You can really, because every class but warlock/priest relies on melee damage for at least most of their damage output.
Mercenaries/Barbarians/Swashbucklers/Rogues/Scouts, are obvious. Then hellions, necromancers, and sorcerors through charms, controls, animates, and dominates, not to mention hellions get third attack and cleave. Bards don't really do much damage period, they're support. Shamans also don't crank out a huge amount of damage on their own, they're largely a healer/support class, however when in melee a lot of their damage output is directly affected by how much they throw back with spirit aura, nerfing melee also nerfs the damage spirit aura reflects.
Really I think taking all melee damage down a notch, would be a step in the right direction. Not only would it be a small nerf to the hellacious amount of melee damage warrior classes can pump out at the moment, it would also be an indirect buff to nearly all casters in general, which I believe is needed. As it is right now the prescribed method of killing anything as a sorceror/necromancer, is getting the biggest, meanest charm you can find, or a huge army of undead, haste/GS them up, and kill your target as any warrior would. After order lag, and the severe affect MP has on almost all damage spells, they're really almost an after thought. A wimp across the board would give necromancers/sorcerors another couple rounds to actually focus on spellcasting, instead of just spamming 'o all bash' and praying everything goes alright.
On that same note the charms would do less damage to their target, so it's not like it would really die any faster, the prescribed method of killing would just be slightly different. Spellcasters would have to actually you know... cast spells. Melee on the other hand would actually have to employ a bit of tactic rather than the standard 'bash; bash; bash' because they know they're going to rip through the pet in 3-4 rounds anyways.
Anyways, I think a straight notch down across the board would balance everything out quite well, and make small scale caster combat more effective than it is now.
EDIT: I would like to point out I agree removing auto assist would be a neat idea, and would help with group combat definitely, but I still think without a direct nerf to damage, melee classes still have the advantage over caster classes in general.
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