My assumption for mages is

Classes Mage
72

Yeah so are numbers in the 75, 65, 50 percentile. Those are fake numbers? Your whole premise is I feel like warriors are bad so I’ll link mythic parses at 95th percentile. To be frank lowering the percentile you’ll see mages (all 3 specs) creeping closer to the bottom, which in turn is closer to the level where most people play including yourself and myself with specs I don’t like or normally play. My point is warriors and most melee really don’t need to be buffed, because at lower level of play most specs will average the same dps and can do well if you enjoy the spec. Utility in a mythic+ is a different story.

You’re saying jadefire is bad for melee? and grong? really? Other than locks and spriests, which a lot of others have mentioned the raid is tailored to, the disparity isn’t so big as “melee need a sizable buff”. They actually do good dps most fights in normal AND heroic aside from council and rastakat, and are within 1000 dps aside from those two.

Devs are actually looking at the fact that most melee have it easy right now (I’d have to find the quote), from things they want to address (finally).

As for my own anecdotaI experience, take it with a grain of salt if you want, haven’t played fire in a long while, It takes time for me to get used to, but i can assure you playing on my dh/pally/warrior/rogue alts, I don’t put any effort in gemming/praticing or reading information on their rotations and can do equal or better dps as my mage (frost/arcane) just playing casually in 10+ keys, which I optimize greatly.

That being said i’m not going to link 95% mythic parses, even though i sometimes get them (i don’t raid mythic) and say this is comparative to me and my specs dps problem when i’m averaging 80 and below.

Overall data is such a horrible metric for raids, it only has a place in mythic keys. Why link this when you have fights like opulence where gems skew actually class performance so much.

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73

No, they are just people that don’t know how to play their class properly or don’t have good gear. The reason you want to look at 95% if because that’s the skilled players with gear to match.

The reason I said fake numbers is because all of the DoT classes dot up the adds that everyone ignores on the first boss so they can improve their DPS. It’s pointless damage that does not speed up the fight, it just makes them look good on paper.

Then you clearly don’t know how to read. I never said warrior should be buffed outside of jest. This whole thread was started by people crying for buffs so they can out DPS cleave classes on cleave fights that mages suck at.

Classes scale differently so gear is more important to some than others. Another issue is that a few classes have larger skill gaps than others, you can easily tell the difference from a good Mage and a bad Mage that have similar gear for example. That does not mean you need a buff, a rework maybe but not more damage to make up for being bad.

I 100% agree, I’m not the one here asking for buffs.

Where did I say that in the quote? If we look at the data from the best players that get the most out of a class we can see what fights which spec is best and worst at.

Again I never said Melee need to be buffed you have taken my words out of context and are fighting a fake ideal I don’t have. If you read my quote on the issue you would know that.

You should need to stop using data on Normal/Heroic. When talking about how good a class is doing you really need to look at the skilled players that have their character properly geared and know what they are doing.

I also pointed out there I said this raid, not in general.

They where talking about M+ and I agree, if you would read the post you are quoting I said that myself.

Yes it is relevant to you because it shows what numbers you can get when you play properly and have good gear to back up your skill.

You say that then look up Normal, Heroic data with lower parses. Sorry but your just wrong here. You don’t look at a random noob to see how well a class is doing you look at some of the best players.

I agree looking at over all data is bad, that’s why In my posts I point out how a class is doing on each fight.

Also stop with the lies and trying to fight views I don’t hold if you look at my posts in this thread I’m not asking for buffs for anyone, at most reworks for some specs in 9.0. The only time I talked about buffs was at someone asking for buffs when other specs are far behind them and that the classes doing far worse would deserve them more.

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I’m not sure the exact DPS gain, but it is very very significant. Garothi had the same bug, which put melee classes ahead of most other ranged classes. Auto-attacks are even stronger in BFA. I’d guess at least a 2% gain for every melee class, even when not including any mechanics influenced by auto-attacks(Rogue energy regen, rage, Outlaw wits stacks, etc.

76

I would just completely ignore this child. I said “Stupid people have a hard time comprehending things” and he actually reported it to get me banned on the forums.

If you cant handle being proven wrong at least take it like a man. Dont run to daddy blizz to get me muted.

(Was post above but posted on wrong character. Posted on the OP for clarification.)

77

That’s actually an untrue or a best only partially true comment. While dot classes can and do pad on fights like that, for affliction warlock and shadow priest, keeping dots rolling on adds is a significant ST dps increase. Why? Because the more agonies you have rolling as affliction, the more soul shard procs you get to use on UAs. For shadow priests, the more apparitions you have, the more shadow power you get which increases the duration of your void forms. The longer you keep up that 20% buff, the better your dps is.

Bottom line: while those numbers may be partially cheesed, they are most definitely not pointless damage. You really need to understand how these specs work before calling something “pointless.” Especially given how you’re accusing others of lies in this very post.

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Yes some specs do gain a little dps from this my bad for not pointing that out. That said, most of the damage is still padded and the classes that gain nothing are still willing to do it so they score higher, that was my point on that comment.

  • I made a new Mage as I wanted a Gnome for the new patch and my old Mage is Horde that I’m not in the situation to play anymore.
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[/quote]**********************************************************
Yes, Blizzard is fine.

In general, they feel too many people playing mage, even though it will always be one of those most tropes in any game because many people across video games enjoy being a wizard. When you see a ranking of parses, mage is always numerous if only for this reason. People rerolling is what they desire.

I lived through MoP when there was warlock envy, but you could argue that Mage was at least still holding its own. This is worse to the extent that mages are being kept for thie[quote=“Roran-stormrage, post:73, topic:147860”]
No, they are just people that don’t know how to play their class properly or don’t have good gear. The reason you want to look at 95% if because that’s the skilled players with gear to match.
[/quote]********************************************************

NO. ABSOLUTELY FALSE.

If there is one thing that needs to be stopped is the myth that only people who parse at the 95th percentile are good players.

Do people understand the meaning of 95th percentile? It isn’t a grade!

It doesn’t mean “congrats, from the total possible score, you score 95%”

No - it means among all the people playing WoW, this percentile was higher than 95%. If everyone was playing exceptionally well, there would still be a 95th percentile, the range from top to bottom would only maybe change.

Yes, at these high levels there is a representation of player skill, but you are effectively looking at Olympic Athletes to determine if something easy. These individuals aren’t just good at playing Mage, they are good at playing video games period. Many of them can pick up many games and just do amazing at them, and will then have videos on twitch and youtube showing their accomplishments. In short, don’t watch the figure skating event to decide that landing jumps on skates is relatively easy to do.

In a player base of say, 1 million, why not examine what kind of experience the other 950, 000 other plays are experiencing. You may want to see if things are generally balanced for most players rather than saying they just need to become Olympic athletes.

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80

Again guys, Dont feed roran who literally just made a mage and is at 107 to “show he has a mage” lol. He is a troll who actually reported me for proving him wrong and due to me typing “stupid” in my comment I got chat banned for 3 days.

81

Holy quacamoly batman.

People look at 95th percentile because thats where the classes are being played properly and have the gear that is appropriate for their specs. We examine it so we can see what specs, when used correctly, are too strong/weak.

If a class is hard to play (not that many are anymore) then it will have super low dps in low percentiles, but be high in higher percentiles where people know what they are doing. If blizzard then buffed this class they would become OP at higher end play. That’s not healthy for the game and would force a lot of specs out.

No, they gain a LOT of DPS from multi dotting. First boss is irrelevant obv and has been since the raid opened, but it’s not the only fight in the raid where multi-dot classes end up getting a huge ST boost from adds.

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82

But you are inherently saying that only 5% of the player base knows how to use their class correctly. Also, at that high of a level, does it not become a reflection of the player as much as the class?

In other words, they don’t parse that high simply because they know how to play the class properly, but also because they would be able to play any class to a high level. In other words, the data is a reflection of both the player and the class, and isn’t giving you a pure presentation of the class itself as would be possible in a simulation.

To me, that means a player has a high enough skill level to make a class work, in spire of its inherent flaws. A professional golf player is still better than the vast majority of players even when playing with a mediocre club.

However, I really need an answer to this question:

Is it the general assumption that 95% of the playerbase simply doesn’t know how to play their class properly which is why parses below the 95th percentile should be ignored?

83

True.

Discounting certain mechanic cheese, fight time granularity, and aoe padding in general, people who parse lower are doing so because they are dpsing incorrectly. (Again, I understand that there are reasons that dpsing incorrectly is actually the correct way to ‘win’ the fight in some cases). But when considering balance, you should probably balance around the max potential or else things will get messed up real quick at the high end.

This does not refer to an individual player. It refers to a trend across different performance levels.

Again, yes. Actually I think way more than 95% don’t know how to play properly. But in the raiding population probably 95% is fair.

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84

I understand the need for balance, and at what level is an interesting debate.

However, true balance is less about simulations and more about player skill.

You should want two equally skilled players, playing different classes, to both have the same DPS potential, right? Assuming you agree, then you may also agree that the real current issue is that a higher level of skill is required for certain classes to produce the same DPS. People note they can play some specs badly and perform equal or better DPS than their mage main.

It’s like that Crendor video: Attention Shamans, if you want to play Shaman, you must play it almost perfectly to be comparable to others. I think that’s the real balance issues that people want to discuss. Even if the numbers are similar, it’s frustrating if someone needs to work four times as much as someone else who can produce the same doing a lot less work.

If there were two jobs, equal pay, but one was easier, you wouldn’t call it balanced. People would gravitate towards the easier job, and people in the harder job would argue it’s unfair to them, even though it’s the same pay.

The 95th percentile represents a select group of individuals. In a research study, they would be considered a select group that represent the best video games players in WoW. It doesn’t refers to an individuals, rather a group of individuals with presumably similar skill level. In other words, I assume players in this bracket have an inherent higher level of skill which interacts with the class itself.

In other words, a skilled player can make a difficult and mediocre spec work, but I’m unsure if that means the class ceases to be difficult and medicore.

That’s why I don’t feel the 95th percentile is a good representation of what a typical player in WoW can accomplish. In research studies, we tend to examine the normal population and would consider something that happens less than 5% of the time to be an outlier or a separate group entirely.

That is a very interesting sentiment that doesn’t really apply to anything else in life (and perhaps even other video games). If I gave my students a test, and only 5% passed, I would honestly think something was wrong with the test rather than thinking 95% of the students were just too stupid. If I had a food product and only 5% liked it, I wouldn’t then say only 5% had good pallets. What kind of longetivity does the game expect if they are ensuring things are ok for just 5% of them while the rest have a miserable experience?

Mage compares worse at the 75th percentile compared to the 95th percentile, and rather than saying a) it’s because Mage is harder to play well compared to other classes or b) The top-end players have the skill level needed to make the class more comparable to others, we go with:

C) Players just need to learn to play better.

That’s like saying a Triple Axel (mage) is easy because you saw it done multiple times at the Olympics (95th percentile) and the problem is that people (95% of the player base) just don’t know how to skate. As opposed to making the argument that certain things need a particular skill level because they are inherently more difficult than other comparable behaviours.

Here, we have a mage class that appears to need a higher skill level just to be comparable to other classes, which remains a problem even when numbers are similar. No one likes working harder to receive the same pay as someone having an easier time.

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85

The specialist minority are an outlier when compared to the entire sample of players? Weird, never would’ve thought.

Similarly, I also assume people who understand biochem have a higher inherent level of knowledge. Nothing I can do about that really. We need to be lowering degree standards to the point the average person without effort can pass a biochem course final, otherwise we’re just catering to outliers who are inherently predestined to pass the class.

It’s honestly disappointing we aren’t balancing Mythic raids around whether or not you keyboard turn. DoT classes have an inherent advantage over Mages due to not needing to face the target for many abilities, and I’ll have none of it. Mage needing to turn to attack is a huge oversight that marginalizes my 5th percentile bracket.

86

Actually I kinda like playing hard specs and needing to actually work for results. It’s more interesting. I’m also not denying that it might be a hard class. Maybe your ‘a’ and ‘b’ are true to some extent. What skill level and what scenarios to balance around is a good question (and I’m not sure the devs know the answer). Should certain specs just exist as ‘easy’ or ‘hard’? Easy as in floor or ceiling?

In my opinion you might as well just pick the top end as the balancing point. That’s the players playing to maximum potential, they’re the ones participating in the high end of content (note that this is where the mounts/titles/rewards exist). If we balance around people pressing random buttons we’re gonna end up with a game that isn’t fun for anyone.

87

I’d point out what you all are conveniently forgetting about 95% bracket is that those people typically are allowed to “cheese” an encounter via their guild to achieve that parse. Nor do you consider that proc specs parsing 95% probably had GOD LIKE RNG on that encounter to produce said parse.

Or that they had no mechanics hit them, bombs or hopping in robot for example on Mech, which will drop them out of 95%.

My guess is blizzard chucks both ends of the bell curve when looking at balance and then takes a mean of each spec sans those ends.

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88

I wouldn’t say it’s set it stone that nothing is happening yet. Blizzard has been slowly releasing upcoming class changes for the next major patch. We found out about some druid and DH changes yesterday, other classes a few weeks ago so let’s not get too worried until the finalized patch notes are out we could still be under consideration and our changes just haven’t been released yet.

89

Talking 8.2 changes…

The initial set of class changes were targeted at M+ MDI. The next set, mostly again for M+ MDI. Only spec they have touched outside of M+ MDI so far is Frost DK.

So while am hopeful would not be shocked if mages saw nothing.

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90

I disagree. I think at the 99th percentile you’d be partially correct but people that perform at the 90-95th percentile regularly do so. Guilds aren’t cheesing just to buff one particular raid member’s stats. Yes, RNG can sometimes push them down into the high 80’s or the upper 90’s but the fact of the matter is, most mages in the upper echelons are consistently there because they understand the class and the mechanics, not because they got a lucky string of hot streak procs.

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91

It’s both. Good players are good players but that doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from rng or cheesing. I remember doing the mythic Eonar fight in Legion on my affliction warlock alt (back when affliction had insane aoe) and being assigned to kill roving mobs. I has something like 3.5-4m dps for that fight and was like wow neat. Then I looked up the top parse in the world and it was 11m. There is no way that was achieved without cheesing (ie: letting the lock and the lock alone kill all the add waves).

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Which is why I don’t look at the 99th or 100th percentiles. Take Keestus for example - he regularly and consistently performs at the 85-95th percentile. Most of the “top” mages will do so as well. It’s not realistic to pretend that RNG somehow swings good mages from performing at a high level to being average or even slightly above average.

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