Incentives to bring Melee to Mythic+ and Raids

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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As the title suggests, I’m curious about community ideas to help blizz understand that communities turn away melee in pve content (mythic+ and Raids). Is this new information? No, but its the elephant in the room that has been said so many times without fixing - that its engrained in our culture as an unwritten rule without justification, or worse, years of blizzcon saying “we will develop more melee-friendly encounters” without actually doing it (prob for fear of healers not being able to manage it well?).

Mythic+ dungeon unwritten rules:
1 Tank
1 Healer
2-3 RDPS (mage is required)
(1 melee: usually only take a Rogue or shaman because nothing better was available)

Mythic Raid unwritten rules:
2 tanks
4 Healers
4-5 Melee
9+ RDPS

Additional unwritten rule: you need the GOOD Heroism/Lust or we can’t time/kill stuff

Actual classes available ingame
9 melee (DK, DH, Monk, Druid, Shaman, Hunter, Rogue, Paladin)
6 RDP (Druid, Mage, Lock, Hunter, Priest, Shaman)

Not only is the competition horrendous for melee by shear numbers, but RDPS generally outperform Melee in both Mythic/Raids, most of it due to boss mechanics already, but even on typical Putricide sims. people won’t bring Melee because Melee don’t bring utility, don’t bring as much DPS, and because the affixes and dungeon/raid boss mechanics and Trash packs favor casters in nearly every scenario and affix.

Are melee trash dps? Certainly not, they’re not far behind truthfully. So then why does the community choose to not bring a melee then? See above. Statistically, you do have a higher chance of success with more casters, casters do more dmg relatively, can swap targets from far away easier/faster, have more utility, have a less chance to get cleaved, and have a broader visual scope of the room to be more aware, can handle mechanics/affixes better. You can see successful top US guilds with these RDPS numbers, you see it in MDI tournaments, and you see it copied on your Premade Tab looking for ranged dps.

One may say I’m answering my question to an extent bc the community did this, but only because it was proven the above reasons do impact the game severely (Lust and “easier” caster dps moreso)
. So my question lies: how can we help incentivize bringing melee? Here are just a few suggestions, what are yours?

-Give another melee class Heroism/Lust
-Give another melee class the DH spell dmg debuff equivalent to Chaos Brand
-Give a caster class the Monk Phys dmg debuff equivalent to Mystic Touch
-Make an affix similar to the Torghast Soulforges that does periodic pulse dmg, but nearly nullified if within 8yrds of a mob
-Boss Abilities that generate runspeed bonuses (these are generally fun for everyone)
-More Boss abilities that award you with a personalized stat increase for doing a mechanic
-An affix that lowers the enemy cast CD so it casts more often, requiring more melee to interrupt
-An affix where enemies/bosses receive 15% less magic damage but deal 15% less magic dmg
-Remove the ability to Parry as a Melee DPS (not as a Tank) so we can actually perform mechanics without being punished for being in front of a boss

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Since when has it been rogues or shamans for melee dps? I have seen more warriors, dks, and monks over those two.

If you actually look at data, all of the melee classes have a fairly even distribution for +15 and up (except for survival hunter and feral druid).

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9+ ranged is not really optimal in Mythic raids even now and is a huge amount of ranged bias that most guilds (at least, any I’ve seen or heard of) don’t reach.

Usually your comp will work out more like

  • 2 tanks
  • 4 healers with a 5th that can flex into healing when needed
  • An even mix of DPS or very slightly ranged biased.

The ‘ranged bias’ is purely that there are more melee specs than ranged specs, and they are fighting over fewer free slots in a given raid because of raid buffs and how good Unholy DKs were this tier.

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oh good another “ranged are preferred because they don’t have to do mechanics ever” thread

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In dungeons specifically, needing lust and brez also implicitly favors ranged specs, since there are simply more ranged classes/specs with those things. But really, needing to cram at least three things (lust, brez, covenant) into every 5-man group is just a huge constraint on group comps; that’s not even a melee/range issue except incidentally. If drums were viable, it would already be much easier to bring a fury/ret/havoc/whatever.

Then there’s the fact that balance druids have Treants, something which nobody else has, not even other druid specs. They also get Innervate, which ferals don’t. Why exactly does the ranged brez spec get all this other unique utility too??

2 Likes
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Focusing on keystones since that’s where the balance is completely out of whack:

  • Un-nerf drums so that one DPS slot is automatically dedicated to mage/hunter/shaman
  • Rework storming to spawn tornadoes near players, not near mobs
  • Rework Spiteful somehow to not be so anti-melee (e.g. take 5x damage while stunned)
  • Either remove AOE caps or put them on everything, none of this nonsense where certain specs have godlike uncapped dps and most don’t
  • Pay some damn attention to which specs are under-represented and just buff them instead of letting them remain trash for an entire patch
  • Future expansions: make more ranged dps specs and stop making new melee dps specs
4 Likes
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Make them spawn from the location (at the mob’s time of death) of the fixated player, rather than the location of the corpse. Then everyone has to run from them equally.

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Thanks to melee being faster(and smarter with) for interupts, I try to take melee in when I can.

Honestly, it’s so rare to see interupts from range that I have invited melee over ranged.

It’s kind of sad though that mechanics and dps checks are so tight, the 1 second of dropped dps from a melee having to run out/in to something really does affect the meta.
But until I’m pushing 20+ keys, I see no real reason not to take the melee. (even more so if they keep up the interupts, do the bare minimal or more dps, or just a nicer person to be around)

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This is my argument for playing anything not meta, the differences are negligible until you get to a level that matters.

That said, lust/br is always a better decision then most, but you can get the lust from survival/enhance/arcane/frost/bm and br from rdruid/feral/frost dk/any warlock.

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It’s interesting because in BfA, the M+ situation was completely reversed. There were a few melee unfriendly affixes where you’d avoid bringing a full melee group, but in general melee were preferred for their faster interrupts.

I’ve noticed this as well, and it’s incredibly frustrating. I guess ranged players got the idea that because melee interrupts have a lower cool down, interrupts in general could be left to them? I’m not real clear on what the thought process is, but it doesn’t work very well in an all ranged team.

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i never liked bringing heavy melee to my groups, regardless of meta, affix, w/e. In a 5 man, I think the tank and one melee for a melee interrupt is more than enough in close range for most of my comps.

Obviously, as a pug, that doesn’t always work out the way I want it to lol

There’s exceptions to this, but, for the most part it’s 2 in melee and 2 in ranged…as a druid i’m the floater depending on my affinity (kitten or chicken)

I don’t personally think it’s a “melee unfriendly” expansion as much as it is that too much melee in a 5 man just feels weird lol

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You forgot warriors.

Aside group utilities, I think melee should have por DPS potential, to make it up for being more difficult to play. It is a risk/reward thing.

Melee takes more risk, they should do more damage in return. Otherwise there is no reason to pick one.

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I’ve been complaining since SL day 1 about the hero/bres changes and the need to include someone of a specific covenant. All three of these things needlessly restrict group composition. All they do is force a group to recruit a dedicated lust and bres class, and those classes were already in very high demand for M+ and did not need this “extra incentive” to mandate their inclusion.

Bring back full drums. Let any class with a consumable fulfill the hero requirement. Bring back engi bres. Let any engineer fulfill the bres requirement. Get rid of covenant dungeon interactions, make them all non-essential, or make all of them as essential as Venthyr is in HoA. And balance all four of them so there’s an equal distribution of all classes/specs of all covenants so no one is excluded on the basis of covenant choice.

This forum laughed and me and trolled me until I went away.

Now we’re here. I’ll finish by pointing out that you can absolutely time high keys with no melee, but you absolutely can’t time high keys with no ranged.

Dedicated “don’t invite melee” affixes like Spiteful and Storming need to go.

Balance!

2 Likes
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Would literally murder Frost and Unholy DKs, Enhance Shaman, and Ret those weeks.

That is the fundamental issue why melee will never be favored over range, even if you gave them more raid buffs. The way you fix this you blanket nerf all range classes damage by a % to the point when there is uptime on a boss the melee are doing noticeably more damage than the range but when looking at the overall damage of a fight, they are about even (class tuning aside) due to range being able to deal damage during/handling mechanics that prevent melee from damaging during said mechanics.

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I don’t think that’s a feasible way to balance things. Damage tuning is way too important; nobody wants Hybrid Tax 2: Electric Boogaloo.

If melee must be in more danger, then one natural way to counterbalance it would be to give melee better defenses, to mitigate and/or heal back damage taken more easily than a ranged DPS could. Right now, I think it’s hard to argue that, say, an Arms warrior is any more survivable than a Fire mage, even if we ignore the fact that the mage can just outrange many things. Alter Time, Ice Block, and Cauterize massively outstrip Die by the Sword.

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lol yeah having to move is a huge burden that ranged don’t have to worry about

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Moonkins and mages are grossly overtuned in mythic+.

Bear tanks and vengeance DH’s are the same way to an extent. DH providing them magic damage bonus is icing on the cake.

Hunters are great because they are good at letting tanks kite with slows and binding trap. The other ranged classes are in no way dominating mythic+. Ele shamans are doing good too.

Idk why Blizz gives all of the utility to a handful of classes

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Moot point if people are able to avoid mechanics, in which case doesn’t matter how survivable melee is if they literally cant do damage then.

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I see people saying they don’t think Shadowlands is a particularly melee unfriendly expansion and I wonder if they’ve actually played the game much.

Seriously, not a single affix is as detrimental to ranged as Spiteful and Storming are for melee. For Volcanic you can simply side step it and that’s it, and it sometimes targets melee too (although rarely). Quaking interrupts your casts, but if two or more melee are clumped together, more than 20% of their HP in damage. That’s not even mentioning most of M+ mechanics, trash packs and bosses, affect melee way more than they do ranged.

Now for raid mechanics I’ll only say one thing: Mythic Sludgefist. That’s fight is so horrendous to do as a melee compared to being ranged it’s crazy. Your groups must be trolling if they bring more than 4 melee for that fight, counting Holy Paladins and the rare Mistweaver Monk.

This expansion has only been melee unfriendly so far. That’s not to say it’s impossible to do stuff as melee, but it’s so of a hassle being melee compared to being ranged it’s crazy there are people that do not see this.

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Actual classes available ingame

  • 9 melee (DK, DH, Monk, Druid, Shaman, Hunter, Rogue, Paladin)
    6 RDP (Druid, Mage, Lock, Hunter, Priest, Shaman)

OP, You’ve completely left out Warrior. We bring Battle Shout which is all raid and party members get an increase in attach power by 5%. We also bring Rallying Cry, all raid and party members have temporary increase in maximin health, up to 30% with 213 lvl finesse conduit.

  • Melee don’t bring utility

Also, Warriors bring Heroic Leap to get out of bad stuff real quick and also gain aggro (tank)

It appears you’ve spent a good amount of time preparing your post, but again, you’ve left out Warrior which has always been part of WoW and any fantasy game out there in one form or another.