r/wow • u/AttitudeAdjusterSE • 7d ago
Competitive Week 1: Heroic Raid - Spec Popularity vs Average DPS
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u/neunzehnhundert 7d ago
They really butchered Frost DK huh?
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u/Thanag0r 7d ago
Obliterate does less damage than frost fever.
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
Apparently FDK is using Frostscythe on ST right now which is unbelievably cursed if true lol
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u/Teegeetoger 7d ago
Frostscythe on 2 targets which given this raid... yeah. The obliterate buffs were cosmetic.
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u/QoLAccount 7d ago
Man that sucks to hear, I was having a great time towards the end of last season on FDK. Rerolled because someone else in my raid wanted to play BDK & we needed Battle Shout but big Oblit crits gave me life last season.
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u/Brozpeh_Stalin 7d ago
Obliterate does less damage than my Auto Attacks or even Remorseless Winters….in single target. It is rough.
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u/GreenTeaRocks 7d ago
This hurts my soul and now I understand why my DPS as Frost DK was so bad. I was playing Obliteration because I love big Obliterations.....guess I'll stick to blood DK
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u/Dextixer 7d ago
It wasnt even meta last tier since Unholy was mega-busted, so i have no clue why they even needed to kill Frost like that.
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u/dogsarecool-yeah 7d ago
I mean it was gapping almost every spec on ptr, but it was wild overcorrection sadge
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u/dronix111 7d ago
it was also exaggerated by some OP trinket that got nerfed at the same time. it felt like they over nerfed frost by not even looking why it performed so strong, which was partially because of that trinket.
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u/RiskDiscombobulated7 7d ago
I think it was also dual wielding one of the raid bosses 1h aswell because on ptr it wasn't unique equipped
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u/Dextixer 7d ago
Ah, so the usual. Blizzard sees absolutely 0 additional things that make classes parse and they just fuck up entire specs based on items that they later fix.
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u/zhaoz 7d ago
Amazing they thought "yes, we need a week 0 nerf to the 2 piece bonus" with FDK's performance. Either they dont care, or they didnt look at the numbers. Neither is a good look...
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u/FFTactics 7d ago
It started out on ptr as a top raid dps so the corrections were harsh. Arcane did as well but the nerfs were not as huge.
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u/krhill112 7d ago
I at least know roughly how to play frost since I was playing it heavily s3 tww, so figured it would be better than unholy I haven’t played in years.
It was like 20k worse as frost.
I was dragging shit onto my bars and reading the guide between pulls :P
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u/mazca 7d ago
There's always that large population of specifically of BM hunters and Ret paladins that simply don't switch regardless of where they are. Just below average at the moment but it's nice to see them next to each other.
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u/Tozon 7d ago
I get pets and a not too complex rotation, along with all the special duties in raid. No reason to switch!
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u/Jealous_Comment7113 7d ago
I just refuse to read getting pets as a positive, pet control in wow has been awful since 2005
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u/thunda789 7d ago
You're not wrong, buuut No cast bars No worrying about range
It is frustrating they don't just make pets cosmetic, as if pets flying around the screen would break the illusion more than hiding in a conjured turtle shell prevents damage, no they must walk slowly from mob to mob..
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u/DrainTheMuck 7d ago
Yeah lol, I want to enjoy warlock as an alt but the pets just seem to be objectively a downside in the modern game. Definitely a big shift from 2005 where even tho the controls were bad, the pets gave you an actual advantage.
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u/Jejouch1 7d ago
Playing Paladin is so comfy and feels like I’m in front of a fire place with hot chocolate in winter
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u/Dracid88 7d ago
2 of the easiest classes to play. they'll always attract a lot of more casual players
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u/AeratedFeces 7d ago
That's like me with enhancement. The button presses feel so punchy if that makes sense. Even when it sucks I like it.
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u/Dahkeus3 7d ago
Honestly, I see simple specs like BM and Ret as some of the smartest picks for the start of progression raids. All the fights are new, so the less cognitive power you have to spend on your rotation and balancing cast times with positioning, the better you can handle the mechanics. This is also how a lot of medium DPS specs like this can outperform more complex, but higher DPS specs, particularly early on.
This goes without saying, but this applies to most normal players, not bleeding edge players.→ More replies (4)3
u/Tager133 7d ago
I dont know about BM but for Ret its spot on. I remember on the early seasons of dragonflight before their rework they sucked monkey nuts and they still had normal to high number of players. You put shadow priest or any of the warlock specs on that level and they lose 90% of its players overnight.
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u/SolidSky 7d ago
I'm curious how this will shift once everybody has 4pc. Ele Shaman 4pc will be a massive DPS increase.
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u/jacked_preacher 7d ago
ye, its almost 15%. On the other side, some classes have small performance improvement with 4p. If they nerf it, hopefully it will be just tierset, not the abilities, imo its the best way to tune down overperforming classes.
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
I'm trying something different this tier where I show the percentage of total parses as the Y-axis rather than the raw number, as the total number of parses over a tier changes quite a bit from week to week, which should make comparing between weeks easier!
TL:DR: higher up = spec more popular, further right = spec does more DPS overall
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u/noMC 7d ago
Does this take ilvl in to consideration? I was just thinking that it could really skew the chart, if some of these had better gear than others.
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
It doesn't, but the average ilvl across the entire playerbase of different DPS specs is unlikely to be very large I would've thought.
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u/Mekhazzio 7d ago
I'd expect an ilvl bump for the specs that are currently popular in M+.
This early, ilvl is primarily a function of sheer number of dungeons run, and the specs that pugs will auto-accept will spend less time in queue.
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u/noMC 7d ago
Yeah, maybe - probably depends on the amount of players in each. Especially for more “obscure” builds, you could get some deviations.
But a nice graph, I appreciate you posting it :)
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
Yeah it'd be interesting to see what the average ilvl for each spec actually is in this data, but WCL doesn't have an easy way to see that. It could definitely have an effect if there was even a small difference!
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u/Jealous_Comment7113 7d ago
Hero talent is also interesting, im hella biased as a devourer who refuses to touch voidscarred thoigh.
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u/andreasels 7d ago
Comparing ilvl between specs might even be misleading. Some specs play new dungeon trinkets and others are stuck on old stuff cause all the new options (outside of raid) suck.
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u/Correct_Call3521 7d ago
Is arms fun this expac? I stopped playing during tww but arms is my favorite spec and I would actually consider hopping back in if we are back to being as fun as we were in legion.
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u/Ok_Science_2070 7d ago
Warrior main for 20 years
Arms honestly may have never felt so fun, you just absolutely shit out damage at every turn and there's constantly procs and buttons to press. Come back now and enjoy it imo
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u/Infinitedeveloper 7d ago
Did they change anything core since launch? I remember a lot of arms negativity.
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u/TheBungler2 7d ago
Not playing Colossus is the biggest one. Sudden Death procs fills in the gap the rotation had and you're no longer as rage starved.
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u/of_the_Coast 7d ago
I really miss MoP Arms. We were immortal and heroic leap into blade storm was just AMAZING
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u/Squery7 7d ago
I decided to return to my Warrior this season since I didn't like how my main got changed. I was super disappointed in seeing how popular arms was compared to fury because I like fury fast play style, then I tried arms and honestly I find it even more fluid than fury now with slayer!
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u/EmergencyHorror4792 7d ago
They're awesome just don't be surprised if you get outshone in 10's and maybe 11's too by bursty damage window classes as the packs blow up before you can really execute much and the bosses don't last a significant amount of time to catch up on overall in the execute phase
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u/ins0mnum 7d ago
I just came back after last playing DF s1. I was always a fury main, but decided to lvl a new warrior and try out arms and I'm absolutely loving it.
But tbf I have not done any real endgame content, only normal dungeons so far as I need to get my ilvl up. Sometimes I still get a bit overwhelmed with all the buttons to press but it already is so much fun.
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u/Turbochad66 7d ago
Is it more fun than fury?
Switching to arms feels so wrong, i mean who wants to drop their second 2h weapon?! Thats so lame 😭3
u/ins0mnum 7d ago
I honestly can't tell you, because I still haven't tried out the current iteration of fury. For now I really enjoy arms and, considering the current state of balancing, I'll stick with it over fury. I don't really feel like getting to know the current rota of fury when I still need to get used to arms rota.
Edit: And honestly? I kind of enjoy having only one 2h sword hitting hard instead of 2 2h. Would've never thought I'd actually say this lol.
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u/Khaosfury 7d ago
Tbh the only reason I'd swap is if they gutted Fury entirely, but as long as it's at least middle of the pack I'm never playing Arms. I want to love Arms so much but god damn is the spec identity an on-going crisis.
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u/markhammel666 7d ago
We run 2x arms in our mythic comp and we have been face rolling 14-15s
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u/arkanian1210 7d ago
I absolutely love this iteration, on the same level as Cata arms tbh. Slam still feels quite bad and some spells could use more oomph but the bladestorm resets with Reap the Storm procs on every sudden death feels sublime
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u/KaboomOxyCln 7d ago
All I know is, in our raid last night - I parsed a 93 on unholy with 99.3% uptime and our arms warrior beat me by 30k dps with 78% uptime.
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u/bold_snowflake 7d ago
In terms of fun, I'd say kinda. Arms needs some love.
Rend in a remnant, it's not going to go away, but class designers are struggling to figure out what to do with it. Slam is not a fun ability. The Apex talent makes it better, but it's not a fun ability to press.
In still struggling to see what the spec identify is, bleeds? Execute? Damage window?
I love Arms, but it for a while it's felt like a mix of previous iterations that haven't gelled together.
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u/HighNoonZ 7d ago
As a frost DK it really is wild what they did to us. We were already unpopular last season but were at the top in dps. Now we are still unpopular and they destoryed our damages lol
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u/BorryBreakdown 7d ago
Me and 4 other survival hunters holding on for dear life
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u/enigmaza 7d ago
I had a blast shitting out huge damage as an underdog spec in season 1. Come season 2 and I've been left thinking I'm doing something wrong because my damage just isn't there until I saw this.
Think its time to switch back to BM and keep surv for my offspec.
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u/Barthomal 6d ago
I just couldn't do it anymore. Been maining Survival for a few years and swapped to Warrior as of this patch.
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u/Fenrir395 7d ago
As a Frost DK it really hurts how we are always nerfed to oblivion for no reason and then have to wait until mid season to be slightly viable again.
Of course this also rules us out of 90% of high M+ keys because we are "off-meta".
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u/lologrammedecoke 7d ago
You have a up next patch, not sure it's enough though
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u/Fenrir395 7d ago
Not even remotely. We went from being good at AoE and great at single target to OK at AoE and abysmal at single target.
We will be again at the back end until the buffs pile up in few months and people realise we can hit hard.
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u/Nekowaifu 7d ago
It’ll equalize us with unholy if not slightly push us ahead of them in ST, but still behind them in AoE/M+. We’re in a really rough spot, I’d imagine we catch another buff in the next round also, but I also imagine Unholy will too (though they were super bugged and their biggest bugs got fixed recently, so they may not necessarily need it).
I don’t need to be topping the meters to feel good about my gameplay but it does hurt to be doing THIS much worse than everyone else
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u/Inevitable-Bit615 7d ago
I think the buff was around a 7.5% in st. This should put us in the affliction area on that graph, if my math is correct, it is.... 87-88 boosted by 7.5 should be a 6.6 boost on the chart, so we should be on the -6% area of that graph. So maybe, maybe we beat havoc, except havoc is getting a buff too, so we don t, same for affli and survi, maybe we could reach ww. Basically, we will gain 1 position tomorrow, i doubt more than that.
Next week we ll likely get another buff since our tuer set was heavily nerfed so i d expect our standing to even decrease as ppl get the new set XD
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
Bare in mind as the 0% line is an average of every spec, weaker specs getting buffed also pushes the average up, so it's slightly less of a gain relatively.
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u/Shneckos 7d ago
What did they do to Affliction. It somehow feels worse.
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u/SkidPub 7d ago
Destro is best for everything, pretty much every good player plays that. Few people are Aff.
Its the same with Mages. Fire n Frost are not that bad. Few people are playing them though because Arcane is FOTM.
This has been the case with Mages n Locks for so long i wonder how people cannot realise it yet, wondering why their Lock or Mage spec is doing bad when theres a better alternative..
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u/Shneckos 7d ago
I don’t care how good the other specs are I only enjoy Affliction. But they changed it for some reason
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u/madrarua87 7d ago
I think they may gutted Aug a bit.
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u/Wolf3h 7d ago
Aug basically requires 4p. Can't take week 1 data seriously when it comes to aug.
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u/SovietRobotDad 7d ago
I've heard the 4p is like a 3% dps increase? Prescience has never been a big part of dps - but I'm hoping with Chronowarden + Motes of Possibility they might catch up; seems really unlikely though...
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u/EowyaHunt 7d ago
Looks about right, if judging from my own guild raid group.
I'm consistently being beat in dps by the arcane mage, sub rogue and elem shammy, as a Devourer dh.
I guess our warriors are pretty bad, only one of them hits top 5 dps, in execute phase, when he lives that long.
The rest of the melee are doing tank dps sadface
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u/Hottage 7d ago
Retribution Paladin Discord:
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u/Vrazel106 7d ago
I saw them roughly in the middle and thought "better put the ret discord on suicide watch"
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u/Kvallen93 7d ago
As a stubborn Frost DK main this graph pains me, I happen to also enjoy Affliction Warlock and Resto Druid a lot as alt characters.
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u/Vrazel106 7d ago
I wont be suprised if unholy fotm slowly trickle out.
While it was more fun last season and the soulreaper change feels bad i still enjoy the spec a lot
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u/val_lae 7d ago
Really indicative of the state of the game tbh, people really do just migrate to the meta en masse. I think rerolling might be 'too easy' at this point, but it has its good and bads.
Seeing ret, bm, unholy where they are completely unsurprising. diehard specs.
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u/Adorable_Character46 7d ago
Funny enough the only two classes I’ve ever mained are ret and fdk. Was actually considering swapping to frost this tier…
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u/SovietRobotDad 7d ago
They changed one of Dev’s talents - they skyrocket from bottom to top; they changed one of Aug’s talents - they drop from best to worst ???
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u/Stormwingx 7d ago
Glad to see rogues doing great, thats how a pure dps class is supposed to perform.
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u/Sudac 7d ago
I am happy that rogue is doing well (borderline even too well in certain scenarios), but it's been such a silly way of doing it.
Before the patch came out, a lot of rogues were complaining about our damage profile. Pure single target was okay, full aoe was good, 2-3 target cleave was horrible.
Hell, Zorthas even made a video about that (and our raid buff being weird).
So now instead of fixing those issues, we just got aura buffed. Over and over again.
Sure if you just aura buff a spec by enough it will be good at everything, but that's such a lazy way of trying to fix it.
Subtlety especially went on a rollercoaster where they even nerfed the spec by 8% initially for god knows what reason.
Then they buffed it again because it was useless at everything. Then it got another buff. Then they fixed a bug that added almost 5% more dps. That bugfix caused another bug that was positive this time and added another few percent to it. And now you've got a spec that just puts out big numbers, but is functionally still a very flawed spec.
I feel like this is really indicative of blizzard just not being able to spend enough time on each spec to actually make them as good as they can be. Instead of addressing some real issues with a spec, they just aura buffed it.
And now if anyone complains about rogue, you get linked the warcraftlogs statistics where it shows rogue is strong (which it absolutely is).
This is also not just a rogue issue, plenty of other specs have issues that seem relatively easy to get resolved, but just don't. Devourer no longer casts collapsing star, frost dk's use frostscythe on one target because obliterate is a wet noodle, etc...
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u/islurpcoochie 7d ago
Its not Blizzard having trouble spending enough time on the specs. Blizzard doesnt care about Rogues. They ignore the entire class every patch. Feedback - ignored. Bugs - ignored. Pain points - ignored. In fact, they go out of their way to actively make the class and specs feel bad. You cannot cancel Shadow Dance anymore to enter stealth the second combat drops. Every one of their expansion talent features was a bust for Rogues upon release. The specs rotationally are a shadow of what they were at their peaks post midnight. Blizzard does not care about Rogues.
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u/Icy-Commission66 7d ago
Such a boomer way to look at game design. We should aslo roll for initiative before we attack
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u/Bruhahah 7d ago
Oh lawdy arcane nerfs incoming. This is before most people have 4-set, and arcane gets pretty good value (above average) from their tier set per the bloodmallet sims.
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u/2pift 7d ago
Is there a reason the x-axis can’t just be DPS? I feel like that would be more interesting. You could still have the vertical line to show the mid point.
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
Is there a reason the x-axis can’t just be DPS?
Yes - or at least a reason why it'd be misleading to show DPS.
You could just average every spec's DPS on each boss, but the issue there is that the average DPS value for everyone is different from boss to boss, so that would weight different bosses higher - bosses with damage amps or lots of AoE would literally count more than single-target bosses.
Because of this issue, WarcraftLogs uses a "DPS score" metric that's essentially normalised DPS for each boss, and I used to use that as the X-axis back in Dragonflight when I started making these, but it's fairly complex to explain how that actually works, whereas it's very easy to understand just plus and minus percent from the average.
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u/widowkiller 7d ago
Oh holy shit, have arms warriors finally gotten their patch? They've suffered so long
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u/goblin_bomb_toss 7d ago
I think shadow must be the same people every time. The number of parses is always in the middle lol. We're committed.
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u/Suddendemise_x 7d ago
Well, other specs can just switch to the best-performing ones. Windwalker Monks and Ret Paladins better lock the fk in lol
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u/ze4lex 7d ago
Hows ret this expac? I havent touched the game since the start of tww and havent kept up with the paladin mains discord since it had a moment a couple years back I think.
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u/Mekhazzio 7d ago
Same as it always is. Survivable, easy to play, neither top nor bottom performance on anything, enough ways to break certain encounters to still have room for mastery.
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u/MarkElf2204 7d ago
I miss when Survival was on the right side of the graph. Being undertuned sucks.
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u/Duncan_PhD 7d ago edited 7d ago
Man survival is so cooked. Here’s an idea, buff our damage outside of boomstick and takedown. The pathetic 20% buff on raptor strike today is just going to change raptor strike from hitting something with a pool noodle to hitting something with a foam bat.
It’s less fun than it’s ever been thanks to the pointless pruning and god awful rework and it does no damage. Thanks, blizz.
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u/rippledippledapple 7d ago
does this chart include my mediocre paladin dps from my guilds run last night? i just want to make sure i dont skew the data too much.
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u/69_apm 7d ago
Is this post nerf arcane mage?
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u/NoUBitch 7d ago
Kind of. This is from after the nerf, but the nerf was to the set bonus. A lot of this data is from players without 2 or 4 set, so the nerf doesn’t really come into play.
I’m much more curious to see what this graph looks like weeks 2-3 when most people have access to 4 set
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u/69_apm 7d ago
Might respect then. I've been running frost spec but I see arcane outperforms it few times damn.
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u/hiirogen 7d ago
I must be reading this wrong, how is Frost DK doing less damage than Aug Evoker?
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
On logs, the extra damage Aug's buffs give other people count as the Aug's damage.
That said, both are very bad right now, in raid at least.
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u/Iraymur 7d ago
Is there anything like this but for M+?
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 7d ago
Not really.
You can look at participation on the stats page at raider.io, but DPS varies so much by key level and speed that it'd be basically meaningless to look at DPS there in this way, so nobody does.
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u/fenrirsbasketball 7d ago
How far demonology has fallen... I used to fart and top charts. Now... just sharts
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u/maegorthecruel1 6d ago
interesting that fire mage looks like its pumping a bit, but also has the least amount of parses. makes me think if it’s actually good, or if ONLY pumpers are playing it?
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u/TallAfternoon2 7d ago
Nobody tell rogues all 3 of their specs are parsing above average.
It'll clash with their identity as an oppressed class.
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u/Jynkxy 7d ago
Numbers aren't everything. If they were, why wouldn't rogue popularity be near the top? Most rogue hero talents are boring and stealth as our main mechanic is mostly ignored or played around. They have no idea what to do with out class to make it engaging, so they throw aura buffs at it until its too strong and people complain. Then its right back down.
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u/A_BattlePanda 7d ago
Don't care, gonna switch to frost DK. Unholy is so lame to play in raid. I need my dragon.
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u/Narwalgan 7d ago
Can you make one for normal raid. According to warcraft logs there is a big difference between heroic and normal this tier
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u/Evorpasid 7d ago
Even with all the changes they did, seems that Frost is just in a bad spot. I love my DK and love Frost, but by golly do I feel that I am so much weaker than compared to last season, even with the same or better gear. Here is to hoping the reverts and buff this reset help that feeling out a bit.
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u/Aye-Loud 7d ago
All 3 rogue specs on the right side of the chart. They about to get nerfed:( To shreds you say?
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u/huuuzera 7d ago
Arcane in danger, I just hope if theres a nerf we dont get gutted because it feels fun to play again
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u/Tierst 7d ago
Crazy how popular Arcane is lol