Melee is obviously ridiculously over-tuned for capping points.
it’s not even fun to play melee without a pocket healer and other melee friends because you die to other melee instantly. Not to mention ranged damage also killing you.
Even then sometimes you just run in and cap the point with little to no resistance because most players are playing ranged. But then sometimes you die instantly to a musket pre-made or get caught out alone after respawning by that annoying bow/spear guy.
I can’t blame them for playing ranged/off point specs when melee is so ridiculously strong (and yet somehow also boring).
I see some major issues that need to be resolved:
Melee is ridiculously strong in melee range situations. Ranged is ridiculously strong in ranged situations.
Melee only really have uptime on targets that WANT to fight them. Chasing players that run away all the time is not fun. Ranged have no ability to push and play on points.
Do we reduce the distance ranged can engage and buff their damage in close quarters? Basically making everyone a pseudo melee?
Changes must be made and I don’t have any great ideas
As it currently stands Melee is king and every single other setup exists just to support your melee zerg.
Yes yes, let’s go with the solution of completely turning New World into worse version of Mordhau.
PS -
If you were truly interested in balancing PvP. You’d make it to where like in other MMOs range and melee have some meta builds. But not to the point where they just make the other side completely dogwater.
Easiest way would be to completely retune the different PvP maps. Add some side objective that rewards range. And take away the concept of giving out rewards for damage dealt and kills.
Also, AGS should actually get more serious about balance updates. New World’s balance updates compared to GW2, ESO, and BDO is shameful.
My ranged build is designed to never fight a melee in their range.
Why should I? I would be better off running away until they give up. Even dying to them is quicker than actually fighting and killing them due to TTK (time to kill). Takes time mixing in kiting and damaging. Easier and quicker to die or run away.
As a melee there’s no point (strategically) in chasing a ranged player. Much smarter to just stand near my healer and chill in sacred grounds. To win a game you never have to actually kill ranged players.
I guess this interplay between the different setups is OK if theres matchmaking?
Melee builds seems overtuned in 3v3 and undertuned in world PVP/OPR.
I’m a very average PvP player and when I play bow in 3v3 I basically can’t win against a bruiser build of equal skill. They are too tanky and with the amount of CC and sustain they have I can’t out-DPS it before they inevitably get some hits in on me and kill me.
On the other hand when I encounter these in world PVP/OPR I can kite them endlessly until they give up or die to chip.
Game balance is around groups. Proper teams which have good balance with melees, ranges and healers always win OPR. So if u have bows, muskets, few assasin melees and 1 healer you cant win, you cant demand win in content where main target is capture 3 points. Same with Arenas if your combo sucks you lose, not every build fits with others 2 bows and mage glass cannon vs 2 bruisers and healer or mage everyone know how it will end… bruisers with mage will just kill them one by one. kill-> hide behind pillars-> w8 for cooldowns and again.
Melee zerg meta only exists because of how OP healing is, honestly. Since LS can outheal any sustained dps we have the same zerg → clump → nuke meta that’s been going since launch.
Open world or 5v5 melee fights without healers are a lot more interesting. There’s no deathball zerg because you can’t just sit in a sacred and facetank everything.
