Why should I bring melee to my raids?

[Stevoman]

In general, melee:

1. Are easier to heal
2. Can interrupt more reliably
3. Do more DPS (hunters excepted)
4. More reliably keep buffs/auras up
5. Can off tank if needed (rogues/shaman excepted)

[Deleted]

In general, melee:

1. Are easier to heal
2. Can interrupt more reliably
3. Do more DPS (hunters excepted)
4. More reliably keep buffs/auras up
5. Can off tank if needed (rogues/shaman excepted)

Absurd claims.
#1 I partially agree, as healer's aoe heals are more likely to hit more melees as they're generally closer together. In 10 mans though where 2 melees are about the maximum and boss hitbox is too large for most aoe heals to hit both tank and melees, this ain't true.
#2 Where did this come from? Ranged might have longer CDs by average, but they'll work just the same. Every dps on interrupt duty should be hit capped, naturally.
#3. It's the player, not the class. Putting it rough, only 10% of players can use more than 90% of their characters theoretical capability. Maybe you're ranged players are less competent.
#4 Like what? Most buffs are permanent or long duration anyway. Totem or pala aura range is a different thing, but I suppose you didn't mean that.
#5 Moonkin druid can have tank OS too. No dps can seriously offtank anything when not in tank spec. I don't consider picking up adds in Nefa or Akir real offtanking.

[Deleted]

Absurd claims.
#1 I partially agree, as healer's aoe heals are more likely to hit more melees as they're generally closer together. In 10 mans though where 2 melees are about the maximum and boss hitbox is too large for most aoe heals to hit both tank and melees, this ain't true.
#2 Where did this come from? Ranged might have longer CDs by average, but they'll work just the same. Every dps on interrupt duty should be hit capped, naturally.
#3. It's the player, not the class. Putting it rough, only 10% of players can use more than 90% of their characters theoretical capability. Maybe you're ranged players are less competent.
#4 Like what? Most buffs are permanent or long duration anyway. Totem or pala aura range is a different thing, but I suppose you didn't mean that.
#5 Moonkin druid can have tank OS too. No dps can seriously offtank anything when not in tank spec. I don't consider picking up adds in Nefa or Akir real offtanking.

1. It generally is, melee has passive self-heals (LotP, Bloodthirst, Death Strike) and/or strong defensive abilities. Many also have talents to increase the healing taken. As a general rule, a good melee player who is raid specced and doesn't take unnecessary damage will be easier to heal than, for example, a mage. A bad melee player, well .. those tend to get dead. And fast.

2. Consider the interrupts themselves .. a rogue's kick, a ferals skull bash, a DK's mind freeze, a ret's rebuke. Base class skills with low enough cooldowns (except ferals, we need to talent for it) to support a tank in interrupting anything that needs to be interrupted in every fight that I can think of. What do mages/warlocks/shadow priests/balance druids/hunters get? .. much longer cooldowns, many of which are dedicated talents and can't be relied upon in fights that have lots of interrupts like Maloriak or Halfus's shadow nova. The only competent ranged interrupter is the elemental shaman.

3. Hard to say, most parses have ranged classes coming out on top in melee unfriendly fights, but melee tends to top when there's not much movement or stuff to avoid. Pretty balanced, I'd say .. though there are a preponderance of melee unfriendly fights which skew things somewhat.

4. Yeah, not much of a variation between ranged and melee as far as buffs go; I wouldn't say that melee have an advantage here.

5. Feral druids can. Melee do have more survivability than ranged, I don't think that can be argued. A fury warrior isn't going to be one-shot by a loose mob, but a cloth wearer might.

[mypally]

Things you seemed to miss

1. in many cases melee take damage that range can avoid completely, this is something to consider.

2. interupts only ever merit 1 dps to be either ele or a melee.

3. I have no idea where this comes from. melee have a broad range of dps capabilities, and are basically matched by the range of dps ranged classes have. The average melee will basically match the average caster on a stand still fight.

4. The only buffs that are not long duration are self buffs. So the only concern they are to the raid is that individuals dps. I guess the closest thing to this would be warrior shouts, but that seems to be a negative for melee, so not sure why it was included.

5. While melee do all have cooldowns and such that give them the ability to tank something for the duration of that, this can be huge, or not useful at all. On chim, having a rogue evasion tank him for 30 seconds (seen it happen) is an extremely useful thing. Still not sure id want more then 1 melee for this though.

[cFortyfive]

1. It generally is, melee has passive self-heals (LotP, Bloodthirst, Death Strike) and/or strong defensive abilities. Many also have talents to increase the healing taken. As a general rule, a good melee player who is raid specced and doesn't take unnecessary damage will be easier to heal than, for example, a mage. A bad melee player, well .. those tend to get dead. And fast.

2. Consider the interrupts themselves .. a rogue's kick, a ferals skull bash, a DK's mind freeze, a ret's rebuke. Base class skills with low enough cooldowns (except ferals, we need to talent for it) to support a tank in interrupting anything that needs to be interrupted in every fight that I can think of. What do mages/warlocks/shadow priests/balance druids/hunters get? .. much longer cooldowns, many of which are dedicated talents and can't be relied upon in fights that have lots of interrupts like Maloriak or Halfus's shadow nova. The only competent ranged interrupter is the elemental shaman.

3. Hard to say, most parses have ranged classes coming out on top in melee unfriendly fights, but melee tends to top when there's not much movement or stuff to avoid. Pretty balanced, I'd say .. though there are a preponderance of melee unfriendly fights which skew things somewhat.

4. Yeah, not much of a variation between ranged and melee as far as buffs go; I wouldn't say that melee have an advantage here.

5. Feral druids can. Melee do have more survivability than ranged, I don't think that can be argued. A fury warrior isn't going to be one-shot by a loose mob, but a cloth wearer might.

Most ridiculous claims ever heard.
Netherprotection, Dispersion, mageward, soullink and many more would like to have a word with you. You already mentioned an elemental shaman provides a lot of interrupts as well - a mage also works great since you mentioned halfus. And melees outperform of course every ranged on single target fights. Wait wat ? Ah yeah they don't .

[Gritchy]

My guild has cleared all normal content and heroic halfus so far. We have done so with 3 melee dps + 2 tanks (i.e. 4 melee dps on 1-tank fights), and we've done just fine. The only issue we had with all our melee was on Ascendant Council where chain lightning insta-killed the melee relatively shortly into phase 3. But we split up in two groups with the tank and 1 melee in front, and 2 melee in the back, and our second tank (pally) standing outside the melee and doing whatever, and we did it without problems.

To everyone saying you have 3 strict ranged spots, or don't wanna take more than 1/2 melee, I think you should direct your focus elsewhere and not blame the wipes on the number of melee you have (and if you're not wiping, what's the reason for the restriction).

I will agree that more fights are more punishing towards melee than towards ranged, and that way too many melee can cause issues. But most of you are blowing it way out of proportions.

You keep listing reasons for why one is better than the other etc etc, But seriously, what fights are a problem with a lot of melee?

All the fights are more than doable with lots of melee. However, your raid will run into problems with too little aoe dps. Dps Warriors, enhancement shamans, and ret pallies are probably worst off there. Rogues, and dks are amazing, however. Just like there is discrepancy between aoe capability among ranged classes as well.

[Rendandtear]

Whoa, hey guys cmon. Remember blizz's mission this and last xpac was to "Bring the player, not the class" ... Haha, I couldn't even keep a straight face while typing that. :P

[mypally]

The only issue we had with all our melee was on Ascendant Council where chain lightning insta-killed the melee relatively shortly into phase 3. But we split up in two groups with the tank and 1 melee in front, and 2 melee in the back, and our second tank (pally) standing outside the melee and doing whatever, and we did it without problems.

lets say the encounter is designed around 5 dps and 2 tanks doing full dps for the entire p3. This means that between the 5 dps and 1 tank, you have to make up for that 5k dps lost. So now to beat the encounter, you need your dps to be doing 1k more dps then if you just brought more ranged. You are also asking the healers to heal twice the damage on 4 members of the raid then if you brought more ranged

[Deleted]

Most ridiculous claims ever heard.
Netherprotection, Dispersion, mageward, soullink and many more would like to have a word with you. You already mentioned an elemental shaman provides a lot of interrupts as well - a mage also works great since you mentioned halfus. And melees outperform of course every ranged on single target fights. Wait wat ? Ah yeah they don't .

Nether protection is single-school magic. Dispersion lasts 6 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown. Mageward is Fire/Arcane/Frost only. Soul Link is pretty nice, though you run the risk of losing your demon unless you spec for Fel Synergy. Big DPS less for a destruction 'lock if the imp goes splat, from what I understand.

Mages have a 24 second cooldown on their interrupt. Halfus casts a shadow nova every what .. 7 to 8 seconds? 1 in 3/4 doesn't seem that "great" to me. .. We only use mage interrupts in that fight 'cos they can blink out of the 3rd furious roar.

Please, respond to what I wrote .. not what you "think" I wrote after skim reading. I said melee friendly fights, not single target fights. Check some logs for Chimaeron, for example. Top of the charts are often held by melee.

[Exeris]

Nether protection is single-school magic. Dispersion lasts 6 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown. Mageward is Fire/Arcane/Frost only. Soul Link is pretty nice, though you run the risk of losing your demon unless you spec for Fel Synergy. Big DPS less for a destruction 'lock if the imp goes splat, from what I understand.

Mages have a 24 second cooldown on their interrupt. Halfus casts a shadow nova every what .. 7 to 8 seconds? 1 in 3/4 doesn't seem that "great" to me. .. We only use mage interrupts in that fight 'cos they can blink out of the 3rd furious roar.

Please, respond to what I wrote .. not what you "think" I wrote after skim reading. I said melee friendly fights, not single target fights. Check some logs for Chimaeron, for example. Top of the charts are often held by melee.

Hmm might need to clean my glasses, in top five I see 3 ranged and 2 melee
on wowmetersonline, both on normal and hard mode.

[Jordybe]

Bring the player not the class.

So we run with:
2 prot warriors
1 fury warrior
2 rogues
2 holy paladins (sometimes even 3)
1 holy priest
1 shadow priest
1 Warlock

We have a whooping progress of 2/12 normal. Yeah mate, you can't beat that!


....

crap....

[Deleted]

Hmm might need to clean my glasses, in top five I see 3 ranged and 2 melee
on wowmetersonline, both on normal and hard mode.

I'm not familiar with the site; I use www.worldoflogs.com.

A cursory glance at the top performing raid guilds on my own server show rogues in every #1 slot.

[Deleted]

Before we start my raid composition
Prot Warrior
Feral Bear Druid
Holy Pally
Resto Shammy x2
or
Holy priest
Unholy DK
Rouge
Enhance Shaman (myself)
Fire Mage
Hunter or Warlock

Now i'm not going to stand here and say ranged are not the easier option cause i don't beleive it to be true nor am i going to get into a debate about the pros and cons of taken either cause it isn't nessecary.

What i will do is give you a bit of information on my guild we are effectively a social guild with a semi-hardcore raiding team about 12/13 of us out of 200 odd players. We raid 11 hours a week.

Our progress is currently 11/12 and working on nef now we do run with three melee and have to yet to come across any problem with using this setup providing they do the correct thing at the correct time. The only time i can see it becoming more of an issue is on some of the HC modes before you out gear/farm them.

What this bottles down to and the point of this post is if you have a limited good player base or simply prefer to play with your friends don't hesitate to take three melee as it is more then viable and don't let whatever you read about it making encounters stupidly hard deter you because it really doesn't.

Jackedy

[Gritchy]

lets say the encounter is designed around 5 dps and 2 tanks doing full dps for the entire p3. This means that between the 5 dps and 1 tank, you have to make up for that 5k dps lost. So now to beat the encounter, you need your dps to be doing 1k more dps then if you just brought more ranged. You are also asking the healers to heal twice the damage on 4 members of the raid then if you brought more ranged

..and yet it was no problem because the normal modes are quite forgiving. I refuse to believe that all of you (including yourself) that hate on melee are fighting for top 20 guild progression. Hardcore raiding guilds will always optimize to down content the fastest. They stacked disc priest on heroic halfus as well, which many guilds who downed him later (even pre-patch) didn't do, because they didn't NEED to do so to be the best of the best.

Like I said, the only fight that gave us problems was Ascendant Council. However, he is more than doable even when bringing lots of melee. Normal modes aren't incredibly tightly tuned.

[EvolutionXXX]

Melee = interrupts

Also on some fight melee top damage done charts because all they have to do is stand on the bosses leg the whole fight and dps. No switching to adds on fights like al'akir and cho'gall, no moving along in a big circle and getting out of the raid with engulfing magic, interrupting dark adherants on cho'gall, chaining magmaws head down, etc etc...

Most dragons that fly can be dpsed by melee in cata at the moment as well. IE: atramedes, drakes on halfus.
The only one they can't is nefarian in fact, but the melee would be busy interrupting the prototypes anways to dps nefarian.

[Strakha]

just roll with 1 enh shaman and the rest ranged and you will be fine.

all you really need is interrupts, ranged do better at everything else except maybe a patchwerk style fight, but there is what, 1 of those.

[Deleted]

Also on some fight melee top damage done charts because all they have to do is stand on the bosses leg the whole fight and dps. No switching to adds on fights like al'akir and cho'gall --

So how you're going to kill the adds without rangeds sacrificing their personal dps to do that? Have melee switch all the time and lose chunks of dps time running between boss and adds?

[mystblade]

we do very well however yes I am the only melee
Tanks
DK
Pally

Heals
Disc Priest
Holy Paly
Restro Druid

DPS
Mage
Warlock
Fury Warrior
Moonkin
Hunter

Works very well on any fight.

[EvolutionXXX]

So how you're going to kill the adds without rangeds sacrificing their personal dps to do that? Have melee switch all the time and lose chunks of dps time running between boss and adds?

Perhaps there is a language barrier here? What i was saying is that melee do not have to switch to adds during al'akir and cho'gall the ranged burn down the adds...

[Nightbliss]

Because I'm an Enhancement Shaman pulling out astounding DPS numbers, carrying 10million buffs and skilled as fuck?
These sort of posts make me cry a litle bit inside.