ahh well that’s it then , im talking about the rest of the game, don’t get me wrong if there is one situation in the least played difficulty where sienna, sorry, beam/pyro can’t make the rest of the team irrelevant that’s good news, but i doubt even george bush would be getting out the mission accomplished banner over that!
I’m not sure that’s the best answer. I don’t enjoy the current ranged meta either, but when they reduced the ammo count of the Brace of Pistols, they simply made the weapon non-viable on Legend on any of the 3 classes.
To be fair if that happened I’d consider kicking the melee for charging solo just to get kills.
But I get your point.
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This is true, but in my opinion it just means that they need some tweaks, not that the idea is wrong.
Repeater pistol is vastly a better option, but the trouble with the meta is not that saltzpyres use repeaters, it’s that some classes have infinite ammo, and so they shoot everything all the time.
Weapon balance would be cool, don’t get me wrong ; )
Pyro / Beam won’t kill even a single CW with ult on legend. Just sayin’.
Only Saltz (can’t remember the career) is able to do this with that blessed shot of his. And that’s only 1 CW or maybe 2 if they walk in line. Still atleast 6 more to go and some marauder / mauler trash if we talk about legend (like we are)?
On champion everyone can go yolo mode in melee combat as it is now. Ain’t too hard fights there. I think weapons need to be balanced by using legend as reference. Lower difficulties are just way too easy for anyone who has played a bit more, knows maps and how to deal with different enemies. On legend everyone needs to contribute for a successful 3+2 runs without glitching etc.
Kills go fairly even if everyone knows what they are supposed to do. I for one don’t care if Beamer kills 53579614 trashmobs in a run. Everyone can deal with them. Things tend to get a bit hectic on legend if you have IB just blocking everything and not doing dmg at all, or Beamer/WS running yolo and facetanking every gutter/leech they can find. 
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I think WS is made for more ranged oriented than melee (no ranged penalty etc), but I love the versatility on her and don’t even want tanking traits on her. I think that’s the reason i enjoy playing it so much. Effective in the right hands and proper team.
So atleast there we can agree on 
Does the 1.08 patch bring some balancing to this Ranged vs Melee?
While ranged has gotten weaker it serves to highlight many issues with melee instead unfortunately 
Phantom swings, cleaving, anti armor, specials, block push not working etc.
That and the very small pool of actually viable weapons, no one has many good options by the looks of things.
So,…while the issue of ranged just gunning everything in sight down doesnt happen nearly as easily or much there are still a lot of things left i think.
Right now, I feel like ranged is a little bit too strong, and too good to pass for any party that wants to have a smooth run. I main IB Drakeguns and usually play with a Bolt Sienna friend. We can melt through most hordes, specials and most elites before they even engage. These two classes have virtually INFINITE ammo, making them great sustain tools. If Sienna goes heat reduction when criting, she can literally keep the left click without even caring about overheat. 
In my case, I can fire non-stop by venting my temporary health.
Here’s a link with scoreboards during 1.0.8b when playing with my friend to show that this combo may be overtuned.
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Played earlier today with Waystalker, PYro Beamstaff, Bounty Hunter and Huntsman. I played Kruber and didn’t have to worry too much about swapping from longbow to Melee as nothing got close enough to wallop me. Troll got melted in a laughable fashion.
In some cases a special got hit by volleybow, longbow, pyro and elf arrow before it hit the floor. 
Ranged-meta is still broken in a melee focused game.
Personally, it’s the panic-buttons and infinite “ammo” that make me sigh. Homing Fireball and Homing Arrows need a complete rethink as Ults, and drakepistols, volleybow and some of siennas heat-reduce-on-crit still needs some deep thought to fix.
If you fixed that, and made all chars into melee with a little ranged, you’d need to rebalance all careers and all weapons, and give sienna in particular a wide new range of weapons viable for melee. She certainly couldnt still have the slowdown for melee and dodge if she was routinely forced into melee.
agree, for how powerful these things are they need a longer cooldown. Alternately making them only hit one target (but with more reliable targeting) would also be a good change.
I haven’t played pyromancer, but I play waystalker a lot, and Trueflight Volley is just way too easy to spam to either delete a special or thin out a ridiculous amount of trash enemies.
Sienna wouldn’t need to be forced into melee and I’m not suggesting completely doing something new for her Pyro Ult, but there should be some degree of skill involved in using it. In VT1 you had to highlight the target enemy you wanted to target (with trueflight bow) and although it could still delete specials, it couldn’t delete lots of them and took some time to line-up and aim. It was also a waste of ammo to just pummel a horde with trueflight arrows as it had the lowest ammo.
I’m suggesting rewarding skillbased play. I really do not begrudge a Huntsman Kruber who gets the highest headshots and most elite kills when I know it requires skill to do it. It gives me a real sense of burning frustration when a Pyro has tons more damage, tons more headshot kills and lots of elite/special kills for simply pressing F whenever they feel like it.
As a side note, does anyone know the effective range and damage of Salty’s rapier pistol? It doesn’t have ammo so could be open to abuse but is it actually any good?
That can be done pretty easily without no rebalance.
But even a rebalance would be pretty easy. All that needs to be nerfed is ammo regeneration, possibly to 0, and heat ventilation - then players will have to melee no matter what.
My opinion:
I think it adds much diversity to the game to have some ranged focused carriers.
The Problem appears when we have to many ranged focused carriers in one match.
Right now i just leave when that happens and it works fine for me.
I don’t think that it is a problem that a waystalker mainly uses its bow or the witch her staff.
I still think that ranged needs a bit balancing.
For example no temporary hp on ranged kills.
Less damage with ranged weapons on bosses and more with melee. (Especially with slow weapons.)
I too am sick of being spam-cannoned in the back by Bardin when I try to melee. It’s not the damage that makes it annoying, it’s the flashing red screen and its DoT which makes you think you’re taking damage from an enemy when you’re not which leads to “Where am I getting hit from?” and spinning around all over the place.
Sometimes I just go “meh” and stand at the back and let the ranged characters get their green circles.
The thing that sucks most is that some characters are “shoot everything in sight with no concern for ammo” and some are “specials and headshots (on enemies whose heads are waving around all over the place) only or you run out of ammo in 30 seconds” which leads to “stand at the back and do nothing so you don’t get spam-cannoned”.
It’s not a melee vs. ranged thing. It’s a “certain OP weapons, talents, and traits” vs. melee thing.
You think ranged is so much powerful in this game?
Try playing it with some other weapon than you normally do. Try it without the usual ammo-replenishing traits and options you use. Try it without the one-button ammo gain talents, and try it without the “my ammo is unlimited” weapon, and see just how much ranged can really put up constant firepower as they can do when using the (obvious) choice of careers and weapons.
After all this time, people have gotten so much accustomed to those things that are basically OP, easy-mode options/settings, that many people just take for granted those things as the norm, and in comparison complain about all the other weapons, talents, settings are gimped or underwhelming.
In reality, it’s the opposite. The weapons and settings, talents some people view as weak or ‘gimped’, is actually the norm. Under those terms, the balance between melee and ranged are quite comparable and compliments each other very well.
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This is the most coherent post I’ve read concerning ranged/melee.
I play Kruber huntsman without using Halberd simply so it’s not easy mode. I play Sienna Unchained with Fireball staff just so I don’t have to play with panic-button pyro.
When these OP weapons or talents do get fixed, the backlash from the people who have always used volleybow BH (and also Beam staff, trueflight etc) is going to be bigger than the monumental amount of whining about green dust.
Hm, not sure i really agree.
For fatshark did decide to add in ranged specialized classes.
They generally have a few traits in common, superior ammo capacity, ammo regen and less falloff damage.
And their talent builds tend to be split towards either further enhancing their ranged capability, or giving small enhancements to their melee like stamina regen.
But those enhancements are nowhere near enough, a single slaverat can instantly eat 30-40% of your health in a melee so you have to avoid it as much as possible to avoid making mistakes that result in a shortage of healing supplies.
And while it seems like Sienna and Bardin still very much have unlimited ammo and kerillians shortbow the same doesnt seem to apply to the rest of their weapons.
I myself play with hagbane on kerillian, i have to be hella careful with ammo management for i´ll run dry very quickly if not.
I´ve seen bounty saltz actually run out of ammo completely several times, and huntsman kruber has to line up his shorts nicely to keep the ammo up.
Kerillians ammo regen? Her 25 talent on hagbane restores 5 shots on a …35-45 something seconds cooldown…and her ammo regen is 1 shot every …5-7 seconds?
I dont know about others but i end up in melee, a lot…for i basically only shoot bigger clustered groups, stormvermin, specials and bosses.
Anything else and i try to save up on ammo for the next big occasion.
So, i have a fair feeling for melee i think, and as a matter of fact i usually end up with a 6/10 parts ranged or even a 5/10 parts ranged to total kills with the rest being melee/bombs.
But, this doesnt mean melee doesnt have its own share of issue´s.
Phantom swings and pushes are still a thing, bigger enemies doing instant guardbreaks still happens and hyper density is still a question big as ever.
Ranged has none of those, it still frequently happens that a group of 4 mixed types of ranged can easily breeze through a map as long as they are careful with their positioning…i have actually farmed skittergate like this just because the map is so optimal for it.
So sure, i´d like to have some ranged things nerfed…but more than that i still really want melee cleaving,phantom attacks, anti armor,blocking and the bugs to be buffed/fixed for melee can never be a thing with those still around
Well that and boss turn animation attacks, so easily to die instantly because a supposedly charged heavy boss attack has its windup cut by half or more because it´s obscured by the turning.
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If you’re playing as BH, use the volley bow and help kill hordes/elites. I regularly top elite kills and compete for total kills/damage.
That being said, melee is a lot weaker than ranged at the moment. And this is proven by playing a few maps of ‘melee only’. Bosses take forever to die, and specials turn into a fun challenge.
Melee really needs to be buffed across the board.