Your opinions about the game and balanced seemed to have changed a lot.
I think we had a similar evolution of opinions. I mained the musket, like you, for a long time and I was oblivious to the balancing issues until I started playing melee.
Different builds are drastically better than others and I’m surprised more people don’t see the obvious issues.
I do think small balance changes are better than big sweeping changes.
Dont feed the trolls they get bigger.
When someone is so quick to dish comments like this its just useless to engage.
They dont want improvements, if ags does something good we should give credit.
Is it better for them to release more balance patches then they did in the past? Yes.
Is it perfect? No, but nobody said it was.
OP point is clear, they did reevaluate the balance patch frequency and that IS win. No need to argue against facts.
But once again, we are no there yet. But somehow this attitude helps nothing so go on OP keep giving credit when credit is due and forget pessimists that just want to flame.
Yea, that it has.
When you main a musket, you’re truly playing a different game compared to everyone else. You don’t really see that, when you have 4kish hours as a musket user 
When they stuck the bloom in the PTR, that’s when I started experimenting with other stuff more, and truly saw the differences in play styles.
Hence why you don’t really see me being a heavy advocate for musket to return to what it used to be. Musket does need changed, and I don’t see it happening until they do the full rework, probably in the fall.
Small small changes (like they did with this months changel aren’t enough for the current state of things. It simply isn’t…
They SERIOUSLY need to get their crap together, before the release of a couple MMOs that are coming this year.
I just don’t see the game being around for much longer. I’d say RIP NW 2024.
Dude you should find anotehr game to play. If at this point you don’t get its not game for you, you have some serious issues. Uninstall and go play wow or somthing you like.
Well aint that a perfect representation of the tea pot calling the kettle black.
Sounds like it’s really getting to your mental, def best to go play other games.
NW has been a mess for a long time, not saying it’s in a great place, but I like the change in approach to balance.
Play other builds besides bow or mage for a week. See if your opinion stays the same. Don’t switch once you get farmed. Keep playing. See how much longer you want to play the game after that.
Why do i need a week? I never swap builds for more than 1-2h lols. I like mage and there is no reason to play other builds for me.
But sure i will play some medium mele tommorow for few hours.
Honestly been having a lot of fun as a skitzo this patch in OPR. Having a group makes a lot of builds fun in OPR rn, but sure as a solo I can imagine it’s not as fun
Melee can be good. I think light melee is a lot of fun. In fact, range is way too boring to play after getting playing melee for awhile.
However, there are many games where you cannot do anything because of the build you are playing. It’s really only a melee and kind of a healer issue. Range can always play the game, which is probably at least partially why it’s so popular. They might not win or get as many kills as normal, but they can at least always play every time they log on. I think this is an issue if they want to retain or grow their player base.
I do think with a few more small balance patches it will be fine. I also think they made the easiest weapons to use the strongest, which was a weird design choice.
So did play few hours yesterday and few today. Medium ss/spear on arena. And its good build. Im not felling it. But in general you are so tanky compared to light that its night and day. Also amount of cc is crazy. If you get to any light - mele, bow, healer - you can make their live hell.
But bad side is you have limited amount of what you can do in 1 vs x. I think good mele players can perform in that scenario to, but im not one of them.
trust me, he end’s up calling this a lucky round. no video proof is fake aswell 
Lol what? Yea this was a good game. Had many, way worse games ofc. But my experience after few hours as medium mele on arena is as above. Has strong sides, has weaker sides. Matter of what player preffers imho. And build is very oppresive vs light armor users on arena.
And if you want compare that build to light range difference is simple. Range can do something with bad teammates, where mele can’t do as much. Sure you can take more punches and have way more cc to protect youself. But lack of mobility vs light builds shows. And even if you play well and use cc to get out - main issue is you are not range. You can do dmg in 1 vs 3 situaion where you just burn lot of cds to get out 
So we talk about 2 different playstyles. One is less team depended while other very much team depended.
I just wish the balance team would separate the pvp changes from pve. There is a good portion of the pve that is becoming train content only, that has been abandoned by the solo people I used to see on occasion.
There is no real grouping to speak of outside mutations, and they are a toxic hell scape. I had to step away from expeditions, or give into telling people just how trash they are at the game. 
And that is easy to do:
So you are limited with ballancing but you can adjust pvp and pve with ofc some limitations. And it would be easy to do for them i think.
I’ve been talking about OPR this whole time. It would funny if you were talking about arenas the whole time.
Medium and even heavy melee is probably fine in arenas. It’s been that way since the brimstone update.
I haven’t played the most recent update. Some people think it’s good.
This patch buffed fortify and now heavy/medium bruisers are seen way more. People have less of an issue with bow hitting them across the map and killing them, and flare got toned down. I do think FS is still a little overturned, but that’s mainly due to Pillar.
Overall it’s on the right track regarding ranged vs. melee balance. They have a long way to go though because too many skills in weapon trees are outdated and flat out bad. Musket is also dead and needs a rework asap.
Medium and heavy armor builds are slapping in arena. Especially heavy sns. I think they were stronger before the CC nerfs, but they’re in a really good spot now
OPR does not show much. Arena does show something. Reason OPR is bad place to look for data:
So you have game mode that has no match match making, with 1 open map where ppl for many reasons go afk after they done just to get reward.
Arena ofc have own issues but is way better place to look for some data. Still not pefect, but its a good place to start.
PS. Also im not going to play OPR as medium armor solo player. No batter if it would be bruiser or mage lol. OPR you play as a group or go light armor.
Most people who try PvP in new world will queue for OPR. It needs to be good to retain players.
I don’t think it matters much anymore.
