Bursty Caster for Random BGs?

[Pelleas]

Wanna play some caster with good burst to pwn noobs in BGs

Don't want to play BM though. Can you guys please recommend between DestroLock or Elemsham or somethign else? Thanks

[Deleted]

Demo Locks probably have the largest burst actually, though they are kept in check by the 2 minute CD on Dark Soul. Frost Mage is probably your best bet in random bg's, you get nearly similar burst, but every 30 seconds.

[Yvaelle]

You are looking for Frost Mage.

[checking facts]

was I the only one who read "busty caster"? lol

[Haven]

was I the only one who read "busty caster"? lol

Human female, definitely.

[Machomaije]

"To pwn noobs in BG's". If you dont know which caster is the best off Pvp, something tells me your a 'noob' yourself.

OT: Mage og lock.

[Dundebuns]

Mage or Lock. Don't bother with an ele shaman, very squishy

[Firebert]

Arcane Mage, hide at the back and let the meat shields protect you, and all you need is a Frostjaw-Deep Freeze macro and you're set.

[Nicola]

-Don't bother with warlock, casting for 15 seconds, doing pretty terrible damage, so they can cast 1 decent hitting chaosbolt ( or a hard hitting one when popping everything). Dies very easy when focused tho due long cooldown on defensive cooldowns.
-Elemental shaman does some great burst with in my opinion some overpowered healing as well, but dies fairly easy as well.
-Boomkins can bring some amazing burst by popping everything, but as always, boomkins are pretty terrible in pvp. While being a jack of all trades class, the boomkin spec is master of nothing.

-Shadow priests bring some amazing burst as well as good sustained damage, good defensives and control as well as overpowered healing
-Mages can probably kill you before you can even touch em when they pop everything, in addition to amazing control, defensive and escape tools which makes them even deadlier. Not to mention both fire as frost are very good.

[Yvaelle]

Just a caveat, boomkins are actually really good in pvp this season - the reason you don't see more of them is because resto druids are overpowered right now, if you have boomkin gear you have resto gear: why not be resto?

Boomkin sustained is very strong, and between boomkin/elemental/shadow - it's actually boomkin that has the highest HPS via glyph of moonbeast, And they don't have the mana problems from healing that shadow has. As good as they are though, resto is obviously better.

[TJ]

Mage obviously..

[Nicola]

Just a caveat, boomkins are actually really good in pvp this season - the reason you don't see more of them is because resto druids are overpowered right now, if you have boomkin gear you have resto gear: why not be resto?

Boomkin sustained is very strong, and between boomkin/elemental/shadow - it's actually boomkin that has the highest HPS via glyph of moonbeast, And they don't have the mana problems from healing that shadow has. As good as they are though, resto is obviously better.

Sustained damage means nothing when the games are all about burst now.

[Deleted]

If you want to spell cleave everything down while topping damage I'll suggest Moonkin. If you want to top killing blows and damage (assuming there's not a pro moonkin/frost DK present) I'll suggest a shadow priest. Shadow priests are also having better overall survivability.
What I love about playing moonkin/shadow priest in BGs is, that the relatively better gear you get, the more invincible you become. Against poorly geared players you don't have to play optimally with cooldowns and control to win, since your survivability/healing/damage is so strong. That means you can always save your escape possibilities/defensive CDs for when you get outnumbered.

I don't know how destruction warlocks work currently, but they have always been very bursty in Tbc/wotlk/cata. Since chaos bolt is even more powerful I think that will be a good call too. You'll just be a bit cooldown reliant, but you will have fun killing players before they can react with iceblock/bubble/detterence etc.

Frost mage is great for controling/cooldown based burst. So if you want to fuck up healers, this will be your call. However you wont be topping damage/killing blows the same way a moonkin/shadow priest does, and you need to use your tools much better than if you are playing a hybrid.

[Krimson]

I'd say go Frost Mage. The survivability / burst combo makes for a fun random-bg experience, assuming you are just going to be queueing alone most often and not going to have a pocket healer or anyone to help you with peels.

Shadow priest is a ton of fun right now, but 5.1 is supposedly bringing the removal of pvp power from healing for hybrids so the survivability of spriests, boomkins, rets, etc is going to likely go back to about what it was in Cata. It'll still be a fun class but it won't have the tanking power it has now.

[Yvaelle]

Sustained damage means nothing when the games are all about burst now.

I don't fundamentally disagree, but you listed sustained damage as one of Shadow's key strengths while implying that boomkins (and elemental shamans) were only dangerous during their cooldowns. If sustained damage is irrelevant, than your main claim about shadow is also irrelevant - but if we're taking it into consideration - boomkin sustained is markedly higher than shadows, and elemental is the highest of all if you are engaged in a large node battle (ie. Waterworks in Gilneas, Lumber Mill in AB). So we can ignore sustained damage as a selling point of any class or we can talk about it correctly - that was the aim of my caveat. Boomkins bring considerable burst during their cooldowns, but without their cooldowns they're still dangerous because of their pressure - as opposed to Affliction which is only dangerous because of pressure - or destruction which is only dangerous because of burst.

[Rorke]

Elemental Shaman.

[barrsftw]

Isn't boomkin the worst DPS spec in the game for PvE atm? If so I find it hard to believe that they have good sustained dps.

[Firebert]

Isn't boomkin the worst DPS spec in the game for PvE atm? If so I find it hard to believe that they have good sustained dps.

High burst and low sustained damage (hardcasting Starfire/Wrath) puts them at the bottom, but it doesn't make them bad for random BGs.

[Axi]

Frost Mage, Destro lock.

Spriest is better than either in random BGs though because you can heal yourself and have better survivability(especially with healer set bonuses), and can do crazy spread damage and still 75%+ the burst of either mage or lock.

[Yvaelle]

Isn't boomkin the worst DPS spec in the game for PvE atm? If so I find it hard to believe that they have good sustained dps.

Boomkin damage on single target fights is comparatively low because of their dependence on cooldowns for burst followed by lower damage phases when cooldowns aren't available, for example - Feng the Accursed on normal is almost entirely a single target burn:

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Feng_...14/60/default/ (6th lowest dps spec in the game)

However, if you have just as little as two targets to dot cleave, Boomkin sustained becomes one of the highest specs in the game, such as on Stone Dogs:

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/The_S...14/60/default/ (4th highest, beaten only by combat rogues, fire mages and affliction locks)

Furthermore, Stone Dogs is only really a two target fight - on three targets (no great example in a raid tier yet though) Boomkins scale better than any other caster again, so they go from one of the best - to probably the best for 3+ target dot cleaving - which is what pvp sustained damage always is. The only thing that can surpass them is chain lightning spam from an elemental shaman, but that requires the enemies all clump up even after seeing that chain lightning is bouncing between them all - while boomkins dont have that positional requirement.