Should melee builds do slightly more damage than ranged builds?

eserras7b16_ESO

I'm posting this poll in order to sort this out. I believe the direction Murkmire is going will lead to Magplars, Magblades and potentially other ranged builds doing more damage single target and AoE than melee builds. Playing ranged is already an advantage and I believe that melee should be doing slightly more damage because you're taking risks and because vCR and vAS + other bosses mechanics already punish playing melee.

The game will win if we achieve something like 55k on ranged 60k on melee. We still have some time to apply balance changes for the next patch.

What do you think?

Aliyavana

Yes

Melee has the disadvantage of having to go up to their opponent who can attack at a distance. No reason snipe spammers should be more rewarded and less punished yet do as much damage as dizzying swing users.

Cillion3117

No

An arrow to your face would kill you as easy as a sword to your face.

MashmalloMan

Yes

To anyone that says no, please, why should ranged do more or the same damage. From a pve perspective, Melee needs to disengage in a fight a lot more then ranged does breaking up your rotation where a ranged spec can continue to dps.

Not to mention shields can completely nulify damage in pve where melee stamina dd's get 25% aoe dmg reduction, not every attack in the game is aoe. So you're just SoL in some fights.

If a melee stam dd and a ranged mag dd can pull the same dps on a target dummy, there's an issue.

MashmalloMan

Yes

Cillion3117 wrote: »

An arrow to your face would kill you as easy as a sword to your face.

Lol. Yes, lets try to use real world logic in a fantasy game with fire meteors and frost fields.

I think snipe is fine to be honest, the problem with the ability is the travel time stacking shots and the asylum bow buffing the crap out of snipes dmg.

Bow/Bow builds in pve are at a disatvantage because not only do they do less dmg then magicka at range, but they are more squishy without shields.

Melee mag dk/templars are at a disadvantage because they are in melee range, but take up the slot of a melee DD that can do a tiny bit more dmg.

ccmedaddy

Yes

eserras7b16_ESO wrote: »

I'm posting this poll in order to sort this out. I believe the direction Murkmire is going will lead to Magplars, Magblades and potentially other ranged builds doing more damage single target and AoE than melee builds.

Has the testing already been done to confirm that magicka builds do more DPS than stam? Or is this just a knee jerk reaction to the Relequin nerf?

Kelces

Yes

Emphasis on slightly, but I think it should.

Melee combat defenitely has certain moments, where you have to get distance from a boss or whatever target and even completely stop their rotation leading to a huge damage loss. However, most stamina builds include a bow to compansate for that. Full melee builds have always had that issues with that.

On the other hand, there is still some difficulty using bows, due to the distance you have to have to your target compared to staff specialists to have maximum effectiveness. I'm not aware of eventual changes to the passives for bows, but if that stays as now, I think it has to be kept in mind aswell.

Strider__Roshin

Yes

Melee should do around 20% more damage considering the increased risk as well as to account for the time it takes to close the gap whenever you engage and whenever your opponent moves.

ccmedaddy

Yes

Daus wrote: »

Melee should do around 20% more damage considering the increased risk as well as to account for the time it takes to close the gap whenever you engage and whenever your opponent moves.

Cast times on gap closers confirmed!

FearlessOne_2014

No

I say this for PvP only.

In PvP gap closers are spammable and cheap. Meaning range means nothing. If ranged was a thing in solo to small scale PvP than I would say yes.

MasterSpatula

No

No. Considering all the gap closers (and the fact that your enemies have just as much access to ranged attacks as you do), the safety "ranged" provides doesn't really amount to that much.

The difference isn't nothing, however. This is why the difference between Light Armor and Medium Armor protection should be greater. In the end, ranged attackers should be glass cannons. Close rage fighters should have more survivability.

Illuvatarr

No

Nope. Gap closers and stamina toons can use a bow. Range means nothing in this game unless you are at a keep.

idk

Yes

It normally his the case in MMORPGs. It is a greater risk going melee.

However, the design we have in ESO is much more complicated than other games. It is not designed in a manner where Zos can manage it that well and Zos does not seem to even try.

Pretty much it is easier to manage the damage along the lines of magicka vs stam than melee and range. It is why we usually have stam doing the best DPS or we find mDKs and mTemplars taking over the melee roles.

So in the end I do not think Zos will every figure this out. Maybe the update before the figure out how to eliminate the horrid lag that pops up in Cyrodiil.

brandonv516

Yeah I'll bite.

Okay if ALL weapons can have increased damage in melee range.

So if I'm a Destruction staff user and you get me in melee range, my damage goes up too. Then when I evade and get back out of range, my damage drops again.

10-28 meters away from an enemy: -10% damage

28+ meters away from an enemy: -20% damage

PathwayM

No

I voted No simply because I think they should be equal.

I know OP is referring more to the context of PvE, but in PvP melee is far stronger than ranged most of the time.

I would vote 'Yes' if there were more reliable ways to remain at range for all contexts than there currently are.

Pulque

No

There is no ‘should’. They force-change meta and make players keep leveling new toons.

Metafae

Yes

This order:

Melee Build in Light Armor = Should be doing Highest DPS
Melee Build in Medium Armor = Should be doing less than ^^
Ranged Builds in Light Armor = Should be doing less than ^^
Ranged Builds in Medium Armor = Should be doing less than ^^

JobooAGS

Yes

Metafae wrote: »

This order:

Melee Build in Light Armor = Should be doing Highest DPS
Melee Build in Medium Armor = Should be doing less than ^^
Ranged Builds in Light Armor = Should be doing less than ^^
Ranged Builds in Medium Armor = Should be doing less than ^^

So stamina should be doing less damage than magicka?

Emma_Overload

No

Melee does not deserve any advantages until all classes have counters to snares, roots and gap closers.

Emma_Overload

No

Also:

Melee does not deserve any advantages until all ranged attacks are able to connect within melee range. ZOS needs to fix the close range targeting issues.

Emma_Overload

No

Furthermore:

Melee does not deserve any advantages until magicka builds have our own magikca melee weapons. Duh!

RedRook

No

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Furthermore:

Melee does not deserve any advantages until magicka builds have our own magikca melee weapons. Duh!

This. If you think my magicka DK is happy to be over here holding a fire stick, you're mistaken. All my kit is melee range, but my only offensive weapon choice is a ******* staff. You think I also need a damage penalty because I'm playing it so safe? How about no.

SirDopey

Yes

I would go as far to say they should do a LOT more damage

Mykriz

Yes

Absolutely. It's one of the easiest and most common ways to balance ranged and melee.

bardx86

No

From a PVP perspective absolutely not. I fail to see how a melee next to caster is at any disadvantage, in fact the advantage is in the melee favor. If anything ranged attacks are harder to land and should do significant more damage.

Gilvoth

No

Cillion3117 wrote: »

An arrow to your face would kill you as easy as a sword to your face.

this ^

kypranb14_ESO

No

Every class, and the Sword & Board Skill Lines all have a counter to projectiles, as I mentioned in another post.

To top that off melee has gap closers which take most of ranges advantage away. If this game had cooldowns on abilities to prevent gap closer spam, I would probably agree that melee should do more damage.

kypranb14_ESO wrote: »

Believe it or not, every class can counter projectile builds.

Nightblade - Cloak (makes you invisible/untargetable, causing all incoming projectiles to "miss", and suppresses DoTs for up to 2.9 seconds unless revealed) | 4,050 Magicka Cost

Dragon Knight - Wings (Reflects up to 4 projectiles over 6 seconds) | 3,780 Magicka Cost

Sorcerer - Ball of Lightning (Shortest Duration with increased cost for spamming, however absorbs infinite projectiles over 1.8 seconds) | 3,780 Magicka Cost

Templar - Eclipse (Can be broken with Break Free or any method of purging, arguably the weakest counter to Projectiles. However, reflects some Magic damage for all Direct Damage) | 4,051 Magicka Cost

Warden - Crystallized Shield (Asborbs up to X damage from 3 projectiles over 6 seconds) | 3,240 Magicka Cost

Not to Mention Sword & Board has a stamina skill that reflects the next projectile that hits you, and stuns the attacker.

*Disclaimer- Costs were taken from the wiki and may be inaccurate.
**EDIT changed wording on Nightblade's Cloak to provide a more accurate statement as to what it does.

Carbonised

Yes

Metafae wrote: »

This order:

Melee Build in Light Armor = Should be doing Highest DPS
Melee Build in Medium Armor = Should be doing less than ^^
Ranged Builds in Light Armor = Should be doing less than ^^
Ranged Builds in Medium Armor = Should be doing less than ^^

Speaking from a clear PvE perspective and disregarding PvP which is a whole other game, this is the only distribution that makes sense.
Melee light armor has the least survivability of all specs, following them are melee medium due to medium's higher mitigation.
Which also means that according to this, magDKs should have the slightly best PvE DPS seeing as they are entirely melee and light armor. Well I'm still waiting for that to happen ...

Also, stop making this a matter of stam versus mag. Every time someone says stam deserves more DPS due to being forced into melee, you completely disregard magDKs that are no less melee based than all stam builds in the game. MagDK should have at least as good DPS as stam builds, and even slightly more, due to lower mitigation of light armor, yet magDKs can't keep up with top dogs such as magsorcs have been for a very long time, and magNBs have been for a while now.
It's just double standards all over. Either face the fact that magDK is melee and need the same perks as stam melee builds, in order to outweigh that drawback, or simply scrap the idea of magDK being a melee class, and make our class skills ranged instead.

ZeroXFF

Yes

Magplars are not really a ranged build though. And magblades do a lot less damage if they play ranged, because they can't use Zaan and Soul Harvest.

Pastas

Yes

bardx86 wrote: »

From a PVP perspective absolutely not. I fail to see how a melee next to caster is at any disadvantage, in fact the advantage is in the melee favor. If anything ranged attacks are harder to land and should do significant more damage.

Ranged attacks harder to land? please explain.

LadyNalcarya

No

"Melee" as "stamina"? Then no. If we're talking about survivability vs damage, then magicka melee builds such as magplar with sweeps or mag dk have less defense than stamina builds - their shields were heavily nerfed and they dont have much stamina to block or dodge.
Also I can see this being a problem in pvp where range advantage is greatly diminished with all the gap closers, cc and snares.

vAS is just a badly designed trial in more ways that just discouraging stamina players. I hope they will make more content like vMoL in the future.