When did ranged DDs die out?

Woodenplank · October 2023

First off: I'm not requesting. I'm not looking for "solutions" to a problem, I'm simply trying to have a discussion on causes and effect.
It used to be that people had clear distinctions between "Ranged DDs" and "Melee DDs" - Nowadays even DestroStaff/DestroStaff or Bow/Bow builds will join the mêlée in ragtag stack of bodies.

And I asked myself, where did the Ranged DDs go?

On the one hand, I think the game's light weight targeting system inherently reinforces stacked, close-knit gameplay. Illustrious Healing only heals allies in a target circle; Combat Pray buffs allies in a rectangle in front of the healer, Breath of Life auto-target the lowest health friend in front of you, etc. etc. Even in a DD kit you see a lot of ground-AoEs or conal targeting.
It's no surprise then that people stack up in close formation just behind the boss.

However, having played since Beta, I distinctly remember Ranged DDs being a thing in the past. In the ever so vaguely defined, and nostalgia-warped "back in the day", it was considered problematic having too many melee DDs on The Aetherial Mage, because you counted on ranged DDs to focus down the mini-mages and atronachs without breaking position and catching a Chain Lightning.
When Summerset first came out, Elemental Weapon and Channeled Acceleration out of the Psijic line were considered a godsent for magicka DDs, because now they would no longer need to slot Rearming Trap for Minor Force, and Elemental Weapon (not only because it weaved better) could replace inconvenient, melee-range magicka Spamables, like Templar Jabs.

So were Ranged DDs always at a disadvantage, doomed to be outperformed, but Players just took a while to realize? Or did something happen in the course of the game's updates and design choices that made Range unnecessary, or to downright "nerf" that playstyle?

p.s. shoutout to vAS+2 where frequent target switching and Boss teleportation means ranged DDs are the best option.

Okay if I'm being entirely honest, I feel like Trial Groups may have lost a bit of their aestheticism once everyone; Mag or Stam, Molten Whipping or Crystal Fragging, all piled together on the Boss's poop chute and began just stabbing at it with daggers and greatswords.

Pelanora · October 2023

I like playing at range and it sure stresses the healers out

Turtle_Bot · October 2023

It happened about the time that ZOS decided that ranged needed to be compound nerfed.

Not only -10% to the abilities themselves, but another -10% to the damage stats overall resulting in a much bigger nerf than the 10% that was claimed at the time.

They've never really caught back up, especially ever since crit chance became the BiS dps stat, which outside of 1 bow passive, ranged weapons don't have access to like daggers do.

IZZEFlameLash · October 2023

Afaik, almost always dps was dominated by melee. Bow is really the only ranged weapon atm viable for anything imo. Staves are less desirable in many ways.

Vaqual · October 2023

Melee stacking is very economic and is something that is done in almost every MMO (if the encounter allows it), since the tank/melee DDs can not really go anywhere else and you just want to get as many players as possible with heals/buffs. Even if ranged DDs did 20 % more starting from today, that would not change, except if the entire group can perform 100 % at range.

There is no general disadvantage for ranged players in going to the melee stack, but they retain their flexibility with target swapping and have an easier time keeping high uptime on their strongest abilities. In my opinion it is justified for melee skills to hit harder, as ranged is more forgiving to play. Of course this is not reflected in all encounters or dummy parsing and also strongly depends on the overall group strength. If the group can skip mechanics due to high DPS, the advantages of having ranged options can become irrelevant.

In the end it is up to the players to play however they like. They can form a range camp with dedicated support if they want to. But to me it seems more like the real issue often is a "I am ranged and therefore I should be allowed to stand where I want, buffs/heals are not my responsibility" -attitude (not saying you think this way).

The reason why more groups play as scattered mess in the beginning of an MMOs life is mostly due to groups being less optimized, existence of fewer support options and content being clearable with suboptimal setups. There are many bosses today where it wouldn't matter either, but for some people a optimized playstyle just has become natural and others just try to emulate behaviours of better players (monkey see, monkey do), whether it is appropriate or not.

tldr:
Ranged DPS did not die out. Ranged DPS will always be just as far from the group as heals and buffs allow them to stray. For meta groups only the highest parsing option counts, this will almost always be an exclusive pick, some class/playstyle will always be favoured.

edit to fix broken sentences

MudcrabAttack · October 2023

Speaking from my own experience, I’m in a trifecta running group that usually starts off with an attempt at mimicking the play through of a world record, but usually winds up going back to old safe methods outlined in guides that have been around a while to help with survival. No-death achievement can be a pain in the dlc trials.

After failing over and over with the “just spread out around the bosses butt and block” strategy, we found the old melee positioning/ ranged positioning for Dawnbringer to be much less stressful. And I can’t count the number of times whirlwinders keep getting killed in the middle of trash fights, these days Arcanist beaming from the edge of the action just seems like the safe option while doing the most damage, but not everyone likes it, which I totally understand. My favorite character has been a nightblade bow build, it used to have mediocre dps (compared to the rest of the group) when posting a trial dummy parse. Now it’s kind of near the top-end. In the actual trial fighting it usually does really well for boss dps. Even with the boss’s butt strategy there are just far fewer moments where an attack has to miss while walking around and dealing with mechanics.

Woodenplank · October 2023

Vaqual wrote: »

The reason why more groups play as scattered mess in the beginning of an MMOs life is mostly due to groups being less optimized, existence of fewer support options and content being clearable with suboptimal setups.

Not saying this isn't the case, but haven't ZOS also simplified some of these old encounters? I remember Trial leaders stressing over group positioning on Aetherial Mage, where you wanted DDs spread out in a semicircle about the Boss to prevent Chain Lightning Jumps. I believe there even was a "Personal Space Addon" which projected an aura around you, to make sure you weren't standing too close to anyone - although I might be misremembering.

Could be that something simply changed in Tank positioning and Player health bars/resistances though, I guess.

On some level I think it would be cool if we could have an encounter now and then that catered to ranged setups. Just once or twice, instead of another "4 peeps jump in portal to kill Mini(s) before the group blows up" - which is/was a cool mechanic, but is growing a tad repetitive.

LunaFlora · October 2023

they didn't die out.

Soarora · October 2023

I play ranged. I’ll still stand in melee positioning when possible for buff reasons but by melee positioning I mean I stand on the healers toes… sorry healers. It can be useful in plenty of encounters to have some of the DPS be ranged.

Woodenplank · October 2023

Soarora wrote: »

I play ranged. I’ll still stand in melee positioning when possible for buff reasons but by melee positioning I mean I stand on the healers toes… sorry healers. It can be useful in plenty of encounters to have some of the DPS be ranged.

Oh yeah I didn't mean to say no one uses ranged weapons and spells. Just meant that most people "stack on the poop chute" of the Boss, because 9/10 times there's no reason to spread out for range.

I tried Melee in vAS+2 though once. Once.
(Thank you OakenSorc)

ecru · October 2023

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Afaik, almost always dps was dominated by melee. Bow is really the only ranged weapon atm viable for anything imo. Staves are less desirable in many ways.

The gap was never this large. Right now using a completely ranged build (no daggers, no 2h) is the best way to make sure your DPS is extremely uncompetitive.

This happened when they decided that every set should have both weapon and spell damage on it, along with providing much better scaling for melee weapons. It forced a situation where regardless of whether you use mag or stam abilities, you are always better off using daggers/2h instead of a staff, otherwise you are down something stupid like 1000 spell damage. How does that make sense? Not using daggers lowers your spell damage by 15-20%? Who thought that was a good idea? I dunno lol.

They doubled down on this and made sure proc sets scaled too. We needed that, right? 20% of our DPS coming from passive damage from a set? No, we really didn't, but we got it anyway, so now simply using sets that buff your stats is another great way to gimp your character too. You need those sets that do damage for you, because they do so much damage that not using them is a blow to your DPS no matter what. This also means that we have """""magicka""""" (if you could even call them that) characters using medium armor instead of light. It's honestly insane and class identity is essentially nonexistent for most classes, since every build is based around the same weapon scaling + sets, rather than anything your class can do with unique abilities. This has also severely narrowed viable race choice, with there being little benefit beyond picking one single race.

Until damage scaling on staves is fixed (adjusted upwards, obviously), or melee scaling nerfed a bit, the meta will not change from one where everything is based around the scaling from daggers/2h and set procs.

Braffin · October 2023

There is a principle as old as raiding in mmos: "There isn't a single reason not to sit on the "Boss's poop chute", except the Boss is forcing you to do so."

I have to agree tho, OP: Eso did a far better job in encouraging groups to think about formations in the "golden years" (original vMoL HM and vAA HM are good examples). As power creep progressed over the years and the game became easier and easier, the need for more complex formations dwindled.

Not the players fault tho, but a result of unfortunate game decisions.

MudcrabAttack · October 2023

Dual wield is too good to pass up for both a completely static fight and really high parse.

It provides the only thing that gives major evasion while at the same time dealing high damage per cast, so standing in red circles can be far less painful

Nirn trait on just the main hand (1 out of 2 weapons) adds 200 weapon damage, the same as Nirn on an entire staff or bow. This leaves the other weapon as either charged or precise, but really charged has to be the way to go since status effect damage is massive

Daggers add crit

Dual wield is the only weapon set that provides enough spaces to passively gain poison/ flame enchantment damage (+2-3 kdps poison / flame status each because charged is on a weapon)/ + weapon damage enchantment on the back bar. You can’t really get this with any 2H/2H combo. Zaan seems to be the best thing for making up the lost flame status, however that means you’re up close to the target and probably aren’t wearing a mythic or something like kjalnnar etc that can crit for big damage. Selene seems to pack the biggest punch out of anything, but of course that’s a melee attack proc

BetweenMidgets · October 2023

I feel like most of the ranged people only live between tri-keeps and the ring keeps your faction doesn't own, and they'll be in stealth.

bar_boss_A · November 2023

Additionally there are some overloaded/overpowered abilities which only can be used in melee and are therefore needed on most DD builds:
Barbed Trap
Molten Whip (DK)
Boundless storm (Sorc)
Concealed Weapon (NB)
solar flare(Temp)
arctic blast (warden)
any build dropping one of these loose an additional 3-10% damage as there are no ranged alternatives

Woodenplank · November 2023

bar_boss_A wrote: »

[...]
Molten Whip (DK)
...

magDK used to be considered a poor choice for a mag Class because their Class skills were so melee oriented xD

bar_boss_A wrote: »

Additionally there are some overloaded/overpowered abilities which only can be used in melee and are therefore needed on most DD builds:
Barbed Trap

This one has always been the biggest offender to me. Going back to day one, this has been pretty much the only viable way of getting Minor Force in a DD build - and the ranged morph is just awkward.
Even Channeled Acceleration is kind of meh, since it gives Minor Force but no other offensive benefits.

It also helps that Barbed Trap is one of the strongest DoTs in the entire game, and people even run it when Minor Force isn't required any way (such as for builds using Tzogvin, Medusa, etc.), because the DPS means it's generally worth slotting any way.

IZZEFlameLash · November 2023

ecru wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Afaik, almost always dps was dominated by melee. Bow is really the only ranged weapon atm viable for anything imo. Staves are less desirable in many ways.

The gap was never this large. Right now using a completely ranged build (no daggers, no 2h) is the best way to make sure your DPS is extremely uncompetitive.

This happened when they decided that every set should have both weapon and spell damage on it, along with providing much better scaling for melee weapons. It forced a situation where regardless of whether you use mag or stam abilities, you are always better off using daggers/2h instead of a staff, otherwise you are down something stupid like 1000 spell damage. How does that make sense? Not using daggers lowers your spell damage by 15-20%? Who thought that was a good idea? I dunno lol.

They doubled down on this and made sure proc sets scaled too. We needed that, right? 20% of our DPS coming from passive damage from a set? No, we really didn't, but we got it anyway, so now simply using sets that buff your stats is another great way to gimp your character too. You need those sets that do damage for you, because they do so much damage that not using them is a blow to your DPS no matter what. This also means that we have """""magicka""""" (if you could even call them that) characters using medium armor instead of light. It's honestly insane and class identity is essentially nonexistent for most classes, since every build is based around the same weapon scaling + sets, rather than anything your class can do with unique abilities. This has also severely narrowed viable race choice, with there being little benefit beyond picking one single race.

Until damage scaling on staves is fixed (adjusted upwards, obviously), or melee scaling nerfed a bit, the meta will not change from one where everything is based around the scaling from daggers/2h and set procs.

Yeah, don't think even bows compete compared to dual wielding, despite its passives. Was running EA and damage difference was big enough to be felt since I do not have fancy trial proc sets. Staves really are behind if you do not use proc sets. Staves need buffs.

BXR_Lonestar · November 2023

IMO ranged DD's died out when hybridization came out. Bows were already mainly back-bar fodder, but with hybridization, you had to go dual wield to maximize your crit chance, which means mag users or casters who would normally fight at range were suddenly using melee weapons and had to go into melee range to really maximize DPS on their build.

IMO, the hybridization has not been good for the game. It's narrowed the meta even more to just a small handful of sets regardless whether you are mag or stam, and everyone basically uses the same setup, with dual wield on the front bar and 5 piece medium on the body. Overall, I don't believe this was a healthy change for the game.