Brawler Archive

Before you get angrey, hear me out. Now I don't know about you guys, and I grant that I have only been playing for a little bit, but I find that I can more than hold my own against shooters. Granted if you run right at them or fight them in a small room, they will most likely toast you. But I have found that with terrain and juking until I get close, I can beat shooters more than they can beat me. Maybe this is a quake thing, but using the side step buttons does actually seem to help you get out of the way of their blazing bolts of death. If the make fighters any better, I wonder if blasters would become obsolete. Granted maybe they can kite mobs better, but I have had no problems just ruining the mobs that I have tried to fight, anything under red.

Looking at the skills, looking at how combat works, I do think that armour may be overated, and guns may be easier to come by, but I dont' think that the gunners are inherently better. If you play by their rules, than yes, they beat you, but if you shoot a gun for awhile and realize it's limitations, and they do have them, than you figure out how you need to approach a gun slinger. As of now the hardest NPC mobs I have fought are the hand to hand ones, those with guns just melt for the most part.

Maybe I haven't played enough yet, but that's how it appears to me.

Azre'el Blain

I think you're pretty close to the truth as far as mobs go.

The big issue is when fighting other players, or comparing a melee character's success against mobs vs a ranged character's success.

Let me annotate parts of your post:

[quote]
Granted if you run right at them or fight them in a small room, they will most likely toast you.
[/quote]

Here's one issue. It should not be the case where they will beat you both at range, and close up. They *should* have an advantage if your running at them from a distance, that's the whole purpose of a ranged weapon. But in a small room, you should have the advantage. At the point where ranged weapons are superior at a distance and point-blank, what good is melee?


[quote]
But I have found that with terrain and juking until I get close, I can beat shooters more than they can beat me. Maybe this is a quake thing, but using the side step buttons does actually seem to help you get out of the way of their blazing bolts of death.
[/quote]

This is a perception issue. In SWG (and all MMOG's save Neocron and Planetside), hit detection is rolled at the moment you attack. When your attack goes off, the server rolls to-hit against the other guys defensive bonuses and decides right then if you hit or not. All the graphics showing the shot fly through the air and all that is window dressing.

Also, if you play as a ranged character, you know that you can shoot right through terrain, like hills, crevices, and mountains, so using terrain to block LOS doesn't help much. Pretty much only buildings will block shots.


[quote]
If the make fighters any better, I wonder if blasters would become obsolete. Granted maybe they can kite mobs better, but I have had no problems just ruining the mobs that I have tried to fight, anything under red.
[/quote]

For the kiting part, ranged characters can kite YOU, the melee guy at will. You can't attack while running, but they can. And they will hit you nearly every shot despite the -50 modifier.

As for killing mobs, ranged and melee characters can take out pretty much everything. The difference is that when the ranged guy is done, he's nearly at full health. When we're done, we took every point of damage the mob could dish out.

So, we have more downtime, more repair costs, more medical costs, and slower advancement.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be all doom and gloom here, I don't think melee characters are screwed. I play one and have fun. I *do*, however, think some balancing is in order.

I don't want to be weaker AND take more damage AND have more downtime AND get less group exp AND lose at PVP. Give us some kind of advantage somewhere.

Well, I got 30min left at work so I'll put in my 2 cents...

I agree with the second poster -- melee is severely handicapped vs. ranged. Not only can they shoot through objects, run while attacking with NO penalty, and play ping-pong with your pet... but as I'm running at the shooter, every time I get hit my character pauses for some unexplicable reason making the distance gap even wider! Eventually, you just realize how useless it is to chase someone with a gun and try to run the other way... but if you have no burst run, that's no good either! I honestly think that, if a char is running while firing (pc and npc alike) there needs to be a much bigger pentalty both to-hit and movement-based... and stopmaking me trip with every single blaster hit! It's annoying as all hell.

100% disagree that things are balanced. Wanna know something even better? Since we swing faster and harder, and tend to be within our puny range of 5m from the creature... guess who automatically becomes the meat-shield while our friends hang out taking pop-shots? Us. So like the previous poster said, we can't catch-up to a ranged mob if it's shooting and running (unless you burst), we take 99% of the damage in fights, and even with the TKA skill /knockdown, the animation is bugged... so even though the creature is stunned for 10sec, it still gets right back up again and runs away! I tend to stick with very slow melee creatures as a general rule. PvP is so completely out of the picture until something's done.

If a melee can get up close to a ranged character the melee should _always_ win (as it is now). My pikeman does 1000 damage / second right now and I still have 8 boxes left before I can master. Although ranged can do some pretty big hits, even a fully buffed rifleman (food, enhance, spice, etc.) can't take more than 1 maybe 2 polearm hit 2s from me (up to 6000 damage in a single hit). At range, yeah, I don't stand a chance right now because they just lower posture me.

Best bet, fight in town, in a building with an elevator. Go up the elevator and camp it. If they don't come up, you hang tight.

Also, you only need to get to 20m of them. Then you Warcry and they lose 10 seconds. Lunge 2, they are on the ground for and lose another 15 seconds. Now you have 35 seconds where they can do nothing to you. Intimidate, they do 50% damage. Add in your padded armor, they are doing 25% damage now. So while I'm hitting a rifleman for thousands of damage per swing he is hitting me for what, 200? As master medic I can heal from that easy. If he is rifle, well although he does mind damage, he also takes double damage.

-Micah

Master Brawler, Pikeman, Master Medic, a bit of Doctor.