Now that actual data is in... nerfs?

Classes Death Knight
1

So the top DPS specs in nathria are actually:

Boomkin
Unholy
Spriest
Marksman

Seems like mostly came down to putting some gear on those classes to see it - but so far nerfs are:

Top class: Boomkin(actual top) minor slap on the wrist
2nd class: Unholy(basically a 10-14% damage nerf)
3rd class: Shadow got 0 nerfs
4th class: Marksmen got a minor slap on the wrist

I guess my question is, since melee are basically just needless liabilities in most fights - Did we get nerfed hardest because you a.) thought we were top before waiting for data to come in b.) nerf us and not ranged because you can’t stand to see a melee do well or c.) just hate death knights because of ptsd from WotLK?

Serious answers only please.

As someone who played UHDK at both BFA launch and Legion launch, I’m quite used to the punishment - if you need a reminder

warcraftlogs com/zone/statistics/19#region=2&difficulty=4

warcraftlogs com/zone/statistics/10#difficulty=4

and the legion one takes into account massive buffs for both DK specs - which were originally the two dead last specs.

4 Likes
2

It’s A, B and C all rolled into one. Mostly A though. Not really sure why it went to 20% nerf, 15% nerf would have been enough to make UH fall behind the range specs anyways, but it is what it is :man_shrugging:

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3

I like the idea of the mastery nerf simply because I don’t want 7.0 arms warrior problems, where people were wearing stuff 50ilvls below drops because if it didn’t have mastery on it, it was a downgrade. -but they keep caking on the nerf, while the other “offenders” keep performing better.

4 Likes
4

It’ll make DR less hurtful on the spec, but 15% would have been enough. Too many people stamping their feet about unholy and not paying attention to the actual numbers.

Edit: also agreed about the arms comparison, but that’s on blizzard for making mastery affect 99% of unholy’s ablities

5

TBF, this is the first time mastery wasn’t a bad stat to get. Both the other 2 expansions started out being haste/crit bis - because mastery didn’t effect enough of our damage profile to be worth taking unless you only did M+

Now it’s just too heavily tuned. I’d be fine with the 20% nerf if it also meant the other top specs also got nerfed by a meaningful amount.

2 Likes
6

100% agreed.

They should have been able to identify the other specs keeping up with unholy as additional ‘statistical outliers’ and given similar proportioned nerfs. They’ll probably get nerfed soon enough, but for now it’ll be world of rangedcraft.

2 Likes
7

You are blatantly misrepresenting unholy’s place in the overall rankings.

Moonkin beats unholy on exactly 3 fights, with a 4th showing less than 1% difference between the two. Of those 3 fights, unholy is a comfortable 2nd place on two. “We aren’t the only outlier” isn’t a compelling argument when that other outlier also got a nerf to its strongest niche and strongest legendary.

Try half that, buckaroo.

Shadow isn’t 10-20% ahead of its competitors.

Also not 10-20% of its competitors.

Unholy got nerfed the hardest because it was further ahead than anyone else on almost every fight, all the way up to the hardest ones at the back end of Nathria.

5 Likes
8

And since we’re talking data, let’s talk some frackin data.

Unholy DK’s are:
Shriekwing - #1, 8% ahead of the second place DPS.
Huntsman - #1, 3% ahead.
Destroyer - #1, 4% ahead.
Sun king - #2, 10% behind moonkin, 3% ahead of third place.
Artificer - #1, 8% ahead.
Darkvein - #1, 6% ahead.
Council - #3, 9% behind moonkin and 2% behind survival.
Sludgefist - Virtually tied with moonkin and affliction with <1% difference.
Generals - Tied with moonkin, 4% ahead of third place.
Denathrius - #1, 3% ahead.

And again, these numbers are how unholy compares to the other frontrunners. Let’s dive deeper.

When blizzard designs a raid boss, they have a particular DPS target in mind based on expected encounter length (see enrage timers,) mechanics and what the intended “challenge” of a fight is meant to be. We don’t know their target output, best we can do is run the average from all the DPS specs and compare.

Mean DPS per boss
Shriekwing - 2561 DPS
Huntsman - 4517 DPS
Destroyer - 3338 DPS
Sun King - 4436 DPS
Artificer - 3446 DPS
Darkvein - 4291 DPS
Council - 3019 DPS
Sludgefist - 4578 DPS
Generals - 3699 DPS
Denathrius - 3902 DPS

Bearing in mind that sample sizes start getting small from Sludgefist and beyond. Let’s get to it.

Unholy
Shriekwing: 17% ahead of mean
Huntsman: 11% ahead
Destroyer: 14% ahead
Sun King: 13% ahead
Artificer: 17% ahead
Darkvein: 13% ahead
Council: 19% ahead
Sludgefist: 15% ahead
Generals: 12% ahead
Denathrius: whopping 22% ahead

But given the other specs you mentioned, let’s keep looking.

Shadow
Shriekwing: 10% ahead of mean
Huntsman: 9% ahead
Destroyer: 11% ahead
Sun King: 9% behind
Artificer: 8% ahead
Darkvein: 2% ahead
Council: 6% ahead
Sludgefist: 10% ahead
Generals: 3% ahead
Denath: 3% behind

Marksman
Shriekwing: 10% ahead of mean
Huntsman: 4% ahead
Destroyer: 10% ahead
Sun king: 10% ahead
Artificer: 5% ahead
Darkvein: 6% ahead
Council: 7% ahead
Sludge: 12% ahead
Generals: 3% ahead
Denath: 6% ahead.

Balance, the other major outlier
Shriekwing: 7% ahead of mean
Huntsman: 8% ahead
Destroyer: 7% ahead
Sun king: 22% ahead
Artificer: 5% ahead
Darkvein: 5% ahead
Council: 19% ahead
Sludge: 15% ahead
Generals: 12% ahead
Denath: 13% ahead

In summary: Shadow is slightly ahead of average, with a few favorable fights and a few bad. Marksman is consistently a high performer but doesn’t get especially outrageous on any fight. Balance has a strong base, and massively overperforms on a few heavy AOE/add fights. Unholy is significantly overperforming on every single boss fight. That’s why it got nerfed harder.

4 Likes
9

Great representation of numbers on the raid. It’s also worth mentioning how much of a monster UH is in M+. I’m not a PvPer so I can’t comment on how they perform there, but UH is exceptional in all PvE content. I don’t see a 20% mastery nerf even bringing it down to middle of the pack, but logs will tell us soon.

The terrible tuning of the underperforming specs also makes it stand out a lot more in comparison.

10

Why dont you look at the upper half of the picture, people with actual gear and skill. You’ll find the futher up you go in percentile - the better classes like boomkin are actually doing.

especially when you get to 95/99/max brackets.

warcraftlogs com/zone/rankings/26)

you’ll notice in the top 10 dps on any of those fights, UHDK is only dominating 5 of them.

11

This is spot on, glad I scrolled down before posting a reply claiming the same. DK, you’re melee and by comparison about 25% higher than warriors DPS atm
 the mastery nerf will affect you at most by 10% once you re-rack your secondary stat weights. You will still be outperforming every other melee in the game.

12

where were you when arms warrior was literally doing 100k more than any other melee in legion? there was a time when there were 500k dps arms parses on ursoc and you’d be top 100 as uhdk with 290k

13

When you start looking at those brackets, the numbers are subject to large swings based on how RNG favors you on any given pull. So no, not particularly useful. The only thing the 99th percentile tells you is a specs theoretical “maximum” on a given boss when the stars align, but even the best players in the world can’t parse 99% every time. All it takes is getting targeted by one selective boss mechanic to put a stop to that.

14

5 is still half the damn raid dude. Be glad that Unholy blight hasnt been “FIXED”. When that happens you might actually have something the complain about.

15

i think people are upset because DKs are underperforming in PvP, and these nerfs make DK even worse at PvP when we’re debatably already the worst the begin with.

I imagine the class will be buffed relative to PvP sometime soon tho.

16

My case, I am just a little bit irked that my shadow damage got touched thanks to bonkers pet damage.

Really wish they left the mastery alone and buff the other areas for Dks that makes them more competitive in PvP.

5% Damage loss isn’t really big of a deal. But it could make or break in some content more than others.

2 Likes
17

The nerf is closer to 5% since it doesn’t influence baseline mastery. It’s still fairly harsh - I just wish that it was a direct nerf to the pets rather than the mastery since that impacts our shadow damage aswell that will go on to impact everything especially covenant viability. It’s going to hurt us badly later in the expansion as all the numbers rise. Sadly this hamfisted approach will likely never be rescinded until the spec is broken tier bad again, so let’s just enjoy Unholy while it’s still decent.

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18

It was a roughly 5% nerf at the 15% reduction, now it’ll be a bit more than that. Unholy will still be a decent performer, but it is for sure going to fall behind the strong ranged specs.

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19

Is it 20% additional? Or just 20% total? Could’ve sworn I saw 15% from last time


Regardless, this is why I didn’t want to focus on UH. Always so quick to get nerfed (even if it was justified this time).

20

20% total, they increased the mastery nerf by an additional 5% (from 15% to 20%)

2 Likes