Spec balance ATM

[athenaew]

Good day. I was playing wow from bc to late cata, took a large brake and finally decided to come back. I mained warlock through all those years, thou generally can play anything. That said, i used to play with guild and had many friends, hence never had problem with finding place in dungeons/raids. Today is another story, as most of them stopped playing. And i generally remember how hard it was for dps to "break in" - there was constant flood of dps applications, while tanks and healers were scarce. So question is - how is it today? I would prefer to continue my lock, full memories and cool items, but maybe i should switch to priest/pal alts if that means it would be easier to get back in serious raiding.

[Adramelch]

Most serious guilds already have their tanks and healers and are looking for dpsers and especially ranged ones. DKs are in high-ish demand in this tier as quite a few mythic fights become easier when having a couple of them. Also playing a dps with a strong healer OS could prove to be in demand as it helps guilds have a 5th healer for these fights that demand one, as well as a backup healer when someone can't come.

[Deleted]

Competent ranged DPS are in pretty high demand, so I'd recommend staying with your warlock if that's what you enjoy playing.

[LilSaihah]

If you're a competent DPS the sky's the limit.

[Gaidax]

Well to cool down the enthusiasm a bit, chances of getting in any sort of decent guild this late with a warlock you have no experience with (huge changes happened to warlocks in MoP) and legendary ring nowhere in sight are super low anyway.

Of all the DPS, ranged (not hunters, those are plenty like dirt) are in demand. Warlocks as a whole are a big gamble, me being a warlock myself, I can tell you that warlocks are good this patch, BUT, they have some serious skill requirements to reach that level. People who will tell you that Destruction is a faceroll are probably nowhere near utilizing the full spec potential, Demo is gutted mostly and Affliction, while simple, has a hard time with many mechanics damage dealers should deal with, simply because it lacks very basic tools like AoE and convenient target switching.

So with all that said, I'm not really sure whether this is a good time to return now, as regardless of your choices you will have to join a weaker guild for starters.

[SylintGaming]

Warlocks are at a pretty good place right now. As long as the changes don't throw you off you should be fine. Honestly it's so easy to get gear with the many catchup mechanics added, you shouldn't have to hard of a problem finding a good. Also, they added a premade group finder tool, so you shouldn't have a problem getting into normal HFC once you're geared enough from dailies and raid finder.

[athenaew]

Thanks for replies. Warlock it is then. This may not be the place for this, but still - what's the best way to gear up ATM? Should i just buyout every 715 craftable, while grinding crystals? Seems like craftable gear is beating everything pre-heroic HFC, thou expansive.

[szandos]

Get started on the legendary ring asap. Get 3 crafted 715 (can't have more than 3, get slots you won't be upgrading soon, avoid set piece slots). Then either do pvp for 700 (conquest) gear or grind Tanaan for 695.

[land]

Get started on the legendary ring asap. Get 3 crafted 715 (can't have more than 3, get slots you won't be upgrading soon, avoid set piece slots). Then either do pvp for 700 (conquest) gear or grind Tanaan for 695.

And do mythic dungeons, all of them, every week. It gives u a decentish chance at a 700+ ilvl item.

[freddy090909]

And do mythic dungeons, all of them, every week. It gives u a decentish chance at a 700+ ilvl item.

Be warned that very few people do these and it will be time consuming to get groups going, but the gear is pretty good. Do note that the trinkets are poorly itemized and you should try to avoid them unless they're your only option. Try to get the chipped soul prism off of kazzak for a good start.

[athenaew]

Get 3 crafted 715 (can't have more than 3, get slots you won't be upgrading soon, avoid set piece slots).

I guess weapon is my best choice, considering it's effects on my dps.

[Foj]

Heh, I always find it so silly when people say Destro is easy. Optimal use of Havoc requires so much awareness.

Destro is pretty easy. Havoc is fun to finesse, but the opportunities to "optimally" use it for huge damage are like fire mages swapping stories about ignite.

[Bigbazz]

Lock and Mage are fairly dominant across the board and can be stacked, plenty of room for another Lock in most guilds.

[Deleted]

Play what you love. This game is big. There is literally, practically and truthfully every kind of need out there.

It's not even that hard because Blizzard is hand-holding it. If they see a class underplayed, they buf it.

It's been pretty obvious that there is no true balance when the "politics to keep players equal" exist.

[Clrg]

Please do me a favor and take a look at fire and tell me how it's doing. Nobody uses it for PvP and it's essentially useless in raiding. This expansion makes me sad to play my mage. Probably why I'm thinking about playing a DH as main in Legion(would get me back to my rogue roots in a sense as well).

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8/

No, fire isnt useless at all.

[dottie]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8/

No, fire isnt useless at all.

Granted that is the 95 percentile, but I did not expect fire to be top of mythic reaver...

[Deleted]

It's been said before: Highly RNG-oriented specs skew the results.

In practice if you can do "60k to 120k" you will top the results.

But you will be worse than someone that always does 100K.

[Brianmage]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8/

No, fire isnt useless at all.

Fire us useless. It is NOT the top dps spec on reaver. Not even RNG wise. Nothing can cause fire to out perform Frost or Arcane EVER on iron Reaver. Now, the reason why it shows it as the highest is due to an error and lack of parses. Fire has a high minimum due to lack of people playing fire, and some RNG has occurred. If you changed those ~500 parses to ~50k parses, fire would be below Arcane and Frost. Please don't go telling mages to go fire on any fight in HFC due to it being skewed because so few people play it.

- - - Updated - - -

It's been said before: Highly RNG-oriented specs skew the results.

In practice if you can do "60k to 120k" you will top the results.

But you will be worse than someone that always does 100K.

Depending on how warcraftlogs determines the 95th percentile, this could or could not be true.

[Deleted]

Depending on how warcraftlogs determines the 95th percentile, this could or could not be true.

It doesn't matter how that site determines it, it would be worse for a raid. In the long term the 100K guy will be a better player than the 60k to 120K guy (all else being equal and assuming a Normal Distribution).



Sure a raid team could "risk" it, but in the long term it will be a loss. It's like gambling. It is always a loss in the long term, inevitably.

[Brianmage]

It doesn't matter how that site determines it, it would be worse for a raid. In the long term the 100K guy will be a better player than the 60k to 120K guy (all else being equal and assuming a Normal Distribution).



Sure a raid team could "risk" it, but in the long term it will be a loss. It's like gambling. It is always a loss in the long term, inevitably.

1. I agree with you that fire is not the correct spec to play ever in HFC. However, seems for different reasons. If the true 95th percentile dps of fire was that and the true 95th percentile of the other specs were what they appeared, then yes, fire would be the correct spec to play.

2. The amount of variance you think fire gets is far off. You may get a 10% or so variance, arcane is more than that, some other specs are less than that. Even druids and WW are close to fire mage in terms of "consistency" but nothing compares to Arcane.

Fire is the incorrect spec to play because those numbers are incorrect due to lack of data collection because not enough people play fire. Also, the minimum of fire is off from the "average" roughly as much as the max so if the true 95th percentile of fire was highest it WOULD be the best spec to play. If you are going to say that high RNG specs should be played, then arcane shouldnt be played. Let me use your logic. It has (test yourself) TWICE the variability of fire. On top of that arcane's 95th percentile will be skewed because Arcane has more high outliers then low outliers causing the 95th percentile to be higher than it should be.


Your casino analogy doesn't actually make any sense at all as you are looking at closed vs open system.


tldr: don't play fire. The 95th percentile on Iron Reaver is because of RNG based numbers and are just straight incorrect if you want a true 95th percentile.