...thread derailed, how unexpected.
This thread was intended to be about armor and it's implications; when the devs changed the armor values they practically left out ranged.
Before patch ranged did a lot of damage, and melee did a lot of damage. You could choose to wear armor to get decent protection against both. While you could argue that the damage dealt overall was too high, at least it was fair. (btw the random glancing
was a bunch of bullcrap, thx for getting rid of that)
If you wear a lot of armor nowadays you still get the same decent protection against ranged, but now it also makes you an incredible melee tank. While in theory "compensated for" by the reduction in glances, increased melee skill (= better blocking, but also a more potent offence meaning that the average player wouldn't have had much of a problem with glancing in the first place!) in combination with more looms (and let's do a recap here, which are the most potent looms...? Ranged and armor right!) makes for an increasing imbalance.
Just how effective armor should be is another thing to balance, but right now it's just too good in melee at least. (And hence too ineffective vs ranged in comparison.)
EDIT: Sorry to those of you who did not post irrelevant stuff, I had the comp running for a long time afk and thus most of this was directed to earlier posters.
To add to the derailment:
@ Paul, Gisbert...: Those stats are useless without usage stats, and even then damage done stats would be much better. Also stats such how many of those melee kills are mounted, how many of the "headshots" are from falling etc. would imo be needed before you could draw any kind of conclusions regarding class-to-class balance based on the data.