Is a Bow dmg still melee dmg?

title says it all

Nope, melee is up close and personal, bow and spear are ranged (though a spear melee attack is coming in gw:en)

It does physical damage, not melee damage.

Melee damage can be physical or elemental, it's based upon the type of weapon you are using.

Sword, Axe, Hammer, Scythe, Dagger = Melee
Bow, Spear, Wand, Staff = Ranged

(spear will be ranged with a melee attack once GW:EN comes out)

It might be easier to think of Melee as a weapon type, and not as a damage type. Dargon outlines which weapons are melee and which are ranged rather well.

Unmodified, all melee weapons do physical damage. They can be moded to do earth, fire, cold, or lightning damage (elemental). They cannot be moded to do holy, dark, chaos, or light damage, though some skills can make your melee weapon do these types of damage.

Ranged weapons can be grouped in two types. Those that cause physical damage when unmodified - Bows and Spears. And those that cause what I call "energy" damage or "magical" damage - Wand and Staff. Bows and Spears can be modified to cause the same damage types that melee weapons can (elemental). Staffs (or staves if you prefer) and wands are the only* weapons in the game that can cause light**, dark, and chaos damage. They can also cause various elemental damage. The damage type for the wand/staff is always listed under the items statistics. The staff and wand cannot cause "physical" damage.



*I use the word "only", though this knowledge is limited to my experience. If others have seen other weapons do these types of damage unaided by skills, feel free to correct me.

** Light damage is a little odd. Sometimes it behaves like Holy damage - inflicting extra damage vs certain necro armors, and sometimes it does not - vs undead etc.

In as much as it has ever been - I suppose. Guild wars doesn't have melee or ranged damage - it has physical, elemental (and subtypes of that), and "other". Players use the phrase to mean it's range, however that is just for communicating between ourselves, not official in game damage types.

So, not really sure how to answer that question as Bow damage has never been "melee", it has always worked to some range outside of adjacent. It has always been "ranged" in normal conversations and given that there is no "melee" or "range" type of damage in the game it can not have ever been either one. There *are* official range descriptions, but they are more like "adjacent" and "in the area".

In short, nothing about bows range or damage type has changed. Whatever you thought it was before it is still the same.

See http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Damage_type and http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Damage_type for all the different types of damage. Plus for attack ranges see http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Range and http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Range

There is no melee or ranged damage, per se, only melee and ranged attacks.

So, while you can shoot an arrow or throw a spear at a target standing next to you (adjacent), it is still considered a ranged attack since it's coming from a ranged weapon, i.e. - a bow or spear.

This brings up an interesting point in regards to Ward Against Melee: does Ward only consider attack range (melee = adjacent) or does it also factor in weapon type (melee vs ranged)?

bow are unaffected by Ward Against Melee... even inside the Ward...


and the bow damage would only be melee if you actually used the bow to cause the damage instead of its arrows...

even if you are adjacent to foes you are attacking you are still doing physical ranged damage or elemental ranged damage...

^^ That's what I figured but thanks for clearing it up.