Lack of melee lately?

[Umbreon_skystorm]

Hi guys, I'm a Paladin on my group and we are having problems on finding another melee dps to the party (we have a DRG already but we are searching another melee to the party) and then I started to pay attention on primal Ex and roulettes lately...
I'm seeing a decrease in the usage of melee dps, do you guys just see the same thing or I'm just with ""bad luck"" on finding melee dpses?

(I think this post should be at the "general discussion" topic but since I think more DPS players will see it here maybe I can find some clues about what's going on xD )

[LunaChild]

I play on JP Mana dc.
Yes, I do feel we are lacking of melee joining our PF for Sigma savage everytime. It was BRD/MCH last raid but now melee.

I'm not sure what's the reason tho.

[Khel]

I PF as a DRG and RDM and the other DPS is a range 75% out of the time I'd guess.

Maybe due to the SAM newness wearing off? Still see a lot of RDM though.

[zuzu-bq]

Most of people hate having SAM and MNK. So when those players don't feel forced to play DRG or NIN they either stop looking for groups or look as other jobs that aren't those two melees if they don't enjoy them.

[RenOkamiya]

Most fights this patch are more punishing while playing melee than range DPS. Byakko EX after the "tornado QTE" is just one of the most awful fight in the game for melee I think. Plus the fact that SAM is properly useless atm in comparaison to the other ones, that doesn't help much.
Melee DPS for some mecanics where they can't perform and have their uptime is punishing enough for people to play ranged dps I think. Again, if you are a true melee, you deal with it one way or the other (it's a common "theme" for SE to be punishing to melee), but as a ninja for example, Byakko is really awful for futon, usually you need to use armor crush over eolian edge, your dps going down for it. Even if Monk are mostly the ones to be sorry for here if i'm being honest.

[wereotter]

Now that cast times have been removed from BRD/MCH, there’s not the same trade off. Melee have to deal with more mechanics, bosses jumping across the arena, and positionals. As mentioned Byakko was particularly bad for melee for this reason.

Many players are probably thinking “why bother with all that when I can be safe over here, and can still move while doing damage.”

[Azerhan]

Now that cast times have been removed from BRD/MCH, there’s not the same trade off. Melee have to deal with more mechanics, bosses jumping across the arena, and positionals. As mentioned Byakko was particularly bad for melee for this reason.

Many players are probably thinking “why bother with all that when I can be safe over here, and can still move while doing damage.”

Not really true: BRD and MCH need a DRG first to maximise their dps (and the gape w/ and w/o a DRG is big: 300/400 dps), and I'm playing MCH, BRD, SAM, MNK and DRG, and melee is not harder than ranged.
In ranged the gameplay is quite different, because they don't have positional they have some hard mechanics to do, for exemple in BRD: the perfect timing for proc, to use the buff at the good time, and for MCH, I will not talking about the "1min" gameplay, which is so much punitive (and require a low ss to be used)...
It's true Byakko isn't really easy melee, but I'm farming it in MNK to learn the job, and it's not really hard too. Yes, you need to move a lot, but I found it fun to turn around and dodge ball. It's another playstyle, but it's quite fun, that changes from the others fights.

[wereotter]

I farmed it as monk too, but that's because I like the job, and don't really enjoy BRD/MCH. And there are unique challenges to that job, I agree. The bard in our raid group is the only one who has to actually do knock back mechanics since they don't have Arm's Length. It seems that for fights in general, though, they've started to remember melee are a thing, which has been nice. Phantom Train and Chadarnook not having a positional ring has been really nice, but again Byakko dancing around orbs while trying to get positionals because the cool down on True North is 4 weeks long....

[RenOkamiya]

Again, on a fix team I agree that melee is not necessarily harder than range since you can discuss with teammates to adapt. But in a pure PF fashion, which is the topic here, it's more FFA fucky'all than discuss. When you have a bloody range shadowing your ass with aoe or solo mecanics on melee range of the boss it's quite raging ^^
You also have the timing restriction on melee as well (trick attack, litany/eyes of the dragon...) openers are openers no matter what you play ^^
I would agree that v1s and v2s are great though.

[Deceptus]

I just think that Byakko EX specifically is ridiculously hard as a melee vs a ranged. It's very dot friendly and ranged friendly.