I guess the thread title is a bit inflammatory, but the topic was drawn to my attention from the various complaint threads on the Warcraft forums.

Now that many of us have begun to raid on a regular schedule again, I'm curious to see if you are bringing less melee dps classes to your groups. This of course would be related to the massive damage spikes caused by the mysterious chaining cleave that is being discussed in another thread, and the point blank AoE that many mobs are putting out. Outside of a fight like the Shade of Aran where pummel/kick comes in very handy, it seems that most fights would be better stacked with ranged dps. Of course the complimentary aspect of the casters with their buffs and debuffs that significantly increase their damage output is another factor. So outside of having a 2nd warrior there to OT and sometimes DPS, do you find that you are asking your DPS melee classes to sit out for more casters in your groups due to design encounters. This could include your Heroic runs as well as 10/25 man raids.

Yeah we are finding melee dps in general are worse than bringing an extra ranged. This is especially noticeable in fights like Gruul and Nightbane, but other than those two fights I can't really think of a fight where we will sub out good melee dps. So to state the obvious, melee seem less useful than in previous months. This could very well change in Vashj's Lair, however.

The increased AoE effects that melee has to deal with can be looked at as a deterrent for melee dps (as the OP has taken the opinion) or as a big factor in bringing classes that can apply 'indirect' healing. Examples of said healing are imp LotP feral druid and/or shadow priest which can help relieve the healing issues of melee dps classes.

Further, it seems that the position of dps warrior has some what disappeared, at least for karazhan, so really its just rogues that are melee dps. They seem to have plenty of tools to avoid such attacks like cleave (vanish, evasion, etc.) and are up in the range of 10k health pools.

It's a dangerous life being a rogue... except for the generosity of the people inviting for the raid, I don't think I'd get a spot on many fights. My dps is not much more than most other people and much more precarious. Almost every heroic is easier if you take a mage or warlock instead of a rogue. For Maulgar, we rogues are good for the start of the fight, interrupting/stunning the healer, but that's about all you need. On our first kill, I was the only rogue in the raid. Karazhan I can see needing one rogue for fights like Romulo and Julianne. Trash is easier when stunned/kicked as well. More than 1, however, is hardly necessary if encouraged at all.

I was doing heroic Ramparts just yesterday and had another warrior burst out a huge rant about this after wipeing at Omor for an hour. Yes I agree, ranged dps is definately better than melee overall in TBC besides for their interrupts and ability to offtank which neither are universal in boss encounters.

Why do you feel the role of the DPS warrior disappeared? There are several specs for raiding that would allow you to bring Imp Thunderclap (not everyone has a Thunderfury) or Imp Demoshout while still having a spec that allows strong dps and OT'ing. I would suggest Bloodfrenzy but that would most likely only help the MT and the 2nd warrior and maybe the one rogue you would bring.

As to the imp LoTP druid and shadow priest: Wouldn't group composition do better with the shadow priest in the caster/MT group, and why would you need to bring another melee class if you had that druid there?

The news of the death of the dps warrior are vastly exaggerated.

There are a few ridiculously melee-hostile encounters, and heroics are notorious for favoring CC over straight dps or offtanking, but for raiding in general the dps warrior is alive and well. Their dps is fine, their debuffs are still good, and for Karazhan in particular, their hybrid nature suits the zone well. Anything outside of the Prince (and possible Nightbane) can be tanked by a blue dps warrior without issues, and that is a single tank encounter. Feral + dps warrior has been the most versatile tank combo we have found there.

What little "relief" iLOTP and VE bring doesn't alleviate the giant healing melee often requires, especially considering that so far, a mage or a warlock seems to do the same DPS. "Oh, well, with a properly stacked group and these things you're only mostly flushing away mana on melee," isn't exactly much for the future of melee DPS.

So as long as there's only one trash pull every 3 minutes, and it dies within 15 seconds, one whole class is OK in Karazhan (and pity the poor non-sub rogue). Except vanish and evasion do nothing against magic, which is most of the problem (chain lightning and stomps are cool), in which case, thankfully, the rogue 15 seconds of survival is on a shorter, 2 minute cooldown. 10k HP doesn't last long when the hits are 4k, and the problem isn't being able to heal rogues - it's how much mana they cost as a function of damage per second until you reach the time cap of the fight (aka, healers go OOM/the boss goes berserk). Again, a mythical mage with 3k HP (which I believe is impossible at 70) is more valuable than a rogue with 10k, bringing more DPS costing less MPS for nHPS.

At best I see a Prot hybrid with imp thunderclap. Feral druids and Shadow Priests, however are very encouraged in raids... they are far too good to leave out. Druids are excellent in that they can DPS on 1 tank pulls and offtank when needed. They can tank during Huntsman and Moroes, and much trash, and he can also DPS during Maiden, Curator, Aran, etc.

Shadow priests are great for making sure your healers have enough mana to last through fights.

edit- typo It > At

Another problem is that while not all fights are anti-melee so to say, its been noted that generally speaking unless we stack a group with 'melee dps buffs' then ranged are simply out damaging them noticably (for us atleast, when before it was a complete reverse with rogues being among the top in almost every raid).
Good hunters are clearly out-performing good rogues without any beneficial group buffs, and as when we do stack the melee group the hunter is in there too and as a result becomes stronger still.
Stack a shadow priest with casters (notably warlocks) and all-round caster dps becomes noticably stronger, a shaman with them... etc.

Another issue I think is that really itemization isnt quite sorted for melee DPS yet, noticably on the crit front, where almost every item seems to provide Agil/AP/Hit and very little gives you crit (unless you sacrifice agility for it, which equates to the gain not being worth the trade-offs you get really). Whereas for casters you can easily find any combination of gear you wish to fullfill your need for crit, hit, or spell penetration with relevent ease.

And as alliance im finding it sad (as a former rogue) that now we have shamans, there is still the itemization bias towards daggers over fist/sword (81dps dagger(early boss)/dagger(random boss)/sword(hard & buggy boss)/fist(random boss), 84dps dagger - Karazhan), so there is next to no reason to even consider providing windfury to melee over the spell damage totem for casters as undoubtably most rogues are daggers.


However having a rogue over a ranged DPSer was notably easier in ramparts (heroic) than without due to the amount of CC they can help provide (sap, blind, stunlock - especially on the caster pack), and Omor seemed easier too however we were lucky and neither the tank or rogue got the debuff. And really while some things may be somewhat anti-melee, the good melee players can generally make up for it as there are many occasions where their utilities can be very beneficial, and we've not really encounterd much where we have had to say "we simply cant do this with a rogue".


edit: and to Cel, generally we've found healers can make up most of the mana issues with basic consumables (mageblood and superior mana oil + mana potions) - whereas providing DPS with unlimited mana generally results in a more notable gain. However there are a few occasions where the healing done by the shadow priests on encounters like Netherspite and Curator have resulted in a much easier job for 'proper' healers to handle things, but given that they are usually in dps groups for that too :P

Windfury beats GoA by ~50DPS last time I ran the numbers, utterly regardless of weapon loadout. It's really, really that good.

Yeah but the gain from dagger rogues having windfury is inferior to the gain of casters with +100 spell damage, +4spellhit(1 racial), +3spellcrit.

My raid experience in wow classic (I guess that's what we call it now?) was up to c'thun with razuvious in Naxx. Not everything that the game had to offer, but the majority.

Razorgore, Vael, Sartura, Skeram the Prophet, Fankriss, Twin Emps on and on I can name bosses where raids often brought above 'average' warriors and rogues to the fight. Often times necessary, but also because an extra dps warrior or rogue just meant more dps. Who wouldn't roll into instances with 6 rogues and warriors with their dps output?

Warlocks, at least in my raid experience, were the special kids of wow classic raiding. We never brought more than 4, and rarely more than 3. Warlocks gave you CoE for your mages and some soul stones for the occasional mistakes. Blizzard never nurfed rogues and warrior dps to give warlocks and hunters (and some what mages) a more viable spot in raids. Why now, when the reverse is occurring, should one expect a nurf to warlock, mage, shadow priest dps?

Seems to me that its warriors and rogues turn in the proverbial 'barrel of shame'.


Also, I said that the dps warrior was dead. By this I meant a warrior with 0 points in prot tree (not a tank/dps hybrid) and almost never putting a shield on. Pure dps. Leather and mail armor, all the stuff healers hated. I think that raid 'position' is gone. I haven't done much of TBC raiding (nobody has) but there certainly isn't room for a dps warrior, in that sense, in karazhan. That may change more in future raid instances. We can only wait and see.

It does seems that raiding has been shifted to be more in favour of ranged dps, especially considering how melee dps was infact the king in most of WoW Classic.

I remember stacking rogues with a lot of FR gear for Ragnaros because of how important it was for them to survive for the sons stage, or how totally imbalanced they are in an encounter like Vael (Which was the biggest guild block at that time), and of course Twins/C'Thun which the value of melee damage there is pretty unbelievable. That trend was pretty high until the later part of Naxx where I feel there was a right balance between range and melee.

As for how the game looks now for melee, I feel its too early to judge. Karazhan for example is a very unique place that allows dozens of group compositions. We ran it with all tank combinations (War/Pala/Druid), with all sort of diffrent healers, and with many off specs. Last night we even had a melee group of 2 DPS warriors (1 Arms 1 Fury) and a rogue while a pala/druid were doing the tanking, and I have to say the trash clearing was inceridbly fast.

Melee dps is not dead, its just trynig to find its niche again.

Yeah we only bring rogues and dps warriors when we don't want loot to rot. Other than aran they're not really a good choice. I'm sure that might sound ignorant to some, but it appears to be mostly the truth. Melee classes are pretty awful atm, and really its because of the lack of creativity, balance, and whatnot of making fights more dynamic combined with smaller groups. I mean prince and melee? Seriously, what were they thinking?

I don't see the problem with bringing melee to the prince. We got him down last sunday with 1 rog and 1 dps warri in group. They both performed very well there is no real reason to not bring melees to that encounter.

Rogues and Warriors are not the only melee class, esp with the focus on off-specs. Shammys, Pallys and Druids all have a chance to spec/gear up for melee damage in a group. So this is not just about two classes. Also, your counter point of "you had your day, now its time for you to suck" is a terrible argument to make. Even if an encounter allows for melee, it seems the synergy between the caster classes encourages you to stack your group with ranged.

What I was wondering, has any raid leader or guild leader put some solid thought into the advantages/disadvantages of trying to fit your melee into your groups. It seems that the three major reasons to bring a melee dps are 1) loyalty to someone that has been around for some time 2) not letting loot rot and 3) the occasional encounter where one skill not related to dps is needed. What solutions have you come up with?

Hmm i havent really found this to be the issue so far CoS is on a 1 minute CD and decurses pretty much everything whilst at the same time pretty much stoppping all amgical dmg. Sure its only 6 seconds out of every minute but good CS/Kick/Bash etc (unless its instant cast) can alleviate a lot of the possible magic dmg that melee could take. The 10k HP admittedly wont last long against 4k hits but it will last a long time against the constant 700 hits from AoE and other such effects which i believe is what the OP intended this thread to be about. Yes Melee can take more healing than ranged but this is only in specific cases and 90% of the time its avoidable with good interupts and such.

All our Kara groups run 2 warriors and 1 rogue. Thats it, sometimes we bring another rogue if someone is missing in action, but we have 2 melee at most. Hell, our last prince kill I was the ONLY melee attacking him (tanks dont count)

I dont know why they had to make EVERYTHING IN THE GAME cleave // fear // war stomp // random-AOE-ability that hits for 6k+, or any combination of the above. Nightbane attempts when our rogue gets feared into the 12k cleave are super cool.

In 95% of all heriocs, I bring 2 Healers, 2 Ranged, and myself. I never bring a rogue unless he needs to do a quest, or I feel pity for his class being terrible. (Dear god Kargath was a mother fucking nightmare the first 3 wipes, figured out a working strat for the 4th attempt // kill)

Gauss (or Guass :P), someone actually brought that up in guild chat last night. I think one of our mages was laughing at our rogues for being such a bad class and they brought up the fact you guys only had one rogue in Gruul's Lair. I can't really think of a reason rogues are "worse" than any other dps for the fight. I guess the cave in may be a slight hassle, but his hitbox is big enough so you can maneuver around it and not lose too much dps. The way cave in works is probably an advantage to rogues since they can keep attacking while they reposition, while casters have to stop casting for a few seconds. On top of that rogues in general have more hp than the clothie classes, seem to do slightly more damage (2 out of the top 3 were rogues on our tries) and don't run into mana issues on a long fight. Just some thoughts, I couldn't really see where the "rogues are bad for Gruul" was coming from.

As for heroics, I really don't see a problem with rogues at all. They're arguably the best CC if played right. Imp sap and crippling poisons can make a hard pull seem like a joke. My ideal 5 man group has been: feral druid, holy priest, shadow priest, rogue, hunter.

Edit: Grammar.

To be quite honest I only skimed and scaned this thread to post at the bottom;

Your right, melee dps are subpar atm but that isnt just because of unfriendly melee fights. Sure they are there but most of them arnt unfriendly to a staggering degree.

As far as dps wise: yes they are underpowered compared to Mages/Locks/Hunters atm, but that is also due to the length of fights. Melee shine on longer fights because mana isnt an issue for them, the one place that hunters are getting screwed atm (atleast ours, dont know about other guilds/raids).
Melee also scale 'much' nicer with not only gear, but buffs aswell, atleast in my experiance. You get your melee with 80+ dps weapons/100dps for 2hr, and you are going to see them jump up. Thats also one of the lacking places of Kara in particular, it is absolutly rolling in caster loot. Theres a few nice rogue items but its mostly replacement of the same slots. Theres I think 3 differant leather dps boots that drop, and 2 gloves, theres atleast a dozen+ differant peices of caster loot. Imo Kara itemization blows, but thats just me. You know how many pecies of DPS plate there are? Zero. And atleast 6 peices of Pally plate.

I am biased since I am a fury war with points into prot for OT'ing; but get your dps geared up and you will see them start to shine more. It was this way back in early wow before melee made their jumps, it will balance out more before too long. The problem isnt as much the encounters as it is the loot spread.

That being said, just so it doesnt seem too much like a rant...
The previous week we did take a 2nd rogue in light of extra healer/hunter/mage and saw a big jump in dps and speed of kills. Its a small sampling and could just be because we have an outstanding Rogue crew, but they definatly cant be counted out of the picture entirely.

Also you cant count out Sap, and as was said before evasion, CoS, etc from Rogues. A pro stunlocker is all the better aswell.
For dps warriors, your right they are somewhat lacking but on fights where we only need one tank I still put out dps with the best of them even with 71dps weapons currently (damn our lack of 1h drops ><). Alot of people are just put off because rogues/warriors arent 'the best' dps'rs anymore as they used to be but we are also by no means at the point of 'endgame' where we used to be.

I don't believe that is it at all. It has always been situation as to what classes can come out top on the DPS charts. And until today I didn't have a DPS meter installed since in smaller group setup I'm more concerned about the encounter than the epeen.

The issue comes down to the viability of brining melee at all due to current encounter designs and how well casters work together. Even thou fury warriors will scale over time, will that dps be greater than the healing it requires to keep them up and the dps loss from skipping out on another caster.