CHAPTER 2: MELEE POSITIONING

MELEE POSITIONING INTRO

Welcome to our course on Melee Positioning. This one is an absolute must-watch.

Throughout this course, we're going to be dropping you directly into different arena scenarios, walking you through your decision-making based on who you're fighting. We're going to start with Double Caster, which, as we all know, is an absolute nightmare.

Then we're going to be looking at Melee Cleaves, including one trick that can steamroll your pressure. Finally, we're going to be looking at Melee Caster matchups, showing you how to play neutral, and we hope you really enjoy this course.

MELEE POSITIONING VS. CASTER CLEAVES

How do you deal with Double Caster on Tol'Viron? What do you do when your enemy runs behind a pillar?

These are just a few of the most common problems you're going to encounter as melee instead of arena. And if you don't know the answers to these questions, you're going to be in for a rough time.

But don't worry, you're in luck, as today we're going to be giving you a masterclass on positioning as a melee. Now, before we even start, I know what you're thinking already.

Skill capped? Come on, I'm a melee.

My position is dictated by where my enemy is standing. Well, yes, you're correct.

But what you need to understand is that for melee specs, target selection and positioning go hand in hand. And you don't always have to succumb to your enemy pulling you around the map as they please.

And positioning is a lot more important than you may first think. To explore this concept, let's look at some of the drawbacks or benefits positioning can provide.

Starting off with the positives, position well and you're going to allow yourself a much easier time offensively. Your ability to maintain uptime and keep on targets naturally becomes a lot easier.

This then goes hand in hand with pressure. More uptime, more pressure.

So you'll find offensively you can get a lot more done. Clever positioning also allows you to build on this pressure by interacting with more targets.

We'll learn how to turn being trained into a way to generate overwhelming momentum. On the flip side of things, bad positioning is more than likely causing yourself a plethora of issues, the most common of which is overextending.

We've all been there. You're in the moment, tunnel vision on that nameplate desperately pursuing a low health target.

Where you're standing probably isn't a thought that's even going to cross your mind. As after all, you're just hitting your kill target.

Well, chasing like this and overextending will result in poor positioning and can open up a lot of issues in your ability to survive defensively. One of the reasons and something, again, you probably don't even consider is the impact your positioning is having on your team.

But by this point, I'm sure you're wondering, okay, skill capped, where should we be standing? Well, let's break it down.

All right. Well, first of all, let me start by saying it's sadly not as simple as stand here on the floor.

There are tons of different factors which come into play, the biggest of which is what composition you're facing. So to help, we're going to break positioning down into three subsections, caster cleaves, melee cleaves, and melee caster.

Let's start with the hardest, caster cleaves. Caster cleaves can be one of the hardest compositions to face.

The dreaded triangle formation on Tol'Viron is the bane of any melee's existence, constantly getting dragged further and further away from the pillar, leaving you no easy way to retreat when in danger. Well, what we need to do is to get the caster to focus on you and your healer.

This way, they can land damage onto you and zone your healer simultaneously, either by doing damage to them as well or by crowd control. Then, the caster you focus will aim to move away from your healer, dragging you further and further away from the pillar.

Okay, so there are two main ways to deal with this triangle formation. First is the safest way.

Always hit the closest caster to your healer. The triangle formation works because of the caster between you and your healer.

Don't let this happen and you're going to be a lot safer and be able to pressure for longer. So what this means is that as the enemy's triangle rotates and the caster cleave begins to drag you into their backline, you simply react to this by swapping targets.

This eliminates the threat of the caster zoning your healer. And if you're playing with a caster on your own team, it gives everybody but yourself a pillar.

The other way to deal with this is to fully commit onto one caster. To do this though, you're going to be in a losing position if you stay out too long, and this playstyle heavily relies on your healer playing with you.

This is a very important part of the game, and it's a very important part of the game. The reason for this is as you inevitably get dragged away from your healer, he's going to have to constantly be adapting his position to find another pillar or form of LOS.

Whilst it falls on your healer to reposition, it's a huge team effort to pull this off successfully and for extended periods, and demands a lot of coordination.

From getting to one pillar to the other, you're going to have to be non-stop talking about cooldowns and interrupts, stopping crowd control and damage onto your healer whilst he gets to safety. A great way to help with this is to save your setups, stuns, or offensive goals for when your healer needs to reposition.

Otherwise, it's like mentioned all about communication and using interrupts to help your healer across the map. It's also worth noting that when facing casters, you don't have to commit to either one strategy or the other.

You could start by tunneling one caster until you've exhausted your defensive cooldowns if you don't kill. You can then go back to hitting the closest target.

Or you could just play it safe until your enemies mess up or overextend, giving you an opportunity to then commit and chase for the kill that way. One dire strategy you can also apply is to just choose to not play.

Top Melee constantly apply this positioning against casters when something has gone horribly wrong. Either you've overlapped cooldowns or have just exhausted them and want to buy yourself some time.

What this entails is just simply retreating to the pillar and line of sighting with your team. Against double casters, they will heavily struggle and will either just have to wait until you come out again, giving you time to wait for defensives.

The only other solution to this for the caster team is to look to go on one side each, at which point you just choose one caster to focus and line of sight the other. You can then just go back to the caster team and wait for the caster team to come out again.

You can then just go back to the caster team and wait for the caster team to come out again. You can then just go back to the caster team and then in rare scenarios, the caster cleave may choose to fully commit, at which point you can just use the pillar to your advantage.

Caster cleaves pushed on pillars generally don't do well, which is why it's rare for them to fully commit.

MELEE POSITIONING VS. MELEE CLEAVES

Alright then, so next up, we've got Melee Cleaves. Melee Cleaves, granted, are not the most difficult to position against.

I mean, you're a melee against a melee. You just stand there and hit them, right?

Well, no. There's a lot more you can accomplish with positioning against Melee Cleaves.

Unlike when playing against double casters, the healer in a lot of cases is the best target to go on. Let me show you why.

We're playing a Melee Cleave mirror and they're going on either yourself or your teammate. Moving over towards the enemy healer causes the enemy team to be stacked up.

This allows you to easily interact with three targets, whilst your enemy can only easily interact with two. What we mean by this is that you're going to have an extra target to cleave, interrupt, and crowd control, putting you in a very favorable scenario.

You don't even necessarily have to even focus the healer. Just being on top of him is going to make it increasingly difficult for them to play, whilst your own healer can then follow the fight from max range.

If the enemy does go on your healer, it will then turn into what's known as a healer race, as in most cases, you'll want to avoid what we just explained happening to you. But what about if you're facing a Melee Cleave with a caster on your team?

Do you still want to go healer? Well, it's definitely dependent on composition.

But generally speaking, if you're not the one being targeted, pressuring healers with damage will get a lot more done. Offensively, pressuring the healer will force them to zone themselves out of healing their team.

This can be great as your DPS partner can pressure their DPS or even keep them crowd controlled without the enemy healer being able to easily dispel, allowing you to snowball pressure.

Whilst defensively, you're going to be avoiding a lot of damage, as if you're continuously hitting the Melee that are training your caster or healer, it gives them an added target to Cleave, resulting in more pressure for them.

Again, still playing with a caster, but this time you're the one being focused, things change. It's generally not a good idea going onto the healer.

Yes, you'll stack all three enemies up, but this doesn't do much if you're not playing a Cleave yourself. Instead, you should be using your position to dictate where the enemy Melee Cleave has to move to.

To best do this, you need to follow some rules. You want to drag them away from their healer, but also remain very aware of where your caster DPS is, keeping the Cleave always in line of sight of your caster.

Simultaneously, you always want to be in line of sight of your own healer. But, you never want to be close enough to your healer to put them at risk of being swapped too, interrupted or crowd controlled.

Essentially, you're adapting a triangle formation exactly the same way that caster Cleaves would.

MELEE POSITIONING VS. MELEE CASTER

Which brings us to our last section. What if it's one melee and one caster we're facing?

Well, this takes a lot of the concepts and positioning that we've already spoke about up to this point and applies it on a matchup by matchup basis, starting off with when playing a cleave yourself. Now, you can definitely go on healers, but it's going to be a lot more nuanced.

It's far more risky than versus a melee cleave, but it's not nearly as risky as when against double caster. As when going on healers, you're only leaving one caster free.

So, if you can deal with this, then it's definitely an option. Not to mention, you'll also more than likely have the enemy melee on you, giving you two targets to cleave.

Overall though, this will, of course, depend heavily on the matchup and what composition you're playing. The safest way to deal with melee caster though is to always actively position yourself near the enemy caster.

This allows you to maintain the highest level of control over the game as you can more easily land interrupts and shut that caster down a lot better.

Much like when we covered going on healers as a cleave, just because you're trying to position and stay on top of the enemy caster, doesn't necessarily mean that you have to focus them. Simply moving over to the caster whilst hitting the melee on you has just as much of an effect.

You'll also gain more pressure this way if you or your DPS partner are being trained, as you can hit two targets due to the enemy melee being on one of you.

If the enemy caster does drag you into awkward positions, same as when playing against double caster, you need to communicate and talk with your healer to see if they can push in and support you. If you're playing a melee caster versus melee caster mirror, however, things don't really change.

You can also use your melee caster to counter the enemy caster's melee caster. If you're playing a melee caster versus melee caster mirror, however, things don't really change.

If you're playing a melee caster versus melee caster mirror, however, things don't really change. In almost all cases, the enemy caster will once again be the best target to position near and for the same reasons.

You're a melee on a caster, so you can more easily control the pace of the game. But remember, you don't want to ever overchase and get stuck in overextended positions alone.

So either have your healer accommodate and move so that you can keep chasing, or consider coming back and swapping targets to the enemy melee until you can get back on the caster again. With that in mind, let's go over some really specific situations which require nuanced positioning in Arena.

First, your positioning might be a little bit different from the other players. You might also need to change slightly if you are playing a melee that has lots of utility.

For example, warriors and retribution paladins. You need to keep in mind that your utilities such as Blessing of Sanctuary, Freedom, or even Intervene are all going to be very integral parts of most matchups.

So when chasing targets or being caught far away from the other members of your team, bear in mind that you may need to come back or be close when needed solely for your utility. The other very important aspect of positioning I wanted to touch on is going around pillars.

If you're a melee chasing a target who's attempting to drag you out of line of sight, you need to be very aware of what can happen. So always think about these key points.

One, you're not going to be able to get dispelled. So if it's a mage, your high crowd control target that you're chasing, you could inevitably get stuck in crowd control and not be able to contribute.

Two, you're not going to be able to be healed. Remember, the second you walk out of LOS, your healer cannot interact with you.

So consider if the enemy is capable of bursting you down. Do they have stuns or offensive cooldowns ready?

Three, take a look at your healer's positioning. How long does your healer have to wait for you to get out of the fight?

How long does your healer have to wait for you to get out of the fight? How long does your healer have to wait for you to get out of the fight?

How long until he can get to you? Can they get to you safely without being crowd controlled or are they being zoned?

Just to add to this, something you need to consider and that we already covered is when forcing your healer to reposition, they're going to more than likely be vulnerable. So just because it's safe for you to go around the pillar doesn't mean it's safe for your healer.

Four, then lastly, do I even need to chase this target out of LOS? If you're not close to a kill, it's always going to be more risk adverse to just swap targets or delay chasing until your healer can get near.