Until you start only looking at the very top of the stack, which is where class balance starts to matter.
But here’s the subcreation data archive I was going off of, since I know that WCL does not keep logs forever:
Not sure why you have a problem with hundreds of thousands of parses of data, or how you supposedly compared ranged vs melee dps despite them not being compared in that subcreation. Ret was still ranked 9th for melee in S4 BfA and Destro and Demo at 4th + 6th ranged.
But even that state, they would have been the worst class in 7 seasons, and 2nd worst in the other 2 which honesty equates to the same thing.
Ie the original statement made that Ret is more desirable than all Mage specs in M+ is still false.
There isn’t really any way to spin it that makes Ret look good.
For the BFA S4 part, I was looking at the “By spec (All DPS together)” and “By Class (All DPS together)” sections to compare ret and lock.
It’s also the exact same rankings as BFA S3.
Agreed, ret in M+ is historically a discount fire mage. It does almost everything fire does, but slower, on a longer cooldown, and in melee. but calling paladin the single worst class in M+ for the entirety of the past 2 expansions, is a bit too hyperbolic.
It’s not really hyperbolic from the warcraftlogs data.
Certainly that appears to change if you specify different parameters, however if you account for all records of M+ data at all levels as per warcraftlogs it definitely shows that over those seasons there was never a class below it that didn’t have another appropriate spec available that was performing better.
I’m going to bring up an idea from another thread here, but are you looking at class balance or spec balance?
If you’re looking at spec balance, and go with separating ranged and melee, Ret is historically better than either feral, survival, or both.
Going by class balance, Prot is usually above average for tanks, and holy is generally top tier for healers, and both are still paladins.
I was talking by class specifically in regards to the dps role.
The point being OP claimed Mage was unplayable despite having an “A tier” option available that they seem to refuse to acknowledge.
I said there are other classes that perform worse and have no alternative that they can even swap to.
As I’m sure we can all agree swapping to a completely different role is substantially different than changing from one dps spec to another.
So it’s less “is my spec performing poorly” and more “is there an alternate spec that I could easily switch to to improve my situation”.
Early spoiler for tomorrow’s numbers -
Mages lost a lot more representation this week in heroic raiding than I anticipated. Running the numbers a day early (will update them again tomorrow) to get some stuff set up on my sheet, and they’ve fallen to 5.26% (Down from 5.51% the week prior.) Next lowest representation is monk at 6.02% (Down from 6.07%.)
Mages are in absolute free fall in terms of representation and I no longer think 5% is the floor. (1 out of every 20 raid slots being a mage.)
Hopefully once I have the complete data tomorrow the situation won’t look as dire, but I’m not counting on it. As of right now Mage is the only class that has less logs for this week than the week prior.
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Not once did I state they were “unplayable” in my OP. I clearly stated they were getting band aids on open wounds many times over as a result they were not play tested.
You’re shoving words into other peoples mouths, continuing to whine because for some odd reason, proceed to cyberbully on my thread, and you finally posted citation for Capslock.
I don’t get it with you.
I really really really miss getting that dot sweetspot and snapshotting it with combustion and literally igniting the world on fire in such a way that even your tank couldn’t save your bacon as you die in cackling flaming glory destroying the DPS charts and yourself in one fell swoop as now every mob absolutely hates you.
Honestly, amazing maniacal fire mage fantasy.
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Fine, not unplayable, but you did claim they were worse and less desirable than Ret Paladin which as we’ve seen literally has the worst standing as a dps class in M+ in response to my initial reply that “Mage has a well performing spec that fulfils the same role, and there are other classes are in a significantly worse state in that role, which realistically should be prioritised as opposed to ensuring class that already has the capacity to perform well has two alternative options that also perform well”.
I asked you why you couldn’t play Arcane and asked you back up your claim that Mage provides no utility and is in a worse state than other classes in the dps role such as Evoker and Paladin despite having an A tier option.
One would expect that since it was your thread and you provided the initial supporting evidence that showed Mage having a well performing spec that you would also be able to provide such reasoning as to why having a competitive option doesn’t assist in the class’s viability.
Yes, because they communicated, and also referred to only 2 specific seasons of which they had conflicting information on.
Linking two sources is much more reasonable than linking to every single season since BfA’s release.
Noone is trying to bully you, I really don’t care if your sole reason is that you don’t like playing Arcane and only like playing Fire or Frost. At least that is a reason, and acknowledgement that there are alternatives.
But just trying to deflect and ignore any questions or rebuttal is disingenuous.
the idea of a pure dps is 100% meaningless these days
That’s because the only viable option is a pain in the a** to play, and even when played perfectly by 0.5% of the class population, it’s only in ST that the spec shiny.
If Arcane gameplay doesn’t change throughout this expansion and remains as the best option for Mages, expect even more people to abandon the class.
The funny thing is that Arcane went from this ~12 years ago:
To this nowadays:
I think something in-between would be better.
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cries in fellow mage
WHY CAN’T ALL OF OUR SPECS JUST BE ON TOP!!! WHY!!! IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR BLIZZ!!!
cries
Once again, shoving more words into the mouths of individuals.
You’re the one to proceed to whine that, “they have no utility”. And yet…
Throughout this whole thread I didn’t mention ONCE about ret Paladin, specifically speaking. The most I said was the Paladin have more utility then the Mage because they can assume all three roles. Mages cannot.
This thread is about Mages. Not Ret Pallys, not BM Hunters, not Resto Shammys. Its about Mages. And apparently you STILL haven’t played one.
Your thread is about dps specs.
There is no reasoning because for some reason you think being able to swap to an entirely different role is somehow easier than swapping to a different spec that performs the same role.
It is not “utility” to be able to play different roles. Try changing your spec in a M+ dungeon, I’ll wait.
You only play one spec at a time. Specs are designed around their role, not their class, and there are no “hybrid” specs in the game.
All your statement says is that you don’t understand what utility actually is in the game.
You can only compare like for like, so if we’re talking about dps specs, and tuning being required we are talking relevant dps specs, not “Arms and Fury don’t need to be good because Prot is currently OP”.
You aren’t even prepared to swap to Arcane, so why is it ok for you to expect others to swap role entirely?
Yes it is? Can occur both before or after dungeons. Does not have to be limited to just “in between”.
I will admit you can’t switch during a mythic dungeon. Not only because Blizzard says “no”, but also because it wastes time. Nobody wants that.
Short on a healer but have Pally as DPS? Have him/her go healer. Vice versa on tank. Hurts hardly anything.
̶H̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶a̶n̶k̶?̶
No, because the party will wipe. Obviously.
I would say a strategy like this occurred MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF TIMES when people wanted to embark on normal, heroic, or low level mythic dungeons. People simply want to play. So the Pally throws the favor of assuming a different role. Its a utility that saves time of finding someone else to fill the role.
Again, mages can’t do that. But you’re going to continue to whine about your woeful paladin anyway.
You didn’t see Survival for most of BFA and Shadowlands, did you? We were dead last DPS and they just kept buffing us by 2-3% when we quite literally needed like 20-30% to just break out from the last spot.
There was one tier in each expansion Survival did well in, but the rest of the time, dead last, because Blizzard takes machetes to a job you need a scalpel for when it comes to nerfs.
I understand A LOT of the pain Survival hunters are going through. They got reworked and ended up a colossal failure.
That spec in particular is still useless, and I do hope they address this spec soon.
The problem is, with mages, is that we have yet to get a rework. And even if we do, we might be in the same position you’re in. Fire mage has kept the same burst mechanic since Cata or earlier. The problem is, we get most of our damage from stacking haste.
FR, back then, Arcane used to be mastery. Frost used to be haste. Fire used to be crit strike. Now its like… wtf. How is fire supposed to proc without a high crit strike chance?
Not everyone can, wants, has gear, or has keybinds for multiple roles.
Saying another class can just “swap role” but you can’t play your A tier dps spec is disingenuous.
Noone is not inviting an A tier dps. Especially one that buffs all your casters and has time warp.
Even out of all the A tier ranged specs in your linked tier list Mage brings the most generalised utility.
But some people want to play the game, does not need the gear for it, nor the keybinds.
You cannot speak for everybody.