Why should I bring melee to my raids?

[mypally]

So I'm one of the people who make decisions for my raid group (10 man, fairly casual, only 9/12), and I made a comment after the last patch that i could now go ret if we needed it, and the response I got was "lol, no". I never gave it much thought up until that point, but there seems to be no benifit of bringing melee to a raid. Now correct me if I am overlooking something huge here, but the basic benifits of each are:

Ranged: Can dps during most air phases, Can aoe away from their characters (as in, at ranged), have a lot more room to spread out in fights that need it
melee: can interupt more reliably, can dps on the run

Now I have gone over all the fights in my head (on reg at least), and all i can ever seem to justify bringing is an enh shaman for interupts to 2 fights, and really an ele shaman could do the same job, while bringing more things to the table. The lack of air phase dps for nef and atramedes; the lack of usable aoe on cho gall and conclave; the extra damage taken (or chance of extra damage) in council, Chimeron, conclave, and omnitron.

Really the only fights where i can justify some melee (and i mean some, can't really have fulll melee comps) are halfus, val and ther, magmaw, and maloriak. But all those would really be just as easy with a full ranged comp. I cannot think of a single encounter where melee is prefferable to ranged, and really dont like the looks of that, because I dont want to be healing for the entire xpac >.>

1 final clarification i think may be needed, when I say "justify bringing", I mean in terms of optimization. The group we have has an enh and a rogue, and we really only have an 11 man roster, so rotations seem to come down to who shows up more then who is most optimal. This is just something that I was pondering, a kind of "perfect comp" type deal.

[junialum]

As you mentioned. Usually for interrupts. Some melee classes can offtank. Our Fury warrior off tanks the adds in Nefarian P1 (10 man)
Looking at most of the fights in Cata, sadly you are right. Melee doesn't get much love. It has been an issue for ages anyways.

[JackalopeSpam]

Melee tend to be 'easier to heal'. Not that they take less damage, but they clump and so AoE heals work on them almost always. But in any fight that you can safely stack, the ranged can clump on melee. Any fight requiring a spread, can't have to many melee. So really they aren't easier to heal, more a liability if you have too many. I question the same things too, in wrath my guild had an overwhelming number of melee for the 25 mans, and we could make do. Now that we're only doing 10's, you can't. So I cringe when we end up with more than our fury warrior. You really can't bring more than 2 melee to a 10 man raid. Ranged will have an advantage in most all fights because their position matters less. Melee's true advantage of being more mobile is lacking when most ranged classes have a decent way to maintain dps on the move for minor loss.

[Deleted]

Same. We prefer ranged/casters over melee. However we use a DK and sometimes an enchance but on several fights we go with just one melee. Cause there's several fights, where you only need one tank. Meaning the other will be melee dps as well.

Don't know why Blizz favors ranged dps tbh......

[Deleted]

We have 2 melee, a rogue and an enhancement shaman. I used to be feral but swapped to boomkin because on 10 mans, melee is a liability for most of the fights.

Our enhancement shaman is our main interrupter and he's awesome at it cause it's a ranged spell.

[Chronnos]

Yup, enhancement are the best PvE interrupters atm, better than ele only because they have to stop casting. Also i play enhancement and i don't feel inferior in damage done to any ranged dps right now. I mean i'm always in the top 3 dps in our 25 man raid on Atramedes and that fight has air phases. I even top the meter sometimes. Our DK does pretty well on that fight, so do rogues sometimes. And it's not only for that fight. I really don't feel gimped by playing a melee spec. Although AoE some melee's AoE is pretty bad when compared to ranged, but other than that it's all good.

Cause there's several fights, where you only need one tank. Meaning the other will be melee dps as well.

I see that as a mistake, if only one tank is needed, bench the other one and get a proper melee dps, not an offspec.

[bonovoxpsu]

Yup, enhancement are the best PvE interrupters atm, better than ele only because they have to stop casting. Also i play enhancement and i don't feel inferior in damage done to any ranged dps right now. I mean i'm always in the top 3 dps in our 25 man raid on Atramedes and that fight has air phases. I even top the meter sometimes. Our DK does pretty well on that fight, so do rogues sometimes. And it's not only for that fight. I really don't feel gimped by playing a melee spec. Although AoE some melee's AoE is pretty bad when compared to ranged, but other than that it's all good.


I see that as a mistake, if only one tank is needed, bench the other one and get a proper melee dps, not an offspec.

wind shear is off the GCD, so an ele can weave in interrupts without too much of a hit to their DPS.

[Seriss]

wind shear is off the GCD, so an ele can weave in interrupts without too much of a hit to their DPS.

He'll still have to re-start casting after hitting his stopcasting-windshear macro. Which is still a dps loss.

[Deleted]

Melee have skills/abilities to self-heal in combat and/or talents with +% healing taken modifiers, so .. easier on the healers (never a bad thing) and the ability to DPS more effectively on high movement fights. We do suck at air phases though.

[Muhox]

*deleted some stuff*

New raid instances will come and you should rather try to compose a balanced team of good players to be well prepared. Until than 9/12 gives much room to improve the teamplay. I don't see the slightest reason to prefer either melee or caster on any currently existing boss, everything is perfecltly doable with a good mixture of motivated members.

[Deleted]

Errmmm you got one thing wrong, melee come out top on Conclave
They bring unique buffs dont forget! Also unholy dks and rogues are at the top of the dps charts atm
check out www.stateofdps.com for more advise on whats working well on each fight

[Kelzam]

I see that as a mistake, if only one tank is needed, bench the other one and get a proper melee dps, not an offspec.

Then the tank you benched misses out on gear that he'll need for fights where you do need two tanks, and the raid suffers.

[Deleted]

because we are the skilled once in this game

[Deleted]

I see that as a mistake, if only one tank is needed, bench the other one and get a proper melee dps, not an offspec.

What? You can't have decent gear for two specs? What ever happened to "bring the player not the class"?

[Memoryz]

Interrupts. Less DPS downtime on target switching fights in my opinion.

[ArthurK]

we run 2 tanks, 2 melee dps, 3 ranged dps, so you can say we are melee heavy, and we are 12/12 reg, 1/13hm. If the player is good, it doesn't matter if they are ranged or melee dps, so long as they stand where they are supposed to, listen to directions, and are alive at the end of the fight.

[drbutcher]

Errmmm you got one thing wrong, melee come out top on Conclave
They bring unique buffs dont forget! Also unholy dks and rogues are at the top of the dps charts atm
check out www.stateofdps.com for more advise on whats working well on each fight

NEVER never never check stateofdps.If you want to see the dps always go to worldoflogs and do the math by yourself.Why? Stateofdps adds 25mans + 10mans for the average.The problems with that are:

1) Some classes like enha shamans carries most of their buffs with them.They will be higher in 10man if you don't have the best possible setup because they have their buffs but if you go to 25man you will notice that they are at the bottom.

2) Some specs in 10mans don't even have 200 entries.

3) Some classes scales better full raid buffed.

Anyway back to the topic now .Atm except from rogues for single target and DKs for aoe there is no reason to bring a melee dpser (only for the interrupts) because:

1) They take more damage than casters.Someone said that melee have self heals.Yes they do.Tell the rogue to recuperate instead of rupture/envenom the shaman to use his maelstom procs to heal instead of LB etc.Try kill some heroic bosses that way .I guess you will end up saying:we don't have the dps for that.

2) If you take dks out all other melee either do low aoe (compared to most casters) like rogues and warriors or no aoe at all retris/enha shamans.

3) Melee dps at is low.Dks/rogues are ok (or at least used to be.I haven't checked many parses after 4.0.6 to see what exactly DKs are doing atm) but everyone else... warrior/ferals/retri/enha are at the bottom of the dps.The problem is not that they are at the bottom.Someone should be.The problem is that the dps difference with the range is huge.

What? They are hybrids you said?So?I don't see anything unique that a hybrid can brind atm.And because this thread isn't to discuss this subject i will leave it and i wll just sayk just compare the hybrid melees with boomkins and SPs even after the nurf.

4) Most fight in cata favorites casters .

[Bleedinggum]

In my 25 man guild melee take up most of the top 10 dps. On Chimeron I really don't i see the problem with melee dps. Hit box is big and some of if not all melee have some way to healing themselfs. On magmaw we could not do it with out the dk we bring. We were lacking hunters for along time and the dk was the kiter. Atramedes are you kidding me. That fight melee take the less damage then range from what i seen. Some range classes can kite him in air phase but should not be the win or loose part if they don't dps the air phase. Range has a problem in the air phase b/c they want to dps and they get sound. Some fights are bad to have to many melee or range for that matter. Tell me how many fights between wrath and cata are good to bring all melee. Maybe one.

[taurendeathknight]

Not being bias, it's kinda why I went it for my guild, but Unholy Death Knight seems to be the only decent melee worth bringing in a 10-man. For one, you don't really want to waste plate dps drops in 10-man cause loot is so rare so you probably want at least one melee for that. You want Unholy because they:

1. Ebon Plague (8% spell dmg) which means a warlock doesn't need to waste time applying it, also for AoE, Ebon Plague on EVERY add is exceptional for maximising AoE from the spellcasters - no one but a Unholy can apply that debuff like that.

2. Anti-Magic Shell for extra damage mitigation to relax healing in scenarios where no one else can do that. ie. Crackle on Nefarian, don't need to heal the DK up, he took no damage.

3. Good AoE compared to every other melee. Diseases+Death and Decay+Blood Boil+Pet Cleave - all four can be done at range so the melee never takes a hit. So no leeches on them in magmaw and no corruption stacking in Chogall.

4. You have another off-tank gearing in the raid.

5. They have decent DPS - so counting the above, and also good dps, they're a good addition.

[tru]

Errmmm you got one thing wrong, melee come out top on Conclave
They bring unique buffs dont forget! Also unholy dks and rogues are at the top of the dps charts atm
check out www.stateofdps.com for more advise on whats working well on each fight

unholy not so much anymore plenty other options to bring that out performs