What is the best dps specc ACTUALLY?

[harky]

There are plenty of Destro Locks that are breaking the numbers you're putting out. There are Affliction Locks higher, but if you're going to ignore fight mechanics and rely on your raid comp to increase your DPS? Silly. What would you have done if your raid didn't have those Arcane Mages to handle it? Rely on someone else? That's the point, you're saying the Destro is broken and non-functional while ignoring any scenario besides your own.

By the way, plenty of Destro Locks break 9k DPS. There are Destro Locks above 9k on all ICC bosses. So who cares? Top Destro Locks on Marrowgar are less than 200 behind Afflic. Check some WoL parses, doesn't take long to look up. Sounds like a broken spec to me all right. The difference between Combat and Assassination is much higher and no one seems to mind either and neither is called 'broken'. Seems pretty silly.

Also, read what I was replying to. That's what my arguments were discussing. Should take about 20 seconds to see I was replying to someone saying Destro was dead.

Anyway, have fun pretending Destro is better for 5s. All heroic trash is AOE bait. It all has ~64k health as mentioned before. Afflic and Demo are both better suited to it because they can AOE with as few as 3 targets. Destro needs 5+ for AOE to be higher DPS with RoF and 4+ with Seed. Demo is right now the best spec for heroics, there isn't any comparison to be made. You have Meta up for the entire boss fight and in many cases Immolation Aura is up for half, or more of the fight. 7k+ easily on bosses, 9k+ on trash. Destro is pointless in heroics. You'll get off Immolate>CB>Conflag then have to switch targets. With even a 3 pull you're doing that while Afflic/Demo chain seed for 12k+, on a 4 pull it's higher, 6 pull it's higher.

Destro is more competitive on raid bosses than in heroics, yet while you think it's broken for raiding, you think it's good for heroics? That's just silly.

[Jenerena]

What is the best dps spec? ACTUALLY? There isn't one. This is the one thing i love about locks. We have a spec for everything. We have a slow going rewarding and ramped up spec like affliction, we have a utility spec like demo, and we have a bursty spec like destruction. We can choose based on the situation.

Some people really are talking rubbish in this thread about things that don't matter. It does not matter what your spec is in heroics, why should it? It lasts 30 mins and gets you some badges. That's it. A good warlock is one who sees a boss fight, learns it, and decides which spec would give them the best performance. Not only personal dps, but utility. If your guild is good enough to get bone spikes down without the need to respec, then that is great. Who cares if you're asked to stay on the boss? It's not because you're 'useless', it's because your spec favours single target damage and you would provide the most damage overall by staying on the boss. That overall raid damage is what matters. When it comes to hard modes, you go in, you see how it goes and if you're struggling for burst, you have the option to change specs.

Personally i don't have a destruction spec as of now, i have affliction and demonology specs, and our guild is doing fine. I only raid 10man, and we only need two or three dps to burn down the adds or spikes, we've already done the achievements. Heroic mode may bring in a little more trouble, but i know i can spec destro if i need to.

There's no need to be defensive about certain specs. A good lock is one who will change depending on the fight, and will aim to get the most out of the warlock class, if that means changing specs, playstyle, whatever. I would say affliction does better on those heavy burn fights with strenuous last phases, such as Saurfang, whereas destro works better on those hectic quick switch fights such as Jaraxxus hard mode. Not all fights are like this, every fight is different, not every fight is designed for burst, because some fights just don't require it.

But like i say, we have to wait and see. You're all judging which spec is best when we have duel spec AND we have only seen a very small side of ICC so far. Not enough to make any conclusions. For now, use your brain, play what you think will perform better for you, for each fight. I am affliction for every fight in ICC and it works fine for me.

[nocturnus]

There are plenty of Destro Locks that are breaking the numbers you're putting out. There are Affliction Locks higher, but if you're going to ignore fight mechanics and rely on your raid comp to increase your DPS? Silly. What would you have done if your raid didn't have those Arcane Mages to handle it? Rely on someone else? That's the point, you're saying the Destro is broken and non-functional while ignoring any scenario besides your own.

By the way, plenty of Destro Locks break 9k DPS. There are Destro Locks above 9k on all ICC bosses. So who cares? Top Destro Locks on Marrowgar are less than 200 behind Afflic. Check some WoL parses, doesn't take long to look up. Sounds like a broken spec to me all right. The difference between Combat and Assassination is much higher and no one seems to mind either and neither is called 'broken'. Seems pretty silly.

Also, read what I was replying to. That's what my arguments were discussing. Should take about 20 seconds to see I was replying to someone saying Destro was dead.

Anyway, have fun pretending Destro is better for 5s. All heroic trash is AOE bait. It all has ~64k health as mentioned before. Afflic and Demo are both better suited to it because they can AOE with as few as 3 targets. Destro needs 5+ for AOE to be higher DPS with RoF and 4+ with Seed. Demo is right now the best spec for heroics, there isn't any comparison to be made. You have Meta up for the entire boss fight and in many cases Immolation Aura is up for half, or more of the fight. 7k+ easily on bosses, 9k+ on trash. Destro is pointless in heroics. You'll get off Immolate>CB>Conflag then have to switch targets. With even a 3 pull you're doing that while Afflic/Demo chain seed for 12k+, on a 4 pull it's higher, 6 pull it's higher.

Destro is more competitive on raid bosses than in heroics, yet while you think it's broken for raiding, you think it's good for heroics? That's just silly.

Actually it's pretty stupid not to consider raid composition like you do. Why spec into burst with relatively low sustained when there is enough burst in the raid already? If you had taken the time to actually read, you'd noticed I said it's only worth speccing for if your raid group depends on it. In my case, my raid group doesn't. The burst is high enough, we have a moonkin and a demo lock.

Now I know many of you are either lazy, or simply too incompetend to play affliction and you invent reasons to stay destro (e.g. the exuses you pulled out of your ass). But face it, affliction will always do better, in every case possible as there's no such thing as destro favouring fight mechanics. Until they fix destro's scaling and talents this shan't change.

Just stop beating around the bush and be honest. You can't manage to play affliction and you're sticking to destro for that reason. No problem.

I assume I have to explain this to you too. The parses you mention where warlocks break certain dps benchmarks are those of destro locks currently geared in quite a few icc25 pieces. Check it out. Therefore, affliction in similar gear pushes ahead even more. You have your view, which lacks logic and reasoning imo.

Destro is broken, not dead, therefore viable, but broken, for the various reasons posted all over various forums, over and over again. Key words "Destruction scaling" - Knock yourself out.

Like I said, if you are running heroics with your guild, where pulling half an instance at the time is acually possible, seeding works. If you don't (and I myself don't do more than 1 random heroic per day), you'll be paired in a group with people that pull 2 mobs at the time, mark them and assigh healing. Have fun seeding there son. I'm not going to discuss this any further because heroics don't exactly fit in my area of interest...

[harky]

Actually it's pretty stupid not to consider raid composition like you do. Why spec into burst with relatively low sustained when there is enough burst in the raid already? If you had taken the time to actually read, you'd noticed I said it's only worth speccing for if your raid group depends on it. In my case, my raid group doesn't. The burst is high enough, we have a moonkin and a demo lock.

That was my point, which you missed. Why would you not be a spec with burst if your raid didn't have it? You're discounting any reason for Destro to be functionally viable. There are plenty of acceptable reasons and plenty of fights were Destro shines. Let's ignore that though, because your particular raid comp doesn't need a Destro Lock. That makes Destro broken, right?

Now I know many of you are either lazy, or simply too incompetend to play affliction and you invent reasons to stay destro (e.g. the exuses you pulled out of your ass). But face it, affliction will always do better, in every case possible as there's no such thing as destro favouring fight mechanics. Until they fix destro's scaling and talents this shan't change.

Just stop beating around the bush and be honest. You can't manage to play affliction and you're sticking to destro for that reason. No problem.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I play Destro in 3.3.

I assume I have to explain this to you too. The parses you mention where warlocks break certain dps benchmarks are those of destro locks currently geared in quite a few icc25 pieces. Check it out. Therefore, affliction in similar gear pushes ahead even more. You have your view, which lacks logic and reasoning imo.

The parses of Affliction Locks on those same fights are in the same situation. There's no point to be had here. You're claiming no Destro Lock can sustain 9k+ DPS, there are plenty of easy to find parses on WoL with Destro Locks at nearly 10k on fights like Marrowgar, Deathbringer, or of course in ToC. You claim my view lacks reasoning when realistically the Destro rotation is easier to maintain and has fewer issues which prevent it from attaining its theoretical peak and Destro only spreadsheets out a few hundred DPS behind Afflic. It ignores that a poorly played Destro Lock can compete with an average-played Afflic Lock and other concerns.

Anyway, in regard to heroics, I'll just keep laughing. You don't need to pull half an instance, you just need to pull a minimum of 3 monsters for Afflic/Demo to beat Destro on trash. Do yourself a favor and actually toss a seed into a heroic trash pull on that random daily you run once a day. Hell, do it in your wasted Destro spec on a 4 pull. There are 4 pulls in heroic except ToC, so it's easy enough to find. Hell, use your raiding Afflic spec and seed on any 3 pull. If you use your off-spec for a 5 man build you're wasting your time. Demo/Afflic do better right now on trash by a wide margin and that's all heroics are. At least get a PVP spec so you can farm epic gems from honor. :P

[nocturnus]

No, you missed my point, again. Destro isn't broken because we don't need a destro lock, destro is broken due to it's poor scaling in end-game gear and ill designed talent trees. Again you point out WoL parses you fail to provide in your replies. Luckily, I know them for I scrutinize them regularly. On Saurfang for example, it shows an aff lock surpassing 9k dps. The destro lock isn't anywhere near it (like, pages and pages away), yet he beats me gearwise by a fair margin. I did 9.7k on our last kill.

I'm just gonna ignore the heroic nonsense. I'm happy you enjoy them. You go ahead and seed 2 mobs son. Don't forget to laugh while you're at it. PvP, seriously? I hardly have any time to raid, let alone waste my time on some crappy bg ^^

Destro is broken and needs some fixes because we all know that the T10 set won't help it nearly enough.

This is just one example I took from the dps rankings (the first aff lock I encountered on that specific fight):
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/g...=1541#Mitzberg

This is the first destro lock I encountered several pages later:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/z...4&e=2346#Mekki

I'd say that a dps difference of 500 is a clear sign of a broken spec. Go ahead, check the gear those locks. Also note that the aff lock did 5 times the damage the destro one did on the cult fanatics.

off topic:
Seeing the rogue rankings makes me wanna spit on Blizzard's class designers... Take the player, right?

[harky]

You really ought to brush up your searching skills.

Destro @ ~9.3k DPS on Deathwhisper
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/z...4&e=2346#Mekki

Lock in question:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...ermoon&n=Mekki

Lock in your example:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...zak&n=Mitzberg

Both have HToC gear, both have ICC gear. No real gear gap to speak of at all. 300 DPS gap on a fight that favors Afflic? Yep, Destro is broken.

Edit: Nice edit to remove the exaggeration of 1.4k DPS. Now you're only exaggerating by 400 DPS.
Edit2: Oooo, another edit, now you're only exaggerating by 100 DPS!

[nocturnus]

You really ought to brush up your searching skills.

Destro @ ~9.3k DPS on Deathwhisper
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/z...4&e=2346#Mekki

Lock in question:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...ermoon&n=Mekki

Lock in your example:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...zak&n=Mitzberg

Both have HToC gear, both have ICC gear. No real gear gap to speak of at all. 300 DPS gap on a fight that favors Afflic? Yep, Destro is broken.

Edit: Nice edit to remove the exaggeration of 1.4k DPS. Now you're only exggerating by 400 DPS.

You should brush up your reading and counting skills. For 1: The Aff lock did 5 times the damage on the adds. You know that as affliction you suffer much more from target swapping, right? The destro lock basically nuked the boss and hardly anything else. Still he remains 500dps (not 300 Einstein) behind. What would've happened if the aff lock would've ignored the adds like the destro lock did? Can you guess?

Read my post again, I refreshed my search and edited where I was in err right after I posted it.

[harky]

My reading skills are fine. However, you're comparing what, the 'DPS' figure, or the proper 'DPS(e)' figure, which is the actual important part. Nice going? The DPS gap is 313. Also no, if you think it's a bad fight for Afflic you're not doing it right. It's a perfect multi-dotting fight and he was rightly doing what we all do on her to maximize DPS. Keep DoTs and Haunt up on the boss full time while DoTing and SB spamming on adds. Destro Lock was also in a raid with 8 casters, versus 6 (one of whom died), which means there was less potential damage he could do to adds.

So again, how does this make Destro broken? That's like looking at the overall DPS ranking and saying everyone under #3 on the chart is a bad player.

[nocturnus]

My reading skills are fine. However, you're comparing what, the 'DPS' figure, or the proper 'DPS(e)' figure, which is the actual important part. Nice going? The DPS gap is 313. Also no, if you think it's a bad fight for Afflic you're not doing it right. It's a perfect multi-dotting fight and he was rightly doing what we all do on her to maximize DPS. Keep DoTs and Haunt up on the boss full time while DoTing and SB spamming on adds. Destro Lock was also in a raid with 8 casters, versus 6 (one of whom died), which means there was less potential damage he could do to adds.

So again, how does this make Destro broken? That's like looking at the overall DPS ranking and saying everyone under #3 on the chart is a bad player.

I'm comparing the damage per second on the boss, as should you. Multi dotting won't help affliction in any way. If you think it does, you don't fully comprehend the value of boss parses and affliction's mechanics on them. I didn't even factor in the gear difference. You very simple-mindedly said that they have equal gear by just adding up average item levels. But that isn't the case. Did you notice both trinkets did 2.7% dps on the boss for the destro lock?

I have to say, the exuses you so creatively make up, entertain me. So for you the reason that he did 5 times less damage on the adds was that his raid group had 2 more casters? Right.
No, if you're realistic, you'll have to admit that he ignored adds (and maybe he should, why 'help' on adds when it's not needed?) and wen't all out on the boss. The aff lock should've done the same.

500dps difference while:
- The aff lock, oddly enough, did more dps on the adds whilst the destro lock basically ignored them.
- The aff lock has non optimal trinkets, whilst the destro lock has the very best at this point in game. That's one of the reasons that he's the only destro lock on WoL to pass this interesting dps benchmark.
- As we gear up, the gap will just widen more and more due to destro's poor scaling.

You're content with this gap, you don't think 500dps difference is a big deal. I do and it just proves the simple fact that the destro tree needs some serious changes.

We don't agree and it's fine.

[harky]

Again, 313 DPS gap. If you don't understand why, you shouldn't use WoL.

If you don't understand why multi-dotting helps Afflic, this is a pointless debate.
If you don't understand that 2x Reign is not optimal for Destro, this is a pointless debate.

Look, you're talking about a DPS gap that's smaller than the gain from 4pT9 for Afflic.

You're talking about Destro being broken due to a minor gap in DPS, meanwhile most classes with multiple DPS specs are looking at two or three times the gap and more in some cases. If you honestly believe that a tiny gap like this is grounds for an overhaul of a spec this argument is pointless. Last patch Affliction was in trouble. It was 15% or more behind Destro. That is a problem. That was a gap of over 1k DPS in a raid which favored Destro anyway, making Afflic perform even worse. You're now looking at a gap of around a quarter of that favoring a spec that has more complications that can cripple DPS. It's hardly a problem.

[nocturnus]

Ah we're done talking Harky. If you don't know that 2 reigns is something that every destro lock strives for it shows lack of knowledge, insight and research. The BiS lists of actually obtainable items are based on those.

Every aff user knows that 'multi-dotting' as you so elegantly put, is a net dps loss on the main target. Claiming otherwise is ignorance. But I confirmed your lack of knowledge already.

You think that 1 warlock, in BiS (or close to it), that comes somewhat close to what MANY MANY other aff locks are doing is sign of balance. I think that 1 destro warlock that does 500dps less than 20 inferiorly geared aff locks is a clear sign of a broken spec. I do not care about other classes or the differences between their specs. I don't want to make frost viable for raiding. I'm talking about Warlocks and Warlocks only. You're straying from the main point as your last defense mechanism.

20 aff warlocks surpassing the 9k mark.
1 destro surpassing it in BiS, but lagging behind quite a bit
Repeat this for every fight in icc25 and tell yourself destro is fine

I'll repeat it for you, the gap, only grows. That's what scaling means. Something that destruction does poorly.

Your basing the theory of destro not needing a rehaul on the achievements of ONE warlock. I base mine on what 100 warlocks achieve. Wake up buddy, c'mon.

[harky]

Ah we're done talking Harky. If you don't know that 2 reigns is something that every destro lock strives for it shows lack of knowledge, insight and research. The BiS lists of actually obtainable items are based on those.

2x Reign is not best in slot on trinkets. Hasn't been for some time.

Every aff user knows that 'multi-dotting' as you so elegantly put, is a net dps loss on the main target. Claiming otherwise is ignorance. But I confirmed your lack of knowledge already.

It's also an overall DPS gain and is what the high DPS locks in question on Deathwhisper are doing.

You think that 1 warlock, in BiS (or close to it), that comes somewhat close to what MANY MANY other aff locks are doing is sign of balance. I think that 1 destro warlock that does 500dps less than 20 inferiorly geared aff locks is a clear sign of a broken spec. I do not care about other classes or the differences between their specs. I don't want to make frost viable for raiding. I'm talking about Warlocks and Warlocks only. You're straying from the main point as your last defense mechanism.

Adding a comparison point for what can be considered 'broken' is exactly what this was about. Destro is not broken, dead, or any other colorful term. It is slightly behind Afflic, nothing more, nothing less.

20 aff warlocks surpassing the 9k mark.
1 destro surpassing it in BiS, but lagging behind quite a bit
Repeat this for every fight in icc25 and tell yourself destro is fine

Actually check the other ICC bosses and you'll find that Deathwhisper holds the second largest lead for Afflic. DPS gap on Marrowgar is <200. While DPS gap on Saurfang is ~1k, but like Deathwhisper allows multi-dotting.

You're right though, I am done with this. We all know Afflic is ahead, my problem is in the implication that Destro somehow broken, or other colorful terms. The fact is it wasn't broken last patch when it was the top DPS spec and its DPS hasn't gone down since then. It's broken because Afflic was buffed and now beats it slightly? Nonsense.

[Nicolicious]

Well, I have been doing Demonology and kinda ejoying it, got my gear level on 200-219 atm so kinda bad, only got like one 251,245 etc. And I do around 5-6k dps atm. It's enjoyable I'd say. I like big crits =D.

So demo actually aint that bad when you get the hang of it and get all the benefits you have from it from other speccs. Im sure I can do 2-3k more when I get my gear up.

[nocturnus]

Well harky, yet again you're wrong on all accounts. The BiS list you're referring to isn't obtainable yet kiddo. Do your homework. If it helps, go read up on some interesting trinket discussions.

And again (wow you sure are dense), destro isn't broken because affliction works. Destro isn't broken since the release of icc. It has been since toc and the average item level it brought. Are you one of those clueless fellows that actually thought destro performed well in ToGC? You don't think it was broken before icc got released? Well, that explains A LOT.

Search some old threads on this very forum. I explained in detail how scaling works and I accompanied my posts with parses and calculations to prove my point (not always my own and often quoted from better analysts than myself). Which is accepted by the vast majority of Warlocks.

You're not my student and I don't intend to teach you any further. This thread is becoming useless to others and there my interest ends.

Think whatever you like, it's your performance that will suffer from it. Not mine.

[Glnger]

TL;DR
Assassination Rogue..

wait, did I miss the point of this thread?