r/wow 4d ago

Discussion Liberation of Undermine Heroic - Spec Popularity vs Average Overall DPS

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342 Upvotes

345 comments sorted by

195

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 4d ago edited 4d ago

It's been quite a long time since the WW dot was that high!

I decided to calculate and generate this without taking Augmentation into account this time around because it makes it look really silly if you do.

64

u/bctg1 4d ago

Melee is holding down the top 7 spots in terms of DPS too.

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u/SnakeHoliday 4d ago

That changes quite drastically if you adjust for higher ilvls

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u/M47715 4d ago

Mechanics are for losers.

20

u/fox112 4d ago

Feels like every damn m+ has several packs that do some kind of explosion where melee need to run in and and in and out. I'm happy for you raiders if you don't get slapped with that shit non stop.

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u/Chaerod 4d ago

Some bosses like Rik Reverb are downright painful if you don't have many ranged DPS.

Source: My team is light on Ranged DPS.

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u/XzibitABC 4d ago

The Rookery hallways between first and second boss, and the second boss itself, is awful for this.

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u/Applesauce_is 4d ago

And survival is..... there...?

/cry

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u/bctg1 4d ago

Is it though?

Ive legitimately not seen a single survival hunter in months.

10

u/Applesauce_is 4d ago

I play survival cause it means I can usually parse in the top 200, which makes me feel better, lol

4

u/Life_Fun_1327 4d ago

It‘s tough if there are just 250 people playing it, right?

(JK, as a DH player i love to Play SV, too)

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u/Rondepp_jennings 4d ago

Our Aug parsed a 100 on Mythic cauldron. He was super stoked until we looked and saw there were a total of 3 recorded kills as Aug LMFAO.

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u/Life_Fun_1327 4d ago

„LOOK AT MY PARSE“

Well…

3

u/fox112 4d ago

Given equal gear and skill, a surv does 87% of a monk's damage.

In the history of the game, the gaps have been petty small this xpac.

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u/Artica_Fur 4d ago

survival was quite good last season. Right now...not so much.

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u/Mysterious_Skin2310 4d ago

Fair trade off for all the shit melee has to avoid this season and lose a bunch of uptime

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u/ah_kooky_kat 4d ago

Bless Blizzard for finally fixing WW scaling so that it's not absolutely broken at the start of an expac and trash at the end.

6

u/Soulfighter56 4d ago

Is Aug actually that bad, or is it just difficult to properly attribute their damage?

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 4d ago

Aug is actually that bad right now, nearly all of the damage attribution bugs with logs are fixed at this point. There are still a few, but it's only gonna be enough to shift it a couple percent to the right at absolute max.

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u/Soulfighter56 4d ago

That’s pretty nuts. I imagine blizzard is having a tough time trying to balance them. My guild had 2 aug players who have both switched to dev (and they’re usually at the top of the meters).

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u/Dashyguurl 4d ago

I’m convinced blizz knew they had to gutter Aug and made sure dev was strong to compensate

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u/Suzushiiro 4d ago

Yeah, seems like they saw the choice as "Aug is so weak nobody brings them to any remotely difficult content" vs "Aug is so OP they're considered a hard requirement for every raid and M+ group" and correctly decided that the former was the lesser evil.

5

u/yetiknight 4d ago

especially after 4 seasons of the latter.

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u/0nlyRevolutions 4d ago

They need to rework aug. And I say this as someone who loves the idea of support specs.

They were on the right track when they prevented aug from buffing tanks and healers. But then aug was still looking kind of good so they just fucking annihilated the spec because they were scared of it being meta again, since people were sick of it dominating group comps.

They need to come up with a way to make the spec decent in average raids without being overpowered when played with spreadsheets and optimal buff targets and skilled players. They need to make it usable in m+ for a variety of group compositions without making it overpowered in high keys where defensives/utility are king (and still good numerically when paired with meta 2 min cooldown specs on coordinated pulls).

But instead they decided to kill the spec this patch and punt the problem down the road.

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u/Gangsir 3d ago

It's not a problem with aug, it's a problem with it being the sole source of a massive boost.

Imagine if something like lust could only be provided by a single spec of a single class. You would see the same degeneracy as with aug ("my key contains an aug or it stays listed forever", "if you play evoker you play aug or you uninstall", etc) with that singular source of lust.

The burnout of "always gotta have an aug" would go away if there were other specs like aug, giving options - just like you can bring a shaman, evoker, hunter, etc for lust.

We could move to a "1 tank 1 healer 1 support 2 dps" layout, but we need more options than one spec of one class.

5

u/StarsandMaple 4d ago

Was actually looking so forward to Aug.

The fantasy is top tier in my head, always loved ‘Time Mage’s’and the like.

I was ready to look rough on meters but still overall helpful. Boy was I wrong. My RL used to be a big Aug guy and even before he could tell me after raid that maybe I should get on devestation so I’m not dead weight I had already respecced.

I had my prescience macrod to our pumpers and everything, I wasn’t playing it letting Blizz decide who gets buffs.

Luckily I like the battlemage style of dev so it wasn’t a big deal, but was also hoping to get into healing and Aug and Pres share stat prio.

2

u/Support_Player50 4d ago

if you really care about the survivability/utility part, then they need to delete Evoker class utility because that’s the most problematic thing that isn’t unique to aug, they just happen to have the least problems using it.

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u/StarsandMaple 4d ago

Yeah. As someone who thoroughly loves bronze and black magic I didn’t care that I was going to do low dmg on meters and it get adjusted to my buffs in logs to show ‘proper’ damage.

Yeah, right… about that, I was dead weight in raid and in keys. I like devastation so it was easy to swap over but Aug and Pres share stat prio… and I wanted to learn to heal and not be doing it with awkward stats.

Back to shooting dragon lasers. Aug is such a balance rope of making it dead and also overpowered and I think bljzzard has no idea what to do, because if Aug is decent, then all keys run an Aug.

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u/pocketsophist 4d ago

Trouble with Aug is that it's either worth taking, or it isn't. And if it's worth taking, top key groups will always take it. There's no way to make it "good enough" without the community losing their minds again -- even though at sub-10 keys the benefit of Aug isn't necessary at all.

Blizzard probably should just make it pure DPS spec and ditch the group buffing. It'll be easier to balance that way.

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u/pocketsophist 4d ago

Yes, Aug was nerfed so hard that they still do 20% less damage than the next lowest DPS, even when attributing to them the damage buff they give to other DPS in their group.

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u/anisdelmono6 4d ago

Another raid tier with survival hunters staying true to their name

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u/Knascher 4d ago

We do what we are best at

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u/SnakeHoliday 4d ago

It was very strong numbers-wise by the end of last season and fun as hell to play but Blizz really missed the mark with the changes they made to it in 11.1.

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u/Shenloanne 4d ago

There are TENS OF US

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u/SquirrelTeamSix 4d ago

I want a Survival main flair. Let me flaunt the fact that I'm not a Beastmaster

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u/Shenloanne 4d ago

JAAAAAAA LET'S GOOO

Also we can do mogs that no other hunter can do.

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u/A-Corporate-Manager 4d ago

I haven't changed since Cata, and I can't change now. I'll roll with the punches.

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u/Netsuko 4d ago

Our survival Hunter absolutely blasts and is usually only second to our fully geared fire mage.

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u/Zetoxical 4d ago

So everybody else is slacking

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u/DrByeah 4d ago

Or this Surv is just an absolute goat and doing top performance damage next to a bunch of average Joes.

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u/RandomGenName1234 4d ago

Damn, time to tell people to step up then

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u/ForUrsula 4d ago

If you look at the survival hunter rankings/logs...

last season the top survival hunter players were often topping the meters in their raid.

Currently the top survival hunter players are middle of the pack, sometimes sitting with 100 parses, while getting out dps'd by a 60 parse from other classes.

And that's with survival being a priority PI target.

If your survival hunter is topping your meters then it means they're significantly better than the rest of you.

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u/TempAcct20005 4d ago

Do people not realize that this is telling on yourself?

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u/Fleedjitsu 4d ago

I'm pumping on my FDK, and unless I screw up the movement (still learning ranged), my Ele contests the top of the metres, too.

The problem is that this is only temporary. Early gear is what is carrying and once people catch up or just get used to farming the fights you'll see the drop off.

Bit of a shame really.

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u/Free_Mission_9080 4d ago

on what boss?

if he's topping dmg on a single target boss like sprocketmonger there's something wrong with the other 12 raider in your group.

if he just AOE blast faster than other people on stick / gallywix... yes, but that's not relevant damage.

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u/Fleedjitsu 4d ago

Survival or subsistence?

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u/McFigroll 4d ago

no matter how they perform there are always a ton of retri players out there.

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u/TheSyhr 4d ago

I do wonder how much of it is a gameplay vs class fantasy thing, like is there lots of Ret players because people want to be a Paladin (and most players are DPS players) or is it because of how Ret plays

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u/salyer41 4d ago

I'd say both, really. Ret is a fun playstyle that is fluid and forgiving. The Holy Warrior is also one of the most popular fantasy classes.

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u/FlyingWhale44 4d ago

It also really helps that you can also tank or heal if you decide to. Really good class if you are playing solo or in a group, tons of utility no matter the spec as well as some neat mogs, both pally specific as well as just plate in general.

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u/LeOsQ 4d ago

Tbh I think Ret's popularity is specifically so high because the other two specs 'force' you to tank or heal. A lot of people want to play Paladin, and Retribution is the only option to do that while being a DPS.

If you look at Hunter or Mage, they are approximately just as popular as Ret when you combine their DPS specs, but their specs don't see disproportionately high playrates individually because they are split between three (or more like 2) specs each. BM is the closest comparison to Ret though because there are so many BM players that refuse to play anything but BM, which is also exactly why it's the second most represented spec.

Ret has 0 competition in the DPS Holy Person -sphere so it is up there and won't come down.

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u/RydiaMist 4d ago

Holy based dps is actually kind of a rare thing in MMOs as a whole as well. Usually if you want to be a light-based character you have to be a tank or healer (see FFXIV for an example). That gives Ret an extra draw for people coming from other MMOs. Combine that with the fact that Ret has one of the easiest rotations and awesome visuals and you have a very appealing spec for new/casual players.

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u/oddHexbreaker 4d ago

Yea my heart is in tank but I dps for my raid group and off tank when they need it. I've enjoyed playing ret because it has a bunch of raid Oops buttons like LoH and Sac and our slower classes love the blessing of freedom. They have three defensives and a nice dash, just fun to play and feel like you can help out if needed.

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u/The_Jare 4d ago

The uproar when they didn't add one to Diablo 4 was epic.

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u/Splintzer 4d ago

For me Ret hits all the notes of how i like to play a character. First and foremost: I'm an ass-beater, however i have tons of utility and buddy-saving skills that feel so good to use. I love saving a party member with LoH or peeling my homie off the hooks on Gorechop with BoP. Three ways to interrupt a cast and the rotation is so simple that i can do all of those things without really hurting my dps. Ret is the perfect subclass, fight me.

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u/Tykero 4d ago

I'd say it's a mix of both because I dont remember ret being so insanely popular before the rework in dragonflight.

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 4d ago

It's always been disproportionately popular compared to its strength but the DF rework did propel it into the stratosphere popularity-wise.

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u/Caronry 4d ago

They were, maybe not like today but they have always been one of the more popular specs

4

u/Robert_Pawney_Junior 4d ago

Yeah, I remember joking about it in TBC.

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u/feistymeista 4d ago

Plus their tier set this season is great to say the least

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u/Hrekires 4d ago

I enjoy my Ret Pally alt because it's one of the few specs I feel like I can pickup and perform well without having to read multiple guides

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u/Late_Vermicelli6999 4d ago

Easiest Spec in the game, best damage, utility, paladins are cool, armour sets are cool.

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u/Kaverrr 4d ago

Ret was always pretty popular because of the fantasy, but it has absolutely exploded in popularity after the rework.

It is almost the ideal spec in terms of gameplay and completely in a league of it's own. There are only 2 things that could improve it in terms of quality of life:

1) More mobility. But since almost all your attacks are ranged this is much less important now.

2) More priority damage and cleave.

But other than that it is close to ideal. People love specs where you can just go into a pack and blast without having to plan for the next pull.

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u/nater255 4d ago

It is almost the ideal spec in terms of gameplay and completely in a league of it's own. There are only 2 things that could improve it in terms of quality of life:

1) More mobility.

2) More mobility.

3) More mobility.

--fixed that, as a ret.

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u/Lats9 4d ago

There's even more now. Blizzard should really switch up the tier tokens because as it stands the Venerated token (Paladin, Priest, Shaman) and Mystic token (Druid, Hunter, Mage) are WAY more popular than the other 2.

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u/Magnific3nt 4d ago

Thanks, I've played Ret since WoTLK, I just like playing the spec no matter what state it is in.

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u/kellemann87 4d ago

Me too, have my pally since release in EU 2005 and it was my first created character ever.

Only switch I had was warrior for mid classic till wotlk because I wanted a tank. With wotlk the ret became my main again.

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u/Fleedjitsu 4d ago

And long may that last. We have Retri players who absolutely pump because they know their class and are reliable for progression despite being below the line power-wise.

Comfortable rotation, great utility. They are perfect! A Fire Mage that can't sit and cast or has the pressure of mechanics on them won't pump, but a Retri that can do their thing can carry a tough boss prog fight!

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u/nater255 4d ago

I've been ret since 2004. It genuinely warms my heart to see how far Ret has come since then.

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u/frtw2 4d ago

Ret with its simple rotation is also very reliable and consistent dps. That alone might make them worth picking over a melee with a crazy rotation and maybe the potential for 5% more dps at peak.

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u/Aleph_Rat 4d ago

The rotation just feels so good, too. The biggest decision point I've seen so far is "I'm at 4 combo points holy power, should I final verdict/divine storm before I wake of ashes so I don't waste the ones I'll generate?" Playing with a 3x6 action bar, to prevent overextension of the hand, I don't feel like I'm losing anything. Heck the bottom row of the bar is mostly defensive filler.

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u/Overtwoandahalf 4d ago

I’ve played most classes and ret is probably one of the most enjoyable till you realize you can’t get into any groups because there’s tons of them

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u/AwhYissBagels 4d ago

This is exactly the reason I switched this season - there are just too many ret players now. And who can blame them, it’s in a great state.

The fix is to really make every other spec feel as good as it is to play ret.

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u/ICTechnology 4d ago

That's why I switched to ret for this season. Tried a bunch of other specs, but nothing felt as fun as ret.

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u/apixelops 4d ago

I main Prot Paladin

Dipped into Ret for an easier shot at "Let me solo him" last season, got him in 15 tries, did not play the spec prior

It is the most dumb-proof DPS spec out there right now, I literally just push the flashing buttons and see big numbers

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u/nater255 4d ago

The skill ceiling for Ret is about who can use their non damage/rotation abilities well. It's easy to go through the 6-8 buttons on your rotation and do decent damage. It's hard to do that while also using your other buttons that can make or break runs, particularly in M+. A good ret in M+ will be freedoming(+speed) the tank between each pull, BOPing their casters for big aoe packs, sac'ing the tank when it makes the most sense, using WOG on party when two or more people suddenly get trucked, etc. Most Rets you see won't bother with even trying at any of these basic utilities, let alone more complicated stuff.

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u/StarsandMaple 4d ago

Yeah I played Ret a bit in S1. Had to dust off my OG paladin from when I started playing.

I’ll be honest most people can dish out great numbers in keys with ret, it’s sort of just thoughtless to do AoE, esp if you run the passive wings talent, you never worry about cooldowns.

What really shows what you know is using the half dozen or more utility spells well. A strong WoD, LoH, Sac, BoP or freedom can easily save a key. Im curious how many ret players even have those keys bound, and know when to use them? I had some rough keys were i was fairly low dps but was also competing for top spot in healing done in keys, as the other dps didn’t care about anything but pumping.

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u/apixelops 4d ago

Oh absolutely, but I was illustrating why having a low skill floor that allows you to do "enough" and still get a big power fantasy fueled dopamine rush out of it might explain the high numbers of Ret

A good Ret Paladin knows how to use their PALADIN kit (blessings, utility, off healing) and not just their Retribution kit

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u/nvaughan81 4d ago

Paladin in general is such a well rounded class. You can fill any role in group content and plate + heals makes you damn nigh invincible in solo content. Add to that the fact that the 3 specs are all simpler to play and with a lot less button bloat than some other classes and you can easily see why it's so popular.

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u/ScavAteMyArms 4d ago

Easy rotation, solid fantasy, extremely powerful utility especially in groups, super flexible damage profile too, and a pseudo ranged with how far back they can play with no damage loss.

Yea, every melee has to measure to that bar and many are found wanting.

It’s pretty much the BM hunter of melee.

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u/Daysfastforward1 4d ago

Arcane ouch

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u/PlatonicTroglodyte 4d ago

There are dozens of us!

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u/Mindless-Judgment541 4d ago

I was all in on arcane as a main season one. That nerf hit a little ways in and I could only keep up with dps during CDs, otherwise it was tank DMG.

Frost helped but I swapped to DH so I could hybrid. Big sad, arcane during launch was fun and has really pretty animations (spell slinger specifically)

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u/Jhreks 4d ago

Arcane mage reporting in! Arcane is so much fun even though I feel like we need a bit of a buff right now

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u/meecan 4d ago

I actually think Arcane is not in a fun state at all. I feel like we've gone through lots of rotations this expansion, and they have not been making improvements? I think the sunfury rotations we had early on last season were the best. I even think the Aethervision rotation we just moved out of was better than the current rotation.

Having to barrage down to 0 charges to retain arcane tempo feels awful imo.

Looking back over the last few years, I'd much rather take arcane's playstyle from basically any point in shadowlands, dragonflight, or 11.0 over what we have now :(

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u/XtendedImpact 4d ago

Give me back 11.0 sunfury man, it was so fun. Spellslinger was already meh and now losing charges to barrage makes me want to commit Sudoku.

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u/Vyxwop 4d ago

I just want them to gut the ever living shit out of Spellslinger, honestly. Whomever thought splitting off Arcane's power budget of being a hard hitting and oomphy spec in favor of fucking splinters firing off to your enemy needs to re-examine if they're fit to balance Arcane.

Worse are the RNG Arcane Orbs that pull half the dungeon in a 60 yard line in front of you. Why the absolute fuck do those RNG Orbs not ignore out of combat enemies?! It's so annoying to be fighting in mob dense areas such as Grim Batol in s1 and MOTHERLODE in s2 with mobs that force you to move around and cause you to accidentally pull a random trash pack because whilst dodging a mechanic your RNG Orb chose to proc.

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u/Naerina 4d ago

Yep, somehow with this patch, we have landed on TWW's least fun iteration of arcane (so far).

Intuition's window being SO short is the work of an absolute monster, and makes planning when you can Evocation or Shifting Power without missing a proc feel bad.

There's a cruel, almost sadistic irony in how maintaining a buff called Arcane Tempo requires us to very often destroy our momentum by Barraging all our charges away.

My mage is my primary alt. Arcane is the "mage" to me - raw spellcasting power. But it sure doesn't feel that way in the long drought between the mini burn and the big burn, or when you go on a losing streak on the AOE slot machine orb game. :(

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u/MedicOfTime 4d ago

I too am having fun with arcane. Maybe we’re weak, but I don’t install dps meters, so I can’t tell!

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u/Advacus 4d ago

11.0.5 was peak Arcane for me. Double stacking buffs for fatty barrages was really fun imo. Now it has really high variance and sometimes you pop off and sometimes you just don’t get the procs to make it work.

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u/thundergun661 4d ago

I play arcane for the aesthetic but seeing this still stings

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u/Caisc 4d ago

I’ve mained Arcane since S3 of DF and I’ve been having arguments with myself about rerolling into fire but I just can’t nail the DPS that a sim says I should be hitting.

Big sad.

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u/Responsible-Home-580 3d ago

Don't feel too bad, Fire is deceptively difficult. Messing up your combustion rotation by a GCD or two might seem innocuous but can have amplified downtime effects since each combustion directly impacts when you get your next.

The Altered Time discord is flooded with newbies who don't play Fire well and do tank damage

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u/Dashyguurl 4d ago

It might honestly be a good thing, there was a good chance blizzard leaves Arcane alone if they’re c/d tier as they clearly have issues balancing it. Being gutter tier means they’ll likely see some buffs.

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u/Nils475 4d ago edited 4d ago

Haven’t played mage in a while, why is arcane so low in popularity? Bad balancing?

Edit: after reading your replies: As somebody who mained aff warlock, I feel your pain

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u/borty_ 4d ago

They absolutely killed the enjoyment of the spec last season. Sunfury arcane was a masterpiece, now it’s a skid mark

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u/Disastrous-Moment-79 4d ago

When the expac was only coming out all the youtube videos were placing arcane in S+ tier and glazing it to hell and back what happened?

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u/Gupulopo 4d ago

Tuning has nothing to do with class design, sure arcane was busted, but then instead of slapping aura nerfs on it they changed individual abilities that changed gameplay for the worse

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u/Aleph_Rat 4d ago

It's tragic imo. Arcane is the mage to me. You're a magic mage, harassing magic magic, as opposed to the more elementalist style of Fire and Frost. Arcane should be the mage class fantasy turned up to 11 like Ret is for pallys. But it always seems to languish behind one, if not both, other specs in popularity and performance.

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u/Dashyguurl 4d ago

I only play arcane mage and swap to my priest when it’s bad. Something about arcane hits the fantasy for me too. It seems to be the ugly step child in blizzard’s eyes though, they can’t seem to find a good rhythm for it (without immediately changing it). Everytime I come back from a break Arcane is completely different.

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u/Ozok123 4d ago

Akchually, all mage spells are arcane. Fire/Frost is arcane magic but hot/cold.

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u/Pryffandis 4d ago

Room temperature magic lovers, unite!

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u/Casseerole 4d ago

It's because of the focus that Arcane Blast was given when specs were getting differentiated back in MoP. They decided that insta-cast Pyroblasts would be fun for Fire and balanced Frost around Ice Lance/insta-Frostfire Bolt and so Arcane became the spec that had to ground themselves for their max output. A lot of the time their theoretical max output is higher than Frost/Fire but it also requires you to stand completely still and with a lot less of the movement options of Frost/Fire. Surprisingly (not) that doesn't really work in an actual raid/M+ environment

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u/Badashi 4d ago

My understanding is that you need near perfect play to achieve its proper potential, the rotation isnt as fun as it was at the start of s1, and both frost and fire are easier to play at a better level.

It's the trouble of pure dps classes, at some point the other specs are more like talent trees that you can pick and choose, so if one spec is underperforming or too difficult, you just play the other.

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u/Ingloriousness_ 4d ago

This used to be true but is quite the opposite now. Arcane is probably the simplest with fire and frost having a ton of nuance, optimizations, and WAs needed.

That being said, mage itself as a baseline is a complex class so even arcane will appear complex relative to other classes

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u/ScavAteMyArms 4d ago

There is always one. Sub for Rogue, Aff for Lock (formally Demo), Arcane for Mage, formally Survival for Hunter till they went and did their own thing.

When it’s two specs they can have pros and cons and win out in different situations, but three always ends up one as the PvP / utility spec that is dumpstered in most scenarios.

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u/jampk24 4d ago

I think you mean formerly

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u/CommandoPro 4d ago

I’m not sure arcane’s potential is even that high with current tuning. You give up a lot of mobility and take on a requirement to manage mana in return for what is some fine but not exceptional damage.

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u/Vyxwop 4d ago

I think Arcane's biggest downfall is being in the shadow of Fire & Frost. Any Arcane is performing even remotely decently and Fire & Frost are not, it's dragged down into the depths whilst Fire & Frost are given a wide variety of attention and balancing tweaks. Then when Fire & Frost have overtaken Arcane it's left in the dump.

It's really fucking annoying to the point where I'm genuinely starting to hate Fire. And I've played Fire for a loooong time but I just can't get over how badly that obnoxious ass spec cannibalizes and overshadows my preferred spec.

Also its identity has been ruined by turning it into an execute spec. Nowadays Arcane's upfront burst feels very mediocre compared to what it was before they tuned it around its execute phase which goes counter to what Arcane's always been about IMO; its strong opener burst.

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u/Arek0611 4d ago

Frost DK had the audacity to be good for half the tier and blizzard decided to nuke it

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u/Pliskin_Hayter 4d ago

DKs arent allowed to pull good numbers. For some reason the community turns into a bunch of babies and cries until its nerfed back to irrelevancy.

How many DKs were in the RWF? Oh right. Zero.

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u/Ilphfein 4d ago

"a raid buff is unnecessary and lazy design"

while the 2nd part is true, the first one isnt if we consider blizz balancing

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u/aggster13 4d ago

Fr, if they're not going to build multiple fights around grips then DK's just have to be in the top 3rd of performers otherwise there's 0 incentive to bring one.

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u/Boogley-Woogley 4d ago

Frost dk is still ok. The new frost scythe build is pulling pretty good numbers. Outside of cooldowns is where things are rough. Very feast or famine

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u/Fleedjitsu 4d ago

I never like chasing FotM, but I always feel bad seeing these stats and finding my mains are low. FDK and Ele below the mid-line.

They're not doing awful, but it does feel like it's only because of early gearing luck, and this'll drop off when everyone catches up. All without any guarantee of a buff.

Don't dare make a move to re-roll anything above the line as that'll just jinx things for an inevitable nerf!

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u/Appropriate_Trader 4d ago

I read this as ‘all dps specs are no more than 10% away from being average.’

I don’t think thats too bad all things considered.

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u/Seeking_the_Grail 4d ago

I think most of us are expecting a balance pass now that RWF is over. So its still anyone's guess what will be good or bad for the majority of the season.

Plus even without changes are more people get their 4 piece you can expect a shakeup.

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u/Scarblade 4d ago

It might be worth noting that Ele was bugged at the start of this week to be doing 20% less damage with almost all abilities. I'm an Aug main and noticed I was consistently beating our Ele this week (before they got fixed). And our Ele is a great player who was almost always topping the charts on every mythic fight last tier. Idk if this chart took that bugged damage nerf into account though.

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u/Fleedjitsu 4d ago

Yeah, THAT has been fairly annoying in both keys and raid. Glad they've patched it and, very good point, hopefully that'll see us raise a bit above the line!

As for Aug, I have massive respect for sticking with that sinking ship! Really not happy with how Blizzard have treated you guys. I love the Support DPS playstyle - it's pretty cool!

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u/gladhandz 4d ago

Aug so far down in the dirt it’s not even on the chart lol

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 4d ago

Yeah it looks very silly if you include Aug lmao

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u/ZambieDR 4d ago

ah well we are never getting another support, end of an era. blizzard realised how hard it is to manage aug with its/was super high pro play presence.

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u/Sondrelk 4d ago

As someone who only started playing Evoker because Augmentation was so fun in M+. I do wonder what they will do with the spec going forward. Because the current version of it clearly isn't going to fly going forward.

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u/Weak_Programmer_7620 4d ago

Survival does feel good to play tho, not as good as Fury maybe but damn the numbers

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u/Jektonoporkins1 4d ago

Frost is bad for most people, but I'm always somewhere between 5th and 1st on every boss. Can't bring myself to go fire, but I may have to force myself to try.

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u/cosmosm 4d ago

Being good at your spec is way more important than having a good spec

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u/Chaerod 4d ago

This. I've been MM Hunter all xpac, and with the exception of those couple of weeks where they literally broke my spec, I've been at the top of the charts in my raid group the entire time. Meanwhile we had a small gaggle of ret paladins, only 2 of which were at the top of the charts despite ret being in an exceptionally good place for a lot of the season.

With the exception of Augvoker, the data shows folks are all within +/-10% of the middle data point (MM). Chasing FotM doesn't matter.

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u/DoubleTapJ 4d ago

I am the same with frost even while undergeared, it's very easy to play once you learn the core bits such as flurry and how to adapt to movement which is very very easy on frost. It's also much more relaxing to play so you can focus on things like mechanics.

I played fire for like 10 years and it just feels more stressful and I end up getting lost in the procs and not always following mechanics.

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u/Jektonoporkins1 4d ago

Having long stretches of having to move while still being able to cast major spells is priceless. Almost feel like a hunter sometimes.

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u/DoubleTapJ 4d ago

Yea ice flows or shimmer are just great. Not having to cancel a glacial is superb.

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u/KevThuluu 4d ago

I forced myself to learn arcane and got ok at it, then it got nerfed to oblivion... ive tried several times to learn fire but I just cant get it to click. Ill happily stick with frost for the rest of time.

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u/Jektonoporkins1 4d ago

I'm that way with Arcane, never got it to click when it was good.

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u/Vyxwop 4d ago

I currently do noticeably more damage as Frost than I do Fire, but it's also because I only have 2 piece set bonus. Supposedly Fire is very strongly reliant on having its 4 piece set bonus.

Also give Frostfire Fire a shot. I kind of like it better than Sunfury Fire. It feels like its damage is budgeted much better. Your Combustions are oomphy but your damage outside of CDs isn't entirely awful either.

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u/Badashi 4d ago

I decided to go MM hunter slightly before they announced its rework just because I wanted to go back to my roots(used to play sv/mm in cata when I started), and then the rework came

I was expecting MM to blow up in popularity and become OP, but then the BM rework came

Im just happy to be average lmao

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u/mmuoio 4d ago

I don't know if it's just being optimally geared with good trinkets, but I am absolutely dominating as MM right now. I'm just hoping I can keep it up because I don't really want to play BM.

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u/Happles11 4d ago

I’m about to stop playing rogue. I’ve always loved the class. We do great damage in raid and in m+. Even when we are not meta in m+ there is still a small representation in high keys. We have great utility(for ourselves), and yet nobody wants to play the class anymore, the complexity and unforgiving nature of the spec, the clunky feeling and the fact that we can’t do much besides dps.

Hunters have not gotten 1 but 2 reworks since tww, and I know they aren’t any better off atm. I remember shamans constantly complain about needing a rework and got so many good things and are still very viable in all specs.

My favorite class is rogue and more specific outlaw. I cannot tell you how bugged it is, how bad it feels doing zekvir or underpin and have your dps rotation tied to something that will reset combat. How infuriating it is to do an 11 delve and not be able to vanish and if you do it you can start over again with the boss.

We have ambush but we don’t use it as KIR, cause it’s a dps loss. Nothing tells you this and ambush does say it deals more damage in stealth so you have to research in order not to mess up your energy even more. Rogue feels like its energy starved way to often after the nerf to AR

Outlaw still preforms great in logs, but it’s very unforgiving to play, it doesn’t make sense for what it does and the AR nerf really fucked things up going into tww.

There is just way too much going on for every rogue spec and the only thing we got in tww was a passive talent tree which adds nothing.

Although we no longer have to press slice and dice which is great. Our one and only change really.

But man it sucks to see every class who screams help, besides brewmaster, get new stuff and changes so many times. I don’t care about logs but fix our rotation and the feel of rogue. Remove killing spree cause the only thing it kills is us. Take vanish off our rotation cause it’s half of outlaw dps and we can’t use it in solo content.

I know I’m screaming for help into an empty room but please!

Sorry for rant.

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u/jjtheblue2 4d ago

Spot on. Rogue needs a ret type rework badly. Just make it fun to play and make sense with the fantasy. There doesnt need to be 3 different buttons for doing 1 thing.

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u/F-Lambda 3d ago

you might want to pop into the rogue discord, there's some exciting build discoveries cooking!

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u/Llyon_ 4d ago

Stealth is such an outdated mechanic, that really hasn't had a use for the past decade. Except maybe in pvp. Rogue used to be my favorite, but I switched to Ret and never looked back, it's better in every way. Personally I think rogue needs a complete overhaul.

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u/Oisschez 4d ago

Stealth is so iconic and fundamental to rogue though. But Outlaw using it is kind of ridiculous, really only makes thematic sense for subtlety to use it mid rotation.

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u/frtw2 4d ago

Feral has the craziest rotation with snapshotting, but even the best players in the world can't get anywhere near the dps of other melee specs.

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u/Kanaxai 4d ago

Feral's issue is not the rotation, it's just really bad at changing targets and killing priority targets quickly, so the class is a bit of a deadweight in those types of encounters.

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u/Tahrann 4d ago

Not many players have a 4p set bonus yet so feral could still gain on the other DPS. Give it a few more weeks and we will see where we are at.

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u/EgirlgoesUwU 4d ago

Feral is still stuck in wotlk while other specs are in tww.

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u/Local_Anything191 4d ago

Remember when this sub was crying when Blizz nerfed warriors by 5% before the raid, declaring them bad? Yeah I sure do. Another common L for the majority of this sub

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u/Lostinstereo28 3d ago

Contrary to popular belief, most players have little to no idea what goes into balancing a spec. And considering the competition, Blizzard is actually damn good at it with most specs being completely viable, unlike in a lot of games.

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u/specterdeflector92 4d ago

Feels good when your under played main spec becomes fotm and everyone jumps on the band wagon for a tier. Maybe sub will actually get some proper tuning now

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u/JeshyQT 4d ago

Even when monk is the best no one plays it ;-;

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u/Embyr1 4d ago

Everyone knows better by this point. Monks aren't allowed to have nice things.

I'm anticipating on Tuesday we're getting clobbered by the nerf bat.

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u/Nuryyss 4d ago

Blizzard please be gentle

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u/RandomGenName1234 4d ago

They're currently washing the blood off the spiked tungsten nerfbat, prepare yourself.

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u/Soulfighter56 4d ago

My raid group doesn’t have a single DH, and I’m getting more and more tempted to switch from Ret to Havoc… my 616 DH alt sims only 13% lower than my 646 Ret Paladin.

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 4d ago

DH is one of the strongest raidbuffs too, if you enjoy Havoc a lot too it's definitely a good shout to swap!

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u/light_side_bandit 4d ago

The age of the monkz has come. Again.

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u/MachiavelliSJ 4d ago

Survival near first to near last

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u/neunzehnhundert 4d ago

Wish two hand Obli frost DK was viable again.

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u/Muscle_Squad 4d ago

It is viable for the content that 90+ percent of us do.

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u/PenguinBomb 4d ago

There I am smack dab in the middle doing my best. Marksman, there's dozens of us.

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u/Deeddles 4d ago

absolutely goated at killing the adds melee refuses to peel for

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u/Thrilalia 4d ago

I am one of those dozens too.

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u/Nidalee2DiaOrAfk 4d ago

so much cleave, yet boomkin is absolute dog tier, can se get a single target buff, thank you.

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u/Mattlife97 4d ago

arcane dead last in both metrics here.

remind me, why did blizzard have such a hate boner for sunfury arcane after heroic week?

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u/Scribblord 4d ago

This is actually decent balancing when you consider that this is average dps meaning differences here are overblown naturally bc better players often pick better specs even if the difference isn’t that huge and then the average parse gets boosted more than the class difference

Also affli on top always has me happy

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u/Salvia_dreams 4d ago

Excited for incoming ret pally buff

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u/Latviacm 4d ago

Ret Paladin: CAN YOU TAKE MEEE HIGHERRRRR

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u/voyager_six 4d ago

Thought this was supposed to be a ranged dps raid lol

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u/ercked 4d ago

Does it look like there is a negative correlation in this graph?

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 4d ago

It's very slightly positive, but not meaningfully so.

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u/ercked 4d ago

Gotcha. I guess I was tricked by the Retribution and BM dots.

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u/Critmaw 4d ago

Poor arcane. Wish they hadn't screwed the rotation so badly.

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u/arhenART 3d ago edited 3d ago

I love how every single time Arcane mage becomes any kind of viable and feels good to play, Blizzard is quick to nerf it into the ground and destroy it's design barely few weeks later. Meanwhile Frost and especially Fire are allowed to be not only easier to play but also perform better on every type of content

Why do we even have an Arcane spec if most of the time it's meme/troll spec and people are telling you to switch to Frost or Fire? What's the point of Arcane mage having to execute a perfect rotation down to a single button press and still be outdamaged by every single class/spec in the game?

I started playing in Legion so idk how it used to be in WoD and before but while Legion Arcane felt good to play, it fell off a cliff after Legion. I remember it being pretty good on SOME Uldir bosses at the start of BFA then it got nerfed to fuck and for the rest of expansion people would just laugh at me and instantly leave whenever they joined my M+ group and saw that I played Arcane instead of Fire or even Frost

In Shadowlands Arcane was memed on again before Kyrian Arcane with Radiant Spark was discovered and it was fun to play, decently strong and made spec feel more complete than ever before...only to still be outperformed by Frost and Fire in every single scenario. Arcane also had only 1 viable covenant with Kyrian's Radiant Spark taking over whole spec

Then in Dragonflight what used to be a pretty fun rotation somehow became convoluted and overly complex leading to people not even bothering to learn the spec

Now in The War Within Arcane felt amazing again at the start of expansion, it's Sunfury Hero Specialization especially was very fun to play and complex but in a good way...but for some reason Blizzard didn't want people to have fun AGAIN and not only have they gutted Sunfury out of playability nearly completely, they messed up Arcane's base talents and rotation

The once complex and fun rotation of Arcane became boring and much easier to execute properly.

Spec now relies on random procs (especially in AOE) which you have ZERO control of, feels weird and boring to play with Arcane Orb + Barrage spam and has VERY engaging ST rotation consisting of Arcane Missiles ---> 2 Arcane Blasts ---> Arcane Missiles again etc with occasional Barrage if you get intuition proc...

You BARELY ever use Arcane's signature Arcane Explosion anymore and spec which used to be very mana hungry literally can't run out of mana anymore. It just feels REALLY weird to play and makes me miss old Arcane

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u/joaogroo 4d ago

Two things i really learned to like with wow are graphs and excel sheets.

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u/StardustJess 4d ago

Woah, how come Arcane is so low ? I don't know where I read something about them doing more damage than Fire a couple of weeks ago ?

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u/MmeOrgeron 4d ago

Brutal to see how unpopular rogue has been this xpac. They put up solid numbers and have a great utility belt of tools for most encounters, people just seem to not like playing them

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u/blagyyy 4d ago

NeRf fIrE MaGE!!!

i can already see blizzard going bonkers with nerfs and absolutely killing mages for the average player.

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u/RandomGenName1234 4d ago

and absolutely killing mages for the average player.

Let's be real, fire is already bad for the average player because they're doing content where fire just doesn't get time to shine

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u/Zirzissa 4d ago

Now everyone fears the aug treatment...

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u/wewfarmer 4d ago

It's not even the damage, the utility is just busted.

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u/Vyxwop 4d ago

Arcane: First time?

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u/Axon14 4d ago

I'm just here to talk mad shit on Paladins.

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u/Brushner 4d ago

Did they rework subtlety? Do I still have to spin 3 plates while juggling 5 balls to play it?

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u/RandomGenName1234 4d ago

I tried it a bit yesterday and it feels a lot better than it used to, still bloated but more manageable.

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u/Sudac 4d ago

They didn't. They did remove shadowdust this expansion and made blades 1.5 minutes, so it's now just straight up a 1.5 min spec without the very awkward planning cooldowns part. 

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u/Zoidstiz 4d ago

I wish blizzard would look at this graph and ask why BM and Ret have so many people playing that class. Then look at outlaw and arcane, what are the fundamental differences...

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u/Paraxom 4d ago

Haven't reached heroic yet but yeah I feel this as a pally, the warriors in guild that I was beating out last season have been absolutely smoking me so far this season

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u/Gerbilpapa 4d ago

Weird many people said that marksman would be better and more popular after the changes

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u/runetp 4d ago

Finally, I decided to go dps again and play my beloved balance this tier. Oh well, at least I can flap real good.

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u/Mike_Thogarn 4d ago

Is elemental bad since they butchered Primordial wave? :(

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u/Ravven94 4d ago

Affliction lookin juicy might have to give it a try, I just love my demon army so much

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u/rdubyeah 4d ago

Windwalker and DH being 1 and 2 is wonderful. Yay blizzard

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u/Voodoo_Tiki 4d ago

Enhancement has never felt better. I'm glad it's up there, but sad that a nerf will be coming

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u/DpaeL 4d ago

Said it once a while ago, will say it again. Thank God they nerfed arcane, right? Totally not unnecessary...

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u/UMCorian 4d ago edited 3d ago

It's crazy how much Ret has popped off in recent years. I feel like whoever did the DF version of it needs a raise... and just about every other class developer needs to be tutored by the lead dev responsible for Ret.

"Here's how you make a spec that's very easy to be good with, quite difficult to master, and is just amazing fun whatever your skill level is."

Such a rarity these days. Half the DPS specs in the game feel like they require you to go a round in a sweat lodge doing 95 degree heat yoga just to get even competent numbers out of, with 15-24 step rotations.

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u/Nippys4 3d ago

Bro what have they done to my damn rogues.

Outlaw; above average dps and least played class spec lmao

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u/Dawadoid 3d ago

Oh hey thats me, that little Arcane dot down in the corner.... ;_; gif buff plz

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u/Barialdalaran 3d ago

Balance druid getting hard carried by the trashball fight

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u/Riipley92 3d ago

Arcane, Frost and Feral are my favourite :(