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The Conundrum of Raiding as a Melee Player in Battle for Azeroth
Wowhead
Geposted
25.05.2019 um 15:01
von
wordup
Melee in Battle for Azeroth Raiding: Uldir, Battle of Dazar'alor and Crucible of Storms
Over the course of Battle for Azeroth there's been a marked increase in dissatisfaction with raid composition balance. This isn't the first (and certainly won't be the last) time that this has happened when it comes to Ranged/Melee balance, but given this is at the forefront of the discussion at the moment I would like to give some thoughts about the current situation. This will include some specific examples in current content, and a general overview for those who may default to the position that one role is easier than the other, without knowing exactly what it is that may be causing the disparity (though obviously, this is heavily colored by my own perspective).
This article was written by
Wordup
, our
Enhancement Shaman guide writer
.
About the Author
This guide is written by Wordup, a long-time Enhancement player and moderator on the
Shaman Discord server, Earthshrine
. I've played every iteration of Enhancement since Sunwell, and played in Echoes on Laughing Skull (EU) since Warlords of Draenor. You can catch me on
Twitter
, or in Discord if you have any guide related questions!
Specific Problem Points for Melee
With three raids down in Battle for Azeroth, we’ve seen some stark examples of how a punishing environment or boss arena in raids can impact melee specs. The higher frequency of positionally oriented mechanics, and increasingly larger boss arenas (often with some specific environment related aspects), have further limited the uptime melee tends to have on targets - something the majority of specs rely on as many operate on a cyclical basis. These larger areas also have a habit of increasing the distance between not only the player and important targets, but also the space that needs to be covered when switching efficiently off a boss and to something that needs to be killed and back again.
Some of the most common complaints I see from other players that I tend to agree with are:
As mentioned above, forced downtime caused by mechanics. This includes those that restrict your range and require you to reposition or lose massive downtime by moving out (sometimes out of melee range of your target) such as
Instabile Resonanz
or
Lawine
, or effects that cause extreme displacement that can sometimes be unavoidable, such as
Schockwellenstampfer
;
Significantly higher visual noise around your character. This is a combination of unsuppressed animations such as
Gefrorene Kugel
and that all pets will centre around the rear of a boss. When an encounter such as Cabal has a large number of visual effects that can be mixed up in this (
Leerengeschoss
and
Ozeanessenz
as examples) makes navigating a limited space all the more difficult;
Lack of access to good Cleave/AoE if targets aren't able to be stacked. This is a point that is limited the heaviest by encounter design, but BfA's mantra so far has heavily dissuaded (or even strictly blocked) stacking targets together, which significantly favours classes that don't strictly require targets to all be in one localised spot, incentivising multi-dotting or long range spread cleave;
Needing to be in a specific location to cover certain utility roles, particularly in relation to interrupts or abilities like
Dunkelheit
. This has already in both Crucible encounters made ranged interrupts more desirable than melee to the point were long-winded rotations are set up to circumvent the problems of individual cooldown lengths - something that has traditionally been a melee job for that very reason - because melee simply can't efficiently or safely cover them reliably.
All of the damage related issues present an interesting question though - would you still take melee if they did desirably high damage? There are a large number of specs right now that simply don't deal enough damage at a raw level to justify taking them when they also have all of these extraneous punishments to consider. This is definitely a more difficult topic to delve into though, because class balance is harder to extrapolate on an encounter-to-encounter basis, but the general trend has been that outside of a handful of specs, melee are simply dealing less damage even in ideal circumstances than a lot of ranged counterparts. While I don't want to distract from the discussion with devolving into "
buff melee damage!
" I personally think the current encounters that exist with relative parity are exacerbating the perception, because even when melee
should
be showing up, they aren't exactly blowing away the competition.
Current Content Examples
Crucible of Storms provides a good example of the two fight archetypes that often tend to push melee out, with each of the encounters mirroring the issues that either
Uldir
(in this case
Uu’nat
) or
Battle of Dazar’alor
(which is represented by
The Restless Cabal
) presented:
Uldir
and
Uu’nat
A lot of the Uldir encounters that were most oppressive for melee share the same issue as Uu’nat - very heavy positional and spacing requirements that restrict the space around the boss, despite being in a very large area. The boss arena is given this space to allow for room to deal with these mechanics, but only the ranged component of a raid can capitalise on this, melee are strictly limited to the space around the boss hitbox.
Instabile Resonanz
mirrors the same kind of spatial issues that
Stinkendes Miasma
on
Fetid Devourer
,
Vergessenssphäre
on
Mythrax
and lastly
Welle der Verderbnis
on
G'huun
did: each extra melee you have exponentially increased the difficulty of navigating this hitbox and staying active on the boss while also remaining safe. That kind of increasing difficulty and reduction of space makes any extra melee - no matter the skill level - a liability to the others in the area.
Battle of Dazar’alor
and
The Restless Cabal
Cabal on the other hand has parallels with a lot of the things that hurt melee in Battle of Dazar’alor - that of damage efficiency. On any fight that has a large arena combined with important targets to be dealt and mechanics that force you out of range, melee will always have an issue with uptime. Certain specific mechanics force melee players into specific places often out of range of the boss or important targets for a set time to allow for them to expire (
Erdrückende Zweifel
forcing you far out on Cabal,
Kimbuls Zorn
forcing a spread outside of melee range on Conclave, or
Meeresflut
forcing melee to stay stacked in a spot to conserve room on Stormwall) further exacerbating the output gap. That higher ceiling for efficient DPS emphasises the gap in output between Ranged and Melee potential, and given that a number of later BoD fights and Cabal specifically had a heavy focus on efficient damage, this pushed melee out of many compositions very quickly. Cabal in particular also presented the new downside of melee being the worse option to deal with frequent high priority interrupts for a crucial encounter mechanic, despite them traditionally being the ideal choice to use, diluting one of the last vestiges of melee priority.
What Recent Nerfs in Crucible Imply
On the reset beginning the
14th of May
,
a number of hotfixes
were applied to both encounters in the Crucible of Storms in an attempt to address some of the extremely strict composition requirements that were excluding melee. The methodology of these nerfs are quite telling as to what the core problem is - melee are simply unable to adequately deal with many of the mechanics that follow the patterns I have addressed above without enormous downsides. The mechanics that were targeted were deemed so difficult to gracefully manipulate into something that is conducive to melee play that the solution was to simply exclude melee from the pool of players who are targeted, highlighting a problem that plagues a lot of encounters. The precedent that this sets is
extremely
unhealthy - melee shouldn't be reduced to a glorified damage turret that you take because they don't have to care about what's going on in an encounter. The solution to this is, however, very hard to retroactively address so it is understandable. My personal feeling is there should be mechanics that are weighted toward melee in tandem with ranged focused alternatives in important encounters and throughout a raid instance as a whole, and if that mantra isn't followed at the design stage it can't be magically implemented after the fact.
A good example of an encounter that follows this "Melee mechanics in tandem with Ranged mechanics" I find is
Gul'dan
in the Nighthold. There are a number of specific aspects of the fight on Mythic that lends heavily toward melee's damage delivery methods (such as
Auge von Gul'dan
and
Schädliche Wunde
spawns), and their positional constraints as a whole; while at the same time providing enough things that ranged are more efficient at (less downtime from
Flammen von Sargeras
and
Mächtige Teufelsfesseln
) that warranted a healthier balance without forcing exclusion one way or the other.
The Place of Melee in a Raid Group
The largest advantage of Melee within a raid is providing a consistent source of mobile DPS, assuming that it can maintain active uptime on a target. Thus, boss position and space around the hitbox are (or at least should be) the limiting factors that cause problems for said specs. On the other hand, Ranged is limited by movement requirements and arena space relative to other players. Melee also often provide heavy cleave/AoE damage in a small area, meaning the space underneath the boss is a prime place to position adds or other targets without much loss to their priority damage output, making this sphere around a target a common place to stack enemies for more efficient AoE. One of those great strengths melee have in their ability to deal heavy damage with constant movement has a glaring flaw however: for that advantage to be necessary, you have to create mechanics that are designed specifically to oppress ranged specs that cannot do good damage on the move to make that advantage shine through. While it’s true that many things recently have made it more obnoxious to play melee, advocating a solution that actively makes other classes have less fun and agency while playing doesn't feel like a healthy solution either, making this a complex conundrum.
Melee have also historically been among the more durable and self sustaining specs, allowing for them to take more punishment because of the risk of being locked into a singular position. In some cases (but not all!) this also extends to more mobility as well, allowing them to stick to a target in high movement situations more effectively when a boss is being dragged around without losing much damage. This being a thing that is expected of melee though can be particularly oppressive to the specs that lack enough tools to keep up, which is why this qualm often rears its head with specific classes. All of these combined usually lends to melee being good to key in on a target and provide the most consistent punch to a high health target and burn it down assuming it is kept in a reasonable position (though this has been somewhat diluted over the past few expansions).
Unfortunately as time has progressed, this process of turning melee into the "cleave zone" has lead to some mechanics being implemented seemingly to prevent this habit. When this ability to create a hot zone around the melee to cleave or burn down adds is removed, this quickly forces players to spread around the boss and the collateral damage is the primary method of efficiently improving melee damage on fights outside of raw patchwerk style encounters goes away. As adds then also begin to spread further out from that focal point to combat melee being an easy fix to cleave down adds, the downtime issue of moving between targets increases exponentially. Some recent methods of this include:
Blitzdetonation
on
Grong
to dissuade stacking the boss with add spawns;
Pakt der Loa
coupled with
Loas Zorn
on
Conclave
to not only make cleave-induced damage increases difficult to gain, but also far less relevant due to the heal;
Extremely spread, high priority target spawns, examples being:
Nerubischer Leerenweber
(Zek'voz),
Verderbniskorpuskel
(Fetid Devourer Mythic),
Affenreizer 3000
(Grong Mythic),
Unersättlicher Schleicher
(Conclave),
Verlockende Sirene
/
Energiesturm
(Stormwall),
Urzeitlicher Geistbeuger
/
Unsterblicher Wächter
(Uu'nat Mythic);
Geistesverbindung
on
Uu’nat
to prevent efficiently stacking
Unsterblicher Wächter
without risk, and creating very limited range pockets to allow melee to make use of their tools;
Markiertes Ziel
on
Jaina
drastically increasing range between the boss and adds, making cleave very inefficient unless Ranged players facilitate their melee actively;
Finstere Entschlossenheit
on
G'huun
making stacking infested add spawns not only extremely difficult due to the varied targets, but also very dangerous to get into proximity of.
Many of these have forced an increase in distance between bosses and priority targets that not only often make melee who can gain additional single target via cleaving less able to do so, but also those who gain significantly more efficient overall damage by switching to a Cleave/AoE rotation impeded by simply not being able to make use of those tools. This has also frequently created situations where lower mobility melee feel overly punished by this manufactured distance created by this boss design, without many equivalent encounters that actually allow for players to make use of their tools. In particular, tools such as
Todesgriff
not only being placed on the GCD, but also being specifically flagged to not interact with certain targets (such as
Urzeitlicher Geistbeuger
) feels to me like an extra step that was unnecessary to hurt the desirability of some specs, and the ability for melee as a whole to lock down and focus a target in a set position.
What Makes Good Melee Encounters/Mechanics?
One of the hardest parts of putting this into words however is actually establishing what I think is a distinctly good mechanic that melee can actively interact with. Generally speaking there is an overwhelmingly good number of mechanics that have been implemented into raids in the past 3 to 4 expansions that create very good decision making and creative encouners, but the unenviable task of making melee feel like they are on equal footing or have agency to deal with them is something the encounter designers have to do, which sadly I think hasn't been achieved. There are even some examples of a mechanic being re-used (to an extent) and becoming
more
oppressive - the most pressing recent example being
Star Auger's
Große Konjunktion
being significantly less of a hassle to deal with than
Uu’nat's
Instabile Resonanz
due to spacial constraints and frequency.
Some quick examples however of what I think
are
successful mechanics that encourage melee without significantly punishing Ranged to the point where you want to exclude them are:
Mechanics that force, or heavily incentivise players to be in melee range for quick target swaps. This "obscurity" mechanic works well to encourage high movement combined with close range damage tools. Fights that successfully achieve this are
Lebende Bombe
s on
Jadefire Masters
and
Schädliche Wunde
s on
Gul'dan
;
Mechanics that encourage having stacked -
but distinct
- camps that are split between melee and ranged, usually designed to fluctuate between each. Two fights that did this well in Legion were
Helya
with
Kugel der Verderbnis
, and
Maiden
in Tomb with
Essenzfragmente
on Mythic difficulty;
Encounters that split the raid that have mechanics that are dealt with better by Ranged or Melee depending on the side. The best example of this recently is
Opulence
, as the Lightning side leans toward ranged space management while melee are significantly more suited to dealing with the Fire side's
Flammen der Bestrafung
mechanic;
Things that need to be soaked in multiple tiers, allowing for melee to serve as a "last line of defense" around a target to soak when things inevitably sneak through or are spread in specific sections. Previous examples like the weighting of soak pools on
Krosus
toward the front of the bridge, or the upcoming Eternal Palace encounter Lady Ashvane's
Kräuselnde Welle
;
Very heavy movement requirements during intense periods in an encounter without extreme positional constraints. This includes things such as the final phases of
Argus
,
Helya
(assuming you didn't get an orb),
Operator Thogar
during Train movement, or
Aggramar
;
As a quick example exercise, we can look at a specific mechanic that was shifted from something incredibly oppressive to melee into one that was a non issue and could be ignored:
Vergessenssphäre
on
Mythrax
. In its first incarnation the increasing number of orbs restricting room around the boss would mean lowering your melee number was a significant benefit by reducing the eligible targets that could restrict (and be impacted by the lack of) space. This was later hotfixed to prioritise ranged, meaning that melee could simply ignore this the majority of the time. If however we took something akin to the Helya example above, having it alternate between targeting a Melee and then Ranged player, each camp could position in places to manipulate the orb casts more reliably without having to pre-empt random targeting. This is a quite graceful change to turn something from the binary feast/famine method of having Melee accomodate RNG positional mechanic spawns into one that can be manipulated and played around.
Note as well I have opted to omit things that give melee an advantage by virtue of simply being excluded from mechanics. Obviously melee gain a benefit on fights such as Jaina by not being a valid target for
Frostherz
, but I don't personally feel that it's a good mechanic just because you don't have to worry about something typically very dangerous. This also doesn't include things such as specific tools that only melee can provide that allows for a different approach to an encounter. This extends to the previously aforementioned more flexible and frequent interrupt rotations, and abilities such as
Todesgriff
or
Dunkelheit
. This is due to these feeling a lot more like you taking them not because they are melee but because they have something you can't get from any other source, which doesn't promote a healthy balance between the two roles either.
Is it Really as Bad as People Say?
This section is slightly weighted by anecdotal evidence, but in Battle for Azeroth I feel that the situation with melee is a mixture of slight exaggeration from some melee players (partially due to frustration from an overrepresented spec population relative to currently available raid spots) alongside a large grain of truth. No raid as of yet this expansion has encouraged bringing melee over ranged - especially not important or final encounters in a tier - despite a strong desire from a lot of people to play these specs. Frequently when people see a Feral Druid, Enhancement Shaman, or Retribution Paladin (
as examples
) show up in a kill this expansion, I have seen it met with surprise, awe or interest rather than it being expected. Phrases such as “
wow, there’s a
Feral Druid
in this kill? I wonder what they needed one of those for!
” or "
they must be an
insane
player to be brought over
" - despite the fact that past performance in some cases indicate the spec is at the very least capable of performing, or even exceeding numerically. Often the inclusion of unusual melee specs imply that something is awry to the outside viewer, because it is so unexpected to invest resources into them either as a player or as a guild over a competent ranged player.
All of this isn’t to say melee is unusable though - far from it - it is simply that the gulf between them and ranged is becoming more tangible specifically due to the current encounter design. This is a combination of performance based metrics such as damage and survivability (which melee is currently more than adequate at in most cases
in a vacuum
), and also ease of execution for the average guild. Ultimately no guild wants to make a fight harder than it needs to be, and oftentimes melee raise that bar of concern when some mechanics are present. It also then leads into the requirement to invest gear and time into that player or spec who may end up appearing inadequate compared to higher ranked kills before the tier is over and you reach the true test at the end of the raid; a gamble that seems increasingly like one that more and more guilds are unwilling to take.
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