Why is N'Zoth even a boss if melee exist in the game?

[Hellobolis]

I'm sorry that I have to spell this out for you but the joke isn't that I think you want every fight to be Baleroc, it's that you think such a balance is even achievable. Vague criticisms that "melee sucks," have existed since the game launched yet somehow melee players still find raid spots, tier after tier, expansion after expansion. The reality isn't that Blizzard "favors" either ranged or melee, it's just that encounter design will always naturally sway in one direction or the other and players will constantly bitch that the grass is always greener on the other side.

Sure melee gets raidspots, but there are many raidfights with maximum melee spots, while you can count the amount of fights with maximum ranged spots on one hand.

And while i do believe they don't do that with some anti melee intention in mind, they have to be aware of how that will turn out when they make "can't stand within 10 yards of another player" bosses. I don't mind it on a boss like n'zoth with the sucks you to the boss mechanic, but on something like fetid devourer it's just stupid design.

it's not been that bad in BFA though.

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What do you want Blizzard to do? Have a checklist of all raid mechanics and force them to add a commensurate number of fuck you ranged mechanics for every fuck you melee mechanic they add? I'd hate to be an encounter designer under your ideal conditions: Gone would be the days where I could just throw a dragon in a dungeon and have it breathe fire in a 90 degree cone. Nah -- now I've gotta meet our fuck you ranged DPS quotas or else the Melee Raid Mechanics Union will begin drafting harshly worded criticisms directed at my boss. Fuck man, why can't dragons just be dragons?

Theres plenty of mechanis in the game with hidden conditions like "always goes on ranged unless there is less than 3 ranged" or "doesn't target healers".

just make something like that so it's always possible to have 6-8 melee before the mechanics actively punish it. or you know, just don't make mechanics that by their nature limit the melee spots in the first place (and there's a difference between melee unfriendly mechanics, and melee spot limiting mechanics)

[Miyagie]

We had around 2-3 addons were melees had to do 1 mechanic (not even at all bosses) and ranges, tanks and healer did the rest.
Now we got some addons that involve doing mechanic for a few melees and the sky is falling down...

[Dartakan]

Even that can be done by a range, they dont lose anything if they stand next to the boss. You bring melee dps for their boss, if the tank/healers cant cover for them or if their spec is broken in dps. There is really no downside in having a roster full of range dps.

[hulkgor]

just make something like that so it's always possible to have 6-8 melee before the mechanics actively punish it. or you know, just don't make mechanics that by their nature limit the melee spots in the first place

This is an absurd notion, in its entirety.

so let's have a preferential role with no\less mechanics to deal with (poor melee), whilst the ranged deal with the mechanics, or at least the more punishing ones?

Seriously? Get a friggin' grip.

[Lucetia]

To add salt to injury it's worth pointing out that there are more melee dps specs than ranged dps! Outrageous!!!

Oh like how they even converted a ranged spec to melee too?

[Hellobolis]

This is an absurd notion, in its entirety.

so let's have a preferential role with no\less mechanics to deal with (poor melee), whilst the ranged deal with the mechanics, or at least the more punishing ones?

Seriously? Get a friggin' grip.

no i'm not saying shift mechanics to ranged. i'm saying make it so it's not an automatic wipe if more than 4 players are in melee range of the boss, which has happened quite some times. while on the reverse i can only vaguely remember ever hearing you can't bring more than 4 ranged players once, and that was more of a strong suggestion rather than a guaranteed wipe deal.

theres 14 dps spots in a raid, and i think it's fair to say that all bosses should be killable with a 40%/60% (aka 6/8) dps split. (and while were at it, also without strongly encouraging 10 immunity classes thanks)

[Kaver]

Fun fact: ranged classes can actually stand in melee range to handle mechanics if need be.

Not if the mechanics for example involve heavy movement. That will punish caster classes heavily (BM hunter can of course handle everything). And that’s my point: Blizzard can easily make mechanics which are hard to deal with by casters. But for some reason they don’t do that very often.

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Of course mechanics will be reused. That wasn't the point. Some fights have new mechanics some have only reused in different configurations, that's the nature of things.
Problem melee mechanics have is that they have constraints that ranged don't have. You have a small area in which all of the mechanics need to happen as well as you have to take into account that everyone at melee are more bunched up than ranged.

As soon as you have a mechanic that calls for spread among ranged compared to melee you have situations where ranged gets less penalised in spreading out while in melee the mechanic have more of an impact for everyone at melee. More people will lose dps output compared to ranged.

Any mechanic that requires repositioning will also affect melee more than ranged. Any repositioning is shorter for ranged than for melee in most cases. Like Ra-den for example. Melee have to travel lot further to deal dps to orbs and to get back to ra-den than ranged have to simply because they have ranged.

I mean, ranged do have mechanics which requires to move and reposition there is no shortage of that... my entire point is the ranged have it easier to deal with those than melee simply because they have RANGED attacks.

To adress you opulence example. Now we get back to my point on mechanics feeling the same rather than reusing mechanics. To make things like that which basically punishes ranged while not punishing melee you get a lot of constraints in how the mechanic can work. There more constraints you have to design a mechanic the similar the mechanic will feel and then we have to add this sort of mechanic to a lot of bosses which increases the frequency of this type of mechanic which once again leads to similarity.

Point is that ranged is such a big advantage over being melee simply from an adaptation pov. Ranged can adapt to situations more easily than melee can because they can attack from any range, while melee can't.

The Ra-den orbs are not really an issue because melees can plan their way out of it. Most melee has pretty great mobility so you just need to have good timing.

The issue are mechanics which straight up force you to be away from all enemies for an extended period and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Blizzard can create mechanics which are punishing for ranged. They can make more mechanics which requires movement for extended periods which will punish casters. For example the spinning flames on opulence. They can also make more smoke clouds like on Drestagath so you can only attack the target in melee range combined with dodge mechanics. And they can make mechanics which only target ranged players that limit the amount of ranged players you can have in a raid group. Blizzard just need to be creative because they have every possible to create melee biased mechanics. People are just set in the usual raid mechanics instead of thinking outside the box.

[epigramx]

yet somehow melee players still find raid spots, tier after tier, expansion after expansion. The reality isn't that Blizzard "favors" either ranged or melee, it's just that encounter design will always naturally sway in one direction or the other and players will constantly bitch that the grass is always greener on the other side.

Hold up. The point is that the "other side" perspective is on average worse for melee in PvE. I have raided both as pure melee and pure ranged and it's clear melee is annoying in more fights (especially if you don't have the most versatile class of it (rogue)).

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you just make melee do more damage than ranged.

I came up with that solution too while I was reading the thread. I guess a problem would be that the ranged will whine like no tomorrow.
Mages especially always demand very high numbers and they will en-masse complain to Blizzard about it (I know because I maged).

[iosdeveloper]

at least melee's "feel the mobs" and can have some minor fun jumping around during boss

only thing ranged feel is that constant frustration you have to cancel your long cast to move

[Donkeywing]

At least they actually removed a ranged spec while adding a fuckton of melee ones. You will play melee whether you like it or not.
Hoping for melee warlock and battle mage at some point.

[Relapses]

Hold up. The point is that the "other side" perspective is on average worse for melee in PvE. I have raided both as pure melee and pure ranged and it's clear melee is annoying in more fights (especially if you don't have the most versatile class of it (rogue)).

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I came up with that solution too while I was reading the thread. I guess a problem would be that the ranged will whine like no tomorrow.
Mages especially always demand very high numbers and they will en-masse complain to Blizzard about it (I know because I maged).

I find it incredibly difficult to take you seriously when your entire complaint is melee "is annoying" and the one solution you agree with is to just buff melee damage so much that ranged DPS players would cry foul. I guess I should be glad people like you are summarily ignored by devs so enjoy your melee sucks echo chamber in the meantime. /shrug

[Magical Mudcrab]

Welcome to world of warcraft where raids have literally shat on melee since Burning Crusade?
Crap in Wrath they gave rogues Killing Spree and there were a few bosses where us using it LITERALLY KILLED US.

Magmaw was a brilliantly designed boss with no flaws whatsoever. I won't have him slandered because of killing spree.

[Baneto]

People keep spewing this gibberish, but the fact is that a lot of times, it's the exact opposite and it's ranged dps getting shafted.

Okay so Nighthold is one example, do you have any more?

[erifwodahs]

There are soooo many fights where you get some sort of debuff that you have to run away with to drop a patch on the ground or explode. This mechanics is seen in so many encounters. So they are already reusing the same sort of mechanics over and over again. And they should be able to make other melee mechanic than simply soaking something. They can make mechanics where the lack of mobility of caster becomes a disadvantage. Like when one of the adds of Opulence does the spinning flames. We need more mechanics like this that punish casters and reduce their uptime just like "running away mechanics" do for melee. It's only fair.

You realize that casters are not standing and shooting fireballs all the time? EVERY dodge mechanic for melee is 0 impact. Literally 0. For a caster you can't cast. So yeah, then we should make that melee can't dps while moving. Which is stupid and not fun. Ton of boss models are so big that even spread mechanics can be done and melee still dps the boss while their swing point looks like 20 yards away from even touching the boss skin.

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Okay so Nighthold is one example, do you have any more?

Every boss mechanic where you have to dodge? Run away from? Only DK's and paladins are wheelchairing in raids while mage is probably the only class which can get around as easy as monk/war/dh/roegue can.

[Kaver]

You realize that casters are not standing and shooting fireballs all the time? EVERY dodge mechanic for melee is 0 impact. Literally 0. For a caster you can't cast. So yeah, then we should make that melee can't dps while moving. Which is stupid and not fun. Ton of boss models are so big that even spread mechanics can be done and melee still dps the boss while their swing point looks like 20 yards away from even touching the boss skin.

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Every boss mechanic where you have to dodge? Run away from? Only DK's and paladins are wheelchairing in raids while mage is probably the only class which can get around as easy as monk/war/dh/roegue can.

Yes exactly. But there is not enough mechanics like this. There is not enough mechanics which punish ranged classes and prevent the stacking of ranged classes. We need more dodging mechanics, more smoke cloud mechanics, more movement-for extended-time mechanics.. we need more mechanics in raids that incentivize the use of melees and that punish classes with cast time.

[loras]

They are simply out of range a lot of the time while the ranged are not. Method had the same criticism.

Because it's fun to have buttons that can instantly kill you if your mind wanders at the wrong moment during the somanieth attempt.

*eyes Charge-button warily"

But honestly it's part and parcel to fighting superpowered creatures, as raiding tends to involve.

If i were foolish enough to get close to an elephant while everbody is shooting it with arrows i'd likely end up dead too.

The only way to make it "make sense" for melee to even exist in such a setting is by making it do a lot more stronger/reliable/sustainable dps than ranged classes, but for balancing reasons and pvp that's not gonna work.

So yeah, welcome to mmo-raiding where melee dps is fucked up from the concept up.

All the more reason to make the game not revolve around just one form of endgame content.

[Baneto]

Every boss mechanic where you have to dodge? Run away from? Only DK's and paladins are wheelchairing in raids while mage is probably the only class which can get around as easy as monk/war/dh/roegue can.

I cant think of many such boss mechanics, other than maybe in dungeons perhaps but not in raids.

[erifwodahs]

Yes exactly. But there is not enough mechanics like this. There is not enough mechanics which punish ranged classes and prevent the stacking of ranged classes. We need more dodging mechanics, more smoke cloud mechanics, more movement-for extended-time mechanics.. we need more mechanics in raids that incentivize the use of melees and that punish classes with cast time.

We don't. Melee is way more fluid gameplay in the first place so what do you want? Ranged caster specs being absolute dogshit to play in raids?

[GEICO gekko IRL]

You're free to believe that but 15,000 Fire Mage parses compared to 450 Arcane Mage parses seems to indicate maybe...just maybe... some people are factoring more than just 'fun' into the equation when they decide what spec to play.

Fun is subjective why are you trying to argue this. Fun to one person could be seeing big crits fly across the screen while fun to another could be a certain sequence of actions (i.e. rotation)and fun to the next person could be just simply doing the most DPS. Hard concept to grasp for some I suppose, so you're free to believe what you will as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Kaver]

We don't. Melee is way more fluid gameplay in the first place so what do you want? Ranged caster specs being absolute dogshit to play in raids?

Of course not. I just want ranged to not dominate raiding like they have through the last decade. Blizzard should make more mechanics that are punishing to ranged:

- Smoke clouds so you cannot attack the target unless you are in melee range.

- Dodge mechanics that gets wider the further you are from the target.

- Mechanics that make the players move for extended periods.

- Mechanics that only target ranged players so it is really punishing if you have 10+ ranged players in a group.

- Adds that focus ranged players and needs to be killed by melee to save the ranged players.

There are many options to make melee more viable in raiding. Blizzard just need to be creative and think outside their traditional raid design.

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I find it incredibly difficult to take you seriously when your entire complaint is melee "is annoying" and the one solution you agree with is to just buff melee damage so much that ranged DPS players would cry foul. I guess I should be glad people like you are summarily ignored by devs so enjoy your melee sucks echo chamber in the meantime. /shrug

There is some truth to what he is saying:

- currently there is no performance related reason to play melee in raiding. You will always be at a disadvantage compared to ranged classes. So in practice melees are just annoying. It’s the sad truth.

- melees will on average have much less uptime than ranged. So either Blizzard should reduce the uptime of ranged classes with mechanics or they should make melee do more damage per uptime second than ranged.