Probably time to roll back the class changes, Rets and ferals way too high on expected DPS

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
644

Yeah, and none of that makes a 3rd replenish source THAT big of a deal for a more optimized comp.

It’s not like you bring the other sources of replenishment to raids because their damage is too low to be a serious consideration.

When people are talking about removing the ret buffs because stuff like replenishment is good, they are basically trying to argue that you’d take the worst DPS spec in the game other than arms warrior for minor boons here and there, but you would never use things like destro lock, or frost mages (which would out-dps ret) because their damage is too low.

645

What about the fact fury wars have the worst nurfs ever in wow history and they buffed ret so they wouldn’t suck but THEY LEFT US WARRIORS TO ROT?

this was all literally planned to keep us wars down from day 1

646

Left you to rot? They didn’t even buff ret ahead of you…

Basically just made us tied, and now warrior is a mid to top tier DPS depending on if they get shadowmourne.

How is that rotting?

647

Better specs can bring all those things, and you only need more than one interrupt (ideally warriors are not interrupting at all). Ret brings a lot of things that are good even if you have more than one. Ret obviously has more utility than fury and it’s not close. I’m sorry this is so difficult for you to understand.

I love how you went from “huge diminishing return with more than one” to “well a 3rd one really isn’t THAT big a deal” lmfao

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648

Because that entire argument also applies to ret if you reduce its DPS back to those levels…

Every utility will be brought by a better spec. It won’t matter that ret has more, it’s all overlap, and you’ve got to stretch to find examples where it’s still even a noticeable benefit unique to ret.

I’ll concede that groups with lots of locks eat up much of the first. The third remains a large drop off regardless of comp.

649

I think we all agree. Nerf Ret.

650

You know this directly speaks in favor of keeping the ret buffs … right?

651

I don’t really care about the ret buffs that much, nerf feral though

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652

Lol. Literally. Ferals are just keeping their heads low while Ret’s are keeping this thread alive.

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653

:rofl:

I love feral. I have one, its tons of fun being an S+++ class with great utility. Its just as bad of an issue but they do keep their head down.

654

S+++

lol

655

Alrighty then, let’s have a look at the numbers. I’m gonna use that table I quoted last post when this nonsense was brought up.

Ret Fury Shadow Feral Mut Rogue Arms
Naxx 16-Jan 960,629 1,030,835 1,254,689 559,373 2,111,802 434,516
Uld 6-feb 124,310 157,354 172,773 92,294 235,431 48,669
12.94% 15.26% 13.77% 16.50% 11.15% 11.20%

Ret had a decent drop-off again, but not outside of the normal unless you think Mut Rogues were also suffering a representation crisis in, uh, Ulduar.

Note that I think it’s summing the logs for every boss on each spec, so Phase 1 having more bosses would have higher numbers, however I wouldn’t expect this to substantially change relative class dropoffs.

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656

Yeah, that’s why I wasn’t really paying much attention to the total parses dropping off. It was definitely easier to look at the number of people raiding as each spec in ulduar’s first bosses and comparing that to those that were actually being brought to the harder kills.

That’s where ret was seriously struggling at a level that even warrior wasn’t. That’s why rets were generally happy with a buff that just brought them to fury warrior tier DPS even though warriors were very unhappy at that point.

Unfortunately for ret, reversing the buff wouldn’t leave us in an ok spot like fury is in ICC.

The only thing ret could really afford to lose and remain viable is the change of hammer of wrath from ranged to melee coded.

If it went back to ranged, we would have a small step down in DPS, but it wouldn’t destroy our viability for those that don’t have shadowmourne (since no other class needs shadowmourne just to be middle of the pack like ret would if the Ulduar buffs were removed).

I’d really like to wait to see real world data before deciding that’s needed though. Sims are not gospel truth (apparently this whole time they forgot crit suppression existed for casters on bosses), so complaining that ret is slightly higher than fury might not actually pan out.

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Now I personally think no balance changes is a better place to be than buffing 2 specs which become 2 of the top 3 melee specs.

However there’s a whole gamut of possible changes that have Ret having some kind of buff without being right up the top. Double the taunt CD if glyphed, or just remove the SoV changes, or just remove glyph and leave SoV changes. Or even stuff like toning down TAJ, blizzlike is out the window already for Ret.

This whole “what are we gonna do, you can’t revert the buffs” mentality is weird as hell.

I’d really like to wait to see real world data before deciding that’s needed though.

As I’ve said before, Blizzard have dug a hole for themselves here as they said no class changes outside of PTR.

Edit: distorting the balance for ICC release because you want to wait for data to come in is pretty terrible for a game like Classic.

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658

That’s a fair position given what we are playing, but ret left alone in wrath classic is just a useless spec, and it takes a LOT for them to become one of the best even with the buffs. (Which ret was during original wrath just because people were largely not performing anywhere near max potential on the other specs)

Ret is now performing around where we did based on historical data. Pulling back on it doesn’t really make sense given that ret is kind of supposed to be one of the best melee in this expansion once they have shadowmourne.

… we aren’t without it, even with the buffs ret falls behind most other melee without Smourne.

They definitely did over limit themselves there.

The ICC balance on launch for ret is hardly skewed though. The spec only approaches one of the best melee very late in the phase. (It takes full best in slot for us to get there) it’s very mid tier until it’s incredibly decked out, and even there, sims don’t even have it as an outlier, just kind of tied with a bunch of other specs that historically spike significantly higher in top parses than ret does.

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The historic data you’re quoting had Ret 800 dps below Fury.

No other spec in the game got any adjustments for the difference between original Wrath and Wrath Classic.

The spec only approaches one of the best melee very late in the phase. (It takes full best in slot for us to get there)

The important Ret pieces are far less contested than the important pieces for physical dps. Needing DBW and 1400 arp sees a lot of specs wanting the same pieces, which Ret mostly avoids (and 100% gets first TAJ).

660

My guess is that when you start looking at 90+ percentiles, you’ll see that happening again even though the sims have us tied.

Well, there have been some. Unholy tapped down, munching fixes, shattering throw improvements, breaking the demo lock snapshot, trap launcher added.

Rets / ferals aren’t the only ones to get adjustments or fixes.

In addition, the modern theorycrafting and dpa modeling itself can be considered a change, as every DPS spec got more out of this than ret did… (There’s not much skill flexing can do to increase its DPS, but it’s also hard to play it so badly as to fail hard. Our old best in slot lists are really close to optimal as well)

Minus shadowmourne, which if not chosen first means you don’t do top tier DPS for at LEAST 14 weeks even if you get all of the things you want. The phase will be effectively over by then.

And even then, our best in slot still has some pretty heavily contested items on there, like the neck, and belt slots. If we go for fully uncontested, we lose a few hundred DPS.

The only huge item that’s basically uncontested is tiny abomination in a jar, which itself doesn’t skyrocket ret to top tier. We need it to be mid tier without Smourne, even with buffs.

661

You talk about me having to stretch for examples of ret utility (I wasn’t), but you have to go out of your way in search of a specific dataset that makes ret representation look bad.

If everyone else is magically in full bis while the ret is not, sure. The ret in my guild is beating me on half the TOGC bosses. Somehow I don’t think he’ll be mid if he gets an early TAJ.

There’s no spec that gets everything for free. Getting your absurdly broken trinket uncontested is better than most specs, baseline.

Rets who get the trinket week 1 or 2 will instantly be top tier. Just add 1k to their current numbers and add in that ICC is all undead. Other classes need like 5 big upgrades or their tier sets (also really good for ret btw) to match a single uncontested ret upgrade.

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662

Seems like feelscraft when as you say Ret has the easier rotation.

Well, there have been some. Unholy tapped down, munching fixes, shattering throw improvements, breaking the demo lock snapshot, trap launcher added.

Yeah they should probably unnerf Unholy at some stage, that’s a good point. Maybe on RS release when they have stopped topping most fights.

You’re otherwise comparing small changes to the stuff that Ret and Feral got, which is about an order of magnitude different. These also weren’t (from what I’ve seen) designed to change the actual balance of each class, which they largely didn’t, MM might pop off with trap launcher but that’s pretty unknown.

To my mind it’s disingenuous to compare these changes to what Feral and Ret received, but hell, I’d rather they all get tossed.

In addition, the modern theorycrafting and dpa modeling itself can be considered a change, as every DPS spec got more out of this than ret did

Boy the quality of ret arguments for keeping their buffs really has gone downhill.

Are you saying the theorycraft behind Warriors getting SM, DBW and 1400 arp has changed a lot? How about Fire Mages with their incredibly simple rotation?

Minus shadowmourne, which if not chosen first means you don’t do top tier DPS for at LEAST 14 weeks even if you get all of the things you want. The phase will be effectively over by then.

Assuming a 75% drop chance (was listed as 50-99% on old armory), you’re looking at 5 shards guaranteed, with an extra 7*75% = 5.25 → 10.25 shards per week with 12/12 clears. This is a Shadowmourne slightly under once per 5 weeks, or 10 weeks for the 2nd.

And even then, our best in slot still has some pretty heavily contested items on there, like the neck, and belt slots. If we go for fully uncontested, we lose a few hundred DPS.

I refuse to believe you actually want to take this argument.

If your class only needs a few high contest pieces and they are smaller pieces, you are less contested than classes than need lots of high contest pieces, or important pieces that are high contest (hi DBW).

The only huge item that’s basically uncontested is tiny abomination in a jar, which itself doesn’t skyrocket ret to top tier. We need it to be mid tier without Smourne, even with buffs.

Of course Ret is the one that should have adjustments around Shadowmourne, guess we aren’t worrying about Warriors or DKs here.

Kind of the theme of Blizzard class balancing isn’t it?

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663

Unholy will still be very good for ICC progression, they only fall off in comparison to everyone else when everyone else is ICC geared. And they’re so broken right now that if Blizzard actually cared about balance at all, they’d be nerfed again.