Ret (and melee in general) a liability in MoP raids?

[Pridelock]

I really do not agree with some of the thoughts and feedback in this thread. Basically the bottom line of this thread is that melee get it harder than ranged? Generally speaking ofcourse they do and ofcourse they should also. There should be more running away or avoiding things for melee as that is a key part of been a decent melee? Anyone can stand there and press a rotation in order without moving (hense decent ranged players are easy to come by) - Melee requires a little more reactiveness compared with ranged so been a decent melee is about maintaining maximum uptime whilst keeping up with the rotation (that is why decent melee are more difficult to come accross than decent ranged - GENERALLY SPEAKING)

If any melee are not happy at been melee - become ranged

I would hate to think how boring tanking would be if they were to make half the mechanics in the game share between all the ranged people. We want varity. We want bosses that favour melee, some favouring ranged, some favouring dot classes. There is nothing wrong with variation

Just my 2 cents

[Pickwickman]

There were next to no melee "unfavorable" in that instance. In fact it was so melee friendly, that they had to make mechanics force people into range. I can't believe how people don't remember the phrase "World of Meleecraft" that was tossed around so frequently back then. Shadowmourne compounded this issue as well.

While this is mostly true, one tier of Meleecraft should not lead into two expansions after it to be Rangedcraft. (Ofcourse outlying 1-2 fights aside).

But being a decent rogue I can cheese through most mechanics anyway, which should hold true for any Ret Pala worth his salt.

I have to say that melee are actually pretty strong in MoP, the only downside is that most buffs are easily covered so it's easier to bring the class, not the player. The only buff that's a PitA to get is actually the +spelldamage taken which rogue/locks bring, so 10 mans have to have at least one of those classes.

[Ferocity]

There were next to no melee "unfavorable" in that instance. In fact it was so melee friendly, that they had to make mechanics force people into range. I can't believe how people don't remember the phrase "World of Meleecraft" that was tossed around so frequently back then. Shadowmourne compounded this issue as well.

Marrowgar - can't dps during whirlwind, Deathwhisper - when she casts aoe on ground and then refuses to move out of it by spamming spells or her abominations in 1st phase? Gunship - if you have no ranged, it will be pathetic. Saurfang - hold your dps rotation half the fight due to fiends, and if you have no ranged - you are in trouble. Festergut - too much melee makes it impossible to see green things under your feet. Rotface - too much melee, good luck with oozones. Putricide - run, run, run, and on hc lots of dps loss due to handling plague if melee heavy. Sindragosa - getting slow debuff on attacking boss (probably wrong here, it was slowling attack speed only), and then you need to run away from her when she does her grip+aoe, more melee - more time your healers will be locked by magic debuff. Valithria - oh those exploding zombies. Princes - someone needs to keep bombs up, and too much melee causes problems with "disorient" special. Lich King - hi Defile, Frostmourne room and exploding adds in last phase, with too much melee you are in world of pain.

So far I only skipped Blood Queen part, doesn't look like it punishes for having too strong melee setup. "Meleecraft" was applicable to PvP? Probably. But not to PvE.

[Requital]

Unless you are trying to finish a tier for World top 10 the raid comp doesn't matter.

Come on Anaxie you know that is BS form past raid tiers, Firelands being a perfect example. As for the OP who knows about it for sure, The testing I have seen and watched I have seen 1 Ret in most of the tests but beta has been a joke this time around. No premade 90's eliminated 60% of the top end raiders that have no want or care to level to 90 twice.

I'd say watch the streams when they are streaming live and see what you can find out. But I'm not seeing a ton of Rets in streams only the one I watch regularly.

[Reith]

Marrowgar - can't dps during whirlwind, Deathwhisper - when she casts aoe on ground and then refuses to move out of it by spamming spells or her abominations in 1st phase? Gunship - if you have no ranged, it will be pathetic. Saurfang - hold your dps rotation half the fight due to fiends, and if you have no ranged - you are in trouble. Festergut - too much melee makes it impossible to see green things under your feet. Rotface - too much melee, good luck with oozones. Putricide - run, run, run, and on hc lots of dps loss due to handling plague if melee heavy. Sindragosa - getting slow debuff on attacking boss (probably wrong here, it was slowling attack speed only), and then you need to run away from her when she does her grip+aoe, more melee - more time your healers will be locked by magic debuff. Valithria - oh those exploding zombies. Princes - someone needs to keep bombs up, and too much melee causes problems with "disorient" special. Lich King - hi Defile, Frostmourne room and exploding adds in last phase, with too much melee you are in world of pain.

So far I only skipped Blood Queen part, doesn't look like it punishes for having too strong melee setup. "Meleecraft" was applicable to PvP? Probably. But not to PvE.

People who spout on and on and on about this so-called "Meleecraft" forget that Warriors were the main offenders and PVP was the only thing they completely dominated. But hey, if one class dominates in PVP, it somehow extends to all other melee in every facet of every part of the game. /rolleyes

[Requital]

People who spout on and on and on about this so-called "Meleecraft" forget that Warriors were the main offenders and PVP was the only thing they completely dominated. But hey, if one class dominates in PVP, it somehow extends to all other melee in every facet of every part of the game. /rolleyes

Warriors haven't dominated pvp since the TSG lolmourne days, Unless you mean tanks carrying flags.

[Reith]

Warriors haven't dominated pvp since the TSG lolmourne days, Unless you mean tanks carrying flags.

That's what I was referring to. Warrior/double healer 3s teams, mainly.

[Requital]

As it sits currently from all the time I have been raiding I can't honestly sit here and tell you one fight that is melee favorable and I've killed everything as melee and ranged. Range are nearly always going to have the easier time, mechanics that attack range have to start somewhere and they generally start melee.

Rhyolith is a good example as a ranged if you get hit by lava lines you are just being lazy, as Melee sure you can avoid them but you are more likely to get hit by them based on everything else you might be trying to do. There are a lot of fights like that after playing an Ele Shaman I can tell you there isn't one fight where I said oh shit this is hard as a ranged dps.

I highly doubt you will ever see the day a Raid leader says ok we need to stack melee for this fight. We could but certainly not likely unless the melee somehow managed to be the classes that burst the highest over all ranged highly unlikely.

[Freia]

There were next to no melee "unfavorable" in that instance. In fact it was so melee friendly, that they had to make mechanics force people into range. I can't believe how people don't remember the phrase "World of Meleecraft" that was tossed around so frequently back then. Shadowmourne compounded this issue as well.

Yea heroic blood princes was so fun as melee with a stacking debuff from moving on a target switching fight. /sarcasm
And Sindragosa, melee got the stacks from dpsing the boss period, casters only got stacks when they had unchained magic and hunters.....they got the same stacks as melee but at a very slow rate(it was a joke).

And plenty of fights required a lot of target switching which is flat out easier to do as range. It was not melee favored at all except Saurfang and Festergut. And on heroic Festergut was the same for both. World of Meleecraft huh? Thats why Fire Mages were pretty much the top of every fight pre-4.0 (and affiction locks for LK). Give me a break.

Warriors haven't dominated pvp since the TSG lolmourne days, Unless you mean tanks carrying flags.

They didn't even dominate then. The top comp was LSD 1.0 (EleShaman/Lock/RDruid). And other spellcleaves, like MLS and shatterplay(spriest/fmage/rshaman) were big as well. Casters using heroic trinkets>smourne warrior.

The blizzcon tournament that year had like 2 melee, a warrior on a team that I don't think won a game and a rogue on an RMP that might had placed 3rd or 4th.

[Requital]

They didn't even dominate then. The top comp was LSD 1.0 (EleShaman/Lock/RDruid). And other spellcleaves, like MLS and shatterplay(spriest/fmage/rshaman) were big as well. Casters using heroic trinkets>smourne warrior.

I think he might have been talking about Arena at a lower caliber level, TSG was very hard to get through and once you got through them you have all the DFO caster cleaves. But those were in the 2400+ range and not everyone has that level of partners or skill around them however the 2k to 2.3k was filled with DK, Ret & Warriors that would just zerg people down. They definitely dominated the lower 2.2k range but I agree the 2.4k+ range turned into caster cleaves.

[deeyoueye]

Ret will definitely be able to hold its own in MoP even with the recent nerfs.

[Requital]

MMO Homepage has live streaming for some heroic content this is your chance to see how Ret holds up, However it's hard to tell if that is a Ret or a Prot because tank damage is fairly high.

[herpecin]

while it's player > class, if you are in a guild that will sit you because of your class, then you are the type of player that will roll a new class mid tier for a 2% increase.

[Requital]

while it's player > class, if you are in a guild that will sit you because of your class, then you are the type of player that will roll a new class mid tier for a 2% increase.

No it's not and no I wouldn't. I've been in guilds where 1 Ret was 1 too many and 2 was unheard of but never would I have rerolled.

[wynterlyn]

Melee, in general, are more vulnerable to devastating boss mechanics due to the range most of all.

---------- Post added 2012-09-12 at 02:00 AM ----------



Luckily, it's always about bringing the player, not the class. Good player on a class with lower dps >>>>> idiot on a class with huge dps. Dead players do no dps.

I think this is very specific to each boss. Ragnaros and Morchok and Orc lady boss in DS come to mind. Melee have it easy on Morchok where they simply have to stack to absorb part of the stomp. Range have run back and forth and have a lot more going on with their crystals. Ragnaros as well Melee simply stood and could easily ignore the molten waves or whatever. Range actually had to look for numerous things including the random red fire on the ground.

So it isn't black and white. Melee has it easy on certain bosses, range has it hard on certain bosses and vice versa. But the consensus in general is raid groups will go for a range heavy set up cause you already have 2 tanks that are melee in there. Taking 2 more would make that 4 with 2/3 healers which would leave room for 3 Range DPS.

But it depends on each encounter.

[Tangra]

I think this is very specific to each boss. Ragnaros and Morchok and Orc lady boss in DS come to mind. Melee have it easy on Morchok where they simply have to stack to absorb part of the stomp. Range have run back and forth and have a lot more going on with their crystals. Ragnaros as well Melee simply stood and could easily ignore the molten waves or whatever. Range actually had to look for numerous things including the random red fire on the ground.

So it isn't black and white. Melee has it easy on certain bosses, range has it hard on certain bosses and vice versa. But the consensus in general is raid groups will go for a range heavy set up cause you already have 2 tanks that are melee in there. Taking 2 more would make that 4 with 2/3 healers which would leave room for 3 Range DPS.

But it depends on each encounter.

Ranged might occasionally be asked to do more, but they are still more effective overall even on such fights. Ultimately the only thing harder about ranged is having to pay attention and stand somewhere when you were told to once in a while, such simple tasks really don't justify ranged being drastically more versatile and almost infinitely stackable on almost every fight.

In a complex game like wow, which people play for years, skill cap really can't be used as an excuse to make classes that are harder to play more powerful. In an arcade game that people play once in a blue moon, sure it makes sense for classes that are harder to play to also be stronger, but in a game that you play for years, it doesn't really matter whether it took you 1 week to master your class or 2 weeks.

[Ferocity]

I think this is very specific to each boss. Ragnaros and Morchok and Orc lady boss in DS come to mind. Melee have it easy on Morchok where they simply have to stack to absorb part of the stomp. Range have run back and forth and have a lot more going on with their crystals. Ragnaros as well Melee simply stood and could easily ignore the molten waves or whatever. Range actually had to look for numerous things including the random red fire on the ground.

So it isn't black and white. Melee has it easy on certain bosses, range has it hard on certain bosses and vice versa. But the consensus in general is raid groups will go for a range heavy set up cause you already have 2 tanks that are melee in there. Taking 2 more would make that 4 with 2/3 healers which would leave room for 3 Range DPS.

But it depends on each encounter.

Morchok: if you will bring too much melee, melee will have to run back and forth to crystals too (huge dps loss). Ragnaros: fight mechanics require you to dps boss in face a lot of time, say hi to parries. Also too much melee will make Ragnaros hc impossible due to Molten Seeds' adds (unless melee are DKs). Hagara hc, frozen phase - extremely frustrating for melee, no way to do it with melee heavy team pre-nerf.

You miss the point that ranged can do their job in melee range if needed and can nuke things from range. Melee can't do anything from range, and if raid lacks ranged, melee have to fill ranged roles (like same Morchok), heavily gimping raid.

[Tangra]

Morchok: if you will bring too much melee, melee will have to run back and forth to crystals too (huge dps loss). Ragnaros: fight mechanics require you to dps boss in face a lot of time, say hi to parries. Also too much melee will make Ragnaros hc impossible due to Molten Seeds' adds (unless melee are DKs). Hagara hc, frozen phase - extremely frustrating for melee, no way to do it with melee heavy team pre-nerf.

You miss the point that ranged can do their job in melee range if needed and can nuke things from range. Melee can't do anything from range, and if raid lacks ranged, melee have to fill ranged roles (like same Morchok), heavily gimping raid.

Yeah heroic Rag was easily the biggest "screw you" to melee in a while. People forget that Blizzard now nerfs content fairly quickly after it's released, which creates the illusions that melee are not too bad, when in reality melee are very often complete trash until the nerfs start happening.

[Bonkura]

Yeah heroic Rag was easily the biggest "screw you" to melee in a while.

Didn't the fact that we were able to constantly stay on the boss during all movement make up for the fact that we were in front of him for the first 3 phases? Ranged classes lost a lot of DPS having to move so much and not being able to hard cast spells.

[Fhi]

There were next to no melee "unfavorable" in that instance. In fact it was so melee friendly, that they had to make mechanics force people into range. I can't believe how people don't remember the phrase "World of Meleecraft" that was tossed around so frequently back then. Shadowmourne compounded this issue as well.

Yes, ICC was very melee friendly. We didn't have to move much, it was the casters that kept having to move.