Know how and skill trump just about anything. When that is equal, duration and raid script/guild strat come into play. Gotta support your best based on your guilds situation. Realize OP asked about a ideal melee group but so many drastically undervalue the power of a good necro group and often support them last or only partially when thats not always the highest return. Nec Nec Nec/Best Mage Druid Bard Enc
I know this is talking raid groups, but I recently leveled up two zerkers to form a war/brd/sha/3x ber group. They just hit 110 but the big disappointment is that even after the zerkers start attacking a fresh mob with all their skill attacks on cooldown, mobs die before the alliance fulminates. It's fun when I fight a named but I'm wondering if I shouldn't have gone war/brd/sha/ber/mnk/rog instead, just to get the group ADPS from the rog/mnk.
Is this assuming the other Wiz/Mage groups don’t have bards? It strikes me as... strange to burden your best Mage with the relatively incompatible Necro burn times otherwise.
I often try to give the necro group this setup: Shm Brd Nec Nec Nec Enc While I'll double up the Druid for either the mages or the wizards to the tune of Mage/Wiz Mage/Wiz Mage/Wiz Enc Druid Druid
please see with the quote in my post that I was responding very particularly to the ranger adps situation.
It all depends on the adps available as well as the talent that is on. Its not perfect but many guilds only run 3 necs so if one's not on you don't want an open spot and from my experience mages gain more than wiz from the bard. Necros can shift their burn quite a bit and still perform very well if you are talking about necros holding burn until dooms fire as the incompatible burn time part. Instead of the well only 2 necros on so no support scenario which while often the norm is often leaving lots on the table. You have to do what works for your roster, adps available, your talent pool and durations. But druids can add quite a bit to the mix for necs and while they add more to a mage or wiz thats still a spot that a 4th wiz or mage could have had instead. Just guesstimating in general but I would think the gain from the 3 necs and a 4th supported wiz/mage in the other group would trump the return for double druids for that group. But if your necro team isn't as strong as they should be or doing what is possible then yeah the situation flips and higher returns could be had elsewhere.
I have kind of considered there to be really 4 adps/support classes that are sort of divided into to sets. Druid/Shaman as one set and Enchanter/Bard as the other. What I wish is that they would give shaman the ability to provide more ADPS to casters, Druid's and Enchanters some more melee based stuff. Probably on the same timer as current support of either melee or caster. I would like them to be more interchangeable. When I have a druid for my groups healer, I don't want to think to myself "Darn, only have a druid tonight." Selfishly and more over arching, I wish they would reduce the gap between having ADPS and not having ADPS for classes through self abilities and then give the traditional ADPS classes boosts to make up for the contribution loss. Probably too big of a project though and would take away some aspects of team play and coordination away that the has made the game great.
I'm not sure what your necros are gaining from a druid. The mana regen of BW? They don't need it. They'd be better off with shaman healing as they have HoTs and faster casting heals.
I can easily have 100k of my dps come from nuke procs and mods that amplify them and their crit rate, excluding alliance which isn't modified. Which is peanuts return from what wiz or mage would see for sure but its not nothing. But in game thats times 3 necros or 2/1 other of mage/wiz, plus the boost the druids dots will see from having the bard as well if they were missing that in the other group, the boost to the enchanters nukes in the necro group from the druid and then the adps gained from the 4th wiz/mage being added to the other group with druid/enc if they were missing either elsewhere. In total it adds up with the shifting of the pieces some. If some of those factors don't apply then yeah the diminishing returns might come into play.
If I had 3 Necros in a group Procing RB I'd 100% put a ranger in instead of a healer for cheetah, they can patch the poor bard if need be, but really shouldn't need to with splashes/shaman alliance procs and MGB HoTs Edit: That or a Second Chanter
There's no real number crunching to do for raids. Regardless of if Caster DPS got bumped slightly more than Melee there is the rest of the event past the burn. Giving 100k burst DPS addition to a caster group in the long run pans out as a lot less overall for the raid. Ranger DPS is heavily based on Melee type attacks, so if you eliminate the Shaman/BL (Assuming a Bard in caster group) you end up losing a pretty big chunk off of sustained DPS. Adding 100k Burst is great till you've lost 100k+ Sustained DPS for the whole event.
Just coming back to the note on ranger in caster group - got some info back from our Ideal ranger group would be SHM, DRU, ENC, BRD, BST, RNG That's if you're building around the need of a top performing ranger.
Most people put the ranger in the melee group with the bard and shaman unless there’s another Zerker, Monk, or Rogue that can benefit from the melee slot more. Then you file the ranger away with the casters. You prioritize those classes having a shaman and bard before your ranger.