Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.

[Linnael.1069]

Anet, why are you balancing 1200+ range options to have the same DPS as melee options?

It's painfully obvious that there will ALWAYS be an issue with scourge/virt/etc. when they can just do constant DPS from anywhere, while melee has to stop and run around for mechanics. Can we please remind ANET that range is a big advantage which should come with a trade-off? They seem to have forgotten that.

[LadyKitty.6120]

Problem with nerfing ranged weapons to clearly perform lower than melee weapons is that nobody would use them in most of the instanced content.

Best option would be to have ranged weapons do damage almost equal to melee builds from within 240 range and reduce it dynamically based on distance with max. range causing 25%-50% damage reduction. Though difficulty with that is probably implementing it to the skills, especially condi ones, in a reasonable time. (And dev time is money so would it be worth the cost?)

DH does have a trait with similar function but that's a singular trait that applies to all skills and they'd need to add similar formula (+develop condi version) to every ranged skill.

[bruakumfd.4817]

I absolutely love, love how aggressive I can get on my Reaper and Tempest. However, it's pretty annoying to have to switch to an axe or to water attunement for a noticable DPS drop. So, I agree that there should be a trade-off of some sort, and I think the person above me has the right idea.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

Ranged builds are doing equal damage even while standing outside the melee boon ball? I remain skeptical. The only way ranged builds are going to do equal damage is to convince everyone in the zerg to play ranged and stay away from the boss. Until then, I'll be standing at 240 with my rifle. Woot!    /s

[peperoncino.2516]

being a power weaver enjoyer, im basically stuck with a sword/dagger(or warhorn if soto) for any content that requires best dps out of me (or at least close to it) and i just cannot see why weapon combos available to this espec just for some reason have to have 90% skills as 120 range melee that lock me into long uncancelable animations, or leap me right on top of bosses kitten (and on top of whatever aoe currently is being shatted out by said kitten) while those skills still are required for any actually decent use of the weapon.

then theres mentioned "scourge/virt/etc" bunch that can do without all that. ok.

[SeTect.5918]

I would generally agree but necro and engi dont have any melee condi weapons. 

With engi getting shortbow i doubt engi will ever get a melee condi weapon. Unless they heavily buff mace (finally)?

I mean scourge is kinda op atm but condi necro builds (and condi engi builds) shouldn't be nerfed to a dps where its 30k while all others are 40k just because it has no melee option. 

Edited September 18 by SeTect.5918

[Obtena.7952]

17 minutes ago, SeTect.5918 said:

I would generally agree but necro and engi dont have any melee condi weapons. 

With engi getting shortbow i doubt engi will ever get a melee condi weapon. Unless they heavily buff mace (finally)?

I mean scourge is kinda op atm but condi necro builds (and condi engi builds) shouldn't be nerfed to a dps where its 30k while all others are 40k just because it has no melee option. 

That's a constant misconception because ranged weapons ALSO work at melee range. 

As for the thread. Ranged weapons have intrinsic advantages because ranged so ... yeah, they shouldn't be as good as their melee options. That's not a fundamental problem, it's a fundamental weapon design consideration. 

Edited September 18 by Obtena.7952

[Curennos.9307]

9 hours ago, peperoncino.2516 said:

being a power weaver enjoyer, im basically stuck with a sword/dagger(or warhorn if soto) for any content that requires best dps out of me (or at least close to it) and i just cannot see why weapon combos available to this espec just for some reason have to have 90% skills as 120 range melee that lock me into long uncancelable animations, or leap me right on top of bosses kitten (and on top of whatever aoe currently is being shatted out by said kitten) while those skills still are required for any actually decent use of the weapon.

then theres mentioned "scourge/virt/etc" bunch that can do without all that. ok.

I feel that pain. I enjoy sword ele, and while I twirl gracefully back and forth in melee range I've also been trying out scepter because I haven't played it since they changed the dragon's tooth skill and my goodness it has no evades, worse healing, and it's still easier just because of the range. And it feels like it does more damage (the fire AA seems better, at least, and all I notice is that higher burn ticks pop up more consistently than with sword). I'll stick with sword because I like it, but ugh. Especially painful using sword for rifts because the bosses are always zooming around and farting out goop onto the ground.

[Gibson.4036]

16 hours ago, Linnael.1069 said:

Anet, why are you balancing 1200+ range options to have the same DPS as melee options?

It's painfully obvious that there will ALWAYS be an issue with scourge/virt/etc. when they can just do constant DPS from anywhere, while melee has to stop and run around for mechanics. Can we please remind ANET that range is a big advantage which should come with a trade-off? They seem to have forgotten that.

Can't speak to scourge, but ranged damage is about all that virt has in general PvE. I enjoy stints of just blowing things up from 1200 range, but then I end up going back to other professions that can help others, eat breakbars, and have great resiliency.

[Gibson.4036]

39 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

 

As for the thread. Ranged weapons have intrinsic advantages because ranged so ... yeah, they shouldn't be as good as their melee options. That's not a fundamental problem, it's a fundamental weapon design consideration. 

Then again, if you're using it at range, you're also missing out on any boons and healing the blob is putting out. So there is a trade off.

[Stx.4857]

If you straight up make ranged weapons deal less damage than melee, then no one will ever use them.  
 

My suggestion would be to try and balance all weapons to have equal dps.  Give melee weapons additional advantages for the cost of being in melee.  That could be in the form of defense, group utility, mobility, boons, built in cleave or heavier AoE, whatever.   

Edited September 18 by Stx.4857

[Linnael.1069]

14 hours ago, LadyKitty.6120 said:

Problem with nerfing ranged weapons to clearly perform lower than melee weapons is that nobody would use them in most of the instanced content.

Best option would be to have ranged weapons do damage almost equal to melee builds from within 240 range and reduce it dynamically based on distance with max. range causing 25%-50% damage reduction. Though difficulty with that is probably implementing it to the skills, especially condi ones, in a reasonable time. (And dev time is money so would it be worth the cost?)

DH does have a trait with similar function but that's a singular trait that applies to all skills and they'd need to add similar formula (+develop condi version) to every ranged skill.

This is a good idea but too ambitious for ANET. 
 

IMO the balance should be focused on actually interesting content where you actually have to move and do things. Clearly there can’t be an even playing field for both the content that matters and the content that is just standing still in a stack with no thought. 
 

Ask yourself why you don’t see everyone in open world playing scourge? It is highest DPS, most comfortable, most easy by a long shot. It’s because that content doesn’t care at all about balance lol. People talking about the “blob”: let’s be real you would not notice or care if melee was a solid 20-30 percent better DPS than the ranged weapons you use for tagging. 

We should keep balance discussions focused on the situations where it is actually relevant. If you keep the mindless stacking DPS equivalent between melee and range, you are just saying you prefer to balance that at the sacrifice of balance for actually interesting gameplay.

 

[SeTect.5918]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

That's a constant misconception because ranged weapons ALSO work at melee range. 

? Yes but the topic was not about that and my post was not about that.

Topic was about ranged weapons should come with a trade off and my post was about engi and necro ONLY having ranged options if you play condi so you always get this trade off if you play one of these. Thats why these should have melee condi options. So they have a way to avoid the trade off.

And no i didnt talk about melee range, i talked about melee weapons. Melee range on range weapons are still projectiles and melee weapons dont have projectiles.

Edited September 18 by SeTect.5918

[Stx.4857]

17 minutes ago, Linnael.1069 said:

This is a good idea but too ambitious for ANET. 
 

IMO the balance should be focused on actually interesting content where you actually have to move and do things. Clearly there can’t be an even playing field for both the content that matters and the content that is just standing still in a stack with no thought. 
 

Ask yourself why you don’t see everyone in open world playing scourge? It is highest DPS, most comfortable, most easy by a long shot. It’s because that content doesn’t care at all about balance lol. People talking about the “blob”: let’s be real you would not notice or care if melee was a solid 20-30 percent better DPS than the ranged weapons you use for tagging. 

We should keep balance discussions focused on the situations where it is actually relevant. If you keep the mindless stacking DPS equivalent between melee and range, you are just saying you prefer to balance that at the sacrifice of balance for actually interesting gameplay.

 

Balance is relevant everywhere in the game.  Even for easy content, if spec A is doing twice the damage of spec B, then players who play spec B will eventually get fed up with the imbalance.  
 

To answer your question, why doesn’t everyone just play scourge.   It’s because a very high % of players play the spec they enjoy, not the current flavor of the month.  

[Linnael.1069]

11 minutes ago, Stx.4857 said:

Balance is relevant everywhere in the game.  Even for easy content, if spec A is doing twice the damage of spec B, then players who play spec B will eventually get fed up with the imbalance.  
 

To answer your question, why doesn’t everyone just play scourge.   It’s because a very high % of players play the spec they enjoy, not the current flavor of the month.  

It’s objectively true that balance matters more where the margins for success are tighter. As anyone with arc can see, most players in the open world do not get fed up even when other players are doing 20x more dps than them, why would they be fed up by a 2x dps difference between specs?

 As you said yourself, people in easy content care more about what they want to play than what is objectively most effective. In that content, the efficacy doesn’t really matter.

 Also, like I said, many contexts in this game are mutually exclusive. You cannot just say balance matters everywhere, inherent contradictions exist between different types of content.

Edited September 18 by Linnael.1069

[Obtena.7952]

1 hour ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Then again, if you're using it at range, you're also missing out on any boons and healing the blob is putting out. So there is a trade off.

No, because you can move to melee to get those things without penalty with a ranged weapon. So, you STILL get those things AND you get the advantage of the range on your weapon. 

Edited September 18 by Obtena.7952

[Stx.4857]

17 minutes ago, Linnael.1069 said:

It’s objectively true that balance matters more where the margins for success are tighter. As anyone with arc can see, most players in the open world do not get fed up even when other players are doing 20x more dps than them, why would they be fed up by a 2x dps difference between specs?

 As you said yourself, people in easy content care more about what they want to play than what is objectively most effective. In that content, the efficacy doesn’t really matter.

 Also, like I said, many contexts in this game are mutually exclusive. You cannot just say balance matters everywhere, inherent contradictions exist between different types of content.

Actually, I said players like to play what they enjoy, not the FOTM, that applies to ALL content.  Balance matters in all content, for the same reasons.  

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Then again, if you're using it at range, you're also missing out on any boons and healing the blob is putting out. So there is a trade off.

No, there isn't.  If there were some disadvantage to being at close range with a ranged weapon that would be true.  As it stands, range is purely an advantage with the only exception being projectile block/reflect which is only really an issue in PvP.

I don't know what the answer is here.  While I think a "range tax" is appropriate, I don't think it should be very big.  I think it should be a factor, however.  Generally speaking, higher risk and complexity with lower utility should be at the top of the DPS ladder.  Currently we're at a place where the opposite is true.

[Curennos.9307]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

No, there isn't.  If there were some disadvantage to being at close range with a ranged weapon that would be true.  As it stands, range is purely an advantage with the only exception being projectile block/reflect which is only really an issue in PvP.

I don't know what the answer is here.  While I think a "range tax" is appropriate, I don't think it should be very big.  I think it should be a factor, however.  Generally speaking, higher risk and complexity with lower utility should be at the top of the DPS ladder.  Currently we're at a place where the opposite is true.

- Damage. I would say just go for a few percentage points difference in core damage value of a skill. Anything more and it will compound through all the damage multipliers flying around. Idk, however much it takes to make up for the damage difference when melee is forced to dodge/move when ranged aren't. I don't think that's a huge amount, but still.

- Support. I just don't think scourge should be able to get full support benefits from range in multiple locations, that's bonkers. Preserving the class fantasy, overall effectiveness, and feel of the spec(s) is important but there are definitely outliers that can be looked at here (I just picked on scourge cause it's easy). Support in this game is generally melee, so being able to do it from range - which is fine! - should still have some drawback. Such as the case with specter, which has range but it doesn't just puke it out easily without targeting, is limited by ini instead of cooldowns, has reduced effect in AoE, etc.

- Options. Scourge again, or more necro this time. What is a necro supposed to do if they want a melee condi option? Technically harb shroud is already melee except for the AA, since 3 and 4 are dashes and shroud 2 does terrible damage unless you're in melee range. Engi doesn't really have a melee condi damage weapon either. If we want anet to differentiate more btwn ranged and melee, there need to be additional options so folks have the choice to go melee if they want

- Mob behavior. By and large, insofar as I've found, mechanics *generally* favor ranged. AoE mechanics tend to spiral out from the boss, giving ranged more time to react. Boss movement is rarely, if ever, relevant to ranged characters unless you're standing at the limit of your range and the boss takes a step back. Aggro mechanics were mentioned in another thread, which I like it being brought up - mobs don't generally make a beeline for ranged attackers, and on the flip side melee attacks rarely get to feel like they're helping if they put on more durability stats to support doing the deepz in melee.

- Cleave. Not as much of an issue IMO but it does have its outliers as well. Most melee has good cleave, and moooost ranged IIRC tends to be single target. Weapon skills, at least. Ranger longbow (longbow5 exists, but everything else is single target and 5 is the longest CD of the bunch and a long cast time), thief rifle, etc. With some exceptions ofc (necro scepter 2, and scepter 3 if you take a trait, but exceptions are fine as long as they're justified, like taking a GM trait to change necro scepter 3). Of course the easy pickings here, again, is scourge - good range, good support options, good cleave. Not that ranged *can't* have cleave, but it should be a bit harder to come by than on melee setups.

Edited September 18 by Curennos.9307

[anbujackson.9564]

To be honest I dont understand the argument that ranged weapons wont be played if they are weaker than melee. 

So you are telling me that people wont use cvirt or scourge if they do like 35-36k dps when pure melee like bladesworn or weaver do 40k? You dont honestly believe that right? Rethink the new PvE endgame content and say that again.

[Linnael.1069]

29 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

To be honest I dont understand the argument that ranged weapons wont be played if they are weaker than melee. 

So you are telling me that people wont use cvirt or scourge if they do like 35-36k dps when pure melee like bladesworn or weaver do 40k? You dont honestly believe that right? Rethink the new PvE endgame content and say that again.

People in this thread are honestly arguing that we should balance for open world blobs so I don’t think they have any idea how much you lose by going melee in real fights. I think a -15% range tax is fair overall but even -20% wouldn’t be out of line.

[LadyKitty.6120]

2 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

To be honest I dont understand the argument that ranged weapons wont be played if they are weaker than melee. 

So you are telling me that people wont use cvirt or scourge if they do like 35-36k dps when pure melee like bladesworn or weaver do 40k? You dont honestly believe that right? Rethink the new PvE endgame content and say that again.

Don't forget that there's old content to take into account, quantity-wise more and new content where range is a lot stronger than melee is mainly played by a minority within endgame community which is greatly a minority itself.

So yeah, people who have multiple classes geared and care about doing as good DPS as they can would only play those ranged builds at few new bosses (CM99+100, EoD strike CMs, prolly Matt and also Adina if on pillar duty) and otherwise melee builds.

Ofc if we go to open-world solo gameplay (you stack at most world bosses so there you balance for group), ranged builds would still be good since they can just kite to avoid taking major damage. But since in solo gameplay you probably would use different builds anyway (if you want to have best time dealing with mobs, champs and bosses) and since your damage wouldn't affect the success rate of other players, using open-world, esp. solo, performance as main measure to balance on wouldn't have much effect there but likely a massive negative impact on balance of any squad content where people care about DPS. This paragraph was in response to people who speak about using open-world for balance, to be clear.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

4 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

To be honest I dont understand the argument that ranged weapons wont be played if they are weaker than melee. 

So you are telling me that people wont use cvirt or scourge if they do like 35-36k dps when pure melee like bladesworn or weaver do 40k? You dont honestly believe that right? Rethink the new PvE endgame content and say that again.

Because they won't be played if they were weaker. A lot of people are like me, and they just follow Snowcrows, Hardstuck, or metabattle because it is the easiest thing to do. So, if ranged weapons got nerfed bad, the people there would switch it to a melee or remove the build altogether leaving people like me who don't mind playing the ranged weapons no meta build to follow. 

The bigger issue isn't even the ranged part if I am to be honest. I will even admit most builds both melee and ranged are overperforming atm, so nerfing a pure dps build down to 35k would kill it at this moment when most are over 42k. 

Edited September 18 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Gibson.4036]

20 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

No, because you can move to melee to get those things without penalty with a ranged weapon. So, you STILL get those things AND you get the advantage of the range on your weapon. 

If you’ve moved into melee range, how are you still getting the advantage of range?

[Jzaku.9765]

9 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

If you’ve moved into melee range, how are you still getting the advantage of range?

Why are you drawing a binary of "Always Melee" vs "Always Ranged"? 

Do ANY recent content and encounter design constantly pulls you off the boss. Orange Circles (Spread Mechanic), Ankka Quaggans (giant AOE on CM) or Krait or even Reaper, or any time you have to drop a puddle off-stack. 

You benefit from being on stack as much as a full melee, then you can still get value while you are ranged off doing mechanics, as opposed to a full melee which is doing ZERO. It's really not hard to understand.