Are melees too powerful?

Battleborn Battleborn Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#2

All of them are incredibly over powered. Phoebe has been nerfed twice. Let that sink in. She’s still that good after two nerfs. Everyone all says “oh you can counter and blah blah blah” but that’s ■■■■■■■■. Only thing that counters them is another cheap lame melee class. It’s basically the automatic shotgun of this game. Hold mouse1 + w, maybe hit f. No aiming, no thinking, no strategy. If this game ever is competitive, and I want it to be, I guarantee you they will ban most melee characters. You won’t see Phoebe or Galilea in there.

On the other hand, most people ■■■■■■■ suck at this game. So imagine if had semi intelligent beings who understood “oh we need to stun this dude” or “I’m the tank, let me take on the melee douche”. It’s hard to genuinely evaluate balance when everyone is complete ■■■■.

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#3

Well I was playing Rath 4 rounds on PC yesterday and he seems as powerful as ever before… When cleverly played semi team kill support/assassin/aoe dmg role, he’s a wrecking machine…

#4

Can we at least try to keep comments respectful?

#5

Melee are very strong, almost all of them with gap closers/CC and good damage. If you’re ranged you should just poke at them a lot and watch your minimap or they’ll come up on you. Remember your Accelerators speed you up and can slow them down so if you run past that you should be safe. There will just be an adjustment period for awhile, people will adapt.

#6

As a reminder:

Fighting in melee range, a melee character should beat a comparable ranged character most times. That’s the advantage of range.

If you’re playing as ranged, don’t fight in melee, or you’re gonna have a bad time.

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#7

You gotta run away, learn the map. An assassin, which Phoebe and and Rath both are, is supposed to kill people quickly.
But when countered by a decent Marquis they are easily disposed of. Of course Rath will wreck you up close, because he’s supposed to.
Marquis will wreck you from a distance, just like Oscar Mike will get you at medium range. They are characters designed for specific occasions. Sure there may need to be some tweaks, but do we really want to nerf melee characters for doing what they’re supposed to be good at?

3 Likes
#8

The problem is that at low to mid player skill range melee is far easier to dominate with because they remove aiming from the equation. At higher skill this changes. However the masses fall into the low to mid skill range and this can turn into a big turn off in popularity of the game. This is a tough problem for gearbox to solve and has to do with the melding of the moba and fps genres.

#9

you should mention melee charcters take a while to get good rath dosent start to shine till he is at the mid way point

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#10

Lol I know right! I was just in a match and rath went 17-1. Only reason he even die once is because it took all of us to kill him.

#11

Yup. Imagine playing a melee character if they couldn’t wreck you if they managed to get close enough.

Stay out of melee range. Use your own melee attack to push them away. Use CC to escape.

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#12

Nah…just stay out of their range, its not a “counter” thing…its just Pay Attention to whats going on around you.

Turn around and sprint away, Thorn has unrivaled agility for escape…Marquis can pop his slow (plus birds for damage…) in front while running…Benedict obviously flies…Mike has Stealth…Whiskey has his junk shot.

Str8 up? Its Frankly a L2P issue.

#13

Basic Melee attacks are super important for just pushing them back, can keep them at bay with that often

#14

Melees are incredibly weak IMO. You just need to hit them once with your melee attack, push them back, 180 run away. Most of the time they will not catch up if you do not sprint in a straight line. They are super weak to CC, even more so than ranged characters that can still fight even slowed.

I main ISIC and as soon as I hit lvl5 I become an absolute nightmare for melees.

#15

My fairly limited experience has told me that some melee characters are really good while others are really bad. I couldn’t do squat with Boldur in the competitive matches I got in. So it’s not as ‘easy’ as some people say it is.

What is true is that the ‘masses’ will naturally gravitate towards whatever is or feels the most overpowered and whatever is the easiest to learn. But I don’t think all the melee characters fall into that gap (particularly since you can push them away and run away while their gap closers recharge).

#16

Thats true the only problem is they can just simply run through your attacks soak up all the damage and very easily get within melee range.

#17

Boulder is actually really good just takes alot alot of practice.As people get better melees will have less impact in games

#18

I wouldnt say melee is overpower just rath and phoebe

#19

Personally, I just fail to understand how people jump to the conclusion that a character is overpowered. Throughout the beta, and first day of release, I practically only played using Shayne & Aurox, I can consistently go 15-1 give or take a death or few kills with her. Most people from what I’ve seen during the beta thought she was extremely underwhelming, yet I’m able to die no more than three times per game.

On the other hand, today I decided to try Reyna, who I actually happened to love playing as. She’s a shield-specialized support class, and doesn’t have a high damage output, yet I’m able to beat a Rath in a 1v1, and just about any other battleborn with her after only a few games. I’ve been averaging about 11-1 per game, along with 15-20 assists in the 5-10 games I’ve played.

Also, I’m new to MOBAs, never played one before Battleborn, and didn’t even know what battleborn was till the beta, so it’s not like I’m extremely skilled. Also, I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I rarely die at all and I can show screenshots to stress my point more. Now overall, what my point is that any character can beat any character, and while some may counter others more, there really is no overpowered character. Galilea is the only character that could even remotely be considered OP. Every other Battleborn is usable, and many that people write off just don’t fit there play style. I just don’t understand how people can consider melee characters overpowered or underpowered, or any character for that matter.

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#20

I basically agree with everything you said right here. Thought i’d just throw my 2 cents in anyways. Though it is worth mentioning that I am a Rath main and I do often get results ranging in the 20-1 area. With that being said however, I’ve also played against plenty of other Raths/other melees (yes this includes Galilea, the supposed unkillable god of battleborn) , and on very few occassions have I been afraid of these characters, even when I play different characters like OM or Caldarius.

I fought my first Galilea as Rath thinking that I was gonna get completely steamrolled like everyone on these forums seems to suggest, yet I beat her. In almost every single one of my interactions with a Galilea it either ends up with one of us retreating, or me securing a kill.

My main point here is that a lot of these things come down to experience and knowledge. I have a pretty good understanding of what each melee character does and how to deal with it, and it’s not that hard to learn these things either. Despite my initial fear of Galilea, I knew what she could do. After all, you guys here on the forums were kind enough to list every single thing that she is capable of doing for me so I was able to prepare myself in advance. But reading walls of text can only take you so far when it comes to actually learning a character. One of the best ways to learn a character imo is to actually take a bit of time to play them yourselves. I would say that I know Rath better than most people who play this game. After all, I am a Rath main so I know a lot of the little tricks that some Rath players tend to do. I know where the flank spots are and when a good Rath would take the opportunity to kill me. I know what his skills do and which helix skills he is likely to grab, so I prepare for this. I know about Rath’s silence + slow combo, so I try to keep accelerators set up in case I need a quick escape. I know about his ult, so I keep my stun and CC skills ready for when he tries to use it. I honestly can’t say the same about Galilea or the other melees because I simply haven’t put enough time into them, but I still know the basics. I know that Galilea will cancel my life steal so trading blows is a bad idea, and I know that she is a major threat at full hp, so I never engage her unless I can do a bit of damage before she has a chance to retaliate.

#21

i 1v1 raths constantly with OM and WF, melee and aim :slight_smile: but yeah ideally you dont want to get close haha