Raid composition and the role gap
by Matthew Rossi 
Feb 17th 2011 at 4:00PM
It kind of drives me insane (yes, amazingly, I have more insane to be driven to) that at times, raid progress is stalled not by a lack of capable raiders, but rather by the design of raid encounters that punishes them for the type of DPSers they are. As a raid leader, I am not a big fan of telling capable players to switch from enhancement (a spec they may be skilled at) to elemental (a spec they may not have any experience with) because even if their DPS drops, it will be better for the raid and our healers to have them out at range -- just one potential example. Worse than telling people to switch roles is telling them you need them to step out for another player because they simply can't switch to a non-melee role.
Painting a broader picture
When I see a talented and skilled paladin tank powerleveling a druid because he can be a moonkin (and thus fulfill a ranged role) as well as heal or tank, it drives the point home to me. As much as we're always told that it's dangerous to use what happens in our personal gameplay to paint a broader picture of what's happening in the game entire, I can't help but wonder how many other raids are having this experience. It seems to me a failure of design that the raids themselves provide selection pressure to try and force my players into classes they don't want to play. If I'm intended to bring my friends because they're good players, why should my friends and good players be forced to roll classes they don't want to play?
We already have to divide raids into tanks, healers and DPSers. A further division of labor in the DPS ranks, especially when we're supposedly to be able to raid in either 10- or 25-man format, really makes things unnecessarily convoluted for no good reason. Fights designed to be punishing because you're standing too close or too far away from something need to be balanced out so that raids don't need to cherry-pick their roster to succeed (or at the very least, so they won't suffer unduly). This should go for ranged players as well; it should be just as viable to field an all-caster or all-ranged DPS squad. Right now, the all ranged squad is absolutely viable: there is no penalty associated with having an all ranged raid. Try an all melee and see what your healers say.
We've got more raids on the way, so please, let's see some flexibility in who you can bring.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, BlizzCon, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
wow Feb 17th 2011 4:11PM
This post. It seems pointless.
Yes, you will need to ensure you have a proper balance of ranged and melee. The same way you need to ensure you have a proper balance of tanks and healers.
It has always been this way, what has changed is that it now doesn't matter WHICH melee you bring, or WHICH ranged you bring. (at least not as much as it used to)
There was once a day where your paladin tank would not have the choice of which ranged DPS he would run with, he would have to go as a hybrid, most likely boomkin (maybe spriest?) or your pure DPS would be absolutely abysmal.
And what happens if and when, one day, in a magical far of place, where blizzard manages to build a set of encounters that are perfectly balanced for melee vs ranged? You will see people stacking either melee or caster buffs or be at a large disadvantage.
Blizzard would either balance for a mixed group, and make the DPS requirements easy for a group that stacks, or balance it for a stacked group and make the DPS requirements near impossibly for groups that don't stack.
Billlop Feb 17th 2011 4:12PM
You obviously dont think its pointless. if you did then you wouldnt write a reply at all, let alone write a 5 paragraph reply.
Scott Clark Feb 17th 2011 4:30PM
This is not an issue of balance. A team with no melee DPS suffers no penalty. The current raid design offers maximum reward to ranged-only compositions. Melee DPS are consistently punished for being at melee range while ranged DPS are rarely penalized for being ranged.
Our current raiding group is largely ranged, with only two melee DPS available. Composition is generally determined by who is online at raid time; fights are more difficult when one of our melee DPS are included, and we struggle significantly when both are included - despite the fact that our melee players are, as a rule, at least as talented as our ranged DPSers.
wow Feb 17th 2011 4:31PM
Or I'm bored at work and this article caught my eye
I looked, I lol'd, I took a few minutes out of my day to compose a reply.
Dee Eff See Feb 17th 2011 4:32PM
Totally agree. Don't think of this game as having 3 roles: Tank, Healer, DPS. Think of 4 roles splitting the DPS into ranged and melee. You can bring any melee, any ranged, any healers, and any tanks you wish and you will be successful as long as you bring the right number of each.
It's hard enough to make new and innovative boss fight designs using 4 distinct roles. If you widdle that down to 3 you are severly inhibiting the designers and will certainly hurt the game in the long run.
Regarding Paragon's comment, that is an extreme case where druid's Rip lasts very long and does a lot of damage while not actually attacking the boss. These problems will be fixed and are not something 99.99% of the WoW population has to worry about.
wow Feb 17th 2011 5:13PM
Paragons comments were focus'd around several encounters.
The biggest problem ecounter was ascended council (P3), which has been hot fixed now several times over to pretty much make it even for melee and ranged.
In fact as it is now, ranged may even be at a slight disadvantage in that you can easily get blocked of from being able to DPS towards the end of P3, or if you do DPS be spreading chain lighting everywhere.
(larger hit box makes for quicker spreading of blue pools, essentially adding a second element (it was always there, but was not a issue before) to the soft enrage, both a healing element, and a can't stand anywhere element very similar to PP)
Pyromelter Feb 17th 2011 6:01PM
"Our current raiding group is largely ranged, with only two melee DPS available. Composition is generally determined by who is online at raid time; fights are more difficult when one of our melee DPS are included, and we struggle significantly when both are included - despite the fact that our melee players are, as a rule, at least as talented as our ranged DPSers."
I agree that the current tier is significantly unfair to melee dps because of how much ranged is favored in the raid designs. However this is different than what Rossi was saying though. He was talking about running a raid with only melee DPS, and complaining about the fact that he can't just easily shoehorn them all in without any regard to ranged v. melee.
Most raid encounters prior to cataclysm favored a mix of dps types, so to complain that now you can't just steamroll with 6 melee dps would be like complaining about all raid compositions from the beginning of wow. There are certainly some encounters and raids that favored stacking certain classes (shaman in sunwell, warlocks on yogg +0, paladins on lich king; currently we see paragon stacking a lot of mages in different cata encounters), but rarely could you just bring all of one type of dps, and while there have been some that have been ranged friendly, there haven't been any I can think of that were melee-exclusive - although I admit my knowledge and memory can be spotty on these types of things.
Anyway the point is complaining about being melee-unfriendly is one thing, but asking for a raid that allows for 6 melee dps is pretty much unreasonable, based on previous raid design.
Mr. Tastix Feb 17th 2011 9:16PM
Don't know why this guy is downrated. Because he thinks the post was pointless?
Regardless of that, his points are completely and utterly true. Whether the current raids have anti-melee issues or other problems isn't a problem of the class, it's a problem with the encounter's balance.
Paladins should be happy that they can at least dps now.
Chokaa Feb 17th 2011 10:14PM
@pyro
It doesn't sound like he WANTS to bring 6 melee, just that the fact that 6 ranged is perfectly viable and suffers no penalty while 6 melee is impossible. Its neither fair nor balanced.
Rajah Feb 18th 2011 1:06AM
@Scott Clark: But this IS a question of balance. The very fact that a team suffers no penalty from having only ranged dps is precisely what signals this imbalance. To restore the balance and make melee dps once again as viable as ranged, they need to buff melee dps classes back up to the top and nerf ranged dps back down to the bottom. This introduces at least a relative penalty for choosing only ranged dps classes in a raid team, since switching out any one ranged for a melee damage dealer would always result in an increase in dps. At the same time, teams would be discouraged from choosing melee-only dpsers because of the damage avoidance and other advantages that ranged will always have over melee.
Spellotape Feb 18th 2011 2:41AM
While it's unfortunate if all of your friends happen to be melee and you want to bring them all but can't, I wouldn't exactly say it was "balanced" to be able to field raids with *all* of one kind of DPS. It's not balanced right now with the ranged superiority, and it won't be balanced if you can field a raid of all melee DPS, either - balance is when you need to use both kinds.
it's not that Feb 18th 2011 11:08AM
@KURASH:
No, Rossi alluded to that fact. But the overall theme of his article is that he should be able to bring all melee DPS.
From the article:
"I am now constantly trying to field a 10-man raid with six melee DPSers."
"We already have to divide raids into tanks, healers and DPSers. A further division of labor in the DPS ranks ... makes things unnecessarily convoluted for no good reason."
Also, the anecdote about the pally re-rolling a druid.
He does mention the imbalance that all rDPS setup suffers no penalty. But he argues that this is good and all mDPS should be possible too. He does *not* argue that a mixed rDPS/mDPS should be necessary.
Kurash Feb 18th 2011 2:48PM
@it's not that
You're addressing me, but you didn't actually refute anything I said: if Rossi wants to bring all melee and he can't because the encounters are designed to be more punishing to melee, but he *could* bring all ranged and do just fine, then the encounter is still unbalanced.
All of the quotes you cited only reinforce this idea—the paladin rerolling because paladins can't dps at range; the argument against the role of DPS being further subdivided into ranged and melee, which would essentially create four roles for players to fill (the others being tanks and healers); etc. All of these are to demonstrate that right now melee is at a disadvantage.
Keep in mind that most melee DPS does not have a ranged option: druids and shaman can respec, sure, but warriors, paladins, rogues, and death knights can't. They are stuck in melee range. Having other DPS classes at an advantage simply because of the method they use to DO the damage is not fair.
Thus, as I said below, the issue is balancing.
Billlop Feb 17th 2011 4:12PM
Leveling a new Hunter (63 at the moment) this actually makes me happy :D Nice to know i'll be appriciated at end game.
JonGalt Feb 17th 2011 4:12PM
This is a longer, more politically correct expression of what Paragon said when they finished this tier. I agree wholeheartedly, even as an rDPS.
We've actually had to recruit and expand our core into 2 going on 3 teams to accomodate all the good mDPS we have. As a result, we have spread our more experienced and talented raiders out more and have slowed progression across the board. It's not fun, but if you want to progress it must be done.
Pyromelter Feb 17th 2011 6:14PM
Actually I think paragon's was more politically correct. Rossi was complaining about not being able to down bosses with all melee dps, when that has almost never been the case for raids in wow. Paragon wasn't asking to stack all melee, rather that ranged was so superior to melee that they benched their melee to be able to down a lot of the hard mode encounters.
One is complaining about not be able to stack a certain type of dps (Rossi), and the other is pointing out they were forced to stack a certain type of dps (Paragon). That's where I see the difference in the statements, anyway.
gewalt Feb 17th 2011 6:38PM
I read Rossi's statement and all I saw was qq. I'm not sure what hes trying to get at.
How dare blizzard design balanced encounters! OMGWTF
Kurash Feb 17th 2011 7:21PM
"How dare blizzard design balanced encounters! OMGWTF"
But that's the thing, gewalt: What Rossi is saying is that things ARE NOT balanced. He's saying that things are much more difficult for melee DPS than for ranged DPS. Having these encounters consistently more punishing for one and not the other is not a well-balanced design.
Cider Feb 17th 2011 4:14PM
I completely agree.. Our raids are suffering right now because of that :P
Potsos Feb 17th 2011 4:15PM
I am finding the same problem even in heroics with my guild. For instance, a boss like Ozruk is so much easier with ranged DPS. I often cringe when I call for a group and it's a DK, Fury Warrior and Rogue that offers to go. :x