The RANGED DPS Dominance of Shadowlands – What happened? MELEE DPS at lower representation than ever



Read more about Shadowlands ➜ https://worldofwarcraft.mgn.tv

An update on our original video regarding the shift in priority for DPS Specs when it comes to PvE environments: Now Ranged DPS not only dominate Raids (even more than before) but also Mythic+, the habitual Melee Stronghold for most of Legion and BFA has now also come under siege my Ranged DPS who are currently taking over the Meta and being the more represented role in Mythic+ as well.
Why? What happened? How bad are things, and what could happen to change this status quo?

0:00 The Melee / Ranged disparity in Raids…
2:46 …and in Mythic+
4:41 Why this drastic change?
7:29 Blizzard’s Philosophy Change for M+
10:08 AOE TARGET CAP
14:37 What could Revitalize Melee DPS Popularity?
18:00 Bad Melee Affixes are not…that bad
19:15 TOP DPS is still KING

AoE Target Caps Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc6hqtH26r0
Ranged VS Melee Meta 1st Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QdqDnjpJ3Y

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48 thoughts on “The RANGED DPS Dominance of Shadowlands – What happened? MELEE DPS at lower representation than ever”

  1. They literally just need to make an affix that reduces the damage you do to your target based on how far way you are to force range into melee. Literally the only way to balance them unless you hyper nerf all range. Otherwise the way things are, there's no point to bringing melee unless for an external like shroud or AMZ

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  2. Frontal cones I think are definitely an advantage to melee because they can run through the add to dodge. I think allowing further range on those to force ranged to counterplay can be a reasonable contribution to balance. Related to that, I like the ToP interrupt attached to the run-out mechanic because it at least offers some parity between the two roles

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  3. Also, Unholy was literally only nerfed ONCE. Unholy is still VERY powerful, it's just being played less as it isn't REQUIRED now. It has nothing to do with a loss of power but, more that during actual progression it got played WAY more. Now that progression is over, people are playing whatever class they want, and thus you see it drop in the rankings. Don't mistranslate the data, you are usually very good at not doing that. 9

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  4. You have it wrong Izen. The reason why ranged is popular in the 15-18 key level has nothing to do with Resto Sham (it probably should, but in this key range they aren't thinking about it, trust me). It's not even ranged vs melee (unless it's quaking or spiteful week). It's purely a damage consideration and mostly caused by Night Fae (Convoke, Wild Spirits, reduced Combust CD), but also the dominance of DH tanks (for magic damage). The 15 key range is all about damage. You can screw up a lot of mechs and still easily make time if you have a good fire mage and boomy. If for example outlaw had uncapped AoE or a massive covenant CD like wild spirits, then there'd be one (or two) in every key.

    When putting together a group here's the thought process in 15s:
    1. Do I have lust (Mage, hunter, maybe ele sham)?
    2. Do I have big / uncapped AoE? (Mage, Boomy, Marks, Unholy, WW, maybe ele sham).
    3. Do I have the dungeon covenant covered?
    4. Do I have a brez (Druid, DK, Lock, engi in a pinch)?

    When you get to higher keys (I'd say 19+) having a rogue increases in value since missed interrupts can be real expensive. It's still just one melee slot usually though.

    If Vengeance loses it's S-tier status and Night Fae gets a nerf (and fire mage FFS) you'll see the DPS meta change.

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  5. most of the overtuned specs are ranged, uncapped aoe tends to be with ranged, bullshit OP cooldowns like combust, convoke, wild spirits – ranged. It's really just clear favouritism for ranged dps. It should be the other way around, specs hurt by mechanics and movement should have a paper dps edge over other specs.

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  6. Sanguine, storming, quaking, spiteful. Range also deal with prideful simpler, melee had to look out for range who might stand too far away. Range don’t have to deal with frontal and melee circle. Doubling down the AoE cap is the amount of dungeon with limited space. Notable includes ToP and SD. Even other large dungeon has corridors: HoA after second boss, De Other Side corridor to bosses, Mists worm section. Despite all of that, if they can invent something better than the 4 aforementioned affix, melee will slowly balance out.

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  7. You mentioned the aoe cap on all the melle dps and yet, they are one of the best when it comes to aoe where as in ranged you have 3 classes (ok maybe 4 with elemental shamans) doing aoe for the rest of the other classes (funny that you mention spriest who is more of a single target spec). Because the ranged classes need time to ramp up that aoe(excluding the ones mentioned above) where the melee just go there ,pop cd and boom, big numbers.
    Classes who do burst damage very easy and the toolkit they have, (pushback, disorient ,interrupts,aoe stun etc) are the meta in M+.

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  8. “what happened?” fucking mechanics happened and tanks like VDH happened where Melees with no gap closers like Frost DK get massive downtime (relatively) due to both factors.

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  9. Incentive to be melee= 0. All the new affixes other than inspiring are anti melee, and I'd say 9/10 mechanics are more unfriendly to melee than range. The only thing melee really bring are shorter cd kicks.

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  10. You are over complicating this way too much. The reason ranged are more dominant is because Fire Mage/Boomkin are just straight up better than most DPS specs currently due to their utility/defensiveness and damage profile working very well for m+. It barely has to do with anything of the nature of melee vs ranged (although there are more anti-melee mechanics tbf but that barely plays a role). If you took both of those specs and made all their abilities melee, with the same damage profile, same utility, etc. They would still be the most dominant.

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  11. this is why i dont pvp curently. No reason priests should be able to have more than 2 bubbles and snare breaks. Hunters just disengage, turtle, and run. then they have ice trap, snareshot, and tar trap. don't get me started on warlocks…. I should be able to cut these bitch bois in half with my 212 paladin, but they all have MORE snare breaks, MORE cc's, MORE bubbles, and more movement abilities. BLATANTLY overpowered. it seems only demon hunters actually stand a chance in PVP currently. smh

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  12. they have to remove the aoe cap or just make it even for everyone, in any case melee shouldve been the ones unccaped not range since range already do literally no mechanics when doing damage just stand there and turrent

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  13. You forgot to say VDH being the only tank to use means you have the AoE silence and disorient, as well as jump away from the range of the casts, making interrupts useless

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  14. If the new affix is like the anima power from torghast Darkness, that increases damage but darkens your vision, so melee is the same and ranged have to move more = cast less

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  15. BLIZZ is punishing normal players by upping prices instead of BANNING BOTTTERS how funny is that. Their deterant is to make the multibox pay a little more to fatten their own pockets.

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  16. I just think this entire discussion is useless. I mean, if you are not in a guild that is racing for world first, just play with the class you like and LEARN HOW TO PLAY IT PROPERLY. I know two survival hunters that play so well that almost everytime they do top overalll damage in DG's. If you play a class bc it is considered meta, you should be a professional player.

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  17. honestly the capped AoE is probably the biggest influence . . . ranged dps have almost always (outside outlaw having the most stops) had the most AoE control but had lower interrupts . . you can't even chain pull with too much capped AoE. . and the meta as you get higher up. . . druid/hunter/rogue also bring the very much required soothe. . so many of the present dungeons you require a soothe or two. and those are the only 3 that offer them. . do you want the lower pack AoE burst of MM, the larger pack higher sustained of boomie (plus ST burst and beam), or the 6 target cap AoE of outlaw when you're constantly pulling 3 packs at a time? outlaw is going to fall off hard, MM has poor single target and so prideful very much is carrying it and lower self survival, so you take druid. Good sustained AoE (uncapped), soothe for the important enrage, and high burst ST so the mage can save combust for the larger pulls right after prideful. . . not to mention tree's exist to help a tank get out of melee for free or to easily reset necrotic. . . . the utility of ranged paired with uncapped AoE far far outweighs the extra interrupt a melee brings. . esp since blizzard has the packs that require interrupts spaced further out it seems. so only one or two major stops in a 3 pack pull is enough for casters utility paired with DH's immense mob control to cover. (people look at dh as #1 tank purely for it's dmg. but often fail to realize that dh's sheer kit enables so much mob control that it frees up party compositions to include casters easier. where say a warrior even if it had the same dmg, would require at least 2 melee to offset the difference in AoE pack control that sigils provide. namely something like a windwalker that has strong innate control (short cd para, ring, AoE stun, melee interrupt) or outlaw rogue for immense amount of stops. and so on)

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  18. The one nice thing about blizzard making kicks less about KICKS but about everything you mentioned IMO is a good thing because now I see people using all of their class abilities to the max potential. It made me a better player before I would just silencing shot on my hunter to kick but now I trap kick bursting shit kick. It was a learn to kick these mobs or you are a 10 keys Andy forever

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