To all of you melee newbs out there!

I do randoms on 5 characters now, and all too often I see melee happily chopping away in the mob's face. The worst part is that half the times I tell them to go stand behind, I get foulmouthed.

So for all those people out there who have absolutely no idea why it is that healers, tanks, and yaknow, generally just more experienced people, are asking you to stand behind the boss....

Soooo, 3 reason why you do NOT want to stand in front, and 1 reason why you DO want to be in front!


Con's for being in front:


Bosses do NOT parry from behind while they do from the front. 

Now, what does it mean....

This has 2 effects:
- 1. (and you'll like this) You will do more dps when standing behind. 

When your weaponswing gets parried by the boss you actually do way less damage. You can counter this by wearing a lot of expertise, and in some of the later fights you will actually want to wear expertise because you don't always have a choice of standing behind. But if you're in the stage of having to learn to stand behind the boss....you prolly don't have your expertise capped.

Also parry hard cap is something like 52 expertise which is aboutish impossible to cap for dps without losing a lot of dps. Soft cap, just to make the information complete, is at 26 expertise and prevents all dodging from the boss (front and back).

- 2. (and you'll care less about this, but your healers do) When you stand in front, you will cause parries. 

Huh? Yes.

Every attack that is parried causes parry speedup, meaning that the next attack will go off sooner, meaning the tank will be taking more damage. Now in general if you're questing or on puny mobs in heroics the healer can heal through the extra damage taken. If you try to do so on for example Saurfang in ICC you will cause the tank to take about 4/5 K extra damage, in heroic mode this goes up to about 9/10K.

Think about how grateful your healers will be if you're not the noob causing this extra incoming damage.

- 3. (and this has nothing to do with parrying) It's a good habit to stand behind if you don't like being dead on the floor.

Many bosses have frontal attacks. Marrowgar is a very obvious one, since he will cleave all your life away with just one hit. But most have pretty hefty damage that you really should only be taking while wearing a bag full of hitpoints, have all the right talents, and are defense capped.

So get in the habit of being behind the mobs if you're meleeing. Your group, raid, guild, anyone who plays with you, will be grateful for it.

Pro's for being in front:


- 1. You will cause the queues to be shortened for everyone by being kicked from a lot of instance groups and then stuck on ignore. 


I personally have no problem with beginning dps, I have no problem with new players either. But really, if you see a priest healing the group in shadow while doing about 5 times as much dps as you are doing. Then don't start foulmouthing when she tries to teach you something.