Melee vs range attack

[Plume]

So, I think melee damages have a problem.
Here is what is happening :

Tests are made with a lvl 30 warrior, killing sand shells lvl 2.
Using the Celestial Wrath (sword from the last boss hard mode) and the Arc of lignthning (bow from the first boss hard mode).

With no points distributed yet, a lvl 30 warrior 164 strengh and 68 dexterity.
I do 112 dmg and 298 crit dmg with the sword.
I do 127 dmg and 410 crit dmg with the bow.

With all my points distributed in Strengh, I now have 277 strengh and still 68 dex.
I do 145 dmg and 388 crit dmg with the sword.
I do 127 dmg and 410 crit dmg with the bow.

With all my points distributed in Dexterity, I now have 155 dex for 164 strengh.
I do 112 dmg and 298 crit dmg with the sword.
I do 167 dmg and 536 crit dmg with the bow.

So I understand the sword swings faster than the bow shoots arrows.
And I also can do dmg to multiple ennemies with the sword if they are stacked around me, where the bow will target only one mob.
And those should be good reasons for a warrior use melee weapon.

But between the mobs that are doing dmg on contact, time you lose running after your target, and the bad view you have of your environnement when you fight as a melee (you fall easily, and dodge is often hard to time because of the generation of the world), ranged attack is safer and more effective.

I don't need to invest points in constitution, I don't need to get high damage reduction from my armor, I can just wear what gives me the most dps and safely attack with a bow. I crit way too much so the better non crit dmg I have with all my points in strengh won't make a difference.

Overall it seems the melee dmg does not scale enough versus ranged dmg.
Also the sword has 208 attack where the bow has 215, both are end game weapons dropped by hard mode boss. So it pushes even more the difference.

I'm not for the nerf attitude, mainly because it just causes more disapointment to the players than really making the game better. Maybe melee dmg need a bit of a boost.

What do you think ?
Maybe I'm missing something important about melee that makes it really strong too ?

[Oberic]

Faster attack speed = more dps (especially when the damage difference isn't that huge).
Damaging multiple foes = more spread dps.

As well, melee characters are usually able to take more damage than ranged characters.
Does your warriro wear heavier armor with more defense?
Does your warrior have more health or other defensive traits?

Damage per hit is a nice number to look at, but tells little of the big picture.

With a group of players, a tanky reliable warrior is going to be far more valuable than a warrior that is trying to match the dps of a squishy ranger/wizard.

[Plume]

Originally posted by Oberic:

Faster attack speed = more dps (especially when the damage difference isn't that huge).
Damaging multiple foes = more spread dps.

I've pointed that on my post if you read carefully, and I have addressed it.
It's not enough for me to play the warrior over the mage or the ranger.
Where the ranger is more mobile than the mage, the mage will have more magic power. It feels balanced to me and I enjoy playing both for this reasons ! The warrior on the other hand...

Originally posted by Oberic:

As well, melee characters are usually able to take more damage than ranged characters.
Does your warriro wear heavier armor with more defense?
Does your warrior have more health or other defensive traits?

Damage per hit is a nice number to look at, but tells little of the big picture.

As I tried to point out, you don't need more health or armor as a ranged because it's easier to avoid damage. You have a good view of your environnement, you can dodge easily, you can read the pattern of your ennemie clearer.

Plus the scaling of the ranged damage on the warrior is so good that melee feels... unnecessary.

I understand that if I make the calculation (which I did not) I might find out that the warrior has higher DPS with the sword on a non moving target.
I also understand that if I want to survive correctly in melee (because dodge is harder, etc...) I'll have to give up some DPS for some survivability and...

I mean the snake is biting his tail here.
We are not in a mmorpg where you have a tank to control the ennemies and DPS classes to do the job. The warrior has no need to tank here, he needs to kill his target.

I don't know, I might need to play a bit more with the warrior and find a build that will bring something the ranger and the mage don't. I'll keep experimenting. :)

[Oberic]

It doesn't take much to figure the DPS. I just need to know damage (which you've already provided) and attack speed (preferably in the form of attacks per second (0.8, 1.2, etc.)
I don't know if portal knights provides this information.

[sxl2]

I've played all 3 classes all the way through, and beaten hardmode bosses with all three classes too, so it's not like I haven't played and enjoyed them - but yeah rangers FTW..

To boost the point the OP is making even more, even if the warrior IS a clear tank (questionable), if it does significantly less damage than a ranger (and it does - especially when you consider the multi-strike capability of the titanium bow) why bother? Who cares about tankiness if nothing hits you and you do most damage? Plus titanium bow + big cc armor + + kings armor = +150 health with almost every hit?!?!? how can a tank beat that!)

Mob battle mechanics are designed mostly to challenge melee, and as such hardly bother ranged attackers. For instance flying mobs can be near unhittable for warrior without stun spells, making them need to adjust and vary attack style, but this doesn't matter at all to ranged players. Still just point and click. Also ranged characters can cause damage and eliminate mobs that can't even target them back. (the current solution of restoring mob health if they can't track/pathfind to you actually hurts melee worst, as sometimes a mob standing right next to you and actually causing you damage can't pathfind correctly, and keeps restoring health - not very fair to player up close is it? And why punish player for AI's faults?)

I mean what's the point of armor if enemes never get close enough to hit you? and almost all ranged attacks are slow enough to simply walk aside from (don't even need to dodge most of them). The only attacks that require a ranger to think a bit are the jumps of golems and roarcs and missles that track you - and even then they telegraph themselves enough that it's easy to avoid them.

Plus If the benefit of the warrior is supposed to be hitting multiple enemies at once then the devs really need to re-think the way combat mechanics work - it's designed so that you specifically target one with right-click, which is entirely built around picking off mobs one at a time, and of little use if you want to gather mobs and hit a lot at once. (Seriously, I have to have picked one enemy before I can dodge properly? WTF? Why isn't dodge always on? Why do I need a seperate key config for that? Under what circumstances would I want dodge disabled anyway?)

And on top of all of that, look at the kinds of drops that are needed to make ranger equipment vs either warrior or mage - and you'll see you can top out ranger gear, both weapons and armor, earlier in the game than either of the other two classes. (Mages are especially screwed, needing opal dust for most things, and only two places have opals out of all level 3 worlds. Almost no mobs drop opal dust either - everything drops refined opal which is hardly used, WTF? Well it's a great source of money anyway)

And even more: since any player can wear any armor, what class advantage, really, does warrior have? As the OP implies, you're probably better off playing a ranger as a warrior than a warrior as a warrior, lol. (+CC is king in this game as currently designed)

The game really needs a balance pass on a lot of things - not just DPS - to bring the other classes in line. I assume that will happen at some point...

Maybe to give warrior something spcial - stun ability or something - that other classes don't have that really give it some clear differences. Same with Mage, which really plays a lot like ranged right now - wands etc not even using mana...and way more powerful than spells in DPS terms.