The title of this post is rather ironic considering our recent successful progression in ICC 10man…
I would love to post you some numbers about BM’s performance against MM and SV in a 10man ICC raids. I’ve been thinking about it because in my experience, BM is a viable raiding spec and does not “suck” as bad as it’s been reported with information that I believe is based mostly on 25M raiding
Alas, I have finally have decided against posting any numbers in defence of BM. Today I heard about this blue post:
Oh crap.
Did he just call my spec “fail”???
What does he mean? What’s the context – is he talking raiding 10mans, 25mans, heroic modes? GC’s complete words were:
Yet, even though Enhance’s dps was low, there were thousands of dps shaman raiding ICC. By far the majority of raids had at least one. The only specs we really failed on in LK raiding were Frost mage, Subtlety rogue, BM hunter and Arms warrior. If Enhance’s numbers are higher on mobility fights, then those participation numbers should only go up.
Okay GC, so… what you’re saying is that the 5 above mentioned class specs have lower dps compared to the other classes and their specs in raiding. However, since Shaman DPS was still being used by most raids, it isn’t as “failed” as the others? What if BM hunters had a good representation in raids? Would that change your opinion?
Does this mean that I’ll get my moose instead?
Trying to prove that BM can produce raid-worthy dps is rather pointless when Blizzard has come out and agreed with the masses.
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Reading around the blogosphere, I’ve seen where people have defended the statement:
yes in the min/max, heroic lich king downing, hardcore community, BM failed. these are the same people who wont pug me as survival. that being said, i was in a 25toc gdkp where the 2nd highest dps of the carriers was a BM hunter, who i only beat just barely, granted this was only one instance, but lets be honest, how many BM hunters do u see?
And I’ve seen what people have responded with:
you have just verified what Blizzard said. You just named 1 example from WotLK where BM was second on DPS…. The only thing it says about that particular run is that the rest DPS was either incompetent, raiding with VERY low gear compared to him or simply they were other failed DPS specs.
And you also answered yourself. The reason you dont see BM raiding is exactly the fact that it is failed raiding spec. So no, not in the min/max, heroic LK, hardcore community but in general. Although it is the king of soloing specs.
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Trying to prove that BM can produce raid-worthy dps is not a fight worth fighting if people will come along and insult my fellow raiders or the guild that I run with. I know what dps BM can do and I doubt very much that just because Blizzard failed me, I’m going to drop BM now.
DarthRegis
Brokentree
Chawa
There’s basically a feedback loop going on.
1. Blizz gets the balance wrong on some specs such that they don’t scale as well as other specs. This difference becomes more pronounced with full 25-person raid buffs and the best gear.
2. Hardcore min / max guilds in the best gear notice this and adjust their raid make-up (though non-optimal specs can be included if they provide key buffs) They also post their findings on theorycrafting sites.
3. Other players skim theorycrafting sites and decide that spec A is the best and specs B and C suck and they all change thier spec. These same players declare anyone trying to raid in spec A is a noob.
4. Blizz observes that few are raiding in spec A and states that this is a failure on their part
5. The same idiots now say that Blizz confirms spec A is a “failed raiding spec” and it will never beat a competent player with a non-failed spec.
I think it’s safe to say that the author of the reply you quoted is an idiot.
I don’t know if you looked at the raid make-up in the world first heroic lich king 25 kill but it was crazy. No mages, no resto druids, one shaman (resto) and a ton of hunters and warlocks. The reason for this had a lot to do with negating specific mechanics of the fight — hunters and locks are essentially immune to being tossed over the side by Val’kyr.
Does this mean mages suck and resto druids are a failed healing spec?
Finally, all the hardcore theorycrafting seems to be based around 25-person raids. 10-person raids are quite a different story.
I had a quick look at the logs from our recent Sarth 3D zerg (which of course is without the 30% ICC buff) and ferocious inspiration accounted for about 1350 DPS.
With the ICC buff on a DPS race like Festergut it’s worth 1500 DPS, which is a good chunk less than the difference between the various hunter specs on that fight.
Okay, this was a bit of a rant.
Indeed, the information and theorycrafting needs to be taken with a grain or two of salt. It is indeed [presently] optimized for 25-man raiding and the buffs typically incorporated with that. It’s not that it’s bad information, but it can be a tad misleading if you’re not raiding in 25′s regularly. (As per my recent change to Fire.
)
The thing that bothers me the most about this information is the way people abuse it. People ridiculing (or even vote-kicking) others from a heroic 5-man because they’re in a “fail” spec is downright offensive.
But I digress…
I’ve thankfully never seen that. Nor have I ever been negatively targeted for my BM-ness. In fact, the last time someone approached me was to ask for advice about running as BM as a fresh 80.
It’s not common, nor have I seen it much. But I have witnessed it. The fact it ever happened is mind-boggling to me.
We welcome rants here! And yes, I’ve been imagining the same sort of feedback loop too. It’s quite interesting when you think about it.
I find it frustrating that most theorycrafting is based on 25M raiding and somehow, in the presentation of results, that fact is left out.
Sadly, there are alot of idiots out there, who will turn “Blizz failed those specs” into ‘Those specs are fail”…
I watched as hunter’s everywhere switched from BM to survival when Blizzard made the changes that affected that spec. When you line up the specs the dps is not “fall off the charts bad”. The main problem came when Blizzard did not go back and try to balance their mistake. I know they talked a bunch of talk, but that talk never went anywhere.
This type of thing is not new to the gaming industry. Designing a game is one thing, keeping it balanced as it grows is a harder task. Those that say BM is not viable for raids need to open their eyes.
I know plenty of hunters that don’t play BM that really miss it. Their guilds push them to play survival or MM. I am glad you are in a guild that realizes DPS is not all that a hunter can bring to the table.
They also bring fish feasts.
I’m really thankful for my guild. I am sure I wouldn’t enjoy this game as much as I do without the people I play with.
Although I can’t speak for the other “failed” classes, I can say from experience that frost mages are not failures in raids. I used to be arcane (like almost all other mages), but decided to switch back to frost since that is how I want to play. My dps is about the same, maybe higher on aoe packs because of improved blizzard
. I am usually first or second dps in my guilds 10 man raids, and it’s not because everyone elses gear sucks.
Moral of the story: play how you want to play, because the numbers (from my perspective) are almost the same
That’s pretty much why I changed back to fire. Sure, it was pushed over by some news that Fire was comparable DPS to Arcane… but I spent levels 1 – 70 as Fire.
That’s right… I leveled most of this game not as frost! :O
So yeah, Fire is the most interesting gameplay for me as a mage and I’m happy to be back. (Although I still do Saurfang as Frost… hooray for Deep Freeze!
)
I’ve come to a conclusion. I may not be a hardcore Raider and have become a pretty casual player. One thing I always did though was try and min/max my toon to be the best possible rogue I can be.
The conventional wisdom is to level combat and then at 80 choose the current best for raiding. I leveled Assasination. I love it. Daggers are in my blood. For all of Wrath I was Mutilate until one day the “Broken Hilt” dropped and I won the roll. Ok this is the best weapon I have in my arsenal. But it would mean changing specs to one that I really do not enjoy. But the min/max in me won and I changed. Got the OH axe from Lord Morrigar, gemmed out Arp and voila….Rallick was now combat.
But guess what. I hate it. Combat is the current top end rogue raiding build and I couldn’t care less. My play became sloppy, I would clip SnD with like 10 seconds left because of boredom. My DPS is not what it could be….because I hate Combat. But again daggers are hard to come by early in ICC and if I wanted to min/max properly I needed to be combat.
So thank god last night I was able to get those two daggers to drop and can be what I love again. Hopefully this will teach to play what I love and not what is best. Blizz has made Raiding accessable to all to play what they wish to play now. I’m not with Ensidia….I’m with the Zug Initiative and we play for each other and we play for fun.
So play what you want Chawa I will not begrudge you, because I never cared or judged what anyone else’s spec was because I didn’t care and frankly was not educated enough to know much of a difference. I put pressure on myself to be the best but have decided it is not worth it. I get to play twice a week with Rallick and U’m going to play how I want.
What the hell?! You were gimping your DPS almost deliberately?!
/gkick
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