Anyone else see the problem with melee dps and the Soa fight?

We spend more time running between mind traps and Soa (Soa cannot be force charged against in the last phase), running away from orbs than actually DPSing the boss.

On the other hand, the ranged dps if stationed correctly will never run into an orb unless the orb is targeting him, be in range of both Soa and mind traps.

My experience with Soa so far is if you bring too much melee DPS, you'll never down the boss before it enrages and wipes the group. Boss fight is just way too melee-unfriendly.

What are your experiences?

Endgame content in general in this game (whether it be HM Flashpoints or Operations) are melee unfriendly. There's a reason why most of the nightmare mode guilds are stacking ranged dps.

So to answer your question: yes, Soa is melee unfriendly. I wouldn't be surprised if Bioware retuned some of the content later on in regards to it when more of the playerbase reaches 50 and starts plugging away at operations / HM flashpoints.

As it stands, I'm having fun getting pushed back, knocked back, hit by secondary attacks that only hit melee, running out of fight mechanics (causing me to lose DPS time while ranged don't even have to worry about it), and generally having a jolly time getting instant knocked back on "certain" bosses when I try to force leap to build focus. The only reason I'm even getting into raids is because I run mine and entice my ranged dps with the thoughts of "but you'll get Inspiration during the burn phase..." as my excuse for not rerolling to a Gunslinger.

I have this experience with Soa as well, and yes it is easy to see how ranged DPS have an easier time of it - even with mechanics like being closer to the outside ring before the ground falls.

This is not limited to Soa though. I get the feeling (and the other melee dps in the guild do too) that a lot of the current PvE content favors ranged dps over melee dps. Encounters are often rife with knockbacks, cleaves, AoE damage, and travel times that make having mostly melee dps a liability - not just a hassle. Take a look at the very start of Eternity Vault: Melee cannot target the turrets. They have to faff about with the power cells at the base which is a lot more inefficient than just killing the turret itself, and on hardmode killing the power cells bugs the boss! Yay!

Factor in enrage timers and who do you want dpsing? The guy that has to run around or the one that can stand in one spot and dps all he wants? Scoundrels/Operatives don't even have a gap closer of any kind, they have to hoof it around (I'm not saying force speed or force leap is a sufficient band-aid).

Scoundrels/Operatives don't even have a gap closer of any kind

hey, our gap closer is rifle shot.

(says the operative who was required to heal to raid and is rerolling sniper)

I'm glad I'm not alone in this.

What I want to know from BW is this... is this trend going to continue? I haven't seen any official response from BW about this melee dps vs ranged dps issue.

I don't like having ranged DPS literally 'carry' me. I have +1400 strength and I need to be carried by my ranged DPS counterparts that are way less geared. It's embarrassing.

I'm actually working on rerolling mercenary at the moment as an escape route from melee dps cause there's no word on this issue and playing melee DPS is just plain frustrating and unrewarding.

I'm glad I'm not alone in this.

 

What I want to know from BW is this... is this trend going to continue? I haven't seen any official response from BW about this melee dps vs ranged dps issue.

 

I don't like having ranged DPS literally 'carry' me. I have +1400 strength and I need to be carried by my ranged DPS counterparts that are way less geared. It's embarrassing.

 

I'm actually working on rerolling mercenary at the moment as an escape route from melee dps cause there's no word on this issue and playing melee DPS is just plain frustrating and unrewarding.

Yeah if this was acknowledged we could both know that they see it as well and recognize it exists and perhaps we could also know future content would keep it in mind.

This is the standard in raids since WoW and the indroduction of more "actioney" and simon sez style raiding.

The ONLY way to fix this problem (since Dev's cant seem to come up with enough boss fights which punish ranged in ANY way) is to significantly buff melee DPS to close the gap between ranged DPS's ability to easily do sustained and uninterrupted DPS and melee's inability to do both.

Of course if Bioware does this then you will see endless QQ from people playing ranged DPS because melee can do more DPS on a stationary target which doesnt fight back.

I find it particularly ironic Bioware didnt try to address these problems in a game where the Jedi/Sith lightsaber users are melee DPS LOOOOOOOOOOOOL! /facepalm

Melee DPS is definitely at a disadvantage to Ranged DPS in a lot of the end game fights. However, if you use your gap closers properly or your raid is set up properly Melee DPS works fine.

That said, I feel Melee DPS is more challenging and more rewarding which is why I play it.

(Lvl 50 Jedi Shadow)

As a melee I think cleaves and knockbacks are fine. However, I do think that on bosses that require a lot of movement from melees should also require equal movement from ranged to balance things out.

Examples:

On Gharj: Melees have to get out of his ground pounce ability, whereas ranged can just stand at the edge of the platform and never move. Give Gharj a cave in ability that affects everything outside of 10 yards from him so that ranged have to move at times when the melee get to stay put.

On Soa: Make Mind Prisons/Traps spawn in the center of the room so that melee are not at a disadvantage.

Melee DPS is definitely at a disadvantage to Ranged DPS in a lot of the end game fights. However, if you use your gap closers properly or your raid is set up properly Melee DPS works fine.

 

That said, I feel Melee DPS is more challenging and more rewarding which is why I play it.

 

(Lvl 50 Jedi Shadow)

If by your raid set up is proper you mean dont bring melee that doesnt have a gap closer (aka operatives/smuggler), then the encounters are designed poorly. There should always be things ranged and melee have to do other than sit there and dps (patchwerk fights are not fun).

Yea SOA sucks for melee, on hard mode he can't even be charged on the 2nd platform (phase 3)

Who knows if it's a bug or intentional but either way it really sucks, if you bring too many melee you lose

Reminds me of the bloodlust spread in WoW where every raid required a shaman in each group

Yes this game is built more around the range classes. Sins having if specced (found only in our tank tree) a 20 sec cd gap closer makes charging around after mindtraps and during the final stage charging back to Soa afterwards when the shield break a very large headache. Most bosses in this game are like that in one way or the other. In most games that is to keep MDPS from owning them on a stick but in this game where RDPS damage is very similar to MDPS damage that is a flawed mechanic

I respectfully request the next operation added the final boss fight have an anti-range mechanic that favor melee so they can know what it feels like for a change.

This is, really, a very serious oversight.

Force Leap and similar abilities, in pve, serve a very specific purpose: to minimize downtime for melee on running/target swapping fights. If leap isn't an option, the boss Making a boss immune to being charged is a *major* problem, and on a fight like Hard Mode Soa, makes the penalty simply for being melee absurd.

In normal mode, this is a minor issue; I can afford to run while we wait for him to go vulnerable, and get pretty high dps uptime, since the fight isn't really that bad. But, in hard modes, as a sentinel, I'm likely looking at simply sitting out Soa - that's how serious the issue is. My gear is good, my damage output is (normally) fine, but the boss is unchargeable, and with lightning running around, my DPS uptime on the boss is, if I'm lucky, half that of a ranged class - maybe less, in phase 3.

Bioware: first and foremost, fix this. Let me charge Soa, or you're going to have a lot of VERY unhappy melee. Second (And perhaps more important in the long run), STOP DESIGNING MECHANICS THAT PENALIZE MELEE ONE EVERY FIGHT.

All of the single-enemy boss fights in the instance have a mechanic that basically makes melee worse in every way. On the droid, there's an AoE stun; on Gharj, there's both Pounce *and* frenzy.

Stop it. There are plenty of ideas for bosses that don't involve "Hey, let's knock the melee back again, they love that!"

This game needs to change with regards to how bosses treat melee, or I'll just be another one of the fallen sentinel, forced to reroll gunslinger/sage to go to raids.

Melee DPS is definitely at a disadvantage to Ranged DPS in a lot of the end game fights. However, if you use your gap closers properly or your raid is set up properly Melee DPS works fine.

 

That said, I feel Melee DPS is more challenging and more rewarding which is why I play it.

 

(Lvl 50 Jedi Shadow)

Yeah...you clearly have not done the Soa fight yet.

He cannot be charged at during the burn phase (part 3) which means the melee dps can do 1 of 2 things:

1) foot it from the mind traps to the boss. usually this is on the other side of the room which means by the time you get there, you can only get 2, maybe 3 hits in before he's back to immune.

2) stand around near the boss and wait for him the crystal to drop of him so you can dps him. Problem with this is you'll soon have a quarter of your raid if not half of your raid in mind traps if the melee dps are just standing around doing absolutely nothing.

So clearly, this is fight, and many others is just not working out for melee.

Soa definitely sucks for Melee and I thought it was as bad as it gets... Until HM 16 Karraga. Ugh.

For Soa I handled 3rd phase by getting on mindtrap and counting on the tank to call out about 5 secs or so early when shield is going down then I would head that way and let the range that can swivel from one to the other without issue finish off the mindtraps. Worked pretty well for me.

As far as the balls in melee range.... Well... Due to the TIGHT enrage timer we usually just ate them and counted on our amazing healers to keep us up. I have 3 cooldowns that I used as needed to keep me up throughout the shield down burn phases.

BTW It's good to see others with the "No Force Leap" issue too. I thought I was going insane for a while with that one. The bad thing about pushing for world firsts is that sometimes you just don't know if it's a bug or a mechanic that just hasn't been figured out yet hehehehe

Overall I really love my class but yea.... definitely been times I wished I were ranged!

-Retsah

As a raid leader I now have to tell 2 other officers (one being my GM) that the fact they are melee is the reason we can't down Soa. I gots 2 guardian DPS a gunslinger, a vanguard and a DPS sage. and that really is the reason, we have the mechanics down but if 2 mind traps pop accross the room in the 3rd phase, we are so massively screwed.

this REALLY bothers me as I am a strong proponent of bring the player not the class. I really don't get what MMOs as a genre have against melee? aside from vindictus and dragon nest they've all been so massively melee unfriendly that I feel like an idiot for rolling melee, and like I am wrong for liking melee. guess I am

We are currently using 4 melees in our 8 man group and it punishes us severly, specificly on SoA and Karaggas.

While we didnt have much problems one shooting the other bosses in nightmare, these two seems to painful for melee's even on Hm, we managed to down Karaggas after many tries, but we are still not getting past SoA on Hm witho ur 4 melee's. Partly because some bugs keeps screwing us.

I have no doubt its doable with melee's but as it is both these fights just straight out punish melee's, if you are gonna add such nasty minuses for melee's in a fight you also need to added bonuses.

for example: damage done within melee range of SoA/Karagga being higher.

Atleast fix the Rancors Sweep radius on hm/Nm, atm its WAY to wide, melee's are getting ***** slapped when they are directly behind him.

And for gods sake let us charge SoA, its a absolute must.

The "no charging" bit I think is bugged. I bet we're supposed to charge him. I hope they don't overlook this, because we are also running a heavy mele setup and it's really hard.

Slightly to the side of the topic. Any tips on proper positioning the boss in the final phase, for the shield breaks. We started ops for the first time tonight(I am tanking) and I got a few tries, but I've not managed to get the hang of it yet. And it really annoys me when such a thing would cause wipes. I don't know if I need a few more tries to get used to their movement and my camera position.