Please rank each ranged dps spec based on complexity of rotations/spell casting.

[tadasbladas]

your "tons of damage" was 4k in 25mans I presume?
survival and MM are pretty similar and both offer a degree of complexity, but MM is a bit harder to manage and has more options in rotation

[Pasture]

forst mage =1
fire mage=~3 (with TTW)
arcane mage=~4 (arcane blast debuuf is hard to manage for me )

Arcane isn't complex because of the rotation, which is simple. It's complex because of the mana management and the use of cooldowns. The difference between an Arcane mage just rolling out a rotation and an Arcane mage who knows when to fish for procs and when to stop on account of mana preservation is huge, and knowing when to pop cooldowns is also key.

While Arcane is very easy to play once you've learnt it since it becomes almost second nature, it does have a learning curve for newer players to learn all its nuances.

[Revrant]

your "tons of damage" was 4k in 25mans I presume?
survival and MM are pretty similar and both offer a degree of complexity, but MM is a bit harder to manage and has more options in rotation

No, this was before all of this BM nonsense and Survival buffing, when MM was king and king alone, as it is now after they restored the status quo.

MM has three shots extra, granted, but they don't have to really care about their pet, their pet dies, minimal damage loss, a BM's pet dies, he's useless. Pet management is a lot more difficult with rotation versus just rotation, and it shows many still haven't played BM hunters well.

Explains why they sucked so often and made me look bad, didn't know how to manage their pets, and most of them converted right back to MM where the cat just slashes and they just shoot.

[toletthemdecide]

I highly doubt anyone here has expierienced all those classes and specs in all diffrent types of raid/dungeon content. Dont rate what you do know. Assuming only leads you to looking like a moron. o.O

[Lily]

Obviously I can only rate specs I've personally played for a little while.

Shadow Priest - 8
Arcane Mage - 5
Balance Druid - 4
Fire Mage - 3
Frost-fire Mage - 3
Frost Mage - 3 (not pve viable)
Elemental Shaman - 2

Generally I would say that Spriests are a lot more difficult to handle than ele-shamans and fire/ff-mages.
If you don't care about being at the top of the dmg-meter all the time, go with the Spriest. Such a beautiful spec!
If you are looking for a good dmg dealer, go with fire mage or destro lock. Maybe a good survival.

[PBitt]

I'm sure you had the best of intentions in making this thread OP, but I can't see what effect it would have except to elicit e-peen.

[Jakome]

I can't speak for classes I've not played, so I'll just comment on the Warlock stuff.

Apologies in advance for the walls of text critting you.

Affliction is the most complex of the Warlock builds to learn (no clue how they compare to other casters; my alts are all lowbies)...you do much of your damage via DoTs and there's four of them, some on cooldown, some tied to other DoTs, with shadow bolts or drain souls as filler depending on how much health is left on the boss. Not clipping dots is probably the most difficult thing (for me at least) to learn (since you'd think it's better to refresh early, but it's actually not necessarily), and you usually need a good DoT Timer or SOME way to keep track of when your dots are going to fall off, and some sort of indicator when your target is below 25% health so you can drain soul as a finisher. I've never raided with Affliction due to the lag issues I have and the steep learning curve. (I plan to try it once I get my internet connection sorted out.) It's very different from the other caster specs, except perhaps shadow priest, because your damage builds up as time goes by and many other casters just nuke stuff with big casted spells.

Even though several people have said Demonology is the second most complex of the Warlock trees, I would disagree and say the Destruction rotation is harder. With Destruction you have two nuke cooldowns, one which bumps up your haste a crazy amount, and two to three dots (although you can typically drop one, corruption, to simplify your rotation). You basically throw up a curse, than Immolate, and maybe corruption, and use Conflag on immolate which pushes your haste way up, then you Chaos bolt and Incinerate until you need to renew Immolate and your dots and do Conflag and Chaos Bolt again when they're off cooldown. The hard part (for me at least) is because your haste bumps up so much, things like fight movement interrupting your rotation and things like heroism/bloodlust/haste trink procs make the length of your casts get really...variegated. So like one moment you have like a 2 second cast time on your Incinerate (I think it's 2 seconds...my connection is shitty today so I can't log on to double check), then you have a 1.4 cast time or less. I've seen myself get close to a 1 second cast time with heroism up...it's like driving a car where you jump from 20 MPH to 60 MPH then back to 30 MPH. Feels weird, particularly if you're trying to time necessary fight movement around cast times that can be anywhere from 2 seconds to 1.5 to 1 second long depending on what's going around you and if you just hit the Conflag part of your rotation. It's also really easy to get aggro with a poorly timed conflag/chaos bolt combo. Destruction is my off-spec and I play it when we need the hard, fast DPS more than we need the buffs or massive AOE damage of Demonology. (IE, I use destruction in 5 man ToCs.)

Demonology is easiest to run with as a warlock...your pet (Felguard) does a lot of your damage (as in, my felguard has done 1000 DPS by himself in 25s). Aside from a little pet management (not much at all now that pets avoid a lot of AOE and the like) all you do is renew 3 dots that aren't on any special cooldown--which is a skill you hone merely by leveling--and spam shadow bolt and pop your Metamorphosis form whenever it's up. Sometimes if you feel fancy you can risk getting into melee range and popping immolation aura too for extra damage (just be careful of any melee range dangers before doing this). You do have a finisher at the end, decimation, where for every shadowbolt or incinerate that hits the mob while they're at 30% or lower you get a free, shardless soulfire, but so long as you get Power Aura or something to let you know when Decimate has procced, and try to stand as far away from the boss as possible, it's easy to weave a 1:1 ratio of shadow bolt to soulfire. Demonology doesn't have the same DoT management that Affliction has, nor does it have the weird haste procs that make your casted nukes change cast time from moment to moment like Destruction does, so it's more forgiving, and more predictable. You also put up a crit debuff on the mob you're shadow bolting, and give a spellpower buff that's better than the improved shammy totem when you have more than 3000 spellpower which is easy to have post-Naxx. But it's not hard, as both of the cooldowns you do have are very predictable--meta form every 2.1 minutes, and decimation at 30%. Demonology is also great on trash because you can do a double AOE with Immo Aura and Rain of Fire. (Sometimes I do trash as Demonology then go Destruction for a boss.)

So, my take on lock specs.

[Deleted]

Survival Hunter - 4
Arcane Mage - 9
Fire Mage - 4
Frost Mage - 2 (PvE)
Frost-fire Mage - 4
Elemental Shaman - 3
Affliction Warlock - 6
Demonology Warlock - 5
Destruction Warlock - 4

I didn't rate the ones I havent played.

[Weena]

While some of these classes arnt listed there, heres what i think for the classes i have played:

Arcane mage - 6
Fire mage -4
Ret pally - 2
Shadowpriest - 9
Feral Druid - 8
DK - 5
Affliction lock -8
Desto lock -4

[Stixxz]

1 = least complex 10 = most complex

Balance Druid = 4
BM Hunter = 3
MM Hunter = 7
Survival Hunter = 4
Arcane Mage = 2
Fire Mage = 2
Frost Mage = 2
Frost-fire Mage = 2
Shadow Priest = 5
Elemental Shaman = 3
Affliction Warlock = 8
Demonology Warlock = 5
Destruction Warlock = 4