So, now that MoP is over, which class and spec suffered the most this expansion?

[cszsolt3]

Shadow Priests beat out Monks by a ton. Coming from a Brewmaster that has raided a while we had one change which was a needed damage nerf I dont call that a roller coaster. As far as WW I never really followed the spec but the only major thing I can remember is the Mastery change and something in 5.1 or 5.2 but then again Ive never really played WW.

As far as MW besides Jab Jab Uplift and Manatea i dont remember much either about their changes but then again never really played it a lot. Basically Brewmasters had one change the entire xpac maybe some really minor ones along the way. Other specs had it MUCH worse than Monks.

So you say you don't know much about WW which most people said had the worst this xpac, then you go on to saying that other specs had it worse even though you don't know anything about WW . Your statement seem to be standing on solid ground.

To make it clear, WW had absolutely no place in a HC 10 man raiding guild throughout the WHOLE expansion, there isn't a single other spec in the game the same thing could be said about.

[Enan1981]

Warlocks... They took away our AoE Drain Life *sniff*

[NuLogic]

Shadow priest by far.
WW monks where thrown around like a rag doll with all the changes and lack of utility.

Dk frost/unholy and ret paly didn't do very good either.

[Aensland]

What a difference a year+ makes. I actually had to bench my warlock (main) to raid Dragon Soul with my spriest. This expansion, I find little to no reason to play it.

[Dead_MAX]

Depends on point of view. I play PvE balance druid and I think, MoP was a good expansion. On the other hand when I was trying to do some PvP with my balance...I was/am still totally useless, like in Cata....

[Venant]

I would say that Rogues are in terms of how many people are actively playing them, locks and rogues were far below everyone else in representation early on in the expansion, but for some reason Blizz decided to buff locks to 'lol god status' and more or less ignore rogues.

[Raugnaut]

First, this is not only about dps. Shadow priests have: no burst (have no ability to get 3 orbs when needed = can't burst at the start of fight with the whole raid = not only much lower overall damage, but also unable to burst something quickly when needed), no dps cooldown (EVERY other DD spec has one. Every fucking other. Homogenisation is bad, but unequality at this level is WAY worse), huge ramp up time, very boring gameplay, bad resource management system (we should have 5 slots for dark orbs for better planning and not wasting procs), awful loss of damage dealt on the move. Oh, and Greg "Let's nerf Shadow Word: pain" Street. Should I continue?
Second, if you look at detailed bosses statistics, you'll see that they are playable on half of the bosses, its the optimistic view.

I don't know about superiority of shadow priests in pvp on the start of MoP, and neither I care. Blizzard should not cripple class in pve because of pvp reasons, it is awful design. I also don't understand Blizzard's nonsence about "every class having their place in the DPS ladder", it is bullshit. It should be "bring the player, not the class". It definitely should not be "we bench shadow priests when we have a single-target based boss progression". It definitely should not be "warlocks do 20-25% more dps than everyone else".

While not all of this is wrong, some of it is. For starts, Shadow Priests DO have a dps CD- Shadowfiend. After doing a bit of testing, it does about 20k dps for 15 seconds at 502 ilvl. I would imagine that its probably in the range of 50k dps at 570 ilvl. So, saying that Shadow Priests do not have any DPS cooldowns is wrong, they have a relatively strong "burst" one.

I do have to say that the inability to "hold" onto DP sucks. You HAVE to spend DP before MB comes off CD, and if you are speced into insanity, which seems to be common atm, you have to use it as soon as you get your 3rd shadow orb pretty much. (The only time you can really hold off is if you are speced into mindbender, in which you can hold off on it till right before you have to mind blast). Imo, if Shadow Priests could hold onto 6, or even 9 shadow orbs, it would help the burst problem a TON more then anything else. But, saying that Shadow Priests have NO burst is wrong. Shadow Priests simply can't save their burst for bursting periods, and it takes a while to ramp it up.

As for ramp-up time.. Nah, not really. SW:P, VE, and then you can start mindflaying with MB woven in. No ramp-up time imo. Ramp-up time is more like Feral- you have to use a 5 point SR to get PS, pool energy, get 5 more combo points, and then make sure you get a TF+DoC rip/rake/thrash for max damage, preferably with procs up. That takes at LEAST 15 seconds, if not more, and has to occaisonally be repeated. Nothing like the 3 globals it takes to get Shadow rolling.

"Boring Gameplay". Thats really in the eye of the beholder. If you don't like shadow's playstyle, you swap to other dps classes, because obviously Shadow isn't for you. My GL currently raids 11/14 heroic, and he only does shadow priest, even though he has 3 other dps alts capable of preforming in the raid.

"Awful loss of damage dealt on the move". Yes, compared to other classes, this can be a problem. Shamans can Lightning Bolt on the move. Warlocks have that movement talent, and Fel Flame if they don't want to take it, as well as reapplying DoTs. Mages also have a movement talent thats very strong. Boomkins have moonfire spam, and hunters never stop moving. Shadow Priests? Well, not much. If you are speced into twist, you can toss a heal on someone in hopes that you get the healing side proc. If you are speced into MB procs, maybe you will get lucky. And who DOESNT spec into insanity? But yea, compared to all other range, priests are really suspectable to movement for losing dps, and requires RNG in order to NOT lose damage.

Anyway, for fights where priests are good... H Immerseous has opportunities for high ToF uptime, but not much multi-doting, and its heavy on movement. Yea, S Priests are bad here. H Protectors, GREAT fight for shadow priests. Little movement, many targets. H Norushen, decent fight. Potentially some multi-dot action, little movement. H Sha, average. Slight movement, good ToF potential, no multi-dotting. H Galakras, great fight. Tons of multi-doting, ToF uptime very high. H Juggernaut, bad fight. Lots of movement, no multi-dotting potential. H Shamans... better on normal then heroic. Bad on heroic. H Nazgrim, good fight. Low movement, high add density. H Malk, average fight. Can have quite a bit of movement and not much potential for ToF. H Spoils, meh fight. Quite a bit of movement, adds die very quickly.

H Thok, terrible fight. Tons of movement and lots of interuption (Although the interupting portion isn't that bad compared to the other classes). H Siege... Also not a good fight. Lots of movement. H Klaxxi, good for padding, but bad otherwise. H Garrosh, good fight. Many periods of non-movement followed by short sprints.

Also, keep in mind Shadow's healing utility. We have Vampiric Embrace as a very good healing CD, if we have ToF, can toss out minor heals on the move, have among the BEST survival CD (Dispersion), which allows us to soak mechanics that would kill the majority of other players (Static Shock on Lei Shen), Halo, which can be a revival on a 45 second CD if positioned correctly, ect. To say that Shadow Priests have been bad this expansion is just wrong. Sure, we lack on movement and single target situations, but we are pretty good in other windows. Remember that hunters/mages/WW are constantly complaining about a lack of raid utility in comparision to most other classes. Damage isn't everything in progression, utility can make a HUGE difference.

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People, please at least TRY to qualify your statements, yea? Rather then looking like every single "NERF X BUFF Y" QQ on the WoW forums. Thats why we have the WoW forums, for QQ posts.

[cynsacat]

Well every other class being stated mentions poor PVP burst or utility capabilities or poor dps/healing quality in PVE, but maybe I am mistaken. Nonetheless, if the only thing mages have to complain about is that they don't like there last talents, then I hardly say that makes them the hated class XD

I will certainly grant you that! Having previous mained a mage (and shelved it after the first tier of MoP), I think the resonating word that is putting mages in the conversation here is "suffered." It's rather disappointing to have played a class for a while and loved it (prior to my monk, the mage was the only DPS class I had any real fun playing) and then to have that wrecked by something as... Well, simple as the level 90 talents. It's not that they're bad in the sense that they're not functional; obviously mages do excellent damage still. But having to dance between two runes on the ground or to stop and channel a spell every 60 seconds (is it 60 seconds now? I'm throwing in a random number that sounds about right, but don't take it as gospel; it's more a reference point than anything) definitely disrupted the play of the class, thus causing the class to suffer as a whole. But that's from a player standpoint, not from a numbers standpoint.

And, yeah, a lot of other classes have stupid things like that (Paladins and inquisition come to mind, and they're not alone). But what I'd argue there is that you can build holy power and work on keeping that buff up while moving and doing everything that you need to do. It's the fact that, as a mage, you have to stand and channel, or stop everything you're doing (stop doing damage entirely) to channel to keep up a buff. Then, mid-channel, a fire puddle spawns under you... So you have to GTFO, then stop, then start all over again. In practice, it works. But... Yet it definitely subtracts from the appeal of the class.

Other classes have suffered for other reasons, for sure, and more so than mages at that. But I think it's still a very viable point.

[Eace]

Have to go with mage as well.

My mage used to be my favorite character; now I don't even enjoy playing it. If they completely redo the 90 tier of talents (and perhaps 75 as well, the bombs could just be made class specific?), I'll consider playing it again in WoD. Now, in terms of enjoying a class, it falls behind everyone else. (I've played all of the classes to at least level 81, most of them to 90.)

[Kosic]

Mages, because of the level 90 talents

What's wrong with the level 90 talents?
Alter time was more of an issue than anything else the Mage has suffered.
Oh, I love getting the perfect opener, use Alter time with all procs, CDs, trinkets etc, 1 second into Alter time someone goes "pop heroism!" at the start of the encounter instead at the normal time, and bam the shaman instantly hits it, I miss out on the Alter Time because I got to quickly cancel it. Or they hit it 1 second before Alter time flips over, and I miss out on the Heroism buff.

Tbh, I think shadow Priests had a hard time this Xpac. I rerolled to mine, got to 90, did some timeless isle, found it slow, and read they were pretty weak into this patch. So I just went Mage instead and never looked back.

Only seen a few Shadow Priests out there, but none has shocked me. Some did back at the end of ToT (LFR) when they had heroic gear, but this time around. I've gotten into normal raiding, and the heroic geared SP's on my server just don't cut it. So I don't know if that is down to class design or skill. But from seeing on sims etc, I would say it's class design restricting them.

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*edit*

What is with people not liking Mage's 90 talent. It's not horrible, it's a little annoying but nothing bad.

And @Eace, you not liking Mage bombs? I know this is own opinion, but man, having the choice of using the correct bomb on any encounter, there's nothing wrong with that. I would hate having to be fire just to use the better bomb out of the 3.

[Dreyen]

mm... havent followed all the classes, but elemental shamans havent been strong at any point this expansion i believe, only good in areas where chain lightning shines.

[l33t]

To say that Shadow Priests have been bad this expansion is just wrong. Sure, we lack on movement and single target situations, but we are pretty good in other windows. Remember that hunters/mages/WW are constantly complaining about a lack of raid utility in comparision to most other classes. Damage isn't everything in progression, utility can make a HUGE difference.

While I do understand your point of view on some weak points (Shadowfiend being a dps cd made me laugh, though. Should we now say that hunter's Dire beast is a dps cooldown too? Or Frost DK's zombie?), I must say I'm kind of tired of that "raid utility" argument everyone use when it comes to judging SP's performance. You know, due to Blizzard's genius raid mechanics people switch to raiding with two healers instead of three in 10, because of great increase of damage done needed and total huge overhealing percents. And here you are, saying that lacking damage as a damage dealer while being able to add to total overhealing percent is good. Don't know what your healers are doing in raid; our holy pala and disc priest require raid saves so rarely that we could celebrate annuals of such events happening. I, as a damage dealer, want to do my primary role, which is dealing damage. And being a competitive damage dealer on three fights out of fourteen is not good.

I was more than happy to play Shadow priest back in BC, yes, my damage was not rocking up in 90% of encounters, but I had a strong support role, and I knew that if I fail to do what I needed to do - regen mana - raid will fail. And I always had a raid spot, no matter what. Since we don't have a support role anymore, every damage dealer must be equal, or, at least, they should be in 5% delta, so nobody would be benched for a progression due to idiotic class design.

And anyway, even if raid CD really that mattered, we have an affliction warlock. He has way more powerful multidot, and way more useful raid healing cd, while having way more stronger single target damage, real dps cooldown, loses way less damage on the move, mitigate way more damage and can also support raid with battle res and gates (had any people completed Iron Qon without warlock gates? I seriously doubt it). I really forgot the genious shadowform "passive damage mitigation is boring and skilless, so we take it from everyone - except hunters, because its their talent, and warlocks, because we decided that warlocks should be uber in everything" nerf, which adds to the whole picture of SP's miserability in MoP.

[LocNess]

What's wrong with the level 90 talents?

They were admittedly a LOT worse pre-5.2. But it is something that forces little movement in an expansion that you need more movement than ever, and it is a pain in the ass and extremely tedious, and it breaks your DPS if you fuck up. Alter Time has issues as well, which are also being addressed. If you ever need to know whats wrong, just make a post on the Mage forums and people will tell you.

I am going with Mage, lack of great utility + shitty class design + forcing multi-dot to bandaid dps for part of the expansion. Shadow Priests dps sucks, but they have great utility and off heals that makes them very helpful to raids.

[GoldNSilence]

Shadow Priests and Death Knights in general. Shadow Priest does still get some shining moments in SoO but overall they're bad vs single target. Death Knights scale horribly with gear.

[Paula Deen]

Shadow Priest suffered alot overall, it was a bit sad. I would also say Ret.

[Senftw]

PvE: Elemental, or Hunters.
PvP: Monk

[rebecca191]

I guess it's just as well I came back too late this expac to hardcore raid, while I don't *hate* disc and never had a problem playing it on fights where it was needed in Wrath and Cata I prefer to play holy for some fights too. Shadow definitely felt awful though. I never spec it for anything other than Brawler's Guild (and it makes me cry and wish my main had a better DPS spec). It's way easier to solo stuff as disc and it takes forever to kill me.

[Suzaka]

Shadow Priests and Death Knights in general. Shadow Priest does still get some shining moments in SoO but overall they're bad vs single target. Death Knights scale horribly with gear.

This. Spriest was my main ever since BC, not anymore.

[leggomydairy]

Have to agree, WW was pretty shat upon

[Deleted]

Poor Shadow Priests