Are you serious?
Yes, obviously melee are punished if they can’t stand in melee range. But in comparison to what Gidemon suggested with putting in punishments to ranged specs for standing in melee…
In short, you spend fairly little time as melee away from a boss during an encounter. Meanwhile, there are encounters where we basically have to stack in melee for long periods(minutes) at a time.
Would you ever suggest that “hey, on this encounter we should all stack up 20 yards from the boss for the next 1-2min, because that’s the most favorable strat. Oh, melee can’t dps properly then? Meh too bad for them.”?
Would you argue that they should vastly(in several cases)re-think how encounters are designed just so that they can add in intentional punishments for ranged players that stand in melee?
Don’t try to equate the very short windows where a melee has to run out to drop a pool/debuff or avoid a stomp etc, to that of how close quarter punishments would affect ranged specs. At least not in the current game.
Also…
This is not a punishment to melee. This is a slight upside to playing ranged.
Heck for several expansions, melee barely have had to deal with mechanics. Most mechanics have been tied to ranged classes/healers. Many of which were intentionally designed to only affect ranged.