Is there a such thing as a bad spec anymore?

[Deneios]

Survival hunter.
Mediocre dmg, least amount of utility, pet AI sucks still and its melee.
9 times out of 10 id rather have enha shaman than a survival hunter in group.

[Rndname]

Survival hunter.
Mediocre dmg, least amount of utility, pet AI sucks still and its melee.
9 times out of 10 id rather have enha shaman than a survival hunter in group.

You have 0 idea what you are talking about.
SV is an absolut m+ beast and more than fine in ST raid dps.
I guess you just never saw a geared/good SV hunter in your +10 keys

And SV got the same utility as the other speccs: melee interrupt, binding shot, stun

BUT, yes, often you just want more range dps

[potis]

3 pages that once more show why these forum cant be taken seriously at matters of how WoW should be designed, someone calling SV hunter bad, rofl.

For the content that Blizzard seems relevant to balance around (for those that dont get it they care until the point of the reward system), they care about the balance in +15-20s, they dont care about +25s or PvP , there are no bad specs, only bad players for the last 3 expansions or so.

The only problem with specs is mostly "Why would i play this when the other spec is so much easier and does the same", the balance also produces that problem, why play a MM/Survival hunter that are harder to play than BM, when BM does the same things mostly, why play Feral with its "tryhard compared to moonkin" rotation, which is 3 buttons?

[Doffen]

Laughs in MOP

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And there's your problem. Raiding is just one aspect, theres still PvP (which is terribly balanced right now) and mythic+ (which has fairly large problems with balance too).

Though I wouldnt even call it the most balanced time for raiding. Why yes, it certainly is fairly balanced for that at the moment, this isnt the first time that's happened. Its just the last two expansions had periods where the balance was wildly off during some tiers which is coloring your perception.

Even Legion and BfA was more balanced than the previous expansions. I dont think my perception is the one that is being colored. You are thinking about outliers, which I agree should be handled more agressively. I talked about the balance as a whole.

Mythic+ is quite balanced too, with some outliers, but better than BfA, by far.

While PvP has some major burst issues. Thats what removing templates and scaling do for you.

Though a difference of 10% dps is fairly large if both have similar utility.

Just to take that sentence on its own context, 10% is far better than what it was before. To think they manage anything better is utopia. Too many factors that makes balancing an impossible task.

Though they should fix the few outliers way faster than they have, historically.

[Amaterasu65]

I laugh at people who say SV is performing bad, I don't play hunter but I've seen SV hunters in +20 keys blasting.

Also nerf Moonkin and dps balance should be ok-ish.

[Doffen]

I laugh at people who say SV is performing bad, I don't play hunter but I've seen SV hunters in +20 keys blasting.

Also nerf Moonkin and dps balance should be ok-ish.

SV hunters do good. I am probably changing main to my survival hunter when I come back to WoW in 9.2, looking at that great tier set.

And pretty much as you say, nerf boomkins a little and balance is as good as its going to get. I highly doubt they can do much better.

[Log Cabin]

Laughs in MOP

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And there's your problem. Raiding is just one aspect, theres still PvP (which is terribly balanced right now) and mythic+ (which has fairly large problems with balance too).

Though I wouldnt even call it the most balanced time for raiding. Why yes, it certainly is fairly balanced for that at the moment, this isnt the first time that's happened. Its just the last two expansions had periods where the balance was wildly off during some tiers which is coloring your perception.

It wasn't better in mop... depending on tier fire mages were pulling nearly double dps of other classes or warlocks were a mile ahead.

[Temp name]

Depends what you define as a bad spec. You can generally do whatever content you want on whatever class you want, it's just a matter of getting into a group that lets you. Whether or not you'll have fun or be useful to the group is another matter.

As a quick example, you can bring a feral druid or a boomkin. The boomy will (probably) do more damage, it's not a melee, and it has more utility. The only thing feral does that boomy doesn't is consistent off healing, but you generally don't need that in keys unless you're running a meme comp without a healer

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SV hunters do good. I am probably changing main to my survival hunter when I come back to WoW in 9.2, looking at that great tier set.

And pretty much as you say, nerf boomkins a little and balance is as good as its going to get. I highly doubt they can do much better.

Boomkins aren't even the best spec in the game.. They only look like that because people will focus on the pulls they had their CDs and ignore that they do basically nothing the times they don't have CDs up.
If you want a class to be upset at for doing super well, get upset at WW

[unbound]

Are there any specs, currently in this patch, that are so horrible that you'd recommend not be used in any situation (World, BG, Arena, Raid, M+)?

It seems like, roughly, things are "close enough" that a competent player of a spec if better than an incompetent player of a "good" class+spec.

So excluding personal preference, are there any specs so bad that the spec alone, for the moment, is a "horrible choice"?

I'm an altaholic so I tend to bounce around and right now it seems gear and skill matters more than class+spec in, literally, every single way. Is this an incorrect assumption?

rofl


[90th percentile, heroic Sanctum, 242-244 ilvl]

Ignoring the best and worst, there is a ~13.5% difference between Assassin Rogue and Aff Lock. Considering the best and worst, there is over a 20% difference between Balance Druid and Ele Shaman. Despite the relative smoothness of what you see, the differences are still rather stark, and sufficient large enough that guilds pushing raids will eliminate certain specs.

Top-level PvP is just as bad. Arms Warrior dominates, followed by Fire Mage, with Shadow Priest, Ret Pally, Sub Rogue and WW Monk not overly far behind. Marks Hunter, Frost Mage, Demon Lock, Unholy DK, Outlaw Rogue, Arcane Mage, and Fury Warrior are all very poor. Link - based on data from official Blizz API


About the only element in WoW that your comment could remotely apply towards is M+ dungeons, where the discrepancies aren't *as* bad...but you will still find classes that will have preferential treatment (Balance Druid, Havok DH, Dest Lock, Arms Warrior) over mediocre classes.

[Schizoide]

Right, as per usual in these threads people get confused about viable vs competitive. Every spec is viable, elemental there does more than enough damage to clear the content. It'll just take longer and be more annoying, if you take the specs in the bottom quarter or so of the rankings.

[Nootz]

Hell I bet even this is overestimating the skill level here. I'd be surprised if only half of the active players on this forum (of which I'm not one) can even get into those runs and are instead languishing in the +4-9 hellscape because of bad IO scores.

Overall WoW dps is very balanced these days and for any content that matters any spec combination CAN do it. Whether it will be the fastest/most efficient is another story, but that's moving the goalposts imo.

Which is where the wow M+ community gets this giant misconception of "good vs bad". Everyone these days thinks they're the hottest shit to hit the scene and they need the good comps in order to compete.

I have friends that managed KSM with a Necrolord Prot Warrior only pugging during S1. Unless you are going for MDI levels of competitive play, anyone with a high enough skill level can accomplish KSM on any spec.

[Doffen]

Boomkins aren't even the best spec in the game.. They only look like that because people will focus on the pulls they had their CDs and ignore that they do basically nothing the times they don't have CDs up.
If you want a class to be upset at for doing super well, get upset at WW

They do better than WW monks looking at the raiding charts, so what is really the best raiding spec then? I dont look at my personal experience in game, so it doesn't just look that way. People will focus their pulls with cds? You talking about your own personal experience? Its like in WotLK when the guild leader listed up boomkin as the best spec, while it was mediocre at best with the worst scaling in the game, but he based it on the guild's performance. Which is faulty, on all levels.

What are you basing it on? WW does good, yes, but it doesn't stand out the way boomkin have done all of SL. I give you that it seems in 9.1.5 there is more competition if you look at different percentiles, but at the most used one, 90%, boomkin still dominates in hc and mythic.

[potis]

Which is where the wow M+ community gets this giant misconception of "good vs bad". Everyone these days thinks they're the hottest shit to hit the scene and they need the good comps in order to compete.

I have friends that managed KSM with a Necrolord Prot Warrior only pugging during S1. Unless you are going for MDI levels of competitive play, anyone with a high enough skill level can accomplish KSM on any spec.

Pretty much the only actual problem when it comes to M+.

The majority of the players as always, is so low skilled that they think they need the 5% extra some class might have in cleave situations while they are trying to do a +10.

You can see how sad things are skill wise in LFR, you see people with 50-55k hp, which means 240+ ilvl, doing something like 3.8k DPS with actual 99% activity, so they are not AFK or some other shit, getting outdpsed by the 215 alts, with 200 ilvl weapons that we just joined to get some sockets to have some fun.

All specs are viable, but you are supposed to actually play them properly.

[Fenrys]

No. Balance right now is actually in a really good place relative to WoW's history. There are certainly better specs, but everything is competitive and viable. Skill matters way more than spec. Tank balance in particular is actually astonishingly good right now.

Healer balance is probably the worst of the three right now - though all healers have their niches, its just some niches (damage & DR) are far more useful than others (throughput)

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Also - FWIW - raiding data posted is super useful, but has to be understood in context. High variance specs (like boomkin) are always going to over-perform on 90 percentile logs. Also not sure why you'd control for a weird gear level in the chart there (but I may have missed something in that?)

[Biomega]

"Good" and "bad" really only exist as relatives in WoW, not absolutes. I.e., you can only say something "better than..." or "worse than..." most of the time, and that is context- and content-specific, too.

The biggest problem, really, is that it's so easy to discriminate based on performance. Is a Survival Hunter "bad" in M+? Not at all. It can still clear most keys. But is it "worse" than say a Sub Rogue or a Frost Mage? Yes. And that's where we come to the real problem: the selection process. People imagine it being something along the lines of "oh this is a Survival Hunter? We don't want that!" - which isn't how it works, exactly. Rather, it's "oh this is a Survival Hunter? We'd rather have something better". And the reason you can do that is the overabundance of players - especially DPS - that's available in group formation. And it makes total sense - why WOULD you take someone that's worse when you could just as easily take someone that's better? Sure it might only be 1% less or whatever, but if you get that extra +1% for free why NOT take it? If that choice isn't there, you quickly see things work out differently; tanks and healers, for example, are far less discriminated against (though not never, of course) because there's less choice there. But for DPS, you start a key group and you get 20 applicants in a two seconds - so why wouldn't you choose the best classes, even if they're best by a tiny margin, if it's so easy to do so?

[potis]

"Good" and "bad" really only exist as relatives in WoW, not absolutes. I.e., you can only say something "better than..." or "worse than..." most of the time, and that is context- and content-specific, too.

The biggest problem, really, is that it's so easy to discriminate based on performance. Is a Survival Hunter "bad" in M+? Not at all. It can still clear most keys. But is it "worse" than say a Sub Rogue or a Frost Mage? Yes. And that's where we come to the real problem: the selection process. People imagine it being something along the lines of "oh this is a Survival Hunter? We don't want that!" - which isn't how it works, exactly. Rather, it's "oh this is a Survival Hunter? We'd rather have something better". And the reason you can do that is the overabundance of players - especially DPS - that's available in group formation. And it makes total sense - why WOULD you take someone that's worse when you could just as easily take someone that's better? Sure it might only be 1% less or whatever, but if you get that extra +1% for free why NOT take it? If that choice isn't there, you quickly see things work out differently; tanks and healers, for example, are far less discriminated against (though not never, of course) because there's less choice there. But for DPS, you start a key group and you get 20 applicants in a two seconds - so why wouldn't you choose the best classes, even if they're best by a tiny margin, if it's so easy to do so?

Yes, but no.

Your whole paragraph only makes sense if you assume everyone plays correctly, for the 99% that doesnt play correctly, nothing of that matters.

Which is what people dont understand, in simpler terms people need to understand or start accepting they are absolutely terrible at the game either way and to cool it off and stop pretending they need a +25 composition for their +5, when they are already outgearing the content, but their lack of skill and knowledge doesnt allow them to know that.

[Biomega]

Your whole paragraph only makes sense if you assume everyone plays correctly, for the 99% that doesnt play correctly, nothing of that matters, which is what people dont understand, in simpler terms people need to understand they are absolutely terrible at the game either way and to cool it off and stop pretending they need a +25 composition for their +5.

Well of course player skill comes into it, too, but there's few ways to gauge that. I can look at gear and now M+ score, but even that won't guarantee a skilled player. And all things being equal (or close enough), you'd STILL pick the better class wouldn't you?

Of course if you have more information things change but a lot of the time you don't.

[Theangryone]

i dont see any purpose to ever play a melee hunter or feral druid but thats about it

Both work quite well in pvp

[Unholyground]

Most of the specs aren't really that fun though. World of warcraft has the problem of no build freedom sure there are small choices with each speck but it's not really fun.

[Zantera]

The few survival hunters I've played with have been absolutely bangin' the DPS and I've seen some much more popular DPS specs smoked by those survival hunters on the damage. And yeah that goes into player skill etc but I remember times in this game when playing a weird spec would never be able to compete with the big specs at all. The only real negative of a survival hunter in terms of group comp would be that it's another melee in a game that already has too many melee options but that in itself doesn't make the spec bad.