Originally Posted by
Zuuda
The thing is.... I speak as someone ho only plays ranged characters in all games. WoW is old. WoW is incredibly old. I tried all ranged classes and even in Legion none sticks.
Since I don't play meleers correct me, but:
- Most ranged classes except hunters have cast times. This is terrible. We are kiting? We can't do damage. We have to avoid mechanics? We can't do damage. We are casting and something CCs, even a soft one like knockback? Interrupted. Surrounded by enemies and need to kill them fast? Time to slowly hadouken while being at the mercy of a CC and push-back. Most of the time for crap damage (more about that below) On top of it some skills have obnoxiously long cast times. WoW players just accept it as the thing they grew up on but after playing other games I can say that the cast time is horrible and a turn-off (cross-reference with dazed&dismount mechanics, though we -finally- have Barding to avoid it. Also cast time for mounting and being unable to mount up if a level 1 critter is hostile).
- Ramp-up times. Most classes, with the exception of hunters again, have ramp-up times. Fight starts, time to cast several weak skills to build up energy/combo/etc in order to cast the strong spells. Having played demo warlock at the start of Legion was cringy. Weak spell, weak spell, weak spell, meteor that summons imps, empower them OK, TIME TO DO DAMAGE! In the meanwhile meleers have distance closers, jump in, start doing damage straight away. Most of the time they have good AoE they can dish out immediately.
I'm not raging on melee. they have their own woes and I don't envy them. I'm mostly disappointed on how WoW can't seem to make a fun ranged spec. So here I am playing BM hunter. The other two expansions I played was also with a hunter. Even now I have a friend I inducted into WoW and have been guiding her into all the progression and even raiding, and she is playing Feral. She -loves- druids and melee, but even at 881 her numbers are weak. She complains about lack of AoE and having to chase adds or avoid mechanics making her weak numbers even weaker. So I'm telling her to try a hunter.
Yes, I know hunters are not well seen by the community. Ignoring all of that it is like I told her:
- Do damage while moving. Gotta dodge something? Keep doing damage to it. Gotta kite? Keep doing damage to it.
- No ramp-up. Gotta AoE? Multi-shot triggers Beast Cleave. Immediate damage. ST? Kill Command, immediate damage. Bestial Wrath and Cobra shot to reset it. Damage, right now, not in 4-5 GCDs.
In my opinion this is why ranged are sparser. We only have to look at recomendations for classes and the term 'weak mobility' is applied mostly to what? Ranged classes. Someone tries a ranged class and woomwooomwooom cast times, see the lil bar build-up... for a miserable bit of damage equivalent to an auto-attack. It's a hard slump to get over with, and then comes the first times having to kite, or reaching max level and actual dangerous mechanics and finding how much they need to run to avoid being one-shot.