"Melee Light Attacks deal 2250 base damage, while ranged Light Attacks deal 10% less.
Fully charged melee Heavy Attacks deal 2500 base damage multiplied by their cast time and cooldown, and 10% less for ranged. "
This is from the patchnote.
i simply want to ask: Why?
What's the reason of this?
Eso unlike other games that made life hard for melee has always been a melee friendly game.
Back in the first days of Trials: everyone realised that being stack at melee at all time was more efficient than staying at range:
-better buff uptime from support
-heal range
-taunt range for tanks so that they dont run everywhere
-direct dmg aoes that are all less than 20m, most are melee circles
-synergies of all kind dmg and ressources or healing (there are only 2sunergies that requires long range and both suks bolz)
all of that made melee more efficient AND easier even for mags/range archetypes.
Now considering PvP:
-gap closers have 22m range
-gap closers are spammable
-knockbacks knock you 6/8m away
-knockbacks give you CCimmunity for 5sec (not sure about how long but that just means you CANNOT spam it)
-CCimmunity exists through pots/skills and breakfree
-root immunity exists through skills/rolldodge
-every single class has a multiple counters to range harassment: hide or stepback
-each class has also an activ skill to counter range: wings for DK, retro ice stun for warden, retrogrip for necro, rectro stun or streak for sorcs, blackbubble for templars and in/out cloak for Nbs.
-there's also sword n board skill + ultimate if you're really into it.
-almost all PVP objectivs are melee objectives: flags, relics, chaos ball, they all requires you to melee at some point; i mean, even if you kill the chaosball owner, if you're melee, you grab it instant: dop it at range there'll be a fair chance that someone take it long before you even reach it.
beside all of that both melee setups have been granting more SP/WD since forever for no valid point neither.
i can also add that range channeled attacks, and heavy attacks from bow slows the user while melee heavy attacks or chaneled thingies DO NOT. which makes closing gaps only easier.
For all of them reason, i'm asking WHY on earth are them melee doing more base flat dmg on top of that?
when will it be enough?
having sooooo many advantage juste because "melee has always been more difficult and therefore does more damage" is everything but true in ESO, never has been, never will be.
think about trials, ballgroups, they split or go range only when they are forced to. Period.