BEATING MOBILITY CREEP

THE EASIEST WAY TO BEAT EVERY MELEE DPS INTRO

There is one simple counter that works against every single melee in the game. And no, it's not importing your favorite streamer's weak aura pack and figuring out how to deal with a screen full of flashing icons and sirens blaring in your ears every 10 seconds.

Instead, it's something that fans of a sport like basketball or fighting games will probably understand. It's the concept of spacing.

Something so simple that top players often forget to even mention it on their streams when answering questions in chat. In fact, it's probably the most effective, fundamental strategy that anyone can easily exploit to take less damage while also doing more DPS against melee players, no matter what class you play.

The reason why melee might seem so dominant at lower MMR is because players don't grasp the importance of spacing against melee and what it can achieve.

After all, the biggest weakness of any melee class is the fact that they have to be in melee range, so if you aren't actively exploiting this weakness, you might be missing out on rating gains without knowing it. So get ready to take down some notes as we walk you through the number one counter for every melee spec.

THE POWER OF SPACING

Consider this. Melee can only attack what's in front of them, unless they commit a gap closer.

This means if you're being attacked by a melee while standing next to your teammates, you're giving the enemy melee more targets to interact with, ultimately giving them more power over the game.

Instead of interacting with one target, they are interacting with two, or even three, allowing them to have a much higher impact, not through their own strengths, but through your poor positioning.

This means that they can do double the crowd control, and sometimes even double the damage, all through instants that are impossible to react to.

HOW TO BEAT ROGUES

An excellent example of this added value is when you stack up against rogues. Rather than the rogue having to commit his gap closer to stun the healer, then shadow step back to stun the kill target, they can simply tab target and instantly apply their crowd controls to the whole team.

Not only allowing them to do more damage, but also allowing their goes to be far less predictable.

On the flip side, if you were to not stack against a rogue, you not only take less damage as they have less globals from traveling back to you after cc'ing the healer, but it also gives you the opportunity to preemptively use defensives as their goes become far more telegraphed, or even allows you to run so far away in the opposite direction of the rogue while they're trying to set up, that they can't even connect back onto you in the first place.

This is a huge reason why high rated rogue teams are forced to pre cc their kill target, as the higher rated players are always spacing far apart, allowing them time to react. But as we said earlier, this concept applies to every melee.

So without further ado, let's get into how you can use this concept to your advantage. So let's get into how you can use this concept to your advantage.

So without further ado, let's get into how you can use this concept to your advantage. So without further ado, let's get into how you can use this concept to your advantage.

So without further ado, let's get into how you can use this concept to your advantage. Let's get into how you can use spacing to you can use spacing to win you more games

HOW TO BEAT WARRIORS

First, let's start with Warriors, who you obviously want to not stack up against because of their cleave damage, right?

Well, that's not the only reason, as by standing far away from your team, you will have a much easier time reacting to a Warrior's Stormbolt despite its relatively close 20 yard range, because it has a travel time.

If you've ever seen a player meld Stormbolt or Axe Toss, it's not because they have godlike reaction times, it's because of the positioning of their entire team. By being spread apart, you can actually see the Stormbolt coming well before it lands, allowing them to shadow meld or apply a defensive before it connects.

This is incredibly powerful when facing Warrior teams, as very often their Stormbolt is a major part of their kill window due to their limited crowd control. Moving on, Warriors intimidating shout is also a huge reason why you want to avoid stacking against Warriors, but not just to avoid triple fears on your team.

Remember the Subtlety Rogue analogy? Well, this applies here too, as if you see the Warrior pushing for that fear on your healer, you'll have a much easier time reacting with good spacing.

Not only do you see the Warrior waddle over to your healer, allowing you to do damage to them while they aren't interacting with any targets, but you also allow yourself time to escape the Warrior after the fear lands on your healer, effectively wasting their crowd control.

I bet you've had countless games where you or your team have been cross CC'd by a Warrior's fear and Stormbolt, resulting in a loss. Proper spacing fixes this issue.

Finally, Warriors can deal huge cleave damage with Bladestorm and their Thunderous Roar talent if it's allowed to hit multiple players, so playing far apart will allow your healer to focus more on utility and damage rather than having to pump out heals on multiple targets.

What's better, a healer that's able to push in for crowd control due to his team's positioning, or one that's forced to spam heal due to their team's stacking? I know which one I'd choose.

HOW TO BEAT RET PALADINS

Next up, we have Rett Paladins, who although they have a long range on most of their damaging abilities, are still limited by range on their Hammer of Justice stun, as well as having Blinding Light, which is a 10 yard AOE around the Paladin themselves.

By utilizing the correct positioning of not stacking on your healer, you can create distance between the Rett Paladin and yourself when the crowd control lands, allowing you to minimize damage taken on their setup.

Since Rett Paladins have access to the Fist of Justice talent, which reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice every time Holy Power is spent, it's actually very difficult to properly track Hammer of Justice, making consistent spacing even more valuable as the stun's cooldown varies wildly.

And although Rett does have a huge range on their damage abilities, this spacing will allow you to escape to line of sight and avoid their attacks, meaning you can hold onto your defensives for longer.

This concept is increasingly important when the Rett Paladin is opting to use Crusade, as by staying away from your team, you deny them easy swap targets, meaning that they only force defensive cooldowns from one player, rather than having your entire team trade their personals as the Paladin taps around.

HOW TO BEAT SURVIVAL HUNTERS

When it comes to Hunters, staying spread out is also crucial, as it makes their traps lose a significant amount of value. In a scenario where you're playing far away from your survival hunter and your healer, the hunter has two options to be able to trap.

One, they can trap off an initiation crowd control such as their 1 minute intimidation stun or 20 yard scatter shot, which they would much rather use on an off target. Or two, they can harpoon across the map towards your healer and trap on top of them.

If you force them into moving towards your healer, you not only give yourself time to escape the hunters setup and line of sight them until the trap ends on your healer, but you also allow your healer to know exactly when the crowd control is going to land, giving them time to use defensives like pain suppression in the stun before the trap, or even counterplay the trap entirely and negate it with a grounding totem, taunt or shadow word death.

HOW TO BEAT FERAL DRUIDS

Moving on to Feral's now, where proper positioning will not only cause them to lose a huge amount of damage, but also make them die far easier. Feral's in Season 3 are all about cycloning with the Wild Attunement talent, allowing them a free no cooldown Feral Frenzy whenever they complete the cast.

This ability usually has a 45 second cooldown baseline, so you can see how powerful this talent can be when a Feral is able to just clone everything in their sight.

Cyclone is also just an insanely overpowered ability in its own right though, as it serves as the main kill window and peel the Feral has due to how squishy they are.

When looking for crowd control, a Feral will often stun both the enemy healer and their kill target with either a Rake or Mighty Bash, and then follow up with their casted CC while no one can kick them.

Thus by making sure that you're far away from your healer, you can deny this cross CC from happening and kick the cyclone coming in on your support player.

Maintaining distance is also crucial into Feral's as it means they will often have to use their Wild Charge to connect to your healer to get the CC rolling, meaning they won't be able to kill the Feral. This is a very important part of the game, and it's also a good way to instantly leap back onto their kill target.

As we said earlier, positioning far away from the Feral will also make them die easier. This is because you can actually outrange the end of their cyclone cast if you're far away enough, as it's only a 23 yard range, compared to the 40 yards of most other casters.

Considering this is their main tool for surviving, by standing far away you strip that away from them and make them significantly more vulnerable.

HOW TO BEAT ENHANCEMENT SHAMANS

Although Enhance is seen as a bit of a damage bot without much crowd control, there are still a few key abilities you do shut down by being far apart. First of all, they won't be able to Windshear your healer.

Windshear is only a 30 yard range compared to the 40 yards of other casters, meaning that if you don't push up on your own healer, they can't be that disruptive.

Similarly, you disable their AOE CCs like Sunder, Thunderstorm, and Burrows Eruption effect, meaning that your healer is just going to have a way easier time healing as there's nothing to really watch out for. Finally, you can also shut down their biggest win condition, Totemic Production, combined with Static Field.

It's pretty common for Enhance teams to grip players together and attempt to land stuns or cleave damage while their enemies are trapped in the field.

However, by staying far apart from your team, they can't grip multiple members of your team together as the totem can only be moved once before it fades, and it has a very limited range for how far it will drag players.

By not stacking into Enhance, you make their Static Field only hit a potential of 2 targets, and you can only move up to 2 targets rather than a potential of 3, making their setup only have 2 thirds of the value it could achieve.

HOW TO BEAT WINDWALKER MONKS

Next up are Windwalker Monks, who are all about that legsweep setup combined with their Serenity. In the ideal world, every single player a Windwalker faces would stand on top of each other and get triple stunned by legsweep, as this would allow them to one shot all 3 players at once.

But our job at skillcapped is to make sure that doesn't happen. Windwalkers want nothing more than to triple sweep, so by spacing correctly, you can deny them their wildest dreams and the easiest setup they can get.

It's not just enough to be far apart to narrowly avoid legsweep though, as you need to have enough distance to not be bounced into range by their Ring of Peace, which is a very common play windwalkers will attempt to get more players into their airy stun.

Ok, so now that we're not stacking into the Windwalker, there's still another check we need to make. We need to be at least 20 yards from our healer.

This is because if a windwalker is unable to connect their sweep to multiple targets, they will look to paralysis the healer first and then sweep the dps.

To prevent this, we can stand first, but then look to paralysis the healer. further away from our healer, giving us a window to react to a paralysis on our healer, and preemptively use a defensive cooldown or trade mobility, allowing us to save our trinket on the go.

HOW TO BEAT DEATH KNIGHTS

Moving on, we have Death Knights, the true enablers of all other melees, with their multiple death grips and blinding sleet. Now, although death grip does have a huge range, making it almost unavoidable, standing far apart still does have its benefits.

Fortunately for us, death grip has quite a long animation that increases the further away you are.

This means that when we have more distance, we are allowing the partner that we are being death gripped towards more time to react to the incoming setup, or even allowing ourselves to use a movement ability like blink or teleport to escape the go entirely.

If you were to stand too close, the death grip animation would be too fast for you to react to, and would force trinkets almost every time.

Pressuring the death knight to use their grips in the first place is already a small win though, as it means you are free to use your mobility tools afterwards with no repercussions as they won't be able to pull you back, while also denying a pseudo interrupt from the death knight, meaning that you and your team can cast way more.

The worst thing you can do into a death knight is completely stack on your team, as they will be able to blind and sleet everyone without committing their grips, as well as being able to threaten your healer with their 15 yard interrupt, pet kick, asphyxiate, and strangulate.

HOW TO BEAT DEMON HUNTERS

And finally, we have Demon Hunters, who boast some of the largest cleave damage in the game. Demon Hunter's biggest offensive cooldown is Essence Break, which does huge damage in its own right, as well as making the follow up Death Sweep deal way more damage than any button should.

Essence Break itself fires in a cone, meaning it can be applied to multiple people, as well as Blade Dance obviously being AoE, making it a no brainer not to stack versus this class due to their damage output on multiple players.

However, it's also integral to have good spacing against Demon Hunters due to their crowd control chains, as if you were too close, they can easily imprison your healer into a sigil of misery, stunning and bursting you instantly after.

Correct spacing will allow you to run away as you see the Demon Hunter move towards your healer, meaning their short CC chain will be completely ineffective, and although the Demon Hunter may have Vengeful Retreat to connect to you, you're forcing one of the biggest defensives for free just by pressing W on your keyboard.

MELEE CLEAVE POSITIONING TIP

Alright, so we know how to deal with each melee individually now, but what if you're in a double melee vs double melee environment? You can't just walk away all the time right?

Well, let's take it back to what we said in the beginning. The key into melees is to limit the amount of targets they can interact with.

Therefore, the key to winning double melee vs double melee is to make sure that you're constantly pushing towards the enemy healer, allowing you to interact with all 3 members of the enemy team while they only interact with 2.

This not only makes you deal far more damage and have more crowd control and interrupt options than the other team, but it also enables your healer to do more than just panic heal, allowing them to generate momentum with your team through offensive plays.

Always remember, the worst thing you can do is run on top of your own healer.