Why Ranged Classes Dominate This Game and Why It needs a fix

BW stated that they want all classes to output overall the same DPS. Melees dont deal more damage.

This is pretty simple guys, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

If you have a game that has half the classes bringing a knife to a gun fight the only way you can balance the situation without giving melee a huge damage increase over ranged is to give melee better defenses vs ranged.

Let's say a melee and a range class duel each other and lets say they both do 500 dps and they both have the same defensive tools(armor, stuns, knockbacks). The ranged classes essentially has a extra "bubble" defense over the melee. That is for ever second the ranged classes keeps the melee class at > 4m range they get a 500hp bubble, the melee has no counter advantage, they will do less damage to the other than the ranged.

The only way I see to balance a knife in a gun fight is the same way it was done in the SW movies, melee must have superior deflect/dodge than ranged by quite a bit and it should probably increase significantly at greater than 4m.

That is if both classes are within melee range they both have essentially equal defense, but when a melee is outside melee range and they are not attacking their defense goes way up to account for the essentially 100% defense the range classes has at the time.

Of course the issue with defense in this game is that it only works against certain attacks while range give essentially 100% immunity to all attacks from a melee class. So it couldn't be a straight defense boost, it would have to be a resistance boost too, or the mechanics would have to be reworked where defense works against all types of attacks. The movie cannon show blocking lightning with a saber after all.

If you ever played Jedi Knight Outcast then you would remember how they handled it, essentially if you weren't attacking as melee your deflect was nearly 100%. This gave you control over blocking essentially. Of course scatter guns, rockets and grenades could not be deflected, BUT they could be force pushed to turn them around back! Now that was fun. Lightning was immune from deflection if I remember right but it was a much smaller part of the game play. JKII Outcast had nearly perfect melee/ranged balance, and was hella fun too.

Bottom line right now this game follows the same principle RL currently has, guns are superior to knives/swords in nearly all combat situations.

I've seen lev 12 Sents deal upwards of 300k damage in a single match with only 3 deaths.

BW stated that they want all classes to output overall the same DPS. Melees dont deal more damage.

Dude im a BH mercenary BM , any melee that jumps u just interupts tracer, then knock backs then stuns then follows with another interupt. seriously if anything ur argument isnt even viable, range are good if left alone to kill but once a melee locks u down ur fkd.

when it comes to a sorc/sage. i think a good fix would be to take one abilty away, eitehr the bubble,sprint,the slow or the slow from teh lightning/force throw. and as for the push back stop they have to spec into that, thier not having it givin to them so its ok in my books.

i think you are confusing 500 dps with something completely different.
if a melee does 2500 damage in 1 second and spend 4 seconds not doing anything that is still 500 dps.
if a range does 500 damage every second over 5 seconds that is also 500 dps.
that is the difference.
given what others have said a sniper can cast a spell which has 2s+ that does say crit for 5000, is exactly the same as a melee doing a 5k crit instantly and not dpsing during 1s when they are running up to the ranged.

The issue is that ranged aren't punished for being in melee range enough and have ample ways to generate a gap. Ranged classes simply have better snares than most of the melee specs.

That being said, as another poster said somewhere earlier in the thread, the more melee there are, the harder it is for ranged to maintain that efficacy.