Originally Posted by
refire
What fights are you mid to low on?
I play with some pretty competent people with eleven (I think?) hardmodes down. We're bad damage on heroic dogs but we can light the floor with no dps loss, amazing on Feng (although it's a fight that can be abused doing shield fourth and padding on adds so the numbers will be skewed here), amazing on Gara'jal if you're raid leader is smart enough to realize you have a very small benefit from the buff and a very weak cleave in the spirit realm, amazing on heroic spirit kings, DKs and Warlocks both blow us out on heroic Elegon because of dot spreading and the glyph that extends the range for warlocks however we are one of the best soaks for protectors, and the most important part of Will we have control with traps, deterrence for sparks, and amazing SV AoE. We're bad on one fight and one of the best if not the best for Feng, Gara'jal, and will (because of deterrence soaking).
In Heart of Fear we're good on heroic Zor'lok since we don't lose dps to attenuation (sp?), Ta'yak when played properly is again a pretty good fight for us although I'm not sure why, we have no cleave damage so we can't compete with DK's, Arms warriors, or rogues on Garalon however we don't lose damage when kiting pheromones, and even on my first heroic Garalon kill back in Novemeber only cleave classes were allowed on the legs because they died to fast so while the numbers won't show us as good, we're just as good as any other class that doesn't have a cheese cleave mechanic (Howling Blast, sweeping strikes, blade flurry), we're one of the best on Wind Lord (I did 418k without padding) plus we can glyph scatter and save a wipe from someone being dumb with a re-trap, I haven't killed heroic Amber or Shekzeer so I won't comment on that.
In Terrace we're good on protectors although numbers won't show that because of wasteful cleave padding, tsulong normal has a very small gap between classes but I'm unsure about heroic, on Heroic Lei Shei we're incredibly good comparing with arms and arcane for the best class to bring, and I imagine we're rather bad at heroic Sha of Fear but I wouldn't know.
Either way, the fights we're very bad damage wise on (Dogs and Will) we're also the best at an encounter mechanic (spark soaking and floor lighting). Excluding padding on a fight like protectors, we're in a very solid spot right now. That's not to say I wouldn't love to see some changes. Marksmanship needs something, most likely to the tune of aimed shot scaling more with weapon damage, creating a sort of Ulduar esque playstyle where whether you were SV or MM depended on your weapon (and ArP at the time), beast cleave could use a buff but for the burst BM can provide I think it's honestly in a pretty good state, and SV could use a mastery tweak to make SV gearing go for mastery which would scale up Explosive shot damage a lot, or a rework on AP scaling with explosive shot or black arrow. With those suggestions said though the thought still remains that overall, when you take out the worthless padding we're only in a bad spot on DPS with a couple of encounters, and on those encounters our bad DPS is also countered by being the best class to handle a mechanic.
My apologies for the wall of text but really, look at the bigger picture of things. For one exclude warlocks from most DPS talks. They are very clearly overpowered, asking to be tuned around an overpowered class never makes sense. Two, realize we have close to no cleave and that a comparison to a cleave class on a cleave fight is worthless. If you want cleave as a ranged class similar to a hunter, roll a shadow priest. It's the exact same thing with different names for the spells. Three, realize that on the fights we aren't great on dps wise, we're also very good at a mechanic. Lastly, for four make sure you're comparing fights that aren't being gibbed. Comparing us to a shadow priest on protectors when they're multi-dotting to pad (although mind spike procs may make it worth it) doesn't make sense. Comparing your SV feng parse with shield second to an SV feng parse that took shield last and only had five people padding for numbers on the adds also doesn't make sense.