PVE: Melee is massively trumped by Ranged.

[KyoMamoru]

In the current operational content [one can only imagine how things are going to be in Nightmare Mode] it is substantially harder on a group to bring Melee into the fight. Currently, the best AOEs in the game are reserved for Ranged Dps, while they also maintain the absolute best DPS numbers. Let's review the new operation mechanics.

Ravagers

Sparky

• [Hard Mode] Adds need to be away from the boss's aura.
  
• The boss is mobile with knockbacks and leaps, forcing Melee to chase.
  
• Adds need to be killed timely due to debuffs placed on the tank, which requires numerous target changes.
  
• Boss has a Multi-Leap Phase where he Melee is forced to chase after him while he attacks everyone in the group. Range keeps full uptime.
  

 

Bulo

• Multiple AOEs that if placed near the Boss that can completely negate Melee DPS from being in range.
  
• During the mass AOE phase, it is substantially easier for Ranged DPS to maintain uptime on the move, while Melee is forced to retreat.
  
• Load Lifters have an AOE as well, which will dramatically increase the damage done to the raid with multiple Melee.
  
• Cleave is far easier to avoid when Melee dps aren't crowded around the tank since the Ranged DPS are positioned at near max range.
  
• [Hardmode] Unstable Carts will target the Tanks, but will also be able to hit the Melee, unless the Melee abandon their DPS rotations.
  

 

Torque

• Requires a single DPS to man summoning the droid. Without a ranged DPS, one Melee would need to run to the terminal.
  
• The Fire Add can be damaged by Melee, if they max out their range perfectly; however, the Add is capable of doing huge amounts of damage in the process.
  
• The AOE that spawns from the floor has little warning and will stack on multiple Melee/tank resulting in tremendous damage.
  

 

Master and Blaster

• Random members will gain a mine on them that if overlapped will cause an explosion. Melee cannot spread out adequately once you include a tank that has it.
  
• Master performs a Fire Wheel of Death that prevents Melee dps from damaging it.
  

 

Coratanni

• The bird switches targets often. Melee is forced to be on Cortanni to maximize dps.
  
• Land Mines require the tanks to constantly move the boss, if the tank does not, Melee can be in positions where they cannot dps.
  
• Death Mouse is an AOE every 30 seconds, which has a random target. If it goes after Melee, it results in tremendous amount of Raid damage unless the Melee stops dpsing. A Ranged will simply be spread out.
  
• Knockbacks hamper Melee far greater than Ranged in this fight.
  
• The fight is actually rather mobile towards the end points due to jumping/knockbacks, which significantly reduce Melee uptime.
  

Temple of Sacrifice

Malaphar

• Adds spawn out of the circle requiring AOE damage. The longer you're out of the circle, the less damage you do.
  
• When the spear Spawns, ranged DPS can still [assuming spec] do damage in the run as they go towards the adds. Melee cannot do this.
  

 

Sword Squadron

• Numerous ground AOEs that if stacked or clipped result in tons of damage.
  
• The shield switch mechanic causes the Melee to change [using leap and so forth] when a few seconds later, an Add will spawn back on the other walker. A fast switch for Melee isn't possible.
  
• If a Melee is charged with running the bomb, they will lose out on damage, due to having to sacrifice 15 seconds of their uptime every shield. If you deploy the bomb in those 15 seconds, it ends up being ~3,000 worth of dps applied to the Walker. A ranged DPS would be able to dps for an extra 7 seconds prior to picking up the bomb.
  
• The Huge bomb requires spreading out and using movement abilities to escape. Ranged DPS can maintain attacking during this.
  
• Walkers are very hard to evenly dps towards the end for Melee stacked teams, while a Ranged group could easily swap as necessary.
  
• [Hardmode] Gravity bomb forces everyone to spread out, but Ranged Dps can maintain their uptime.
  

 

The Underlurker

• During the Add phase, Ranged can stack on Healers, Melee are forced to attack the mobs.
  
• The Adds in the fight also have aditional Melee attacks on top of the AOE. Ranged stacked groups will not deal with this damage.
  
• When the rocks fall, melee are still forced to deal with the damage from the AOE stomp and the Rage Storm. Range can attack from behind the rocks.
  
• During the Rage Storm, Ranged dps can LOS via the rock and still damage the boss. Melee cannot.
  
• After the knockback before the Cross, Range can continue to attack while getting into position.
  

 

Revanite Commanders

• There's so much target switching and add spawning that Melee can never get on anything aside from the boss for more than a few moments.
  
• AOE from Curse forces Melee to retreat, while Range continues full damage.
  
• Adds can place AOEs on boss [or themselves] that will damage Melee.
  

 

Revan

• Sabers force the group to spread out to deal with AOE/mechanic. All Ranged classes have their own Knockback moves. Operatives and Marauders do not have access to any. Having either in your group causes two members of the raid to stop what they are doing to deal with it.
  
• HK's bomb throw requires everyone to spread out to avoid stacking damage. Range can continue to DPS without issue, while Melee will have to abandon uptime to avoid splashing each other or the tanks.
  
• Ground AOEs aren't as bad in this fight, but they are a massive hurdle for Melee compared to Range.
  

 

Currently the absolutely highest dpsing parse for a Melee is 4924 dps on a 500k dummy. This was accomplished by a Concealment Operative [me] when server lag was at the absolutely lowest, and required numerous parses to actually accomplish. Aside from my single dps parse, there are no other Concealment Operatives that have posted anything close to that, and if I would post a 1,000,000 dummy, my parse would be lowered to 4700. Comparatively, we have ranged DPS that at peak are doing 5130 dps on the 1,000,000 dummy. When it comes to Melee, the only spec that has multiple people having success is Annihilation, and that is only because of a double proc bug on Primary Stat Relics due to their self healing. Even in my concealment spec, I was aided by it due to Stim Boost's self heal. When that is removed from the equation, we'll have the upper tier of Melee sustained DPS averaging under 4700 through all specs. That's the best players of these classes.

 

This is all on a stationary target. No changing of targets, no running to a new target, and certainly no dodging of mechanics. At the moment the content is significantly easier with stacked Ranged Classes:

 

• They output more damage even in a Dummy environment.
  
• AOE circles are never placed near the boss.
  
• AOEs will never stack damage on the raid due to overlaps by being too close.
  
• Rarely will they find themselves in a situation where they cannot DPS a boss.
  
• Adds that self destruct on targets have ample time to be spotted and heals prepared in advance.
  
• They easily target switch.
  
• Pound for pound, their AOEs are significantly more powerful.
  
• They can easily stack near Healers for AOE Healing when necessary. Add an Assassin's Shelter for even better results.
  
• Rotationally easier due to having to pay less attention to the mechanics of fights.
  

 

Yes, you can beat Story Modes with Melee. You can even struggle through Hard Modes and make it work; however, if you're going for the absolute ease of clearing the content, there's nothing that is going to beat Ranged Dps right now in this game for PVE. In Nightmare, I cannot even being to fathom how the mechanics are going to make Melee even less viable. Melee would need to see a massive buff to damage done. Already, a mere month into this expansion I'm seeing groups scoff at the thought of bringing in a Melee into their raid groups. I've witnessed numerous die hard Melee players make the switch.

 

I posted this on the Test Server's forum, and I'm posting it here. This is an issue that is very, very important to me as a player, so I hope I'm not breaking a forum rule in an attempt to gain more visibility for this topic.

[Octom]

Last February (as in Feb 2014), I overheard a question at the Cantina tour in Phoenix about melee. The direct response was the developers are aware of it and are working on it. Then, Nightmare Dread Fortress came out in April and Dread Palace came out in June. It was very apparent that even if they were aware, they didn't care. I questioned the same person who made that response in February at the ComicCon tour date in late July. They pointed to the timetable and said that 'that must have been why' (or something close), but that they are definitely aware of it.

 

And then this crap.

 

I was going to make a large tirade post and started to do research on it and found that this isn't a new problem nor a problem unique to Star Wars. When preparing an outline, I had a bit of a realization: My post won't be passed on. The people I want to see it won't see it. The people that need to see it to see what they are doing wrong and can effect a change won't see it. And, in the off chance that either of the previous statements are wrong, they won't care.

 

It's not a realization I wanted and definitely not one that I want to admit is true, but my head just started to get flooded with example after example of this same thing. They will just keep their blinders on, dedicate any true originality and quick-turn-around-efforts to trolling things like the upcoming Meat Tree decoration (as a 'sorry' for that bug, how about fixing another too instead of making a damn decoration?), and continue to not give us what we ask for even though doing so wouldn't come at any logical cost to them. We've been asking for melee-friendly PvE content for a while and it's not like they've not come out with endgame content in the last 3 years. They could have, but they didn't. They didn't care or, even worse, chose not to make any considerations.

 

It sucks. It just sucks.

 

Prove me wrong, Austin.

[Projawa]

Not to downplay or divert the issue, but it's like this in most MMOs. Can it be solved? Maybe, nothing is impossible. But designers typically think mostly along the lines of let's come up with "interesting mechanics" rather than "mechanics that don't favor ranged". Some games try to compensate by giving melee slightly higher dps.

 

If your progression team isn't up for the extra challenge and frustration, you'll have to wait until they get it on farm and start allowing melee alts to come in.

 

Also, have you reported the double-proc relic bug? Sad to see it come back after the 2.4.2 "fix".

Edited January 9, 2015 by Projawa

[invertioN]

Last February (as in Feb 2014), I overheard a question at the Cantina tour in Phoenix about melee. The direct response was the developers are aware of it and are working on it. Then, Nightmare Dread Fortress came out in April and Dread Palace came out in June. It was very apparent that even if they were aware, they didn't care. I questioned the same person who made that response in February at the ComicCon tour date in late July. They pointed to the timetable and said that 'that must have been why' (or something close), but that they are definitely aware of it.

Well that's pretty ridiculous if true, seeing as the new ops are a lot more unfair to mdps than DF/DP, hell I've even done Tyrans NiM with 4 mdps and it was a fun experience.

 

As for the OP, some things you mention are not as bad as you make them sound (for example, unstable carts on Bulo HM shouldn't be a problem for MDPS, the tanks just need to back off a bit... of course that wouldn't be required if u had 4 ranged ), but also one could add other things that are annoying on HM.

 

And yeah I don't really know what they can do about a lot of these issues.

Edited January 9, 2015 by invertioN

[KyoMamoru]

In other games that I have played, the solution was always that Melee would do more single target damage, while Range would bring the AOE. Usually in those games, Ranged classes would have less armor and defensive cool-downs as well. In the current game, Ranged classes would need to do 8-10% less damage than Melee on single targets to make up for the loss of damage/extra damage the group takes due to them being in the party.

[Saenth]

Ranged DPS simply needs to be toned down a bit overall (it is their stated intent that ranged should do the same or less as melee, at the very least). Plus, the melee should get the more powerful AOEs (not ranged) if they're not willing to make ranged lose some defensive capacities. Sages are the only ones squishy enough to penalize their ranged capacities somewhat.

 

Of course in the PVP metagame all of this isn't necessarily true.

[GuiltySouldier]

Ranged DPS simply needs to be toned down a bit overall (it is their stated intent that ranged should do the same or less as melee, at the very least). Plus, the melee should get the more powerful AOEs (not ranged) if they're not willing to make ranged lose some defensive capacities. Sages are the only ones squishy enough to penalize their ranged capacities somewhat.

 

Of course in the PVP metagame all of this isn't necessarily true.

 

I can get with this for the most part, depending how big of AoE attacks would be implemented for said mDPS. I doubt it would quell most of the negative chatter though. Those who favor rDPSing as their playstyle would complain about losing DPS to a mDPS.

 

Truth be told, I highly doubt this would ever be resolved without some accepting a sacrifice to some aspect of their chosen 'profession'.

[Yezzan]

Ranged DPS simply needs to be toned down a bit overall (it is their stated intent that ranged should do the same or less as melee, at the very least). Plus, the melee should get the more powerful AOEs (not ranged) if they're not willing to make ranged lose some defensive capacities. Sages are the only ones squishy enough to penalize their ranged capacities somewhat.

 

Of course in the PVP metagame all of this isn't necessarily true.

 

How exactly will that solve the issues raised by the OP? The bane of his discomfort is that dungeons are more taxing on Melee than ranged due to the mechanics involved. "Toning down" ranged is a separate issue, not relevant to this topic, and in effect will reduced the overall DPS of the raid group. I'm quite certain that's not what the OP intends to achieve.

 

I understand his frustration but we have to consider the effect any change will have on PvP. So that in trying to balance one aspect of the game we do not unbalance the other.

 

In this case, I don't think anything needs to be done Melee. The mechanics of the dungeons need to be changed so that the difficulty is spread out between all the roles. Aggressive encounters should not be more taxing on melee than ranged.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Yezzan

[Saenth]

Making the mechanics better is a hope we can only reserve for future content. For all current content it's too late, any feedback from testers on these issues was ignored or the developers simply did not have the resources to address.

 

Besides, there is a class balance issue regardless of mechanics. Ranged should not have the same overall single target DPS, equal or better AOE capacity, and equal or better armor, than any melee (as in, they should not get ALL of those, maybe one or two of those). There has to be some sort of tradeoff, that's what I'm suggesting.

 

Powertechs are the only "melee" who actually do have enough benefits to offset their status, and one of those benefits is ironically that they can effectively perform most of their rotation from outside melee range.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Saenth

[Jerba]

They did say their target DPS numbers for melees are higher than for ranges, but unfortunately, the classes are far away from hitting the target mark. Maybe with 3.1, they'll be able to fix the imbalances and melees can make up for bad mechanics with higher DPS, who knows.

I don't really see how they can design an interesting mechanic that's not challenging to melees. Anything other than a tank and spank boss requires movement of the group, and if the boss moves around, melees are affected the most.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Jerba

[lazerxxx]

How exactly will that solve the issues raised by the OP? The bane of his discomfort is that dungeons are more taxing on Melee than ranged due to the mechanics involved.

But if your damage under perfect conditions is way higher you can afford to lose some due to boss mechanics and still be competitive and and would encourage the very great principle of high risk high reward.

When i started playing(asation) it was usually 2mdd+ 2rdd with maro highly favored over everything else in the melee slot, with 2.0 it switched to 1 mdd(usually maro again)+ 3rdd and now we are finally at 0mdd + 4rdd. That's just sad.

 

It's a shame that the torparse boss encounter leaderboards aren't available at the moment. It would be absolutly hilarious to see how many melees are in the top 50 per boss for each of the hm encounter. Maybe that would be an eye opener for bioware.

[KyoMamoru]

How exactly will that solve the issues raised by the OP? The bane of his discomfort is that dungeons are more taxing on Melee than ranged due to the mechanics involved.

 

I'd be fine with the mechanics if I was doing substantially more damage when I wasn't doing my best Jackie Chan impression to avoid taking raid damage or being flat out killed by a mechanic. The damage that Melee does needs to be significant if we are going to be playing the game on Hard Mode and thus forcing our fellow Raid Members to undergo harder fights due to our preference of being melee.

 

It's a shame that the torparse boss encounter leaderboards aren't available at the moment. It would be absolutly hilarious to see how many melees are in the top 50 per boss for each of the hm encounter. Maybe that would be an eye opener for bioware.

 

I actually don't know how many hard mode numbers you'd even see from Melee. Most of the guilds that are doing Hms are doing it almost purely with range. I'd be eager to see the parses, but I know the vast majority of the submitted ones would be range from the get go.

Edited January 9, 2015 by KyoMamoru

[Yezzan]

The solution is not in buffing melee damage or toning down ranged damage. The issues raised are in respect of operations, and as such, the change should be confined to where the specific problem exists.

 

it is better to change the mechanics of the ops so that you can quarantine any problems that arise thereafter.

[Projawa]

They did say their target DPS numbers for melees are higher than for ranges, but unfortunately, the classes are far away from hitting the target mark. Maybe with 3.1, they'll be able to fix the imbalances and melees can make up for bad mechanics with higher DPS, who knows.

I don't really see how they can design an interesting mechanic that's not challenging to melees. Anything other than a tank and spank boss requires movement of the group, and if the boss moves around, melees are affected the most.

 

That IO merc who gets nerfed almost 20% from 5300 to ~4300 is not going to be happy. Plus, a nerf that substantial would have PVP implications in addition to issues with any dps timers/enrage on current content.

 

Conversely, buffing everyone to IO merc levels is also not going to happen for similar reasons: it would throw PVP balance out of whack and trivialize most PVE dps checks.

 

Nerfs should occur. Those top tier madness sorcs who can barely eek out 4300 in 198 gear are actually closer to the ~4300 sustained dps goals that BW stated in their podcasts. Those carnage marauders who are getting ~4100 are also performing up to BW's own expectations. It's almost all other specs which are exceeding expected target numbers anywhere from a little to a lot.

 

Whatever they do should be quick. There's no way they can effectively design dps checks in NIM without normalizing some of the dps discrepancies. Balancing is also the best way to encourage class diversity (short of cheese strats like 8 BH on HM Revan) since we all know that the unique buffs/debuffs BW painstakingly baked into every advanced class has done jackshyt in regards to encouraging class diversity.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Projawa

[Octom]

I understand his frustration but we have to consider the effect any change will have on PvP. So that in trying to balance one aspect of the game we do not unbalance the other.

The opposite consideration has never been made. Not saying we should ignore it here but I had to get that in there.

 

Fuggit, I'll throw another way it could work in:

 

Take all channeled/casted moves (Master Strike, Ion Storm...) away from or out of the rotations/priority considerations for melee and make ALL ranged classes have 2 or more as part of theirs. Then, make all the PvE encounters (at least close to) equal parts area attacks and movement mechanics and aim to create equal down time for both.

 

There are others, but unfortunately, nothing we say will matter. No matter how important or true this thread is, it will be like >99% of the rest of threads here: ignored by the powers that be.

[Emperor-Norton]

I think people should ponder the idea of making the game less Melee Friendly, but more Anti-Ranged. I remember doing HM Torque on a Melee (specifically a Marauder), then doing it on a Ranged (Sniper). When I played a Ranged, mostly I just sat back, attacked things that you easily saw spawn, clicked a panel at x time, and that was it.

 

When I played a Melee, oh my was that night and day. I had to dodge fire, watch out for Fire Devices, cycle defensive cooldowns as I got pummeled by Shoots Lasers + turrets, get randomly stunned, and in general get wrecked (took 800k+ damage to a healers 70k). On top of that, I needed to do my rotation on a boss that ran all over the room, through fire where I couldn't follow, through Fire Devices that would global me, and I had to stick to him since we were pushing a super tight enrage. And man was that FUN. It was really enjoyable to test yourself against those mechanics and that enrage. To me, that is what is fun about raiding. Not seeing how well you can sit there and tunnel a boss. So I think the focus should be less on making Melee life easy, but how to make Ranged life equally hell.

Edited January 10, 2015 by Emperor-Norton

[Yezzan]

So I think the focus should be less on making Melee life easy, but how to make Ranged life equally hell.

 

Which would involved a change in the fight mechanics (as I suggested) and not "buffing" or "nerfing" melee/range classes.

 

So in essence, melee shouldn't be complaining about the "difficulty" (tantamount to a whine since it's about DPS loss) but instead it should be ranged that complain about the "relative ease" due to melee-favored ops mechanics.

 

[Octom]

And before anyone tries to claim that some dome that reflects damage is a mechanic that hurts ranged: it is not. Ranged just moves inside or is already there because they know it's coming. They don't care where they sit - none of their moves have a minimum range (and maybe they should...). The only one that did - Mortar Volley - just lost that requirement. Oddly enough, it's the leaps and storms that have a minimum distance on the melee characters.

[Ardarell_Solo]

Thanks for summing that up in detail. Of course all this is still beatable with melee dps, but the case in point is, it's much harder. So groups who struggle with the current content are always better off the less melee they bring. Problem: This becomes a general attitude. LFG-Channel on my server these days says "LFM RDD for Temple/Ravagers" way too often. So even if you outgear stuff come time, all 3.0 content will have a lot of raid leaders generally avoid melee DPS.

 

In our raid group I only play my Sent on fights where it doesn't really matter. All the stuff we're really working on, I go Gunslinger. We just can't afford to make things more difficult for no reason.

[GuiltySouldier]

I don't really see how they can design an interesting mechanic that's not challenging to melees. Anything other than a tank and spank boss requires movement of the group, and if the boss moves around, melees are affected the most.

 

I just had to grab this bit from the post because it is a very fair point to bring up. I highly doubt there's something that can be done to effectively make content challenging to melee without some bringing up an issue with 'taking too much damage' (issue at hand) or 'not doing enough damage as mDPS/rDPS compared to rDPS/mDPS (an issue that would come up eventually).

[rsuhandy]

Currently the absolutely highest dpsing parse for a Melee is 4924 dps on a 500k dummy. This was accomplished by a Concealment Operative [me] when server lag was at the absolutely lowest, and required numerous parses to actually accomplish. Aside from my single dps parse, there are no other Concealment Operatives that have posted anything close to that, and if I would post a 1,000,000 dummy, my parse would be lowered to 4700. Comparatively, we have ranged DPS that at peak are doing 5130 dps on the 1,000,000 dummy. When it comes to Melee, the only spec that has multiple people having success is Annihilation, and that is only because of a double proc bug on Primary Stat Relics due to their self healing. Even in my concealment spec, I was aided by it due to Stim Boost's self heal. When that is removed from the equation, we'll have the upper tier of Melee sustained DPS averaging under 4700 through all specs. That's the best players of these classes.

 

 

Not to derail your general point of this thread which I am in agreement with.

However, at least according to torparse, which is buggy as hell, There are at least two melee specs that can break 5K on a 1 Mil dummy; Vanguard/PT and Sentinel/Marauder. This is more to point out that besides for I/O ranged and Melee can pull similar numbers on a static target.

 

Furthermore, it seems that the only classes able to break 5K, at least on Torparse, are I/O Mercs, Eng Snipers, Pyro PTs, and Anni Marauders. I also have seen a screen shot of a 5K Lightning parse by stomach on another thread.

So that leaves the 5K club at currently 3 ranged and 2 melee which doesn't seem that bad on paper.

But yes for most groups ranged is still the better choice and until mechanics that disrupt ranged dps uptime are designed this will continue to be the trend.

Edited January 10, 2015 by rsuhandy

[Whitelightr]

The issue is, and has always been with MMOs, that without changing range dps basic skillsets you cannot effectively 'punish' them like you can melee. If a melee moves out of their designed engagement area they lose dps; but ranged can be anywhere between 30m and 0m of the boss and still do full dps.

 

The only way to change it would be to make some/helf of a ranged dps abilities have a 30 max/15 min meter range. Then you could effectively add mechanics that target people outside of 10 meters, causing ranged to break dps to avoid it. Right now if you added those mechanics ranged can just clump into melee and negate them (IE Calph and Droid last tier) without suffering any penalty.

 

 

As for the current tier, the bosses are not all that bad with proper tactics, but there are a few the punish anyone in melee range (dps or tanks).

[SBR_QuorTek]

Simple solution would be that ranged in Ops/FPs and whatsoever would get a DPS penalty if standing within 15meters, and more stuff to avoid and run from when at 15m+ like circles of doom or whatever...

 

but it is just a suggestion.

[Emperor-Norton]

There are mechanics and ways of doing a fight that does incentivize Melee over Ranged without having to make Ranged to much less damage. To understand what needs to be done, you need to know the advantages and weaknesses of Melee and Ranged. Melee Classes are very limited in the area they can attack from, but they do get more freedom of mobility by never having to sit in one spot and cast. Basically something that moves, but doesn't move so fast that it makes it impossible to keep up, inherently advantage Melee. What hurts Melee are things that move too far and fast for them to keep up with, or things that prevent them from moving through an area. Some mechanics like Air Strikes on TItan 6 can be fine for Melee if they work together to drop circles in certain places to make sure they have room to keep attacking. Examples of Anti-Melee Mechanics are the leap on Sparky, Fire Vents on Torque, Tyrans porting, and chasing Sunder on Cartel Warlords.

 

Ranged Classes get total freedom of distance that they can engage from, but they have to sit there in one spot and cast a lot, which takes away their ability to be mobile. Since they have freedom of distance, they can generally pick where to attack from. So anything that hurts Ranged are things that make them pick up and move at all. Examples of Anti-Ranged Mechanics are Air Strikes on Titan 6, moving to get in front of the boss on Thrasher, and Horic choosing people on Cartel Warlords. Since almost all Ranged classes have some instant casts however, if there is a long amount of time before they should move, they can easily just wait until they get to a point in their rotation where they can move without disrupting things. This got worse in 3.0 when Ranged Classes got a ton more mobility. So for PvE the only answer may be to lower their damage (a PvP solution is to lower their control of other players).

 

Generally, Melee is harder since you need to pay vastly more attention to boss position (especially as an Operative, Sentinel, or Juggernaut) that Ranged do. Since both generally worry about things spawning on them, this means Melee have much more to think about. Melee DPS do require a lot more coordination with the Tanks to make sure they don't do something that moves the boss away from the Melee too fast. For example, on Torque if Fire Vents and Fire Devices spawned on the person Tanking, the Ranged DPS, and Healers, that fight would really encourage Melee.

 

And seriously why am I still able to post?

Edited January 10, 2015 by Emperor-Norton

[KyoMamoru]

Not to derail your general point of this thread which I am in agreement with.

However, at least according to torparse, which is buggy as hell, There are at least two melee specs that can break 5K on a 1 Mil dummy; Vanguard/PT and Sentinel/Marauder. This is more to point out that besides for I/O ranged and Melee can pull similar numbers on a static target.

 

Furthermore, it seems that the only classes able to break 5K, at least on Torparse, are I/O Mercs, Eng Snipers, Pyro PTs, and Anni Marauders. I also have seen a screen shot of a 5K Lightning parse by stomach on another thread.

So that leaves the 5K club at currently 3 ranged and 2 melee which doesn't seem that bad on paper.

But yes for most groups ranged is still the better choice and until mechanics that disrupt ranged dps uptime are designed this will continue to be the trend.

 

Looks like a couple of parses got thrown up after this thread was written on there. Torparse has been removing/adding stuff log wise. It's been strange. The issue is if we [using Torpase] look at the top parses. There were a few in another language, and a few that also had no data in them once I clicked, but these are the numbers I counted:

 

24 Mercenaries.

10 Snipers.

4 Sorcerers.

5 Powertechs

4 Marauders

1 Operative.

 

So we have a total of 38 Ranged on the board vs 10 Melee. I hope that Torparse gets its class sorting soon. It seems that this ratio between the two is fairly close to 1 Melee to every 3 Ranged DPS in an Operations Group. If this is true, it might be probably that the trend would continue downwards from the top 50.

 

Also, I still stand by the fact that Marauders/Operatives/Powertechs are gaining the use of an bug via self healing to get extra procs of their relics. Once that is fixed [it was fixed in the previous tier of gear] we are going to see their numbers drop. Snipers are also seeing an increase in DPS with this bug as well. In the Marauders parse for example, his fight was 195 seconds long. His Primary Surge buff ended 22 times, meaning he had 132 seconds of Primary Surge, and his Power Surge ended 21 times, giving him a total of 126. His uptime on these buffs was 67.6% of the fight, and 64.6% of the fight respectively. Under normal circumstances, his proc rate should have had a lock out of 20 seconds before alacrity, leading to just shy under 10 procs for each. Assuming 198 Relics, we're talking an extra 890 of Power and 890 of primary stat. He is currently enjoying an added full minute of these effects. Once this bug is fixed, Melee will plummet.

Edited January 10, 2015 by KyoMamoru