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Concerned about Melee
aesperus
Member UncommonPosts: 5,135
I know some people have been concerned about the effectiveness of melee in GW2. I'll attempt to post some videos showing good melee gameplay in GW2, so you can decide for yourself just how gimped melee classes actually are.
I'll continue to update the list as I find them. It will be tricky to find good videos of WvW, because not only were there not as many people recording, but it's harder to record as a melee character, because it requires you to be in the middle of the action, instead of standing in the back where you can see everything. However, if I can find some, I will add them to the list.
PvE:
Warrior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR0-S9SQCW4
Guardian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUJ5uGLms0Q (added this to show poor melee gameplay. He still manages to do okay, though)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMqOSZecPkU - Good melee gameplay against an event boss.
Mesmer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0nKx_Ukpec - Melee mesmer is actually a lot stronger than I would've thought.
PvP:
Warrior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQfGmYWjuS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhRxmobfOCo&feature=channel&list=UL (this one has some good commentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOlgn8rAA_8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83hvsuTd_No (Warrior guide / greatsword DPS Burst spec) **thanks Saxx0n**
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=x2Od3djom-k (first viable defense spec vid I've seen. No commentary, though =/)
Ranger:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF1-CgkGZsA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlFAR6xtJtQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4vinsdrqU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDeZxCfpsr0&list=PL41A3792F2FE95E41&index=5&feature=plpp_video
Guardian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNxZSBRJNIY
If anyone has found any other good ones, feel free to post, and I'll add them to the list. I know for me, personally, I ended up switching a lot between ranged & melee. I ended the weekend playing a ranger in WvW, and I would swap between longbow & sword - warhorn for fights. One of my favorite strategies was to cripple, vulnerability + rapid fire, swap to melee call of the wild (group aoe sprint + crit & dmg buff), viper's fang into my target (roll around them and poison), place a spike trap (bleed + cripple) a flame trap (sets them on fire), hornet's sting (with my back facing their reinforcements this would actually launch me into additional enemies. From there I could either attack more players, or use hornet's sting again to leap back to my original target / run away. I found myself leading a lot of the charges, and our server managed to dominate most of the weekend.
Comments
Yep that is similar to how I played mleee mesmer except I believe sword/pistol is clearly better than sword/sword and having GS as other weapon in not as good as staff.
Staff give you the ability to skirmish even more. Pistol give you the ability to stun/daze/blind 3 things and to start with a range phantasm.
The sword flurry is very powerful offense and efense then skirmish some and deteonate your illusion you can clean up a number of things if stuff is left around kite with staff and lay down a chaos storm whenever you want.
Also don't underesimate mate focu the speed buff is much strong you may be obvious and the phantasmal warden is quite good damage. Pistol is better for PvE though IMO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83hvsuTd_No
Any questions?
Life IS Feudal
The thing with melee is you basically have a few skills you are gonna use to not take damage but they won't last the whole fight so you will have to skirmish away to medium range or circle straff while those CD are down. Some mobs can be timed to minimize damage others you can only time the special attack but need CD based defense to take less damage.
I almost never went solely melee except in fairly easy fights. Single bandit or two. Once I blew my flurry and daze and a dodge or two I would swap out to staff and skirmish/kite a bit.
Of course with a hard fight I often actually started with staff and chaos storm + warlock, then go in for melee.
Its was actually pretty rare for me to solely do melee. For me it was a pretty fluid blend. I only did solely melee on singles because basically that is the fasest kill. But Icertainly put melee to use in hard fights.
Edit:
actually you know what a thought just occurred to me. I never tried have two differnt Sword/pistol sets. I bet that might work really nice. Use one blow CDs. Swap do same. That should give quite a good cycle of defense skills. I guess I gotta try that in next Beta.
For some reason I was just always set in the mindset you gotta have two difference weapon sets.
Vey nice! Added it to the OP!
Reminds me a bit of the eviscerate build tbh, but it's interesting to see it w/ the GS as well (since I know this was one of the weapons people were complaining about not doing well in PvP).
Melee seems to require better play, from an earlier point, to do well in GW2 than most ranged combat. There's just more room for error, literally, than with ranged combat.
Part of the problem people are having is that is addition to not fully knowing the profession they are playing and the dynamics of GW2 combat, many people don't yet understand that melee professions in GW2 are not tanks. Even the heavy armor professions need to move in and out of close range combat over the course of an extended fight, making proper use of dodge, circle stafing and defensive abilities in order to succeed.
Melee skills do much more damage that ranged skills, which compensates for the risk of getting close to an opponent and also helps to even out DPS as the player meneuvers in and out of active, close combat.
That all being said, Arenanet, on the beta forums, have already discussed the need to address melee combat. They want to do a better job communicating to new players how best to approach a melee profession in the game, adjust skills to make sure that each weapon set has proper defensive capabilities and possibly look at other ways to slightly boost survivability, with out making melee professions tanks.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
@ Magnum: I feel the exact same way. I did a LOT of melee pvp as a ranger. I felt it was very strong, and I didn't die very often (even in WvW). I even managed to take down Anet's elementalist (I forget his name), with my melee build. He was pretty tough to fight, though. The thing to note is that for attacking keeps w/ siege weapons up, it's almost never a good idea to just charge, period (melee or not).
This isn't a game where you can just pop your CDs and never die, it does take some positioning & tactics. However, I also managed some pretty interesting tactics in PvP that I wasn't sure would work. I managed to fear people off of walls, a theif w/ my would also grapple people off the keep walls, and hten we would burst them down on the ground. I saw a mesmer also teleporting onto some of the walls and placing portals for us to warp over the gates. Very awesome for surprise attacks. There was also a fight where we ignored the gate completely and just blew open a wall, lol. Quite awesome. It's once you breach those defenses that melee gets VERY very good.
@gestalt: I actually had the same thought as well, lol. I wonder if Anet has even thought of this? I imagine it could potentially make for some pretty OP builds. Definitely something I'll have to try next beta as well.
After watching that video and the one following it, I am convinced. But I still say melee has it rough in PvE in comparison to ranged. Not that I mind actually going ranged as a warrior, but some people feel like it's not the way they wanted to play or whatever.
I think one of the things that happened in structured PvP is that people didn't understand stats and just went in with whatever ArenaNet gave them. I know as a Mesmer, I had to customize an incredible amount in a similar way that the guy did in the video.
Anyway, I think that's my favorite video for showing the amount of customization possible in GW2. And it makes me want to get back in and play really bad.
Against most, but not all champion MOBs I agree. They need to do some tweaking there. MOBs with knockdowns were also pretty brutal when I was meleeing, though it was still managable (and you could always counter it with some stability).
I think they are aware of the melee PvE woes are are working on balancing it.
As for PvP I found speccing more into toughness and vitality to be very beneficial. I used Dolyak Runes (toughness, vit, and regeneration), toughness/vit gems, and a power, toughness, vit amulet. Worked out suprisingly well. I had a decent amount of condition removals in my build too so it was very difficult to put any form of CC on me.
That...was sick...
Imagine 20 of those berserking into your force in WvW
muhahahaha
Life IS Feudal
Lol, I imagine that will become the first FotM build tbh. The thing is, though, it's not w/ out it's flaws. A smart block or dodge can negate much of what that build is aimed towards. It'll still hurt, but the bulk of it's damage revolves around hundred blades & eviscerate. Even a good hammer warrior would make it tough for that build. I would love to see more people at least attempt melee builds in PvP (or WvW) I've seen a few, but I think a lot of people are still a bit intimidated by it.
The ranger ones are just as bad with Quickening Zephyr and 20 seconds of stability. Getting hit by a barrage of 3k crits in a matter of a couple seconds is absurd especially since you can't CC them while they are doing it, they have swiftness, and gap closers.
There is a lot of tweaking that needs to be done on abilities.
Edit: I just realized none of the PvP videos you have of melee rangers show the overpowered build, so here goes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4vinsdrqU
Gasp!
op? lol not realy - all you have to do is block the zephyr.. meaning blind, double dodge, elite skills, counter burst or some of the other 100 possibilities ^^ (stability is just an anti-knockdown as far as I remember)
With my thief I would win a fight against a ranger who is solely focusing on burst, just saying.
Then there is also the fact that this is not a 1vs1 game, so use good teamplay.
My point being: dont jump to conclusions
my apologies.
Noticed in a few videos that warriors who know what they are doing look absolutely beast. I guess this is one way of achieving it.
I'll contribute; Here's a video of me beating up a Ranged Thief till he learnt how to use the environment against my poor tired fingers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDeZxCfpsr0&list=PL41A3792F2FE95E41&index=5&feature=plpp_video
This is not a game.
Why did you leave out Engineer? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHAFoxfLl34
Ok, technically it's not melee, but it is melee range.
If I recall correctly, when you swap to the same weapon type CDs should carry over. That's why you want to use different weapons.
Thanks for the vid.
And you kinda answered your own question =P. I left out the engineer precicesly because they aren't really a melee character. They are actually one of the only characters that don't really have a melee build. They can do some nice damage close range (with an PBAoE bomber build), but they are a very unique class.
Toolkits. Engineer with toolkits can do melee.
I'm mostly concerned about Warrior. Compared to Guardian, the other heavy armor wearing melee, Warrior is pretty weak.
Respect, walk
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- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
He wants the entire game canceled imo lol