World of Warcraft: Current Year

Daidraco · Oct 29, 2022

Burns said:
Frost DK had a little bit of time where it was good, but I don't remember if that was MoP or Cata. WotLK DKs were op in all areas but I think that power lingered for at least 1 or 2 xpacs.

M+ is much harder to rate and not that many people even uploaded parses until fairly recently. It's almost impossible to get a good rating system for specs with how different each boss fight is, and how different M+ is compared to raiding. So, the way that dude ran the numbers seems as good as any, for a general performance idea.

So yea, it's only for raids and how the classes ended up, fully geared, at the end of the tier, which also relates how each class performed at the start of the next tier (outside of the xpac end tier). It may be the case that WoD was as far back as the info would go, so no MoP WW monk domination to bump them up a spot or two.

As for how the balance will end up in DL, it wouldn't surprise me if everything gets mixed up, as they are still messing with all the multipliers. Some specs get new combination of abilities that they can access (at the same time) and/or others get a few new or heavily modified abilities.

That said, I'm sure Ret and Enhancement will continue to get shat upon and any of the pure DPS classes will have the best chance to have at least 1 spec in the top 50%.

Everytime you say DL, I think Dreadlands, not Dragonflight.

Ive never thought about looking for it before, but I think I would be more interested - especially when picking a class to play - is to see where classes rank against each other when theyre wearing gear from leveling in a Mythic 0. Then, where they stand when theyre at a Mythic 8, then at a Mythic 15. (or in Dragonflight's case, maybe M12 and M20. (Or for raiding, Leveling Gear LFR > Normal Geared > Heroic Geared > Mythic Geared.)

I cant remember what class I was playing, but it was the best spec to play in the Meta at the time. Lets say it was Mage for example - It would have been better for me to play Frost in the beginning since their base damage is so much higher with longer sustain. Where as with Fire (the meta choice), I didnt have the crit necessary to proc enough for it to be more powerful than Frost. A line curve chart displaying the start from a basic item level to max item level would be really helpful. So I could play Frost, and gear up until Fire parses past it.

Right in the feelz when you're doing shitty dps compared to everyone else, but you're within 100's of a Patchwerk fight Sim, playing the correct talent and spec.

Burns · Oct 29, 2022

Daidraco said:
Everytime you say DL, I think Dreadlands, not Dragonflight.

Ive never thought about looking for it before, but I think I would be more interested - especially when picking a class to play - is to see where classes rank against each other when theyre wearing gear from leveling in a Mythic 0. Then, where they stand when theyre at a Mythic 8, then at a Mythic 15. (or in Dragonflight's case, maybe M12 and M20. (Or for raiding, Leveling Gear LFR > Normal Geared > Heroic Geared > Mythic Geared.)

I cant remember what class I was playing, but it was the best spec to play in the Meta at the time. Lets say it was Mage for example - It would have been better for me to play Frost in the beginning since their base damage is so much higher with longer sustain. Where as with Fire (the meta choice), I didnt have the crit necessary to proc enough for it to be more powerful than Frost. A line curve chart displaying the start from a basic item level to max item level. So I could play Frost up until Fire parses past it.

Right in the feelz when you're doing shitty dps compared to everyone else, but you're within 100's of a Patchwerk fight Sim, playing the correct talent and spec.

Since the new Lizardmen look retarded, I keep calling it DargoneLands in my head...opps.

As for what plays best at what gear levels, the simcraft sites kinda did this in the past, I think. At least I remember reading discussions on why X spec will be strong early, but Y spec scales much better and will outperform the others once certain stat thresholds are hit.

You will eventually be able to use raidbots or simcraft to fill in various M0 dungeon gear and see how the different specs parse out, but as long as bliz keep changing the numbers, the simcrafters will keep chasing their tails. So it wont be much help in deciding what class to level first/play, if you are looking at a few different options.

Chersk · Oct 29, 2022

Pages and pages of people talking about how they aren’t playing. If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t be in this thread posting horseshit. Maybe start a new support group thread where you all can talk about where the bad Blizzard touched you.

Daidraco · Oct 29, 2022

Chersk said:
Pages and pages of people talking about how they aren’t playing. If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t be in this thread posting horseshit. Maybe start a new support group thread where you all can talk about where the bad Blizzard touched you.

So.. you're playing?

Cinge · Oct 29, 2022

Daidraco said:
So.. you're playing?

He has to, can't have blizzard's dick in his ass and not play.

The nerve of people to be on a forum of all places, in a section labled MMO discussion, having a discussion on the pros and cons of maybe playing a new expansion for a MMO. String them up!

Secrets · Oct 29, 2022

Chersk said:
Pages and pages of people talking about how they aren’t playing. If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t be in this thread posting horseshit. Maybe start a new support group thread where you all can talk about where the bad Blizzard touched you.

i-dont-remember-asking-drache-i-dont-remember-asking.gif

Caeden · Oct 29, 2022

I post because I'd rank Classic-WOTLK as my most favorite experience in any gaming environment...second mayyyybe to OG D2 when my friends played. Legion was the best "modern" expansion from Cata on IMO, with Cata then MOP right behind. Draenor was fun to level and sucked ass from then on and BFA shouldn't have happened. A lot of us loved this fucking game and are sad that its turned into a lobby game full of political grandstanding and second rate MMO grifters who figured out there's naught but maggots left on EQ's corpse.

That's probably a sign i'm getting fucking old. Time to move on.

Rajaah · Oct 29, 2022

Daidraco said:
Dragonflight starts at 60 and goes to 70 iirc. So he's GOT to play through Shadowlands to get to Dragonflight afaik. Where as BFA and before are all lumped into the noobie zone to 50 experience? I even remember them saying that the most recent expansion before the current one from here out (BFA when this was said) will be part of the leveling process in order to help the player "catch up" to the current lore.

Not Lore of WoW, but the topic of how lore is implemented in WoW:

The lore though, even at the beginning of SL's is a jumbled mess. Made worse by the few content patches where they made sweeping changes that they said they would never do. If you actually wanted to understand the lore behind SL's without reading up on it on the web - you would have to not only level up through the story, but also switch covenants all four times, then do each raid to completion on LFR, in order. I already had four characters spread between all the different covenants - I just had to catch up on the raids and zones like Korthia, but I got most of the story.

There are more than a few moments where I rolled my eyes (the story is bad, we get it), but I have to give SL's at least an ounce more appreciation in that I can get the entire story IN THE GAME this time. In BFA (and before) you had to read the fucking books to fill in what happened to cause the events that you're doing within the game. But in SL's the real life books (afaik, I dont read them) - are side stories that are irrelevant to the story taking place in WOW. The other side I appreciated about SL's is that, if you at least know the order of the zones that came out, the quests make you well aware of the fact that you're going to one of these new zones. So if you're just trying to get the base story from playing, you can, and then you can choose to go to Korthia and then Zereth Mortis. Unlike previous expansions where you could, using SL's for comparison - unknowingly pick up the quest for Zereth Mortis, go there and skip the entire story of SL's without even realizing it.

Basically, for those that WANT the story - they do a really shitty job at it on all fronts. But it helps that they at least look like they're cognoscente of their past failures.

Yeah, I have to go through Shadowlands. Also, that's half the point of coming back. I'm there to see the expansion I missed, then the new one. I haven't missed a single WoW expansion in the past and usually played them close to release. This time around I'm just getting in under the wire. Even if SL is terrible (I didn't enjoy BFA at all), that's what I'm there to do. 1-47 is basically just "mess around with a Warlock" time and I used it as an opportunity to see some Wrath zones I missed, but once I hit 48 I'm only doing SL.

Rajaah · Oct 29, 2022

Burns said:
Who doesn't love to look at/talk about numbers and spreadsheets?!?

View attachment 440363

TLDR: Time spent with at least 1 DPS spec in the top 50% of performers (classes with both ranged and melee specs are also separated):
View attachment 440364

How long each spec spent in the xpac in the top 50%
View attachment 440365

By Tier:

SOURCE: Google spreadsheet

So if I'm reading all of this right...Affliction Warlock was tops in the previous 3 expansions, now Elemental Shamans out-do them but Warlock is a strong 2nd? Balance Druid is 3rd. Pretty cool since those are the 3 main classes I was considering for this go-around and I didn't even know any of this. Some day maybe I'll try Elemental and Balance chars when I come back for some later expansion's launch. This time around it's just Warlock and maybe try Evoker for 20 levels or something. The Affliction rotation is getting a little old, but every class is like that in this game I think. Seem to be posting huge numbers and that's pretty awesome. It's sort of scratching the EQ Necromancer itch.

Secrets · Oct 29, 2022

fresh geared DH is going well.

Burns · Oct 29, 2022

Rajaah said:
So if I'm reading all of this right...Affliction Warlock was tops in the previous 3 expansions, now Elemental Shamans out-do them but Warlock is a strong 2nd? Balance Druid is 3rd. Pretty cool since those are the 3 main classes I was considering for this go-around and I didn't even know any of this. Some day maybe I'll try Elemental and Balance chars when I come back for some later expansion's launch. This time around it's just Warlock and maybe try Evoker for 20 levels or something. The Affliction rotation is getting a little old, but every class is like that in this game I think. Seem to be posting huge numbers and that's pretty awesome. It's sort of scratching the EQ Necromancer itch.

Affliction can do well in Mythic raids due to how long a lot of the fights last and especially on cleave fights or long lived trash. Those fights greatly out number the burst trash fights in most raids. Although, any of the DoT specs do poorly in low and mid level M+, since most of those are about bursting down trash, quickly.

I would assume top tier Affliction Lock players will still switch to Demo or Destro for anything less than a M15 (this number may vary, depending on ilevel and affix).

When it comes to warlocks, in particular, on that chart, it doesn't mean Affliction was best, it's more that they were consistently, not the worst when compared to all DPS. So Affliction could have been middle of the pack (slightly higher than 50%) while both Destro and/or Demo were performing better in all aspects of the game. Then Destro/Demo ate some nerfs (or lost some OP tier/trinkets) and Affliction just kept chugging along, hiding out in the upper middle pack.

Both Elemental and Boomkin are great with the burst trash, and that never seems to change. It's hard for them be be a low performing spec, just because of that. It also means they perform well in M+, although I have never played either spec, so I don't know how easy/hard it is to get into M+ pugs.

I have though about switching to elemental before, as it was a fun spec when I have played it, but I don't like the race choices for alliance, and moving tradeskill/gold to horde and back was too annoying.

Uriel · Oct 29, 2022

Affliction seems to be back on top, and guardian druid dps is kinda insane atm too. As a monk I'm happy that WW single target is actually good right now.

Dragonflight Pre-Patch DPS, Tank and Healer Log Rankings, Day 1

Update: if youre looking for a less preliminary bunch of stats, the week 1 DPS, tank and healer rankings are now ready, with some included explanations from our guide writers! Head on over here to check them out. ______________________________________________ The pre-patch is upon us and its chao...

www.icy-veins.com

Chersk · Oct 30, 2022

Daidraco said:
So.. you're playing?

Yuuupppp

Daidraco · Oct 30, 2022

Uriel said:
Affliction seems to be back on top, and guardian druid dps is kinda insane atm too. As a monk I'm happy that WW single target is actually good right now.

Dragonflight Pre-Patch DPS, Tank and Healer Log Rankings, Day 1

Update: if youre looking for a less preliminary bunch of stats, the week 1 DPS, tank and healer rankings are now ready, with some included explanations from our guide writers! Head on over here to check them out. ______________________________________________ The pre-patch is upon us and its chao...

www.icy-veins.com

Going to be interesting seeing that all shake out. Especially when we just got done with a graph spread over multiple expansions putting ret at the bottom and now its stacking up in fourth place. But like usual, Shadow Priest starting off almost at the bottom at the beginning of every expansion.

Penance · Oct 30, 2022

I"d take any logs right now with a grain of salt. Sure, if you're pushing content now definitely take a look, but a lot of classes are going to benfit greatly from the extra talents (10 more points 5 base 5 spec I think?). I might be wrong, but I believe a lot of the balance is fucked now because some classes are double dipping their covenants/talents (meaning some cov abilities got put into talents which allows you to take the other cov and use both I think?)

Also as somebody who has mained warlock since vanilla on and off, I can confirm the Blizzard bias ever since the greenfire quest. Hell I think Warlocks been getting crazy class quests since... well Vanilla with the mount, but I'm pretty sure every expac before Legion had warlock specific quests that were actually interesting and even sort of challenging. And ever since Legion the only class that has come close to being on the top 3 DPS on the most fights more then warlock is balance druid. So if you are going by history standards you really can't go wrong with warlock/mage/druid. You are almost guaranteed a meta spot with those classes.

On a side note, the interface errors are crazy right now. Make sure to backup your WTF folder almost daily. Buddy of mine lost his entire config and had to rebuild his interface from scratch.

I just lost all my talent configs.

Burns · Oct 30, 2022

Penance said:
I"d take any logs right now with a grain of salt. Sure, if you're pushing content now definitely take a look, but a lot of classes are going to benfit greatly from the extra talents (10 more points 5 base 5 spec I think?). I might be wrong, but I believe a lot of the balance is fucked now because some classes are double dipping their covenants/talents (meaning some cov abilities got put into talents which allows you to take the other cov and use both I think?)

Also as somebody who has mained warlock since vanilla on and off, I can confirm the Blizzard bias ever since the greenfire quest. Hell I think Warlocks been getting crazy class quests since... well Vanilla with the mount, but I'm pretty sure every expac before Legion had warlock specific quests that were actually interesting and even sort of challenging. And ever since Legion the only class that has come close to being on the top 3 DPS on the most fights more then warlock is balance druid. So if you are going by history standards you really can't go wrong with warlock/mage/druid. You are almost guaranteed a meta spot with those classes.

On a side note, the interface errors are crazy right now. Make sure to backup your WTF folder almost daily. Buddy of mine lost his entire config and had to rebuild his interface from scratch.

I just lost all my talent configs.

Yarp, prepatch logs for old xpac raids are almost always meaningless for the upcoming xpac class performance. It is compounded by how many changes have been made to the classes, and how the covenant abilities and legendries interreact with a talent tree not made for them.

They should have no influence on what one should play in Dragonflight.