I read a lot about “end game” viability (oh baby, two more weeks!! notices pee in pants)
I digress
As I peruse these forums, I notice that many retail players have this mindset of late game/class viability being benchmarked as DPS
Long story short,
Ya, it’s just not retail.
Being able to top meters as a DPS is simply not important for 90% of the encounters . If you show up to raid, are a likeable player, help out the group, and you play your class well (gear, rotations, movement) you are a raider.
I’m so sick of this “well you won’t top the DPS charts”
Who gives a flying monkey who is topping the DPS charts. This is not a benchmark for skill or competency.
Theorycrafting and min/maxing is another part of the game some people really enjoy. It won’t apply to many people even in a raiding context (including myself)!
Every Class has their own respective toolkits. Some are HIGHLY suited for the DPS role (ie: Rogue and Mage). Some are HIGHLY suited for the Healer role (ie: Priest). And the Tank role is nearly always filled by the Warrior. Hybrid Classes are very special in their ability to perform multiple roles depending upon Talent Choices and Gear. They trade base DPS/Heal throughput for additional utility and the ability to occasionally perform multiple roles simultaneously. Biggest Heals and most DPS may not save the day when you need those niche utility spells / buffs / coverage that your Hybrid classes carry.
True yet at the same time you’ll find people that stand in fire are often very low on the damage meters; probably because they’re dead most of the time.
IIRC DPS meters weren’t a thing for a long time. Utility was much more important then.
Not that I intend to rush to end game. I think some people are missing the point that a big part of the enjoyment of classic is the journey.
There are numerous fights in Vanilla where your personal DPS doesn’t really matter. You need a certain amount of Raid DPS, but the main thing is doing the mechanic(s).
I sort of give classes like Rogue a pass on this, because it is completely over their head usually that a bunch of other classes have other stuff they need to be doing during the fight.
A missed Tranq Shot can wipe a raid. Warlocks are often threat capped on what they can do, Mages need to decurse etc.
It is a different game that way, and I am looking forward to that.
Being able to top the meter, or at least be competitive on the meter is half the fun of raiding as DPS. It’s a fun mini-game in and of itself.
That’s been true for ALL of WoW’s history. From early Vanilla to today. That hasn’t changed at all.
If anything, raw DPS output was actually MORE important back in Vanilla than it is in Retail today.
Most raid fights in Vanilla had very simple mechanics. DPS could mostly just focus on DPS. High output was often the difference between downing or wiping on an encounter.
In contrast, many fights in Retail feature extremely complex mechanics. Mastering the encounter is less about raw dps output and more about mastering the mechanics… something which might take weeks and hundreds of wipes.
I agree with OP. I would add that raiding is not the core of Classic as many people are making it out to be. There’s -so- much more to do in the game. I myself wasn’t raiding (outside of the occasional post-nerf Kara run) until ICC and I still had plenty to do, which was half the reason I didn’t raid until then (the other half being never getting a group for Oculus, and therefore not having completed all heroic content).
If there’s enough of us that are more concerned with genuinely enjoying Classic than min/maxing (which there’s nothing wrong with, play how you want to play), I propose that we all head for the same server so we can raid with our “wrong” specs with chill people.
I’ve read the responses to my original post and I think it’s worth clarifying to those who think I have an issue with min/max. I do not. However this post is in response to the hybrid (ret, sp, feral, survival hunter (lol), enh Shan, etc) being considerd less important in a standard raid environment due to their inability to top the meters consistently on most if not all boss fights .
Some specs simply are less useful due to the fact that they can’t do their role as good as other specs.
They aren’t useless and one might consider bringing one if they’re a good player, but that doesn’t mean that just because the person on the Ret Paladin might be better than your Rogue that means Ret is equally as useful as a DPS.
Though for most players, the lower DPS of a hybrid wont be an issue, you got a lot of slots to fill up in a raid, and you don’t want to stack nothing but Mages, Fury Warriors, and Rogues for DPS since that causes loot problems.
DPS isn’t that valuable… it doesn’t matter in the whole scheme of things if you are doing 800 or 550 dps…
The dps benchmarks are very low in vanilla. That is not the hard part.
ALL dps classes and specs can make the dps minimum benchmark.
It actually could be more helpful to have people that can cover up mistakes Like bubble,Lay on hands, BoP from a ret pally… or Rebirth, emergency tank, tranquility on a Feral/Balance Druid. Or reincarnate on a enhancment/elemental shaman. It’s the mistakes that wipe raids… less mistakes, less wipes.
Warrior dps for example brings zero utility like this… they are squishy and die easily… they can’t cover anyone’s mistake…
I am not saying to NOT bring warriors/rogues/Mages whatever for dps… it’s just simply not a big deal if you don’t.
Homogenization of Current WoW took away most utility each class had. That’s not the case in Classic. You bring a ton of utility no matter what spec you use. So topping the dps charts isn’t nearly as valuable as doing less damage but providing more utility.
This is not specific to Retail players. Both Retail and Classic players have a subset of people whose mindset is that any hybrid with the ability to heal is only good for healing, the only talent build to use is the one that maximizes damage done, you (because it is never them) are useless if you choose this class because you’ll never top the charts.
They shouldn’t even get as much attention as they do. If they put in the work to run their own guild, they can make the rules for the people they recruit - and that’s it. For most, that’s the extent of their reach. Very few would ever be on the level of “Elitist Jerks” with a whole forum and a bunch of followers who interpret what the few say and extrapolate their ideas of viability.
– Side note: DPS is actually not the best metric anyway, as some classes can do insane burst while other classes can go the long haul. Of course death messes with that, but also things like burning mana or energy, trinket cooldowns, and more make one person’s boast of DPS less important than asking what their throughput on a short, medium, and long fight is, and whether they use any non-damage skill that is needed (like kicking to interrupt a cast).
This is a little more dangerous to say. Someone topping the DPS charts pretty consistently is unlikely to be unskilled or incompetent.
I think the problem is the subset of the subset who think that min/maxing is about bringing 14 warriors, 7 priests, 7 rogues, 7 mages, a warlock, a hunter, a paladin or a shaman, and a druid (and the guild leader’s gf or the trial).
The larger majority of people don’t hold to that mindset - in Retail or here - and it’s really a waste of time to do more than shrug and laugh and go on about our day.