Shadowlands DPS rankings

[exochaft]

If you've actually played on the beta and/or raid tested, you'll understand why even using raid logs to determine a DPS tier list at this point is terrible.

Some of the raid testing occurred shortly after a beta reset, so most chars had some serious issues going in (such as lack of conduits acquired, no legendaries, etc). For example, half of my guild's chars have bugged out or non-functioning Covenant powers. Some characters had access to two covenant powers for some odd reason. Depending upon the class/spec/covenant, that's a drastic change in how your class functions. Furthermore, not all classes have conduits implemented on the beta, so you're playing with empty soulbinds while raiding/dungeoning with classes that have some functioning and damn strong conduits. This isn't even going into the whole numbers pass argument, which is true to some degree, but they have adjusted some numbers on a broad level.

My personal spin on things: I'm still hoping for some mechanical adjustments to some specs, as even if they might appear to be doing well on that DPS chart listing and assuming it's accurate (it's not)... some specs just feel like trash to play at worst, not fun or awkward at best. If you're part of the higher end raiding community or know some people from that community, while performance matters when it comes to class balancing, something that feels good and/or does utility or odd jobs in a PvE environment can actually matter a lot more. Keeping in mind things like a few Nathria bosses had non-DPS related jobs to do, this is where actual class balance comes in.

Class balance isn't necessarily about getting everyone as close to a similar performance in terms of pure DPS. This also doesn't mean every spec/build has to have the same potential. Even if this were possible, you'd still see this sort of DPS disparity in the logs because player skill and preference matter, as well as your job in the content. For example, my logs will likely never be 99-100 parses because I'm almost always the person on my raid team that'll do the utility/mechanic jobs where I have to stop or lower my DPS to ensure something gets done properly, allowing someone else to tunnel the boss and get their sexy parses. That's fine, I'm okay with that. Now, if you're a raid leader and you have to multitask during an encounter, you may tend to gravitate towards a class that doesn't have a high skill cap or involved rotation but stable DPS output so you can perform both roles. If you're a skilled player, you may gravitate towards a class/spec that has a high risk/reward when it comes to DPS out... and people who think they're skilled will try to copy this 'meta' and while some will succeed, others will fail and may actually perform better with a class/spec/talent loadout that "sims" or "conventional wisdom says..." is lowering in DPS potential. These are just a few of the myriad of factors that actually go into what class balance from a designer's perspective is all about.

If you got a brain-dead spec with no skill requirement destroying every other spec in every scenario from DPS to utility, you might have some grounds to be concerned. But having disparity between the potential DPS of specs/builds in itself is not a bad thing. Having specs that are more simplistic or more complex is not a bad thing. Not everyone has the same skills level nor the same skill set. Having a diverse set of options for players of all skills sets and skill amount/preference is the ideal place to be. Some players can pick up any spec and perform extremely well at it in any scenario, the vast majority of players can't (or think they can but cannot).

Players get stuck in the meta build/comp mentality when the majority of the time players fail to realize the people that created that meta did so to compliment their skill set and playstyle (and strategy sometimes), and this tends to get warped into a class balance mentality. Even higher end mythic raid guilds still fall victim to this, sometimes struggling on content because they're obsessed with the meta versus tailoring their strategy or using a class/spec comp that works for their team (you try telling your officer team that you don't need 10 immunities on mythic N'zoth prog, it's not a fun conversation even though it ultimately was better than forcing some of our team players to play specs/classes they sucked at ).

Anyways, I digress. Point is this: there will be more class balancing in the future, and the end result won't be everyone has the same DPS potential on every spec, nor should it be.

[Kralljin]

How can you post something that's factually wrong, claiming that soulbinds won't affect dps, and then try to backpedal so hard into saying "But actually those are conduits!"

No, as usual, you just don't get it.

Those Soulbinds provide general effects, meaning that major swings between classes is unlikely, unless they provide massive stats gain to a certain class, which i doubt is going to happen looking over all those effects.
Not to mention that those Soulbind among each other should also be balanced, doesn't help any Kyrian Shaman if Venthyr have an OP Soulbind.

In other words, the OP specs benefit in a similiar fashion than the weak ones, meaning that the overall semblance of power remains the same.

If Soulbinds weren't working, either were the conduit features of Soulbinds which ARE CLASS SPECIFIC so you're going to see variation since as always, the classes will be balanced around them since they're a core feature.

"Legendaries are still missing, those will fix it"
"Azerite traits are still missing, those will fix it"

Yep, heard it all before.

If a spec is 20% behind, then those Conduits need to provide at least 20% power on top of what other classes are getting.

Do you see the error in your logic?
Those things need to balanced in their own right, if a certain conduit provides that much power, it's basically a mandatory conduit and anyone who doesn't pick that one is making a huge mistake.

They were strong, yes. But if you tested Nyalotha without corruptions, they wouldn't be as prominent and it would just look like "oh they're still faring well".

Fire was already decent in EP, before any Corruptions were even available.
Corruptions just blew the lid off.

[Gaidax]

No, as usual, you just don't get it.

Those Soulbinds provide general effects, meaning that major swings between classes is unlikely, unless they provide massive stats gain to a certain class, which i doubt is going to happen looking over all those effects.
Not to mention that those Soulbind among each other should also be balanced, doesn't help any Kyrian Shaman if Venthyr have an OP Soulbind.

In other words, the OP specs benefit in a similiar fashion than the weak ones, meaning that the overall semblance of power remains the same.

You do realize there are class and spec specific conduits that are exclusive to the Covenant too?

Quick example, for Kyrian there is a conduit that increases Chaos Bolt damage by 40% for 10 seconds if a target of your Warlock Covenant ability dies while effect persists on it.

That IS a pretty damn strong conduit that is both spec specific and Covenant exclusive.

Every spec has at least one of those.

[Jester Joe]

No, as usual, you just don't get it.

Those Soulbinds provide general effects, meaning that major swings between classes is unlikely, unless they provide massive stats gain to a certain class, which i doubt is going to happen looking over all those effects.
Not to mention that those Soulbind among each other should also be balanced, doesn't help any Kyrian Shaman if Venthyr have an OP Soulbind.

In other words, the OP specs benefit in a similiar fashion than the weak ones, meaning that the overall semblance of power remains the same.

"Legendaries are still missing, those will fix it"
"Azerite traits are still missing, those will fix it"

Yep, heard it all before.

If a spec is 20% behind, then those Conduits need to provide at least 20% power on top of what other classes are getting.

Do you see the error in your logic?
Those things need to balanced in their own right, if a certain conduit provides that much power, it's basically a mandatory conduit and anyone who doesn't pick that one is making a huge mistake.

Fire was already decent in EP, before any Corruptions were even available.
Corruptions just blew the lid off.

Alright. Surely everyone who realizes half the system is missing is absolutely wrong.

Never has Blizzard ever implemented something that caused a class to far outshine any other class, like some sort of Chorus of Insanity trait for Shadow Priest, or Master Blaster for Fire mage. Yep, never in WoW's history has a rental system given a class a ridiculous amount of power that carries them for the expansion.

You seem to fail to realize your argument is that Blizzard will have conduits balanced. Good luck with that.

Also to tack on, again you flat out state something that proves my point and yet try to say how I'm "not getting it as usual".

Fire was decent in EP, yes. Corruptions made them overpowered. Hence, a rental power system making a huge swing in damage. Like Conduits will be. But you resort to insults and cheap mockery instead of actually proving anything while dancing around the facts.

[Gaidax]

For the record, I also think that this whole sky is falling is unwarranted, because as usual people will make their conscious choice and live with it just fine.

But let's not pretend there won't be combinations of Covenant and Legendaries that will be VASTLY better than anything else for almost every spec.

Like even now, I know no balance pass yadda yadda, but if you look at what abilities do, I can already guarantee that for Destruction Night Fae will be absolute garbage because the Covenant ability is useless and synergies with nothing in the spec.

And yes, some combinations will inevitably be busted as fuck too. You can bet there will be a couple of specs that will literally be carried by pure BS synergies that will remain a thing for a good chunk of expansion. It was always the case even with something simple like a lucky good trinket. Let alone whole array of weird ass loosely coupled powers.

[Stardrift]

blizzard hasnt even started number tunings yet, they start doing that usually in the last month of beta

And *still* manage to fuck up real hard. What's your point?

[Kralljin]

Never has Blizzard ever implemented something that caused a class to far outshine any other class, like some sort of Chorus of Insanity trait for Shadow Priest, or Master Blaster for Fire mage. Yep, never in WoW's history has a rental system given a class a ridiculous amount of power that carries them for the expansion.

You do realize there are class and spec specific conduits that are exclusive to the Covenant too?

Guess what, that's why people hated on Azerite because there only was only a handful of viable traits.

The entire concept of "customization" falls through the floor here.

I really have no idea why you think "Look, those individual systems weren't balanced!" somehow showcases that the Conduits will have a positive impact on class balance.
Your argument is basically "if one system is imbalanced, then two imbalanced systems will result in balance".

If you use those systems to offset major class imbalances, then you essentially throw the systems as a whole under the bus in favour of class balance.

You seem to fail to realize your argument is that Blizzard will have conduits balanced. Good luck with that.

You fail to realize that Blizzard won't have anything balanced, neither the individual pieces nor the entire package.

Fire was decent in EP, yes. Corruptions made them overpowered. Hence, a rental power system making a huge swing in damage. Like Conduits will be. But you resort to insults and cheap mockery instead of actually proving anything while dancing around the facts.

I find it utterly hilarious that anyone unironically uses Corruption as an example in a discussion over balance that it in fact had a positive impact on it.
This system is a clear case example that Blizzard very often fails to balance the individual system as well as the package as a whole.

Especially because Blizzard flat out admitted that the power gain of Corruption was too strong.

[Kuja]

No way warlocks will be that high up when they're done tuning. But monks and shamans will be at the bottom for sure as usually.

[Jester Joe]

Guess what, that's why people hated on Azerite because there only was only a handful of viable traits.

The entire concept of "customization" falls through the floor here.

I really have no idea why you think "Look, those individual systems weren't balanced!" somehow showcases that the Conduits will have a positive impact on class balance.
Your argument is basically "if one system is imbalanced, then two imbalanced systems will result in balance".

If you use those systems to offset major class imbalances, then you essentially throw the systems as a whole under the bus in favour of class balance.

You fail to realize that Blizzard won't have anything balanced, neither the individual pieces nor the entire package.

I find it utterly hilarious that anyone unironically uses Corruption as an example in a discussion over balance that it in fact had a positive impact on it.
This system is a clear case example that Blizzard very often fails to balance the individual system as well as the package as a whole.

Especially because Blizzard flat out admitted that the power gain of Corruption was too strong.

Great.

So you admit it's fully likely that conduits can and most likely will cause a huge shift in DPS because Blizzard isn't known for perfect balancing records, which makes your original claim that someone else was dumb for saying the soulbind system will cause a difference in raid dps is faulty.

Now we've come full circle.

I strongly doubt that soulbinds will skew the picture - because they aren't class specific.
Legendaries are class specific, but i'll doubt that one dps spec will suddenly jump into top tier because of one.

If so, it'll be nerfed because it vastly outperforms any other legendary.

In my opinion, you're the moron for believing those things make an actual difference on the ranking.

I'm not sure how you're claiming I don't understand something when you're missing this all wraps back to your original post. Conduits are part of soulbinds. No soulbinds=no conduits, which means there's still a lot of potential for drastic power swings without them.

[crakerjack]

I always take these lists with a grain of salt because the average player sucks ass and I could whoop them in dps with any of these specs. Even with the reworked enhance going back to maelstrom weapon. Every class/spec combination can do every single content in the game, excluding top 1% keystones, world first mythic raiding and r1 gladiator. They can all fully clear mythic raids, do the bare minimum of a +10 or +15 dungeon and get gladiator.

Just play what sounds fun. I personally have every class at max level already so I tend to do 180's each expansion and pick a new series of alts to rotate. With leveling only taking 10-13 hours to get from 1-50, I hope more people have more alts so people can realize for themselves that what you play doesn't really matter in the big scheme. Every class can compete and it's up to the player how well they perform.

[Kralljin]

which makes your original claim that someone else was dumb for saying the soulbind system will cause a difference in raid dps is faulty.

Yeah and *maybe* should start reading the post properly.

In my opinion, you're the moron for believing those things make an actual difference on the ranking.

And if now come around and say "BUT CORRRUPTION", let me remind that i also said:

If there is any soulbind on the powerlevel of those corruptions, i think we run into other issues than just class balance.

No soulbinds=no conduits, which means there's still a lot of potential for drastic power swings without them.

Because those are still seperate from each other?

If Conduits disappear, Soulbinds would still be there and its effect are still generalized ones, not class specific ones.
So the chances of them actually compensating the weakness of a spec in terms of dps isn't that huge, because everyone has access to the same Soulbinds.

[Jester Joe]

Yeah and *maybe* should start reading the post properly.


And if now come around and say "BUT CORRRUPTION", let me remind that i also said:



Because those are still seperate from each other?

If Conduits disappear, Soulbinds would still be there and its effect are still generalized ones, not class specific ones.
So the chances of them actually compensating the weakness of a spec in terms of dps isn't that huge, because everyone has access to the same Soulbinds.

They will make a difference, as we have always seen.

Just like azerite traits have.
Just like corruption has.
Just like legendaries have.

And as pointed out, there is still class specific stuff.

But there's no point in this because it will just be argued in a circle with you being convinced you're 100% right, so I'll just wait until soulbinds and legendaries are implemented and you'll see that it will change.

I mean, it already changed since the very first post without either system still. So... Yeah.

[Kralljin]

They will make a difference, as we have always seen.

On the actual ranking of classes? Doubtful.

But if you call it a success when Blizzard throws these systems under the bus for the sake of balance, then you do you.

Just like azerite traits have.
Just like corruption has.
Just like legendaries have.

The only one that really "changed" Meta (by making an already strong spec even more OP) was Corruption.

[Jester Joe]

On the actual ranking of classes? Doubtful.

But if you call it a success when Blizzard throws these systems under the bus for the sake of balance, then you do you.

The only one that really "changed" Meta (by making an already strong spec even more OP) was Corruption.

You keep goalpost moving and ignoring the parts that prove you're wrong.

Last attempt at this because it's not entertaining to try to discuss this with someone who only wants to be right.

Squished image, but you can make it out, that's how this chart looked originally.

Without even implementing soulbinds/conduits/legendaries, it's already changed to this.


Odd, Arcane and Fire went from near the bottom of mid to top. MM went from bottom to top. Affliction changed quite a bit too.

Need I go on? Coz already there's changes while there's no ground systems implemented.


Next point, the only one that changed the meta was corruption?
But you said this-

I strongly doubt that soulbinds will skew the picture - because they aren't class specific.

Yet a non-class specific corruption (Masterful) caused a huge swing in damage for a single spec?

And then you want to claim it made an already strong spec more OP, but you ignore that I already showed you how far Fury dropped and Arms rose, so there was a clear flip from "Not OP" to "Basically OP" and "Strong" to "Not really a good choice".

Mind you, you're also ignoring how Legion added/revamped legendaries throughout Legion, and one of the more interesting legendaries were the Soul rings. For some specs, they were passable to bad, but others saw a strong synergy, like Soul of the Highlord for Ret. Did it make them OP, no, but it definitely made them stronger than they were before. That's just off the top of my head, but I'm sure it will be nitpicked anyway.


But anyway, we have a case of
1) The rankings already changing while missing the system.
2) Clear cases of the system causing massive power swings for certain classes

and here comes 3.
A rental system equivalent to conduits/soulbinds causing a change in rankings from traits.

Remember back in 8.1, when Blizzard added a lot of new azerite traits.

Specifically for Retribution, Light's Decree.

Which saw Ret go from bottom of the charts in Uldir parses-
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...#timespan=1000

to upper mid in parses for BoD-
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...cs/21#region=1

You argue based on your opinion. You don't source anything, you don't give any facts or examples.

The TL;DR - the DPS ranking right now is worthless. It's silly to even take it with a grain of salt, when not only is there more tuning to come, but the fact that systems aren't fully implemented yet. The very system Blizzard has admitted to using as tuning knobs for classes (Notice this entire expansion, Azerite traits were adjusted a ton, even moreso than the class itself at time, like Shadow Priest).

[Thorcall]

Are these ranks with tier 1 SL gear or just dps rankings with general activity

This rank are with any gear, with an ilvl upgraded to current. So this count player who have bfa gear (like azshara trinket or mechagon wrist), on top of some players having conduit but not all, some having working covenant but not all, without legendary (atm the best legendary for hunt give a +35% dps increase, before balance) and on top of that, its before the balance patch, who they explicitly told not gonna happen before they are done with the class part of the beta.

In few word, this ranking is useless. Do not look it.

[Amsden]

Wait... do i need the "don't worry about it" salt or the "cry about it" salt?

[Jester Joe]

Wait... do i need the "don't worry about it" salt or the "cry about it" salt?

Yes.

Yes is always the answer.

[kranur]

So are you saying that destro being the highest isn't okay but affliction being only 3% off and still 6-7%+ better than every other spec is okay?

Wut

- - - Updated - - -



Which is a mistake because classes being brokenly overpowered on release and not getting tuned properly until the first raid tier is done is ridiculous. No way they get accurate number tuning from 1-2 passes at the very end of the test.

The chart has changed. When I commented destro was pulling ahead by 25%. If that is the case ppl are forced into destro

[Bisso]

There's no point to look at those unless you just enjoy looking at meaningless color bars. We still get spec redesign on a weekly basis with MM and Shadow. Some class still don't have proper SL kit (conduits/legendary). Those numbers are from raid testing which half the players couldn't even pick their covenant. The only thing people should care right now is how the spec feels. Numbers will come later. Go talk to a guide maker or on the class discord to have knowledgeable people's opinion on the spec. Concerns and Hopes that can't translate on dps ranking are available. Like scaling issues with certain abilities. Those can't be seen on a graph. But can dictate if a class will fall behind as the tier/expansion progress or vice-versa.

[lunethzero]

Seeing Ret near the bottom. Yep, seems about accurate. Not sure about the other classes tho.