Or maybe because there’s like two of them at that skill level in the world? Maybe their groups aren’t as good? They are taking a feral druid after all.
Also you didn’t see it because you didn’t look. Just admit it. You probably assumed feral never got above a 20 at best and aren’t even sure how to argue when you see it’s POSSIBLE.
Different types of damage in different situations, though, I’d think. For example, M+ tends to favor AOE damage for mowing down trash, does it not? And the boss fights favor mobility, so you can see monk which has ton of mobility and can be specced for good AOE at top.
The danger here is that it’s just a slice of the data. Blizzard can presumably see all of the data.
I was looking at the top 10 ferals. In order to find the two +24 clears you have to go all the way down to #16. One of these clears was for NW, which has a gimmicky ST debuff that allows ferals to partially compensate for lower AOE on trash. The other was tyr PF, which has its own gimmicky trash debuffs, and is more of a ST boss fight dps check.
I already stated that ferals were clearing > +20. The argument was never that it wasn’t possible, just that it’s harder relative to other specs, due to feral being undertuned by at least 10%.
They’re not undertuned. You just want a buff. The real answer is as i stated below, the best groups aren’t inviting a feral. They want the meta dps. Thus the groups the ferals ARE getting aren’t the best. Look at some of the other people in those 24 clears. One of them is only 2300.
Sims show that they are undertuned though. And while sims are not perfect replications of reality, they are better than speculation. And it’s not just meta dps that are clearing higher keys than feral; it’s every other spec.
They’re last in IO, last in logs, last in sims. Your argument is that they are last because they aren’t getting into good groups, but one could just as well argue they aren’t getting into good groups because they are last in dps. The difference is that the latter is at least supported with some type of data.
Demo warlock. Enhance Shammy
No, my argument is they are on the lower end because there are so few of them, and they offer no real utility. Nothing you can’t get elsewhere better.
Odd, I’m actually ranked higher for my spec than you are.
You need to get gud. Taking the easy path with that hunter and still got beat.
Is that what all this push back is about? You’re scared they might balance the classes? You won’t be able to META hop to greatness but actually have to compete with every spec?
Wow, these unfounded put downs do feel great, such a profound boost to my ego.
Yet when we had that in BFA the forums were still crying all expansion about metas and how nobody gets group but the top specs.
Havoc, outlaw, BM, fire.
Prot tanks.
Druid healers
Everyone else get lost.
It’s always going to happen and be that way. People like lists, rankings, metas, etc in everything now just WoW.
That’s possible but you would need some extremely disproportionate gear scaling for these trends to be much different at different levels.
I think this methodology is pretty fair because you can throw out a lot of other factors. The 25th best parse for spec A is going to be the ideal situation for spec A, the 25th best parse for spec B is going to be the ideal situation for spec B. Average them across all the dungeons to include all the possible damage profiles you would encounter and I think you get a fair representation of a specs relative output.
As for all the good player rushing to META, I think every spec is going to have die hard experts and with enough data it’s their parses that are going to be in the top 100 parses.
Both have cleared +25. Despite that, demo lock looks to be comparably as bad as feral; note how both are at the bottom of the OP data set. Enh looks to be somewhat better. This is all mirrored by WCL, IO, and sims.
A class’ performance is independent of its popularity though. DPS doesn’t increase proportional to the number of people playing the spec. This is why the world’s best ferals are also struggling relative to other specs, and also why sims correspond to this. Alternatively, adjusting a spec’s DPS can affect its popularity.
We can at least agree that feral doesn’t offer unique, impactful utility. Also, the existence of other specs that need tuning for m+ doesn’t invalidate the design problems with feral. Even if you ignore that other bottom-tier specs can clear higher keys than feral, they are all still bottom-tier, usually (or in the case of feral, always) on a consistent basis from season to season, and Bliz should do a better job adjusting and designing these specs so that is not the case… no matter the reason(s) on which we disagree.
No it’s not. If a class doesn’t offer anything that puts it ahead of better options, the more devoted, “skilled,” playerbase will pick those better options. Period.
Every spec has die hard experts.
Your assumption requires that every single good player META hops. That’s not the case.
I could just as easily assume every player that META hops is just a jack of all trades at best and is using better specs as a crutch.
As was just commented above, even if this is applicable to most players there will always be some extremely skilled players that don’t swap. So, you would still, at the very least, see a few ferals represented at the highest level if the spec was not subpar.
And now we reach the point of the debate that is had every season, in which we argue over whether it’s feral’s dps or lack of unique utility. It could very well be a combination of both, but the reason most people seem to think it’s more the dps is because this is supported by sims, along with its fundamental mechanics: mostly that it just lacks CD dependent, burst AoE.
Going back to FDK once more, feral has nothing like BoS to use on large packs. Even with feral’s superior ST dps, it’s still 10% behind that FDK build on sims. And that’s just comparing bottom-tier to bottom-tier, so you can imagine the discrepancy were we to go back to comparing feral to WW. Of course, the latter not only provides top tier dps, but one of the most powerful group buffs.
Lastly, even if the numbers suggest that it’s feral’s dungeon dps that needs a > 10% buff, I would much rather have an impactful group buff like LotP, as raw dps is more likely to fluctuate from patch to patch, whereas fundamental design is a more robust method to lift this spec out of bottom tier. Unfortunately, none of this is likely to happen, as conversations like this one and the plethora of other ones regarding feral, dating back to 7.0, should be taking place between the developers, but only take place between the players as an exercise in futility.
Best run +16, you got me
For anyone that doesn’t yet understand the current issues with balancing the specs:
First addressing the outliers.
WW monks are OP in an aoe setting simply due to spinning crane kick being utterly over-tuned. This ability needs to be nerfed, and FOF (which is supposed to be their strongest aoe skill) needs to be buffed as to be more contributing to their overall aoe output. Blizzard wont even remove the aoe cap on SCK on the upcoming “remove all aoe caps” patch simply due to how OP it currently is.
For feral, demo, and enhance; these specs need a direct rework. I would also put SURV into this category. Their toolkits are just awful and/or lacking abilities to tie everything together.
For everything in between; what you’re seeing on this list is NOT an issue of spec balancing. You’re seeing the bigger issue of the layered subsystems like legendaries, covenant abilities and soul binds in conjunction with the tool kits, causing the ranking.
Some specs simply benefit more from the same covenant over others. Some specs don’t get a decent legendary that even helps them in an AOE setting. For example, i mained a DESTRO all through 9.0 while AFF was OP; i can assure you that Destros’ toolkit is more than well-equipped to do great aoe damage. The problem is their BIS covenant and BIS legendary do virtually nothing to increase their AOE output. Thus, they appear below the bottom half of the ranking despite having a ridiculous aoe toolkit.
This is exactly why people don’t want all these layered systems (burrowed power) put into the game. It gives people the impression that some specs are utterly broken, while others suck. The reality it, HOW these systems interact across all the specs is nowhere near equal nor consistent, and is thus the core issue.
Outside of the outlier specs needing to be directly buffed/nerfed, Blizzard needs to seriously cut out the complexity and variability of burrowed power to avoid this crap.
Every individual yes. But again, the people trying to push as high as possible go to the meta. Everytime. It doesn’t matter HOW good that feral druid is if the top groups won’t take him. He can’t solo the key.
And we both know the advantage of the meta spec isn’t enough to crutch this kind of performance. The mere fact you suggest otherwise discredits everything you say.
I’m not sure how you can leave Ret Paladins off that list, they are the lowest spec by far in terms of # invites at high keystones compared to # of players (e.g. data on raider . io or benched . me websites). They easily have the worst toolkit of any dps - at least enhance/survival have lust, feral/demo/DKs have brez. Ret has absolutely nothing valuable in keystones and low DPS to boot (e.g. only sliiiightly above feral/demo/enhance on the list above)
They still do the damage in the keys they get in to.
And it’s still recorded.
Is your argument that the damage they do in 15’s would be better if they did a 25’s?
But the damage other specs do in 15’s isn’t better because they do 25’s?
Yes? To do a 25 you have to pull multiple groups at a time. The mobs have much more health so the ferals dot style aoe actually has time to do something. Do you even understand how keys and feral works?
Other specs are invited to 25s so that’s kinda irrelevant now isn’t it?