From Meleewalker to Meleetrail

[Valence]

Ranged dps suffers from the issue of being the middle between the 2: Casters have cast times, melee has positionals. Both mechanics that make positioning themselve as part of the balance. By not having such restriction, you generaly will only end up with the rotation itself as downtime by forced movement isnt an issue. And micro positioning which a melee dps often can do usualy also barely matters (wall boss, or the boss barely rotates because the tank rarely needs to dodge in such way it causes boss rotations).

To me the best way to solve the ranged dps issue, is by introducing some sort of positional system in them.

Something like a minimum range: being further away increases damage, but increases risks of extended downtime when you need to move out of the way. Automaticly also giving a certain situation in which you can be sure they are prefered, or discouraged. Damage at that point then can be allowed to exceed other jobs since depending on the fight, you might not be able to use that, or since it gets used more often might promote it.

You can also simply make it 2 buttons: close range/long range and force the players to alternate them for higher damage. This makes a certain distance from the boss optimal, and can provide similar restrictions to the melee dpses (like wall bosses not providing a back).

Screw positionals. I hate them. That's why I play rphys.

The problem with that kind of positionals is that it will make every healer scream in pain and secretly hating any rphys player for standing in narnia. Another problem with which I don't trust SE at all is the UI, because this game UI has always been medieval especially when it comes to feedbacks. It's already a pain with melee DPS positionals... How do you want to play through ranged positionals without huge grids and radiuses covering our screens clearly showing where we're in the green, good dps area, and where we're not? This is already a problem with pvp BRD right now, and DRG a little as well.

I'm however very much okay with close and long range skills, which DNC used to have during its bursts in ShB and lost for the bland Starfall and Tilana designs we have in EW. It worked very well, but I doubt it was really a consideration into damage output balance either. Do we want to add this on every skill they have? Then we run into a problem, because filler shots can't else you'd just screw every time they have to be close, and if it's making filler shots close range, then rphys just becomes a glorified melee.

So, where would this work? For MCH, probably on Tools (Drill long range, Chainsaw short range with a damage falloff the furthest away targets are), for BRD probably on Apex/Blast (long range), and DNC probably on Tilana and Starfall.