Mages Nerf-ed?

[nobodyz]

Been few years since I last boxed WoW.. Came back recently and decided to run a team to max before I continue my old team.. those were the days of shammies ~

so i started a pally, bm hunter, sv hunter, mage, priest.. am nw in my 40+ noticed my sv top the damage chart, with pally next and bm.. i'm running arcane/frost (dual spec) mage.. both spec got me the lowest dmg done??

are mages being nerfed so badly? i saw on noxxic.com, frost dk top the dps chart? but frost mage is 3rd in the chart after dk.. hmm.. wonder where went wrong.. is frost the way to go? or arcane stil the best?

[MiRai]

How can you compare level 40 -- where you don't even have all of your abilities or talents -- to the top level of the game where everything is extremely competitive and classes are constantly being re-balanced?

I have no idea how accurate this site is (http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/), but Arcane Mages seem to be right near the top like usual.

[Wubsie]

Looking at Word of Logs (http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/US-EU/Siege_of_Orgrimmar/dps/) it seems they are doing just fine on most fights in high end raiding as well. Granted some there are classes and specs that are more commonly represented in the rankings, but mages seem to be able to competitive.

[zenga]

The rankings on noxxic are based on simulationcraft, which is - as the name says - a simulation environment. There are many reasons why that isn't accurate:



it's prone to bugs
some classes/specs are better addressed than others (.e.g. boomkin theorycrafters tend to use their own spreadsheet instead of simcraft), meaning that for some specs the results are fairly accurate and for others totality not
how do you measure it? single target standing still vs high movement fights vs a fight with 5 adds ... hard to compare these, different specs perform different under different circumstances


If you want to get a better real-world representation of how specs perform you should go to raidbots.com, their rankings are based on actual logs from actual fights, i.e. the sample size is massive.

Let's see for 10 man heroic:



this is the spec score (http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Score/25H/all/14/60/default/), a system that gives points to each class based on how those respective classes perform on each encounter, it gives a good overall overview of how strong certain specs are
for an actual dps overview one should check each individual fight, but there is also an overall dps ranking (http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_DPS/25H/all/14/60/p75/), though there is somewhat a consensus to use the 75th percentile, as it weeds out bad players


The reasons why 'top 100' is an awful way to measure spec performance contrary to popular belief:


it shows the outliers, meaning that a spec that is more rng based than another will have a wider variance spread
rankings are being gamed once content is down (e.g. a certain class in a raid gets all the buffs like tricks, or can stay on adds infinitely ... etc ... just to score a high ranking) thus it makes the results of this even more bogus.


Keep in mind that these rankings are made in top notch gear by really good players, 585 gear is different than 563 dungeon gear. Not to mention that certain trinkets can literally make certain classes OP as fuck. The difference between having that trinket or not is massive.

All in all the best way to determine how strong a spec is, is to check raidbots on a fight per fight basis (i.e. single target high movement boss, mixed adds/single boss fights, aoe fest, etc ). There is no 1 best list that is accurate enough to draw conclusions, it only gives an indication.

[nobodyz]

How can you compare level 40 -- where you don't even have all of your abilities or talents -- to the top level of the game where everything is extremely competitive and classes are constantly being re-balanced?

I have no idea how accurate this site is (http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/), but Arcane Mages seem to be right near the top like usual.

i remember among my team when I boxed few years back, I have issues keeping threat off my arcane mages due to the huge dps they are doing.. well.. it could be my shammies are not doing much dps :P seems raidbots shows warlock is the highest.. nv tried that before.. mayb i should :p

with proc base spell casting.. its not tat easy to spam one button anymore.. :|

[MiRai]

i remember among my team when I boxed few years back, I have issues keeping threat off my arcane mages due to the huge dps they are doing.. well.. it could be my shammies are not doing much dps :P seems raidbots shows warlock is the highest.. nv tried that before.. mayb i should :p

with proc base spell casting.. its not tat easy to spam one button anymore.. :|
Threat really hasn't been an issue in quite some time since they boosted it by like... 300% or something like that when you're in your tank "stance." If you're not in the "stance" that you're supposed to be in when trying to tank then you're not going to output any real threat unless you're doing an ultra amount of DPS, so I wouldn't classify a class as bad or as having low DPS based on the fact that they can't pull anything off your tank like they used to years ago.

[nobodyz]

yup.. i guess i've lots to re-understand again.. haha.. with all the changes coming in.. had to watch some of mirai's instance run video before i could do them.. got a shock at the changes that came about.. :p

all in all, the fun is still there for me..

[Xixillia]

Also - instant casts > cast times - so if your mage's target dies before a cast goes off - that's a dps loss. I run into that issue a lot with myowbie teams.

[nobodyz]

Also - instant casts > cast times - so if your mage's target dies before a cast goes off - that's a dps loss. I run into that issue a lot with myowbie teams.

yeah.. i realize that as well.. cuz 2x of my hunter are mostly instant cast with dot.. and my pally get his damage from aoe spells and skills.. guess when i run my shammies and mage, the damage shd b comparable.. :p