Where are you on the meters?

[Deleted]

I'm sorry but that is just you being a casual player looking at it like that. Ret is the only DPS spec for a Paladin we are talking about DPS not the freedom to be Holy or Prot. On the other hand a Hunter/Mage/Lock/Rogue have 3 DPS specs and should bring the one the most beneficial for the raid and if they aren't it's their problem but in no way does it change that Ret is pretty much last.

How many guilds actually care about your spec? Yes, the hardcore ones. But the people in them aren't as "picky" when it comes to which class they play. Most hardcore raiders have a couple of alts and reroll to one of those when needed, be it for more DPS or more utility. Believe it or not, there's still more casual raiders then hardcore raiders.

You also need to consider the fact that we're talking about a very small difference here. Yes, there's a lot of space between the first couple of specs, but after those, ret is not far behind on the rest. The first classes are overpowered. The ones close to each other are balanced. Someone's gotta be last though.

Next up is Raidbots. Looks shiny and all, but I still believe Blizzard's method of testing is far superior to logging DPS of a bunch of specs that ALL contain RNG. You get lucky, you do more DPS. easy as that.

[Requital]

How many guilds actually care about your spec? Yes, the hardcore ones. But the people in them aren't as "picky" when it comes to which class they play. Most hardcore raiders have a couple of alts and reroll to one of those when needed, be it for more DPS or more utility. Believe it or not, there's still more casual raiders then hardcore raiders.

You also need to consider the fact that we're talking about a very small difference here. Yes, there's a lot of space between the first couple of specs, but after those, ret is not far behind on the rest. The first classes are overpowered. The ones close to each other are balanced. Someone's gotta be last though.

Next up is Raidbots. Looks shiny and all, but I still believe Blizzard's method of testing is far superior to logging DPS of a bunch of specs that ALL contain RNG. You get lucky, you do more DPS. easy as that.

Any guild that wants to progress at any level should care if they don't they aren't a progression guild they are just friends raiding together for fun. So yes even in the non hardcore guilds raid leaders have to be picky about specs believe it or not it does happen.

[Ater]

This list doesn't make a lot of sense, you took "hunter" as 1, same for rogue, warlock, druid, DK, mage and Warrior.

Those classes have more then one DPS spec. Paladin isn't the lowest.

The list makes a lot of sense, it's comparing classes and right now, or at least when that list was made paladin was the class that did the lowest dps in game at an average for 10 man normal.

If you are in to raiding most people who are a bit serious about there raiding and have access to different dps-specs will change spec if one of them is doing a lot higher dps then the other specs, it's even common to change spec between bosses in the same raid. My raidgroups hunter was Survival for most of Cataclysm since it was the spec that did the highest dps. Now he is BM since thats the spec that does the highest hunter dps.

If I take my mage as an example I have change between fire and arcane during the years because in one tier one of them is better and in the next tier another has been better. And even during most tiers it has often been like one or two bosses that I change spec for just that boss, like in firelands when Arcane was stronger for most fights but ofc I went fire for Alysrazor and in Dragon Soul when fire was stronger then Arcane for most fights but I went arcane for the burst dps on Spine. And if you want to go war back in time, how many firemages did you see in Molten Core?

There is one exception where I can agree with you and thats for shamans and druids, people rarely change between ranged/melee since most of does players have healing or tanking OS and the gear needed is completely different.

---------- Post added 2012-10-14 at 06:22 PM ----------

How many guilds actually care about your spec? Yes, the hardcore ones. But the people in them aren't as "picky" when it comes to which class they play.

Most guild don't care about your spec as long as they don't miss out on an important raidbuff but most guilds care about your dps if you are a dps. If you play a warlock and the other warlock in the raid team is doing 20K dps more then you then the risk is big that people will start ask questions and get annoyed with you, and if they then finds out that the reason that the other lock is doing 20K dps more then you is not skill or the gear but the spec you are using, then yes even in non hardcore guilds will ask you to change spec if low dps is whats holding you back.

But if you were doing about the same dps as the other lock who was using another spec, then most non heroic guild wouldn't care.

[Subbversion]

At ilvl 460 last week I was between 3 and 7 depending on the pull for Stone Guard in 25m. With proper management and positioning I was coming in three, below two mages. A lot of the raid was in better gear than I. I suspect that for most fights we should be able to push the top 5 if you are playing the rotation and cooldowns properly. Sometimes if I have poor inquisition uptime or miss timing a cooldown due to movement or something else I might parse lower. I'd say Ret is in a decent place right now.