The most difficult melee spec?

[Ytar]

Hello everybody. I cannot decide what to play in Legion and maybe you can help me out. First of all little bit of background. No matter what I play I tend to pick rather more difficult characters (or whatever a game is about). Im sure I want to play melee, but I cant decide what to play. On PTR (no Beta club here) I tried every melee class (except for demon hunter obviously) and I liked almost all of the specs.That means "pick whatever you like" is off the table, because except for Retribution Paladin, Survival hunter and Feral druid I liked every melee spec. Plus the most fun I have, is while mastering the class. Im a PvE player and my goal is heroic raids.

Please discuss which classes are in your opinion the most difficult to play.
So far I think one of them might be windwalker monk, especially with hit combo talent, which makes mistakes in your rotation way more punishing (or rather precise rotation more rewarding). AoE isnt just "press blade flurry and repeat single target rotation".
Another one is In my opinion Unholy DK, because you have to keep eye on festering wounds. Soul reaper on CD means a lot of planning. You have to have enough festering wounds on target plus enough runes to use soul reaper and three scourage strikes, while have as low runic power as possible, because you are about to generate a lot of it.
The last one might be subtlety rogue. This spec requires again a lot of preparation for CDs. Shadowdance lasts just 3 or 5 seconds which means you have way shorter window to make use of it. That means capped energy is a must, but at the same time you have to have low ammount of combo points because you want to be shadowstriking during Shadow Dance. on top of it I feel like I just cant keep 100% uptime on Nightblade dot. Mostly because of its wierd duration. It feels like its to short to reapply it every other finisher, but too long to apply it every finisher.

These are in my opinion the most difficult to play melee specs, but its possible that I missed something. Please share your opinnion and keep the disscusion going.

[JoshuaNLG]

Feral Druid with Lunar Inspiration, Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds and Bloodtalons

[Thorim]

Feral Druid with Lunar Inspiration, Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds and Bloodtalons

The answer to the 'hardest melee spec' at least since wrath has always just been "Feral".

[Tojara]

I haven't tried them all but Outlaw (Combat) Rogue seemed to be the most enjoyable and going on specialization of the several melee I've tested. I use to main Rogue in the first 4 years of this game and what I said in that previous statement is something I would never believe.

Outlaw is really random, but from what I can tell it has a decent amount of the depth that wasn't present ever in the specialization. The random buffs (at least to me on the surface) give you some decision making and influence how you play. There is some opportunity cost in rerolling them hoping for more (or better ones), while other ones like the crit buff move you to a different finisher instead of the standard one that you typically use. How you play it depends on a ~40 second window of the buffs you, so it's constantly changing, or you're constantly evaluating whether or not you want to fish for something better at the cost of potential damage. Pretty involved.

[Deleted]

The answer to the 'hardest melee spec' at least since wrath has always just been "Feral".

WW was way harder from ToT till BRF.

[Deleted]

Retribution. It's the hardest because it is that mind numbing you will die due to bordem! But seriously, as others had said, feral is my vote.

[rosebull]

Lots of people voting based off WoW's history it seems. Ferals pretty easy on live, not particularly difficult. I wouldn't say any melee spec really takes "that much" more skill to play then any other. All of the rotations are pretty easy to master.

[Crovyn]

There is no really difficult one, but from what we have I'd say:

Survival Hunter, Feral and Sub Rogue

[Thorim]

Lots of people voting based off WoW's history it seems. Ferals pretty easy on live, not particularly difficult. I wouldn't say any melee spec really takes "that much" more skill to play then any other. All of the rotations are pretty easy to master.

Feral is harder with the reduced duration of RIP and SR, but SR isn't the best talent in that tier so far on pre-patch, so it's pretty easy-mode with incarnation and the free energy procs going off constantly from the 4pc.

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WW was way harder from ToT till BRF.

WW was easy? Picked it up wayyyyy faster than feral back in wrath.

[Varixdos]

Fire mage. stabby stabby

[Taeldorian]

Id say Feral druid for sure. I always have trouble managing the classes with energy though, I just dislike that resource system overall. Either way, feral seems to be the hardest. All of them are pretty easy though, I just think feral is the hardest out of all of them.

[Taygai]

WW was way harder from ToT till BRF.

Wat, WW has always been easy. It's been a joke for the last 2 expansions. Compared to other melee specs, I would probably have rated it as the second easiest next to arms until 7.0

[Smog]

I can't tell you which is the hardest, but I can tell you that it isn't WW. WW is far more intuitive than it was previously, and the Mastery you have to /try/ to screw up. You naturally want to alternate to other abilities.

edit: if I had to take a guess as what the highest skill cap melee was, I might be tempted to say Outlaw rogue due to needing to manage RtB (when to reroll, roll early, etc). RtB and its buffs make the playstyle very dynamic and variable from roll to roll. That said, the rogue community will eventually figure out the breakpoints and exactly when and with what combination you should reroll. Once they do, it'll be as easy as setting up a weak aura and turning the spec into 100% autopilot. Runner up would probably be survival hunter, but honestly, no spec is terribly complicated.

[xhisors]

Well back in the day, feral had the most ridiculous "rotation" ever. Someone made a flow chart that i can't seem to find but it was hilariously accurate. There have been a lot of QoL changes for feral, not sure if its the hardest anymore.

Personally I found Sub rogue harder than feral. Depends on the player I guess.

[emilylorange]

The answer to the 'hardest melee spec' at least since wrath has always just been "Feral".

Powershifting in BC *thumbs up*

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Well back in the day, feral had the most ridiculous "rotation" ever. Someone made a flow chart that i can't seem to find but it was hilariously accurate. There have been a lot of QoL changes for feral, not sure if its the hardest anymore.

That chart got even more complex with each expansion since LK. Haven't played the new version yet tho.

[Krobane]

WW is probably the hardest and the least played. Double win.

[xhisors]

Powershifting in BC *thumbs up*

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That chart got even more complex with each expansion since LK. Haven't played the new version yet tho.

Really? I found it pretty simple in WoD, maybe I was just a scrub not doing it right and not knowing it? haha

[emilylorange]

Really? I found it pretty simple in WoD, maybe I was just a scrub not doing it right and not knowing it? haha

idk every xpack a new ability appeared in the rotation. Something laughably complex in LK got more and more added to it (when compared to other classes, anyway).

I wouldn't call anyone a scrub, feral is fun, it's just there's a lot of interacting parts and decisions that make the difference between decent and master.


Also the default UI is utter shit for it, given you need information available in 3 places on your screen. Bless the feral modding community.

[Deleted]

Wat, WW has always been easy. It's been a joke for the last 2 expansions. Compared to other melee specs, I would probably have rated it as the second easiest next to arms until 7.0

Completely untrue. WW has always been the most challenging spec in this game, if not the most challenging, ranged included.

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WW is probably the hardest and the least played. Double win.

This.

WW is way way easier now in Legion however. It's still extremely fast and global locked, not a lot of other melee specs have that.

I'd definitely say bloodtalon feral. It's not a fun spec though personally I hate it, shitty design. Slow and awkward, it's just needing addons to manage talons.

[Deleted]

NoN after prune every class become super easy to play.