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Rampages and melee
drmechano
Posts: 46 Arc User
Why do the devs seem to just flat out hate any non-ubergeared melee tank in rampages? If you're even slightly squishy in any way you're forced to almost constantly block to avoid all the powers being thrown out by Gravitar OR if you don't have a vehicle in Sky Command you might as well just sit on the deck for all the good you're going to be doing trying to chase down single targets.
Plus the whole "shorter range but more damage" schtick that they seem to spout off for melee just isn't true. Thanks to being able to sacrifice a lot of survivability for damage, the ranged damage dealers can just sit back and do a crapton more damage than any melee DPS can do just by using their maintains meanwhile melee players have to give up some of that to just be survivable IF they're not geared out the wazzoo.
All I'm asking is could we please tune the rampages to be a little bit more melee friendly?
Plus the whole "shorter range but more damage" schtick that they seem to spout off for melee just isn't true. Thanks to being able to sacrifice a lot of survivability for damage, the ranged damage dealers can just sit back and do a crapton more damage than any melee DPS can do just by using their maintains meanwhile melee players have to give up some of that to just be survivable IF they're not geared out the wazzoo.
All I'm asking is could we please tune the rampages to be a little bit more melee friendly?
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Watching the dev chatter for that soon to be time traveling dragon game they've figured out that they've made ranged too mobile with all the instants casters have gained over the near decade, where the penalty for being ranged used to be getting rooted by your cast bar.
Ranged has the "big sky" theory to use to their advantage. Boss has a nasty PBAoE? Step a few feet back and continue your maintain. Patch of bad forming under your feet? Move a few steps to your left and carry on. Since there aren't any set classes in CO there's no way to say you're melee so you'll get hurt less.
It's a matter of keeping track of what your character does, and using that. If what you do best is punching and kicking stuff, don't bother grabbing a disk on the Carrier, unless you just want to use it to get around the deck quickly. Stay on the deck, beat up the robots, if you have a heal use it on the scoop, and rely on your teammates to keep the engines up.
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An SC team can only make use of one or two melees though. A ranged character with strong AoEs will be a lot more versatile and can move to wherever they're needed most.
Gravitar is very melee-friendly. Fire & Ice seems to be okay for us as well. It's true that if you aren't a tank or ?ber geared you're gonna feel the pain, but that's what support characters are for. Buffers and healers are a must if your defenses are a bit lighter, and I think that's to be expected with content of this difficulty level.
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No one's even saying ranged powers should snare the user... you starting another imaginary battle?
Melee's biggest self root is its range, which is the real problem here, not the few powers that have a self root. Buffing the damage won't do anything, your dps is 0 when you're dead.
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Unless you want to defeat the bonus boss, then you'll probably need a few DPS people - and in that case melee and ranged are about on par in usefulness because unlike other rampage enemies the destroid doesn't flood the entire deck with instant-kill AoEs.
If 2GM self snared/rooted, it'd be a sensibly balanced power maybe.
Rooting on ranged powers is actually a pretty smart balancing tool. Compare Electricity/Fire and Archery/Munitions in an alert like F&I, specifically considering a situation with falling ice. Elec/Fire characters would not be able to attack at all, because all of their attacks, whether it's lightning arc or conflagration or fireball or what have you, root the player in place. This is all in spite of their much higher damage output compared to Munitions or Archery, which have their own drawbacks (munitions being shorter ranged on non-rooting moves, and archery doing less damage, but easily being the most mobile ranged set). Even considering that, in the situation of rapid tracking AoEs, the archer is going to be able to maintain its DPS while avoiding enemy attacks, while the elementals have to choose between dodging or attacking - something melee also has to do, despite not being rooted, because... Well, a 30 foot diameter circle isn't much breathing space when 30 ft AoEs are getting plastered all over the place.
Almost all melee attacks are non-self-rooting. There's only an odd few exceptions, most of which are done either to balance them out (Eye of the Storm) or just to spite the players (Mighty Kick and the entirety of Heavy Weapons as soon as you realize that the attack animations are also slow as all hell.)
A lot of melee characters I build end up being pretty hardy, even when offense-focused (~7-9k HP) Those that don't explicitly use a defense-passive still get one-shot regularly in rampages. I'd sure love to bring one into a rampage with proper healers/tanks but whenever I try the game always seems to like pairing me with more melee fighters. ****. **** flxekhgaslihtsefmr,ase
I just find it really odd that for the rampages practically everything is focused around punishing melee with very little done against ranged, with Gravitar the only problem they really have to worry about is the gravity well pull and the shot she fires out seemingly at random and I say this having taken my pure elec build in there so it's not just me judging on whats happening.
They might, occasionally, be targetted for the AoE dome thing but most of the time that's focused around Gravitar herself which is where both the tank and the other melee are located.
Most other boss fights in MMOs tend to balance this out by making it so that there isn't ALWAYS AoEs being fired off every few seconds (and that Melee DPS is usually designed around high damage bursts and not the lower sustained DPS of ranged damage dealers, meaning they don't lose much DPS by having to break off), the boss will usually fire them off once every 30 seconds or so, usually with a big telegraph to signal to melee DPS to get the frell out of there and then head back in once it is done. Gravitar by contrast just spams the PBAoEs every few seconds.
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I'd say that the most Rampage-like boss that's favorable to melee fighters is Firewing, as his AoEs seem to mostly be directed cones that can be avoided simply by running to a different angle around him. His conflags are pretty dangerous, but they're not exclusively centered around him like Gravitar's blasts are, nor does it quite seem he uses it as consistently. I can't confirm this, though, since I've never gotten a freaking melee fighter beyond the two fat naked alien men. His flying might also be a problem.
There's also Warlord - he's stationary, much like the current rampage bosses, but has his napalm that he only uses when the target is far away enough. Funny, because this makes it so that most of the ranged characters' big perks are completely invalidated, but still, they're far from useless.
There were some Rampage boss drafts I did that were designed with a bit of melee friendliness in mind. Though that term is a bit obtuse, because the way that's done, in the case of the hypothetical Ripper and Jack Fool cases, is that the boss actively chases you, so ranged targets are basically forced into melee. Even then, Rampage JF there takes more damage the closer the target is to him. Menton is a bit more nebulous in this respect, but he's vulnerable to knocks and stuns, which Melee is much better at doing with basic attacks.
So YOU are the one who's been kiting the alert bosses, making the game frustrating for melee characters
To not stray too much from the topic, melee does have the advantage of being tougher, due to generalized defenses in their passives, and block replacers like parry/energy shield. Stuff like Thundering Kicks also gives a nice survivability buff. There's also Endorphin Rush in its majesty to mention.
Melee is actually mostly fine in the rampages. Pretty much anyone not in a vehicle/healing is gonna be having a lousy time in Sky Command. Gravitar is Gravitar, and F&I does minimal to no area damage until enrage. Lemurian Invasion stands to be seen, but none of the ones we've had so far really penalize melee, except arguably Gravitar.
So why is melee seen as bad? Well, it has a much higher skill floor then ranged AND is a little harder to build coherently. Because 90% of the melee powers are charges, there's a substantial amount of people that don't build to enable tapping, nor are all the melee powers really even that good. Couple this with only one energy unlock for melee as a whole (Supernatural) and you get into a bizarre situation of needing very specific gearing or rotations to maintain some level of energy neutrality whereas most ranged DPS sleepwalk with theirs.
It's not all that bad though, as melee DOES do more damage then ranged pretty heavily. Brawler blows Avenger out of the water, Strength is superior to Ego (tree wise), and generally there's a variety of high damage abilities that are melee (Devour Essence, Massacre, Haymaker, and Gauntlet Chainsaw to name a few).
Ranged as a whole is easy and reilable damage while melee is much higher, but harder to pull off damage. This is assuming all things being equal and, while it could use some QoL buffs (energy unlocks zomg), it's most of the way fine.
You mean the advantages that also give you that nice -10% damage? As far as I know, Phalax Defense (or whatever it's called) does the same for ranged PA, but with no damage penalty.
Positioning is very important for melee in F&I. Especially as a melee tank where Flamer's splash damage can decimate melee dps. Taking advantage of the 10ft range of melee is a must.
My non-vehicle healer seems to do just fine in SC. And I don't feel too terribly useless with my gat gun or arrows on my other toons. I can just stand there and tap the buttons without bothering to target manually. Love those 100ft powers. I don't have to move much either, but that would just be a waste of the awesome hoverdisc.
Can't do more damage if you're not in range. I also don't see how you need more skill to pull off a melee build vs ranged build. Elaborate?
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Maximizing Fire DPS : Have flame reverberation and high energy -> Deploy firesnake -> Tap fireball -> Use flashfire -> Use conflagration = Good damage to multiple enemies.
Maximizing Dual Blade DPS : Charge Dragon's Wrath -> Tap Dragon's Wrath -> Tap Dragon's Wrath -> Tap Dragon's Wrath = Great damage to a single enemy.
Or how about this?
Maximizing Power Armor DPS : Making sure you have enough energy to even consider PA -> Turn on Concussor Beams -> Turn on Minigun -> Make sure concussor beams didn't turn off -> Turn on Micro Munitions -> Turn on concussor beams and minigun again because they both turned off at the same time -> Run out of energy maybe -> ????? = Great DPS against multiple enemies in a wide cone.
Maximizing Bestial DPS : Have Supernatural Energy -> Bite -> Massacre -> Massacre -> Massacre = Great DPS to a single enemy.
Maximizing Fire DPS : Have MSA and high int -> Deploy firesnake -> Use SR -> Use rimefire -> Use ice greandes = Good damage to multiple enemies. (okay, ice greandes isn't fire damage or power.)
Maximizing Sniper DPS: Stand past 100ft away using the old PvP power replacer -> Sniper rifle -> repeat
Funny thing is try out doing the damage on those on a melee and still be able to survive in gravitar. You just chose some bias examples.
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The most complex it gets probably is Single Blade, and even that can generally be boiled down to using a rush ability once, then full charging Reaper's Embrace repeatedly if it's got advantage. Earth's also complicated but phffahhahahahaa who the hell uses earth melee for superior damage output.
So just to be clear, you are maximizing Rush from Dragon's Wrath, either sitting in a CoAP for it, or weaving in a low cooldown ability to keep the energy up for it? Likewise, for Bestial you're managing Shredded and bleeds?
You need to compare appropriate DPS sets with appropriate ones, not compare them in a void. You're effectively not comparing either of those Lightning Arc or Two Gun Mojo, that revolve around "Sit there and hold button down." You're also not accounting for things like "make sure you're behind the enemy" to take advantage of flanking, or the majesty that is Laser Sword, the equivalent of Power Armor.
Phalanx Defense System operates off a singular spec (power armor) which, to be frank, kinda needs it due to its limitations (energy), and it's not always on if you're not energy neutral.
As for melee, a large amount of the skill is managing when to block, when to heal, and knowing what to do in your empty downtime. If you have Night Warrior, being forced to back off to ignore a Gravitar Bubble, as an example, may set you up for a Shadow Strike to recoup the damage you would've lost. Knowing how to weave combos in to maximize Brawler/Warden abilities (if you have them) or maintaining buffs, something melee has to do with range rarely does, requires more management then most.
Look at Laser Sword or a few of the various sets for examples. The only real exception to this on the ranged side is TK Lance, as Ego Leech can be RNG horror (Ego Blade Breach also has to deal with it).
Ultimately, if you play Range the same as melee, simply go through your rotation/button press at the absence of everything, you will do significantly worse when compared to a flanker, or a setup user (as appropriate).
So wait, just to be clear, if it was nerfed you'd be fine and nothing would change? I mean, I think the vast majority of people are wanting its damage nerfed and little else.
For you.
Since you don't speak for the silent masses they are both correct and incorrect, since the likelihood of every single player utilizing it purely for how it looks is, extremely low and already I can name off two people I know that use it for the damage.
So, get off the horse, and understand the views of other people.
On the subject of powersets : Some things work easier then others. It's all about the players preference really.
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As was said above, most just want a damage reduction on it, and I've advocated for a damage reduction with it myself since the damage penetration is extremely strong on it, in other threads concerning it.
Please don't put words in fudge's mouth. I never said it should Snare or Root.
And invisible army fights invisible army, your 'larger number' is null.
Also, to quickly add : Melee in gravi is painful. o_o
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For most of the game "when to block" is about never or when that giant "!!!" thing pops up over the villain's head. Blocking and healing are not things exclusive to melee. As far as I can see, ranged builds tend to have more involved rotations than melee builds do. I'd say it takes more skill to create a good PA or FC build than your typical melee build.
While I do agree that being able to run around is more fun than being rooted with ranged powers, I'm not going to pretend people take Two Gun for that instead of the high damage for low cost that it has.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Otherwise it's just a case of sitting there and doing their maintains/rotations, there is nothing difficult about Gravitar for ranged players if a competent tank is there, compare that to all the sh...stuff Melee DPS have to deal with on Gravitar.
So saying "oh you just want tank and spank fights..." no, I want fights that are fair. For example, one boss fight in an MMO that remains nameless would charge at the player furthest from him, encouraging people to get closer and a lot of bosses have the "emergency hug" mode where you have to group up on them, even for a brief time, forcing ranged to move their asses into melee range and allowing the melee DPS already in there a chance to continue to do so.
Certain bosses had room sweeps which you had to run infront of otherwise you'd suffer a lot of damage if not get OHKO'd if you got caught in it. That dpesn't just penalise Melee, a room sweeping ability hits everyone, it's a case of either move or die for everyone.
Gravitar is basically a big middle finger to both melee DPS and averagely geared tanks, the fight is poorly designed in my opinion.