They either never actually raided TBC(doing Kara once a week doesn’t count), they have horrible memories or they simply just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Most everything I can find online is from pservers.
I raided with EJ when I went to Mal’ganis for awhile, but then Cata hit and I bailed. They used to TC a lot, but I doubt logs are around anymore.
They do exist, on legacyplayers.com
Forewarning: the site is extremely slow in loading logs, which makes the process I laid out in my previous post somewhat tedious and time consuming
I’m not sure I agree with your characterization of EJ, but even if it is accurate, then we have NOTHING concrete on which to base these generalized statements.
Literally just found that site after I replied. Looks interesting, I’ll have to dig into it.
All I see are vanilla?
If you’ve been watching videos or looking at private server logs, you’d know very well Rogue is nowhere near top DPS, and consistently loses to Warlock until late T6.
There’s a reason Rogues are only top DPS on a single fight: Kil’jaeden.
T4 (not counting Karazhan because it’s a 10m):
Magtheridon: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
Maulgar: Warlocks > Hunters > Mages
Gruul: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
T5:
Al’ar: Warlocks > Mages > Hunters
Solarian: Warlocks > Mages > Hunters
Void Reaver: Hunters > Ret > Warlock
Kael’thas: Hunters >= Warlocks > Mages
Lurker Below: Mages > Warlocks > Hunters
Hydross: Hunters > Mages >= Warlocks
Leotheras: Mages > Hunters > Warlocks
Fathem-Lord: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
Morogrim: Mages >= Warlocks > Hunters
Vashj: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
SSC: Warlocks > Mages > Hunters
TE: Warlocks > Mages > Hunters
T6:
Rage Winterchill: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
Anetheron: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
Azgalor: Hunters > Rogues > Enhancement
Kaz’rogal: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
Archimonde: Warlocks >= Mages > Hunters
Naj’entus: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
Supremus: Warlocks > Hunters > Mages
Shade of Akama: Warlocks > Mages > Hunters
Teron Gorefiend: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
Gurtogg Bloodboil: Hunters > Rogues > Warlocks
Reliquary: Hunters > Mages > Warlocks
Shahraz: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
Council: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
Illidan: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
Hyjal: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
BT: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
SWP (Post Glaives):
Kalecgos: Warlocks > Rogues > Hunters
Brutallus: Hunters > Warlocks > Rogues
Felmyst: Hunters > Warlocks > Mages
Twins: Hunters > Rogues > Warriors
M’uru: Warlocks > Mages > Hunters
Kil’jaeden: Rogues > Warriors > Hunters
SWP: Hunters > Rogues > Warlocks
It’s basically not until they get Warglaives that they finally start showing up consistently in high DPS rankings. This isn’t from a shortage of gear, either. Many groups bring at least one Rogue even as early as T4, so that Rogue is geared to the teeth with everything they’d ever want, leading up to and including Warglaives, and it’s not until the legendaries are equipped that they finally get CLOSE to being better than Hunters, and most of the time they’re still worse, anyway.
Compelling argument from a level 10 alt with 6 posts.
Watch, I can do it, too:
“You obviously never raided TBC lol”
It’d be facts and objective data that they’re basing this stuff on. You guys are the ones basing it on beliefs or feelings.
For example, you believe that private servers are unreliable. Arguably that is true, but TBC is far better documented than vanilla was due to the prominence of theorycrafting on places like Elitist Jerks. The accuracy of TBC private servers far exceeds the accuracy of vanilla private servers. The only question is the exact PPM values of various items and effects, none of which really play a large part in what makes certain specs over or under powered in TBC.
Then you have low level throw-away alts who want to avoid all the negative attention that comes with the stupid things they say by adding a layer of anonymity to their statements. Oh, what a surprise, they say they raided with Elitist Jerks. They probably cleared SWP first on their realm, too. Uh huh.
All of this can be summarized quite succinctly: melee is worse than ranged, but not terrible.
If you find that argument disagreeable, feel free to struggle all you wish in TBC proving otherwise, but I can guarantee you won’t be getting the highest DPS parse on any bosses until SWP when you have both Warglaives, and every melee spec that can’t wield them is destined to forever be behind Hunters, Warlocks, and Mages, in that order.
Once again… There are few fights where the top dps is going to be a melee until very late game. I’ve never said anything otherwise.
But you regularly see melee beating out every other class… even in some of the best guilds. Are they beating out every person in that class? Usually not… But… once again… a well-geared melee in the hands of a skilled player is going to be competitive with any other class.
I’m sorry you spent 2 hours writing all that out to argue against a point no one was making.
Show me either and we’ll talk. Its not much… but I’ve at least referenced kill videos from both vanilla and TBC that show where melee are competitive on several fights. I’ve yet to see anyone show a compeling argument for the complete and total dominance of locks, hunters and/or mages that you seem to be suggesting (without any facts OR objective data.)
Edit: And just from a glance at the logs on the site Harem mentioned… In Bt the top overal dps among all raids is:
Akama - war
Gorefiend - mage
Najentus - Hunter
Supremus - Lock
Sharaz - Hunter
Bloodboil - Rogue
Reliquary - Hunter
Council - War
Illidan - Hunter
So on 3/9 fights the top DPS is a melee. Seems slightly more frequent than “never.” 
You can look at dps on that site as well. Once again… small sample size and arguably skewed data… but at least we’re working on data and not feelings…
The top warrior dps is 1950 (rogue is 1577 but no glaives.) That’s equivalent to the #5 warlock overall or the #3 hunter… So… again… they might not be overall top dps on even the majority of fights… all other things being equal… but it’s still not like a geared/skilled melee isnt still going to outdps a less geared/skilled caster
Well, if by melee you mean Rogue specifically, sure, but that’s pretty easily explained by:
Balance gives 3% physical hit from Faerie Fire (a unique debuff that benefits BM at ALL gear levels because their pets cannot gain hit rating) and 2% miss chance from Insect Swarm. They also get Innervate for the Mage.
Survival gives upwards of 250-500 AP to the raid depending on their gear levels.
Fire boosts the Warlocks’ damage by 15% until T5 when they swap to Shadow and the Mage swaps to Arcane (and starts out DPSing Rogue, anyway).
Shadow offers 3% spell damage to the raid, 10% shadow damage for Warlocks, and 5% physical damage dealt debuff. They also grant 300-500 Mp5 to their party.
Elemental offers 4% spell hit if Alliance, or 3% if Horde, and 3% spell crit to their party, as well as 101 spell power and 50 Mp5.
Despite doing less DPS themselves, all of these specs offer a greater raidwipe DPS increase than Rogue. That changes for some when the Rogue has Warglaives, of course, but these specs remain viable nonetheless.
All Rogue offers is DPS, and it’s not even the best at that, which is why they’re so unpopular. And Rogue is the best of the melee, followed by Fury who similarly offers little to the raid (they give Battle Shout, at least), Enhancement, Feral, and Ret, in that order.
Enhancement, Feral, and Ret, like the ranged hybrid DPS specs, offer raidwide DPS increases over Rogue despite doing less personal DPS. Enhancement gets Windfury Totem, Strength of Earth Totem, Grace of Air Totem (all better than their Ele/Resto counterparts); Feral gives 5% physical crit (valuable for BM hunter DPS for the same reason Balance is) and Innervate for the Mage, and Ret gives 3% raid wide crit, 2% extra damage to their party, another blessing, BoP for emergencies, and can refresh Judgements from all the Paladins, making JotC, JoL, and JoW 100% uptime at no expense of the other Paladins.
For logs, you can look here: https://legacyplayers.com/Raids/Ranking/
This is obvious private server logging, so perhaps inaccurate.
You could instead do the math for yourself by browsing data bases for damage values, stats on gear, and spell/ability coefficients. Check any TBC database, Elitist Jerks forums, etc.
As far as videos go, you can search for historical videos, though their accuracy in the older tiers is questionable for the reasons I stated:
Ignoring the fact that not all of the good players documented their kills on video, you also have to account for the changes throughout TBC and the attitude leading into TBC resulting in skewed raid compositions early on.
That’s because you didn’t actually read what I said, or what I was responding to:
Also, you’re looking only at boss damage, which is only part of the raid. Most often, the top DPS for a fight will be Hunters or Warlocks.
Yes, there are fights where the top recorded DPS is from a melee. In particular, Warrior will have the highest parses on fights where it’s possible because of Recklessness, a 30 minute cooldown skewing their numbers. For the entire raid (and even on other bosses), their DPS is noticeably far lower.
In any case, this does not at all refute the statement that there is zero chance Warlock is often behind Rogues and Warriors, because they demonstrably are not. They are very, VERY infrequently behind those classes.
Of the fights you listed where melee is top…
Shade: There are two Warriors sprinkled into a sea of Warlocks. It’s safe to say those Warriors are extreme outliers. When we consider that Warriors have to use Recklessness to reach their maximum parse, I think we can reasonably assume that’s how these Warriors achieved competitive numbers on a fight that quite demonstrably favors Warlocks.
Bloodboil: All but one of the Rogues had at least one Warglaive. Even so, Rogues are competitive on that fight, so let’s just say Rogues have a fight they are good at.
Council: Hunters and Warriors litter the top parses. It’s fairly easy to understand why: consistent multi-target cleave. The top guilds are stacking all the council members and just cleaving them down. Rogues can do this, but for a limited time and only to two targets compared to Warriors’ Whirlwind + Sweeping Strikes and Hunters’ Multi-shot consistently throughout the fight. Also, the damage difference on the top parses for Warriors makes me think Recklessness.
So of all the bosses up to Illidan, Rogues and Warriors each have one good fight for them, with some other melee spec being competitive depending on the fight, Warriors having the potential to top the damage for any favorable-for-melee boss by using Recklessness, while overall being far, far worse throughout the raids than Hunters or Warlocks.
That’s such a terrible condemnation of melee, though. LOL. Think of what you just said:
Well, at least a skilled melee will beat a less skilled caster. Duh. We’re not comparing skill levels between individuals, though. Even if we are, you’re generally going to require a higher level of skill to make melee work in the first place, let alone excel, because of the generally unfavorable mechanics that melee have to deal with that ranged either can safely ignore or more easily handle. Then they’re totally screwed on fights where Ranged can actually still DPS while melee get to sit around pretending they’re contributing by shooting their ranged weapon every few seconds for a whopping 100 DPS.
Throughout this entire thread there’s one glaring misconception over and over; thinking with a Classic mentality.
In TBC the balance between specs is MUCH better & much closer. Unlike classic you wont get to easily outDPS the best warlock/hunter/mage in your raid simply by showing up as a fury warrior with full world buffs. There’s nothing like that in TBC.
Even as the min/max crowd shouts warlock/hunter as top DPS - which they have and will continue to do so - there will be bad/mediocre warlocks & hunters in your raid getting routinely beat in DPS by good mages and rogues… because that’s what its like in TBC. The margins are significantly thinner.
No way I’m reading the rest of your wall of text… but are you being serious here? I literally linked that site. How come you linked the hunter dps and not overall? Because it didn’t fit your narrative maybe? Niiiiice try.
https://legacyplayers.com/Raids/Ranking/Default.aspx
I mean… even for you I didn’t think that was gonna be an excessively difficult concept to understand… There are ceilings and floors for every class. The ceiling for locks and hunters is slightly higher than other classes… but within that range the disparity isnt so great that a hunter or warlock is always going to outdps the rest even on fights that favor them… outside of that very very small instances where you’re dealing with skill-capped players in BIS gear… Basically what Qpon said.
Again… relatively simple concepts.
Ohh noooooo. Imagine being so wrong so consistently. Whats that like?
https://legacyplayers.com/Raids/Viewer/Default.aspx?id=15212&exp=1&upl=23251
???
I honestly have no idea what you’re even talking about. I didn’t link any Hunter’s DPS…
If you mean the DPS ceiling, it’s a little more than “slightly” higher, at least until Warglaives and full T6 gear.
No, actually, the disparity is that large. Assuming you’re talking about a baseline level of competency at playing the spec, Hunters and Warlocks are just miles ahead.
Keep in mind that Hunter and Warlock are both braindead easy to play at a high level because it’s almost literally a one button rotation.
I’m not sure why you think what you linked proves me wrong. The top DPS is literally a Hunter. lol?
Also, you’re linking one raid log. I was looking at overall. You really don’t know how to look at logs, do you?
Anyway, you’ve sort of devolved into trolling, so I’ll be moving on. If you can’t even be bothered to read what I’m saying, there’s no point wasting my time with you.
Whatever, I do not see much value in this conversation unless you’re in the top 1% of the server doing speed runs. I believe Blizzard has done the balancing right in TBC, the gap is closed, and we will be able to clear raids with any spec.
The most contributing factor to any successful raid is your decency. Be on time, be prepared, and click the right buttons at the right time.
You spent 2 hours typing out an entire thesis earlier lol. But sure. Dont be bothered
I’ll never understand this mentality because it really doesn’t square with reality. A casual guild can still have stellar players in it who are on-time every raid night, don’t miss assignments, use full consumables, and rock their rotations night after night. If those players are Hunters/Warlocks, you’ll be that much more successful downing bosses that you otherwise fail to complete. This is especially true of later fights where you can easily fail by less than 2% missing DPS.
You don’t necessarily need to stack exclusively Hunters/Warlocks, but you’re going to penalize yourself by overly stacking melee or not building balanced parties within the raid. Most specs have a place in 25m raiding, but most of those specs will be the sole representative of that spec.
And then comes Brutalis and none of the tryhards stacking hunters and locks can kill him becuase they don’t have the warriors for execute while the dad guilds laugh all the way to the loot bank.
People think the two are mutually exclusive. They are under the impression you either play optimally, or you’re a decent person and reliable raider. You can’t be both in their minds.
That’s why the arguments about what classes are better ALWAYS devolve into “I’d rather have a reliable raider than…”
Hunters, Rogues, and Warlocks dominate that fight, though. You’re sorely overestimating Execute. It’s not an instant kill on any target below 20% HP. It’s a moderate DPS increase that, at best, brings them temporarily up to the level of other classes.
Brutalis isn’t dying without a group of fury warriors lol
My thoughts: Tauren box 
I learned a ton from both Ironchain and Bearhands. Nice debate!
I always wondered how much the data skews by warrior alpha leaders in early TBC until that point where it seemed everybody revolted against the “follow the shoulderpad fury” and rolled a rogue, caster or druid. Id say hunter but didn’t everybody have a hunter alt it seems?