Going Going DOWN!

I dont ever feel like i have a chance to avoid being downed when playing any of my melee characters. Almost every Meta im rocking out and then bam....down....i try standing behind the mob, to the side....max melee and nothing changes. I can get on my ranged and all is good.....i survive unless i do something that should kill me like "stand in red" so to speak.

Is it just the mass amounts of ae effects that i cant see that im standing in something bad? Do i need to learn each event as melee? Are melee supposed to be downed?

Thanks.

@"Mavein.3214" said:Is it just the mass amounts of ae effects that i cant see that im standing in something bad? Do i need to learn each event as melee? Are melee supposed to be downed?

It's almost certainly AoE that's hidden under the morass of other players, but it might be you standing in the way of boss cleaves(1) and the like. Watch the boss wherever possible to get hints from its animations. Example: when an Ettin moves like ... that ..., it's about to throw a big cleaving knockdown, and you want to get out of the way. (Fortunately, cleaves only hit people in front of whoever launches them, and most of them prevent the launcher from turning during the wind-up.)

(1) For anyone in the audience who doesn't know this term: a "cleave" in an MMORPG is a big melee attack that hits multiple foes. Players can cleave with lots of weapon skills, especially melee two-hand weapons like GS and Hammer, but there are even cleavish skills for axes, swords, etc. "Spin To Win" or "Will It Blend" skills like Guardian GS 2 "Whirling Wrath" are point-blank AoE rather than cleaves.

Definitely melee takes tons of learning in contrast to range, but it is also the game’s fault for not having an option to disable the effects of other players - it gets very, veeeery busy/messy.

One thing that can help a lot with melee is turning off a setting that’s on by default - I can’t remember it’s exact name, but something like “melee combat assist”. With it turned on, enemies can block your movement. With it turned off, you’re able to move through enemies, and often the shortest route to avoid a cleaving attack is to step into the enemy to get behind them.

Two major differences between Gw2 and say WoW that make it harder on Melee.

1. There is no way to see what your target it targeting. If in WoW for example, you saw the boss changed targets to your portrait, you knew things were about to get real.
2. Outside of raids and perhaps high end fractals, Gw2 doesn't use the holy trinity of MMOs. In most of the MMO's I've played, there is a tank, whose job is to hold the aggro, and position the boss so that DPS can safely attack; in the case of melee, that meant from behind. Now on some boss fights they might randomly turn and take a cleave strike at the DPS, but generally speaking, you knew all the damage was pointed at the tank and as melee DPS, you stayed out of the way.

So in Gw2, the boss might turn and take a swing at you for 'reasons', and if you don't notice the position change or the tell (because of particle effects from other players), you end up face tanking.

When you play solo in open world, this is pretty easy to deal with. I remember when I leveled a thief I got pretty good at timing my 'death blossom' (Dagger 3) so I could attack and evade my targets attack at the same time.

Wish I could offer a solution, but on many a fractal fight, I've struggled with the same.

If you can't see the attacks, you might try turning down/off post-processing effects. This will make the game appear much less flashy, but will also make it easier to see more than just the blinding flash of light from 50 attack animations landing on the boss every second! The rest comes down to learning the mechanics of each fight. The better able you are to anticipate key attacks, the easier it will be to avoid them.

Here's a sample video without other players around to get in the way:

This boss's attacks are fairly predictable. It's the unstable magic effects that make it a challenge. For instance, notice the fire circles that appear under my feet. They deal quite a bit of damage and the first strike lands in a fraction of a second. However, if you stay in motion and are quick on evades, they're one of the easier unstable magic effects to deal with.

You'll also see the impact of positioning and staying in motion when the boss drops his line of fire attack. He does the big line first, but then there's always that smaller line of fire that he angles toward your current position. So if you just stay in motion and circle strafe, it's easily avoided. With a group you have to be more careful because you don't know who he will target for that second attack. But you still know it's coming and there's only a slight chance it'll drop in your path, in which case you should be ready to dodge because you know exactly when the attack is coming!