bastion of twilight melee unfriendly?

[Speech]

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

The problem is not that it is easier or harder for melee / ranged to complete a fight, the problem is that There is no fight that it is required to bring melee. Historically the only fights where melee actually contributed something beyond normal were cleave heavy fights. This is no longer the case. (multi target fights are dominated by casters)

However the real kicker is, every raid NEEDS ranged to fulfill some duty. Whether its standing spread out and avoiding different effects, kiting adds, dpsing the boss in the air, or just being a viable target for an effect at range. Raid designers have never given us a reason to want more melee in a raid. The only question is how many melee do we have to take after the ranged are invited.

[Kojiyama]

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).

The point being, even fights that are 'melee friendly' aren't 'ranged unfriendly', while there are still a fair number of mechanics that are specifically melee unfriendly.

Gone are the days when melee did more DPS on tank and spank fights and therefore gained an advantage when they didn't have to move. Likewise, spell pushbacks used to play a major role in this type of thing, but with the current pushback mechanics this is a much weaker effect than it used to be.

You and Tengenstein cite V&T as favoring melee, but does it really? Even with the majority of P2 being stand still and pewpew, ranged are still in no great disadvantage from having to stand outside and move from void zones. They can be targeted by the temporary double damage buff, which easily offsets any minor DPS loss they take from having to move every 10 seconds or so--additionally, the majority of ranged classes don't even care about having to move for a couple seconds like that and can simply use instants.

Being melee in the fight is probably easier, but that doesn't mean it yields better results.

In normal, ranged can DPS through P1 and during both phase transitions, while melee can easily have little DPS time during them.

The whole concept of the advantage of melee being that they can DPS while moving (as long as they are close) is somewhat subverted by the fact that most ranged classes can do decent damage while they are moving as well. What does a Fire Mage lose while moving when moving Scorch is about 90% of the DPS as Fireball and everything else is instant?

[Feanorr]

Like many said, it's not bastion of twilight that are melee unfriendly but WoW with the exeption of ICC, who got a few fight where melee were good to have; for almost all other raids, at best melee are not a problem (but not having them isnt a problem either), most of the time they have to work harder for, at best, the same result than ranged.

They are many fight in WoW where, as a raid leader, you try to avoid too many melee; I cant think of any where you would try to avoid too many ranged.

[Katzazi]

Well we are often quit short on melee. And you can feel it. One thing most melee are better than most ranged (with the exception of ele shaman) is interrupting. You need this for some encounters and using only tank interrupts is not enough since their CD is too long or two abiliites have to be dealt with.

For V&T I have to switch over to Fury, because my co-tank has a healing spec with no gear for it. I hate it. I don't use it outside of raids. Well I did some questing with it, but well you can be very lazy with your rotation while questing. My equip is ok, but not all stats are where they should be. I screw up at least something about every 10s with the rotation. I use my CDs quite randomly when I happen to think about then, without looking if I have a buff, or even knowing what is good to use at the same time and what to use in which order. In short: Most "other" DPS classes probably play their class much better. But the only one beating me in dmg done for this encounter is the warlock. The ele shaman beeing last, because he is really hurt by all the movement. Mages and Spriest somewhere in the middle. Sure they probably can do something while moving, but it's probably not optimal for them.

[Kojiyama]

You're certainly correct that the majority of available interrupts are on melee classes.

But, on that note, Elemental Shaman are infinitely better than melee at interrupts due to rarely having range issues on movement. Tank + Elemental is usually going to be more reliable than Tank + Melee.

[Katzazi]

Sure, but it's only one ranged class. And it's the ranged class that is hurt the most by mobility again. If you don't have an ele shaman you probably want to have at least one melee. (If you don't have a hunter, a rogue is nice to have because of tricks, anyway.) It's easy to make a comp that works without melee. But that's only if you have a pool of good players of the appropriate ranged classes. So at least at some level it's again bring the player not the class.

[Kojiyama]

Well, having one melee isn't what I would call a resounding success in giving melee a defined advantage over ranged.

Provided the majority of Ranged classes only lose 5-10% DPS even on fights with significant movement, there is little way for Blizzard to make melee more attractive with the current way they are designing encounters.

Nothing keeps Ranged from stacking up on fights when you need to stack up, yet melee has little choice when it comes to spreading out on fights requiring spreading out. Ranged has no penalty from attacking the front of an enemy for 'stacking up' on the tank or being flexible about moving out of Bad Things. Melee cannot keep up with boss movement speed without cooldowns and therefore is further at risk of being out of melee range. And, worst of all, if melee range becomes unsafe for any reason melee doesn't just lose 10% of their damage moving out...they lose most of their damage until they can move back in.

Basically, most of the common fight mechanics do nothing to help the situation. It's only in the case of very rare and somewhat contrived special situations that melee can pull ahead.

If you look at two classes with similar DPS on a pure tank and spank then look at the average of those classes across all encounters, you'd probably find (like I did when looking through) that the ranged class will have higher DPS far more often than lower DPS and by a much larger margin than the 1-2 cases of melee advantage. This is not even touching on the survival problems melee generally have over ranged due to proximity.

Good example is Druids, as Balance and Feral have very similar theoretical single-target damage. Looking across many logs, across all fights Balance has an advantage of around 20% DPS. Looking on specific fights, Feral is 5-7% higher on Chimearon and Al'akir, tied on Halfus, and anywhere between 10-30% below on every other fight. That is not singing the praises of melee.

[swollenpickles]

What do people mean when they say 'melee friendly'? I suppose it depends on how you define melee friendly.

When I see melee friendly I think of fights that involve little to know boss movement so that melee dps can maintain as close to 100% up time on the boss as possible. In that respect I can see why they'd design fewer 'melee friendly' fights cause they'd be very hard to create and make interesting.

When I think of melee friendly fights I think of Saurfang and Festergut in ICC. They were basically melee target dummies. You could really just ignore all the fight mechanics and just focus on your rotation (or whatever you want to call it :P). In that respect I have to say I found Magmaw to be fairly melee friendly (so long as you were the one kiting the adds) as for the most part you can just plant in one spot and smash the boss (besides the couple of times you do the rodeo).

[Kojiyama]

Yeah, the interesting thing about the Saurfang example, though, is that the fight isn't really melee friendly. In fact, it is a decidedly melee unfriendly fight.

I'm sure some people are saying 'lolwut?' about that, but think about it for a moment.

Ranged are semi-required for the add mechanic. However, the need for ranged is finite. Not all ranged need to be on adds. Melee get a free pass because they can't do anything else. What happens if you have no melee? Nothing. It just means a ranged gets to stand there and pewpew just like melee did.

It's a very easy fight for melee, but that doesn't mean it's a 'melee friendly' fight. It just means that melee can't be assigned one of the 'jobs' in the fight. They aren't really much better at doing the DPS task on that fight than any other class. (And while Rogues easily topped meters on that fight, many meters at the time were dominated by Mages not assigned to adds as well.)

It is exceptionally hard for them to make a fight which is truly 'melee friendly'--while it is very easy to make a fight that is melee unfriendly.

[PatrikL]

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

I've been meaning to ask abotu this for some time. Beeing a frost DK I can't see any good reason not to kite the adds there but... The majority of my guild thinks it's "cheating" or "exploting" (and shouldnt be used since they might disable this in the future) and the two times I've run with pugs they dont even think it is possible. Now having done it twice with the guild I know it works very well.

Same with BH, I have yet to find a pug (often pug it since Alliance has it so seldom) which lets me solo tank it. DKs are fully able to do this and I have yet to be even close to dieing.


Are people just too traditional when it comes to these somewhat "creative" ways of doing it?

[ANDELE3025]

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.

I have a Warrior, DK, Hunter, Ele Shammy and a Mage.
Warriors - (unless tanking) are totaly crippeled when any slows or long runs are in fights,
DK - can handle movement ok because of AMS, D Coil that is RP based and if frost HB but still lack mobility (unholy excluded if talents in D Advance and pet helps),
Shammy - no story free movement, instants, only take care of totems and dot,
Hunter -if you are min maxing or are good at multitasking fox hawk swaps are no problem, MM only lacks the mobility when castim aimed when not proced (i dont know why would you do it but i see some people), BM is in full power (more than 50%dps from pet that is immunt to most insta kills and aoe), survival is kiting + dps at same time king.
Mage - well i dont play arcane so i dont know for them but frost and fire are totaly ok just blink if in a bad situation + load of instants, frost pet, fire moving scorch.
Every encounter in BWD, if the ranged are lazy and dont pick up the adds, will kill melee in a few seconds (the Magmaw is a wash... is the prime example, true we can do constant dps but is a small bit goes wrong=dead=no damage for quite some time while ranged is one spell cast free of everything (dont know for locks but shure glyphed fear will handle that)

[Kazeyonoma]

watch the personal insults, also edgewalker used to play a rogue (famously to get boots named after him) and plays a DK now. So yes he plays a melee.

warriors - while somewhat true, charge/intercept/intervene/heroic leap, all help the warrior close gaps much better than other races, i am calling BS on this especially since I personal have abused these skills to completely circumvent raid mechanics (think conclave of wind)
DK- you said they're fine
Shammy - while true they do have SOME ranged attacks that can help pass some dps while during movement, and strong instants at that
hunter - hunters complaining about movement need to learn to play
mage - agreed

this is the nature of boss mechanics, it's true there are some fights that are melee unfriendly, and melee could use some help in the mass aoe department (working hm maloriak this is frustrating) but overall i would agree with EW that it's not as bad as people think.