Most high skill - high reward dps class atm?

[Raiju]

I've played feral since mid BC regularly ranking on near every fight. So i think i know what im talking about. The base rotation sure is easier, but if you are pushing dps from trinket procs/doc/Tiger's Fury then it's just as complicated if not more so. In Wrath Ferals rarely worried too much about maximizing trinket procs with bleeds (especially in ICC when Armor Pen was the way to go) Now that the baseline is more simplified good Ferals found things to work harder on to get the most out of the spec.

No. You were just worse back then and weren't aware of trinket maxing. It's been going on as long as I've been involved in theorycraft (early wrath).

[Reyzzz]

Enhancement shaman

[Deleted]

Sub rogues.

heh, no

sub rogues are pretty awful and punishing atm with positional requirement and bosses spazzing out (council, primordious, iron qon, lei shen) and does overall way less damage than combat/assassination

[Viromand]

I have a affliction lock and its not that hard, keeping up high dots is just looking at your buffs and dot durations. Plus you will not be rewarded the highest dps gain.

The highest reward you get is firemage, enhancement, after them i would say feraldruids/SP/WL/Boomkin.

He did well because spriest is probably the easiest DPS to play.

I'd say the Druid dps specs, or maybe aff lock.

Its not about how difficult they are but on how much dps they gain if played near perfection, and affliction locks are as easy to play right as spriests now and both dont even gain that much if played perfectly.

[lordsphinx]

Im not sure if the posters have ever played a s.priest, but they are def one of the biggest effort/reward classes there is. The average player can do acceptable DPS, but to really maximize DPS, s.priests have a lot more to watch out for than other classes. Specifically, the "snapshot" dot mechanic is really tough to manage if you have a lot of on-proc buffs. Personally, I have UVLS, Lighweave, Jade Spirit, and 1 other haste-proc trink (can't remember the name). Trying to maximize dot damage with the snapshot dot mechanic and that many potential procs, while casting MB on CD and timing DP to maximize MF:I so dots don't fall off is freakin nuts...

[mistahwilshire]

Snapshotting for any class is made so effortless by addons these days that it's not even a factor in skill anymore imo.

[isadorr]

Uhh feral is still John Madden if you're pushing good dps through trinket procs and DoC

People still try feral dps?

[Dominian]

whatever my class is.

[Akraen]

Arcane mage.

Don't even have to think about it, arcane mage.

[Thelxi]

My vote goes to destruction warlocks. A good destro lock will squeeze out considerably more embers and dps than an average destro lock.

[isadorr]

Arcane mage.

Don't even have to think about it, arcane mage.

Not hard if you have enough gear, it is the people who have no business trying to play arcane with bad gear that make it hard.

[Thelxi]

Im not sure if the posters have ever played a s.priest, but they are def one of the biggest effort/reward classes there is. The average player can do acceptable DPS, but to really maximize DPS, s.priests have a lot more to watch out for than other classes. Specifically, the "snapshot" dot mechanic is really tough to manage if you have a lot of on-proc buffs. Personally, I have UVLS, Lighweave, Jade Spirit, and 1 other haste-proc trink (can't remember the name). Trying to maximize dot damage with the snapshot dot mechanic and that many potential procs, while casting MB on CD and timing DP to maximize MF:I so dots don't fall off is freakin nuts...

Lol, spriest is very clearly the simplest most straight forward caster this expansion. If any class doesn't have much of a average-noob seperation, it's probably hunter.

Spriest rotation troubles lol.. There is not a single spec specific mechanic that raises spriest skillcap, not one. All other classes in the game deal with the same things, plus more.

[lordsphinx]

Lol, spriest is very clearly the simplest most straight forward caster this expansion. If any class doesn't have much of a average-noob seperation, it's probably hunter.

Spriest rotation troubles lol.. There is not a single spec specific mechanic that raises spriest skillcap, not one. All other classes in the game deal with the same things, plus more.

The rotation itself is not hard, not 1 little tiny bit. Keep up 2 dots, cast MB on CD, cast DP with 3 orbs. Easy Peasy... It's maximizing the DoT damage that's difficult. I raid in 25 man content with another s.priest, both of us have 97%+ uptime on dots, my DoT's do an average of 30-40% more damage overall for each fight because I refresh at the appropriate place. Refreshing DoTs properly (and not just when the are about to fall off) can amount to 20K+ differences in DPS.

[Pacab]

The rotation itself is not hard, not 1 little tiny bit. Keep up 2 dots, cast MB on CD, cast DP with 3 orbs. Easy Peasy... It's maximizing the DoT damage that's difficult. I raid in 25 man content with another s.priest, both of us have 97%+ uptime on dots, my DoT's do an average of 30-40% more damage overall for each fight because I refresh at the appropriate place. Refreshing DoTs properly (and not just when the are about to fall off) can amount to 20K+ differences in DPS.

How does having the most basic rotation and any min/maxing completely trivialized by using one of the numerous addons that snapshots DoT strength equate to being even remotely close to a high effort/reward class when the majority of others have the same deal+more?

[announced]

frost mage is a lil tough to play correctly. its all about timing and using frozen orb at the best time.

fire is more or less getting the perfect combustion.. which can either make or break your dps.

spriests are somewhat difficult to play if you have trinkets to complicate dot dmgs, but that all depends.

[Akraen]

Not hard if you have enough gear, it is the people who have no business trying to play arcane with bad gear that make it hard.

It's not hard at all to stand and do the rotation.

It's the hardest thing in the game to do the fight mechanics correctly and maintain DPS.

There are many gaps where movement is required but you have nothing you can cast while moving. Rune of Power compounds the issue because you have to recast it after movement.

The challenge is doing what you can to plan ahead, timing snapshotting before movement, refreshing your L90 talent (which should generally be RoP), and not screwing up the mechanics of a fight.

In any other tier Arcane might be playable, but in ToT Heroic it's damned near impossible unless you can get the strategies to be built around you standing still.

[Deleted]

I only play warlock, but in that class I would say Affliction is highest skill/reward. Demo is not easy, but if you don't mess up the UVLS Doom casting there's not much more to it. As affliction, beside obviously dot snapshotting it can be hard to think forward far enough to Haunt at the correct time. You really want to channel MG/Drain for the whole duration, which you will have to stop if you need to update dots due to getting procs.

Enhancement/Feral are still pretty bad even if you play amazing, so... I guess mage/boomkin is the only contender beside warlock, haven't played either at a good level so can't judge about them.

[Yeahbaby]

Heh, everyone saying spriests because of snapshot dots but no mention of moonkins or any other dot class/spec?

Just the fact that moonkins have the exact same thing (snapshot dots) to worry about + eclipses inherently makes moonkins more complex and more difficult to play to perfection. Spriests only have to think about their proc durations and dot durations. Moonkins have to think about proc durations, dot durations, eclipses and possibly Incarnation + Celestial Alignment. The only cooldown spriests have is Power Infusion and they don't even use it for most of the fights.

With that being said I have no idea who is the most difficult to play to perfection, but personally I don't see how anyone could think spriests would be highest on the list considering both moonkins and warlocks(aff/demo) have the exact same things to worry about + more.

Without having played all the classes/specs at a high level, which makes this kind of meh but you asked, I'd say either of these specs could be the most difficult to play perfectly (highest reward for effort) ON ACTUAL BOSSES:
Balance/feral Druid
Demo/Affliction Lock (I've never played this spec so I don't know how much work goes into actually using the Metamorphis properly or what other CDs demo locks have so maybe they're actually super simple -_-)
Fire/Arcane Mage

If you just want the highest damage potential possible on most bosses you'd go with something like this:
Affliction warlock > Demo&Destro/FireMage/Moonkin/Shadowpriest/AssassinationRogue > everything else

[Viromand]

Lol, spriest is very clearly the simplest most straight forward caster this expansion. If any class doesn't have much of a average-noob seperation, it's probably hunter.

Spriest rotation troubles lol.. There is not a single spec specific mechanic that raises spriest skillcap, not one. All other classes in the game deal with the same things, plus more.

you could just use WL instead of spriests in your post cause they are almost completely the same if you want to max dmg. Maximizing dmg on Affliction,Spriests and boomkin is maximizing dot dmg cause lets be honest all of them are really easy to play.

And this thread is not about how easy or hard a spec is or how good one is. Its about which class gains more dmg from playing near perfection if compared to a good player. Warlocks gain alot of dmg if played correctly with his dots but since its already so easy to do good dmg if player good or normal the gain you get is not so high as on some other classes.

[Deleted]

People still try feral dps?

Feral dps is extremely good, we had one feral druid in our guild during T14 and he was topping meters(we are not bad players) and during few bosses in ToT heroic before he quit he also were top3(25man) in meters.