Priest on top 'total damage' chart?

[Qualia]

If you're beating anyone except Shaman, Moonkin, Arms Warriors, BM Hunters, Destro Locks, etc... then there's a very good chance that they're bad.

This can't be more wrong. To be honest, I'm surprised to find out that so many priests are still underestimating shadow. If you are finding it hard to get to top half on most of the boss fights in ICC, and top 5 in some, then you are probably doing something wrong or not maximizing your potential (or the very rare chance that you are in a guild w/ extremely high dps, higher than most of the guilds in world top 10, and all your non-boss mobs died in less than 6s).

It's may be difficult for SP to beat "pure dps" in a stand-still, tank-n-spank fight, but fortunately, there aren't many encounters of that type in ICC. The more movement required / multi-doting & searing potential, the higher you will find yourself in damage done chart.

[Frmercury]

I'm going to agree with Qualia. Even something like H Festergut melee get goo'd and everyone has to move for spores. Shadow Priests don't have to worry about moving and will only stop DPS for 4 seconds to Disperse or if you get Gased / Goo'd. That's just one example, but I can attest to the fact that Shadow can and should be pushing in the top half, sometimes top 5.

I realize this isn't a particularly popular opinion partially because of variance in comps and skill level across different raids and varying DPS standings on the different bosses.

[harky]

It's a matter of equal gear/skill. I know it's hard to sit there and think that you're only coming in top 5 because your guild isn't as great as you think it is, but it very well may not be. For a comparison of what equal skill/gear might look for let's take Festergut and compile all the top DPS of each DPS spec:

Fury: 16.4
Feral: 16
Ass: 15.9
Marks: 15.9
Fire: 15.8
Combat: 15.6
Blood: 15.1
Ret: 15
Arcane: 14.7
Afflic: 14.4
Unholy: 14.4
Enhance: 14
Demo: 13.9
Frost: 13.8
Shadow: 13.8
Arms: 13.4
Balance: 13.4
Ele: 13.1
SV: 13.1
Destro: 13
BM: 12.2

Honestly, it's not as over-stated as you guys are thinking. When you see yourself, or other Shadow Priests consistently near the top it's due to a gear/skill gap, or a fight that happens to strongly favor them. It's not the norm.

[harky]

Uhm, most people aren't talking about theoretical DPS maximums. They're talking about effective-DPS. That is Damage Done / Fight Time. The highest effective-DPS player will always be top damage done. So when people talk about topping DPS charts, they're talking about both DPS and damage done, unless someone died who would have done more damage than them had they not been dumb.

[HavocLock]

Still yet to see any class that can beat Demo locks for AoE.

40k-50k on certain trash packs.

[meddle]

It's a matter of equal gear/skill. I know it's hard to sit there and think that you're only coming in top 5 because your guild isn't as great as you think it is, but it very well may not be. For a comparison of what equal skill/gear might look for let's take Festergut and compile all the top DPS of each DPS spec:

Fury: 16.4
Feral: 16
Ass: 15.9
Marks: 15.9
Fire: 15.8
Combat: 15.6
Blood: 15.1
Ret: 15
Arcane: 14.7
Afflic: 14.4
Unholy: 14.4
Enhance: 14
Demo: 13.9
Frost: 13.8
Shadow: 13.8
Arms: 13.4
Balance: 13.4
Ele: 13.1
SV: 13.1
Destro: 13
BM: 12.2

Honestly, it's not as over-stated as you guys are thinking. When you see yourself, or other Shadow Priests consistently near the top it's due to a gear/skill gap, or a fight that happens to strongly favor them. It's not the norm.

It is far better to compare median scores for DPS instead of looking at outlier and "best possible situation" data, i.e. the top person from each spec. A feral can easily grab the boss for a couple stacks of the damage buff and then go kitty which produces a very skewed metric. No one should be beating rogues on that fight under normal circumstances.

http://www.stratfu.com/kamigami/H_Festergut.html

See how shadow priests fare for each fight, just change the boss in the dropdown menu.

edit: the normal mode fight parser appears to be bugged

[blizzardcashshop]

I've been told OVER AND OVER priests would NEVER be on top of charts, that's why I'm questioning my chart standing. If now it's normal and quite welcomed to see priests in top of charts, then I'll get with the program and consider myself a "pure dps" class.

most people who play this game are bad and don't care.

competent people stand out and always have, now that the game is so easy to get gear in (and top tier raid gear requires no raiding) how geared someone is barely matters.

spriests aren't the best anything when the other people/classes are just as competent. there are better AOE dpsers, single target dpsers, multitarget dpsers, etc

priests are the one true support class that can do most things well. if all classes were like priests in that regard, it would be a better game. but melee do half of their damage automatically, hunters do 35-50% of their dps automatically, mages have a simple rotation and are one of the top DPS classes, etc

priests have always been about right, never op or up, just about right.

[blizzardcashshop]

It is far better to compare median scores for DPS instead of looking at outlier and "best possible situation" data, i.e. the top person from each spec. A feral can easily grab the boss for a couple stacks of the damage buff and then go kitty which produces a very skewed metric. No one should be beating rogues on that fight under normal circumstances.

http://www.stratfu.com/kamigami/H_Festergut.html

See how shadow priests fare for each fight, just change the boss in the dropdown menu.

edit: the normal mode fight parser appears to be bugged

if you compare the median then you are factoring in a LOT of info that is wrong based on how bad the average player is. they drag the median down and skew the hell out of anything you include them in.

best thing is to take the competent people and compare them, which is the same as comparing the top dps in similar gear across the board.

[hoot80]

Well, on bosses, I beat that similarly geared hunter by ~2.2K dps... so... he needs help? I basically beat every range dps, except something versus a mage, that's pretty much the only class able to beat me. Again, I would expect *every* other pure dps classes to beat me, but it isn't the case! What's wrong here? (again, not about trash, forget trash, I'm talking about versus bosses)

The question is...are you doing like 4.5k dps and he's doing 2.3k dps? It's hard to say what's going on if you are just giving out numbers with no reference. Also is this ONLY damage to boss or does this include trash DURING the boss fight? Lich King has a ton of trash during the fight and SPriests put up some massive numbers (especially in P3). Or are you talking about a boss fight with no trash? If so then your hunter is doing something wrong. Is he Survival or BM? If not, is he gemming Armor Pen?

There are going to be fights where ranged will simply out perform melee as well, but on a fight like Festergut you'll be hard pressed to out-dps a geared Assassination Rogue. Sounds to me like either your guild sucks at dps/gemming/enchanting/gear choices or we're not getting the full story here. Do you perform better than everyone on every fight (aside from the mage you mentioned)? If you linked WMO/WoL and a list of armory for your dps it would be much easier to pinpoint what they are doing wrong based on what percentage of which abilities they are using during the fights and things like their time dpsing and idle time. Of course, you probably shouldn't list other player's armory links as I don't think this is encouraged on MMO champ

[Nabuza]

I know in the tens i run i am always top on bosses (maybe a real close second) and on 25s i am usually 3-4 with an occasional 2nd but right there with 1st and 3rd.

[harky]

It is far better to compare median scores for DPS instead of looking at outlier and "best possible situation" data, i.e. the top person from each spec. A feral can easily grab the boss for a couple stacks of the damage buff and then go kitty which produces a very skewed metric. No one should be beating rogues on that fight under normal circumstances.

http://www.stratfu.com/kamigami/H_Festergut.html

No, never compare median values. This has nothing to do with median values. The point here is to look at equal gear/skill. You're talking about a Feral Kitty taking a boss temporarily to get stacks and build DPS. Who cares? That's part of their class and part of the fight. Again, equal gear/skill is what we're looking at here.

But hey, let's go with it. Sort them by median. That still means Warrior, Druid, Rogue, Warlock, Mage, DK and Paladin all beat Priest with at least one spec. Rogue, DK and Mage all beat them with multiple specs.

But again, that isn't what really matters. When you look at the best, that's what it is.. it's the best. If you look at the best of each DPS spec, where does Shadow place? People are trying to claim they should be in the top 5, but the truth is if you have a good class balance they should barely be breaking top 10.

[DiGG]

As I don't want to talk against my guildmates, and frankly don't want to expose myself, I'm still gonna show what my Recount looks like, after a first quarter clear of ICC 25:



I'm on top... but that's including the trash. Excluding trash I would have been 3rd or 4th (me top range 'total damage', or maybe behind our top hunter). Got one retadin pulling loads of dps/total damage, one dk pulling loads too (but on some fights seems to do way less, somehow).

The hunter in my 10 men Lich King is surv btw.

[zsun]

32 - 33k DPS on ICC trash. Does your tank chain pull the trash or something? I never been that high even on trash. The best I did was around 20k.

[DiGG]

32 - 33k DPS on ICC trash. Does your tank chain pull the trash or something? I never been that high even on trash. The best I did was around 20k.

The trash before Marrowgar, can be los pulled. They come in bunch of 8-10, 2 tanks tanking them all, all I have to do is Mind Sear to death! It's really awesome to see the counter explose hehehe.

[harky]

I hang out around 25k overall on trash on my Warlock and Priests usually float around 20k. On the big AOE pulls I go up to ~50k they go up to ~30k, the Ferals go up to ~35k. ICC trash is all either AOE pulls, or single pulls.

And yeah, no offense DiGG to you, or your guild, but those numbers are very unimpressive. Now, I have no idea what kind of guild you're in, or what kind of gear you're in, but it is what it is. My guild has a probation for DPS who can't break 9k DPS. If you don't bring it up within 2 raids you're demoted. We're talking about very different environments and very different performance levels. Ultimately if you have the DPS to kill bosses before they enrage then who cares where you place on the meters?

[Weena2]

Its funny people say they do such large AOE dps, when I've done at most like 25k-30k on massive AOE pulls - I'm speaking the whole room before deathwhisper, and I assume I'm more geared than mostly everyone here.

Answering the OP's question as simply as possible, it depends on the fight how well you do on meters. On a fight like Saurfang you shouldn't be up top, I was once in my guilds kill due to perfect RNG, but that's about it. Now take a fight like LK, in phase one you should be near the bottom. Why? Because other melee classes have cleave in there normal rotation, you shouldn't be AOEing or Dotting anything else bar the LK. In transition phases you start climbing, why? Because you can dot the mobs up and move to the next before the last dies (on normal mode they die before they spawn but if your guilds dps isn't top notch then you can easily do what I said). Valkyr phase is lovely for a shadowpriest, you can Dot all 3 or mind sear off the LK (I MS as they die too fast to dot), again your climbing the meters. Last phase again is great for you if your guild dps the Vial Spirits, you have the strongest AOE possible to get them down and no one can even come close to the dps you pull on them if done properly.

[harky]

The issue is damage caps prevent AOE from scaling too much. I don't produce much more AOE damage now than when I first entered in 245/258 gear. It doesn't have that much to do with your gear as much as how well you handle AOE packs.

Oh and... as always, Seed says hi. It completely destroys Mind Sear on spirits. :P

[DiGG]

Ultimately if you have the DPS to kill bosses before they enrage then who cares where you place on the meters?

Again, I cared (used to care) only because I was told spriest wasn't suppose to be near top, while I am... I'm just trying to figure out what's "the problem" with that.

@Weena2

No, on LK I'm not on top the meter. My raid leader is asking me to dps LK, so that's what I do, and in doing so I'm doing almost 30% less as I would if I was aoe the ads (phase 1). We're still learning the fight (trial and error), we're conflicted between many tutorials, so we try plenty of ways to *place ourselves* (phase 2), I just hope we finally find THE way to do it and become a King Slayer...

[Calendra12345]

trash dps is harder then bosses I dont know :s

[talrob]

If you want OP trash aoe, see feral druids with berserk up...50k dps in 10 man heroic gear.