Nighthold Damage balance 7.1.5

[Soisoisoi]

I'm less bothered by the order that the classes are in and more bothered that in almost all situations melee > ranged.

As much as I'd like everyone to be equal, I can honestly say - as someone currently raiding on a ranged, but who normally plays melee - that it should be like that. Melee struggle enough for raid spots as it is, without damage on top or specific mechanics (rogue feint tanking shit like Blackhand, etc) then why would you bother taking melee? Ranged have it so much fucking easier in the average, non top-50 mythic raid/dungeon where mistakes are made often, it's unreal.

As melee, you're at the mercy of the rest of the raid not making mistakes (mostly tanks and other melee, but ranged/healers too) and doing things like positioning the target(s) correctly or not dropping shit where you need to stand to hit the boss, great you can dps on the move, but that's useless when there is shit between you and the target, or hell, half the time it can be under it because the tank doesn't feel like moving - or does, but slow enough for you to be forced to take damage or stop dps. Ranged might have to stand still, but I'd much rather be at fault myself for poor pre-planning than at the mercy of someone else.

When I first did Helya on my [MM, still needs to stand still unlike BM] Hunter I was amazed at the fact they could be nearly at the water at the back of the room and still deal full damage - when oozes came I could DPS them immediately with half a step of movement that was on-GCD and zero DPS lost [pre 7.1.5, don't need to move at all now, RIP Sidewinders], or without standing in what they dropped the breath before that - or that I could continue to deal most of my damage whilst running away with an Orb. Any of that is a DPS loss or damage taken as melee.

I'd much rather play my Rogue - and trust me I know I have it easy for mechanics on that with Feint/Cloak relative to the rest of melee - as it's more fun and engaging mechanically. But why would anyone bother when you can have it so much easier? Have fun playing favourite spec/class, have to deal with other people's mistakes - or have less fun, but have to so much easier and not have to put up with other people's mistakes costing you damage constantly.

Probably got a bit carried away, but tl;dr - I'd much rather everyone be equal, but whilst ranged have higher uptimes, I'm not surprised melee are higher on damage. That should equal out though in real world fights, so, it still needs changing I agree.

To an extend. I don't think you'd have seen double warlock 10s setups during mop if it wasn't for their ridiculous capabilities. Or to give a more recent example I don't think you'd have seen similar helya setups if everything was a bit more "equal".

Yeah, if a class is doing noticeably more damage - be it overall, or to specific targets - that make a fight easier, it will get noticed and a "meta" will form around it. pre 7.1.5 Hunters on Helya for example, for the oozes. They weren't amazing overall, but they make the fight so much easier when people weren't worrying about Oozes.

That's literally the reason I switched to my Hunter again so my guild would have an easier time on HC Helya. Literally jumped in, 15-20 ilvl lower than my Rogue, and went from doing naff all damage on Oozes and requiring all the raid to switch, to topping damage by far and letting two other people stick to the boss instead. Then we got another Hunter. Lulz were had. Half the time they ended up dead before Barrage if we were lucky on Marked Shot proccs.

I guess that also fits into my above comment: Why bring a melee when you can bring a ranged that makes the fight easier for everyone else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Orwell7]

I guess that also fits into my above comment: Why bring a melee when you can bring a ranged that makes the fight easier for everyone else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The question itself is flaved in essence: if your rogue would have been replaced by a demo lock, what would be a difference? Arcane mage? Ele shaman? Shadow priest?

Nope, no +2 dps full time on the boss like you've said. You still have had to switch to the oozes full-time. It was NOT melee vs ranged, but every spec vs. MM Hunter.

In theory, boss mechanics should "punish" people - handling them is part of the fun.
In the past, more ranged meant easier boss fights - which was partly true, because if you had LESS ranged, some mechanics would target melee. So, by default, ranged got punished instead of melee most of the time. If you had a bad composition THEN melee get fcked too.

Nowadays both get punished equally by mechanics, but all melee have MASSIVE movement tools. Grapples, jumps, sprints, you name it.
Part of mastering a melee class is learning how to minimize downtime - but its the same with ranged.

For example the damage of a non-casting warlock or mage or SP is miniscule in comparison when they are allowed to cast. Like, 10-20% max.
Almost all melee have some kind of dots or energy regen while they have downtime, and they need to move much less than ranged.

[Deleted]

If both Shaman DPS specs were in the gutter I would be just as screwed as a pure dps in the same situation. I can't reroll to Resto, we have too many healers in the guild as is.

I guess chances are that fucking up 3 DPS specs is more difficult than 2 or 1.
That's why a whole class can become "useless" if all their DPS specs suck, hybrid can still heal and/or tank, a role that is not seeing as many players as DPS which means you are more or less always welcome.

[Raiju]

I guess chances are that fucking up 3 DPS specs is more difficult than 2 or 1.
That's why a whole class can become "useless" if all their DPS specs suck, hybrid can still heal and/or tank, a role that is not seeing as many players as DPS which means you are more or less always welcome.

That depends, we've had trash tier healers who were largely not brought to any serious content, and very rarely the same with tanks.

[Sylvaeres]

Hybrid tax was removed something like 8 years ago though. A dps paladin, has as much right to be number one on dps as a mage.

Also, if a ret paladin is bottom area on dps, they have no other spec to change to do dps (and for raiding, you cant just say you want to heal or tank on hybrids because not every raid group has need for an extra of those 2 roles etc). They are stuck. Mages etc, generally have at least 1 spec performing well, so even if your preferred spec is bottom, pretty sure one spec is decent.

Using 75th percentile, on a new raid with limited data from the live game, and without being able to see who has what specific items already (AKA new trinkets/tier sets etc) could massively skew the numbers. Add in split raids happening resulting in some parses from peoples alts which they might not be the best at and slower fights, ability to outgear the heroic content already available and thus create extra quick kills for some players, and completely ignoring mythic mechanics which will make people play difference makes balancing based on log numbers currently almost entirely wasted and would lead to knee jerk balancing next week instead if a certain class get too strong etc.

This is the kind of response that I look for. All excellent counterpoints made

[Raiju]

Using 75th percentile, on a new raid with limited data from the live game, and without being able to see who has what specific items already (AKA new trinkets/tier sets etc) could massively skew the numbers. Add in split raids happening resulting in some parses from peoples alts which they might not be the best at and slower fights, ability to outgear the heroic content already available and thus create extra quick kills for some players, and completely ignoring mythic mechanics which will make people play difference makes balancing based on log numbers currently almost entirely wasted and would lead to knee jerk balancing next week instead if a certain class get too strong etc.

75th percentile is an ideal number for weeding out specific items corrupting the data too much, while also ensuring some measure of capability on the players part. You can go higher later in the tier, but you certainly never go lower unless you're talking specifically about less capable players.

Alt runs are always happening, they're always part of the logs and trying to say split raids are some form of outlier is ridiculous.

As to the rest of your paragraph - there's no other data point, because tuning is meant to hit BEFORE mythic goes live so as to not cause people to rely on a certain spec and then break it, making their progression 'reset' to some degree. Heroic in the current raid has fights as close to as relevant as they'll be for mythic next week - and outside of shorter kills and some add scumming easier bosses (once again on the latter fights 75th percentile works great since by and large it's people trying to do the fight properly this week) it'll be valuable going into next week and what people expect to work.

[Mokuna]

Your data is irrelevant for a lot of reasons:

-Aoe is everywhere and aoe dps isn't as valuable as single target yet it's weighed the same (and puts havoc/ww on top when their dps is mostly a niche)
-Boss damage isn't a good data neither, on a lot of fights add damage is really important (augur, anomally, ellisande...)
-75th percentile is suboptimal gameplay, it's far from showing a class possibility

You'd just break the game balancing the game around all classes having the same dps overall, because classes like windwalker or havoc would basically be unviable on ST fights, also balancing around poor gameplay would break the game at the higher level