Why do people think you cant be a *meme* spec?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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There is no rotate healing/drinking on top raids unless very little healing is needed, only drinkwalking. Also if there is 1 place where ele shaman shines is trash, the cleave is insane and since we dont have to worry about threat we can dps right off pulls. This is the reason why it competes with mages and warrios on trash dmg, effective uptime.

But it depends on the raid ofc, this would be for naxx. For BWL for example it might be somewhat different and the top speedrun at one point had all the eles dps on bosses and heal on trash.

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Here are the numbers for overall Naxx encounters from 2019 (this hierarchy changes slightly by fight): h ttps://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1006#aggregate=amount (space between H ttps)

I don’t understand how Ele and Feral are memes but Warlock and Hunter are not in some of your eyes?

In the upper quartiles Ele does 87% of the damage of warlock. if you wanted a windfury totem but you wanted to save a heal slot for dispell, why wouldn’t you bring ele? A ele of equal skill to a warlock is probably going to bring the same if not more dps than a warlock when you include the effective dps of their totem on warriors and, particularly, rogues.

You could have a near identical scenario for Feral. You take a feral rather than Resto druid for another priest dispell or paladin dispell/blessing. You would only be trading out the worst healer for solid middle of the pack dps. It might also be compelling to bring a Feral rather than a 3rd warlock, if the warlocks would be the only 3 Shadow dps. Feral is basically abreast of warlock in dps in the upper quartile, but brings a really good melee buff, a reactive soulstone, and is a flex tank the moment they cast bearform.

There are lots of scenarios where it can make mathematical sense to bring a “meme spec” in the average imperfect raid. And, they are not outlandish niche scenarios. Horde hurts for dispells, pally blessings are important, and the middle of the pack (ele through warlock) is quite close in performance.

This is all withstanding the dedication and participation aspects of maintaining a raid team of 40. It’s always going to be better to bring a good/reliable ele or feral over a bad/unreliable 2nd hunter or bad/unreliable 3rd warlock.

Now, if we’re talking perfect comps: basically everything is a meme outside of warrior, rogue, mage being 70% of your team. Warlock is only 65% of the damage of a warrior in the upper quartile for perspective. You could probably also argue that rogue is a utility meme that you only bring 1 or 2 of for IEA and distract (they’re just a worse warrior, right?)

It’s not realistic for everyone to raid that way though. It’s also completely unnecessary for downing the content. And, for all of you that say meme specs leech loot? What do 10 warriors, mages, or rogues do to each other…? What do multiple warlocks or hunters do to each other…?

A lot of the loot that people commonly call bad itemization and trash can actually be very very good for some of the “meme specs.” I’ve never seen a rogue complain about a druid getting Malfurian’s Blessed Bulwark, for instance.

Having a greater diversity of classes and specs helps your raids loot utilization, it doesn’t hurt it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t bad loot utilization the reason that “perfect raid comps” do split runs and send all there members to GDKPS? I feel like some of you “respect my time” gamers don’t understand that those guilds don’t just show up and do a fast run. They probably spent way more time playing than your average player to get to that point.

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This statistic is very missleading considering that so many restos get logged as eles by casting a LB. Hard to know for sure but judging by the relative abundance of these specs id argue its likely that more than half of these “ele” are just restos. This means that what you see as the top quartile might very well be more than half of the actual ele shamans, and the actual top quartile is way higher than that. An ele shaman will perform considerably better than an equally skilled warlock.

Also, unfortunately you cant filter by faction and the data shows both alliance and horde. Casters perform better on alliance, but shaman is only horde so it would be fair to compare with only horde.

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Warlocks have CoE and CoR, having at least 2 of them is required for raid dps. Then you’re better off having more mages.

Raids usually only bring 1-2 hunter for pulling/tranq (the latter is more-or-less required in some settings).

Memes have no required role, and they’re classes where healing is generally more efficient for the slot. And to do anything approaching reasonable damage you need to be opening dps gear to them that you could otherwise be giving to warriors, mages, and rogues that use it more efficiently.

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Warlocks have CoE and CoR, having at least 2 of them is required for raid dps.

Yes I mention this myself. The scenarios I reference pertain to imperfect raid groups that would still (probably) want to run 2 warlocks.

Then you’re better off having more mages

You are playing fantasy raid leader with the perfect roster… Again I say in the post myself that the answer to filling a dps spot could almost always be warrior/mage up to ~70% of the team. That’s not realistic for a lot of raid rosters.

Memes have no required role, and they’re classes where healing is generally more efficient for the slot.

You’re generalizing based on a perfect raid comp.

And to do anything approaching reasonable damage you need to be opening gear to them that you could otherwise be giving to warriors, mages, and rogues that use it more efficiently.

Itemization between “meme specs” and warrior, rogue, mage is not strictly 1:1. Also, raids that care about speed or want particular loot to go toward particular classes/people for progression can prior the loot accordingly. I’ve seen these exceptions in DKP/SR/etc… guilds. And, then of course many guilds run a loot council that would do this.

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I miss frost mage :frowning:

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Those wcl statistics also make warlocks look better than they actually are in an optimized raid. The ones that do good dps are all in unoptimal raids with more than 2 warlocks and an spriest or sw priest, which is far from ideal (and many have arguably wasted PIs on them past AQ). The reality is that warlocks without both of these support do not do good dps at all, and anything above 2 locks can be considered meme.

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The thing is there is always a solid reason to bring 2 warlocks to any raid comp, there is almost never a good reason to bring an ele shaman other than needing another warm body and not having a mage available or being really light on shamans and needing totems

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A considerable portion of the top speed horde guilds back in classic disagree. And ive presented plenty of good reasons, but you just refuse to accept them.

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he thing is there is always a solid reason to bring 2 warlocks to any raid comp

Yes this is something I think we all acknowledge for the most part. CoR and CoE are really good debuffs.

there is almost never a good reason to bring an ele shaman other than needing another warm body

This is a frequent problem for 40 man raids.

not having a mage available

Not having a reliable dedicated mage available, but having longstanding dedicated raiders of other classes in your guild is probably far from unheard of?

being really light on shamans and needing totems

This happens a lot in general, or because you want to balance your heal comp so that you also have dispells.

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This is so true. A lot of people fail to realize that you always want 7 shamans, but you might not want 7 restos (and enhance is pretty bad), which makes ele shaman a very good option.

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Ele is the easiest spec to fix (for classic+)

Change eye of the storm to reduce mana cost of all spells by 15, 20, 25% for 15 sec after you land a critical with Lighting bolt and chain lighting.

Change Elemental Fury to reduce casting time of lighting bolt by 30% (After you land a critical strike with lighting bolt / chain lighting)

Change elemental devastation to increase spell crit by 2,4,6% after you critically strike with any spell.

Those three changes would make Ele really good, and make it a lot more balanced (arguably better) in PVP.

Thing is, doing this may actually require the spec get nerfed slightly after because I can only test in so much detail.

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I liked your posts about this.

There are people, and I’ve seen them, who very much enjoy pouring over spreadsheets and what’s optimal but when it gets to the reality of what is best long term they kind of fizzle out. Understanding group dynamics and how people work together is a different skill set and the spreadsheets and optimizing group comps and rotations are simply more fun to them.

Take for example you have a lock, he’s loyal, dedicated and gets along with everybody. Then you have a mage. He’s moody and no-shows sometimes.

You’ve got two other locks that you are bringing. You need one more caster for that week, what do you bring? What is best long-term?

Top groups can be picky, even GDKPs (and other pugs) which I know is a lot of the Era playerbase can be pickier. if you want a team that raids together over many years though instead of dying in a big drama blowout there’s way more to it.

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Finally some reality on this topic

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The real problem with playing a hybrid dps spec is the poor quality of life. Even if you minmax the hell out of your class, you’ll always be last on loot prio. You can parse 99-100s every week, have a flawless rotation, spend thousands on consumes, be in the top dps, and you’ll still be the “lmao meme class”. You’ll always be invisible in a loot council guild and may never get your hands on your bis forever pieces. You’ll always be working harder than everyone else to prove you’re not a :poop:er

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Because their WoW hero’s, peoples champions and leaders tell them this is how to play the game, its the best way to play the game, its the only way to play the game and so everyone just jumps on the bandwagon without a second thought and do what everyone else is doing because if everyone else is doing it, it must be right.

Now, there is no right or wrong way to enjoy the game and that’s all subjective anyway - meaningless abstractions. So they are free to tackle the content in anyway they deem fit for any reason they want, just like anyone else. Where they trip up is they tell anyone else that they’re doing it wrong and even that they don’t belong at all.

Someone else already summed it up pretty well when they said its more of a case of it not being a ‘metaspec’ rather than a ‘meme spec’.

They say meme spec to make people feel bad about it so they don’t have to reckon with their dumb, unsubstantiated prejudices and biases. Its all your fault you see, you’re doing it all wrong. Oldest trick in the book.

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damn the amount of people that will never compromisse to a group of people no matter what is pretty damn high in this thread lol.

it’s just about data and time, chill. lol

You can kill onyxia with the entrie raid group beign naked.
And a pet tanking.

It is possible and its meme because the group as a whole agreed to gimp itself becuase it would be funny.

This doesnt mean you should show up naked whitout telling anyone then lecture them about a youtube video.

Because they are not supported to a raid role, as the developers themselves said so.