About the Author
This guide is written by Wordup, an Enhancement theorycrafter who works closely with other moderators within the Shaman discord Earthshrine and other melee communities. You can find him on Twitter & Youtube.
Advanced Role Guides
Melee DPS
Ranged DPS
Healing
Tanking
Positioning as a Melee:
Unlike Ranged, Melee comes with a few heavy restrictions that apply to a large amount of melee specific abilities. These restrictions also extend to the amount of room that is available around enemies (as the more melee you have in your group, the less space you’re going to have to yourself).
Max Range
Your first and foremost concern when thinking about your positioning in melee is the max range of your target. This can vary dramatically between different enemies and bosses, and doesn’t have a general rule - instead you need to judge this on a case by case basis. Generally the best idea is to test this range as early as possible when learning an encounter by using a melee range only ability to gauge this:
Positioning as a Melee:
Unlike Ranged, Melee comes with a few heavy restrictions that apply to a large amount of melee specific abilities. These restrictions also extend to the amount of room that is available around enemies (as the more melee you have in your group, the less space you’re going to have to yourself).
Max Range
Your first and foremost concern when thinking about your positioning in melee is the max range of your target. This can vary dramatically between different enemies and bosses, and doesn’t have a general rule - instead you need to judge this on a case by case basis. Generally the best idea is to test this range as early as possible when learning an encounter by using a melee range only ability to gauge this:
The image on the left indicates that I am currently in melee range, but just a couple of steps backwards block the use of Lava Lash / Stormstrike (the 2 and 4 key, respectively), indicating I have left melee range. Knowing where this limit is and how to stick within this during an encounter is one of the first basics to know.
Parry
The majority of enemies (with some specific exceptions - mostly bosses that prevent access to the rear such as Sinestra) will begin to Parry some abilities when being attacked from the front. While it isn’t always possible to remain behind a target at all times, making sure to spend the majority of time in this region is beneficial:
The above image shows a visual representation of the area that is generally ideal to be standing in on a short-range enemy. Anywhere in the yellow section is fine, but the Red will begin to receive Parry penalties. Note that this chance when active is only 3%, so can easily be ignored with relatively little punishment on encounters were space is tight and mechanics are important.
Also, note this only affects Melee DPS, Tanks are not subject to this rule due to their specialization bonuses.
Dodge, Miss & Glancing Blows
Dodge is not something that needs to be worried about in most content outside of specific boss mechanics, and shouldn’t occur otherwise. Glancing Blows are similar, they only occur when hitting a target that is more than 3 levels above you, which does not apply to endgame content. When levelling, it will incur an increasing damage penalty as the level gap between you and the target increases. Miss Chance will not apply to abilities or 2-handed attacks, but if dual wielding you will incur a 19% chance to miss with both main and off-hand auto attacks.
Awareness of Others, Spreading and Stacking
Awareness comes into play most often in larger raid groups and in particular on some choice encounters. You will need to have an acute knowledge of other players who are expected to be in melee (this includes other melee DPS, melee Healers, and Tanks within reason) for specific mechanics. This requirement means addons such as range indicators included in boss mods are always useful, as is coordinating where you will stand in relation to each other. This spatial awareness also extends to mechanics that require soaking instead - knowing a stack point in advance is much more consistent instead of scrambling to stack at the last moment.
Knowing your routes out of, and back into melee is also incredibly important for a number of bosses. As an example, Malodorous Miasma on Fetid Devourer requires awareness of Ranged and Healer players surrounding you to avoid spreading it, especially during the Shockwave Stomp, while also knowing the quickest route back to the boss after this happens to prevent spreading this effect on Mythic. This is a core skill to make sure you don’t interfere with the raid while maintaining uptime, and requires pre-planning to do so.
Lastly, awareness of Tanks and boss oriented directional effects are mandatory to take count of. Tanks are often marked and have a fixed spot on a boss, and numerous effects such as Essence Shear on Mythrax the Unraveler will cleave in front of the boss that means you must be constantly aware of that danger spot in the group. This extends further on the same encounter to Obliteration Blast, which will fire shortly after a wind up in a line in front of the boss. This means you need to adjust your position around your target to avoid the front incoming beam. All of these things will test your ability to orient yourself around the safe spots of the bosses hitbox, in tandem with other traditional positioning constraints.
Keeping all of this in mind will increase your active melee time due to less disruption blocking you from remaining in range of the boss, or taking lethal damage. Making use of boss mod range indicators such as the DeadlyBossMods or Bigwigs /range indicators, or ranged based WeakAuras as seen above can make navigating the melee space in your group much more precise, and also allow you to play in sync with other players more efficiently.
Awareness of Healer Position
A small extra note is that given your rigid positioning around a boss, you should always be keeping track of whether or not a healer is in range. On some more spread encounters, knowing that you are on your own can indicate a time to make use of defensive options, self-healing tools or Healthstones in a pinch, and can be done with various raid tracking addons. This situation usually isn’t a significant concern for melee as generally usually the raid is oriented around a boss, but is an additional way of making sure you are as durable as possible in encounters with heavier raid damage.
An example of all of these factors in practice can be seen here:
My position can be seen highlighted in Green, and I am positioned here due to the incoming Wave of Corruption to prevent any splashes with other nearby melee. I have also got a healer in range highlighted in Blue, and am aware of the Tank facing highlighted in Orange. I also have a clear pathway out of melee for any needed mechanics such as Bursting Boils highlighted by the Green arrow leading out.
Movement Tools
All melee have access to some form of movement tool, be it passive (such as Cat Form) or active (such as Sprint), and managing these are important to successfully dealing with an encounter. Knowing when you can aggressively make use of these tools, and when they need to be saved is part of approaching an encounter, is a crucial part of preparation.
This information should be scouted in advance when planning when you have times to use it aggressively to stay active on a moving target, or when they need to be utilized for specific mechanics to deal with them more comfortably. Making sure that you have a gameplan for when you can leverage these for ideal positioning across the boss arena (or within a Mythic+ route) will drastically improve your uptime, and as discussed above, uptime is critical for melee DPS.
Downtime mitigation
Alongside your tools, you need to always be aware of when a target will be moving erratically, or force you out of range. Solving this can be done both by positioning pro-actively around the target hitbox (regardless of parries) to be able to stay active, or planning out movement cooldowns to actively keep up with the target. Instant displacement or re-engage tools (such as Charge or Feral Lunge) are great for doing this, to keep the uptime rolling.
This also extends to paying attention to when downtime is going to occur. Making sure that you don’t burn up cooldowns or damage windows when downtime is incoming is very important to prevent wasting these. Actively predicting when you have the time to fully capitalise on these, or by extension finding ways to stay active on the target when they are up plays into the planning aspect of handling an encounter.
Mechanic efficiency
Frequently due to the fact that Melee has a requirement to be active on the boss, many mechanics will require you to drastically shift your position very quickly to deal with them. This is why balancing when you can and can’t afford to make use of these cooldowns offensively is crucial. If a fight calls for you to quickly reposition to deal with an aspect of the fight, then you must plan ahead with the assumption that they aren’t available until that happens.
This also extends to some mechanics specifically preventing some options. A prime example of this is Fetid Devourer’s Malodorous Miasma on Mythic. Shadowstep places you directly beneath the boss, potentially spreading the debuff to any other melee within range, or other clean melee using a similar ability. Being aware of where you will end up after a movement tool, and the distance needed to be covered, allows you to plan ahead.
Lastly, some abilities provide the benefit of displacement. Abilities such as Transcendence: Transfer, Charge and Shadowstep allow you to mitigate momentum pushes caused by a boss (such as Shockwave Stomp or Kil'jaeden’s Rupturing Singularity). This displacement can be very helpful to stick to a target and prevent a long distance push back at the same time, increasing uptime and preventing risk from being forced out of position relative to the group.
Repositioning
Many encounters require you to position around the other melee in your group. This often requires awareness of other players around you, and a small amount of communication to give room to do so. Being aware of potential mechanics that will demand this, and predicting when it will happen so you can proactively make these movements will benefit your uptime once again. Often this preparation needs to be done relative to the raid, and other melee positions to comfortably settle back around the hitbox of the target, so forward planning is a good skill to develop.
Planning is especially important if you need room to be made to maneuver around a boss arena to be accurately positioned to deal with specific mechanics. Fights within Uldir such as G'huun and Fetid Devourer both demonstrate this well with Wave of Corruption and Malodorous Miasma, requiring a spread but also requiring you to be positioned to deal with other mechanics at the same time.
Making sure that you are actively positioned to deal with any potential add spawns that must be dealt with also plays into this. Knowing when and where they will spawn allows you to reorient yourself around that, and set up before they are active and switch to the target as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Ability Management
While it's generally true that pressing buttons is important for performing well within the game, there are some additional rules that should be considered when trying to make the most out of your class. While these may not strictly be exclusive to melee, even those that are transferrable are applicable to all DPS, and should be made clear.
Downtime Prediction and Resource Balance
While all DPS need to be aware of potential downtime, it is a more prevalent occurrence for Melee due to being forced out of range. Due to this, pre-planning your ability uses with this in mind is important to do. This preparation mostly comes in the form of knowing what potential mechanics may mean you will no longer be able to interact with an enemy, and expending as many valuable abilities as possible so they will cool down in the interim.
Alongside this, all melee operate with some form of Resource that either has an active, or passive generation component attached to it. Knowing your regeneration rate, and when you can or cannot afford to allow for pooling to deal with certain mechanical checks or newly spawned targets is a skill that is learned through experience both with your class and an encounter in tandem.
Target Switching and Priority Targets
This experience also extends to target switching, in particular, if there is a high priority enemy that is going to spawn. The way you interact with this will be in one of two ways:
Pooling resources in anticipation of an important, high priority target spawning.
Dumping resources into the boss and allowing for it to recuperate when you are moving to the newly spawned enemy.
Which of these methods you use is context specific, so will depend on the encounter you are tackling. In the former, you will need to know how much time you have before an enemy spawns, and how much you can afford to save without losing uses (as it will hurt your active damage time if you over or underestimate this). With the latter, you will similarly need to be aware of the spawn time and the time spent traveling to judge. You can fill this movement time with ranged ability tools as some classes (such as Rockbiter or Serpent Sting as examples) to fill GCDs, and also have this time as an allowance for cooldown timers to recover alongside some free passive resource generation.
GCD Optimization
Much like the ABC rule for casters (Always-Be-Casting), you should also generally always be aiming to fill your Global Cooldown as efficiently as possible as a melee player as well. Some specializations can deviate more than others from this rule due to their resource limitations (such as Feral), but aiming to strike a balance between generators, spenders, and fillers is a core concept for all melee.
The rule for this varies drastically between each specialization due to these resource differences, but the rule still remains - you should make sure that you are using abilities at the ideal time, as often as possible. Remember, an empty GCD deals no damage, but a filling a GCD with the wrong ability at the wrong time can cost you more than it was worth further down the line. Looking at the [Wowhead Rotation Guides (possible table link here?)] for your spec will likely highlight points in your priority list that are crucial to keep on cooldown; alongside details of when over-spending can starve you out further down the line causing a DPS loss.
| Wowhead Guide Rotation Pages: | ||||
All DPS specializations have some form of high burst window, most often via some sort of cooldown that can be leveraged (such as Pillar of Frost or Recklessness). The cooldown and duration are all tailored to each spec, so you will need to be aware of both of these when thinking about how you will leverage them throughout an encounter.
Different fight patterns will always need careful consideration of when you will be making use of these windows, and these can often be broken down at the most basic level into the following categories:
Pure single target, fire and forget for raw damage
Single Target with high burst/increased damage windows requiring timing
Priority target spawns that need to be burst down with cooldowns
Managing cooldown uses to avoid waste during movement/downtime
When looking at your use on encounters, you need to identify which category a fight falls into. This can be done using Warcraftlogs to see when others are using it, looking through the dungeon journal or checking your own logs for timings. You can also do this personally with a timer spreadsheet to map out when you expect to be using cooldowns throughout a fight:
This can be used to time in advance where you expect to be active on targets, and plan ahead for making the most out of cooldowns without losing a use of each - something that is a rule for all DPS classes regardless of role currently. The above example shows making optimal use of all 3 Enhancement cooldowns during a cleave/add situation over a 3 minute period, accommodating spawns and downtime. This can be manually adjusted to predict in advance, so you can have a plan instead of using abilities on cooldown and coming up short when damage is most needed. Usually, this level of optimization is only needed at the higher level of play and logs can give a good indicator, but this practice can a good one to employ if you struggling to make use of your tools as effectively as you want to.
Extra
Utility
Many melee have tools that are either unique or crucial to success on many encounters. Making use of these can be the make or break on fully unlocking the potential of your character on a specific boss or dungeon, and knowing how to employ these effectively amplifies your versatility when dealing with different situations.
In Battle for Azeroth, many of these tools had a GCD lockout added to them. This addition increases the planning necessary for them, as they can disrupt your normal rotation. The increased opportunity cost is something that you must also factor in if you need to use them at times when damage is also a big factor.
Specific Tools
First and foremost, unique tools are worth mentioning. Death Grip is an incredibly powerful tool to make use of to circumvent a lot of dangerous adds and mechanics in bosses due to the repositioning effect, allowing you to bring an enemy into melee range immediately. Being able to coordinate this with the remainder of your melee to situate a high priority target in close range should always be considered, and can in many cases trivialize some encounters.
Other tools such as stuns and enemy displacements are also worth noting. Being a melee, cast time requirements are low and mobility is high, so the ability to readjust quickly and lock down a target with direct stuns such as Storm Bolt or Fel Eruption is useful, as is being able to catch large groups of targets with AoE stuns in Capacitor Totem or Leg Sweep. While you may be pulled out of active target range, you have a very low opportunity cost for adjusting to this assuming your mobility tools are available, and should be actively used.
This ability also extends to having a unique angle for dealing with knockback tools such as Typhoon or, to a lesser extent, Ring of Peace, letting you angle yourself from the boss outward which can be very useful in specific encounters.
Raid survival tools or extremely potent personal defense options can be made use of to either mitigate or even circumvent some dangerous mechanics. Rallying Cry and Darkness can both be utilised to assist the raid during heavy damage windows in tandem with Healer cooldowns as examples. For personal survival, options such as Feint, Netherwalk and Divine Shield often have a way of allowing you to ignore a potentially lethal mechanic. Knowing that you have these in your arsenal for some classes can allow for you to translate that into increased damage, or an easier time with some mechanics for your raid group.
Interrupts
Melee come with the lowest cooldown interrupts across the board at 15 seconds (outside of the shared Shaman Wind Shear option at 12), and so often it lends to being the best for close range interrupt rotations on high priority enemy abilities. Being able to actively set up a rotation amongst your group to lock down a target is an important skill, and many addons help facilitate this:
Raeli's Spell Announcer
ElvUI
These addons enable an automatic interrupt call that sends out a chat box alert to tell other players that an interrupt was successful, granting a visual cue that the next person should cover the next, removing some audio clutter in communication tools. ElvUI also has this function but requires a full installation of the entire package which may not be as easy to incorporate into your setup. Also remember that some abilities do require long-range interrupts, and often this is deferred to ranged classes that can do this, but don’t be afraid to run out of range to deal with extremely high priority casts that aren’t covered.
Self-sustain and Survival
The majority of melee specs have some form of active survival tool or self-sustain healing, and these are very important to make use of if you find yourself outside the range of healers. Often a small bump in health can be enough to give the room for a healer to adjust toward you and top you off, so never be afraid to give that breathing room if you’re struggling - a single GCD to stay alive is more valuable than one more for damage and dying after all. Paying attention to where healers in range are, and the state of the raid will let you keep track of when you need to shift gears to live, rather than to deal damage.
Player survival is a more complex case, however. There are a lot of mechanics that melee get to avoid simply by virtue of them being focused upon ranged players, however when something ends up in melee it often affects all players around the boss. Due to this, you usually need to be keeping track of another melee in your group and playing around them, both with positioning and adjustments based on the target. Avoiding frontal cleaves and tail whips are both common tropes that end up in a lot of encounters, and getting into the habit of orienting toward the side of a boss is a good one.
Knowing when you can throw away damage reduction cooldowns just to mitigate some of the high damage coming out during an encounter (such as with hi
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