Nighthold raid which spec is top tier?

[Sanguinezor]

Another FOTM thread.

[tratra]

So OP asked a question and then people went on judging him on why and now the topic is about why and who to help and if and what...

OP, it seems that Affliction and Destruction will be strong for Nighthold and demo following for ST fights. As lock currently is a class that requires at least 2 specs to perform on ST and on Cleave/AOE situations you'll need either destro/demo or affliction/demo.

In anyway whatever you chose is going to be alright and you won't lose your spot in your guild, unless you are in a top 5 guild or some guild that pushes for that. If you are in such a guild you'll be asked to switch on an alt etc so no problemo.

Also note that Lock is not like Mages that have only 1 spec per patch like fire outperforming their other 2 specs and arcane now will be outperforming fire and frost. Lock specs are better on occasion and whatever spec you chose will be close to each other unless ST pure fights where Demo is outperforming the others.

[Baconeggcheese]

If you're playing at such a high level of competitiveness. It would be silly to not study every single spec and patch note religiously.

I mean we do, but not everything is immediately apparent. The warlock theorycraft community is severely lacking when compared to say... the mage one (which is an unfair comparison because mages flat out have better theorycrafters than every other class). So there really isn't this wealth of knowledge floating around where everyone knows exactly what's what. Hell even the mages in my guild aren't entirely sure what they're going to end up doing just yet.

I can tell you with what I've seen so far that all 3 specs are closer together than what they were, to the point where you can likely play whatever you want even at the mythic level. The difference between which specs "better" is likely going to come down to mechanics both for the spec and what kind of dmg your guild is gonna need for a given fight.

There wasn't really a huge shakeup for locks, demo remains where it was, destro / aff got ST bumps, aff aoe requires less targets but does a bit less maximum dmg, destro can more easily pick up aoe talents, demo gets a lil bump to baseline aoe with discord change. All these changes do is attempt to address some of the more egregious issues with the specs, but it doesn't make any perform so far ahead of the other that you'd want to jump ship from a spec that you have AP and berries for to a spec that you have neither.

[klogaroth]

Also regarding top 100 - alts exist. Sometimes by the time people get to their 4th+ they're after something a bit more concise from those who main the class. You don't have to be at the forefront of theorycraft for every class you play, just effective whilst playing it.

[BannedForViews]

If you're playing at such a high level of competitiveness. It would be silly to not study every single spec and patch note religiously.

Anyone who tells you right now which spec will be best is a snake oil salesman. Also, this "it onpy matters if youre top 100" and "cutting edge players will swap specs cause 3 54 trait weapons and 6 bis legendaries" bullshit gets really old.

You don't need any reason other than "i want to top charts with my noob friends" as a reason, but it is still a silly question. You arent pulling me off my full artifact and bis legos for a single boss fight where some guy playing demo mit done a bit more than i did.

- - - Updated - - -

So OP asked a question and then people went on judging him on why and now the topic is about why and who to help and if and what...

OP, it seems that Affliction and Destruction will be strong for Nighthold and demo following for ST fights. As lock currently is a class that requires at least 2 specs to perform on ST and on Cleave/AOE situations you'll need either destro/demo or affliction/demo.

In anyway whatever you chose is going to be alright and you won't lose your spot in your guild, unless you are in a top 5 guild or some guild that pushes for that. If you are in such a guild you'll be asked to switch on an alt etc so no problemo.

Also note that Lock is not like Mages that have only 1 spec per patch like fire outperforming their other 2 specs and arcane now will be outperforming fire and frost. Lock specs are better on occasion and whatever spec you chose will be close to each other unless ST pure fights where Demo is outperforming the others.

I challenge you to show me a top parsing affliction lock that has ever swapped specs for progression in legion. Affliction is just fine on all boss types.

[Nize]

Hi, welcome to the mmochampions boards, and yes, there are a lot of people who are world firsts that come here, including people who write the book on the class which millions of people look to for information on how to up their game. People here want to play the spec which brings the most damage, they want to bring their best even if it is 1% or .01% better.

Just because you don't play that way doesn't mean no one does. These boards exist for people seeking information, not for people seeking to not answer questions.

I just wanted to stop by and praise this message. I think we need to stop slamming other people for wanting to excel or play fotm spec. As a whole, I appreciate people doing what they can and gathering as much knowledge as they can to become better players, and not be the ones that others have to unfortunately carry.

[Gnomognomo]

So OP asked a question and then people went on judging him on why and now the topic is about why and who to help and if and what...

OP, it seems that Affliction and Destruction will be strong for Nighthold and demo following for ST fights. As lock currently is a class that requires at least 2 specs to perform on ST and on Cleave/AOE situations you'll need either destro/demo or affliction/demo.

In anyway whatever you chose is going to be alright and you won't lose your spot in your guild, unless you are in a top 5 guild or some guild that pushes for that. If you are in such a guild you'll be asked to switch on an alt etc so no problemo.

Also note that Lock is not like Mages that have only 1 spec per patch like fire outperforming their other 2 specs and arcane now will be outperforming fire and frost. Lock specs are better on occasion and whatever spec you chose will be close to each other unless ST pure fights where Demo is outperforming the others.

Isn't affliction MG build doing nearly the same dps as demo in low movement ST figths?

[tratra]

I challenge you to show me a top parsing affliction lock that has ever swapped specs for progression in legion. Affliction is just fine on all boss types.

Lol not even swapped but benched for their own alt... Guarm is a great example of that. And that was done by method and danish terrace and don't tell me their locks are not top parsing.

[BannedForViews]

Lol not even swapped but benched for their own alt... Guarm is a great example of that. And that was done by method and danish terrace and don't tell me their locks are not top parsing.

A good aff lock can easily do over 400k on Guarm. There is no need to bench that.

[Nithian]

A good aff lock can easily do over 400k on Guarm. There is no need to bench that.

There is if there is a better option. Anyone raiding top progression would swap...especially for an alt of their own

[Baconeggcheese]

There is if there is a better option. Anyone raiding top progression would swap...especially for an alt of their own

My first mythic guarm kill was november 22nd, I pulled around 414k as destruction. Wasn't an issue. Fight wasn't a dps check then and pretty much none of us had our 5% traits etc etc at the time. Once we got past the last charge clean the fight died. Dps was never an issue, it was always mechanics.

The fight has since been nerfed, and people have significantly more gear and AP in their weapons, so at no point is this an issue.

[HeroicMythic]

Some of you are a bunch of scrubs and losers. The OP had a specific question. But since you guys are NOOBS and have no answer, you keep spamming this thread.
If you do not know which spec is top tier in Nighthold, STOP talking about your subjective opinions. Nobody cares for your emotions. Nobody cares what you prefer to play. Go lvl another toon and farm moggear.

[Gaidax]

Affliction and Destruction will switch around based on encounter. I don't see any particular niches left for Demo that can't be filled by either.

From the Nighthold I did in Beta (not Mythic, mind you), I expect Skorpyron and Trillax to be better as Affliction, while Star Augur, Anomaly, Botanist,
Spellblade and Tychondrius be Destruction ones because of all the adds.

Krosus is the odd one, it kinda has adds, but they die super fast and come once pet 1 minute, but probably still Destruction.

I did not try Elisandre or Guldan, so don't know these, but every other boss is having various amounts of adds around, except for Trillax which has adds, but you do not kill them (although you can pad them for shards and such). Skorpyron had a ton of adds spawning each 20 secs or so, but it was probably the case because people were not doing it right in Beta, but Seed of Corruption and Soul Flame was mental there.

But of course who knows, since the time I did it plenty of balancing and shit happened and I have no idea how tier, new Legendaries and trinkets will change this all and nobody has concrete idea either, at best above is approximation.


IMO, I think Destruction will be a safe bet simply because it can switch to the priority add and nuke its face off, unlike other two specs which have varying levels of trouble doing this.

[HeroicMythic]

Can anyone confirm what @Gaidax said?

If yes, we have destro>affli>>>>>demo for raiding content.

[striderZA]

Hi, welcome to the mmochampions boards, and yes, there are a lot of people who are world firsts that come here, including people who write the book on the class which millions of people look to for information on how to up their game. People here want to play the spec which brings the most damage, they want to bring their best even if it is 1% or .01% better.

Just because you don't play that way doesn't mean no one does. These boards exist for people seeking information, not for people seeking to not answer questions.

Haha this is brilliant.

[muto]

The spec you're the best at playing will be the best for Nighthold. If you're good at all the specs then play what you enjoy the most.

[Baconeggcheese]

Skorpyron had a ton of adds spawning each 20 secs or so, but it was probably the case because people were not doing it right in Beta, but Seed of Corruption and Soul Flame was mental there..

Yeah if you're doing the fight correctly there's significantly less adds, and they die really fast. Experienced that during testing pre-launch.

It's also a first boss, so I'm not terribly worried about swapping specs.

Can anyone confirm what @Gaidax said?

If yes, we have destro>affli>>>>>demo for raiding content.

I'd agree with what was said generally, though the bulk of my nighthold testing was before launch. Frankly I think all 3 specs will be competitive in NH for different reasons, and it'll come down to the kind of dmg you'll need. Off the top of my head the only fights that struck me as very biased towards a spec were skorpyron for aff because lots of little fast dying adds to aoe off of, and chromatic anomaly for demo because the spec scales shenanigans with haste and you burst ridiculously high during the speed up phase. Both of those fights are so early in the instance though, that I don't see it really mattering what spec you play on them when it gets down to it.

I decided to just look up the locks in the top 10 world scene to see what they were doing and at a skim I could find 1 demo lock with a 50+ weapon and all the rest either had their destro weapons around 50+ or were still sitting around 35 points in whatever spec they were logging out in. This included locks like verdiisha and bangerzdots (method) as well as xerwo (set sail for fail) who are all damned good locks and maxed out their destro weps.

That said I again still think all 3 specs will do well, so really just play what you like.

[Tehterokkar]

Stop talking about Skorpyron like it's Helya level in difficulty. It's the first boss, it will die in max 5 pulls on Mythic, the DPS you do is irrelevant to the adds as they will get mowed down passively by most classes.

If you want to compare specs, look at the fights on the latter half of the raid, as they are ones that might provide some challenge and min-maxing.

[Orwell7]

The problem with Warlocks and raiding in Legion is that our Single Target is clearly lacking on all specs.
Don't forget, altough Destro and Affli got some nice buffs, specs that are already ahead of us are getting somewhere between 10-16% flat damage increases like all mage specs, enhancement, etc.

Destro is "good" for target swapping/cleave, but none of the encounters have any bottlenecks that needs this.

If not enough DPS players switch, you will wipe. If enough DPS players switch in time, you will make it.
You can argue that meanwhile the boss takes damage from us, but specializing in cleave is not gonna help on last phases, like on Odyn or Helya - and lots of fights in NH have a last-phase dps race, which we cannot compete properly.
Unfortunately not even on Demo, because a little movement puts you at garbage-tier, BUT demonbolt/synergy are getting nerfed, which is being offset by the Felguard buff.

You can argue again that every fight has AoE components as well where we can specialize into - which is true, however, you don't need all your raid to have great AoE, and melee specs are much better at this. Or ele shamans, fire mages, mm hunters, bm hunters..
(who can also do great ST dps while doing much better aoe, mind you)

The to go spec in my opinion is Affliction, because you can heal through some mechanics saving healer mana. But that spec will be plagued by which add can give you a shard or wrath of consumption buff, and you will have to learn to snipe properly.

I won't get my hopes up, but I trust Blizzard that they have something for us in 7.2.

[Shadowswann]

Why do you want to heal yourself when you can have a big shield while dealing tons of damage #demotank