So this might come across as a little bit of a rant, and I'm not really angry, but here goes.

Please, for the love of everything stop giving melee pieces parry and evade. If you want them to block everything give them Soresu Style Mastery, or make up a new ability if they aren't a force user. If you want them to block some attacks and have weaknesses against others, give them one or the other, not both.

Darth Cognus is a fantastic piece. She has a lot of tricks and tools, but has limited force, damage, and attacks. With stealth, parry, evade, doctrine of fear, and force suppression, she is clearly quite tanky. Against other melee pieces, she can last an entire game in the middle of the enemy squad with some luck. Against shooters she is hard to hit if you can even target her.

Guess how many activations she lasts once decent shooters get next to her.

Two, maybe three activations and she's dead.

This annoys me to no end. If I am playing a melee piece against a ranged piece of roughly equal point values, the shooter should want to stay away and use his range to his advantage. Instead, both pieces meet in the middle, and the guy with the lightsaber (you know, the thing that cuts through everything and blocks blasters) ends up dead with zero chance to block anything.

Again, the argument can be made that pieces need to have weak spots that the enemy can exploit. However, this particular weak spot is only available to exploit by pieces that already have an inherent advantage over melee pieces (shooters).

The solution is very simple. Give a piece either parry or evade, and drop some points for the missing one. Make the weak spot larger and give the player more points to work some tech in, or eliminate the weak spot (SSM). Having such a specific (and moronic) weak spot is very frustrating. In the specific example of Cognus, drop evade and however many points that gives you (maybe 3-4?). She still has stealth so she isn't helpless. Now I can upgrade my Freedon Nadd DFS to an Exar Kun DFS and I know that I have to careful around shooters. Except that nothing changed except the ghosts. I already had to worry about shooters, but now I have more flexibility.

Edit: I realize that very few pieces actually have parry and evade, but it still is annoying. My last two regional squads used Cognus and Tenel Ka, both have the combo.

If I may add to your excellent rant, regular Soresu Style should work against adjacent characters. Right now Soresu Style is the EXACT same thing as Evade.

To fairly represent the other side of the coin, though, if shooters have no incentive to get close, they will stay out of melee reach anyways. Cognus can at least hit them at close range. If they have no benefit to getting close, they'll just park as far away as possible and lay down suppression fire the entire game - which is fine for pieces with Stealth (like Cognus), but works out terribly for pieces with bad/no ranged defense (i.e. Critdu, anyone with Deflect but no MotF). So it's kind of a catch-22; if shooters have incentive to get close, it hurts some melee pieces but gives others a chance to actually fight.

There will never be an accurate representation of Melee in SWM. The designers are mostly pro-shooter players, so they focus more on anti-Jedi than Jedi. No matter what shooters will dominate the tables, because they enjoy it.

Soresu should most definitely work against nonmelee attacks even while adjacent.

A lot of shooters stay far away anyway, or have a way to get close and than move away and stay out of danger or have death shots where killing them sucks for you anyway, etc.

TBH, Shooters are doing just as much damage or more than melee users and often have more attacks. The only real thing they lack are HP.
I like RDE and think more force users should have it.

Our community is tough on changes to rules. but if designers started putting out force users with certain "auto includes" we could see the game shift. The problem is that designers do have differing views and we come out with very defensive force users or not enough movement force users or just more great shooters.
but If I was designing a force user I think I would throw RDE on any piece that costs more than 35. just yep, it is on there. Same thing with Knight Speed, just throw it on there because the game needs to shift and it is not that crazy powerful.
I would throw Soresu/Shien on people who have proven to use it as well. I would also have some more Acrobatic characters. What jedi does Acrobatic not fit? there are a few, but for the most part they should all have it.

Think about a Republic Unique Jedi Follower that costs 47 with Knight Speed, Acrobatic, and RDE +2.
Now we are talking because it can grab Soresu and GMA from Cin Drallig with possible Momentum from Gen Sky.

That is a Jedi that can get even the playing field caused by the power of not having to be adjacent.

I run rock heavy or balance. Not shooter heavy. Never outact.

J runs a little bit of everything.

Lou runs rock.

I want in on this debate, but from a different angle.


Is the game so fundamentally skewed to shooters that melee is at such a disadvantage we just haven't hit the sweet spot with design yet?

I think Ven Zallow is the perfect place to start from now on, the guy is legit against almost everything.

Back to my desire for the next v-set... Rework WotC pieces that need help. What about... drum roll....

V-Set 15 - Jedi vs. Sith (probably not all in one set but stick with me)
Update the 140 WotC force users who are rated below an 8. Give them renewal since all force users should always be able to use force (65 with it.) Give master of the force like it's candy (16), give force attuned reflexes or w/e, throw movement helper like acrobatic, just make them playable. Give them evade and/or parry. I think it's ridiculous that a force user has to use a point to LS block or deflect, and non force users just roll.

can I just add..... Baze Malbus

I have no issue with the power level of the combo, as it has a weakness (adjacent shooters). What I hate is that it when the combo is on a melee piece it gives shooters the advantage where the melee piece should have one (getting up close and personal).

In other words, I think that the combo of parry and evade is actually overvalued and gives the pieces that have it a wierd blind spot in their defense that is not reflected in their costing, considering just how many shooters get stronger already when adjacent.

I black list crappy mechanics because it pains me that they exist.
But that is just me.

I don't think you hear much criticism on melee pieces that are good designs. Lets be real. What are the good melee characters from the last couple of sets?
vset 10 to 13 (any other good ones)

Vader of Lothal
warb null
covenant defender
Queen Amonoa
Qui-Gon
Fifth Brother
Kylo Ren
Cognus
Revan, Redeemed,
Yaddle
Inquisitor
AoL Consular
Ben Skywalker
Jacen Solo
Imperial Knight Armorer
ObiKin
Son of Skywalker
Darth plageuis
Aleema Keto
The Father
Artoo
See-Threepio

Out of these the ones that might be competitive right now imo are:
Ben Skywalker
Cognus
Queen Amonoa
Darth Plageuis
VoL
Artoo
See-Threepio

In time you mght see the Army of Light and Covenant guy with Kylo Ren, Fifth Brother, and Imperial Knight Armorer as well.


How many of those designs are fun melee designs? how many of them are hard hitters?
how many of them are defensive melee designs? too many.

Where is the fun, well balanced melee pieces that can drop some damage?
How many of those do people actually play?
I am trying to perfect a VoL no Ozzel Imperial squad for the TN Regional.
I am under the impression that designers are trying to help melee, but are doing so in an unhelpful way.

The above list did little to nothing to help melee be more playable, imo.

Ven is a different story, just make more pieces that balance attack and defense with movement and there we go.
A piece like him in Sith would be amazing. Some mid cost survivable but pack a punch.. awesome.


MarioKart.
Mario is regular through the board.
Than you have your slow but powerful racers like Donkey King and Bowser.
Than you have your Fast but weak characters like Toad and Princess.

We need some of each. Sith has some Bowsers and one Toad, we need some Mario. Or we need more Bowser or we need some more Toad. We do not need some more tough but weak and slow builds.
Why do you think Caedus has lasted so long as the top tier Sith piece?

My point being. Just find the formula for fun Melee and try sticking to it. We have a sculpt for every type that is a great design. It might be nice to have a working list of gatekeeper designs accepted by the community.

Not to copy, but to have a certain idea in mind if you want to design by function. If Sith needs speed here is an example of a great speed piece. If Republic needs more "Bowser" here is an example of a 40ish point Bowser.