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Behind the Mask: Taking a knife to a gun fight
In the long history of MMORPGs, there have been two mighty class divisions vying for supremacy. The melee damage dealers, lead by the mighty rogue (and in the olden days, the monk) showed us that the raw speed and power of melee damage output was of dire importance. The ranged damage dealers, led by the mages and wizards, did not have the staying power of a rogue who might be subject to random AoE at close range. They had to rely on the incredible fury of their spells and the relative safety that distance brings in a battle. In Champions Online, that division is magnified. Ranged and melee characters can select all the same defensive powers, meaning that melee characters must, by the very nature of close combat, expose themselves to more risk. The advent of superhuman mobility multiplies the divide even further -- while a ranged character can flee at incredible speeds, melee characters require special advantages to get in close and stay there. The Super Power Pack came out a while ago and while I talked a lot about it in its early stages, I didn't get a chance to cover how the devs' final answer to these problems worked out or what the landscape of melee is today. That's changing now.
