I've always played ranged characters and loved them. But tor has a lot more viable options for melee (in my opinion) but I don't seem to be very good at playing melee characters. Part of it might be that I'm new to the class as well, but I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how to be better at playing melee characters.

I've always played ranged characters and loved them. But tor has a lot more viable options for melee (in my opinion) but I don't seem to be very good at playing melee characters. Part of it might be that I'm new to the class as well, but I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how to be better at playing melee characters.

 

Your first step is to unlearn what you have learned.

positioning is more of an issue for melee than for ranged classes. But other than that, just kill stuff like you would on your ranged char. Easy targets first, then strong targets then gold. Remember to use your cooldowns if you do get agro. For a ranged it´s all about kiting to avoid getting damage, for a melee it´s a matter of using defensive cooldowns when you do get agro. Kiting isn´t an option since you cant dps while kiting.

Depends on the abilities you have, force leaps good to gain focus straight away, however sometimes its good to just run to a target so you can force leap to the next and in that time hopefully you've retained more focus.

keybind. keybind everything.

i find that melee toons need to be a little more mobile compared to long range toons. move around if you need to. i know those AOE circles on the ground look pretty, but you really don't wanna be standing in those.

my advice for you is to get used to move and attack at the same time.

A few things:

 

You will be moving around quite a lot more as a melee character. This is primarly due to enemy ground targetted AoE attacks that you must move away from. Please be aware that the graphical indicator for the AoE damage is not a true representation of the actual area of "bad stuff" that you should not be around. To counter this unknown always move a bit further away from the indicator when you see it appear.

 

Another thing to consider as a Melee character is positioning. If you possess any AoE Frontal Cone abilities then you want to make sure you always have 2-3 mobs in front of you. As as Powertech I usually pop Flame Sweep (a PBAoE) and during the 1.5 sec GCD I move myself into a position around the mobs to take advantage of my frontal cone AoE: Flame Thrower.

 

As a non-tank you will want to make sure you are not standing directly in front of the mobs, as many enemies will drop AoE, and instant sweeping attacks directly in front of them. It is always better for a melee DPS to stay behind, or to the side of a mob. Also always be aware of where you tank and healer are. You should always be following your tank and killing the weaker mobs first, and keeping an eye on the healer incase any mobs get past the tank and start attacking him/her.

 

Always be the first to jump on those groups of weak/standard mobs that appear sometimes mid fight. Most tanks will not mind if a DPS decided to tank a few weaker mobs as long as you all know the healer can handle a few extra healers tossed your way.

Oh yeah, one more thing. If you have some extra cash, buy a G11 Logitech keyboard. The macros you can setup on the programmable keys are a godsend for melee centric classes (specially tanks) as you can spend more time watching the screen, and a little less time watching your skill cooldowns.

 

I will not go into specific detail about how to set this up here, as I think it is still frowned upon in the community to use such things, but if you are interested we can discuss it through other means.

There's a lot more movement as melee and more emphasis on positioning around the boss. I'm used to the qwerty/mouse setup since my Quake FPS days which works great for melee.

Keybinding and moving with the mouse camera is essential

Knowing your rotation until its fluid and maintaining melee range