If you enjoy playing melee or know someone who does, you’re probably familiar with two in-game combat messages when it comes to the burrow areas of Explorable Ascalonian Catacombs and quests involving destroying supply carts and similar items– “Miss” and “Obstructed”. There’s a bug that’s been around since the beginning where melee and physical damage weapons seem to miss more often than not when it comes to facing these dangerous enem– er, objects.

Robert Hrouda, Content Designer of ArenaNet, acknowledged this bug yesterday on the official forums, and had a few words to say regarding it:

We’re aware of this problem, and it affects more than just the burrows. There are certain gadgets where if you stand still and melee attack them, you miss or get the obstructed pop-up. However if you continue to move around while attacking, you hit it. This is most apparent during “hundred blades” type skills that require your player to stand still.

We’re aware of it though, and trying to fix it.

With any luck, a fix will come soon. This bug can make completing Explorable Ascalonian Catacombs with certain group configurations pretty difficult. At least for the moment, we have another tactic to try and overcome it, as well. Solution– run around like an idiot attacking a dirt pile with a giant sword– got it!

Many players eagerly walked into Guild Wars 2′s first beta weekend unsure of what to expect. Some of these players found themselves surprised at the game’s difficulty level. For some, this surprise quickly turned into appreciation. Others were disappointed and frustrated. Opinions are always going to be widespread and varying in a beta event for a game of GW2′s size, but with the case of the game’s difficulty, some interesting opinions, critiques, and reviews surfaced. Which held water? I’ll let you be the real judge, but for now, let’s take a look at some of the beef regarding GW’s difficulty.

Originally posted by Jon Peters (Source)

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Hey all. I wanted to talk about this a bit since it is a hot topic here and also on the internets. The intention is that both styles are viable. Certainly right now Melee is more difficult than ranged. There are some things we will try to do to address this, but I think the more you play you would find they are closer than you think.
First what’s already there:

1) Melee does more damage. Melee damage is simply higher than ranged damage across the board.
2) Melee has more control. With a few intentional exception Melee has a lot more control than ranged.
What Melee needs:
1) defensive tools on more weapons, particularly on lower armor professions.
2) ai needs to favor Melee a bit less than it currently does.

What else:
Finally because of the more action based nature of combat Melee needs to be taught better. Effective Melee requires skills that translate over from FPS games which are notoriously harder on casual players. You have to wasd to move, constantly aim with your mouse camera, and hit skills on 1-5.
Some tips:

If you have learned any good Melee tips that you think we should pass on to newer players feel free to post them here. I’ll start with a few tips of my own.

- If you don’t have mouse look on when using a skill you will turn to face. I sometimes let go of mouse look as I activate to help me aim through the chaos and then click it back down in between attacks.
- Melee has a lot of hard hitting skills and good setup. Utility skills Can really help set up big Melee attacks. Bulls charge on warrior, scorpion wire on thief, judges intervention on guardian.
- know when to run. No matter what you are not a tank. You have to move in and out avoiding damage. If you have to soak damage try and bring boons like Protection and Regeneration or conditions like Blindness and the very undervalued Weakness.

Thanks for reading this all. Rest assured we will keep working on this and just keep in mind the subtle differences in GW2 combat that take a while to sink in.
Jon