Too many melee DPS?

[OokOok]

Hey everyone!

So, I was "forced" to reroll to a ranged DPS. I was a Frost DK and currently I'm leveling a Balance Druid. To be fair, I wasn't forced into anything, but towards the end of HC Uldir and going into Mythic, out guild leader asked the melee DPS if anyone was willing to reroll to ranged. Since we had no Balance druid and because Frost DK is as fun at the moment as pulling your own teeth, I volunteered. It was ultimately my decision, but it got me thinking: are there too many melee DPS or it just looks like it based on our guild? Granted, there's 11 ranged DPS specs compared to 13 melee ones, and while the latter is more, it's not so big of a difference that it would warrant us having 70-30% melee to ranged ratio. I left in the middle of WoD ad ever since the start of BfA, I had this feeling that the melee market is over-flooded: even as I look at the group finder tool, most of the people look for ranged DPS if they specify their needs, which implies that getting a melee is not a problem.

So, how do you feel about this? Are there more melee? If so, why? Is it a design problem or melee are just more popular by nature?

I mained a rogue in Mythic Tomb, for anyone who cleared mythic tomb will understand why rogues were god mode for clearly the raid, especially avatar and KJ. After tomb rogues were basically obsolete when they made cloak not as OP and feint. My guild had no Boomies so I also made the switch when asked, this is the dumbest decision you can do, making a class your main YOU didn't pick, I was miserable, it wasn't fun and boomkin was in a good spot in ANT, they weren't top on ST but they were pretty up there on all AOE encounters, and still I just wasn't having fun, to the point I quit when we were on phase 4 argus. Just wasn't worth it.

Take my advice dude, tell em to fuck off and play what you want, or at least play a range you want to play. I'm playing Mage and Hunter atm and sticking with my range atmosphere this expansion to see what it's like as I played rogue since Vanilla.

But to stick to the topic, melee have never been fav, we saw this hardcore around the time cata hit, someone could link the old paragon video of their Al'akir fight, that's when it started, and Council in BoT. prior to cata, melee weren't in heavy demand(Hell in vanilla raids were half Rogues and Warriors) Even TBC with the OP warlock SL build you'd still see heavy line ups of warriors and rogues even the odd feral,ench. but fights weren't anal anti melee until that era of cata where guilds were like "Shit....we can't bring this many" Yes maybe 1 fight was fuck off melee, but not half the raid like we have now. Best bet, stick ranged and start enjoying it.

[Filfa]

You mean Zul right the only good melee on Ghuun are frost DKs and Arms warriors.

Will be playing Arms for Ghuun, rip ret

[Elestia]

The problem is having too many required melee specs in a 20 man roster.

If you're going to maximize buffs and debuffs, that means havoc, ww, maybe a dps dk for grip (2+ on zul) retribution and one warrior will always be present. So yea, good for you guys.

I main Enhance... and it has zero value, if not negative value due to shaman's notorious shit survivability.
Besides, shamans are never needed between mages and hunters. Plus WW and Havoc can cover the AoE stun. This means enhance is dead, and maybe ele can be an option if it can pull numbers (which it can't)...

By the same token, Feral is never needed, between DKs and caster druids. So same issue as shamans, where their melee spec is shunted into ranged dps or healing.

Only Survival Hunters have the dps to stay in melee, even though they have 2 freaking ranged specs!

The only other melee left would be rogue, which has more that enough damage and defensives to be viable.


So a 20 man mythic would look something like:

Tank
Tank
Hpal

Arms / Fury
Ret
Frost / Unholy
Havoc
Windwalker

Mage
Warlock
Hunter
Disc

RDruid / HPriest
RSham / MW


Soo... that's 14 slots, and already the melee is full.
Ret buffs and utility, warrior buff, dk grip, dh debuff, monk debuff and hpal makes 6, tanks make 8. Maybe rogues get added in but that's it. The six other slots are going to be filled by ranged.

[Deleted]

2. Fast Paced. Melee have a lower GCD and all their abilities are instant. Being forced to move in the middle of a 2.5s cast is the most annoying thing in the game, and all ranged specs bar BM Hunter have to deal with it. BM Hunter is the only ranged spec that doesn't suffer from this, and therefore everyone who wants to play ranged but doesn't want to deal with cast times plays BM. Which is why BM has literally always been the most popular spec in the game (since TBC anyway).

This is the reason why I won't play ranged anymore and I'd imagine I'm not alone. The problem with BM is you then have to deal with pet management which is annoying. I've had people moan that they are waiting for me to dismiss my pet when taking a shortcut but would also moan when the pet isn't and pulls half the dungeon so you can't really win.

[Deleted]

Hey everyone!

So, I was "forced" to reroll to a ranged DPS. I was a Frost DK and currently I'm leveling a Balance Druid. To be fair, I wasn't forced into anything, but towards the end of HC Uldir and going into Mythic, out guild leader asked the melee DPS if anyone was willing to reroll to ranged. Since we had no Balance druid and because Frost DK is as fun at the moment as pulling your own teeth, I volunteered. It was ultimately my decision, but it got me thinking: are there too many melee DPS or it just looks like it based on our guild? Granted, there's 11 ranged DPS specs compared to 13 melee ones, and while the latter is more, it's not so big of a difference that it would warrant us having 70-30% melee to ranged ratio. I left in the middle of WoD ad ever since the start of BfA, I had this feeling that the melee market is over-flooded: even as I look at the group finder tool, most of the people look for ranged DPS if they specify their needs, which implies that getting a melee is not a problem.

So, how do you feel about this? Are there more melee? If so, why? Is it a design problem or melee are just more popular by nature?

Should have gone unholy, we are rdps

More seriously...mdps seems more popular, plus uldir mechanics make melee heavy groups trickier.

[Aktec]

Its a clear problem in the game atm and has been for some time, ever since post-mop where blizz took away a lot of the cast on the move tools there has been large migration of players from range>melee. But instead of recognising this Blizz has made moves in the oppisite direction, in the new classes they've created they added 4 melee specs (7 if you include tank specs) and 0 range specs. While also promoting 'melee healers' thereby over-saturating the melee area in raids even more.

With the application of m+ and so many mechanics where you have to move of as well as multiple silencing mobs in each dungeon it just feels like a giant FU to casters. When was the last time there was a disarm in a dungeon? Imagine if when moving you could only auto-attack as a melee, thats what playing a range feels like in bfa.

[omeomorfismo]

Its a clear problem in the game atm and has been for some time, ever since post-mop where blizz took away a lot of the cast on the move tools there has been large migration of players from range>melee. But instead of recognising this Blizz has made moves in the oppisite direction, in the new classes they've created they added 4 melee specs (7 if you include tank specs) and 0 range specs. While also promoting 'melee healers' thereby over-saturating the melee area in raids even more.

With the application of m+ and so many mechanics where you have to move of as well as multiple silencing mobs in each dungeon it just feels like a giant FU to casters. When was the last time there was a disarm in a dungeon? Imagine if when moving you could only auto-attack as a melee, thats what playing a range feels like in bfa.

think. half the time when melee had to move they couldnt even aa because they are out of range!

[Marrilaife]

think. half the time when melee had to move they couldnt even aa because they are out of range!

How about they design mechanics that challenge the melee and aren't "stop dps and run to soak that puddle". These kind of mechanics will always favour overstacking range, while leaving the few privileged melee to sit and tunnel boss, while the rest of the melee are benched. This is not good for anyone.

[omeomorfismo]

How about they design mechanics that challenge the melee and aren't "stop dps and run to soak that puddle". These kind of mechanics will always favour overstacking range, while leaving the few privileged melee to sit and tunnel boss, while the rest of the melee are benched. This is not good for anyone.

i know, but isnt something that could be resolved. ranged>melee, thats it. you had to limit ranged in some way like less dps or turret style damage otherwise melee will be disappear. thats even the reason because realistically BM shouldnt be viable....

[Aktec]

think. half the time when melee had to move they couldnt even aa because they are out of range!

Not in my experience, there are so many mechanics especially in m+ that requires just sidestepping to dodge something. On those melee still maintain 100% dps rotation whereas range have to interupt their cast. Even on the big movement mechanics with the amount of mobility that so many melee specs have in modern wow there is little to no downtime.

[Kanariya]

Melee is easier to play mechanically and easier to perform in raids as a lot of the mechanics only target ranged players, and you don't lose any DPS for movement unless you fall outside of the hitbox (which are 10x larger today than they were in Vanilla/BC). The playstyle is fast and they all (aside from Pallies) have at minimum a +10% passive movement speed buff that no ranged gets. Melee also dominate PvP substantially, so players that enjoy both pve and pvp are more likely to play melee.

[Jacob6875]

It's no shock that we are over saturated with melee these days.

Every single class that has been added to the game has been melee. With the exception of 1 monk spec. (and even then you still want to be in melee sometimes as a mistweaver). They even added a melee spec for hunters.

Melee classes are also doing exceptionally well as DPS. Parsing higher than any ranged spec but Warlocks on a lot of fights.

Blizzard should have added additional ranged classes to the game at some point.

[ymn]

It's no shock that we are over saturated with melee these days.

Every single class that has been added to the game has been melee. With the exception of 1 monk spec. (and even then you still want to be in melee sometimes as a mistweaver). They even added a melee spec for hunters.

Melee classes are also doing exceptionally well as DPS. Parsing higher than any ranged spec but Warlocks on a lot of fights.

Blizzard should have added additional ranged classes to the game at some point.

New ranged class for 14.0 announced.

Can't wait for 2030.

[beelgers]

Is there an option for "I don't really care what the balance is as long as they're good"? Because that's generally how I always feel about it. I've had almost all melee. You can almost always find a way to make it work fine.

[paxen]

I think it really is as simple as 6 classes that can ranged dps vs 9 classes that can melee.

To fix this, Unholy can be ranged (proper old skool wcII death knights!) and monks can get a fourth Crane spec, as they always should have had

(Seriously, it's so annoying that you have *three* specs that each match up to one of the celestials, and then just ignoring Crane and giving its stuff to the Yulon spec)

[Deleted]

shoehorn sub to be ranged somehow
when there is will there is way

[Sarevokcz]

Not in my experience, there are so many mechanics especially in m+ that requires just sidestepping to dodge something. On those melee still maintain 100% dps rotation whereas range have to interupt their cast. Even on the big movement mechanics with the amount of mobility that so many melee specs have in modern wow there is little to no downtime.

there are plenty of mechanics that force melee out of range constantly, best example the shark boss, yes, ranged have to deal with sharks, but melee are literally forced out of the fight for like 6s every 30 seconds or so... simple, yet worst designed boss of the expansion, or the constant whirlwind miniboss in kings rest etc. ranged have to deal with interrupting casts, melee have to deal with not being eaten alive by all the aoes and cleaves mobs and bosses do

and there is a reason why the mythic guilds were pushing with primarily casters on most bosses, there is only so much room for melee, when certain mechanics target them aswell, melees had a GREAT time in Nighthold, where plenty of punishing mechanics were ranged only, not so much now

[Saverem]

Doesn't help when Blizz makes them outperform the ranged and then to add insult to injury, DELETES a ranged spec and ADDS a melee spec in Legion.

Also, 6 of the 11 ranged specs in the game (over 50%) are relegated to only 2 classes.


If DHs had a ranged spec, I'd be all over that shit.

[Marrilaife]

Doesn't help when Blizz makes them outperform the ranged and then to add insult to injury, DELETES a ranged spec and ADDS a melee spec in Legion.

Also, 6 of the 11 ranged specs in the game (over 50%) are relegated to only 2 classes.


If DHs had a ranged spec, I'd be all over that shit.

Also doesn't help that half the ranged dps classes have a history of being mediocre to bad, so people are worried of playing them and then being stuck with a crappy class. Haven't enjoyed my ele shaman since MOP because Blizzard is constantly screwing with the spec. Spriest / boomkin have also a bumpy road with more downs than ups.

Now take Havoc for example, newest melee spec, easier to play than many others, and still always either top or middle of the pack performing. Never ever it sucked ass.

Also I'd love another ranged class with a tank offspec, because bear atm is plain horrible, boring and unfun.
Melee class with tank offspec? All 6 tank classes fulfil this criteria. Melee class with healer offspec? You have 4 to choose from! Melee with a ranged dps offspec? Druid, shaman and hunter work. Why is there still only 1 class with tank + range spec existing.

[wink-]

One thing they need to do is increase the CD of interrupt on melee and shorten it on ranged for PVE.