Lack of Ranged?

[kary]

Thing is if they added Wardens 2 or 3 xpacs ago it wouldve worked fine but now there is just too many melee leather classes and they would need to make the warden class stick out otherwise it would really be a monk/rogue/DH hybrid that only roleplayers would be interested in.

Wardens wear mail, fwiw.

[tyry]

It would be so simple to make Unholy DKs ranged at this point. With Clawing Shadows, they actually only have one melee ability in their rotation, Festering Strike. Just expand the talent to make festering ranged too and you're done.

[Lochton]

When did you stop raiding? Dragon Soul?

Ranged has been in high demand for atleast two expansions now and for Mythic raiding there simply isnt enough supply of them and that was the norm in WoD and continues to be the norm in Legion thanks to the 20 man requirement.

Adding more ranged classes doesnt fix the issue though. Much like adding new tanks never actually fixes the lack of tanks issue. It simply distributes that current role across more specs.

Sure, you get the FOTM rerollers on things like Death Knights and Demon Hunters to see how they played, but it never actually adds a meaningful amount to those melee roles.

The specs need to be made to be attractive and the role needs to be fun. During MoP, melee was downright loathed due to mechanics being cancerous for them. THe answer? Make melee brain dead and that really hasnt changed to much. WoD saw that ranged dealt with mechanics and going further along, Blizzard removed the ability for many of them to do that as well as DPS, through removing many on the move abilities.

Now its the norm that Melee is frowned upon over ranged, creating a higher demand.

Adding classes isnt the answer, fixing the way melee and ranged DPS do their jobs and handle mechanics is. Couple that with some of the ranged DPS specs being flat out terrible for damage its not hard to see why they are in such high demand.

Never stopped raiding, still am.

And for us, ranged has never been a problem to find, at all. At times, they are more overflowing than some of the other we might need.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#difficulty=4

Melee 374057
Ranged 392453

Those numbers reflect players accepted by raids, not those applying.

[iperson]

Those numbers reflect players accepted by raids, not those applying.

Wasn't the argument that there aren't enough ranged players? If there's a shortage it's not because more people play melee dps, it's because ranged is more sought after by raids.

the idea that because the last three new classes have melee dps specs has created a shortage of ranged players is flawed from the start because adding a new spec that does a role has almost zero effect on total populations and really just shifts players to a new class filling the role they enjoy, which is why we still have tank shortages even after adding a ton of viable tank specs since vanilla.

Adding another ranged spec would probably just cannibalize the warlock population into extinction...

[jaakkeli]

Really?

Bear:
Versatility; Mastery; Haste with Crit Bottom.
Consumables: Flask of Ten Thousand Scars, Unbending Potion, Seed-Battered Fish Plate.

Feral:
Mastery; Critical Strike; Versatility with Haste bottom.
Consumables: Flask of the Seventh Demon, Potion of the Old War, Nightborne Delicacy Platter.

If you're tanking mythic+ using Flask of Ten Thousand scars and Unbending Potions you're spending money to be useless to your group. Stamina would at best be useful for HoV on tyrannical week etc rare circumstances. Most useful trinkets are shared between cat and bear but not balance and bear.

Raids may be a different thing but what we were talking about was the desire to have a tank offspec for a ranged class and a cat main easily swaps to bear to do some mythic+ with friends after raid and might even do better there than a mainspec tank since he has more dps preferred stats on his gear. It would be harder as balance mainspec as your caster trinkets wouldn't work.

[Rhoe]

It would be harder as balance mainspec as your caster trinkets wouldn't work.

Except most of them do. Trinkets that proc from damaging spells proc from bear moonfire. I've used Oakheart's Gnarled Root (vers + damage proc), Corrupted Starlight (mastery + damage proc), Stormsinger's Fulmination Charge (agi/int + mastery proc), Devilsaur Shock Baton (crit + damage proc), Swarming Plaguehive (haste + damage proc), Bough of Corruption (mastery + damage proc), Ethereal Urn (agi/int/str + mastery) and probably a few other trinkets that dropped for my boomy spec that worked just fine for bear. Well, they did nerf the Ruby, I guess. :/
The only caster trinket I use for main that wouldn't work for bear is the statstick from Helya.

Edit: Using the tornado trinket from Elerethe is hilarious as bear since you can drag a heap of mobs into the tornadoes, so it works better for bear than for boomy. But it's not really worth the QQ from the group.

[Murderdoll]

Never stopped raiding, still am.

And for us, ranged has never been a problem to find, at all. At times, they are more overflowing than some of the other we might need.

Would love to know what magical, mythical server you play on.

[Lochton]

Would love to know what magical, mythical server you play on.

Nothing magical, or mythical. Ranged has never been a problem, it is the right ranged that is a problem.

[kamuimac]

when I look at the trading chat sometimes, there really seems a lack of range dds. About 70% of guilds are looking out for range dds, 20% for healer and 10% for tanks and melees imo.
If that is because of a lack of range roles or if range classes are just not that appealing to many people... thats another question

its not lack of ranged - its blizzard retarded tuning of raid mechanics making people recruit only range and not wanting to take even 1 melee to raids.

[Sierra85]

ranged are harder to play than melee, so most people gravitate towards melee.

[Dietrik]

Its got nothing to do with the number of specs, they are pretty close and if hunters hadn't had a range switch it would be balanced once demon hunters were added.

Its because its easier to play melee, especially when moving, they keep swinging between mobile casters and static casters and the population at least in the groups i play in tends to switch with it.

With the increased number of mechanics forcing range to move and the increasing difficulty in keeping up dps while moving people will gravitate toward melee. Or in our case we have range wanting to switch to other rolls like tank/heals.

In Mop and to some extent Wod we had trouble getting enough melee for our raid group but now we have the reverse.

[Deleted]

Rogues should get a range spec similiar to the Diablo Demon Hunter. That would also address the lack of physical range dps classes.

[l33t]

Thank Blizzard, they destroyed fun in ranged classes in Legion. Try to play any ranged in any form of pvp - you'll quickly leave and uninstall your wow shortly thereafter, crying. So, people who used to play ranged, rerolled to role which wasn't artificially gimped to immobile glass cannon piece of garbage.

Add here the fact that melees got new awesome visuals, while ranged not only weren't given promised casts using artifact weapon in hand, but they simply lost the /attack animation for some reason.

Add here the fact that playing a fresh lvl 110 ranged is pure cancer, while playing a fresh lvl110 melee feels awesome.

Add here the fact that a cat prancing on a keyboard can do decent output as melee, while as ranged you'll have to literally tear your veins to have decent output...

[Rojaha]

Everything doesn't need to be symmetrical.

[Bugg]

as a healer with limited experience in DPS-ing I feel that playing melee is easier especially in a raid...

[Sarevokcz]

I gotta agree with the "fun" sentiment.

I feel like best time casters had was during Pandaria when they gave or upgraded most ranged damage on the move abilities like Ice floes or KJC and ranged were actually fun to play in raids (sweet ToT memories), but they removed or dialed back plenty of them to the point of uselessness, since fights got more mechanical and require more movement, but the tools for those movement phases arent nearly as available.

For example I was maining eleshaman since vanilla and abslutely loved the LB on the move we had back during Cata and MoP, it was great, refreshing, compared to the turret mode ele used to be and ranged mechanics werent incredible annoaynces anymore, you actually felt like you contributed something even when you had to cross the entire room for random spawn or had to dodge void zones on very frequent basis. It actually felt like WoW was going in a new direction with more mobility instead of boring standing around.

But they took it away or atleast dialed back for some classes.And I somewhat understood the reason. PvP. melees felt shafted with the increased mobility of rangeds, it did feel slightly unfair to them, but just as I thought turret casting was a thing of the past, I fully expected melees got more mobility or catch-up tools aswell, because honestly, melee is alot more fun too, when he can, with some limits, charge across the room to kill some spawn instead of slowly dragging ass there.

And it happened, melee did mostly get more mobility and progressed into the more mobile WoW instead of the old days of boss standing at one place and melees not having to move all fight. But at the same time ranged regressed back a little too much in this aspect.

It might not have that big of an impact on mains, since people often dont want to give up their 10+ year old companion, but honestly, if you roll an alt now, do you feel like you would rather play some turret caster, say, eleshaman or arcane mage, that is punised almost every single time he has to move out of stuff and kiling something feels like a chore until you get to some gear threshold or would you prefer something dynamic like retri or DH, that have good animations, memorable weapons, more defensive options for the tough times and still have decent or (in DHs case) great mobility and ranged tools, that allows you close to 100% uptime on whatever (pve) target you want?

I was never really a fan of melee, I always preffered standing back, having an overview of the battlefield (might have been due to being raid leader for years and need to see everything) and even in other RPGs I prefer mostly casters or rangers, but Legion is an expansion, where I really like the flow to the melee classes I have and find them way more fun than ranged. And atleast for our guild, its pretty much the same, when we go do some alt run, its always something like 10 melee 2 ranged.

TLDR: I feel like the dynamics behind melee progressed alot in the last few years, while ranged regressed alot since MoP. YMMV, sure, but for me this is the reason for a lack of ranged nowadays

[Playintrafic]

The number of ranged classes has little to do with the number of players that play ranged. For the most part people either prefer ranged or melee. All of the DH mains I know were melee already.

This. I never can enjoy Ranged DPS. I have tried every class at some point, and varied specs of those classes over the years. Back when leveling mattered I just couldn't get past the grind to cap on a ranged. When they nerfed leveling in TBC to the point you could reasonably get an alt to cap and ready to raid inside of a month I rolled a hunter, then a warlock. And while I did get raid spots on both of them, I didn't enjoy to play them in the world.

I switch back to tanking and M DPS in wrath. I have, since then only healed or M DPS. I really love healing, but I don't play certain healing classes because their DPS specs are boring to me.

I really like DH, but if it were ranged DPS I would have probably not even bothered making one.