Melee Mechanics in NH

[Alvito]

at least be honest.

botanist all mechanics except night debuff are shared. melee has to kill orbs and adds too. both have to dodge collapse and chaos, both have to dodge spores while moving.

tichondrius the only mechanic melee doesn't deal with at all is the green circles, but on the other hand melee often can't dps when hiding behind pillars. on normal and heroic these days ranged can ingore bloods too because melee cleave em in a few seconds. and the plague is actually easier to deal with for ranged the melee due to camera angles and amount of room to spread in. damn sounds like melee actually got it harder on tich oh shit now what.

Melee has to kill orbs but you sit by the spawn points. If target switching counts then we are really lowering the bar.

[Tygor]

As a melee since launch, it's actually nice to do good damage and not need to worry much about mechanics and not getting to stab the boss for long periods of time while ranged have it easy. This is the first raid I can remember (literally since Vanilla) where melee have it easier than ranged. And now some ranged folks have a problem with it? Pretty much every raid has had melee/ranged friendly fights, but generally raids are harder for melee. Nighthold is an exception, and anyone who says differently is just wrong.

[Alvito]

As a melee since launch, it's actually nice to do good damage and not need to worry much about mechanics and not getting to stab the boss for long periods of time while ranged have it easy. This is the first raid I can remember (literally since Vanilla) where melee have it easier than ranged. And now some ranged folks have a problem with it? Pretty much every raid has had melee/ranged friendly fights, but generally raids are harder for melee. Nighthold is an exception, and anyone who says differently is just wrong.

The problem most seem to have is melee having little to deal with ir worry about on top of doing way more damage even before they are able to tunnel.

[Tharkkun]

Must suck to have that full screen view. I've always got a fat boss model taking up the majority of my screen littered with other melee.

Anyway, OT, for the most part mechanics are pretty much shared between melee and ranged.

Aluriel ~ both run out on mark of frost, both get hit by the fire brand debuff, everyone has to run around during arcane phase, kill adds

Star Boy ~ both have to run out during icy ejection, both spread fel flame, both stack or run out during the explosions on each phase

Botanist ~ both prio adds, both dodge the collapse and the purp

Krosus ~ both dodge the beams, both run into the pitch. Ranged gets hit by the orb but melee must run off the bridge or die

Trilliax ~ both get cakes, dodge the beam

Eli ~ both dodge rings, soak orbs, kill adds

Gul'dan ~ both kill adds, dodge storms and beams, soak souls.

Same jobs give or take on most every boss fight.

If you have enough ranged the only fights melee have to do mechanics on is Krosus, Botanist and Star Auger. They bitch like children if they have to move too far on Krosus to soak. Guldan they always soak the closest chains. It was near impossible to get melee to help on an empowered chain. My poor DPS. Or god forbid those rogues attacking the Eyes of Guldan.

Then something like the lashers target melee (On Botanist) and they stand there like stiffs expecting ranged to use all their cooldowns to prevent them from moving an inch.

[taek]

It's not particularly melee friendly for small guilds.

When you are doing everything as 10 man with 2 tanks 2-3 healers, all DPS have to do mechanics not just ranged.
Almost no mechanics scale down down, eg Trilliax has just as many cakes that need to be eaten on 10 as 25.

In 10 man situations, ranged have quite an advantage if every DPS must do mechanics since their DPS suffers far less from having to move back & forth. On Auger fel phase, our 2-3 melee are spammed with Fel so often that it's possible for them to do no damage at all in that phase.

[iky43210]

If you have enough ranged the only fights melee have to do mechanics on is Krosus, Botanist and Star Auger. They bitch like children if they have to move too far on Krosus to soak. Guldan they always soak the closest chains. It was near impossible to get melee to help on an empowered chain. My poor DPS. Or god forbid those rogues attacking the Eyes of Guldan.

Then something like the lashers target melee (On Botanist) and they stand there like stiffs expecting ranged to use all their cooldowns to prevent them from moving an inch.

your healer would prob do more dmg on eyes than trying to ask rogue to kill them.

[Sithalos]

How does the MMO-C community feel about melee mechanics in NH?

...What mechanics?

[D3athsting]

Raid leaders in cata: "melees we don't give a shit about your dps, just don't die and do mechanics"
MELEEegion: "ranged we don't give a shit about your dps, just don't die and do mechanics"

[Shakou]

Melee has to kill orbs but you sit by the spawn points. If target switching counts then we are really lowering the bar.

People in this thread are saying that having to do anything but sit and dps the boss counts as "having to do mechanics".

[Tygor]

People in this thread are saying that having to do anything but sit and dps the boss counts as "having to do mechanics".

Honestly, if melee aren't doing what they can for mechanics to help the ranged out, they simply aren't very good raiders. That includes rogues/warriors running to the back of the room if necessary to soak puddles. A group that lives and dies by meters isn't a very positive environment to play in as long as bosses are dying. I'm a rogue in a 10/10H guild with about 17 people on a dead server, and nobody talks meters, we just do what we need to do to win.

tldr: melee who don't do mechanics to help aren't great players.

[Shakou]

Honestly, if melee aren't doing what they can for mechanics to help the ranged out, they simply aren't very good raiders. That includes rogues/warriors running to the back of the room if necessary to soak puddles. A group that lives and dies by meters isn't a very positive environment to play in as long as bosses are dying. I'm a rogue in a 10/10H guild with about 17 people on a dead server, and nobody talks meters, we just do what we need to do to win.

tldr: melee who don't do mechanics to help aren't great players.

I totally agree. Although I think this is related to a larger problem, and that's that the player base overall isn't very good and likens skill to having certain gear that happened to drop and being able to hit certain dps benchmarks. Dps is important sure, but it's only important in relation to overall raid performance and how good everyone is at mechanics. Why this continues to be such a problem falls down to really bad raid leaders (who should never also be the guild leader for reasons that should be obvious).

Ya there's more people raiding high end content than ever (although certainly not clearing all content when it's relevant), but more and more I come across very bad raid leaders that don't know much about the game beyond playing their own class and copying (poorly) what they see other people do, and typically these guilds with poor leadership tend to be the ones that simply pass loot out to their friends or whatever they think is the OP faceroll class of the onth and have no idea what will actually help the raid the most.

[Tradu]

So generally nothing changed since ICC where all the armor pen gods were tunneling the boss, while ranged had to kite adds on saurfang, deal with spores / pukes on festergut, and all the kind of bullshit Blizzard puts to ensure "raid must have at least x amount of ranged". That's why guilds recruit ranged. Not because they're better, but because they're a must have. What melee get? Better dps and better mobility. So ofc it's more enjoyable for a common joe to play a melee, but guilds still need to fill their quota of ranged for stuff like botanist's call of the night or aluriel's mark of frost not mentioning gul'dans liquid hellfire.

So this goes on since forever. People don't want to play ranged, but guilds want to recruit ranged. Catch 22.

I feel like you missed all the years where ranged were both more flexible in terms of handling mechanics(aka melee also got targetted by everything but sucked at dealing with it in terms of toolkit) and did more damage, thus why ranged have historically been stacked and melee only brought as a last resort or to handle specific assignments/raid CDs(usually rogues/warriors). This is the first tier in a long time(I don't remember a single one since ICC, and even then there were some extremely strong ranged specs) where it's the reverse.

[Wingerie]

In Draenor I was RDPS and I've been loving doing meaningful mechanics. In Legion I went for MDPS and actually it's quite boring in mythic NH now (but I'm casual scrub with 7/10M + 30% wipes on Augur after two days). If I could replay Legion from the beginning I'd pick a DH (they're op) or RDPS, choosing between mage and hunter, because I at least had something to do. Sure, RDPS might have lower damage (but our warlock is super competitive for example) but you have interesting fights, you help raid with other means than just smashing the boss. Also, this is the first xpac that favors melees in terms of dps and mechanics, chill, let us have some fun in melees too.

[Khrux]

Alot of LFR/Nm/Hc posters in here, thats clear from the comments being made.

In a mythic guild with an appropriate roster, you don't have melees doing shitter jobs because you have enough ranged to do them and keep melee(strongest dps) on the boss. In almost all cases, melees are unaffected by movement so long as they're in range of a boss, anytime a melee and ranged need to move together(Augur conjunction) the ranged moves to the melee.

Example of some shitter jobs;
Soaking the back adds on Krosus(way outside range of boss)
Taking the Orb to africa on Krosus(way outside range of boss)
Soaking & bouncing frost debuffs on Spellblade
Eating the "good" cake on Trilliax and blowing up the Sweepers(often out of range of boss, knocks you up)
Interrupt rotations on the Blue add on Elisande(not your primary target, risk of taking blast hits, restricted to being in range)
Soaking Orbs on Elisande
Baiting the pools on Elisande
Soaking Gul'dans empowered chains
Baiting the empowered fel orbs on Gul'dan
Stacking to explode the green debuffs on Tich + positioning them in p3 to not explode them


These are just some of the shit ranged have to deal with or be mindful of. This doesn't include all the forced movement in almost every fight which prevents ranged from casting or causes constant stutter stepping and missed casts, like Trilliax annihilation, Augur conjunction, everything Anomaly does, Spellblades felsoul bladestorming all over ranged, Krosus beams, Gul'dans laser, Spellblades arcane phase orb kite+move and many more.

Mythic is much worse than other difficulties, it is well known and accepted by the raiding community that melee have it easy in NH. There is no debate.

[theyanger]

Honestly, if melee aren't doing what they can for mechanics to help the ranged out, they simply aren't very good raiders. That includes rogues/warriors running to the back of the room if necessary to soak puddles. A group that lives and dies by meters isn't a very positive environment to play in as long as bosses are dying. I'm a rogue in a 10/10H guild with about 17 people on a dead server, and nobody talks meters, we just do what we need to do to win.

tldr: melee who don't do mechanics to help aren't great players.

tldr nothing, it's dumb to have melee do mechanics that are easier for ranged/target ranged speciifcally if you bring enough ranged/reduce ranged dps to 50% and reduce melee dps to 0%

Thus, the result is that melee tends to do almost no mechanics, and ranged does all of them. That's not 'bad melee'. That's efficient raid leadership. If your raid has to have melee run out and twiddle their thumbs with marks on Spellblade, by all means go you, but that's not what anyone else does BECAUSE IT IS RIDICULOUS TO DO THAT.

It's not scumbag melee being unwilling to do mechanics, it is mechanics that are designed in a way that encourages you to, as a raid, let melee ignore them.

[Kirbypro]

There are plenty of mechanics that dumpsters on melee dps, Nighthold designers just chose to not have them. Therefore, NH is pretty easy on melee dps, its not difficult concept for people to grasp.

They usually involve the boss either charging away from melee, or some sort of one shot mechanic that sweeps through melee.

For example:
Thok > melee gets stepped on
Tectus > poison trails
Twin Ogron > Boss charges
Train boss

[Marrilaife]

For example:
Thok > melee gets stepped on

You mean that boss that interrupts spellcasts every ~2 sec.?

There are plenty of mechanics that dumpsters on melee dps, Nighthold designers just chose to not have them.

Yep, there are very few mechanics that actually force melee to lose uptime on the boss. Fel ejection being one, dodging Elisande balls can be another (depending on positioning).

Thus, the result is that melee tends to do almost no mechanics, and ranged does all of them. That's not 'bad melee'. That's efficient raid leadership.

And that's exactly the reason why raid leaders want to recruit ranged (so someone deals with mechanics) while players prefer on average to play melee over ranged (why would I want to run around click scrubbers or soak epocheric orbs when I could instead pick a class that concentrates on doing big dick dps?) That creates a situation where there's overabundance of guildless melee dps and a shortage of ranged.

Some time ago I had a chat with a dps dk on my server who was 1/10 mythic but really wanted to find a guild that is 4 mythic or above. Seemed like a sensible chap, had some decent heroic logs, ok server top guilds shouldn't be interested but at least some middle of the pack guilds in the age of players quitting due to burnout...? However, I think so far every single one declined him. "Melee full" was usually the answer. Yeah, I know 1 mythic is low but I can tell you there are boomkins, hunters, spriests who have similarly unimpressive cv and they're taken by 4-6/10 mythic guilds, because of ranged glut. I know because I've seen their approved apps.

[Tharkkun]

tldr nothing, it's dumb to have melee do mechanics that are easier for ranged/target ranged speciifcally if you bring enough ranged/reduce ranged dps to 50% and reduce melee dps to 0%

Thus, the result is that melee tends to do almost no mechanics, and ranged does all of them. That's not 'bad melee'. That's efficient raid leadership. If your raid has to have melee run out and twiddle their thumbs with marks on Spellblade, by all means go you, but that's not what anyone else does BECAUSE IT IS RIDICULOUS TO DO THAT.

It's not scumbag melee being unwilling to do mechanics, it is mechanics that are designed in a way that encourages you to, as a raid, let melee ignore them.

It's bad encounter design. It makes sense to have this for a couple fights but when the majority favor stacking enough ranged so melee can tunnel it's terrible design. The result is melee are lazy as hell on fights where they suddenly have to do mechanics because it's unavoidable. It causes envy and fighting in raids and obviously on the forums. Who wants to play a ranged class if they are stuck dancing the entire fight? Making the encounters more balanced is the better option.

[Raiju]

It's bad encounter design. It makes sense to have this for a couple fights but when the majority favor stacking enough ranged so melee can tunnel it's terrible design. The result is melee are lazy as hell on fights where they suddenly have to do mechanics because it's unavoidable. It causes envy and fighting in raids and obviously on the forums. Who wants to play a ranged class if they are stuck dancing the entire fight? Making the encounters more balanced is the better option.

You understand we could replace melee with ranged and this would describe every previous tier, right? The irony isn't lost on you, right?

[Deleted]

I don't know what you complain about, being ranged is the only way to enjoy doing DPS right now. Tunneling a boss for several minutes is not funny (or challenging) at all. That's why i play tank, while they have the easiest rotations on all toons, they have to deal with special mechanics, usually harder than others, and they make the whole raid wipe usually. That's the kind of mechanics that i like; and every boss should feel like etraeus MM (one fucker fucks up -> wipe). That should increase lvl on playerbase.