Dear Melee DPS,
This just isn’t working out. I think we need to stop seeing so much of each other. At least in dungeons. We can still raid together. Well, twenty five mans. Ten mans are tricky to work out too.
It’s not you; it’s me. I really love how you’re all up in the boss’s butt, bravely backstabbing him and slicing off his knees. That’s awesome. I really, really love your ten-second-cooldown interrupts and my friend the tank would like to ask you to keep using those every time a boss tries something, please.
But there’s just too many of you. I can maybe handle one of you in a heroic. Two, in a ten man. It’s not your fault at all. It’s just all the encounters out there seem to have splash damage around the boss, short range AOEs, debuffs from hitting things, things you have to run away from. And you guys try so hard, most of you (I’m looking at you, XXArthaassXX. You totally refuse to run away from anything and then wonder why you die. Have fun with the repair bills bud).
And let’s face it; my AOE heals are not what they should be. I know you guys try to stand in the puddle of green…. but Efflorescence and I have just agreed to a trial separation. I fell so hard for that shiny green circle, but it just couldn’t deliver.
But fight after fight, night after night, the mage and warlock are lowest on the “damage taken” meter. How is this even right? Mages are supposed to die in the first ten seconds of the fight, and locks are emo self-hurting goth punk kids. Why are they so much better at not taking damage?
Well, they aren’t. It’s that damn splash damage. Oh, and of course some of you like to stand in front of the boss, where you can get cleaved and parried and stuff. But most of you are better than that. It just seems like, right now, standing near the bad guys is a bad thing. Should be left to the tank.
And the aggro. Tanks are doing awesome at holding aggro these days – but every now and then they lose their grip and someone else gets nommed. And it’s always you guys. You’re right there, so close, so inviting. No time to react. Boom. Dead. At least if someone goes after the mage, the tank has time to taunt it right as the mage frost novas it next to me and blinks away. You guys don’t have that luxury.
So let’s try cooling things down for a while. Maybe seeing each other as friends. We can work out a schedule for doing things. Or if you bring your friend, that hunter we were talking about. Maybe we could work things out like that.
Or you can roll a mage. Let me know if you want to try that. I’ll even help you gear up.
I pretty much always run with a fury warrior, so my heart visibly sinks when I see a ret pally and a rogue in there as well.
I’m desperate for the mages, shammies and hunters!
I physically wince every time I cast rejuv and see my mana pool dip by 5k, or a non free regrowth. Although tbh the hunter I had the other day stood in as much stuff as any ret paladin ever has…
I don’t mind rogues as much, they are so much better at standing BEHIND the boss. There is just so much splash damage right now, even not standing in stuff, the melee takes noticably more damage than the rdps. And they have more trouble switching targets.
“Or you can roll a mage. Let me know if you want to try that. I’ll even help you gear up.”
Do you prefer mages for ranged? Or locks, spriests, hunters?
I once ran with a ranged rogue….it was interesting and funny even if he did poor dps with his throwing!
I like ’em all. I LOVE a good hunter but we rarely get to run with them – because Reversion is too busy tanking to bring his hunter and we just don’t have any around! Mages are awesome, I almost always get to run with one. I think the only spriest I’ve run with lately is ME!
I keep wondering to myself where have all the hunters gone? Weirdly it’s the one class our guild seems to not have many of…aside from Reversion I can only think of 2 others (no I’m not counting Trout the Neverplayed). What happened to them all?!?!
I can think of five total 80+ hunters in the guild … and that’s including Reversion, Trout, and Arc and Chill’s alts. Lex is really the only main. Let’s face it, once people have to actually learn how to do more than MD and volley, hunter is no longer a faceroll.
Doesn’t Elia have an over-80 hunter as well? But yeah. We have ONE hunter at 85. ONE.
@Troutwort – I think it was the resource change. My guild’s 2 hunters rerolled or left the game because they didn’t like focus.
…of course, I adore focus management and only started seriously leveling my hunter alt after the switch. So I think we’re at the place in time now where a lot of old hunters have left the class, but not a lot of people have rolled new hunters yet to fill the ranks back in.
Yeah Button… I like focus too… kinda but apparently not enough to level my hunter seriously 😛
Seems like I might not be alone in the ‘like it but… meh’.
Apparently autoshot will cast on the move now? Well in the next patch anyways?
When I’m running fury, I actually ask the healer to hold back on healing me. Between Bloodthirst (0.5% heal on every melee attack including auto-attacks, glyphed to 0.7%, talented to 0.9%), Victory Rush (20% heal usable for ~20 s after getting a killing blow, glyphed to 30%, talented to 38%), and survival cooldowns on top of that, I feel pretty good about my longevity in melee.
Honestly, every melee class has survival cooldowns, and many have some kind of self-healing. LFD pugs who know what they’re doing are rare, sure, but I don’t think the problem is with melee – the problem is with the pugs, and maybe with the higher skill cap/attention to health required to be a good melee player than to be a good ranged player. The exception at the moment is death knights, especially unholy, but they’re having that addressed in 4.0.6.
For raiding though, Blizzard needs to wise up. Having more than 1 melee is unnecessarily difficult on many ten-man encounters, and having more than 2 is practically impossible. It’s no accident that we got most of our 10m H ICC kills after our rogue dropped the raid, leaving us with only one melee; and even then there were fights when I wished we could bring all ranged, but not a single fight where I wished we had more melee.
Yeah, our raid tonight we’re bringing two mdps – but one is our third tank if we need it. The other has been really good at stepping out and I will ask him if I feel it’s necessary. We’re actually kind of short on rdps right now…. I probably could have brought four melee but I’m not that insane.
Now I totally feel like I should level my hunter and get her geared so that she could come in the raid instead of the mage if necessary. Time to ask Ado for hunter lessons!
You have a great teacher on hand there! But them we’d lose one of our awesome Mage duo. I need to get MORE rdps not the same mix…
I need to get my hunter up for fights where we have overkill on tanking… not sure if that will be soon though. Of course I would probably do poor DPS while huntering and raid leading at the same time. I suppose I could make a boomkin spec….