Ahh Star Wars – and more specifically Star Wars: The Old Republic. A space opera filled with fantastical aliens, planets, and starships. A place with massive space battles, giant planet destroying weapons, and John Woo inspired dual-wielding Smugglers. In a universe populated by near infinite amounts of ranged technology, someone, somewhere, seeing a gap in the market, felt the need to create laser swords.
A lightsaber can only protect so many parts of your body from blaster fire
Now before everyone jumps down my throat, I am a big fan of the lightsaber and my highest level character right now is a Jedi Knight. Having said that, there is certainly a difference in play styles that can be seen between the melee classes and the ranged classes.
While there are several melee-type classes in the game including the Jedi Shadow/Sith Assassin and the Scoundrel/Operative; none embraces the melee lifestyle like the Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior. Sure the other melee classes have melee abilities, but they also have a slew of ranged backup abilities to aid them in battle.
The Knight/Warrior – hereafter referred to as the Knight (not because of preference but because I’m already sick of using slashes) – is pure melee goodness. Of course they do eventually get some ranged abilities like Saber Throw and can close the gap with Force Leap, but you will not win any battles with range alone. This is a melee class.
So what is the problem with that? Many games have melee classes, including several MMO’s. Well the difference is usually in those games, the classes and NPC’s are melee heavy as well. In TOR, ranged rules the day.
This can create problems for a player based not on what abilities they have, what gear they own, what spec they choose, or even what skill level they attest to. The problem can simply lie in the choice of being a melee character in a ranged world.
A Jedi contemplates how difficult it will be to hit that giant orange flower without a blaster
The most prominent example comes from PvP. Now I am no PvP expert. I can happily report that TOR was actually my first PvP experience in a long time. I played two matches…at level 13…one level before you get Sprint. My obvious flawed tactics aside, playing as a Knight afforded me several difficulties aside from my obvious lack of skill. Ranged players could kite me around the map to avoid constant attack. I could be rooted or slowed to prevent me from reaching a target for a melee barrage. I even had one player, who was a Warrior, constantly move through me so I was having trouble facing him to activate attacks. No love even from the other pure melee class!
In PvE there are troubles as well, though not as severe. When in the middle of combat after killing an enemy, many times I will have to move to a new target before resuming attacks. This isn’t that big of a deal but it does take away precious second in a heated fight. Certain NPC’s can also use slows and roots, and some utilize a cover system which has them move to find shelter. Finally, my friend and I group frequently. He is a nut kicking Gunslinger who enjoys dressing his first companion up in ridiculous outfits. The issue I sometimes have when grouping with him involves pulling. If we are fighting multiple enemies, some will attack him while others attack me. When I finish with my enemies first – as is always the case based on my expertise over him – I have to run back to his position to continue fighting. The same happens with champions or harder enemies. I will be attacking the NPC, my friend will use a high damage attack, and the enemy will refocus his attention and move away from me. I am then forced to follow the enemy to continue my attacks.
This did not end well for the Sith Warrior
All of these issues are moot for a ranged character. A root or a slow does nothing if the player can simply continue shooting. Aside from moving out of their ability range, it doesn’t affect them nearly as much. An enemy moving from one target to another causes no break in the attacks of a ranged character. The locations of the enemies also have no bearing on skill rotation. A skilled ranged individual can simply tab from one enemy to another without turning around or moving to a new location. Finally, kiting may have its uses on ranged characters in PvP but I have yet to hear about or witness it.
The problems listed above are not gripes, just observations. A melee character has to be played differently. You have to have a much greater awareness of your surroundings and be able to minimize distances quickly.
Sure the Knight has several gap closing abilities. Actually, given proper specs, a Jedi Guardian has no less than three leaps to utilize. There are also a few ranged abilities and some pulls/holds. But many of these are either situational or rely on a cooldown making constant control difficult. Now this may not seem like a popular choice but I would like to see something like Force Leap have no cooldown through update or possibly from a skill in the advanced class tree. Possibly combined with a tweak to the immobilize time to help balance it.
There is some hope on the horizon for Knights. As we reported this week, Knight changes are coming to make them more competitive in both PvE and PvP. I for one welcome these changes. I could be a little biased but I typically pride myself on making neutral observations.
Now *this* Rakghoul is showing us how melee is done
In the end is the Jedi Knight or Sith Warrior broken or too difficult to play? Absolutely not. The team at BioWare has done a great job of balancing the classes for launch. Sure there may have to be some tweaks made, but they are a far cry from the imbalance issues seen from other MMO’s at launch. I enjoy playing my Knight. Yes he is harder to play than some of the other classes. I am a DPS Guardian so I have two strikes against me already. But the difficulty is not over the top, I just need to play that character in a different way.
Playing as a melee character in a ranged world seems like it would be frustrating beyond belief. While there are issues, it’s not worth picking a different class if you are a fan of mad lightsaber action. You will have fun, you will learn to play effectively, and BioWare will eventually have your back for some of the issues. As the old saying goes, ‘never bring a knife to a gun fight’. Well this may still be the case, but at least The Old Republic has closed the gap on that phrases weight significantly.
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What I’m reading is that juggernauts and guardians are under powered in the dps department. Fear not, the devs are addressing this. The larger issue is nature of a melee class ever being on par with ranged classes. In SWTOR, melee classes are handicapped because they do not have the abilities to outmaneuver the CC abilities of ranged classes. One possible solution would be the induction of another distance closing ability for all melee classes.
don’t write articles about anything if you are going to talk about PvP as a level 13, you have no idea what you are talking about
I mentioned several times in the article that I was no good at PvP so that stands to reason my friend.
Having played a Shadow Tank, Powertech Tank, and Juggernaut Tank, I can without a doubt state that the Warrior class is broken. There is no comparison to the other two, especially in PvP. And it’s a shame, because the Warrior/Knight have great stories in the game. But not even close to being as good as the other two tanks. Although the Powertech/Vanguard Tanks are by far the best in the game.
Hey, you think you’ve got it bad, try playing a shadow in Huttball. I’m happy with the class on the whole, but I get sick of running around the long way all the time while all the sentinels leap up cliffs. :p (Also, we get only one long-range attack, and it’s on a 90-second timer, which doesn’t quite qualify as a “slew”.)
Man, I’m relieved that everyone else thinks the same as me! I’m a sentinel and a PvPer and I had the misfortune of finding out that those two don’t mix well in TOR, especially at lower levls (as I’ve gotten stronger I have acquired abilities that allow me to handle myself better in a fight, but the survivability of the class is still terrible, specially when my CCs, disappear, break CC and reduce damage abilities are all on cooldown – moszt of them have long cooldowns).
To me what bioware could do to balance this is, instead of trying for a long time to figure out this ability’s cooldown, range, etc. just making the melee dpser REALLY DEADLY at melee range. That way the range advantage would be leveled by the high damage/immobilizing abilities of the melee classes.
One more reason that SWTOR is a ranged world in PVE is AoE boss mechanics. While range has easy flexibility to spread out and avoid unnecessary aoe damage (aka certain bosses will throw aoe grenades at random players regardless of threat), melee is typically behind the boss and conversely melee is very close to other melee & the tank.
This extra stress on the healer might even cause a wipe, and with enough wipes the group might decide to replace the melee dps with ranged dps instead.
The thing is, ranged DPS also does more damage. Especially the canon Commando. So in PvE you’re always struggling for ranged DPS for HM/Ops and so on; because they have all the power, all the armor, all the health and at no point do they go close to the boss. Then you have the Vanguard who HAS to be up close and then does half the damage and constantly loses have their HP from being so close.
Currently Vanguards are a bit of a non-class because of this; simply because they are more of a hinderance then help; just because they don’t do the damage a ranged trooper will.
Mark Douville, get some correct information before you write an article like this.
“Sure the other melee classes have melee abilities, but they also have a slew of ranged backup abilities to aid them in battle.”
Uh, no. Sin’s/Shadows have barely any range.
Triton don’t even start. If your going to tell me melee isn’t broken in this game you must be crazy. I have a lvl 50 sentinel with pretty much full pvp set and lvl 40+ valor. Its not just the fact that I get kited all day long and only have ONE cc break on a 2 min timer for everyone one button press a ranged player hits guardians and sentinels have to hit 4 to 5 other ones. It takes punishing skill to be on par with average skilled ranged players. Pve wise isn’t much different for me to take on a group of mobs they all just stand there and shoot at me while run between them all killing them one by since any crappy aoe i have cant actually hit more than one person since their ranged and dont actually move closer to each other. Pretty much make our crappy AoE useless. Again skill threshold on melee and the sentinel are extremely high which i believe makes the game imbalanced and really doesn’t make its fun to play this game even though i love the story line. Melee is being punished in this ranged world and if are too blind to see it then i don’t know why i bother when roll a sentinel and get rolled dont say we didn’t tell you.
all of the melee-based classes have abilities to close the gap between themselves and ranged. Getting into melee from my experience isn’t an issue.
In pvp, mobility isn’t a big problem. Everyone’s got gap-closing abilities, leaps, force runs, snares, stealth and everything you need to get as close as you need…
If you’re having issues with it, you’re doing it wrong, or being outnumbered.
commandos for example, only have a very short snare and a knockback. Not exactly OTT.
Other classes may have a root but it’s not game-breaking.
If all the melee classes were in melee range all the time, they’d be too good.
I feel it’s balanced well between the two
(except in pve…where….)
The only real issue i see is AoE in pve causing groups to favour ranged dps.
Actually, this is not completely correct.
As an Operative, I have no ability to close a gap once I’m out of stealth. Even in stealth, I still have to be able to sneak up and position myself behind the target in order to be effective.
The problem in pve is that most people who play ranged classes are just plain stupid. It appears they all learned to play during WotLK, when you would just start bombarding a target with your most powerful skill/spell or aoe. Usually not even the tank’s target. Ranged players need to learn how to assist target, and if something is attacking them, it’s most likely because they are attacking the wrong target. I play a Shadow and I do my best to control a fight, but when I see some idiot Sniper being mauled by an elite mob after I’ve already marked the targets and explained the kill order and CC’s… then he is as good as dead.
they really have to allow assassins/shadows to have more gap closing abilities. as an assassin I have range abilities but only in few meter range(except electicute) witch doesn´t help me alot and the only thing I can depend on when being kited is force speed. It´s good but it is on a to long cooldown in my opinion and it is also shared with a range class Sorcerer/sage so as a meele class the assassin doesn´t have its own gap closing ability. The other ability I have is stealth but that decreases my movement speed and when I´m in pvp then most of the time im in combat and when I need to close the gap I can´t depend on that and I only do in-combat stealth when im almost dead.
The Assassin is a good class and I can deliver alot of damage but most of the classes seem to have just the same advantages but more, like heavier armour, easier gap closing and aoe stuns.