r/wow 20h ago

Competitive Week 2: Heroic Raid - Spec Popularity vs Average DPS

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145 Upvotes

220 comments sorted by

172

u/DelTrigger 20h ago

blizz cooking up yet another 4% ability buff to feral druid

40

u/Phenova 19h ago

I mean The buff we receive on next reset is a 9.6% buff in ST That's quite big!

It doesn't address feral issues, it needs a rework for that I believe.

6

u/Munno22 15h ago

Need power in the big long bleeds to improve low-target cleave instead of the biteslop ST/AoE design it is now

7

u/notfakegodz 15h ago

They want feral to be funnel spec, where more rip target = more free FB proc.

But kinda forgot to make their FB to actually do damage, and got beaten even in prio damage against spec that can do both big aoe damage while still mostly doing ST rotation on the prio target.

Such is the case.

1

u/Mysterious_Skin2310 4h ago

Idk if we will ever get to go back to that tbh. Blizz has been slowly shoehorning Feral into bitespam since Dragonflight

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16

u/Kanaxai 17h ago

Feral dev feeling bold: "How about a % damage increase to auto-attack?"

1

u/Scared_Flatworm2081 3h ago

And I switched from Arcane to Feral after being arcane main for past 6 expansions.

2

u/Irmdall 20h ago

Bruh i switched to Feral Druid for the first time with Midnight and now this?

21

u/Phenova 19h ago

Well, you can start being used it being trash tier :D

4

u/BestJersey_WorstName 15h ago

There are dozens of us that played feral before midnight! Dozens!

I'm looking forward to the buff. I was running a 12 Altar and hit 1 million DPS on the lust pull with an aug evoker in discord.

2

u/Irmdall 19h ago

f off xD Feral needs faster CDs plus some cleave options imho

74

u/cobras_chairbug 20h ago edited 11h ago

Frost dk looking good, I’m sure another 7% overall will fix it. Third time’s the charm after all.

46

u/Diduheartheoneabout 19h ago

Those massive nerfs they dished out to frost DK in preseason tuning look incredibly stupid now. They also didn’t need to tune down the set bonus, that could be reversed and we would still be about mid table.

16

u/cobras_chairbug 19h ago

Yeah that -50% nerf on the 2p setbonus shortly before the season started was a death sentence for the spec. I understand why they did it, as it was one of the worst designed bonus’ through the roster, which was either broken and give frost stupid amounts of burst, or completely useless as it is now.

11

u/Queef3rickson 15h ago

When my guild was like "you must be so excited for 12.1, frost dk's are so good on ptr!" The sheer fucking dread I felt because I knew they were about to be dumpstered so hard I'd yet again spend another 6 months doing bottom of the barrel dps. It's like fucking clockwork with this spec.

6

u/RuneDK385 14h ago

My issue is I knew they’d get tuned down…I did not expect behind Aug tuned down numbers though.

Unholy just feels so bad now too. For the first time I’m actually not enjoying my DK. Let’s push more buttons for less dps than last season.

I’m hoping the buffs coming this week for Frost push it past unholy at least.

3

u/Lord_Frostyk 12h ago

Did they say they are getting buffed somewhere? I desperatly want my spec to be good just once in recent memory.

3

u/RuneDK385 12h ago

Frost was great during manaforge and s1 of TWW. But yes, this week should be a 7% single target and aoe buff

1

u/Personal_Will_741 12h ago

I think unironically with the buffs coming on reset frost dk should be pretty decent. I dont wanna jinx it tho...

2

u/cobras_chairbug 11h ago

That’s just holy cope at this point. Even if they keep buffing them over and over, the moment you get a different setbonus in S3 will cause them to propel at the top of the charts, then they will nerf you into the ground again.

Aka the frost dk cycle.

17

u/Ok_Try_6377 17h ago

Back to sad feral corner, every season... every season....

117

u/Rain-From-Above 20h ago

Why is arcane mage so ridiculously overtuned? Pretty much every heroic pug I join, there's an arcane mage or two topping the meters

85

u/Glupscher 20h ago

And one in every single M+ group. Yet somehow everyone is talking about Warlock.

63

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 20h ago

They're also far and away the most popular spec in higher end m+ keys.

If I was an Arcane main I'd be pretty worried about nerfs right now!

44

u/GamingZaddy89 19h ago

After RWF it'll get nerfed pretty hard I bet

19

u/Glupscher 18h ago

Mage is auto-pick anyway in every caster comp. Can't imagine it being out of meta this season, even after nerfs. And if arcane does similar damage to other specs they'll still have an insanely desirable damage profile.

9

u/Feartality 17h ago

The only thing that can really stop them is going splat, but especially with Aug completely disappearing from the meta after last season the role of "I'm just a baby. Please give me all the externals" is up for grabs and Mage is it.

5

u/lylahonfire 15h ago

Arcane is one of the tankiest if not the tankiest spec this season, what are we hallucinating.

3

u/Feartality 14h ago

I haven't gotten back to pushing for this season due to IRL yet so I was unaware that as Arcane it's now much more resilient than last season's Fire/Frost.

Being tanky on top of the insane tuning, lust, and raid buff definitely makes them a no-brainer for sure then.

1

u/Economy_Quality_3689 4h ago

It's almost like they should have a real downside and not just all upsides...

6

u/FattyBear 14h ago

Yeah, mage was previously quite squishy unless the player was quite skilled with their defensive usage but they're so resilient now. Reactive barrier is nuts.

-1

u/StrawberryWeekly342 12h ago

Mage is very tanky until you pull aggro. They can't deal with physical hits very well.

4

u/Either-Assistant4610 14h ago

Arcane Mage here. I 100% expect this to a degree. I don't even have my 4p and damage is quite high. I hope they're gentle with any nerfs, but I unfortunately will not be surprised if any come by after RWF is attained.

If they want to boost Fire, I'd be all for it, too. I'm just so tired of Frost.

5

u/Vrazel106 13h ago

Unholy main here.

Theyre gunna over correct. Then alowly bring it back up. Then xhsnge something and bring it back down

1

u/StrawberryWeekly342 12h ago

They'll nerf it into the ground like they did Frost last season and then buff the shit out of Fire next season start and repeat the cycle. I guarantee it.

1

u/MKSe7en 11h ago

Does the damage unlock once you get at least your 2p? My ilvl is sitting at 299 rn ( I know low, still have a 280 chest) but my damage feels like ehh compared to my buddy who plays dev. He can sustain 300k dps and i can barely hold 180-250 on some pulls. I don’t have my 2p yet either? He’s 309 ilvl but I can’t image 10ilvl making that much of a difference.

1

u/Either-Assistant4610 11h ago

Are we talking M+?

I'm always full consumables. I have 309/10 ilvl at the moment. I DO have 2P and decent trinks (I have Heroic Gebbos and I can't for the life of me get the trink frrom Murder Row, but I do have a CD trink as well).

Then it's all about rotation. I watched like three different videos before I got the hang of it personally. The name of the game is really digging for those prismatic bolts. It's a proc spec, so your dps will fluctuate pull to pull. There are times where I'll go a whole big pull with only a couple PBs.

If we're talking ST/Raid, man is it a mobile spec AND we have Shimmer, the best movement spell in the game.

1

u/MKSe7en 11h ago

Gotcha understood, yeah M+ only for me. I try and prioritize PB as well. How many stacks do you launch for AB? I watched one vid and they said 25 and another said anything above 12?

2

u/Either-Assistant4610 10h ago

So, it really depends. And I'm going to botch this, so I highly recommend just finding a couple vids on YT

First of all, depending on where you are in rotation and placement for boss mechanics, of course, PB is priority. The only time I tend to choose Arcane Orb over PB IF I have a proc is when I have a Arcane Soul activated, which lets you cast AO without losing any salvo. If you don't know the aura, it's the SECOND set of arcs on the side.

As far as digging for PBs, let's say you've blown your CDs and you're on to normal rotation starting from 0 salvo, always make sure you have four arcane charges, and AB until you have 12 AS and cast your AO.

TRY not to overlap AM with an already maxed AS stack, but ALWAYS let AM complete its cast unless you have to do something more important like Counterspell. ESPECIALLY the higher your keys.

There's more general knowledge to learn, but I argue these are the important ones and typically don't change throughout any encounter. Again, tho, I would watch a video or two.

1

u/MKSe7en 7h ago

Appreciate that thank you!

2

u/imreallyreallyhungry 9h ago

Basically you want to arcane missiles always if you're under 12 salvo. Generally, that means you want to chain missiles (two back to back) when at 0 salvo. That is number 1 priority.

Next on priority is when you're in Arcane Soul you spam Arcane Barrage.

Next on priority is cast Prismatic bolt if it's up.

If none of the above applies, you:

a. Arcane barrage if at 12 salvo stacks or higher and you have a clearcasting proc

OR

b. Arcane barrage if at 12 salvo stacks or higher and there are 5 or more targets and you have an Arcane Orb charge (this is mainly because Arcane Orb lets you get back to 4 Arcane Charges immediately - casting Arcane Blast at 0 Arcane Charges is terribly inefficient and you want to avoid it as much as possible).

Finally, if none of the above applies then cast Arcane Blast - with average RNG you shouldn't have to cast Arcane Blast much but RNG can be cruel and sometimes you do.

1

u/MKSe7en 7h ago

Thank you for this!

19

u/JeanJacquesBourrin 20h ago

I was worried until I saw mythic raid numbers. Also the variance in practice can be huge because of the RNG aspects of Prismatic Bolt. no procs when you really need it hurts.

4

u/StrawberryWeekly342 12h ago

That feeling when you get no clear casting during your cooldowns. 😭

6

u/Dawn__Lily 19h ago

God yeah its sometimes just so ass. 7 or 8 casts with no proc is suffering.

1

u/Scared_Flatworm2081 3h ago

10+ years of playing exclusively arcane and I am praying it gets gutted down into earth and hopefully fully reworked.

11

u/Wait__Who 15h ago

When a warlock with gear from last season is keeping up with an arcane mage with 311 gear, it’s not surprising it’s being talked about.

20

u/Saked- 20h ago

To be fair they're both very strong atm.

3

u/Glupscher 18h ago

Warlock is never meta unless they do more damage than others. Otherwise you'd just bring a class with better damage profile, utility, raidbuffs or defensives. I mean, they are not even that dominant in top keys right now, and yet they will still get nerfed anyway. I bet they'll even get nerfed harder than mages.

2

u/Morthra 18h ago

You say that but warlock was meta in TWW s3, and not because of damage. If you didn’t have a lock gate for dimmy you were trolling.

14

u/thygrief 15h ago

They're talking about M+ mate.

5

u/Glupscher 15h ago

There's not a single Warlock in the top 100 for that season. In fact, it was one of the least represented classes in 15+ keys. By what metric do you say it was Meta?

1

u/Saked- 11h ago

Oh I know all about that being a Hunter, we were only meta in S3 of TWW cause we did an absurd amount of damage lol

10

u/Kharics 19h ago

Demo is strong in raid and really strong in M+ can see another apex nerf but felguard buff in their place

3

u/DrTitan 17h ago

Because Arcane Mage is so far up the graph away from the cluster that it gets forgotten about. I honestly don’t see it up there at first when I opened the graph because it’s such an outlier.

2

u/High__Roller 14h ago

For a hot minute I thought they forgot about arcane, then saw it chilling up there lol.

3

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 14h ago

I almost did forget about Arcane lol, I had to extend the y-axis from last week.

1

u/Schnitzelbro 10h ago

and arms. everyone talking about fucking arms, a spec that has never been good and doenst even top meters in m+. mage being good is kinda accepted by default and i hate that

8

u/tiny-2727 18h ago

It got buffed. Mage is one of the more popular classes and the missile build is one of the more fun specs to play.

3

u/Either-Assistant4610 13h ago

It is fun! So, I hope they don't kick it back too much if they nerf it.

11

u/Kaurie_Lorhart 16h ago

I mean this is looking at all bosses, which is useless. Arcane is only the top on the first and 3rd fights in the raid. On many of the later bosses, it’s upper, but not top and fire is right there beside it (except for twin fangs where fire is weak and frost is strong). On ssszorak, arcane is middle of the pack.

I sure hope that blizzard doesn’t balance based off all bosses data.

2

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 16h ago

Blizzard should not balance off of all bosses data, for sure. I actually think they do balance off of all bosses data these days, which is depressing, but a different topic.

Arcane is still too good right now and should probably take a minor aura nerf (alongside a few other specs, it's not uniquely strong.) I feel like you're underplaying how good it is a little.

2

u/Kaurie_Lorhart 16h ago

I think it’s good, but I don’t think it’s as OP as people here are suggesting. It’s definitely in the top bracket of specs, just not number 1 for most situations.

I think one thing is that it isn’t necessarily top in most situations, but it’s good in every situation.

Like assassination is number 1 on Ula’tek but number 10 on twin fangs where arcane is 2 and 4x. I believe arcane is between 1st and 7th on every boss but sszorak where it’s 13th.

IMO I don’t think a nerf is necessary, but if it was to receive a nerf I’d expect other top specs to also receive nerfs and for arcane’s nerf to be targeted at its 3-5T cleave.

2

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 15h ago

IMO I don’t think a nerf is necessary, but if it was to receive a nerf I’d expect other top specs to also receive nerfs and for arcane’s nerf to be targeted at its 3-5T cleave.

This is what I think should happen and what I think will, yeah. Arcane isn't uniquely powerful at all but yeah it doesn't have a huge amount of weaknesses.

14

u/Swarl1e 20h ago

Mage is just a super liked class and the new arcane feels very smooth although a bit rng heavy sometimes.
with shimmer being the best movement cd in a raid setting many ranged players just pick arcane mage, it being tuned very high helps a lot.

In the end being strong is very fun. DMG wise Warlock beats arcane on most mythic fights and while mage m+ score is a bit higher warlock still deals more dmg overall

2

u/Glupscher 18h ago

Yeah because warlock does more pad damage, while mage deals more damage to prio targets which speeds up the key. No sane player says that mage is worse than warlock.

8

u/MrNolD 17h ago

There is almost no pad damage in m+. Aoe damage isn't pad damage. Funnel and tunnel are very good dps profiles, it doesn't mean that specs with a more aoe focus are doing useless damage. In the end, the pack needs to die. Doing pad damage means inflating your overall by hitting targets that either don't give count or don't need to die, it is by definition useless damage, and demo warlock melts packs, it is very useful damage.

5

u/smiling_green_frog 14h ago

Try a key with 3 ele shams or something and report back.

5

u/cabose12 15h ago

Doing pad damage means inflating your overall by hitting targets that either don't give count or don't need to die

But that's the thing, it's relative

I like the way Yoda breaks it down: There are high prio mobs, high prio NEEDS TO DIE RIGHT NOW mobs, and everything else. A lot of mobs aren't that scary or don't need as much attention, and those are generally the "pad" in M+

It's not that aoe specs like Ele, Boomie, or Demo are useless, it's that a funnel/prio damage profile like Arcane are much better

2

u/Glupscher 15h ago

Exactly. I would trade 20% of my overall damage im a heartbeat to get the amount of funnel damage potential an arcane mage has.

1

u/Glupscher 15h ago

If we pull 10 mobs onto the boss and I do 30% more damage overall in that pull as a Demo but the Arcane Mage or Assa Rogue does 2x the boss damage due to funnel, then I am slowing down the key by killing the mobs. Therefore, it's useless pad damage. I'm not even gonna argue about semantics, it's just a fact that Arcane has a very desirable damage profile. That's why it could do 10-20% less overall damage than a Warlock and still be meta.

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2

u/Jaba01 16h ago

They performed better than expected an Blizzard usually does not nerf specs during RWF.

5

u/ElBigDicko 20h ago

It has amazing damage profile as it's one of the braindead specs who cleave off the main target at no cost to their single target damage.

Arcane can basically fit any fight this tier. They still bring Arcane Intellect so you need minimum of one.

-13

u/WillSendShihTzuPics 19h ago

All specs are brain dead after pruning. Not a single spec needs more than 2 brain cells to output like 95% of its potential anymore. Perfect for potential new Gen Z and younger players.

7

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 19h ago

post r.io

10

u/DRK-SHDW 19h ago

Usually people who go on about how brain-dead a spec is are playing it like shit lol

3

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 19h ago

Yep! I feel like if you're going to insult large numbers of people for being supposedly bad at the game, you should be able to prove that you're not!

They never do, of course ;)

-6

u/janwow1 17h ago edited 16h ago

He is not wrong though. I miss specs that actually had a sliver of complexity. And current arcane version feels very braindead as does every other spec. Everytime i see old videos of what arcane once was i get sad

0

u/Parking-Upstairs9942 16h ago

Nobody asked for your logs, but good job showing off I guess lol

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1

u/JaegerJaquez25 12h ago

Except that they are spot on lol

1

u/WillSendShihTzuPics 15h ago

No. Anyone who downvoted me is most likely a bad player whose opinion is irrelevant to me anyway.

1

u/JaegerJaquez25 12h ago

I’m surprised you’re getting downvoted. This is a well known fact after the midnight pruning

1

u/TheOliveYeti 14h ago

Got a rework and with RWF going on they aren't gonna nerf it. It's also very easy to play

1

u/JaegerJaquez25 12h ago

They’re not really. Warlock beats mage, and every other class on mythic, as well as in keys.

1

u/BurnForestBurn 12h ago

They do insanely good damage in m+
It’s always one in every good team

1

u/Economy_Quality_3689 4h ago

Payphone class, it's braindead to play and somehow well suited for every situation.

1

u/NoMight178 2h ago

Look at the overall damage for this week it really is over hyped it's upper middle of the pack for most bosses it's just massively over represented

1

u/SlamboneMalone 16h ago

They are crushing in cleave in lower content. But as keys go up and in mythic they fall hard from a pure numbers stand point. Seems similar to frost last season except that they are being used at high keys for funnel

-3

u/GamingZaddy89 19h ago

Its pretty braindead to play so that helps the whole popularity situation.

-6

u/uDrunkMate 20h ago

Good lock or rogue will eat arcane alive

4

u/Care_Cup_Is_Empty 19h ago

In overall perhaps, neither can beat arcanes overall damage profile though. Fury does more overalls than Arms, still a far worse spec.

0

u/Rain-From-Above 20h ago

Yeah, that's why I said "pretty much." A couple times I've seen an assa rogue or demo lock gap everyone

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0

u/_Augie 10h ago

Cause mage is blizzards love child and like ret will make sure its always good

-2

u/DirkNL 20h ago

And yet my mage is middling at best. I’m such a sucky caster! Arcane is excellent at 5 target cleave of which there are a lot of fights. So up the meters they go!

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10

u/cabbages212 20h ago

Gonna get nuked before I even get 4pc 💀

37

u/dzieciolini 20h ago

Lmao, frost DK found dead in the ditch once again. Can't wait for blizzard to aura buff it over the expansion all over again, just so it becomes top dps again with nobody willing to play it.

22

u/Apennatie 19h ago

Then proceeds to look good on PTR, gets nerfed into oblivion and gets aura&obliterate buffs untill they're op again.

It's stupid because they looked decent on the PTR and then got absolutely Obliterate by nerfs.

6

u/Grumpy_Muppet 19h ago

Pun intended!

4

u/pghcrew 15h ago

Replace obliterate with psychic link and you have shadow priest, lol. :(

3

u/DrToadigerr 15h ago

I'm sorry, were you expecting the Death Knight to be found alive in a ditch?

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 20h ago edited 18h ago

TLDR: dot higher up = more popular, dot further right = more dps

Changes in relative DPS for the last 7 days: here. Biggest gains are for Demo and Aff, with pretty big Frost DK and Aug gains too despite them remaining pretty low overall.

Changes in relative popularity over the last 7 days: here. A huge swing for Warlocks away from Destro and into Demo is the biggest change, with a smaller shift from Sub into Assa for Rogues. Arcane has also gained 20% more parses too.

This is currently extremely unrepresentative, but as people will ask anyway, data for Mythic is here. This is basically a chart for the first two or three bosses only right now. It means very little!

26

u/HateAccountMaking 20h ago

*Crying feral tears over not getting an invite to M+ or raid* I can do 300k dps too I swear.

14

u/ItsJustReen 19h ago

Find yourself 4 friends and play phys comp. It's the only way.

8

u/Feartality 17h ago

Physc comp. is forever waiting just slightly into the shadows. The blender is always solid, maybe not giga bis, but solid.

3

u/BestJersey_WorstName 15h ago

By our powers combined, three mediocre classes can make one competitive comp!

1

u/xMcSilent 4h ago

If this makes you feel better, i usually always invite ferals, as long as they meet the requirement (a bit of xp in dungeons and ilvl not low as fuck)

7

u/Yarzu89 15h ago

Frost Mages and Frost DKs hanging out together

5

u/Expensive_Flower_900 14h ago

crying frosty tears together 😢

1

u/Lord_Frostyk 12h ago

They hate us for some reason

17

u/Support_Player50 20h ago

Love how blizzard made aug bad for civilians and op for liquid just because of one talent node on a hero tree. Probably too late for major changes so expecting a 50% aura buff.

10

u/legend9791 20h ago

Which talent are you talking about? No offense just curious

2

u/Support_Player50 10h ago

Wingleader which led to some degen amounts of cdr on aoe. So in m+ for example youd have multiple clones out very easily and blizzard didnt like that. It carried a lot of your damage.

Now even your single target is affected and you have far less clone uptime. Gutted the tree.

Chrono they reworked one node and now you dont like crit as much. This all led to you not caring for any stat besides mastery. Even your int scaling got worse because a lot of your damage doesn’t scale with int.

The spec just got worse overall because they “fixed” some unintended gameplay that has been there since TWW.

The personal/ally split from last season was fine. They just needed not to rush at the last minute changes that affected the spec this much negatively.

5

u/FeralPsychopath 19h ago

Can you eli5 this better. I thought Aug was dumbed down to the point it no longer matters what special shit you do?

15

u/Brightlinger 18h ago

It's kind of three things dovetailing to return Aug to a spreadsheet spec that depends on teammate performance.

First, Scalecommander got a big nerf, which was the spec with higher personal damage (which therefore cares less about teammate performance). This means you run Chronomancer for everything, and Chrono gets more of its damage from other players.

Second, we got a Prescience tier set, which makes manual targeting matter more. Combine that with the third thing, a Double Time nerf to make crit worse, and mastery is now the top of the stat prio instead of the bottom, which makes manual targeting matter even more and makes Sands much more significant even though it's very hard to target (it goes on the closest ally).

So a bigger chunk of Aug's damage now comes from ally performance, and another big chunk comes from targeting individual allies with buffs at the correct times, and another big chunk comes from fiddly positioning for Sands. RWF guilds have great DPS and great Augs, so it's still good for them, but for the rest of us not so much.

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22

u/Gabarne 18h ago

Im tired of specs going from performing well to complete ass between seasons. It gets annoying having to change specs and playstyles just so you can not be a burden on your group.

It also is a pain when you get kicked from pugs for low DPS because you were busy doing mechanics instead of mindless zug zug. I feel like many pug groups wipe because people are more focused on parsing rather than doing actual mechanics

7

u/Munno22 15h ago

The differential between top/bottom specs has gotten too large. It used to be the case that whilst playing a top spec was obviously better, it was only marginally so and mattered mostly to top level players. Now, an 18% difference between an Arcane mage and a Frost DK is so large it matters to absolutely everyone, and Frost DK goes from being "not optimal" to "unplayable".

A 10% swing should be a red-alert hotfix asap moment for Blizz, instead, you're lucky if they address it in a few weeks. Ideally classes should be within 4-5% of each other not fucking 18%.

3

u/brianfromaccounting1 13h ago

Just think about that in an M+ dungeon. purely from a mathematical perspective on those %'s, if a mage is doing 300k overall for the dungeon, you would expect the DK to be doing 246k. That is extremely disturbing. If the mage plays his class at a d+ level while the DK is a literally robot the Mage will still be better.

2

u/Scared_Flatworm2081 3h ago

Last season was even worse.

Devourer parsing 25 was beating people parsing 80+ in some cases, and then Blizzard tries to balance 20%+ spread between specs by giving 2-3% buffs and nerfs.

5

u/BL00D_ZA 17h ago

Where have all these arcane mages come from? I remember feeling like we were heading for extinction not even that long ago lol

5

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17h ago

Mass respeccing from people who played Frost last tier I imagine.

Mages have always been a class where people tend to play whatever is best.

Arcane is M+ meta too right now, which always has a huge effect on raid popularity, especially in HC.

4

u/brok3nh3lix 16h ago

I play mage from time to time. Arcane looked cool with this rework, and my guild needed int buff for the raid.

2

u/Bassmekanik 12h ago

There is no other spec for mages right now other than arcane. Havent seen frost or fire in weeks.

2

u/alienith 10h ago

Fire performs well on paper. There’s just no reason to play it over arcane unless you love fire.

0

u/Schnitzelbro 8h ago

because the game is mutating every season further and further into "reroll to meta". it has always been like that for many endgame focused min-maxers but now its really the norm. look at fucking arms warrior, its been like 2-3 months where everyone was ridiculing this spec for being a miss-designed mess and how nobody wants to play it. now everyone and their mother is an arms warrior within 2 weeks of the season. its insane

29

u/Yuuffy 20h ago

Since vanilla you can pick any expansion in any tier and mage is almost always extremely good up to S-Tier in alteast one spec.

9

u/Syfer_Husker 19h ago

12.0 M+ mage was horrible.

38

u/Josecholas 18h ago

I love how whenever this is mentioned there’s always some poor mage who remembers exactly the one exception and points it out 😉

22

u/Feartality 17h ago

"I was bad ONCE" is a major gotcha though, you gotta give 'em that.

5

u/Bigglez1995 16h ago

"You don't understand my pain!"

2

u/Syfer_Husker 17h ago

I main rogue

1

u/ActualFrozenPizza 10h ago

I have mained mage most tiers i've played since i made it back in TBC pre-patch and we've had plenty of tiers where we are middle of the pack, unfortunately for a pure dps spec there is not much reason to bring them except one for arcane intellect or if you need immune soaks if many other specs out perform them damage wise.

I dont recall us ever being straight up weak though

3

u/alienith 10h ago

Frost was in almost the exact same spot as arcane at this point last tier

5

u/Bassmekanik 19h ago

Aha, that was the one patch I was trying to think about!

5

u/Jaba01 16h ago

Funny saying this after mage was pretty bad last tier.

5

u/alienith 10h ago

Frost was in almost the exact same spot as arcane at this point last tier

1

u/Mysterious_Skin2310 4h ago

Mages don’t like to acknowledge Frost when it’s good for some reason.

1

u/Mysterious_Skin2310 4h ago

Same with Warlock/Rogue typically. Hunters also used to be on that list in the past

-5

u/Pandeyxo 19h ago

Mages have massive up and downs throughout the history of wow. There were tiers you only brought them for their int buff.

Warlocks however, are just consistently good, just very rarely broken (expect mists of warlock lol)

THAT is for raids. M+ is another topic. Obv there was no m+ in vanilla.

3

u/fireflash38 18h ago

You really can't go wrong with either. Gates and health stones are always needed, just like int. 

I think mage has the edge in M+ historically. 

12

u/Munno22 16h ago

18% swing is so large that if you swap 5 feral/frost/augs onto Arcane mage you effectively gain an entire extra player's worth of DPS lmao

3

u/supersetsteve 15h ago

I dont want to play arms!

2

u/Schnitzelbro 8h ago

then dont. fury is fine in raid an m+. it does not have the great 2target cleave in raid and not the funnel in m+ but in terms of raw damg its just fine. people are way too focused on the pre-season tier lists and shit. look at archon dmg logs for fury, its really good

3

u/Duncan_PhD 16h ago

Surely the tiny buff they gave survival will fix it

3

u/Sweetest_Noise 16h ago

I hope mages are preparing for the upcoming guillotine as soon as mythic Ula'tek falls.

3

u/_Jetto_ 13h ago

I fucking love rwf but is ridiculous thet hard cater to it first few weeks there’s no way arcane should still be like this

4

u/Cirtth 19h ago

I'm happy to see shadow priests are somehow part of the cool kids gang. Not that I play one, but the last time I remember they were under the spotlight was on the Crucible of storm patch, which was 8.1.5, 8 years ago.

3

u/n1sx 14h ago

Both DK specs are quickly heading to the grave 🫠

1

u/RussianBearFight 14h ago

I don't play unholy, I've heard people say it's really unfun atm, but at least the damage is ok, if not great. Frost is out here competing with Aug for bottom damage 😬

1

u/MauPow 10h ago

Unholy is so much less fun to play than last season, they need to stop changing the whole spec every 2 fucking weeks

5

u/ghostcrawler_real 14h ago

Seeing WW being ~4% off mean dps and getting a 4% aura buff has made me turn into the joker what are they doing in Irvine

2

u/XoraxEUW 15h ago

I'm just enjoying Arcane before it gets nuked from orbit. At least it has a similar stat prio as Fire now so the swap won't be as rough.

It is a shame since they cooked with the rework

2

u/platypod1 14h ago

Whoa somebody is still playing aug?

2

u/ActualFrozenPizza 11h ago

I havn't fully decided wether I'll main my DH or my Mage, but im very contempt with the fact that Arcane is getting nerfed, I just hope it doesnt ruin the playstyle because it's very fun at the moment hahaha

3

u/thunkalunk 15h ago

Here’s a question for boomy mains..

I picked mine up after he’s been in the bin since Legion, and eclipse as a button to press just feels… awkward to press.

Is that just a me problem? I love everything else about it.

1

u/Secrezeeee 14h ago

I think a lot of people find it very awkward. They fixed a lot of the mechanical problems moonkin had in TWW, but they didn't actually design the spec to be fun. At least in my opinion it's a bit of a mess and I stopped playing it after the Midnight changes. I don't think it was particularly great before Midnight either but the spec at least had clear design intentions and a flow to it.

3

u/oliferro Shitpost Warlord 14h ago

I've seen enough. Buff Arcane

10

u/DraCam1 20h ago

Retri is below average? Shut down the Discord!

2

u/Silkenvada 19h ago

Ret is tooo week, buff it again heheh

7

u/MasterReindeer 19h ago

Mage just can’t be bad can it? I’m going to reroll to it after this season to guarantee always being consistently broken.

5

u/alphvader 19h ago

Yep. Frost un s1, now arcane. I guess fire in s3?

3

u/[deleted] 17h ago

[deleted]

1

u/Yarzu89 15h ago

Yea they can buff fire all they want but it still feels very much like a spec they tried to change, realized it wasn't working that great, and figured they'd get back to it later and never did.

2

u/krmilan 19h ago

Played a mage all throughout vanilla, deleted him in shadowlands. Man died for this.

2

u/xmajson7 17h ago

Why I swapped to being a tank/healer. Got tired of playing roulette with dps specs. Unless you’re pushing apex content like 20 keys or mythic raid. You can play any tank healer spec.

I’ll only dps if it’s a spec I want to play that’s in season.

2

u/ElectricalLaw1 15h ago

Please blizzard buff arcane more so we can't see them on the chart. It still visible

2

u/Bright_Light7 12h ago

Always the same suspects

2

u/_Augie 10h ago

Gotta love seeing classes that have been unpopular for years also performing bad for years… hmm maybe if blizzard would think about any other class besides mage for once we could get better tuning

1

u/BurnForestBurn 12h ago

As a protpally I love to run magic cleave with Arcane, Balance/Demonoly guys, and Elemental shammy.

1

u/BurnForestBurn 12h ago

Also, I used to play with triple arcane teams. It was funny.

1

u/Scrotilus 10h ago

Ret perfectly centered

1

u/burrito-boy 9h ago

Oof, ouchie, two of the four DPS characters I mainly play are Feral Druid and Frost DK.

(the other two are Affliction Warlock and Marksmanship Hunter though, so at least I’m okay there)

1

u/Altruistic_Run_2880 8h ago

Will be interesting watching some shifts after everyone has taken tier sets.

I doubt Arcane and EShamans drop too much but i think a lot of classes will improve.

Week 3 will probably shift a bit and weeks 4-5 we will probably start seeing more variety when it comes to top dps.

Obviously i don't talk about a complete meta shift but having 7 mages every raid seems off lol.

1

u/Mysterious_Skin2310 4h ago

Feral in the dumpster but rogue doing pretty well if not the best is a common thing but Jesus. So many melee specs in the dumpster based off this.

It’s kinda funny and annoying that all 3 rogue specs are in the positive when so many other melee specs are not lmao

1

u/xMcSilent 4h ago

So blizzard sees that and decides that frost + fire needs a 3% buff, but arcane doesn't need a nerf? Most picked AND most damage combined is the worst possible thing you can have in a game.
If it's low pick and high damage, then usually the mains are carrying the scala. But if it's the most picked, it means that every idiot plays the spec. But in such a case if could NEVER be the best performing spec, unless it's utterly badshit broken.

I hope it gets nerfed. Not stomped in the ground like frost dk, but nerfed to a normal place.

1

u/Mojothemobile 18h ago

Fucking Demo man isn't the best  Warlock spec for a single week so Blizz just gives them buffs to literally everything...

1

u/YGoxen 16h ago

I can't read chart. Top right is good bottom left is bad right?

5

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 16h ago

dot higher up = more popular, dot further right = more damage

1

u/awesomeoh1234 15h ago

Yeah arcane is kinda busted ngl. Them being strong is fine good even but they are clearly better than like every spec at everything except pure ST

-7

u/Pandeyxo 20h ago

I said it last week and I say it again: NERF ARCANE.

5

u/Sunshado 19h ago

I enjoy sunfury arcane currently, i could live with nerfs if that means spelsslinger is still dead as fuck. IDK why but whenever spellslinger is meta for arcane or frost i just want to reroll. Sunfury and Frostfire is somuch more pleasing visually and gamemplay wise.

-7

u/SlothySlothsSloth 20h ago edited 7h ago

Yeah a little for raid to bring them in line with other dps, but let them be meta. People LOVE playing mage and they love arcane. It's extremely fun with missles. Last season mage was literally the worst M+ class in the entire game with every single spec being awful. Would love a caster meta with dps like mage/boomie/ele shaman/devourer/lock while physical comp is also very good with resto shaman, arms etc. Everything but dk/aug please.

4

u/Care_Cup_Is_Empty 19h ago

Easy fix, just aura nerf arcane so the gameplay is the same without them being OP. Currently it can do way too much way too easily, at least demo and assa come with big drawbacks.

0

u/czaxnet 15h ago

A spec can still be meta without being insanely overtuned. Nobody wants it to be nerfed to the ground, just adjusted so that it doesn’t overshadow every other DPS spec by a large margin.

1

u/SlothySlothsSloth 7h ago

Then we agree!

1

u/czaxnet 7h ago

Well now that you edited it yeah, I guess we do.

1

u/SlothySlothsSloth 7h ago

I clarified what I meant! I said yeah to slight raid nerf before too

→ More replies (3)

1

u/Usual-Fishing-8419 16h ago

Could anyone check BiS list ST Sims before whining week two about arcane being overturned. Dude, they aren't even in top 5, blizz are not gonna nerf them, also a ton of phys comp buffs when Chinese dudes already phys comping +18 2nd week, so arcane is off the hook both in m+ and raid

1

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 16h ago

BiS list ST Sims

lmao

-4

u/stevie242 13h ago

These posts are so pointless when it’s all bosses. Damage gets padded by the few add heavy fights

1

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 12h ago

It doesn't count any boss higher than any other boss, the data is normalised per boss.

WCL also usually excludes pad?