bastion of twilight melee unfriendly?

[PimpJuice4]

so,i was readin up on some stuff about the new raid.and i heard there was guilds like paragon benching melee dps because they took to much damage,and bosses that have mechanics like fire patches behind the boss and stuff

has anyone thats actually did the 10-25 mans that are melee dps can confirm this? just wondering because my main is melee dps.i just dont really get why blizzard would make the fights biased to ranged dps

[Thegreatme]

there are plenty of fights that ranged have a much easier time on than melee. in regards to twilight ascendant council, on the beta pretty much all of our melee would be dead 10-15s in to p3 when we tried hardmode. as a raid leader I would do exactly what paragon chose to do in that situation.


off the top of my head, other "anti-melee" fights include:

halfus, especially hardmode. on HM you have to stack drakes up to cleave them down, meaning you get like 29 giant wings flapping everywhere obstructing your view and making it extremely hard to dodge the fireballs, If you take a fireball right before the flame breathe you will probably die.

Omnotron, not really that bad but if your melee aren't paying attention they can get gibbed very easily by spawning toxitron adds.

Magmaw, melee can't viably help with killing parasites (or constricts on hardmode) bringing just enough melee so you can chain the boss down is most efficient

Atramedes, melee have to react much faster to the sound balls that spawn under the boss than the ranged do, melee can't DPS the boss during the air phases.

Valiona, guaranteed to splash the shadow bolts, requiring extra healer mana to be used.

Cho'gal, after a few adherents melee are more or less guaranteed to be fixated by at least 1 blood of the old god, meaning that they can't help kill the bloods. also if your raids DPS blows they get raped by the fester blood, ranged don't have to worry about it unless they are being dumb. ranged in general have to move much less on this fight meaning they can be much more efficient with their DPS.

conclave of winds: melee have to run away from the adds when they start doing their purple detonation thing, ranged can keep DPSing.

Nefarian, melee DPS in p3 can be limited by fire placements, also in p2 you can't help DPS nefarian.

[hamster]

This is just back to where we were in TBC, IMHO. 25-man raids were optimally balanced to have one group of melees. It's just wrath was incredibly melee/cleave friendly. I remember we have at times switch to having hunters in melee group. A nice setup being agi totem from resto shaman, feral bear tank, rogues and hunters.

[JollyWarrior]

1 group of melee and 3 of ranged seems like really bad design to me. To pigeon hole raids into that.

[Leucifer]

This is just back to where we were in TBC, IMHO. 25-man raids were optimally balanced to have one group of melees. It's just wrath was incredibly melee/cleave friendly. I remember we have at times switch to having hunters in melee group. A nice setup being agi totem from resto shaman, feral bear tank, rogues and hunters.

Wrath was melee friendly? On what basis?

LDW was cake for ranged as there, they rarely need to move. Saurfang is incredibly difficult without ranged due to blood beasts. Festergut is a pain without ranged due to spores and debuffs. Ranged dps is blessed in Dreamwalker with another tab-target bonanza. Sindy ... ranged can sit back and plink at her. LK.... ranged rule on the valks, especially once a defile or two drop. The frost orbs for melee on LK equal insta-death. That's just ICC.

[Kojiyama]

Anub was the only fight I can think of in Wrath which was particularly 'melee/cleave friendly' in any meaningful way. Melee were at huge disadvantages throughout Ulduar, TotC, and ICC as a general rule.

Sure, there were a handful of fights where melee had it easy--primarily General Vezax--but the majority of fights in Wrath had mechanics along the lines of 'don't clump up too much' or 'run away from things', which will always hurt melee a lot more than ranged as they are naturally clumped up by definition.

[Superworm]

Wrath was melee friendly? On what basis?

LDW was cake for ranged as there, they rarely need to move. Saurfang is incredibly difficult without ranged due to blood beasts. Festergut is a pain without ranged due to spores and debuffs. Ranged dps is blessed in Dreamwalker with another tab-target bonanza. Sindy ... ranged can sit back and plink at her. LK.... ranged rule on the valks, especially once a defile or two drop. The frost orbs for melee on LK equal insta-death. That's just ICC.

I disagree with you. LDW was unfriendly for melee. However, Saufang is OK for melee, as long as you set up a stun chain for the beasts or let hunters taunt the beasts. For Sindy, infact it's easier for melee to dodge the frost bomb because ranged have a larger distance to be pulled and that costs time.
And if you're in a guild like mine who spent months to down H LK, you should clearly have noticed that melee classes are superior in fighting Valkyries due to heavy cleave damage. It's just nearly impossible for a ranged heavy group to take them down before 20% buff.

[Ahti]

Yeah, I feel like Wrath had at least a few fights where melee were better. I have trouble of thinking of a fight I've seen so far in Cataclysm where melee are really superior - some fights where it doesn't matter and numerous fights where ranged are far better, but nothing where I'd rather have melee.

[Tengenstein]

While P1 of V&T is not melee friendly, how is P2 not melee friendly? stack up, don't move; DPS hard? Ranged on the other hand have to periodically move from the void zone as a group, while watching for engulfing magic, and the P2>P1 transition can be a pain for ranged arg we need to get out the fire, avoid the void zone, avoid the guy with engulfing magic, and avoid getting too close to the boss and dropping a voidzone under the tank. melee its a case off ah follow the tank out of fire, oh and carry on DPSing

[Loganisis]

I don't know if *most* of Wrath was melee unfriendly, but it was definately more forgiving to range. I don't really recall feeling gimped by the mechanics compared to range until ICC (then again, I was behind on the progression curve, so I wasn't there as things dropped) - and then it felt like ICC was just designed to bring in 2 tanks, heals and range for optimum. But even then, PP, Sid, LK were the only fights that seemed to favor forgoing melee (others like DBS and Council required range, but I'm not sure they favored it so much as it was just easier to be range for them).

So I'd say that Wrath wasn't melee unfriendly, it just had sweeter eyes for range.

[mrmojoz]

I've raided as ranged and melee DPS, ranged is much much easier across the board. You'd figure melee would do more DPS in general because of this but it seems this is the way Blizzard wants it.

[Knighterrant81]

Melee definitely get the short end of the stick when it comes to PVE. I think it is difficult to design something that is hard for ranged, without also making it hard on melee, while vice versa is not always true. Positioning makes a much bigger difference for melee than it does for ranged. It is really hard to not view melee as a liability.

Way back in BC, my main was a Rogue, and I switched to ranged (Shadow/Holy Priest) because of really ridiculous things like butt-cleaves and bosses where the strategy guide began with "if you are melee, you probably should just stand back and take a break on this one".

I don't really see any advantages to bringing melee. Sometimes I think they do a bit more damage than ranged on stationary fights, and having all your attacks be instant is helpful on any fight that puts out slowing debuffs or something like that. They do tend to have much more reliable interrupts but overall, unless you just really like playing melee for some reason, I don't know why if you were really min/maxing your raid you wouldn't just dump all of your melee. Hunters can bring physical DPS, Ele Shaman can bring the interrupts, and if you need someone to stand in melee range, well, most ranged can do that just fine. You can completely trivialize certain mechanics just by not bringing melee.

I suppose having some melee to soak up the inevitable drops is helpful, and having a few mainspec melee DPS folks who can switch to a tanking offspec in a pinch is really nice to have. But otherwise, what advantages are there to bringing melee at all?

[Kojiyama]

Yeah, I think that is really the issue right now. They have designed a lot of reasons not to be melee but very few reasons where the opposite is true.

Like you say, this is difficult. Traditionally they have been able to hurt 'ranged' by doing stuff with mana and other strange mechanics, but this isn't always practical nowadays for many reasons--not the least of which being that Hunters don't use mana and two melee classes do.

It used to be that ranged was quite penalized by movement-heavy fights, but many ranged classes have recieved a multitide of ways to deal damage while moving over the years. At the moment, it's not really the major penalty it used to be--especially when classes like Mages able to do almost 95% damage while moving nowadays.

I'd like to see a few more mechanics that actually helped melee specifically--but it's a lot easier to slap down void zones and tell the raid to run back and forth all the time than it is to come up with ways to do this.

[Knighterrant81]

Yeah, I think melee are affected by movement too - especially if the *boss* needs to be moved around because of various latency/range issues.

[PatrikL]

Magmaw, melee can't viably help with killing parasites (or constricts on hardmode) bringing just enough melee so you can chain the boss down is most efficient

With the exception that frost DKs are extremely good for parasites :-) I've only done it twice on normal so far since I'm not raiding too much these days but it's not uncommon that I do 50% more than the top ranged on them with a couple of HB per pack.

[Illidra]

normal mdoe it's nto too bad, you can get away with 3 mellee on most fights.

i wouldnt suggest ever tanking more than 2 unless its a 1 tank fight.

[Kojiyama]

DKs at least have the advantage of having a number of ranged or ranged-ish abilities, which helps them a lot. Cats and Warriors are pretty poor when it comes to AoE nowadays (with Warriors getting even worse after the patch in this dept.), which further emphasizes some of the problems.

[proudmoore]

Our little 10-man group saw this one coming from a long way back - I think it was Blood Princes hardmode that convinced us that 2 ranged, 3 melee was not a combination we wanted to continue using in Cataclysm. We've not yet had a reason to regret the decision.

As has been pointed out - melee are limited by mechanics that ranged are not. Abilities like spell reflect or magical resistance affect some ranged - but, like the aforementioned mana, not all ranged classes, and more than one of the melee classes as well. To equalise things, ranged - all ranged, not just some of them - would need to have a limitation that melee do not. Something like an extension of the Hunter minimum range (although with a greater width and applied to every ranged talent spec) would serve as a perfect complement to melee being unable to attack during dragon airphases, for example.

I'm grinning just imaging the volume of tears that would flow from such a change, but I doubt it will ever happen.

[Edgewalker]

The issues are WAY overblown at the moment for the majority of guilds, and even the OP's source has been hotfixed.

Magmaw is a wash... ranged have to move occasionally. melee really free DPS the entire time. Most guilds kite the adds.

Omnitron has 2 mechanics that are melee unfriendly - slime adds that fixate on melee, and the lightning charge. These are very minor parts of the fight and easily avoided.

Atramedes sound barriers are very easy to avoid at maximum range, and you don't need to peel off the boss to do it thanks for the obscene hitbox. Not being able to attack in P2 is a pain though.

Chimearon is stand still and fight. Clumping and spread for the debuff can favor ranged slightly.

Maloriak is, again, a wash, with the only minor exception being debuffs in the blue phase. Again, so minor it doesn't matter.

Nefarian is virtually stand still in fight. I don't know why you cited fire location, as the fire is player controlled and movement in that instance favors melee over ranged.

BASTION -

Halfus mechanics affect both ranged and melee equally. Fireball dodging with all drakes active in hard mode is difficult if you don't have your camera and video settings properly set... but again, that is a fault of the player not a baseline fault of melee as a whole. Instants favor melee over ranged overall for ease of play.

Valiona and Theralion GREATLY favor melee. Melee can completely ignore the meteor mechanic, the blackout mechanic, and are generally not affected by Thera's debuff with reflective group damage. Melee can damage the boss while moving and running from portals and from breaths.

Elementium Council is a mixed bag. Glaciate is obviously anti-melee, as is the knockback from the fire wall. Damage spread from running to grounds and tornadoes, and Arion's port, and eruption, are again very melee unfriendly.
These mechanics are annoying, but do not affect the overall outcome of the fight or an "enrage" when handled properly.
Elementium Monstrosity himself has the silver pools which when slowly kited doesn't affect melee at all, lava seeds which don't affect melee, encapsulate (or whatever it's called now) that affects everyone equally, and a chain lightning which was hotfixed to prioritize ranged targets. The "difficult" phase of this fight has had melee/ranged preference removed.

Cho'Gall is relatively equal. Melee and ranged have split assignments with adds, and assigning melee to close tentacles and ranged to far tentacles is relatively simple.

It isn't nearly the issue that people make it out to be.

[Edgewalker]

DKs at least have the advantage of having a number of ranged or ranged-ish abilities, which helps them a lot. Cats and Warriors are pretty poor when it comes to AoE nowadays (with Warriors getting even worse after the patch in this dept.), which further emphasizes some of the problems.

That's a class balance problem, not a ranged/melee problem though. There are melee and ranged classes both that are very far behind on the overall balance scale (I play a ret paladin, so I know how bad some disparities are).