Which class/spec had the hardest DPS rotation in WotLK?

[Giggitey]

I like how there is 0 votes for hunters and paladins.

[Gunslinger]

All those who clicked druid never played frost DKs. Being a feral was above average in difficulty I'll give it that but it was nowhere near RNG, luck based nor did it require calculated risks as did playing a frost DK right.

Frost DKs had a lot of abilities at their disposal and they had 2 procs to look after in addition to their DoTs & runes. Each proc was very good but that could be blended in together with the rotation or they required you to mix things up using a death rune depending on your current situation in order to maximize DPS. However you couldn't wait long because the proc would refresh and you would have lost the previous, you had to think on the spot and had to think about all possible outcomes inside a 2-3 second window. Each bad choice would decrease your dps instantly. Again due to RNG you could have procs at the wrong time and you had to make the best of them or this week you could have very little procs while the next you would be swimming in them making your DPS vary.

More so I always found it interesting that you could really use, with good success rate, DnD and DoTs on adds that were out of your reach while you continued to focus down on the boss.

The big difference between Feral and Frost DKs was that you always knew when the DoTs would end as Feral and you always had time to prepare your next attack, while as a DK you had to modify your rotation based on procs, DoT timers and upcoming runes.

[Bender]

Love how these threads always turn into "I played/play the hardest class because I'm leet". Most people haven't played all classes enough to realize the complexity of maxing the dps with that class/spec, so just drop the arguments of trying to convince others what's the hardest.

That said, I played fury warrior, surv hunter, affliction lock and fire mage enough at 80 raiding to get an idea on those specs, out of those affliction was by far the hardest spec to play well, followed by surv, fury warrior and then faaaaaaaaaaaaar down the list was fire mage. Sadly fires rotation is pretty much exactly the same boring skilless shit in cata as it was in wotlk, with the added cream on top that it's even more RNG dependant than it already was. Fire is a complete shit spec in it's current incarnation.

[Jelli]

This is wrath we're talking about, AOE spam is not a rotation guys, therefore everyone wins!

[Aeiri]

None of them were hard but the "hardest" I played personally was an Affliction warlock during naxx. The 2 additional dots + lack of dot refreshing during execute really really separated good locks from bad ones.

[Nicola]

demonology, was hard and is still hard.

[Deleted]

Never tried feral, but as many others I heard it was quite hard... Z.z

[Zapgreen]

I've played affliction and feral, I think lock was a bit harder. especially after 1 min mangle duration, or if you have a hemo rouge, warrior, or a bear tank. Heck, hunters have a pet that can mangle too.

if you have that, you don't have to worry about mangling, and its pretty much just shred, savage roar, Rip and ferocious Bite (I don't think i'm missing anything) thats pretty much like a rogue, you got your spam attack, the dmg boost, a bleed and then you're dmg finisher.

excluding CoE, Locks have to get haunt up, BoA, Corruption, UA, and then shadow bolt. they also have to mana tap while juggling all of that. and if something has to bee CC'd Its always the caster's job. Heck, even Demo locks have it pretty rough, they have (excluding shared dmg buff) BoD, Corruption, immolate, hand of Guldan, shadowbolt, Incinerate on proc, and then Soulfire executes. while managing the felguard's felstorm if you use him (I don't remember if it'll auto cast that)

I think its more a case of people been hearing about how hard feral was for so long, that they're just stuck in the old mindset. Like i said, I might be missing something, but from what I remember, its pretty much those four abilities, right? theys why my vote is for lock.

also this is just pure rotation, If you say berserk, locks have meta, rogues have vendetta. tiger instinct; soul burn; cold blood. so the primary damage rotation.

[Ormula]

This really depends on what time frame you're talking about. Feral kitties had undeniably the hardest rotation pre-3.3, when Mangle had a 12 second duration. It was a priority order, where:
Savage Roar > Mangle > Rake > Rip > 5pt Ferocious Bite > Shred, and all of the debuffs had <24 second durations. So many times you were faced with the difficult decision of either energy capping, or possibly losing 1k dps because you couldn't get 5 points again to keep rip up. It had a huge ramp-up time, with an extremely tight and harsh priority order, AND it had a positional requirement of being behind the boss (Thus making them nearly useless on fights like Kologarn, and often times lost a bit of DPS on fights where bosses like to turn around like Vezaxx). So, so unforgiving.

However, when 3.3 hit and caused Mangle to have a 60 second debuff timer, it loosened up the rotation significantly (At the same time, they were starting to get ludicrous amounts of crit, making their combo point generation relatively stable) and I'd say that patch thrust Enhancement shamans above kitties.

Also, I played a warlock throughout ToC and ICC, and while I'm not sure of pre-3.2 Aff playstyle, I can tell you that the kitty was much more brutal than the warlock. Considering your abilities refresh one of your dots, and all the rest of your dots are single casts, with your filler spell being just that, a filler spell. Imagine if you needed to cast a random number of shadow bolts between 3 and 5 (depending on crits) before applying your UA and your spells didn't refresh corruption, and you could only cast shadow bolts every X seconds due to mana issues (Nothing really akin to energy for warlocks, sorry), where X depends on procs of a very RNG talent, and it would be a very similar style. Besides, execute phases for Demo and Affliction were always relatively easy. Hell, When you hit execute phase for affliction, you completely dropped your CoA.

[Peppercat]

Shadow Priests were pretty tricky up till the end of uld.

Ferals and Enh Shams had it rough most of the expac.

Combat Rogues were easy to be okay with, but were moderately challenging to be really good with.

But to be honest I played Feral through WotlK and, it wasn't that hard either.

[Theotormon]

I am going to judge this based on which classes suffer the most due to minor mistakes in rotation, not which classes have most/least buttons to push.
1.) Although I don't play a feral druid, my wife does, and if she misses something or is late on something in her rotation, her DPS varies wildly. Seems pretty unforgiving.
2.) SPriests... I raided shadow for this first cata tier as shadow and holy (shadow since respecced to PvP disc). Everything revolves around keeping all three DoTs up with enveloping shadows (boosts DoT dmg, including mind flay, boosted by mastery). Very tough to do in a movement based raid environment, as ES drops after ~12 sec and must be applied by an orb-empowered mind blast. If it falls off, your DPS is screwed. Like rogue assassination, rotation changes below %25, when u start including SWD... even then that can be a DPS loss if done wrong. Not complicated, but minor mistakes carry severe DPS loss
2.) Sub rogues. Although they are now viable for PvE, I tried it and it's more difficult to top meters than with combat or assassin.... Unfortunately, DPS are judged by those meters, so if you're too deep into thinking out rotation, you're probably standing in shit... that makes Sub tough if you're inexperienced.

[lightscreen]

shadow priests.. between the constant dot reapplying, watching for orb procs, and making sure empowered shadow stays up. not to mention the issue of clipping mind flays

[Deleted]

Shadow priests,
Affliction warlocks
Feral druids
and Enhancement shamans are the only real viable options in this poll.

I voted Enhancement shaman myself.

The reason noone mentioned Subtlety Rogues is because nobody plays the spec in PvE because the rotation is too darn hard. At least the other specs are played.

[Deleted]

I tend to be torn between feral druid and frost (and blood) DK's. Considering DK used ~14 abilities per fight contary to i.e. locks 5 (ish), then yes I found this be harder than majority of others. But those polls often tend to be on style of "my class/spec> others".

To those, who say enhancement shaman. I played both enha shaman and frost DK. And shaman rotation was pretty much "initial rotation" and then things off CDs or procs. same with shadowpriest and as rest was pretty much whack-a-mole, for me those were quite easy classes to dps with actually.

Maybe I just see things "easy" in general. I did run ICC trough with all my characters on some point - enha and resto shaman, demo lock, balance/feral druid, dk (tried all specs), SV hunter (and later other hunter MM), holy paladin and even as fire mage and in my eyes most classes run on same core- apply dots, or do initial rotation. Just thing was to know boss tactics and stay away from the bad stuff. (and before someone comes with the no-life argument I levelled all classes up with dualboxing and my goal has always been to see game from every angle )

If you play enha shaman - frost dk becomes easy. If you play a warlock - dps priest comes easier; if you play mage - you suddenly find there are common lines with moonkin, if you play rogue - feral dps comes much-much easier and so on and so on.

Just my 2 cents

[Deleted]

I always thought enhancement was easy....feral was a completely different story so I voted for druid.

[Xeones]

After the mangle change, it was Enhancement shaman hands down. Death Knights weren't even on the ranking.

I always thought enhancement was easy....feral was a completely different story so I voted for druid.

You were probably doing it wrong, most enh shaman I ran into were so far behind me it wasn't funny in Wrath.