Active dodge/block, my savior!

tavoc

Title sais it all.. but to elaberate.

Threw the last decade of my mmo carrior, i have alwayes been fond of melee classes. Started out playing warriors but eventualy ended up migrating to mellee healers when wow released. Since then i have alwayes played one, in wow i played enhancement shaman and retro paladan. In guild wars my first toon was a warrior/monk. In cage of conan i played a bear shaman for the longest time, but eventualy fell in love with the barbarian. And in aion my main was a chanter.

There have been more but i wont go threw the unending list. Now comes guild wars 2, which admitedly when they said no healer i was like CRAP! there goes my normal class arangement. However after reading more about it, and realizing the active dodge and block (for warriors atleast) i couldent help but almost jump out of my chair in exitement.

My reason for being exited, is that no longer will ranged players be completely OP to me. The main thing is, well thats easy.. I have the option of NOT getting smashed by that fireball or barage of arrows. In all the mmo's the i have played in the past i have alwayes felt that ranged clases plauged the fantasy genre. Before this, there was simply no way out.. if that mage class got their cast off whatever deadly attack they were casting hit you in the face almost 100% of the time, only not if you were lucky enough to resist that magical attack. Same with ranger classes.. bows/guns ALWAYES HIT, no matter what you did.. unless the game told you you were lucky enough to evade the incomeing attack.

That way of doing things sucked for anyone melee. This left us completely vunlerable in pvp..  I mean sure ive gotten a hell of alot of kills playing melee, mostly becuase i alwayes good at  my class and i dont button mash hopeing to kill somone, But i alwayes had that problem. ranged alwayes hit me, no matter what it was. Weather it was a nuke heading my way for 9 billion damage or a barage of arrows taking out my health bar before i could catch kiting rangers due to lack of melee CC or being slowed so much that i had no hope.

Now with gw2, while i cant say it works 100%, but i atleast have that hope that when i see that mage casting or that ranger dwaing their bow sting, i can atleast try to not get hit when im too far away to do anything... And if i play warrior well ill also have a bow but thats besides the point.

Theres many more problems this solves but ill stop now since i just typed a long post to simply say " HURRAY! im no longer a sitting target for ranged players!"

Zeus.CM

Yea. Dodging and Evasion system is a smart move. They wanted more active combat and I think they will succeed. Being melee class was always frustrating to me, when there was so many ways ranged classes were in advantage. First - they are ranged, they will strike you at least 2-3 times before you reach them. Second - many disabling spells (blindness, knockdown, hexes etc.). Third - mages spells mostly were more pwerfull than melee attacks. IMO  Gw2 will change that, and make it more fair.

athariel

btw, you can dodge projectiles in GW1 too, but if you hide behind your ally, it will go through him and hit you anyways.

therez0

The reasons stated by the OP are the main ones why I rarely ever played melee characters. That was until GW1.

In GW1, I first rolled a melee elementalist; boy, did that piss a lot of people off--not only the enemy team, but on my own as well. Back then, the ele had the best move speed boost, the best point-blank spells, and combined with the warrior's Hundred blades elite, the best melee attack (IMO, of course). Use the move speed boost to kite every projectile thrown at you, use the ele's high MR and just absorb the spells that couldn't be dodged. Once in melee range, unleash hell. And all this on a squishy character designed to be a ranged nuker--thus pissed off teammates, they were always afraid I would go balls deep and get myself killed.

They of course they completely nerfed my build, but by then the dervish had come out, and I instantly fell in love for the same reasons I loved my melee ele.

TL;DR version: active dodge does wonders for the playability of melee characters; Anet did it right once already, it can only get better in the sequel.