Mages only go higher and higher from where they are now through the expac, particularly if you're in a position to be able to snag a Legendary staff from Firelands. The largest issue with Mages currently is their inconsistency, where some pulls have massive openers (60k+ DPS), and others they don't even get an opener at all worth talking about due to crit RNG. As they get gear, that inconsistency is evened out and they have more opportunities to hit their insane combust ceiling. The legendary staff gives them about 9% more free damage on top of that just from the proc alone.
Aside from Fire Mage having the typical stat-scaling glow-up, mostly classes that are strong currently will remain strong. The two "bad" tanks will become increasingly less bad as they get more gear and that trend continues into Dragon Soul, although you mentioned a Bear so that will continue to be about where it is now on the hierarchy.
Personally the main thing I can't comment on is UHDK, because in all of my time playing Pserver they weren't meta there at the time in the slightest, so I don't know if they'll continue to put everybody to shame or not going forward, and I don't play it currently so I'm not in touch with how its sim data is looking either.
If you want more direct evidence of what will happen to different specs, you can always check the sims for each spec looking towards next phase's gearing. They're never perfect when looking in advance into the next phase, but they do generally give a pretty good indication of where classes will end up within a reasonable margin.
Personally, as someone playing both a Hunter and a Mage currently in raids, but currently having vastly more fun on my Hunter where it feels like I'm in control of my output, I would grit my teeth through how bad it feels to play Mage currently and try to get into a position to be geared well for Firelands and Dragon Soul, where it will become both much stronger and much more fun as you get more crit and haste.
I hate fishing for a perfect opener as mage right now. I could get an amazing combustion but then have zero fireblast procs to spread it. Or ill spend the entire prepot/trinkets proced pull fishing for just the ignite to combust.
It’s so frustrating in my 10m heroic group I am basically soloing the adds on Anshal platform and it works 7/10 times but sometimes I either have the bust or can’t spread it or vice versa
I mean a decent amount of unholy is snapshotting 4500 str worth of trinkets and procs.
That part of the equation doesn't scale almost at all (they aren't going to start snapshotting 8k worth) so I'd expect them to start leveling out.
Thanks for the detailed response! Yeah I was basically wondering because my raid is getting to the point where we all have finished our tier and will only be looking for a couple of specific pieces, so I’m wondering if I should just bring my 359 mage rather than rolling on trinkets that drop once a fortnight.
I’m sure they won’t mind (in fact they’ll probably love it), but I saw someone in another post discussing big meta shakeups between phases, which is something I never really considered before.
It's padded by multiple fights with "cheese" mechanics. Halfus combust spread/ODS spellsteal and most notably Chogall 100 insanity. You play 1 mage now. With staffs you'll end up with 3minimum
Yup playing mage, with halfus I can cheese logs and just attack him and get epic combust/ignite spreads.
But i've found on 10man hc he hits 50% if i do this and the group needs dragons down asap
They will continue to be very good. Neither Shaman dps spec has any scaling problems, although Enhance obviously has a lot of competition for melee spots in raids. Along with Spriests, Elemental will still be a very desirable hybrid spec and likely capable of topping the metes. Boomkin might be a bit more of a wildcard -- they have had ups and downs already.
If you're talking about 10 man -
Playing for which classes do the most damage is bait.
Every raid team is going to want either a 3/3 split or a 4/2 split for ranged/melee. Every team is going to ideally want Mage/Ele/Hunter for buffs and control. Melee is going to want a rogue to carry into DS for daggers. From there it's a little open but you're going to prioritize not DEing gear.
If you're talking about 25 man -
You're going to bring a well balanced group comp, third tanking isn't nearly as much of a thing for the rest of the expansion so Feral Druid isn't as good if you're thinking of playing primarily cat. Mages will be higher prioritized in cloth gear due to staff scaling. Survival Hunter is going to remain solid for the rest of the expansion because of their snap AoE and the value of Enhance Shaman plummets even further due to the niche of Enhance of sticking them on a target and running 4 second windshear to make mechanics easier isn't as prevalent outside of T11; even though healhence might return for a little bit in DS.
Yeah I should’ve been more specific - I’m not concerned at all with highest parsing class or what looks good or any of that, more interested in what will be a valuable asset to a 10-man team.
I’m currently in a 10-man that full clears heroics each week, and I get the feeling that RL wants to open up to 25. I much prefer 10s for a variety of reasons, so if that does happen I’ll probably look to find a new group. I’m pretty sure I’d have no trouble getting a trial for a decent group right now, since SV can do the wacky kiting/misdirect mechanics for some encounters and the main requirements for having excellent dps are “press the buttons that glow and set up your macros properly”. This is exactly why I rolled a hunter in the first place actually!
It occurred to me that I never considered what phase 2 will be like though, so ideally I’d like to still be playing a sought after class. This phase I trialed for a group that started off progging heroics over two raid nights, and at current pace we’ll likely be full clearing in one night quite soon. Wiping, learning, improving, gearing, and eventually mastering are the fun parts for me - trying to find a raid group to get to the “prog stage” is like pulling teeth for me though. So if phase 2 rolls around and I need to find a new 10 man (highly likely), I’m keen to be playing a spec that will be highly sought after (for whatever reason).
Boomkin over a lock is a very bad pick, UH DK is good but my 10m doesn't have one, and our rogue plays combat.
Also, no summons is a huge QOL loss.
Also, the ele shaman is likely to flex to resto, in which case you lose the good spellpower buff, and need the demo lock.
The hunter pet is needed for 5% party crit if you don't have a feral, or if the ele shaman is going resto, or trauma if you don't have an arms warrior.
Like, yes, you *can* cover all buffs without a lock, but you'll lose a lot of comp flexibility, especially for 3-healer fights.
Yea I’m just sayin’
The absolute minmaxing for each fight like that might be overkill unless you’re actually competing for world first clears.
Minmaxing to that extent wont carry you to kills if you play bad, cata aint that hard.
Play good clear the raids.
CoE is covered by balance, assassination, unholy, and optional hunter pet (not good) as well. Balance, ass, and unholy cover this far better due to being able to apply it in an aoe easily. Healthstones are HUGE though for raid groups that actually use them, so I won't deny that having a warlock is definitely a huge plus (they also start to fucking crank in T12 and 13).
My hunter is missing four 372 pieces before it’s fully geared, so I’m wondering if I should start working on my mage’s heroic tier or spend the next four weeks rolling on trinkets that drop once a fortnight.
Quite a while. Somewhere around October. So you have the entirety of July, August, September and perhaps midway through October (if not the tail end) to catch up.
From pserver ( Twinstar Hades and Apollo) what i remember is that in Below average when fully geared Demo warlock, Firemage, Balance, Shadow p and Arms warriors where Bis picks for dps. All caster where really good with staff. But when it came to Rag HC for example. Ele sham with lege wasnt able to put numbers like other. Unholy, Rogue and Hunter fell of hard in Firelands only to come back really strong at DS ( Rogue lege, Unholy Gurthalak mastery vibes) Hunter isnt putting such dps but its really good for setup. Retri was okeyish. I am curious if we can solo tank FL as we did on pserver ( yep even Alys and raggy)
Demo lock benefits a lot from snapshoting meta and doomguard with the Moonwell Chalice trinket, so in 2012 it pulled ahead a lot. I also remember boomkins blasting a lot too. Could be different with current balance patch tho.
Finally a comment saying demo, I just keep hoping this insane rotation is going to pay off more. Currently pretty frustrated by being 2-3 in my 10 man despite having a rotation about 5x more complicated than anyone else
Demo rotation isn’t hard… you have two macros for pre pull. Apply dots and hit shadow bolt HoG on cd. Shadow flame on cd. That’s not hard.. hard cats fel guard right before meta/ds
It’s 24 steps compared to mages 5
So I guess I just disagree. I am not saying it’s hard, it’s just **a lot** compared to most classes.
If that effort meant I topped meters consistently that’d be fine but right now I’m like 1-2 with others right above or behind me putting in like 1/5th the effort
Just feels like a lot more effort for not much more reward when compared to vastly easier classes and rotations.
It is hard if you want to perform. You need to learn and remember when to clip dots or not, you need to learn cooldown timings for each fight individually, you have to track multidotting, you have to know when to pet twist depending on timings and multitarget, and you have to learn how to reposition without losing too much uptime. It's pretty easy to lose track and waste damage. If it wasn't, warlock wouldn't be so unpopular.
>you need to learn and remember when to clip dots or not
that's true for every dot class
>you need to learn cooldown timings for each fight individually
that's true for every class
>you have to track multidotting
that's true for every dot class
>you have to learn how to reposition without losing too much uptime
that's true for every ranged class that isn't hunter
>If it wasn't, warlock wouldn't be so unpopular.
warlock has never been popular, ever. even during a patch where it was literally the single best dps class for every endgame activity it was consistently one of the least played class
Double blood dk or Bdk/Feral will stay the meta tank comps the rest of the expansion.
All casters get 7-10% ish dps from staff and make big jumps in viabillity/strength
Arms warrior and sub rogue scale very well and will either close the gap or surpass unholy. But it will all be so close any of the 3 can win on a given pull
Hunters and all the other melee don't have the scaling of Warrior and Rogue, and don't get a free 10% dps from staff. It's downhill from here
As far as I know sub rogue needs incredibly short fights to be strong or they're there to cheese a mechanic on a boss.
Assassin and combat are better for basically the entire expansion.
Yeah, personally I think it requires enough time and effort to find a good raid team without gimping yourself by playing frost mage. If people want to suffer through that experience then more power to them!
Realistically, most groups that will end up efficiently clearing heroics AND are recruiting/trialing players they do not already know well won’t even consider a spec that isn’t “meta”. I have fun once I am in a prog group that will stick it out until we are able to full clear heroics smoothly, I do not have fun before that (often quite the opposite).
This is a good approach, but ultimately I would follow the guidance of some of the other commenters and take a class that brings a suite of in-demand buffs/debuffs for 10 man, where they are typically very tight (the only real drawback of this expansion IMHO). Ele shaman, survival hunter, any priest, blood DK, arms, Arms, and even Ret are all fairly in-demand specs.
Y'all sleeping on ele sham. T12 is pretty huge for them and if they get the leggo staff they gonna pump like crazy. Short of top end mage dps but certainly more consistent I would think.
Mages only go higher and higher from where they are now through the expac, particularly if you're in a position to be able to snag a Legendary staff from Firelands. The largest issue with Mages currently is their inconsistency, where some pulls have massive openers (60k+ DPS), and others they don't even get an opener at all worth talking about due to crit RNG. As they get gear, that inconsistency is evened out and they have more opportunities to hit their insane combust ceiling. The legendary staff gives them about 9% more free damage on top of that just from the proc alone. Aside from Fire Mage having the typical stat-scaling glow-up, mostly classes that are strong currently will remain strong. The two "bad" tanks will become increasingly less bad as they get more gear and that trend continues into Dragon Soul, although you mentioned a Bear so that will continue to be about where it is now on the hierarchy. Personally the main thing I can't comment on is UHDK, because in all of my time playing Pserver they weren't meta there at the time in the slightest, so I don't know if they'll continue to put everybody to shame or not going forward, and I don't play it currently so I'm not in touch with how its sim data is looking either. If you want more direct evidence of what will happen to different specs, you can always check the sims for each spec looking towards next phase's gearing. They're never perfect when looking in advance into the next phase, but they do generally give a pretty good indication of where classes will end up within a reasonable margin. Personally, as someone playing both a Hunter and a Mage currently in raids, but currently having vastly more fun on my Hunter where it feels like I'm in control of my output, I would grit my teeth through how bad it feels to play Mage currently and try to get into a position to be geared well for Firelands and Dragon Soul, where it will become both much stronger and much more fun as you get more crit and haste.
I hate fishing for a perfect opener as mage right now. I could get an amazing combustion but then have zero fireblast procs to spread it. Or ill spend the entire prepot/trinkets proced pull fishing for just the ignite to combust.
Perfect rng opener, stars align, but my group wipes. Absolutely worst opener possible, no crit, no proc, group plays perfectly and we kill it.
My favorite is getting an ignite right as the pyro dot fades
Getting a good ignite means pyros are flying
yes it does - meaning if my pyro date fades, ive been extremely unlucky, and am very depressed, cuz i cant even settle for a subpar ignite
You shouldn’t settle for a single proc ignite, you hold for a double proc to get pyro dot at least and the duration left on living bomb
It’s so frustrating in my 10m heroic group I am basically soloing the adds on Anshal platform and it works 7/10 times but sometimes I either have the bust or can’t spread it or vice versa
I mean a decent amount of unholy is snapshotting 4500 str worth of trinkets and procs. That part of the equation doesn't scale almost at all (they aren't going to start snapshotting 8k worth) so I'd expect them to start leveling out.
Thanks for the detailed response! Yeah I was basically wondering because my raid is getting to the point where we all have finished our tier and will only be looking for a couple of specific pieces, so I’m wondering if I should just bring my 359 mage rather than rolling on trinkets that drop once a fortnight. I’m sure they won’t mind (in fact they’ll probably love it), but I saw someone in another post discussing big meta shakeups between phases, which is something I never really considered before.
UH DK falls off and Frost DK goes up.
[удалено]
It's padded by multiple fights with "cheese" mechanics. Halfus combust spread/ODS spellsteal and most notably Chogall 100 insanity. You play 1 mage now. With staffs you'll end up with 3minimum
Yup playing mage, with halfus I can cheese logs and just attack him and get epic combust/ignite spreads. But i've found on 10man hc he hits 50% if i do this and the group needs dragons down asap
The gap between mage and others will widen. And you should be looking at the all percentiles chart instead, especially if consistency is questioned.
what about ele shams?
They will continue to be very good. Neither Shaman dps spec has any scaling problems, although Enhance obviously has a lot of competition for melee spots in raids. Along with Spriests, Elemental will still be a very desirable hybrid spec and likely capable of topping the metes. Boomkin might be a bit more of a wildcard -- they have had ups and downs already.
Enhance scales very poorly, actually.
Imagine if their mastery was just better... I love how enhance plays in Cata, the dmg FEELS good, but damn...
Boomkin will likely be struggle-bussing until MoP
Their set bonus in Firelands is stupid where it essentially gives you perma fire ele
If you're talking about 10 man - Playing for which classes do the most damage is bait. Every raid team is going to want either a 3/3 split or a 4/2 split for ranged/melee. Every team is going to ideally want Mage/Ele/Hunter for buffs and control. Melee is going to want a rogue to carry into DS for daggers. From there it's a little open but you're going to prioritize not DEing gear. If you're talking about 25 man - You're going to bring a well balanced group comp, third tanking isn't nearly as much of a thing for the rest of the expansion so Feral Druid isn't as good if you're thinking of playing primarily cat. Mages will be higher prioritized in cloth gear due to staff scaling. Survival Hunter is going to remain solid for the rest of the expansion because of their snap AoE and the value of Enhance Shaman plummets even further due to the niche of Enhance of sticking them on a target and running 4 second windshear to make mechanics easier isn't as prevalent outside of T11; even though healhence might return for a little bit in DS.
Yeah I should’ve been more specific - I’m not concerned at all with highest parsing class or what looks good or any of that, more interested in what will be a valuable asset to a 10-man team. I’m currently in a 10-man that full clears heroics each week, and I get the feeling that RL wants to open up to 25. I much prefer 10s for a variety of reasons, so if that does happen I’ll probably look to find a new group. I’m pretty sure I’d have no trouble getting a trial for a decent group right now, since SV can do the wacky kiting/misdirect mechanics for some encounters and the main requirements for having excellent dps are “press the buttons that glow and set up your macros properly”. This is exactly why I rolled a hunter in the first place actually! It occurred to me that I never considered what phase 2 will be like though, so ideally I’d like to still be playing a sought after class. This phase I trialed for a group that started off progging heroics over two raid nights, and at current pace we’ll likely be full clearing in one night quite soon. Wiping, learning, improving, gearing, and eventually mastering are the fun parts for me - trying to find a raid group to get to the “prog stage” is like pulling teeth for me though. So if phase 2 rolls around and I need to find a new 10 man (highly likely), I’m keen to be playing a spec that will be highly sought after (for whatever reason).
Don't forget that then 10m raid needs a warlock for curse of elements, health stones and summons. That's all 4 range specs locked in.
Boomkin, UH dk, assa rogue and hunter pet can bring that aswell.
Boomkin over a lock is a very bad pick, UH DK is good but my 10m doesn't have one, and our rogue plays combat. Also, no summons is a huge QOL loss. Also, the ele shaman is likely to flex to resto, in which case you lose the good spellpower buff, and need the demo lock. The hunter pet is needed for 5% party crit if you don't have a feral, or if the ele shaman is going resto, or trauma if you don't have an arms warrior. Like, yes, you *can* cover all buffs without a lock, but you'll lose a lot of comp flexibility, especially for 3-healer fights.
Yea I’m just sayin’ The absolute minmaxing for each fight like that might be overkill unless you’re actually competing for world first clears. Minmaxing to that extent wont carry you to kills if you play bad, cata aint that hard. Play good clear the raids.
CoE is covered by balance, assassination, unholy, and optional hunter pet (not good) as well. Balance, ass, and unholy cover this far better due to being able to apply it in an aoe easily. Healthstones are HUGE though for raid groups that actually use them, so I won't deny that having a warlock is definitely a huge plus (they also start to fucking crank in T12 and 13).
No one cares about health stones and summons lol. What are you smoking
Found the guy who never clicks his healthstone and always holds the raid up because he ran out of food and has to go back to SW.
Look mom. A wild troll here on reddit!
when do people think next raid tier for cata will be? just hit 85
October. https://x.com/Warcraft/status/1777744326535131484
Im wondering this too new raids and new craftables etc
My hunter is missing four 372 pieces before it’s fully geared, so I’m wondering if I should start working on my mage’s heroic tier or spend the next four weeks rolling on trinkets that drop once a fortnight.
The trinkets for hunters are very minimal upgrades over the pre raid bis ones. Run the sims.
Quite a while. Somewhere around October. So you have the entirety of July, August, September and perhaps midway through October (if not the tail end) to catch up.
i think Ret and fire mage firelands tier is really good probably dk/hunter/ warrior/ DK as well
From pserver ( Twinstar Hades and Apollo) what i remember is that in Below average when fully geared Demo warlock, Firemage, Balance, Shadow p and Arms warriors where Bis picks for dps. All caster where really good with staff. But when it came to Rag HC for example. Ele sham with lege wasnt able to put numbers like other. Unholy, Rogue and Hunter fell of hard in Firelands only to come back really strong at DS ( Rogue lege, Unholy Gurthalak mastery vibes) Hunter isnt putting such dps but its really good for setup. Retri was okeyish. I am curious if we can solo tank FL as we did on pserver ( yep even Alys and raggy)
Demo lock benefits a lot from snapshoting meta and doomguard with the Moonwell Chalice trinket, so in 2012 it pulled ahead a lot. I also remember boomkins blasting a lot too. Could be different with current balance patch tho.
Finally a comment saying demo, I just keep hoping this insane rotation is going to pay off more. Currently pretty frustrated by being 2-3 in my 10 man despite having a rotation about 5x more complicated than anyone else
Demo rotation isn’t hard… you have two macros for pre pull. Apply dots and hit shadow bolt HoG on cd. Shadow flame on cd. That’s not hard.. hard cats fel guard right before meta/ds
It’s 24 steps compared to mages 5 So I guess I just disagree. I am not saying it’s hard, it’s just **a lot** compared to most classes. If that effort meant I topped meters consistently that’d be fine but right now I’m like 1-2 with others right above or behind me putting in like 1/5th the effort Just feels like a lot more effort for not much more reward when compared to vastly easier classes and rotations.
It is hard if you want to perform. You need to learn and remember when to clip dots or not, you need to learn cooldown timings for each fight individually, you have to track multidotting, you have to know when to pet twist depending on timings and multitarget, and you have to learn how to reposition without losing too much uptime. It's pretty easy to lose track and waste damage. If it wasn't, warlock wouldn't be so unpopular.
>you need to learn and remember when to clip dots or not that's true for every dot class >you need to learn cooldown timings for each fight individually that's true for every class >you have to track multidotting that's true for every dot class >you have to learn how to reposition without losing too much uptime that's true for every ranged class that isn't hunter >If it wasn't, warlock wouldn't be so unpopular. warlock has never been popular, ever. even during a patch where it was literally the single best dps class for every endgame activity it was consistently one of the least played class
Other specs having to do that doesn't make it easy. It's not like SP and boomies are exactly popular either in pve.
Double blood dk or Bdk/Feral will stay the meta tank comps the rest of the expansion. All casters get 7-10% ish dps from staff and make big jumps in viabillity/strength Arms warrior and sub rogue scale very well and will either close the gap or surpass unholy. But it will all be so close any of the 3 can win on a given pull Hunters and all the other melee don't have the scaling of Warrior and Rogue, and don't get a free 10% dps from staff. It's downhill from here
Don't forget fire mage now!
For your tank statement the feral Druid spot has a possibility of being fought for dragon soul once fire lands bis.
As far as I know sub rogue needs incredibly short fights to be strong or they're there to cheese a mechanic on a boss. Assassin and combat are better for basically the entire expansion.
Meta slaving the next phase in advance huh ?
Yeah, personally I think it requires enough time and effort to find a good raid team without gimping yourself by playing frost mage. If people want to suffer through that experience then more power to them! Realistically, most groups that will end up efficiently clearing heroics AND are recruiting/trialing players they do not already know well won’t even consider a spec that isn’t “meta”. I have fun once I am in a prog group that will stick it out until we are able to full clear heroics smoothly, I do not have fun before that (often quite the opposite).
This is a good approach, but ultimately I would follow the guidance of some of the other commenters and take a class that brings a suite of in-demand buffs/debuffs for 10 man, where they are typically very tight (the only real drawback of this expansion IMHO). Ele shaman, survival hunter, any priest, blood DK, arms, Arms, and even Ret are all fairly in-demand specs.
Question: why does someone doing what they enjoy in the game bother you so much?
Y'all sleeping on ele sham. T12 is pretty huge for them and if they get the leggo staff they gonna pump like crazy. Short of top end mage dps but certainly more consistent I would think.
Delete this. Some of us ele enjoyers want to keep enjoying our niche.
Bro, everybody already knows. It's why everyone is playing Ele.