Melee vs Ranged.

Disclaimer: Other users and i have shared some of our thoughts in others posts where this wasn't the main topic. I'm really curious what other players think about all this in a proper thread with it as the main topic. As an extra i'd like to exclude buccaneers since they kind of fit into both roles in a way. (And they are definitely not struggling). I'm leaving out aspects like "grinding speed" out of the discussion since i believe there's a lot of good alternatives for exp but not so much for dealing damage.

What i mean by melee vs ranged is the current mindset/state of the game where melee attackers are overall considered second class attackers and in some cases stepping stones to ranged attackers due to their innate higher hp and lower overall damage.

With that being said, i'd like to lay out my personal thoughts on the matter. Historically taking into account HP for class balancing has been succesful approach but as the game has advanced i'd argue it's not the case anymore. Hp washing presents players with the opportunity to wash any class to max hp while hp challenges gives each class an equalized amount to guarantee content participation per need. Between these two things i'd argue that balancing around HP becomes an obsolete concept.

Melee classes presents themselves as cleavers but in reality i'd argue there's no true content where cleavers "excel". To avoid going into detail these are some scenarios where melees are supposed to excel yet don't. HT, CWK (I wouldnt call it excel since you need ST as well) and in zak both have similar performances. Rest of the bosses are single target focused.

My proposed mindset would simply be balancing classes based on their damage and utility. Since buffing around only damage would be rather difficult, I believe focusing on each classes unique utility skill is a good approach. I'm sure these ideas could be controversial but i believe I provide good arguments in favor of this. Classes like Archers can dish out superior damage to melees while having within their kit SE, the strongest damage buff. Who's to say shads who have smoke (a less significant utility/buff) can't objectively have higher damage? The next paragraph is just some of the ideas on the main problem classes as far as im aware.

For the jack of no trades, master of none (shads) focusing on smoke would be my take. Making shads strong enough to merit a spot (if only smoke is buffed, it's smoke mule city) plus having smoke provide a significant buff whatever it may be (damage,crit, ied)

Heroes: Between adding uses to armor crash and buffing enrage to be party wide i'd say there would be more use for them (or making cleave content useful/valid)

Darks: Honestly no reason why darks shouldn't do damage as high as ranged attackers from an objective standpoint. High effort class and can't keep the damage uptime 100% (slippery slope since it cleaves).

I have a lot more ideas but i feel like i already ranted too much. I'm excited to see what the rest of the community thinks about this approach.

tldr: No reason to play melee, ranged is goated

 

Right. I also didnt mention pally, i think they are pretty valid.

 

i did say leaving buccs out on my disclaimer, buccs are very strong.

 

You might be right but the lhc part is a big if. CWK requires both so i wouldn't say they excel so it's fair content and i'd argue auf is an underdeveloped boss. I don't doubt ranged will eventually perform just as well. With that being said do you think it is fair and should remain this way? 1 content where they are equally important and auf where you just get your helm and be done.

 

That is why for shads i proposed a mix of the 2. Buffing smoke only favors muling. If you buff damage to a decent level plus smoke shads would be brought in bosses the same way archers are, could be technically SE mules but good enough to just bring as dps. I would probably limit whatever buff smoke could give to an internal cd to avoid abusing it on mules

 

To me it seems like you didn't read my whole post and i don't blame you. First thing i said was to leave buccs out. I'd probably group paladin there since they perform very well in important content. Taking one class (buccs) and saying melee is in a good state seems like a generalization. Obviously bucc used to be very bad but custom buffs brought it to a very good state, i don't see why my perspective is bad when clearly some of the melee classes have no real content where they excel at all.

 

Okay, i agree with the auf part maybe melees will always perform better. In terms of the NX part i really can't agree with that sentiment anymore. Sure it takes more NX but hp challenge is coming and for the average player the HP will be the same. If you decide to spend extra nx on a ranged class for luxury that's a choice.

In terms of the exp comment sure, melees can get more exp but so can ranged from doing higher damage on bosses. My point being EXP has a lot of workarounds, you arent just limited to 7f, while damage is a metric you can't work around. By exceling i mean pros and cons and i'd personally argue for shads heroes and darks there aren't as many pros as there should be to justify maining one objectively in my opinion.

 

I don't think rpgs need to be unbalanced (but it's okay if they are) and i don't think all jobs need to do everything. All im stating is that the gap being relatively big between melees and ranged doesn't make as much sense now as it did before. Making the damage higher or giving them desirable qualities would never dethrone the current DPS meta and would serve as validation for other classes. This also improves class variety while mantaining certain degree of optimization.