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I'm very confused by this thread, no offense meant to anyone involved. I think the ranged meta has nothing to do with "best options," it just means that it's common to see people with ranged attacks that are effective compared to PF2. It's just a statement from Paizo to take into account that ranged attacks are readily, and likely to be, used by everyone.
That's my read of it at least, just seems like more is being read into it than there actually is.
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I'm very confused by this thread, no offense meant to anyone involved. I think the ranged meta has nothing to do with "best options," it just means that it's common to see people with ranged attacks that are effective compared to PF2. It's just a statement from Paizo to take into account that ranged attacks are readily, and likely to be, used by everyone.
That's my read of it at least, just seems like more is being read into it than there actually is.
You have the whole reason why I call out on this so called ranged meta. It's too early to know if ranged attacks will be effective compared to PF2.
The crux of a meta is effectiveness. If range is still dwarved by melee then we will end up with a melee meta as we have in PF2.
I would in fact go as far as to say that these classes are not super-dominant, and that players generally go for classes that appeal to them thematically or mechanically.
And I've never said otherwise. The meta prescribes, it doesn't force.
Calling these classes “meta” is not particularly true, because they don’t shape the state of play or even act as the default for which classes to pick.
You should spend more time on PF2 forums. The Fighter is definitely the point of comparison for every martial. The Bard is in general the one for casters. They act as default for their roles.
It looks to me that you have no clue what a meta is, which certainly explains our disagreement.
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Then it is too early to be saying 'The ranged meta doesn't exist, the cake is a lie' as well.
Then it is too early to be saying 'The ranged meta doesn't exist, the cake is a lie' as well.
Before existing a meta doesn't exist. So no, it's not too early to say it doesn't exist. It may emerge, and I'm fine with that. Still it's too early to say it exists.
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Except that we have statements of intent from the designers and clear trends in the material already produced.
Is the cat alive or dead? We could wait until the box opens, but I'm pretty sure I can hear a pissed-off feline in there.
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Except that we have statements of intent from the designers and clear trends in the material already produced.
Is the cat alive or dead? We could wait until the box opens, but I'm pretty sure I can hear a pissed-off feline in there.
And also 5 years of Pathfinder 2 experience going the other way around.
Stating there's a ranged meta based on the experience of a level 1 adventure with 2 combats, a level 5 adventure with 2 combats and a level 1-3 adventure, adventures mostly played with pregenerated characters who are all ranged but 1, is like stating that Trump is reelected based on polls.
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And I've never said otherwise. The meta prescribes, it doesn't force.
But it doesn't prescribe either, is the point.
You should spend more time on PF2 forums. The Fighter is definitely the point of comparison for every martial. The Bard is in general the one for casters. They act as default for their roles.
I'd rather actually keep playing Pathfinder, thanks. I'd rather not base my opinions off of an echo chamber whose activity mostly comes from about twelve people, and that you would regard this as a major source of truth is, I'm sorry to say, a bit sad.
I'd also say your statement is a tad overblown: literally every class is used as a point of comparison for one thing or another on these forums, and the people using the Fighter as the benchmark for martial class damage (it's usually damage) are doing so in ignorance of the fact that the class is meant to represent the upper limit of how much single-target damage you can deal in 2e, not the standard. Similarly, people like to claim the Bard can do everything well, but I don't see very many claims about the class being great at healing or blasting, both of which I'm sure you'll agree are desirable qualities. Clearly, these classes aren't as "meta" as you're making them out to be.
It looks to me that you have no clue what a meta is, which certainly explains our disagreement.
I've seen holograms with less projection than this. This entire thread and the ridicule you've piled on yourself exist because you fundamentally misunderstood what Paizo meant by a "ranged meta" in Starfinder, and continue to double down even as others have pointed out to you what that ranged meta is all about. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt after you insisted you were arguing in good faith, but I guess I was wrong in doing so.
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I'd rather not base my opinions off of an echo chamber whose activity mostly comes from about twelve people, and that you would regard this as a major source of truth is, I'm sorry to say, a bit sad.
Is it as sad as having long discussions inside what you consider "an echo chamber whose activity mostly comes from about twelve people"?
The meta comes from the community. So if you disregard the community that much, why do you even speak about the meta? Why do you intervene in this discussion? You should align your behavior and your words.
@moderator: Sorry about that, I stop. Sometimes, it's just good to be snarky.
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Except that we have statements of intent from the designers and clear trends in the material already produced.
Is the cat alive or dead? We could wait until the box opens, but I'm pretty sure I can hear a pissed-off feline in there.
And also 5 years of Pathfinder 2 experience going the other way around.
Stating there's a ranged meta based on the experience of a level 1 adventure with 2 combats, a level 5 adventure with 2 combats and a level 1-3 adventure, adventures mostly played with pregenerated characters who are all ranged but 1, is like stating that Trump is reelected based on polls.
I don't know if it's escaped your notice but this is a brand new system. Yes, its core rules chassis is based on Pathfinder Second Edition, but this is not Pathfinder Second Edition. There's no 5 years of anything disproving anything. That's almost like if you said D&D 5e suggests that Wizard will massively outperform Fighter when the PF2e playtest was ongoing. You're right that the playtest material provided so far is too small a glimpse to conclusively say anything about the ranged meta, but it's the only glimpse we have into the game's meta state. And I don't know about you but with both Soldier and Operative having almost exclusively ranged weapon support, and Solarian being the only class built whole cloth on melee and also being one of the weakest classes in the playtest, to me, suggests that maybe the ranged meta isn't a lie maybe.
Is it as sad as having long discussions inside what you consider "an echo chamber whose activity mostly comes from about twelve people"?
Is posting on an hobby forum as sad as getting all of your facts from said sparsely-populated hobby forum rather than experiencing the hobby itself? I don't know about that one, chief.
The meta comes from the community. So if you disregard the community that much, why do you even speak about the meta? Why do you intervene in this discussion? You should align your behavior and your words.
How thankful Paizo must be that their playerbase is made up of more than a dozen people. I do what I can to share my thoughts and observations, as well as listen to interesting things others have to say, and in the majority of cases very productive and enjoyable discussion comes out of that. My ability to engage in discussion on this space, while not always taking what everyone says here to be the gospel truth, hinges on a little thing called "critical thinking": you may have heard of it, and several people on here definitely exercise it too. Would it that everyone did, we'd get to have even more interesting conversations overall, wouldn't you agree?
But also, let's maybe talk about a certain amount of hypocrisy and emotional manipulation going on: it was literally yesterday that you put yourself in the role of the victim and me the villain, as you cried bloody murder at what you claimed were "personal attacks". Even as you were doing so, you were throwing barbs yourself, and at this point the mask has just fully dropped: the moment you were challenged on Starfinder's ranged meta using your own personal definition of what a "meta" meant, you didn't even bother to acknowledge any of the points being made, you just started doubling down and lashing out. This thread is a farce, and you're not even trying to pretend that it's about having a productive discussion anymore.
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I'd rather not base my opinions off of an echo chamber whose activity mostly comes from about twelve people, and that you would regard this as a major source of truth is, I'm sorry to say, a bit sad.
Is it as sad as having long discussions inside what you consider "an echo chamber whose activity mostly comes from about twelve people"?
The meta comes from the community. So if you disregard the community that much, why do you even speak about the meta? Why do you intervene in this discussion? You should align your behavior and your words.
@moderator: Sorry about that, I stop. Sometimes, it's just good to be snarky.
Please look up other definitions of meta. Just like, mentally replace it with "game state." Starfinder Second Edition is designed around and encourages a ranged game state.
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You're right that the playtest material provided so far is too small a glimpse to conclusively say anything about the ranged meta
Well, that's mostly what I say. Without an accross the board experience it's a bit hasty to speak of a ranged meta. And my first post was a reaction to a discussion about "the place of melee martials in the ranged meta": First, let's be sure there's a ranged meta before going into conjectures.
Please look up other definitions of meta. Just like, mentally replace it with "game state." Starfinder Second Edition is designed around and encourages a ranged game state.
Does it? I definitely question this assumption.
Take PF2 (as it's the same system and not another one, there is full compatibility between PF2 and SF2), what is the real doom of ranged parties?
The main issue of ranged parties in PF2 is when they fight a bunch of melee brutes with no way to keep their distances from them. Melee does more damage than ranged and melee disrupt range (through Reflexive Strike, Swallow whole, etc... there are really a lot of melee abilities that are meant to disrupt ranged attacks/spellcasting). A Severe encounter between a ranged based party and a bunch of melee brutes has high chances to end up as a TPK.
In SF2:
- Melee brutes still exist.
- Melee disruptive abilities still exist.
- Maps are small enough that sometimes you won't be able to keep your distances from them.
So the conclusion may be the very same than PF2: Ranged parties may regularly TPK against melee brutes.
If people learn that ranged parties regularly TPK against melee brutes I can assure you they will adjust and go for melee-based parties quickly.
Stating there's a ranged meta is not enough, you need facts. And when reading the book, I don't see convincing facts. And the small experience we have as of now can hardly be considered facts.
And I don't know about you but with both Soldier and Operative having almost exclusively ranged weapon support, and Solarian being the only class built whole cloth on melee and also being one of the weakest classes in the playtest, to me, suggests that maybe the ranged meta isn't a lie maybe.
Operative is full ranged. Soldier on the other hand, seems built like a melee class. It's a tank (Con-based, Legendary armor) without any agro management mechanism. So I expect ranged Soldiers to have hard time tanking. Even if there are more ranged options for the Soldier, the melee option seems much more organic.
As for the Solarian, well, maybe the solution Paizo chose to push the ranged meta is a nerf of melee options. But if the Solarian is weak I expect a buff and not a nerf of the melee Soldier (who seems to be fine in terms of power level). But, obviously, that's outside our reach.
The crux of a meta is effectiveness.
But not necessarily white room effectiveness. Like if you have meta knowledge that electricity damage is rare and fire damage is common, then a meta consideration would be to consider options you can gain for fire resistance to be valuable and similar options for electric damage less valuable, even if those options are presented neurally by the game and if they're not normally especially strong.
Metagaming, and thus a meta game, is using knowledge you have from outside of the setting of the game, to make choices about how you play the game. Sometimes that knowledge can be "which things are the most effective" but it doesn't have to be. It can also be "which things are ineffective" and "which things are situationally effective"(and in one what situations.)
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Metagaming
Be careful, the meta is not metagaming. The meta is the community's current understanding of the game and the value they attach to various strategies and options.
It comes from competitive (video) games where the meta is basically the options and strategies that the community considers the strongest.In TTRPGs, the meta is less prevalent because TTRPGs are not that competitive. Still, the meta exists. For example, when we started playing we didn't know that an out of combat healer was so important. But quickly the community learned about it and now every party has an out of combat healer. That's the meta at work.
Another example is Synesthesia. The spell is strong, but first and foremost it's the perfect counter strategy to a very nasty type of fights: solo bosses. So everyone considers Synesthesia strong because it's meta. If the solo bosses were not that much of a problem Synesthesia would not be considered that good.
You have the exact opposite with the Incapacitation trait, which is mostly aimed at mooks. As mooks are considered weak, the Incapacitation effects are considered weak, even if on paper they are not. Incapacitation effects are not meta.
But not necessarily white room effectiveness.
Quite the opposite actually, the meta is fully backed up by experience. Mostly because it takes a lot of time for a meta to emerge, in general months, sometimes years. People need to play the game, report their experience, and then the community starts determining the good strategies, the strong builds and options and it then becomes the meta.
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Quite the opposite actually, the meta is fully backed up by experience. Mostly because it takes a lot of time for a meta to emerge, in general months, sometimes years. People need to play the game, report their experience, and then the community starts determining the good strategies, the strong builds and options and it then becomes the meta.
Hey! I can report some experiences then! A level 5 soldier in a home game I'm running wrecked shop against a batch of melee focused PF2e enemies because the debuffs built into soldier's AoE abilities kept them from being able to close distance effectively and then made them whiff their attacks or spoil criticals repeatedly... almost like there's a ranged meta emerging after being cultivated by deliberate design decisions on the part of the writers or something.
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Quite the opposite actually, the meta is fully backed up by experience. Mostly because it takes a lot of time for a meta to emerge, in general months, sometimes years. People need to play the game, report their experience, and then the community starts determining the good strategies, the strong builds and options and it then becomes the meta.Hey! I can report some experiences then! A level 5 soldier in a home game I'm running wrecked shop against a batch of melee focused PF2e enemies because the debuffs built into soldier's AoE abilities kept them from being able to close distance effectively and then made them whiff their attacks or spoil criticals repeatedly... almost like there's a ranged meta emerging after being cultivated by deliberate design decisions on the part of the writers or something.
Careful, the 'meta' folks are also saying that soldiers are hopelessly unplayable too.
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It would be interesting to see a different phase in the SF2 playtest where we open the floodgates for PF2 classes. Like "see how the Monk, Kineticist, Thaumaturge, etc. compare to SF2 classes."
It's clear they've been doing this internally with the gunslinger, but stress testing it would be fun.
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The crux of a meta is usage. In competitive games (which TTRPGs are not), the most used options are usually the most effective, but if everyone is playing a meme pick whose not actually good, that meme is the current meta. People have done polls with hundreds to thousands of responses, and while fighters and rouges are popular, they are not the most popular, and clerics and bards are ranked relatively low. The meta and the most effective options are not the same in this game.The crux of a meta is effectiveness. If range is still dwarved by melee then we will end up with a melee meta as we have in PF2.
A lot of that also depends on how you plan on using SF2e. People playing SF2e as a stand-alone game will have a much different meta from people borrowing SF2e classes for a PF2e game. There's more variation on how to mix the 2 settings, and each could have its own meta and memes.
I think for play testing finding the least optimized meme character that can still contribute to the party, survive, and not be the of a cause TPK is important too. How you play the game matters too. I play PFS2e live and SFS play by post. Live organized play games to me, feel more like combat survival games partially due to the time constraint of needing to finish in one session. In play-by-post my main focus and interest in the game is role-playing my character.
Hey! I can report some experiences then! A level 5 soldier in a home game I'm running wrecked shop against a batch of melee focused PF2e enemies because the debuffs built into soldier's AoE abilities kept them from being able to close distance effectively and then made them whiff their attacks or spoil criticals repeatedly... almost like there's a ranged meta emerging after being cultivated by deliberate design decisions on the part of the writers or something.
And your experience will help build the meta. Now, if you explain me that what happened at your table will happen at every table then allow me to laugh. It's too early to be sure, we are lacking feedback to build such a theory.
The crux of a meta is usage. In competitive games (which TTRPGs are not), the most used options are usually the most effective, but if everyone is playing a meme pick whose not actually good, that meme is the current meta. People have done polls with hundreds to thousands of responses, and while fighters and rouges are popular, they are not the most popular, and clerics and bards are ranked relatively low. The meta and the most effective options are not the same in this game.
First Fighter, second Rogue, Witch, Investigator and Alchemist are last
And this one is more interesting: Cleric is third.
So between "What class do you want to play?" and "What class do you actually play?" Cleric went from middle of the stack to podium.
Because people switch to meta classes. Sessions 0 is a superbe example of meta at work: There's nearly always a player who waits for everyone to choose to complement the party. And if the party is not meta you can be sure this player will bring a meta class.
Actually, I got an even clearer experience: In the Sky King's Tomb campaign I'm playing we lost one player and another came with a ranged Ranger. After the first game, he told us we were strongly lacking a frontline and came back afterwards... with a Fighter. Once again, a meta class to help a non meta party, against all the player preference.
I really think effectiveness dictates usage more than anything else (or I should say perceived effectiveness).
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And your experience will help build the meta. Now, if you explain me that what happened at your table will happen at every table then allow me to laugh. It's too early to be sure, we are lacking feedback to build such a theory.
Dunno man, you sound like you're in a pretty bad mood. I don't think a dry recounting of events and then a in depth statistical analysis of just how many abilities and pieces of equipment in the playtest support a ranged play style will get any real mirth from you. If it's laughs you're looking for, I'd suggest dropping this pedantic and overly aggressive argument and maybe picking up a good comedy podcast. I've been enjoying Kill James Bond lately.
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To me this just sounds like a problem with describing/agreeing on what "ranged meta" means.The meta is what the community of players considers the best options.
Alright, I think I see the problem here.
That's one way to use the word meta. It's not the only way to use the word meta, at least as far as I know. It can refer to the "normal" situation that the players can expect to encounter during play, which gives rise to player's selecting certain options to best deal with these typical encounters.
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Alright, I think I see the problem here.
That's one way to use the word meta. It's not the only way to use the word meta, at least as far as I know. It can refer to the "normal" situation that the players can expect to encounter during play, which gives rise to player's selecting certain options to best deal with these typical encounters.
Well, Han is kind of right.
When you start defining notions you know the conversation won't get you anywhere. I'll just continue to ignore posts about this so-called ranged meta until I consider it's backed up by experience or forever if it's just a developer intent that never happens.As a side note, I don't think there are multiple definitions for meta. It definitely can happen, especially when a term is that young. But when looking on the Internet I find always the same one.
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I think a "meta" is created at first by people just reading the book and having a first impression. Later on, after playing a bunch and hearing about things other people did, the meta becomes based more on experience.
Metas are often shaped by things that went really well, and things that went really poorly. In a pretty casual environment (which this is, compared to pro gaming), it's not about solid statistics. Impressive incidents matter a lot.
For example, the official doctrine is that Attack of Opportunity/Reactive Strike is a rare ability among monsters. However, there's been a couple of high powered BBEGs that had it, or something pretty much like it. That makes a big impression. Nobody likes to be hamstrung or murdered during the epic bossfight at the end of a big adventure. So even though statistically RS is supposed to be rare, it still has a lot of impact on meta. For SF2, all it's going to take is one or two AP book bossfights where the boss has RS for people to swing to "melee is pretty important after all".
It can also go the other way around. If you end up in a fight where half the party is completely impotent because all the enemies are flying, that's gonna teach people that ranged weapons are really important. I'm pretty sure the SF2 meta is going to be more ranged than PF2.
SF1 had a pretty strong melee meta actually. At low level the gulf between melee and ranged damage was huuuuge. And thrown weapons used strength to hit, and heavy armor made it so that you didn't need a ton of dex. Being a high strength soldier with a returning sonic starknife was the good life. Also, if your entire party was basically backliners, you'd end up being chased all around the map by one or two melee enemies, until everyone in the party could fly.
Superbidi has a point that with the scaling we know from PF2, a solo melee character doesn't look like it's gonna work. Either the whole party manages to stay out of melee, or you need two people on the front row.
How often can you decide not to have melee, if the enemy does want melee? I think not that often. Mostly because of "meta" (haha) reasons: Paizo doesn't usually use enormous maps for encounters. So the meta is probably going to be, you have to be ready for an enemy that wants melee. (And that, at higher levels, can probably fly too.)
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TL;DR - my meta prediction: ideal party composition is two switch hitters in the front row, and two pure ranged in the back row. Everyone can do ranged okay, and two are built to do melee okay too.
If the enemy's ranged game is weaker, they try to stay at range; if the enemy wants to close to melee, the switch hitters intercept and prevent the back row from being chased around. If the enemy actually looks weaker in melee, they can try to press forward.
TL;DR - my meta prediction: ideal party composition is two switch hitters in the front row, and two pure ranged in the back row. Everyone can do ranged okay, and two are built to do melee okay too.
But how do you build a switch-hitter in SF2?
From my currently limited knowledge of the game, I don't see how to make it happen well.
But how do you build a switch-hitter in SF2?
I think the two most obvious examples are a non-sniper operative with a finesse backup weapon, and a soldier with high strength.
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TL;DR - my meta prediction: ideal party composition is two switch hitters in the front row, and two pure ranged in the back row. Everyone can do ranged okay, and two are built to do melee okay too.But how do you build a switch-hitter in SF2?
From my currently limited knowledge of the game, I don't see how to make it happen well.
I'm still trying to figure it out too. Although I only cracked open the book this weekend. The best I've been able to come up with is to go with a finesse weapon and some kind of damage booster like Get 'Em. Not really happy with that though.
The problem is ranged weapons are generally weaker in damage output but have the freedom of choice when it comes to who they Strike. However is the enemy side has a melee combatant you might as well choose to take him out first since they will most likely be a threat to all of the PCs if they are exclusively ranged. Melee benefit is higher weapon damage and higher base damage due to Strength and other easier to trigger class features. The reason people dislike the Operative because it is a class that uses best feature of a ton of classes into a kit that works wonders.
The Operative should not be the default for the ranged meta or else you get Soldier with Primary Target which is very strong when used right. Hardly any other classes outside Starlit Span Magus can compete with their damage output at range. Rogues, Investigators might be able to but many meta will be high speed monk who can disrupt ranged enemies effectively enough to throw a wrench into this new meta Paizo said will exist.
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I think the two most obvious examples are a non-sniper operative with a finesse backup weapon, and a soldier with high strength.
Operatives make bad switch-hitters. Most Operatives will keep their ranged weapon when forced to melee range, they lose too much damage otherwise.
The Soldier class on the other hand is really built to be a switch-hitter, as AoEs are hard to position at melee range without hitting allies. But still, I expect most Soldiers to have a main focus and a secondary one, mostly because you can't max out Strength, Dexterity and Constitution and because you'll need 2 weapons so one will be weaker than the other one.
The Soldier is the closest you can get to a switch hitter, I won't deny that, but it's far from impressive.
Paradoxically I think the Solarian could do an ok switch-hitter. Your Solar Shot damage progresses with your level, its only issue is that it can't gain Potency runes (but I expect that to change, as of now it seems too punitive for no reason). Also, you don't need actions to switch between melee and ranged. But as Solarians are Strength-based and the Flare has a low range, it's far from incredible.
In PF2, there are a few actual switch-hitters. The Dex-based Eidolon is a perfect switch-hitter, and most thrown weapon builds are decent switch-hitters. But honestly, I don't remember having seen even half a dozen switch-hitters in my PF2 career. This gameplay is not supported well.
Skirmisher Operative is a switch hitter, since they laugh in the face of reactive strike and eventually get damage dice fixing at point blank range. Discussion about them has kind of been drowned out by Hair Trigger discussion, though.
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Alright, I think I see the problem here.
That's one way to use the word meta. It's not the only way to use the word meta, at least as far as I know. It can refer to the "normal" situation that the players can expect to encounter during play, which gives rise to player's selecting certain options to best deal with these typical encounters.
Well, Han is kind of right.
When you start defining notions you know the conversation won't get you anywhere. I'll just continue to ignore posts about this so-called ranged meta until I consider it's backed up by experience or forever if it's just a developer intent that never happens.As a side note, I don't think there are multiple definitions for meta. It definitely can happen, especially when a term is that young. But when looking on the Internet I find always the same one.
Would you be happy if the developers reworded their callout and said: Remember, in Starfinder Second Edition ranged combat is the expectation, meaning that everyone’s packing a gun or some other ranged weapon, so a lot of combats happen at a distance using cover and tactical positioning, rather than up close and personal. Melee can still be incredibly effective, but will have additional challenges that primarily ranged characters won't have.
Cause that's what (I think) they were trying to say.
Anyways, to the second part of your sentence I think it's one of the unfortunate things of the internet that when people talk about "the best way to play the game" (as if such a thing exists) it becomes conversations about how to do the most damage, and everyone just calls whatever that is the "meta" choice. But it ignores a lot of what meta means to say it's only that.
Like "getting in someone's face will cause them trouble" is a good strategy because a lot of things would prefer to shoot at you from cover.
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Remember, in Starfinder Second Edition ranged combat is the expectation
If you are adjacent to an enemy, and your weapon is a ranged weapon and the enemy weapon is a ranged weapon and everyone uses ranged weapons at point blank, is it ranged combat?
For me, it's not.SF2 maps are the same than PF2 maps, you open the door and the enemy is right in your face. Sure, more people use guns but it's not ranged combat to me. Melee characters don't really have additional challenges, they are just working as usual: Sudden Charge and Strike.
For me, ranged combat supposes range, which comes from bigger maps. From what I've seen, the combats still start under the 60 ft. range. That's not ranged combat to me.
Anyways, to the second part of your sentence I think it's one of the unfortunate things of the internet that when people talk about "the best way to play the game" (as if such a thing exists) it becomes conversations about how to do the most damage, and everyone just calls whatever that is the "meta" choice. But it ignores a lot of what meta means to say it's only that.
I disagree with what you say. And I dislike it.
If you want to know why you can send me a PM (I said I'll stop speaking about the meta and I don't want another heated conversation).
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TL;DR - my meta prediction: ideal party composition is two switch hitters in the front row, and two pure ranged in the back row. Everyone can do ranged okay, and two are built to do melee okay too.But how do you build a switch-hitter in SF2?
From my currently limited knowledge of the game, I don't see how to make it happen well.
You don’t.
Switch hitting has much the same problems it always has.
1) Price. You need to up to date weapons.
2) Stats. If you’re a strength primary character, you now need dex to have a decent chance to hit with your secondary. If you’re a dex primary, you need strength to have any reason to use your melee and even then it’s probably not worth it. Swapping from a Seeker Rifle or Laser Rifle to an ECB might deal +1-3 damage at best, or might not even deal any more damage on average. Is that really worth putting all those points into strength and making it your secondary when they could be instead in wis or con for better survivability? Admittedly, Operative, Solarian and Soldier are free to do Str, Dex, Con, Wis as their four stats, but starting strength higher than +1 means you’re losing out on one of the other three.
Then we get into class specific problems
Envoy obviously can’t switch hit, it needs Con, Wis, Dex, Cha. No reason or benefit for it to ever switch to a melee weapon.
Operative simply has no reason to. They lose a bunch of damage, and even with Skirmisher there’s still very little point. You have On the Move to get out of reactive strikes, and unless you have a second melee character you can’t flank.
Soldier has major stat issues because of no ECB equivalent. Even if there was an ECB, you need to take Whirling Swipe to do anything decent in melee and it doesn’t work with a majority of your feats. Without an ECB you’re either neglecting dex which makes your ranged primary target a lot worse, or neglecting strength which makes your melee damage worse and your melee primary target (if you take the Whirling Swipe is intended to allow primary target interpretation).
That leaves the Solarian. And their problem is that Solar Shot sucks, due to having bad range, no potency runes and no damage weapon upgrades. Now I have seen a Solarian “switch” “hit” (currently going through my level 8 playtests, in that because they lack decent mobility options, special mats or the ability to deal any damage types other than physical/fire, then they swap weapons to deal with those problems. And stay on it, often never bothering to swap back to their Solar Weapon. In the latter two cases it’s because physical/fire resist will be a problem the entire fight. In the former because it’s also a problem the entire fight, spread out enemies with long range weapons are hell for Solarian’s action economy. Also helps that a ranged weapon does equal or better damage to their photon solar weapon due to having more damage upgrades.
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As for the reactive strike thing, it’s not that rare once you get to level 11. 20ish% of 11-15 monsters have Attack of Opportunity, and 30ish% of 16+ ones do. Many of these also have long reach, and I didn’t even count the many reactions that have most of the same triggers as reactive strike, while being named differently.
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PF2 definitely allows switch hitters. I've had a lot of fun with a Starlit Span with (pre-remaster) monk dedication, and swashbuckler with shuriken/flying blade/bleeding finisher can skirmish okay. It's not enormously long range, but then again, we're also talking about how the majority of maps put enemies very close anyway.
For SF2 I think you're looking for something similar - Finesse based melee attacks so that you don't have to spend on Str, and an alternative damage booster so that it has an impact.
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I kinda wish they'd kept the SF1 rule that thrown weapons used (or could use) Str to hit. It was a big unblocker for "melee with ranged on the side" characters.
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Hi Exocist, long time no see. I miss your analyses.
Switch hitting has much the same problems it always has.
Yes, I kind of agree. Even if I'm a little less pessimistic than you, in my opinion the Soldier is meant to be a switch-hitter. But I agree it's not a wonderful one.
As for the reactive strike thing, it’s not that rare once you get to level 11. 20ish% of 11-15 monsters have Attack of Opportunity, and 30ish% of 16+ ones do. Many of these also have long reach, and I didn’t even count the many reactions that have most of the same triggers as reactive strike, while being named differently.
Still, we don't know if it'll be the same in SF2. If Paizo really wants to create a ranged meta then it's one of the first thing they need to get rid of as a ranged party commonly attacked by high reach melee brutes with Reactive Strike will TPK every other level.
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I disagree with what you say. And I dislike it.
If you want to know why you can send me a PM (I said I'll stop speaking about the meta and I don't want another heated conversation).
Meh. I'm not interested in a PM conversation about how you define meta vs how I (and others could define it). I get it, you have a very narrow interpretation of what it means, and I have a broader definition of what it can mean (although I will admit a majority of people use it the way you define). But Paizo (I think) didn't mean it the way you use it. When I read that sentence, I interpreted in the way I said when I asked if the way I reworded the sentence was acceptable to you.
Anyways, this honestly doesn't seem like a fruitful line of discussion with you because you are intransigent in your position of the usage of the word meta and separately how Paizo used it in an attempt to guide players.
Related, and to PossibleCabbage's above point (and one of yours) because a majority of enemies and players will use ranged weapons as their primary damage source, and because encounters as written don't happen at 100+ ft melee is actually incredibly effective as either a player or enemy. Because ranged attackers want to sit behind cover and shoot at the enemy from relative safety. Ambushes become more viable, where one side tries to be undetected and start the fight when the other is out in the open with nowhere to go. But melee is incredibly effective because you can flush out the enemy ranged attackers from their cover (at least in SF1, AoO against ranged attackers was a thing, not sure if it is/will still be in SF2). Of course, Paizo deliberately sets encounter distance to not be 100+ ft because it would remove melee characters from a fight for a few rounds, which would be bad to the point of saying "you shouldn't play a melee character". And Paizo doesn't want to actively make it impossible to play melee.
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After all the back and forth, I think we should probably understand Paizo's comment as:
- Expect everyone to have a gun
- Expect more things that actually need to/should be fought with ranged weapons (for one reason or another)
That doesn't mean you can't play melee, that melee is mostly bad, or that you don't need to be ready for melee enemies.
But PF2 monster design literally tells the GM to be super cautious with flying enemies with ranged attacks:
Some abilities are hard for PCs to deal with at low
levels. For instance, creatures that can fly and have
ranged attacks should typically appear around 7th level,
when PCs gain access to flight.
I don't think SF2 is going to have the same approach to creature design.
I think that makes the SF2 meta a lot more ranged than PF2, but "the whole meta is ranged" is a bit of an overstatement.
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I think a big aspect of this going underexplored is just... General options coverage. Melee is in large part the default state in PF because martial classes overwhelmingly focus on melee weapons in their feats and features. Barbarians add rage damage to melee strikes, a majority of Fighter feats assume melee weapons, Monk is literally all about using your own fists. Yes, all martials have ranged support to varying extent, but in almost all cases that's the exception, not the rule.
For the most part Starfinder enforces range with... A much heavier hand, I hope the classes get more flexible, but is melee really going to be as relevant if there's no classes to take Snagging Strike, or Twin Feint, or Twin Takedown, or hell, even the beloved Reactive Strike? Solarian gets a lot of similar feats but it's the dedicated melee class, that makes sense. Operateive and Soldier get some equivalents too, but those are overwhelmingly ranged. Operative gets to use most of them in melee but only if taking its dedicated melee subclass.
Melee is as good as it is in Pathfinder because of the support it gets, and most of that support is now being put in ranged weapons instead. This will skew the general game state towards range. Something with theoretically pretty notable benefits will be less common if no-one's there to use it. On that note please give us a good advanced melee user, without Fighter here we just have to hope that either a deity prefers an advanced weapon or that it's otherwise ancestral. Give it to Striker Operative or something idk
I mean, the main reason that melee is dominant in PF2 is that melee weapons do more damage. Your greataxe rolls d12 and you add your whole strength to it while your longbow rolls d8 and you add half your strength. This tradeoff is reasonable in context because the longbow character can stay safely out of the fray while the greataxe character is right in the face of danger. Guns in Pathfinder don't add any stat to your damage roll, but generally make up for it through the fatal trait.
What's changed mostly is "guns no longer have fatal, but don't need to be reloaded much" (except for the guns that do, which need to be reloaded constantly.)
Probably the thing that needs to happen here is that there needs to be more things like kickback that add static damage to gunfire to keep pace with melee damage. It's the same thing as with finesse melee in PF2 where missing out on extra damage from strength is irrelevant at high levels (where you're adding a bunch of damage from runes) but very noticeable at low levels.
I agree that's a reason melee is good, but it's easy to say that it's the main reason coming from PF where the system's options are built to support it. Again, it's great that a Doshko does more damage than a Rotolazer, but it shouldn't be understated that one of those has a class built around it and the other needs a major feat (or other option) tax to be relevant to an actual character. White-room calculations only get you so far. If you have no gap closers, have no ways to meaningfully threaten the creatures in your reach, have no melee action compression, have no rider effects to apply, and potentially have no way to even apply your core class features to your melee strikes, is the 2-4 extra damage at level 1 really going to offset that?
If you have no gap closers, have no ways to meaningfully threaten the creatures in your reach, have no melee action compression, have no rider effects to apply, and potentially have no way to even apply your core class features to your melee strikes, is the 2-4 extra damage at level 1 really going to offset that?
At low levels, I think so, as you level though it becomes less relevant.
And I think what you're inadvertently driving at is that switch hitting wont be good, and players will need to play a dedicated melee build so that they do get special abilities to cover a lot of distances to make melee attacks, the ability to threaten enemies and make reactive strikes, action compression, etc.
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I agree that's a reason melee is good, but it's easy to say that it's the main reason coming from PF where the system's options are built to support it. Again, it's great that a Doshko does more damage than a Rotolazer, but it shouldn't be understated that one of those has a class built around it and the other needs a major feat (or other option) tax to be relevant to an actual character. White-room calculations only get you so far. If you have no gap closers, have no ways to meaningfully threaten the creatures in your reach, have no melee action compression, have no rider effects to apply, and potentially have no way to even apply your core class features to your melee strikes, is the 2-4 extra damage at level 1 really going to offset that?
4 damage at level 1 is massive, it's basically double damage (d8 vs d8+4 or d10 vs d10+4).
4 damage at level 8 is not much. 2d8+2d6+2 (18) vs 2d8+2d6+6 (22). Only about 25% growth.
This is the main cause of ranged damage being pretty awful 1-3, because of no stat mod to damage, but becoming competitive the moment you get enough runes and weapon spec that the flat mod difference is not that much. Monster HP is balanced around you having that mod at 1-3.
Then at 15+, at least currently, if you're not going for a reaction stacking build (prep backstab, combat reflexes and dueling riposte, divine reflexes, etc.), then ranged tends to become better because the difference of mod becomes miniscule, while monsters tend to get a bunch of anti-melee auras, reactions, abilities, etc. that makes it difficult to actually get in range to hit them.