs hit way too hard and the damage difference between melee and ranged isn’t wide enough for the rolling around and running away for half the fight to be worth it.

A small bit if tweaking to mob damage, AI and weapon damage could probably fix this quite easily.

Pat Hamilton

The only problem I found with melee was against bosses and champions. They one shot you so melee was not even a viable option. Other than that, melee was awesome. 2 axes on my warrior just ripped through everything else.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Turner/1393966691 Brian Turner

That was more due to event scaling when 300 guys are at one event the boss scales up so much it one shots people.

Straylight

What a bunch of bullshit, we are not noobs who dont know what strafing or dodging is. Really getting annoyedthat everyone just assumes its a L2P issue. The problem with melee, at least in PvE is the fact that the whole scaling system in events and heart quests is completely broken. trash mobs that hit you for 50% of your health PER HIT are common place in these events, as are bosses with 1 shot AoEs that are unavoidable due to A) no telegraphs/tells and B) there are 100 people spamming particle effects on it making it impossible to even see the boss let alone dodge anything it does.

http://twitter.com/AsytraFTW Kathryn Fuller

I have to disagree about melee being weaker than ranged. Sure, some classes are very strong in ranged, such as the ranger (duh), but warriors, dagger rogues, even melee rangers can own face in melee if you are properly positioning yourself. (I’m told Guardians are quite good too but I didn’t play one in beta, yet. Sorry Scott!) I can’t speak for PVP (mostly played Engineer in PVP which is mostly ranged) but in PVE I was owning face with a greatsword or greathammer wielding warrior, I did pretty well with a sword and shield too.

Noxdus

The problem isn’t with melee. Melee itself worked fine. The problem is with balancing the aoe attacks world bosses use. They almost always one shot you and spam aoe constantly. Once the bosses get balanced, melee won’t have as much trouble.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Turner/1393966691 Brian Turner

This isn’t due to balance its due to 100s of people in 1 event. Events scale depending on the amount of people in them so when 200 people are fighting 1 boss hes gonna be super powerful and 1 shot people.
- Noxdus
  
  Like i said, its a balancing issue with the boss, scaling or otherwise. I sure hope you know what balancing is.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Turner/1393966691 Brian Turner
    
    It is balanced. The events were being completed and they were challenging. Yes any one person might be 1 shot but the group of players in the event as a whole were completing the events. If you want a snooze fest leveling system go play something else.
    - Noxdus
      
      Don’t let your blind fanboyism get in the way of making good judgement. There is a difference between challenging and outright imbalanced. World boss aoe attacks are imbalanced, and so is the AI. This has readily been admitted on the beta forums by devs, so you are apparently above them right? I realize you don’t know what balanced game-play actually is, so I won’t bother responding to any more of your messages.

QSatu

Actually in pvp melee is good. Peop,le who had problems with it there simply had problems with playing the game. You have to use all your skills and weapon swap.
The main problem was in pve b/c when events scaled too much the swarm of monsters couls 1 shot you. And ranges chars could simply stand still. That’s why I’m happy ANet said something about making ai target ranged characters more.

H S

I’m with Mike. My thief was useless until I figured out how to melee with dual daggers. From lvl 1-20 I was using bow 90% of the time, after lvl 20 I only used it to poison ppl, then went in full daggers, and boy did I kill ppl so much quicker.

QSatu

Oh in WvW they should improve guardians. They don’t have long range weapon. When defending the keep they can do absolutely nothing. All other classes can shoot from the walls and guardians can only jump down. Use a push away bubble or something and roll back to the keep. kind of cool but it wasn’t that effective. Guardians need some kind of ranged weapon.

http://twitter.com/LudovicGasse Ludovic Gasse

Scepter and staff are the ranged for a guardian. Scepter work very well. Try next time you will see! it have a stun I use scepter/ shiel and two handed sword in WvW.
- QSatu
  
  I didn;’t know about scepter. But staff is useless on a wall. it’s too short range. It’s cool to catch running players and attack them on the way though.
St_Draco

Guardians have tons of gap closers as well as walls to push back range. They also have tons of ways to lock foes down and keep them close. I think you just didn’t look at the options.
- QSatu
  
  I was talking specificly about defending a keep on a wall. try to “close the gap” from the wall to 20 people all shooting at the door. you will be dead in a matter of seconds. And this is how defending keeps usually works like when there are more attackers than defenders.
  But I admit I didn;’t know scepter was a ranged weapon.
  - http://twitter.com/LudovicGasse Ludovic Gasse
    
    next time try scepter/shield QSatu, you will shine in WvW. The game is new there is no guide, only one big beta, you cannot know everyting. But you will learn, I’m glad I could help!
  - St_Draco
    
    Um… yeah defending a wall with melee is idiotic. Why would you do that? If you are a guardian, you should be getting down and harassing the back line of the attackers, or using your support abilities to defend your fellow defenders. Hell, throw down a reflective shield down right in front of the door and watch all the ranged attacking it die.

Sharuko

LOL It isn’t a “skill” issue. Bosses and mobs were one shotting melee with AoE abilities. Try dodging that.

Obviously melee should have “better overall damage” in this system. Because the time they are dodging and moving away means less DPS. Unlike ranged that can sit back and spam away.

This is a good example of a pitfall of the lack of trinity. Melee dps shines paired up with healers, without healers it will be harder to balance them.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Turner/1393966691 Brian Turner

Like I said the bosses 1 shotting people is due to scaling when 300 people are on 1 event the boss becomes godly.
http://www.facebook.com/toph1980 Christopher Fischer

Bosses and mobs were one shotting melee with AoE abilities? My Charr Warrior and his longbow has AoE abilities, was I one shotted? No. Never. Stop talking trash.

I unlocked all weapons and ended up using the greatsword + either longbow or rifle (prefer the former) and had no issues whatsoever with bosses. Learn to play. Longbow has an immobilize skill and one of the first utility skills you unlock is another immobilize skill. Use them both and then switch to melee weapon and get in melee range. Greatsword alone provides two distance closers and isn’t the only weapon to do so. Either way, once you get in melee range you’ll deal more damage than any ranged player/class/skill. Kill and repeat. Works vs both mobs and players.
- Sharuko
  
  Try immobilizing a world boss bro with dozens of people bashing him. Secondly, you do realize before you unlock a ranged weapon you don’t have a ranged weapon right? Even on a ranger.
  
  Please give advice when you know what you are talking about.
  - http://twitter.com/LudovicGasse Ludovic Gasse
    
    Ranger start with a one hand axe and they use it as a ranged weapon. They throw it!
  - St_Draco
    
    Lol says the Tera Troll. Did you even play in the beta? If yes, you just gave ANet $60, GG. If no stfu and take your own advice
St_Draco

You act as if melee and range are separate professions and that you have to be in one camp or the other. This ain’t Tera bro. You can melee and range regardless of your profession. You don’t need tanks. If a boss is attacking you, run away. Keep running until it goes after someone else. You aren’t loosing out on xp or gear. All that matters is that the thing goes down.

DPS don’t matter. Only killing the thing does.
- H S
  
  Don’t feed the trolls, it only makes them hungrier.
- Roly Vento
  
  I completely agree with St_Draco statement, in this game you can’t expect to stay in melee range of the boss the whole time, and every single class including the casters have melee weapons…everyone can switch from Melee to Range at will.
  
  This is not the typical MMO where melee stay melee 100%, range stay at range 100% you need to switch it up…
  
  On my mesmer I use the Staff for Buffs & Debuffs and when the target gets in melee range I switch to Sword and Sword for some tanking and melee dps…I have even fought bosses with Sword and Sword and when my defensive skills were on cooldown I dodge backwards switch to Staff and let it reset…
- Jado Cast
  
  Good Points!
Gai Cohen

It happened to me a lot on PVE, specially on Personal Story Instances or certain events, where multiple mobs attack me with aoe… I could not do anyhing and died.

St_Draco

This seems to be the start of the GW2 Meta. Ranged v melee. My experiences were that melee has plenty of gap closers and control within the skills. For example, I used a greatsword/sword and board guardian. On greatsword you had a charge and a bind/pull. On sword and board you had a flash/charge and 2 mid ranged attacks. Add in utilities like “Retreat” (a speed buff + aegis) or Judges Intervention (teleport to foe)and you could catch so many ranged and lock them down. Pick up Wall of Reflection and you could turn ranged attacks against them.

My guess for so many people is that they just didn’t bother to actually think about what they were doing. They are so use to being set with the abilities that are handed to them and a set play style that they got frustrated when the “norm” wasn’t working.

Heck I freaked a few people out when I played a greatsword/Longbow ranger and stomped all over people. I would stand with the bow, they would try to get close to reduce damage, I would switch to greatsword and stomp on them, they would treat and I would switch to longbow again. They just expected that I would want to stay at range the whole time.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Hamilton/1150725720 Ryan Hamilton

Do you think one of the issues could have been the huge amass of players in every area? Don’t the mobs in each area scale depending on how many people are around?

Galdros

I never experienced any real issues with melee in my time. I agree that if you run pure offensive melee you WILL get ripped a new one by ranged. But with the defensive hybrid I had (axe/sword/shield/warhorn) I found I could block some of the deadly burst coming my way. The shield was especially essential when things went bad. At one point it helped me escape a 1v5 scenario by protecting me from all those CC effects while I waited for my heal and leap to come off CD.

I do agree that there were some major issues with keep defense/assualt in WvW for melee however. I ended up resorting to my longbow lest I take too much heat from both the oil cauldron and the arrow carts.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Lia/57201115 Bill Lia

I was wondering… as someone who didn’t play GW1… how much of the world is totally different then it was in GW1? I know this is supposed to be a good amount of time after the original story line so are areas/zones completely different? Are some areas/zones exactly the same but just prettier?

I ask because the amount of detail made my jaw drop… especially for a game with no sub. Would make sense if some of the areas/zones were the same just fleshed out more and updated (NOT putting the game down. Just was wondering how they did it ). Game looks amazing and can’t wait to hop in to an optimized (PC performance) version.

P.S. I loved how they introduced the crafting professions to you in game. By having an NPC run up to you. Made me feel apart of a world that is alive. Cool stuff.

http://www.facebook.com/kayla.roese Kayla Roese

They didn’t use anything from GW1.. it’s a completely new game. You CAN however, see hints of the past here and there that they put in. You might not notice those things though if you didn’t play the first one.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Lia/57201115 Bill Lia
  
  Thanks for answering. Even more impressive then.
http://twitter.com/LudovicGasse Ludovic Gasse

For a skill challenge, I have to dive in a small lake and I figure out that it was the temple of age, a place where you can enter in the underworld “end game dongeon” in GW1. most of it is underwater now… That was… Awsome!
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Lia/57201115 Bill Lia
  
  That sounds cool! Really regretting not playing GW1 now so I can pick up on stuff like that.
Giel-Jan Ottens

It’s been about 250 years or so since GW1. It’s been so long since I played GW1 but honestly, I don’t think GW2 looks a whole lot like GW1. In 250 years, so much has happened, and the graphical/art style has been updated a fair bit.

I’d wager that you probably *could* recognize some areas or landmarks here and there, but for the most part I think someone would need to point it out to you for you to realize you’re standing in a place you’ve been before in GW1. (And of course, not all the places are the exact same locales as in GW1)
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Lia/57201115 Bill Lia
  
  Cool. Yeah I have been doing everything I can to avoid knowing “to much” about GW2 before get in there. Made that mistake before. Want to learn as I play… feel like a n00b again lol
- http://twitter.com/LudovicGasse Ludovic Gasse
  
  If you play a lot of GW1, you see a lot of the place you use to hang out. I saw heros of the past in nearly every statue. I was a part of their acension.
  
  Seriously, they make it right. You remember being there, and you see the 250 change over the time. Even the great wall is still standing!

Kman1242

I don’t think its nearly as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Warriors at least (I know because I played a Warrior all weekend) with dual swords has plenty of abilities that can get you in and out in one piece in both PvP and PvE. Obviously not everyone will play the same way I did, as its a very diverse game, so they can make it easier for those, but its not the case for absolutely all melee builds & classes. There ARE ways around it.

http://twitter.com/LudovicGasse Ludovic Gasse

I think you play it the right way. You cannot tank and spank in this game. People will learn.

http://twitter.com/Hilding_DAoC Holger Kienast

I had very good times in Structured PvP with both Warrior and Elementalist. In fact Warriors do a ton of damage while wearing heavy armor and have a huge hp advantage over the Elementalist both in glass cannon spec. Maybe in World versus World this is an issue but just buffing melee in general will destroy Structured PvP in my opinion. As it stands now Melee dps was already better than ranged.

Baynex

I played a guardian all weekend and did a lot of pvp with her. I have to say, I didn’t notice a real advantage of ranged over melee. I had a lot of abilities that made it really easy to close the gap on ranged and to keep them close.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002811083296 Lauren Michele

Similar experience. I played Guardian and I’m not the best PVP player or very good at quick movement/strafing. I went in expecting to get owned but didn’t. On several occasions I successfully led the push to retake areas. I was able to keep pressure on ranged players and only died when I was the last man standing.

However, I did find myself doing more ranged in PVE as things wore on but I chalked it up to not having mastered the class.

The games really does a poor job explaining the new mechanics. I knew quite a bit from reading up and watching videos but I don’t think that’s the average player.

Giel-Jan Ottens

I didn’t PvP as a warrior so I can’t comment there, but I leveled through to 16 on a Warrior, heavily favoring the Greatsword (and I didn’t really use my rifle or bow at all) and I had a blast. It was so much fun, and while melee might be a little bit more intensive than ranged (because hey, you’re right where they can hit you. Obviously.) I didn’t find it too hard to manage at all.

Learning how to use your abilities and weapons is definitely a big part of this. As a greatsword warrior I had so many tools to stay ahead of my enemies (a charge, a whirlwind attack to move me into or away from enemies, a reasonably long range weapon throw that cripples enemies) and coupling that with proper dodge timing makes for a pretty decent survivability.

I think one of the main problems is that a lot of people are used to either standard MMOs or other kinds of ‘action RPG’ games, where the killing of mobs revolves around running up and just hacking away. GW2 expects players to be mobile, alert and aware of all their options, and they aren’t afraid to create content on a level of difficulty that demands you start using it all.
I honestly believe that this is a great direction. I think it’s fine if melee characters receive a little bit of a buff, I can see that the level of difficulty for playing melee is somewhat higher than for ranged characters. But that’s the risk you take as a melee character. You can’t expect to play an in-your-face hammer warrior and be able to elude enemies like a ranged mesmer or ranger could.
And in the end, these melee characters will have learned some amazing skills in how to do proper combat. Trial and error really favors them and come higher levels they will be excellent players in any situation, because it was demanded of them everywhere they went.

And at that point, still giving them additional buffs might lead to them being more powerful than their ranged counterparts. It would be a tricky balance, but with plenty of opportunity for more testing I think they can get closer to a good balance.

I, for one, will happily keep playing both a warrior and an elementalist (since I played both equally in the beta and loved them), regardless of any balance tweaks they might implement.

Namekian Lizard

If both sides are fighting with range weapons, then I would expect the melee players that rush the field to be torn apart. Sort of makes sense. From my little exposure over the weekend, I would also say that most people don’t know how to take over a keep. You don’t go up and bash the gate, you would use melee to protect the seige and rush the gate once down.

Diequex

Structured PvP I feel everything was pretty balanced. I felt I was using my ranged and melee equally (my experience as a Thief in PvP, didn’t PvP with much else in the Beta). WvW…ranged was definitely king, but I personally found no problem with that. If you have two huge groups fighting one another it only makes sense that a melee attempting to run into the other group is going to get burned downed. In situations like that smartly flanking and the like is better.
The balance was most profound for me in PvE, especially as a Thief. I felt like I was playing a ranger as opposed to anything, as the shortbow/pistols was the most viable skillset in that area. I used my Daggers/Swords every now and then, but that was only when I felt I could burn down the target fast enough with Haste/Stuns or something.

Roly Vento

I honestly think these are not real trolls, they just don’t understand this new game mechanic. Everyone has been conditioned for the past 13 years on the Trinity roles…Arena Net and the Community needs to do a better job at explaining this new game mechanic.

My cousin and I got into this last beta weekend and I had to hand hold him thru the game because he was totally lost, the game does a very POOR job at explaining it’s mechanic.

I love GW2 and will play it at launch but they better implement some type of tutorial with its mechanic because honest fans like my cousin where totally lost and turned off.

Diequex

Posted Twice.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Carlos-Moreno/100000967473108 Carlos Moreno

I actually had a problem in pvp where my closers were being slowed so i never reached my target.
Not sure if this was intended or some kind of bug

warriorbushi

I dont know how they will fix this, I hope they dont change anything really. The learning curve was big coming off of playing WoW. Where as a warrior its charge and stand there hitting them and time you cooldowns and oh sh*t button. First you have to learn to move…. then you need to learn that you do more then just damage you have to heal yourself and throw up buff and shouts at the right times not just spam them. I understand this is really different for a lot of people, and its frustrating to die alot while learning. But at the same time I dont want the first 15 minutes of my game to be here is a dodge button, dodge this attack 3 times. Here is your heal button heal yourself 3 times. It sucked in WoW and it will suck here. But asking the mass crowd of gamers to learn as you go, doesn’t seem to work. I just dont want to see the game dumbed down, or turn into a WoW clone.

http://www.facebook.com/Deemo91 Matthew O’Neill

I think one of the reasons why people weren’t so quick to learn the
mechanics is because it was beta weekend and everybody is like “OMG PVP
AND WVW LETS GO”, I personally didn’t level a character past level 6
this weekend, so i never went through

The slow “here are your skills, you just unlocked this, you just
unlocked this,” with the realization of when it would come in useful,
and learning the synergy, Even unlocking utilities and healing skills one at a time due to the rate you get skill points at, While you are leveling you unlock your first utility slot and you look through the list of skills available and say “ahhh, that would be useful, i’ve being having trouble with ranged shooting me while i beat on the melee mobs, scorpion wire would be really useful”

So I think there would be a deeper understanding on launch when people actually commit to leveling a character rather than rushing to the best bits like they do on BWE’s.

Just my opinion

http://www.facebook.com/Deemo91 Matthew O’Neill

I played an Ele and a Thief this weekend, and i found myself using the bow most on the Thief because, and it may come as a shock to some people (I’m looking at you Cap and Run people), it’s easier to defend a point when you are standing on it. And some enemies just don’t close that range, especially great sword mesmers and longbow rangers, it is in there best interests to stay as far away from you as possible to get you down quickly. And on maps like the battle of khlyo people always end up fighting in the middle next to the clocktower instead of capping points and defending them, so when all is quiet at the windmill i ran across the rooftops, shoot a few clusterbombs down at the crowd and go back to my point so we can win. If i jumped down there in melee i have less chance of getting away quickly if the point gets contested.

The times i used melee the most was with the thief, signet of malice + the bladestorm elite skill heals you back up to 17k in seconds, and shadowstepping onto a low health enemy using steal and heartstriking the shit out of them until they go down were the only times i really closed into melee, but i should add that i’ve only eve played ranged classes in RPGs so i might be a bit biased

snikendelarveføtter

People are complaining about the game having a learning curve, and that just blows my mind. Did they expect to master this massive game during a beta weekend? Or do they expect, and want, every game to be the same?
Everyone starts out with one skill and dodge. Is it too much to ask players to utilise two things at once? I saw people starting to rage at the first heart/renowned quest when they died. Now that is what i call patience.

People need to think before they start complaining about everything.

Jado Cast

Yeah, I don’t see learning curve as an issue, unless you are totally new to MMO’s and Video Games.

ZekePrince

I think the real issue here (in PvE) isn’t that melee don’t have enough survivability, but that ranged doesn’t have much risk involved. Most of the danger is flat-out eliminated simply by switching to ranged. The major sacrifice is that you do less damage at range, which is not even always the case. I think they could fix this by giving enemies more ranged abilities or gap closers, otherwise many people will just neglect melee altogether.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Evan-Iwerks/712235 Evan Iwerks

Yes, more risk for ranged please!

There are some instances of this. Charr and Norn enemies with greatswords definitely used the charge-spin attack to rush me, and many melee centaurs had a lunge-type ability that would close the distance and knock me down if I didn’t dodge properly.

What they’re talking about, and what they need more of, is the ability for a melee mob to peel away from a fight with meleers and charge toward the ranged fighters. Caster mobs are presently pretty terrifying for ranged and melee alike – melee mobs need to spread the fear!

Kagitaar

They do need to beef up the tutorial a bit as it really didn’t teach you how to do anything. I played a Norn Mesmer and the ‘go kill one thing then you are ready to fight the huge wurm’ quest didn’t teach me much. The devs trolled me by starting off my squishy clothy with our only melee weapon and, unlike true newcomers, I knew enough to at least gain my skills first, but you never really had to dodge anything in the first place. In fact, I was too busy slamming 1 most of the time to even be able to think about dodging as they don’t let you know that your 1 skill auto attacks, something I didn’t find out about until many levels later when my scepter kept firing and it clicked.

Anyway, while I dropped my sword as soon as I could, whenever I did an event that either had a huge boss or just a horde of x attacking, melee were just wrecked. Now I know there’s the L2dodge aspect of it, but I think part of it is also due to the spell effects being too loud and the tells being overshadowed by them. For me personally, I had frame issues being near a big fight to start with, and I think many of the L2play people overestimate other’s rigs and their capacity to handle all of it. Add in a boss with crazy spell effects, e.g. the dragon shaman area boss for Wayfarer Hills, and not only are you dodging the bosses melee swings, you are staring at the ground looking for red circles and tornadoes that two shot you.

That’s another issue really. I’m going to use Dragon Nest as a comparison here as it’s the only action MMO that I’ve played that I feel compares. In it, bosses take significantly smaller chunks out of your health bar and you have time to get away, heal, etc. In GW2 this weekend, I felt that if a boss mob or even a large group took interest in you, if you had no defensive abilities lined up apart from your dodge, you were screwed no matter what.

Before I get inundated with ‘well you should have had this and this and you would have been fine’ remember, the game goes out of it’s way to not help you understand how it works, the skill system more so. There is no ability to experiment with what skills to slot, unlike the mostly well thought out weapon system, as they are quite vague many times and have prohibitive costs which, in time, won’t matter as you will acquire them all, but when you are just starting out and learning prevents the experimentation required to understand and flourish.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Evan-Iwerks/712235 Evan Iwerks

Don’t make things up, now.

You can access all of your skills (all weapon skills, all utility skills, all elite skills, and all trait lines) and can buy any weapon type for free by entering the Mists, which is the PvP lobby area. There are multiple training stations there, too, that teach you about both combat mechanics and PvP-specific tasks (how to perform the “Finish Them!” thing. Perhaps more visibility of this place would be good, but it does provide a cost-free way to access every element of your class from the very beginning. It provides all the functionality you say the game lacks, except for the hand-holding. And by God, I don’t want more hand-holding. If I already knew how to do everything, my character’s development becomes a grind instead of an exploration.
- Kagitaar
  
  I’m not a big fan of PvP, so how would I ever know this exists? These things need to be available and visible so the average Joe can find them at a point where they will be helpful. Having your teaching stations sequestered in a place that many if not most have no idea exists is bad design. You can’t look at all this through the lens of someone who has rabidly consumed every bit of info about this game, you have to think about the multitudes who have barely heard of the game but thought it sounded cool. Not to say I want obnoxious hand-holding, but you need to at least give players the choice to learn about the game systems.
- http://profiles.google.com/vulpisfoxfire Christopher Forsyth
  
  Honestly…there needs to be a certain amount of handholding in the tutorials, if only to prevent the ‘I never knew I could do that! If I’d known, my last 80 levels wouldn’t have been anywhere near as frustrating!’ issue.
  From the stories I’m hearing, I’d say that they need to swipe an idea from Champions–that is, an early tutorial that’s designed for a brand new player (whether brand new just to GW2 *or* to MMOs in general) that teach the basics of the game (including things like dodging, down abilities, etc)…but that can also be skipped entirely on subsequent characters on the account (or replayed, for those who take a break for a few months and have forgotten how to play GW2. ) sending the player straight to their ‘personal story’ intro. Perhaps integrate it into the story somewhat, as well–I could see a teacher/mentor/friend/superior being involved, who either continues on in that role, or becomes a motivation in other ways (ala the classic revenge trope–either revenge for them being killed, or perhaps revenge *on* them for betraying the character. )

Krzysztof Kotarba

I want 2h axe for warrior, damn it!

Damir Miric

I played thief in this beta event and all I can say is that after I got shortbow and start using it instead of double daggers game went from hard to super easy.

Kempix

I played an Ele and Warrior over the weekend, and being honest in PVP as a melee the dmg i was putting out was really nice, and was surviving pretty well, (mostly in the structured PVP, WvW was a different story) however in the PVE side of things i was kiting more with my rifle. Now thats not necessarily a bad thing but it just felt like the AI mobs were very heavy hitting even when you are moving in to attack quickly and moving out again, though as i progressed levels (around the 15 mark) game seemed to level out with dmg output vs survivability.

Gregg Whitman

I think melee in PVP is actually easier than in PVE, where melee is a joke. You can only use melee to clean up mobs. If you jump in there with more that 2 mobs you will die a horrible death, and Bosses are just suicide. You are infact a liability as a melee PVE and you must go ranged. There is no reason to risk melee (especially on bosses) when everyone can just range everything down.

I played a sword & shield warrior with “Endure Pain” (5 sec immune to damage) and Banner of Defense (Toughness + Vitality). Even with that build I was forced into going ranged for all boss encounters that I faced in the Norn areas. The problem is the threat mechanic itself. Because mobs will attack specific people (ususally the closest) the melee get their block knocked off first. And it hurts, even as a resistance build I had to back out and get the boss to chase some ranged players so I could heal back up and usually res the other 3-4 melee that just got pwned.

I know ANet doesn’t want a Trinity but there does need to be a tank if you have bosses that focus single players. It is a broken system of keep dodging so we have time to res everyone. There is no good way to go about a boss encounter as melee. The games threat mechanic FORCES you to go range or just run around resing the ranged players. Give someone the ability to tank or make the bosses AOE damage only and not target individuals. Otherwise it is just a broken system.

Tanking by avoiding damage is still something new so that is my pick for how to fix PVE. All I know is that I was pretty dissapointed with the PVE as a melee.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Evan-Iwerks/712235 Evan Iwerks

And my Charr Engineer got one-shot by the giant statue’s hammer at level 1, while trying to keep at range with my pistols. Lvl 1 and ANet already teaching me to dive into melee range with my gun.

You have to be smart about your approach to any of these encounters. Bosses often telegraph their attacks, so prep your dodge button for when the swing is coming and you’ll be fine. It’s not supposed to be easy, not by a long shot, but I definitely felt just as capable of taking on normal mobs or boss mobs with either my Greatsword or Rifle on my warrior. Some of it might be a little counter-intuitive (the kick utility skill is a great way to interrupt most attacks, making it amazing for melee even though it seems like a ranged-weapon aide), but that’s the magic of experimentation and discovery.

I watched many good groups of melee players juggle and “tank” boss mobs at level 25 or so. The bosses hit stupidly hard, but the melee fighters never went into downed states – not once. Clever use of profession mechanics and supporting one another are the tricks to victory – one-man-army logic doesn’t apply to this game.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Andrew-Gibson/654636349 Andrew Gibson

I mainly played a warrior over the

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey Jenkins

Melee was usually only an issue with me in huge battles in WvW. in small fights both pvp and pve i was usually fine fighting up close and personal as a thief. I could see how new players to the genre..or people who dont play alot of action games could see it difficult though .

Gregg Whitman

They could actually fix a lot of the PVE melee issues by fixing AI. If you are in a dynamic event and 5 guys come in the door the first person they find is dead. If they made it so that mass groups would pick a different person to attack, it would makethose fights doable as a 1v1 or 1v2. Right now they just zerg right thought the melee. It makes it impossible to fight on the front lines.

biotek

The AI is definitely a problem in PvE. Engineer turrets suffer from that same mob zerg. To address the others, I think all classes relying on the dodge mechanic severely reduces the variety in gameplay. I would rather heavy armor actually prevent damage as expected but lead to reduced ability to dodge, the opposite for light armor & agile classes, etc. Maybe tie that to shield use or specific weapon types?

Angel Rivera

Only class i played this weekend was thief. and in theory you have everything to keep range with your target. but on actual pvp againt any other class is just target practice. The ability to hide like the class intended would make up for it rather than their 3 second hide on attack or heal wtf.

Arthur Banks

Yeah, I fiddled around with the thief. A little too squishy, I think. The only way I could figure out how to get the dual blade combo to work is to poison, shadow step in, stab stab, shadow step out. Switch to gun+dagger. Cripple and pew pew. If you stay in there longer than a second, a war or guardian will just PBAOE you dead. In fact, the thief pretty much falls over to any PBAOE in PVE or PVP.
- http://profiles.google.com/vulpisfoxfire Christopher Forsyth
  
  So what you’re complaining about is that as a thief you had to rely on hit-and-run tactics and Death By Papercut, rather than being able to just stand there and go stabbity-stabbity-stabbity until they fell over? Maybe it’s just because I come from more of a action-game and paper-and-pencil RPG background than a WoW-clone MMO one, but…quite frankly that sounds like it’s Working As Designed. A thief is a lightly-armored class who relies on speed, dexterity, and basically *not getting hit in the first place*, as compared to the warrior who is big, strong, and wearing heavy damage that allows them to soak up damage rather than avoiding it (what *used* to be a ‘tank’, as in heavily armored with a big attack, but now is probably better refered to as a ‘brick’, since ‘tanks’ now refer just to the punching-bag Lure types).
  
  From what I’m seeing in comments here and elsewhere, one of the worst problems GW2 is going to have to deal with is the simultanous outcry that it’s not enough like WoW (as in having to completely relearn just what roles in a battle *are*, without the Trinity), while simultanously dealing with people complaining that it’s too much like WoW. :-/
  - Gregg Whitman
    
    Melee PVE boss battles are broken. If you don’t think so either you didn’t do much to help with damage or you spent the whole fight resing like most other melee in a boss fight.
    
    Their solution to no tanks is a row of corpses, called melee players, and you just play the resing game (solution for no healers) that is boring as hell. It’s not a system, it’s broken.
    
    BTW, sword and board warriors roflstomp theives. Fact. lol

SiderFace

There SHOLDN’T be alot of opportunity for melee when you assaulting a defensive fortress. Thats the whole POINT to weapon switching. If you have two sets of melee weapons, then I guess you sit back and defend the archers/gunners.

Implying that certain scenarios making specific weapon sets inadequate is a form of inbalance is just a way of proving you’re a griefer and do not understand gaming as a WHOLE.Heres anc example that should ring true: ”Riot created some REAL inbalance by making only CERTAIN champs viable in the jungle. Theres not a lot of opportunity for most squishy AP champions to jungle. They would just get destroyed on Dragon, and would only be putting themselves at risk on most gank attempts.”So you’re saying that GW2 (ROLE-playing game) has specific roles for specific weapon sets. Its BEAUTIFUL that every player can be effective in MOST situations through their diverse build system and weapon switching. Good thing they don’t send you into WvW keeps with Kassadin (LoL). Think if it were MOST games… no matter WHAT you do with your build… you’re stil the same sorry role that didnt change.No amount of masteries or runes will change the role specific strengths/weaknesses of most PvP atmospheres.

SiderFace

There SHOLDN’T be alot of opportunity for melee when you assaulting a defensive fortress. Thats the whole POINT to weapon switching. If you have two sets of melee weapons, then I guess you sit back and defend the archers/gunners.
Implying that certain scenarios making specific weapon sets inadequate is a form of inbalance is just a way of proving you’re a griefer and do not understand gaming as a WHOLE.Heres anc example that should ring true: ”Riot created some REAL inbalance by making only CERTAIN champs viable in the jungle. Theres not a lot of opportunity for most squishy AP champions to jungle. They would just get destroyed on Dragon, and would only be putting themselves at risk on most gank attempts.”So you’re saying that GW2 (ROLE-playing game) has specific roles for specific weapon sets. Its BEAUTIFUL that every player can be effective in MOST situations through their diverse build system and weapon switching. Good thing they don’t send you into WvW keeps with Kassadin (LoL). Think if it were MOST games… no matter WHAT you do with your build… you’re stil the same sorry role that didnt change.No amount of masteries or runes will change the role specific strengths/weaknesses of most PvP atmospheres.

SiderFace

There SHOLDN’T be alot of opportunity for melee when you assaulting a defensive fortress. Thats the whole POINT to weapon switching. If you have two sets of melee weapons, then I guess you sit back and defend the archers/gunners.
Implying that certain scenarios making specific weapon sets inadequate is a form of inbalance is just a way of proving you’re a griefer and do not understand gaming as a WHOLE.Heres anc example that should ring true: ”Riot created some REAL inbalance by making only CERTAIN champs viable in the jungle. Theres not a lot of opportunity for most squishy AP champions to jungle. They would just get destroyed on Dragon, and would only be putting themselves at risk on most gank attempts.”So you’re saying that GW2 (ROLE-playing game) has specific roles for specific weapon sets. Its BEAUTIFUL that every player can be effective in MOST situations through their diverse build system and weapon switching. Good thing they don’t send you into WvW keeps with Kassadin (LoL). Think if it were MOST games… no matter WHAT you do with your build… you’re stil the same sorry role that didnt change.No amount of masteries or runes will change the role specific strengths/weaknesses of most PvP atmospheres.

SiderFace

There SHOLDN’T be alot of opportunity for melee when you assaulting a defensive fortress. Thats the whole POINT to weapon switching. If you have two sets of melee weapons, then I guess you sit back and defend the archers/gunners.
Implying that certain scenarios making specific weapon sets inadequate is a form of inbalance is just a way of proving you’re a griefer and do not understand gaming as a WHOLE.Heres anc example that should ring true: ”Riot created some REAL inbalance by making only CERTAIN champs viable in the jungle. Theres not a lot of opportunity for most squishy AP champions to jungle. They would just get destroyed on Dragon, and would only be putting themselves at risk on most gank attempts.”So you’re saying that GW2 (ROLE-playing game) has specific roles for specific weapon sets. Its BEAUTIFUL that every player can be effective in MOST situations through their diverse build system and weapon switching. Good thing they don’t send you into WvW keeps with Kassadin (LoL). Think if it were MOST games… no matter WHAT you do with your build… you’re stil the same sorry role that didnt change.No amount of masteries or runes will change the role specific strengths/weaknesses of most PvP atmospheres.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001602634973 Kind Heart

I honestly didn’t find this to be the case at all. I played mainly a thief and warrior over the weekend and stayed away from ranged for the most part. I noticed that the dps of both was off the charts when you got into range.

The thief in particular was amazing as long as you kept agile. Using the chilling poison to slow as well as cripples effectively kept your target stuck on the spot whilst putting specs into increasing criticals when flanking allowed me to greatly increase my dps whilst people using ranged weapons were left helpless. Closing the gap was never a real issue for any melee class that I found, and if I did come into heavy damage on the way in a couple of rolls would allow me to negate the majority of it.

The warrior, whilst not necessarily as effective as the thief in close range that I found, was still extremely effective at taking people down. One of the utility skills being a 4s immobilise in particular allowed me to close any gap I wanted. Switching between a 2h and axes allowed me to close the gap with the 2h sword’s charge and then immobilise using my utility and then use whirling axes to unleash a devastating amount of damage.The only point in particular that I found melee was unsuitable was world vs world where there were a lot of heavy aoe’s the closer you got to the enemy – and the closer you got the more likely you were to be focused on. But in that situation, all classes have ranged options they can use.

http://profile.yahoo.com/H5KG7P5NNRLXWU6W44BP6AGLGY Bob Saget

I played as a charr warrior the whole weekend up to lvl 24 and died very few times when meleeing, but I watched alot of youtubes and researched the game mechanics because I knew the melee fights were gonna be tough….and most of them were very challenging. While I don’t consider myself to be very good at the game, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that ya gotta stay mobile and and only commit yourself for short (huge)bursts of damage at the right time. During boss fights, I was the guy using ‘Savage leap’ to charge over the corpses into the meatgrinder….fire off a skill chain then GTFO…rinse and repeat….I dunno what everyone elses problem was, but I wish I coulda looted them

The only thing that Arenanet might think about doing is increase the endurance regeneration a little to give ya 1 more dodge.

Old Ben

If you don’t know what everyone else’s problem was, then you probably didn’t do much PvP and you didn’t compare ranged and melee weapons on the same class.

Ranged can start doing damage sooner, can keep doing damage while moving, and can avoid nearly all damage (except for some single-target ranged attacks – but in group fights you won’t be getting many of those). The only real advantage of melee weapons in this beta was better AoE.

The main problem in PvE, though, was that some events were scaling very strangely (ex., level 3 enemies that could 1-shot players), and low-level melee players (who still don’t have their utility skills) run out of defensive abilities very quickly, so they have to either switch to ranged while their dodge and defensive abilities regen, or stay in melee range and pray that they won’t get hit a single time. Meanwhile, ranged players are taking almost no damage at all; all they need to do is keep circling the enemy and avoiding the (very obvious) red circles on the ground.

If the 1-shot kills are fixed, maybe the balance between melee and ranged weapons will be better, but I suspect they will also need to make the cooldown of some defensive melee abilities a bit shorter (ex., reduce the cooldown of Shield Stance to 15 seconds and the duration to 2), and increase the ranged damage done by most creatures and bosses (or improve their AI so they know how to deal with ranged players). As it is, ranged is just too easy.

Kman1242

I hope. As much as I love the community, and the game as a whole, one of my very few dislikes was hearing “Buff melee, its too weak!” or someone telling me that I’ll always lose because I don’t have a ranged advantage.

Rodrigo Gomez

Thats is cause they fail as players and don’t equip a high mobility weapon as secondary, thats what i did and i owned :U

tehixe

In a game where every class has both ranged and melee options, complaining about ranged being superior in PvP is a whole lot of BAWWWW. Yes, melee attacks are less useful when your opponent refuses to stand there and die. Go figure.

jayremy

I think there is just that current initiation advantage ranged have and the ability to really capitalize on it with players not having optimal control a the moment. You also got to consider the whole thing like AV in WoW days, whoever crosses the chokehold point into enemy fire zone is “easy pickins” fired on by 20+ players at once, those in the back are just safer in WvWvW.

Perhaps more dodge opportunities before running out maybe (like 1 more or so). Melee is usually forced to get up in front and take hits due to that, granted everybody can range but its not like the ranged oriented classes ever feel they NEED to go melee targets for logical normal situations.

RJTravis

Me & a few friends jumped into the beta weekend we had all melee heros & everyone hated how weak melee was.

I got home late so I had to level up but once we all got to level 12 around thee same time we started to run into theses big tree ancient veteran mobs after watching my friends get stomp by theses mobs I was quickly able to show them how easy in fact I had them watch me solo the thing.

Once I showed them how do dodge power attacks & how to use weapon switching right they all started loving the game.

see they were all using 1h sword/shield or 2x 1h axes as they felt they were so weak that they had to use a shield.

Once I showed them the 2x 1h sword & 2h sword combo the game became so much easier for them as you could dodge 2 attacks leap away from a 3rd dodge another attack block another attack then dodge leap switch to 2h whirlwind out of another attack etc they started to never die

In PvP melee needs bigger self heals mixed in they just lack self healing & with out a real healing class in the game they can’t count on anyone to heal them

Henrik Vik

I did not feel underpowered as a melee necro with a staff as swap. When there was groups at point ‘s I switched to my staff and started making the point uninhabitable and when there are smaller groups/solos like 1 to 3 people ill just whip out my dagger and war horn use the fifth skill which game me swiftness while crippling nearby foes when i was i range i used my third skill which was an immobilize and stated draining their life with the second skill and chopped away till I could use my staff again and used all the marks went in to deathshroud and nuked a couple of times with the first skill then used the second skill so I would get next to them and go out of deathshroud and swap to daggers and do it all again on next target if the first one was dead.

Ian Mansfield

I just feel melee could use some advantages built in, like maybe a small amount of increased armor or vitality while in use. not a huge amount but some…. I agree its all in the balanceing the use of both melee and ranged to maximize the potentional, as since in higher scale sPvP matches

John Kim

Gone are the days where ranged classes’ advantages were justified by being “squishy”. Now a heavy armor Warrior has ranged DPS in addition with kiting tools. The same applies to other professions, though not quite as blatantly.

Mobility defines melee. Period. Without mobility, I do zero DPS. Without mobility, ranged enemies have infinite DPS. Higher DPS is not the solution.

Melee weapon skillsets need more options to close, increase speed and remove mobility debuffs. Traits are not entirely the solution, either, as they lead to melee cookie cutter specs.

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