Shortage of Range dps? (Excluding Hunters)

[aarrok]

Is it me, or is it extremely hard to find range dps? Been trying to recruit range dps for our raids and all I seem to be finding are melee and Hunters. Anyone else having this issue?

[Eapoe]

It's been an issue for years. Nothing new here. It's also a bad time to recruit as raids just opened this week and guilds will be looking for the same things as you.

[Noocta]

Should be plenty of Fire Mages around to recruit as well logically.

[Underverse]

Yeah. And it kind of makes sense when you think about it. No ranged dps have been added since the game's inception. And ranged dps are often pure dps, which is an incentive to play another class that can fill more roles.

[Simulacrum]

Well they've made all the ranged DPS classes really annoying and/or tedious to play, especially outside of raids. You probably couldn't pay me to play any of them anymore. So not exactly surprising.

Also there's the part where all of them besides fire and hunters are underpowered. Except maybe shadow priests (though shadow is annoying as fuck to play and shit in all contexts other than raids), but they made sure to smack them down, so.

[FertsBlert]

And currently 2 of the 5 ranged DPS are horrible to play, one of the other 3 relies on a single talent and is part of a class that may be expected to heal, another one of the other non horrible specs has the possibility of a fairly decent melee spec and the last one is a mage.

Ranged overall are designed with low to no mobility, are rather poor to level due to the leveling areas being very unfriendly to low armor targets with little CC and very few escapes and you are asking why so few ranged are around?

[Aoyi]

A lot of guilds are recruiting right now. They also are looking for ranged dps/healers to add to their rosters. Melee are the last spots people try to fill in the raid almost as an afterthought, so you can usually get those easily. Give it some more time and you'll get a new batch of ranged dps starting to look to raid next week. There are some who may not have felt ready for the first week that want to go full in next week or even just have tried lfr before applying to a raid group. Don't worry.

[Underverse]

Well they've made all the ranged DPS classes really annoying and/or tedious to play, especially outside of raids. You probably couldn't pay me to play any of them anymore. So not exactly surprising.

Also there's the part where all of them besides fire and hunters are underpowered. Except maybe shadow priests (though shadow is annoying as fuck to play and shit in all contexts other than raids), but they made sure to smack them down, so.

Hopefully the patch will improve this....although I'm sure we'll have to wait for the kara patch for changes to fluidity of gameplay.

[Sorrowseer]

Same, very melee heavy, reminds me of cataclysm.

[DeadmanWalking]

Well when people run around screaming that their class is broken and then everyone hears this and says, "Don't invite ranged class X" and only invite Melee you guys are actually surprised when a lot of people don't play ranged?

[Deleted]

Always been an issue with my guild. Doesn't help that Blizzard only adds melee classes.

[Soisoisoi]

Long standing issue of the game. You generally want more ranged than melee in a raid, and there's far more to melee than ranged in the game, it seems. Especially when you consider DK, Monk, and now DH have all been melee as their DPS specs, further spreading the dps out into more melee classes.

It also doesn't help that, at least to me, ranged classes generally are boring to play, either due to their spec or bosses that let you stand around either not moving at all or having extremely delayed mechanics in relation to melee.

[ThePhantombox]

Well when people run around screaming that their class is broken and then everyone hears this and says, "Don't invite ranged class X" and only invite Melee you guys are actually surprised when a lot of people don't play ranged?

Yeah what he said.

[Yhcti]

Doesn't make sense as fire and shadow are crazy good at the moment.

[Cerus]

....shadow are crazy good at the moment.

For one more day.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Well they've made all the ranged DPS classes really annoying and/or tedious to play, especially outside of raids. You probably couldn't pay me to play any of them anymore. So not exactly surprising.

Also there's the part where all of them besides fire and hunters are underpowered. Except maybe shadow priests (though shadow is annoying as fuck to play and shit in all contexts other than raids), but they made sure to smack them down, so.

Pretty much 100000000000000% this.
They completely messed up on designing ranged, they're unbearable/annoying/tedious to play outside of DPSing a raid boss and they aren't even good at that unless mm/fire.

It's also lame that outside of affl casters don't get super cool open world/solo scaling like melee do. On my UH DK as I get more gear I self heal/sustain more and can just run around AOEing huge packs of mobs with 0 downtime, something a non-affl caster can pretty much never do.

[Deleted]

I'm going to mention a few reasons why I personally feel like I wouldn't play some ranged specs over melee in the current state, keep in mind I do main a warlock currently:

Elemental shaman: Ever since movement with lightning bolt was removed, it felt clunky and difficult in terms of PvP, in raids we're still fun but overall this isn't as fun as it used to be.

Mages: Well, mages are fine in my opinion, frost and fire have zero issues in both pvp and world content. Arcane differs a little, but mages have never been "Bad" per say

Hunters: I'm gonna say nothing here, their fine.

Shadow Priest: General AoE is a pain in the ass, not to mention a little squishy (As most cloth users).

Warlocks: The doomsayers of our own class have made people want to avoid warlocks, also flavor of the month players completely avoid warlocks now. (Yeah i'm looking at YOU, yeah, YOU, the guy that won't play a class unless it's 20% ahead of everyone else in dps charts, so rerolled)

Boomkin: I personally think boomkin is fun currently, but in pvp it still doesn't stop them being trained by melee super hard, in PvE I actually enjoy boomkin a lot.

As an end note, I personally think mobility is a big issue with casters, we used to be "They do high damage if left alone, and have a way to get away from you" which caused a fun playstyle of trying to counter each others catchup and getaway mechanics in pvp, however, they gutted this by turning a lot of casters get away mechanics into honor talents or cutting down on our ways to get away. Meanwhile melee have maintained all the mechanics used for mobility that were added to counter our getaways, leading to melee full training us in battlegrounds, world pvp and arena.

In terms of PvE, in raids I personally believe casters are completely fine, we suffer in some areas in dungeons since melee aoe can hit one button without some rampup (For some specs not all) and have their instant 700k dps aoe out, meanwhile casters have to prepare or pre-cast a lot of stuff, which they simply might not have time for due to tank pulling really fast or such issues. Also in world survival melee typically have an easier time than casters, from my point of view.

These are simply my opinions, if they aren't the same as your own, I respect yours and hope you do likewise.

[Gangresnake]

Warlocks: The doomsayers of our own class have made people want to avoid warlocks, also flavor of the month players completely avoid warlocks now. (Yeah i'm looking at YOU, yeah, YOU, the guy that won't play a class unless it's 20% ahead of everyone else in dps charts, so rerolled)

And then the doomsayers were proven to be right, class is just mediocre. Sure it's "viable", but as a group leader you have no reason to pick mediocre when you could pick good (Especially when good AND come with a free bloodlust).

The other posts above outlining the fact ranged are tedious are also right, as a ranged you're expected to nail yourself to a point and dish out the damage, it may have worked in the past but right now it simply doesnt, the amount of AoE and mechanics you have to dodge/move-to make it hell on earth for immobile casters. Locks are especially guilty of that, and have a massive rampup for very little rewards, while the most mobile ranged with low ramp-up, aka firemage and hunt, are doing very well.

On the other hand melees feel very nice to play, they all got decent built-in mobility skills, they're not forced to pick between AoE and ST, rotations are fluid and can be adpated on the move.

I dont think the upcoming hotfix will fix anything, the issue require a gameplay overhaul.

[Deleted]

It's a tier that heavily favours melee though. On a lot of bosses melee don't have to do anything at all, or avoid any mechanics at all, and can just tunnel the boss basically, while the ranged are dealing with mechanics, or simply getting weaker DPS due to forced movement. It's also probably the easiest first tier ever, but like I said it's worth noting it's really melee favored.

[Magical Mudcrab]

Should be plenty of Fire Mages around to recruit as well logically.

With the new changes, I believe Fire is actually slightly lower than Frost now, and Arcane is the highest dps in game (depending on talent setup) according to Simcraft.