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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsRaid 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 6 of 6)
wow Feb 17th 2011 9:34PM
If you were doing heroic 25 even having hunters wasn't enough. :<
Hell having 1 hunter and 1 enh shaman for it sucked to the point of having H25 impossible. Oh that was a fun week....
vwgreen77 Feb 17th 2011 9:57PM
I don't agree, but I don't disagree with this article.
I think what is really upsetting, that this article brings up well, is that if you have many great mdps and few rdps you still have to balance. But for those who have played this game - even those who are LK children - it is something we should expect.
The second point I like in this article: RDPS don't get penalized as harshly as MDPS.
To me, I see MDPS as the more difficult DPS anyway because it IS harder to avoid ALL possible avoidable 1) they are right next to the target 2) they also get mechanics aimed at RDPS. Yet I think that is the point of MDPS, to be the more skilled and alert. It is hard to be good at MDPS but that should be expected (IMO).
Yeah you don't want the bad dps coming, but if it is good enough to get the job done, you have to. Is it sad that the great players get left behind? Yeah, but it happens. In my opinion it happens less in the DPS role because there are far more spots for DPS than heals or tank (maybe not now since non-DPS seem to QQ about everything nowadays and then switch/quit). Back to the point, DPS have always had a more disappointing experience in WoW but they should be used to it by now (or switch). What it comes down to during raid formations, one should know (especially those in big guilds) there is a chance to not be able to come.
Now if you're talking about PuGs, that's a whole new thing. It's already a mixed bag, plus the person "in charge" probably is just picking people randomly not asking for prerequisites. And to get something accomplished faster (even failure) they have to do this. However, to do it right, you have to understand your goal, the fight, and anything you need to get it done right.
So, should Blizz change some of these fights to make them more dynamic and fair? Of coarse! But, I see the product of this action being: way too similar fight mechanics, Class-ism, or too easy gameplay. My final thought: Don't forget to make your group dynamic***.
*** Randoms are the obvious, usually uncontrollable exception.
neminem Feb 17th 2011 10:06PM
Heh, that is pretty funny. These days, our "melee group" usually consists of a single cat. Occasionally two, when the other one isn't a bear. My guild's sort of sad that I decided to retire my rogue in favor of a mage, just because it's nice having more balanced class representation as far as who wants what gear, but I agree completely that having a mostly-ranged composition makes some fights nicer, and hardly anything worse (especially since, in most cases, there's nothing stopping us all from fighting in melee range if we want, anyway. We do basically all of Magmaw with 9/10ths of the raid in melee most of the time, for instance.)
Flidis Feb 17th 2011 10:51PM
As a melee DPSer I know this first hand. I won't say i'm the best at getting away from attacks that usually only cause major damage to me but it sucks that a lot of the time ranged don't have to deal with it. This also causes a lot of angry people because I die more often....I know I need work lol but its not always as easy as it looks.
copperbird Feb 18th 2011 2:16AM
This tier seems especially punishing on melee. And what bothers me is that Blizzard haven't acknowledged this so we really don't know if it's something they will try to avoid next tier or not.
It does suck that if you zone into a heroic with three ranged dps everything is fine, but if it's three melee people start bailing. It shouldn't be that way.
fbp Feb 18th 2011 3:24AM
Feral Druid
Enhancement Shaman
Assassination Rogue
Combat Rogue
Sub Rogue
Arms Warrior
Fury Warrior
Unholy Death Knight
Frost Death Knight
Retribution Paladin
10 different specs to bring to a raid. But I bet you would never see a 25-man with all of them.
Balance Druid
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Frost Mage
Shadow Priest
Elemental Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Destruction Warlock
Demonology Warlock
Beast Master Hunter
Marksman Hunter
Survival Hunter
12 specs that you don't mind stacking a couple of.
My group is currently 10 man, we had 3 melee, one went tank after our tank had to leave for RL issues. 3 melee caused us enough issues to make some encounters painful.
Drork Feb 18th 2011 5:32AM
You know there is a place where you can bring 10 melee to the table if you want ... its called 25 man raiding. The problem is you have cut your old 25 man and taken all the melee with you and none of your ranged. Tactical forecast your up some kind of creek with out a paddle. The real question is why did YOU abandon your 15 other friends.
LeftVentricle Feb 18th 2011 7:29AM
I guess I picked the wrong time to re-roll rogue D:
Roidrage Feb 18th 2011 7:46AM
The problem for me is theres too much overlap with abilities. I'm an enhancement shaman and once over I brought some unique abilities to the rest of the raid. OK so I didn’t top many DPS meters but I upped everyone else’s performance. I find I can’t get a raid place unless I go resto because enhancement shaman are now redundant if you have a pally and a DK in the raid. Theres no point in playing a DPS hybrid class now unless you also have a good tanking/healing spec to raid with. The lines have been blurred to the extent that you may as well just go for DPS specialist classes (mage, hunter, rogue) and get the other buffs from your tank and healers because the chances are you will have covered most of the buffs and the ones you haven’t aren’t worth losing the DPS to gain.
Edgarrin Feb 18th 2011 8:16AM
So far my guild is 10/12, just killing Cho'gall. There are a few fights that punish more melee, specifically Chimaeron and Cho'gall. We absolutely could not kill the blood fast enough with 2 melee and 3 ranged, but it was easy with 4 ranged. Chimaeron just requires more ranged to spread out the caustic spit IMO.
Being our raid leader, I typically bring 2 tanks, 2 melee dps, 3 ranged dps, and 3 healers. For most fights right now, it is the best composition for a 10m raid. Do I wish there was a bit more flexibility? Maybe - it seems than 10m is harder than 25m on several fights, but I like it that way. It makes me feel like we accomplish something rather than having loot handed to us for being a smaller raid like in Wrath.
Nyold Feb 18th 2011 9:47AM
I agree with the assessment that right now an all caster DPS raid suffers no penalty, since if the fight (like Saurfang?) benefits melee, then you can just assign some casters to pretend to be melee.
How about designing fights where being melee ACTUALLY has an advantage? I don't know, for example fights where the boss sends an AOE damage that can be dodged? (Maybe 25 bullets around the room, counting as physical damage and not magic, and thus dodgeable?) Having high agility will enable you to dodge more and thus eases the strain on your healers?
Or have adds that's immune to magic damage, and thus must be killed by physical damage only? It's unfair to hunters and enh shaman yes, but those are corner cases, and not ALL dps have to switch to adds. Kinda like how in Lady Deathwhisper some dps are allowed to be on her full time and still succeed.
Or maybe have Twin Valkyr like effect where you're required to interrupt often, and somehow mage's counterspell won't work?
DarkWalker Feb 22nd 2011 2:04PM
Blizzard could make rDPS more effective if the player is somewhat away from their targets; this could solve the issue with rDPS being able to simply stack on the boss and pretend to be melee whenever the content favors melee. A 15-20% DPS penalty from being too close to the target might suffice, while not being too crippling.
Or just add minimum ranges to part of the rDPS rotations, to bring them closer to the hunter.
Will Feb 22nd 2011 11:09AM
I couldn't agree more! I played Enhancement Shaman for 3+ years happily and finally gave it up in favor of a Mage. I love shaman, their versatility and the Enhancement spec particularly, but I just couldn't take it any more!
The tipping point? Heroic Putricide. Clinging to boss-asscheeks while monitoring a pretty hefty priority queue of abilities, was just too much tedium for the DPS return.
Of course, at that moment, blizzard has just came out with the "hybrid tax" philosophy and so after sweating through my Jerkin on a 8 minute fight, executing brilliantly, only to find myself 12th on the DPS meters just killed me inside.
The real issue here is not the design of the encounters though, in my mind, but rather the fact that there IS NO design that doesn't favor ranged. No design that isn't gimmicky, that is. I think there could be tweaks made to make it less punishing but at the end of the day, attacking something from range is just easier and less dangerous.
I have two different ideas for making melee more successful and less punishing:
1. Expand boss hitboxes by 50%. Eliminate wide cleave damage attacks, making the max area damage boss attack ~90 degreee arc; Remove "attack from behind" parry/dodge mechanic. Allow melee to attack from anywhere without loss in dps. Something like this could go a long way Imo.
2. Install a giant set of Butt Cheeks in every boss room. Melee goes over to said butt cheeks and dpses them while the ranged dps the actual boss. Damage done to butt cheeks is transferred to boss.
DarkWalker Feb 22nd 2011 1:54PM
Although it would be nearly impossible for Blizzard to implement those, I find it interesting to compare WoW's group flexibility with some newer games:
- DCUO: every "class" is a hybrid with two possible roles (one of them being DPS), and changing from melee to ranged is as simple as picking a new weapon and respeccing. The chance of a group of friends being able to tackle group content together seems much higher than in WoW.
- LotRO in Skirmishes: not only they scale from solo to raid size, players have a soldier they command; those soldiers can be made DPSers, Healers, or Tanks.
So, should two or more players want to do a skirmish together, they usually can; group composition does not matter much, and there are plenty of group size options available.
- SWTOR: spotty info until now, but it seems characters will always bring a single sidekick. So, just stack on sidekicks to compensate for the roles that are lacking and the group should be good to go.
- Guild Wars 2: all classes able to fulfill all roles with a respec, free respecs out of combat, and NPCs to fill out missing party spots. No matter which class you or your friends play, or the number of players you have (up to the maximum for the content), you can do the content. Players can even solo raids with NPCs filling the group, although if the current Guild Wars is any indication, it should become much harder and time-consuming.
Of course, those games were made under a different philosophy which dictates grouping should be easy, simple, and inclusive. WoW was made half a decade ago while still under too heavy an influence from the early computer RPGs that deal with parties; those games often required very specific party compositions, at times even keyed to each specific encounter, but they supplied the player with the needed party members of the correct classes. WoW (and other early MMOs) inherited the need for fixed group compositions of those solo games, but the developers weren't willing to put NPCs at the player's beck and call in order to keep the flexibility of said games.
In fact, WoW has been trying to escape this legacy, at least in part; the whole "bring the player, not the class" is a giveaway. But unless Blizzard does something really drastic, such as supplying temporary characters to fill raid roles or making every class a hybrid, there's a limit to how flexible they can make group compositions - a limit Blizzard seems to be already very close since Cataclysm, with every tank having almost the same cooldowns and interrupts, and every healer having the same basic toolbox of healing options.