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I think the trick (and this is from watching, not playing) to Melee is judicious use of the various slow/knockback/draw conditions and effects- I'm almost certain that every single build has at least one skill that will close the distance some way or another.

Melee weapons come in two catagories, "catchup" and "control" . Things like daggers, swords and greatswords have leap/teleport abilities that let you catch up to a ranged/fleeing foe whereas hammers and maces have stuns/cripples/immobilises that prevent the enemy from getting away in the first place.

Clever use in these abilities makes melee very effective, after playing melee I kinda got frustrated with how low damage ranged attacks are.

Oh yeah melee has cool stuff like leaps and that, but they are pretty easy to counter just by using a dodge to get back out of range.

I imagine all the range weapons have some sort of movement ability also, to help get you out of melee.

For the 2h Sword guardian the leap was good and so was the chains ability to pull people in, but it does take a while for the abilities to cooldown.

I know that the Longbow ranger has a shot that knocks opponents away, while their shortbow has a shot that launches them away from the target. I do remember seeing rangers in gen chat though talking about how the longbow was nerfed since last beta.

Elementalist can be really good at kiting, plenty of speed buffs they can get as well as abilities to roll back etc.

Not sure how many speed buffs stack though, I had several traits that boosted speed which made me run about pretty quick, then I used swiftness and I pretty much went the same speed so maybe its capped or such.

Corpsesarefun wrote:after playing melee I kinda got frustrated with how low damage ranged attacks are.

Now you know how I felt about my greatsword/rifle warrior. I loved the rifle, but the greatsword just... it outclassed it in almost every way. The only reason I used the rifle was whenever I was running away trying to regain health or fighting a nasty boss, where I was letting the higher level players fight instead. The greatsword did more damage, more consistently, and to more enemies at once, than the rifle could ever dream of doing . EVen just to a single target the greatsword was better. The rifle's advantage was range and the ability to stay back out of the way of area of effect attacks-- but if the enemy decided to focus on me, the rifle was useless compared to the greatsword.

Xeriapt wrote:Oh yeah melee has cool stuff like leaps and that, but they are pretty easy to counter just by using a dodge to get back out of range.

Greatsword warrior for example has three attacks for this purpose. One of which had greater range than most ranged weapons, one of which crippled you, and the other one was a nasty area attack that moved the greatsword user in the process.

And that's not counting the greatsword's own dodge move to keep up with your dodge. You're gonna have to do more than jump out of the way to stay out of the greatsword's range. Other melee weapons have other methods to keep up.

Well that was just my experience playing 2h sword Guardian.

The abilities to get in range of targets are good (the leap is probably the best one), but the main problem I had was that even when your really close to your target I kept getting misses. Not sure if that was some sort of lag issue or not.

That and I only had the 2 abilities to close the gap, both of which have a decent length cooldown.

It does sound like the warrior has better tools for chasing people down, having the cripple would be very handy.

Not forgetting that in GW2 if you're using a 2handed weapon and your swing looks like it's hit something, it has.

Yeah, the warrior is definitely a better chaser.

Seeing as the warrior is pure physical while the guardian is a magic sword user person thing, it makes sense.

I actually love the Guardian's 2H Sword set. Mix the right traits and you can stack some really nasty amounts of damage. But the Warrior seemed to do more straight up damage. The Guardian mauls groups better though if you go for the burning damage bonus and a tanky skill set with damage focused traits.

Guardians are extremely burny with some smashing, warriors are 100% smashing.

It's like comparing Thor to The Hulk :3

Corpsesarefun wrote:Guardians are extremely burny with some smashing, warriors are 100% smashing.

It's like comparing Thor to The Hulk :3

Lol.



Either way I'll probably still stick with the Elementalist.

Its just a very versatile class, can do range/melee, has alot of abilities to gain extra movement and such.

The summoned weapons are also pretty damn awesome.

I'm playing 2hsword/rifle warrior sylvari as my primary, with my secondary being staff/2dagger necro norn. Dunno about the other characters. A guardian, a thief, an elementalist, and a mesmer are all likely. Maybe a human, an asura, and a second sylvari (Because charr walking annoy me, at least Asura are fun to watch with their yoda dodges) for races. Although I might do a second norn instead of the asura simply because I dislike the "cute", it isn't cute, just annoying.

Unless you make them to be (picking the cutest face and playing with the sliders to make it even more cute) the asura aren't particularly cute... Most of them are pretty ugly.

Are necromancers any good? Was thinking of playing one but I never got to play any of the beta weekends.

Am I the only person to be content with the default faces?

Corpsesarefun wrote:Unless you make them to be (picking the cutest face and playing with the sliders to make it even more cute) the asura aren't particularly cute... Most of them are pretty ugly.

I think all of them are ugly, even the "cute". It is not a race aesthetic that I particularly like.

Charr would be okay if they walked instead of pouncing everywhere.


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JohnnoM wrote:Are necromancers any good? Was thinking of playing one but I never got to play any of the beta weekends.

Necromancers are good-- they have the most life of any class, and are definitely the most survivable of any class when played right. But as I said, they have to be played right. There's really three ways to play them, and you can when done right play all three at the same time.

1: Life stealing, the most direct and hardest way to play the class, life stealing is exactly what it sounds like, using attacks that transfer life from your opponent to you.

2: Condition transfer, where you focus on keeping conditions off yourself and your allies, and on your enemies. This is also hard, but there's more condition powers than life stealing powers, so it isn't as hard as life stealing builds.

3: Death Shroud, where you focus on building up life force so that you can transform in to death shroud. Functions as an "oh gak" button as well, because death shroud acts as a second bar of HP when activated, and it has a nasty area of effect life steal and a fear attack to boot.

I play all three to some extent, but I find that focusing on death shroud, using a staff (staff's main attack gives you extra life force for every enemy you hit with it, and it hits every enemy in a line), is usually the best way to go because it's the most survivable. But dagger/dagger, my other weapon choice, is offensively more powerful, and contains more useful conditions and a life drain.

I like the Char run, but a more normal running animation as an option would be nice (notice some Char NPC's have a normal run animation).

The NPC Charr run animation is the "running with weapons out" animation, as long as you're in combat you'll use that animation as a Charr.

I wish that I'd use it outside of combat.

Maybe they'll sell alternate animations for those of us that don't want to look derpy.

Ugh, this one server nonsense is annoying. I have two disparate groups of friend and you jerks I'd like to play with. And I mean that in the dirtiest way possible.

On release (and perhaps in the beta, I didn't really try) you can guest on other servers for as long as you like, the only condition is you can't guest in World Vs World.

As an aside, I'm going to an American server. I might guest at the server the Euro players are using, but I don't want to deal with the lag when I just want to solo.

I'm pretty sure all the servers are based in the same place.

I tried a euro and american server, cant tell the difference between the two.

Nor can I.

At this stage in the internet there actually isn't a huge difference (depending on the quality of your internet provider). Labeling a server as 'Euro' or 'American' is a lot more about helping your demographic find itself than providing the best ping.

Yeah. I was on Desolation (EU server) as an American and the lag was the same as the US servers I was on in prior betas.
My only worry was lack of English-speakers, but Desolation is apparently the primary UK server, so that's fine too; I even met some people from India and Middle East during some late-night betagaming.

27 days until early access starts...

MY BODY IS READY.

For some reason I find that statement horribly disturbing.