Nov 09
25
A war has been raging on MMO-Champ’s forums lately. An inter-species feud that has no end. A struggle that consumes nearly every thread that pops up. And I’m getting a bit tired of it. It’s the age old turkey discussion known as “We suck, no we don’t, yes we do, no we don’t!” (WSNWDYWDNWD in short).
We are a few people who has been spending the better part of our “We could go hit on girls”-time discussing this subject, and it seems to be growing hotter with every post, and once in a while a new person on the board will stroll in, post something as if we haven’t just been discussing this for eight weeks, and it all starts over again. I myself am beginning to feel a little bit frustrated about all of this whole ordeal, and I aim to put a stop to it.
It seems that, with all the different threads we discuss in, sometimes the arguments previously made gets “forgotten”. The initial argument is then re-posted, regardless of it having been countered already, and the cycle repeats itself. On top of that, if an active participant goes away for a few days, the responses to his post might not be seen by him, and that part of the discussion isn’t continued and both parties believe that they have won the argument. And all of the points made, whether they were forgotten or intentionally ignored, it makes it very difficult – if not completely impossible – to reach a consensus.
So I have decided to make the mother of all arguments, the father of posts, the biggest, meanest blog post to defend my point of view: We’re fine!
There are a few arguments that seem to be the most used by the opposition. Some of them might be valid and some of them are just plain dumb. In this post I will attempt to refute the following:
Hybrids aren’t supposed to beat pures!
Your guilds other DPS suck!
Moomkins are never on the Top Lists!
You’re just selecting what benefits your argument!
But what about..!
Hybrids aren’t supposed to beat pures!
Blizzard once made a comment that hybrid classes should be a little bit behind pure classes, because hybrids has the benefit of being able to switch playstyle on a different character. While I agree with this ideal, and think that this is how it should be, it just doesn’t seem like the case. We often see hybrids on top of the meters, in many cases well ahead of any pure class. Death-Knights have been dominating meters for ages now, and have been able to pull astonishing numbers ever since Naxxramas. Feral druids as well has always been in a good spot on the meters, even if they are very difficult to play. So when this is the case for some very powerful and diverse classes, it’s not unlikely that it slips in regards to others.
I know, I know, shamans and shadow priests are generally very soddy DPS, but they have been performing really badly, and are getting a bit of love now. The point is, though, that if you look at the current leader table in either Ulduar or TOTC, you will see Death Knights and Druids on many of the spots. Sure, they are fights that are completely dominated by mages at times, but that’s completely beside the point: Some hybrids already have shown that they are more than capable of competing with pures, and Blizzards vision has not been successfully executed.
Your guilds other DPS suck!
This is a rather hurtful comment, and a below-the-belt kind of way to draw attention away from whatever argument that has been put forth. It’s suddenly not just about me, but the people I play with. In some cases, I am willing to admit that one person can shine in a guild and carry the rest of the raid, but I don’t think at all that this is the case here. The argument is automatically refuted when you note that my guild, in fact, doesn’t suck. In its present form it is just about 6 months old, and yet we have cleared every encounter in the game except for Alone in the Darkness, Algalon 25 and Anub 25 hard mode.
I know, we didn’t clear Glory of the Ulduar Raider before TOTC came out – in fact we cleared it about 1½ months after the release of TOTC. But when we did, we were the 1053th guild in the world – at that point there were over ten times as many guilds that had cleared TOTC25, and had access to just as many nice upgrades as we do. To this date there are only 1469 guilds that has managed to kill Yogg +1, with no less than 19270 guilds that has cleared normal Trial of the Crusader 25. What this means is that even if my guild sucks in your view, we are still doing what only a small fraction of guilds are doing, and gear alone doesn’t permit you to do that – obviously, or we would see a lot more people flying around with drakes.
So what I am getting at here, is that while you may view my guild, and my fellow DPS’ers, inferior to your guild and your DPS’ers, they are certainly meeting a certain standard to ensure they have a grasp of their class and game mechanics at a point where we can say that they do not suck.
Boomkins are never on the Top Lists!
Dear oh dear, people just love to go to World of Logs and look at the top 200 lists of all time best DPS’ers across all the fights. They link that and say “clearly, these classes are much, much better”. I say “Clearly, these lists are very, very biased”.
One thing we should notice straight away is that some fights are completely dominated by one class. The top 10 DPS’ers on Lord Jaraxxus, Faction Champions, Twin Val’kyrs and Anub’Arak heroic are exclusively arcane mages and unholy death-knights, which shows that these classes are quite unfairly balanced, and they should not be used as a general ruler for DPS comparison (especially since one of them is a hybrid! Gasp!)
But even so, you have to note the irregularities on a fight like Northrend Breasts heroic, where we have a bit of a mixed class representation. I made a little graph of the top 50 DPS classes, as shown below, and you would note how quickly it drops from a high top DPS of 8994 to a much more even DPS of ~8200. This should probably show that it is still very unlikely to reach these numbers, when there is such a gap between #5 and #10.
In fact, if you look at the two players at the very top, Hyped and Kripparrian (who are even from the same guild), they are well ahead of their fellow DPS’ers. Whats even more curious is that some of these logs are several weeks old, some going back to late October, which leads me to believe that they have either been incredibly lucky or that they are the more frequent receivers of upgrades.
Think about how much DPS could be affected just how your raid setup works. We spend over 8 minutes killing NrB heroic, and guilds that bring one less healer shave several minutes off their kill. If a larger percentage of the fight is spent during bloodlust, it has a massive effect on how DPS compares to others, not to mention the fact that any damage anybody else does is damage you can’t do. Bloodlust has a huge impact on peoples performance. We bloodlust when the worms come into play, and that allows us to kill Acidmaw shortly after he surfaces after the first burrow. During that, a moonkin will be sure to proc lunar eclipse once (and one duration of lunar eclipse is all we can do to benefit from bloodlust). But if a guild pops bloodlust the first time Icehowl gets stunned, most classes can pop a nuke macro and a trinket, and get a massive DPS increase, where a moonkin is left wishing for the slim possibility of proccing lunar eclipse fast enough to get any benefit at all.
The result is that the top DPS’ers of all time (OF ALL TIME, Kanye!) are prodigies with a bit of luck, and comparing any DPS to them is a mistake. And you cannot be sure that they are teaming with any kind of decent moonkin.
If we really have to look at other peoples logs, I would much rather find logs from the highest moonkins on a specific fight, and then compare them to their group at that very moment. They are still susceptible to the things written above. They could be lucky, or they could truly be a golden nugget in a pile of dung, but we get a much wider spread. But you will ensure that these are the very best moonkins out there, and that you can compare them to their peers. In fact, you are much more likely to get a cut of logs from a more general population, and a much more realistic image of how it could be played out.
Looking through these logs, I notice that the top 200 moonkins are smack even with their peers. Does all of their guildies suck? Are they the only ones pulling their weight? Or are they, in fact, just capable of playing their class to a point where they are comparable to other DPS classes? I think not. Its one thing if 24 people (minus healers and tanks) in my guild are all sucky-sucky, but to say that every single guildie of every moonkin that does high DPS are bad players, is going out on a pretty wide limb. In fact, if i go down the list, i consistantly see the moonkins on that list being comparable to their peers. They can do it, I can do it, you can do it.
You’re just selecting what benefits your argument!
Of course I am – so are you! But you don’t even have to take my word for it. The big guys at Elitist Jerks are spending all of their “Second Base”-time on doing calculations that I wouldn’t dream of trying to understand. But we can look at the end result. Even if I can’t fully understand the amount of algebra put into this work, I can respect the fact that every single comma they make will be checked over by a dozen other people, who are spending just as much time as they are, trying to crack the game. Because of that, I view these results with general positivity, and it just so happens that they are pretty positive towards me – the numbers, I mean. I’m not smart enough to play with the big boys.
According to the current SampleOutputT9 from Simulationcraft, last changed 22th of November, the highest DPS class currently on a static fight, in the best gear currently available is an arcane mage. Big surprise. (Sidenote: I have no idea why there are no death knights in the spreadsheet. Hardly matters anyways). They are topping the calculation with a maximum of 10.232 DPS in their very best gear, under the best, most predictable circumstances. Moonkins show up twice on this list, once with 2pt8 and once with 4pt9 – the 2pt8 version being slightly higher DPS than the other. They come in at a whooping 9.937 DPS. Gasp, it’s not near the mage! Buhu, we are not at the top!
Well, close enough. Fact is, the calculations say that we are just 2,9% behind the mage, which is great because first time I looked at it, we were 4,6% behind, and the second time we were 6% behind. Heck, even if we are 10% behind, at 9208 DPS, I would still say that it is pretty damn nice! And these are completely sterile conditions. Is it so hard to believe that a moonkin with decent gear and a bit of brain could show off these results? No, not at all, and the theory just back up what I see in the real world (of Warcraft, I mean).
Remember, this is in the absolutely best gear available for these specs. Nobody has that, except for maybe the few guilds that has been clearing Anub tribute runs since day one. It’s going to take 25 weeks to gear up one raid group with four pieces of 258 tier 9, and there is the random factor of all the other loot that may or may not drop and go to one person over the other depending on DKP or how much they have bribed the loot master. Most of us do not live in the luxury of having perfect gear, but neither does our fellow raiders. So is it really that unlikely that a moonkin can be comparable on DPS?
But what about..!
Don’t even start on Anub! If there is one thing that makes me tick, it’s people linking meters from Anub’Arak heroic, saying “Look at us, we totally suck”. Yes, yes we do suck. That’s because Anub’Arak is a gimmick fight, where most of the time is spent doing AOE. Classes aren’t balanced assuming they will stand still and AOE. No way, not when I don’t even go near my hurricane button on 99% of the fights I’m in.
Yes, it sucks jormungar balls (they are very small, because they are very cold, I reckon), but we simply have to live with it. You still bring stuff to the raid group. You ensure a nice crit chance to your fellow casters. You make sure the adds are slowed by 20%, just in case that thunderclap doesn’t go on it. You are a giant turkey (happy thanksgiving!).
I have been competing nicely along with other classes on every other boss in the end of each instance, be it Kel’Thuzad, Yogg-Saron or a normal Anub. I can pull off amazing numbers on some of the funnier fights like Hodir and Vezax (the later especially because we are absolutely godlike during Lunar Eclipse) and I am comfortable with my position against my peers.
Conclution:
So whether you are whining about being 3% behind a pure DPS, or because you are somehow less geared or less skilled, it doesn’t really matter. I do not believe that we are in such a bad shape that it’s worth complaining about, and the few fights that we are, we just have to live with. I am sick and appalled about all the negative whiners, polluting the forums with their persistent crying, instead of trying to look at the bright side, instead trying to think of how we can improve or generally have a good time.
I cringe every time a new poster comes along to give his two cents, complaining that they can’t compete with their 17% crit and 600 haste rating. I cry a bit every time a new and creative post is shot down with “You can’t do that, just reroll mage”. And I slap my face with a facepalm that is so hard that it nearly flails the skin off my cheek, whenever someone “forgets” to reply to an argument, or completely forget to take into account the arguments put out on the forums previously.
Disclaimer: These are the reasons I made this blog, and I will continue linking to it every single time, until someone steps up and give me a decent counter argument. I am not going to spend ages writing this stuff up again, but I do hope that future respondents will appreciate the arguments I have put in here, and the hours I have spent on putting all this together. I would be genuinely upset – and very quick to call troll – if someone strolls along and fails to take this all in and give it a good think.
I realise that things will change within a few months, what with the impending nerf to tier 8 and all the new stuff in Icecrown Citadel, but lets live in the moment and get the best out of it.
- QQ
/clap
been following what u were saying on mmo-champion,
and to see it condesed ito one post jst shows the amout of reaserch u put into proving moonkins arent in such a bad place, infact were in a gd place (jst sort out eclipse blizzard gawd)
very informotive post
I was gunna disagree with a lot of points but I actually wont bother
What you’re saying isn’t actually INcorrect and you’ve put a lot of time into it’s just a lot of the basis you’re using can be disagree’d with. Saying that I actually would lean more towards your argument then others but just some of the methods you use aint great foundation wise , still props for the post it’s actually a good read <3
I agree with most of your points anyways, im ALWAYS top5 assuming something goes wrong, if all goes as its supposed to be i was topping charts with 7300DPS at Beasts at least, neck to neck with my Arcane Mage guildie.
In 3.3 things wont change much for us at least, i dont know how the rest will scale with their new upgrades, other than that, we should be kinda fine.
I clap your post, we’re pretty competent at the moment, not being the unbalanced class or not being top always, doesnt mean we’re not okay where we’re, some changes need to be made, sure, but we’re fine, we’ll see how we do when T10 comes.
Nice post, well written.
Just wanted to point you said “Northrend Breasts” about halfway down the post.
/snicker
Isn’t basically every fight a ‘gimmick fight’ of some sort? There is actual valid points to much of why people say “moonkin suck”. We have some very bad mechanics that need to be changed. Removing the dependence on 2pc T8 should help a bit — but we need to be compensated for that removal in some way, because it was a huge DPS boost, as was WiseEclipse.
With the exception of spell power, moonkin basically gain half benefits from all stats, that’s why we scale so horribly. We have a horribly low soft cap for haste, at which point Wrath stops benefiting from it completely. The same goes for the soft cap for crit (although without the 15% boost from 2pc T8, that cap will be raised), at which point only Wrath gains from critical strike.
Since we’re already running at the GCD for Wrath (and that’s roughly as much damage as Starfire now, if not more), we only benefit from bloodlust while casting Starfire — which we only cast during the lunar eclipse. Now that WiseEclipse is gone, we may cast a few starfires after the eclipse to proc solar, but I think if you look at most parses, people spend more time casting Wrath then Starfire.
So what has Blizzard done? They’ve nerfed two things we had that allowed us to actually put out semi-decent DPS, without doing anything to compensate for it. Eclipse in it’s current state is completely messed up. It’s way too RNG, and even more-so without WiseEclipse. There needs to be serious developer thought on how they want to fix us.
Arcane mages are broken, too, in the opposite direction. I wonder if the dev’s actually budget that a mage will receive both buffs of ‘focus magic’ when they look at balancing classes — lord knows the only time they don’t is if there is only one mage in a raid.
I have an idea floating around my head that I’m going to post soon on the Nest on a neat idea that I’ve been thinking up that I think could boost us slightly, but I’ll detail that more later.
TL;DR version: Moonkin do not scale well because we only get ~50% effectiveness from both haste and crit (as well as heroism/bloodlust). Eclipse is a broken talent that has been criticized by the end game moonkin raiding community since day -1, yet Ghostcrawler, et. al. keep holding onto it because it makes moonkin raiding “fun” for them. As we continue to grow into Icecrown this disparity will only grow larger.
Since I was curious, and decided to look at WoL in which you are quoting everything from, let me run some numbers for all five fights in ToGC:
Northrend Beasts:
Top DPS: 8994
Top Moonkin: 7550
Moonkin was at 83.9% of max DPS
Lord Jaraxxus:
Top DPS: 15542, huge delta, second was 12183
Top Moonkin: 9067
Moonkin was at 74.5% / 58% of max DPS
Faction Champions (Alliance)
Top DPS: 18432
Top Moonkin: 7137
Moonkin was at 38% of max DPS
Faction Champions (Horde)
Top DPS: 15742
Top Moonkin: 7134
Moonkin was at 45% of max DPS
Twin Val’kyrs:
Top DPS: 18129
Top Moonkin: 12945
Moonkin was at 71.4% of max DPS
Anub’arak:
Top DPS: 12672
Top Moonkin: 8602
Moonkin was at 67.8% of max DPS
And just for giggles..
Algalon
Top DPS: 11301
Top Moonkin: 7665
Moonkin was at 67.8% of max DPS
So moonkin top DPS are trailing between 17% to as much as 50% behind the top DPS, with most fights trailing 25% or more, and you say our DPS is fine?
Sunfyre, you did excactly what i had asked people – begged people – to not do. You commented on one argument, very briefly, and finished the counter with “And you say our DPS is fine?”.
You did this while completely ignoring 90% of my post, and that makes me a sad turkey. And while you only cared to consider one section of my 2700 word argument, you did everything i tried to avoid: You took two different fights and compared them with no regards to length, composition, and the gazillion other factors like when was bloodlust used or the like. You did, in fact, only pit two numbers up against each other and said “This is bigger” without even looking into why there might be a difference – at all.
If we just go over it briefly – very briefly, because this was what i was trying to avoid – then look at the top DPS on NrB heroic. Consider where they are using bloodlust. Seems to me that they do it when Icehowl crashes the wall. How easy is it for an arcane mage (who, in fact, peaks to nearly 40.000 DPS during those 10 seconds) to pick up his rotation, fire all of his cooldowns and blast away? How not-very-easy is it for a moonkin to do that? Consider then, instead, how much more even it would be if bloodlust is popped on the worms, where you have ample time to go through the full duration with very little chance of interruption?
In the bottom of my blog, i asked everybody nicely to please take it all in, and consider the arguments as a whole. I think its currious how they fit nicely together; That my own experience, the logs we find with competent moonkins, the theoretical spreadsheets from EJ, are all supporting each other. I asked people to put a bit of effort into a reply, because otherwise, whats the point of me spending two hours writing it anyways? If you just stumble in and point at one small segment, ignore everything around it and say “AHA! This number is bigger than this number, so you are completely wrong!” without considering if the two can actually be compared, without considering all the other arguments.
I really don’t think its fair, and because of that, I will turn it over to you: Are *you* 17%+ behind your top DPS during raids?
Yes, there are a lot of gimmick fights out there, but there is a huge difference between a “nuke, run, nuke, run” fight (which classes are balanced around) and a fight where you stand casting an AOE spell most of the time. Some fight can be “ungimmicked” though. We use the cheesy door strategy for Twins heroic, which means everybody gets empowered at the same time (usually when the twins are at like 5%
). This means that everybody gets to stand completely still and just nuke, nuke, nuke. And while we only topped around 10-12k DPS (because we didn’t get empowered), we were all smack on equal. We took a very random fight and made it very little random, and it turned out that we were smack next to each other.
Im just saying, some fights cant even be compared, some have to be done in a special way, and some have to be scrutinized greatly before any conclution can be made. I am not a fan of the argument *at all*, but i included it in the log because its probably the most used out there.
I dont mean to sound too grumpy – its early, and i haven’t had any coffee yet. I am sure you don’t like it either, when people ignore most of your post and wont even consider your arguments
As a start, my opinion (and what i’ll be trying to argue around) is the following : our dps is fine but slightly lower than that of pure dps’ers. To me, slightly means let’s say 5%, ie that’s what i can be satisfied with (10% would be too much of a penalty i think). And to me, 5% is completely fine. 5% is already around 400-500 dps at the levels we are talking so it’s a big enough step to be meaningfull but a small enough step to be bridged by skill.
(most of the arguing around the issue comes from people disagreeing about what “slightly” means and whether it destroys us or not so it’s better to be clear on that)
Another problem that could be identified in why the debate never goes anywhere could be what meaning is put behind “moonkin dps” (or the same for whatever class). For some (me included), it’ll be the best we can dream of doing, either under theoretical circumstances or real circumstances, which means that i want to look at the 99% people. For others it could be the dps done by a statistically meaningfull percentage of “good moonkins”, ie the 95% range.
Both views are valid in themselves but would naturally lead to incomprehension if people don’t agree on what they are talking about beforehand.
Third problem when trying to understand peoples differing points of view comes from the interpretation of “suck” in “your pure dps’ers suck”. People like to make extreme arguments but it does hurt the credibility in the end.
If my normal optimal dps is 5% below a pure’s optimal dps, then him doing 5% less dps than optimal (while i’m doing 100%) is enough to put us at an equal level. In a way it can said that he “sucks” even if he is doing very competitive dps, but more precisely he simply isn’t performing at the level he should, he is only very near to it.
In order to get something out of this, we’d have to look at a distribution curve of best dps – good dps – bad dps. I’d like to use your curve but since there are probably some extreme cases included(all specific buffs given to one person) so it wouldn’t work well. That being said i do think (personnal opinion with no facts to sustain it) that the normal dps curve is mostly similar, ie few people at the top, relatively fast performance drop and a plateau at the end. (you can stop reading this specific point if you don’t agree on that because it’s the base of the rest) ie you’ll find a very very small percentage of people able to do 99-100% of their potential dps over a whole fight, more people doing 95%, more doing 80-85%, and a lot doing 50-70%. This matters when considering what it means to be good (ie in the 95% range, where most people say “suck”) vs exceptionnal (99% range). When you are looking at the best dps fights for a spec, you’ll have the 99% guys in the first pages. When you are looking at the people playing with that guy, there’s a much higher chance for them to be 95% range guys (ie they are competitive else they wouldn’t be at that level but there’s no real reason to believe that they are the cream of the top).
That’s the reason i can’t accept your WoL analysis. You are taking the cream on one side but can’t garantee that they are at the same level on the other side (which you could statistically by looking at top “other class”). I’ll agree that there’s a lot of work implied in :
– having to remove aberrant behaviors (a whole raid helping an arcane mage to do 18k or so on Jarraxus)
– find the timing for each fight in order to compare fights of comparable length
But that’s the only way to make sure you are in the same range of skill for both sides of the comparison (ie moonkin vs everybody else).
(and i’ll say it straight, i don’t care enough about the whole debate to do that work myself)
From what i can see in my guild, i am clearly one of the top dps’er (top 5 generally, and that’s while raid leading which makes me do “mistakes” since i can’t concentrate 100% on the rotation, ie i could do better). From what i can see from EJ discussions and moonkin parses as well as stuff discussed around each kill announcement (ie the world firsts), we don’t put out same dps than other classes.
– Ferals are up there yes, so Blizzards Hybrid view isn’t implemented correctly for everyone. DK’s are up there but mostly on fights with AE components. That doesn’t mean we are there or that Blizzard isn’t aiming for the hybrid tax. It just means they don’t put that much energy in it and are satisfied enough with things as they are (probably since it hasn’t caused any big shift in raid participation yet)
– sucking : already answered higher
– WoL : already answered higher
– SimCraft : i like that program for making comparisons inside a same model (ie changing gear, changing rotation, …) and i do trust the internal coherency of the results. I have no idea how accurate the total dps given is accurate (that being said, it probably is) or more usefull for the discussion, how a real situation impacts that dps (ie what are all the assumptions made). I guess my argument is somewhat hypocritical but the numbers given are quite high compared to what we mostly see.
I don’t like the WOL argument at all. But i felt that i had to include it, because it is being drawn into the discussion at every turn. It is also our only means for comparasson at all, but it is so flawed. In a perfect world we would be able to use everybodys own recount (statement, not the addon
) of the fights and how they compare, and we would be able to determine “skill” just by talking to each other, but that is practically impossible. The only reason why i pull in the top lists is to counter the argument that is already there, and if we have to do that, i would much rather use the moonkin specific list and then focus on those moonkins versus their raid group. But those logs are suspectable to the same factors as the alltime top list is, although i do believe that they are a little less biased when it comes to moonkins.
I think most will find that the majority of good moonkins find themself on an equal footing in a raid group. The problem comes when we are all linking logs from the “super pro” people – maybe 5% of the player base, all super hardcore people. I think the vast majority is a lot more balanced – if it weren’t, we wouldn’t see such a massive drop just from #1 to #10.
The problem comes when people use blunt statements like “such”, without specifying. It can be confusing to new visitors on a forum, and even old hags such as us have problems determinating to what extent they mean we “suck”. There is a huge difference between 5% below and doing shadowpriest-like damage. But moonkins are still difficult to master. I wouldn’t be suprised that most of the people doing shadow priest-like damage really could do with reading a few guides here and there.
I am perfectly fine with a 5% tax. When i am a good player (i am), and people might mess up a bit more than me, that would put me in line with their DPS completely.
My biggest beef is when people are posting logs saying “We could never reach these numbers”, without actually asking: Is there a competent moonkin in the group? Does he play on equal footing as others? It creates a lot of drama when people overreact and don’t consider the logs more throughroughly.
Cheers for the comment. It is much appreciated.
quiet, you seem to ignore my point in this post again. what i’m trying to tell you, that i dont care about simcraft, because there is NO static fight in TOGC. results linked by Sunfyre second my words. in CURRENT end game PVE moonkins are bad (there will hardly ever be end game PVE where you stand and nuke all fight, you know that).
on the otherside “I was gunna disagree with a lot of points but I actually wont bother What you’re saying isn’t actually INcorrect and you’ve put a lot of time into it’s just a lot of the basis you’re using can be disagree’d with. Saying that I actually would lean more towards your argument then others but just some of the methods you use aint great foundation wise , still props for the post it’s actually a good read <3" i mostly agree with this.
grh, Qieth. my stupid fingers.
btw, i’ve dropped wow recently, playing cod6. yeah i know its lame, but just wanted to tell you folks – later. i will be reading mmo from time to time. hugs.
I did not ignore any of your arguments at all. You seem to miss my point completely though.
Very nice article Qieth! This is a very complicated matter, and I haven’t decided for myself yet whether we are competative or not.
In my softcore guild, we only to heroic 10 man. We usually one-shot everything except Anub, so I cannot say my fellow raiders are too bad. However, I usually come out first on every single fight in ToGC. If we have a melee-heavy setup, our Kitty and Retri come out about equal to me, but all our casters are way behind (never have a Mage though). When we do 25 man normal, it’s even more funny: Usually, spot 1-8 are melees only, except me somewhere in the middle of them. All other casters are way behind – probably slacking badly.
So — everything is fine, I feel very competative have a lot of fun playing.
However, from time to time I join a more hardcore guild in doing ToGC25, and things look very differently there. It’s not that they are better equipped, only small differences here. I’m not last, but now the melee do 1-2k more than I do (depending on the fight), and also the caster classes do out-dps me pretty much. They don’t have SPriests, so I can only beat a slacky Mage, Lock or Shaman from time to time. So it’s pretty much frustrating, and I don’t understand why there are such big differences. (I’m not talking about Anub25hc here, never done him as Moonkin.)
So, are my fellow raiders and I just too bad to keep up with decent players (and 10 man heroic is so damned easy we still do it without problems), or are there big differences between the normal and heroic 25 man version, from a dps PoV?
I just don’t know what to make of it.
Okay, so you’re saying the only non-gimmick is when you stand and get everyone empowered on Twins? Come on. The problem is EVERY fight now has some sort of gimmick. EVERY FIGHT. We don’t have controllable cooldowns we can pop during weakened phases (treants don’t count, they don’t hold a candle to mirror images). For fights that are lengthened below 30pct (see Anub’arak, XT, etc), we do not have an “execute”, allowing other classes to pull ahead of us. Our DPS is overtly penalized by extreme movement.
You say our DPS is fine on a non-gimmick fight, but I’m sorry, I want to do more bosses then Patchwerk and Emalon.
And regarding hybrid tax, why should we settle for a 5% hybrid tax (and this number is refuted by devs) when obviously warriors and death knights are not punished by this? (And not even enh shaman, really). This whole “pure” vs “hybrid” argument is stupid, because in one fight, we will NEVER be able to fill more then one role, and ALL classes bring utility now, so the excuse of “you bring utility to the raid, not DPS” is also crap.
No, that is not what i am saying. I am saying that there is a way to ungimmick some fights – to an extent. We can find logs with some AMAZING DPS on some Val’Kyr fights, but these are often where you see people get many empowers – luck. But when using the cheesy door strat, only the five people with a different color will be off – and in any case everybody will get their stacks up evenly. And in this occasion aswell, while nobody is pulling super high 20k+ DPS, and everybody has equal buffs, i found us to be square on – ASWELL.
Please dont read more into what i write. Please dont assume on my behalf.
I agree – most fights are gimmicked in one way or the other. But you can use your thinker when comparing yourself to the rest of the raid group. So there was one DPS on XT that never got a bomb? Great, so you don’t compare yourself to that guy. So you didn’t get fire bombs on Koralon? Okay, count that in when you look at the logs. Just because fights have special elements to them, it doesn’t hinder you in evaluating your performence on them, you just have to factor in more stuff.
I never said hybrid tax was fair – i think its a rather silly idea, to be honest. Heck, i even used the same argument in my post up above (remember how my plan was to write all arguments in one, so people don’t “forget” them along the way?). With that said, i wouldn’t mind terribly if there was a hybrid tax, one way or the other, if it really came down to that.
Not to change the subject on the comments here. But I decided to take a look more closely at the WoL link. The raid leader of my guild put a guide on how to read every little detail on fights to maybe see what you might be doing wrong.
I’m not that great with the numbers in wow (ironically I study in accounting.. I think my brain refuses to work that hard for a video game
) so when I saw the graph explaining my dps.. The only thing I saw was valleys and peaks. Naturally I figured that the valley meant I had no eclipse. The peaks we’re when Eclipse was up.
Now before I continue (or more specifically before you go check your valleys and peaks) you have to keep in mind that sometimes these valleys have nothing to do with Eclipse. When Icehowl does a Massive Crash you better expect your dps to drop, then when he crashes on the wall it’ll boost up really fast. When you get empowered during twin valkyrs your dps better peak. The simple way to avoid errors here is to compare yourself to other dpsers in the raid. When the curves drop at the same time.. something happened that has nothing to do with you. Try to find a class with stable dps. Hunter is my personal preference.
Now I started comparing random boomkins (on the main page I would click on the charts of any guild that just put them up and then check the boomkins and hunters) with the list you provided in the post.. and there’s something I noticed… there is definitely more valleys and peaks in the average boomkins charts vs the “pro” boomkins charts. Now I figured luck might be involved and that’s why the topped the meters (eclipse kept proccing) so I went down the list to the 100th ish boomkin and checked.. still less valleys and peaks.
Now it’s 5 AM here and I’ve developed Insomnia ever since my gf started falling asleep before me.. and since I feel a tiny bit tired I wanna jump on the chance of falling asleep. So I will have to check more and see. But I posted this here in the hopes that someone will help me verify this (I might just be crazy). But if it’s true… we can maybe find how to avoid the valleys and have good stable dps.
P.S. I posted this here to avoid the idiots on mmo-champion. I figure if someone takes the time to read all this. He’s either knowledgeable or dedicated.
Ty for your time (Flame me if you think I’m stupid but please don’t hurt my feelings
)
Dendron (Elysium on mmo-champion)
Yes – Qieths-quips.com, the place all the smart people go!
I just wanted to echo Dje and say my argument has never been any of the things you listed. Simply that we are close but still behind pures and possibly that your DPS is not carrying their weight. Not that they suck, but they are just not min/maxxing to the extent you are.
A good boomkin on his best day will be out shined by a pure on their best. That is the simple point. We strive and strive and in the end we have to go to extra lengths and get lucky with procs to be REALLY competitive with a pure. Otherwise we are competitive in terms of being within a few hundred DPS of the main core of DPS, but we just don’t lead the pack week in and week out, it just doesn’t happen when you have 2 or 3 pures who just demolish everyone (although I will be the first to admit that DKs ignore the hybrid tax, they are still topping damage meters and great tanks and Blizz seems okay with that).
So thats it – you dont think that a few hundred DPS of difference is competative? You are complaining, making all this fuss, for a few percentages of difference?
Also, please ditch the “hybrid tax” completely – i just made a blog post about it less than a day ago
Hybrids aren’t supposed to beat pures…
Can we, the members of the WoW community — devs and players alike — get past this silly idea? Let’s face it, hybrid classes are NOT truly hybrid classes any more. You cannot, as a feral druid, for example, shift out of kitty form and start healing, or even switch into bear form and start tanking. Different roles require completely different specs and gear sets. So at what point do we say “huh, moonkins tend to stay in moonkin form, and if they’re asked to heal, they have to do so between fights, when they can switch specs and gear”? There’s no excuse for the “hybrids versus pures” argument any more. Hybrids no longer exist.
Your guild’s other DPS suck…
Look, it sounds cold, but this argument has merit. When we discuss our place in the DPS world, we need to discuss it in terms of high-end damage. I’m not including fight mechanics that scale DPS like General Vezax or Hodir or Twins (or Jaraxxus for mages). We need to sit and look at fights that are more of an equal playing field. In top guilds, moonkins, even those who are considered among the most skilled moonkins in the world, are not capable of competing. I’m talking about moonkins who are as well-geared as anyone else in their guild, who execute their rotations perfectly, and some who are among the leading moonkin theorycrafters. If you’re a moonkin and you’re leading your guild in DPS (as I was for a while), you’re either MUCH better-geared than your guildmates or they’re simply not as skilled as you. Maybe that doesn’t mean they suck, but it does mean we shouldn’t be comparing the best-skilled moonkins with lesser-skilled players of other classes.
Boomkins are never on the Top Lists…
Top Lists, as Qieth mentioned, are silly. Certain classes have advantages in certain fights, that’s unavoidable. Ignore the top lists and focus on high-end DPS on neutral fights.
(By the way, you totally said Northrend Breasts, which is completely full of awesome and amazing.)
I do, however, like your approach of taking the top moonkins and comparing them to their guildies. I think, though, that you have to then compare those guildies to other members of their classes. Yes, it is entirely possible that those moonkins are competing with the best of the best of other classes, but it’s also entirely possible that they are not. Remember, big picture.
You’re just selecting what benefits your argument…
I giggled. That’s what everyone does. Wouldn’t make much sense to prove the points for the other side.
I’m a bit skeptical of those SimulationCraft results, but even assuming they’re accurate, you have to take the rotations and fights into account. It is MUCH more likely that an arcane mage will reach their theoretical maximum DPS than it is that a moonkin will do the same. The arcane rotation is very proactive; the moonkin rotation is very reactive. Moonkins are MUCH more dependent on RNG than arcane mages are. Moonkins are MUCH more affected by movement than arcane mages are. That’s not to say that we are completely incapable of being competitive; it’s just much harder for us to be competitive.
Bear in mind, too, that we’re currently helped by an overpowered set bonus (2T8) and an addon (WiseEclipse). When these two things go away in 3.3, we’ll be looking at significantly lower DPS.
But what about……
Not going there. Not all fights are created equal for all classes, people need to get over that.
I also wanted to point out one thing that Sunfyre brought up that really hurts us — scaling with stats. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having soft caps, or even breaching them, but when both of our secondary stats have soft caps, it really hurts our ability to scale with gear.
My Conclusion:
We’re certainly not as far behind as some people make us out to be, but neither are we where we should be. The concept of “pure DPS” classes doing more DPS than “hybrid” classes with a pure DPS spec is just silly and really shouldn’t apply any more. Rather than talking about pure versus hybrid, we should be focused on RNG versus non-RNG. RNG classes should be capable of higher top-end DPS and lower low-end DPS than non-RNG classes, with their averages being about the same. That’s not the way it is, but it’s really how it should be.
When comparing DPS, we need to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Qieth’s method of comparing the top moonkins with their guildies is a good start, but then you need to compare the guildies with other members of their classes to get a complete analysis. Furthermore, context is extremely important when comparing DPS. Things like movement, RNG, and fight-specific buffs hold a lot of sway over one’s DPS, arguably more so for moonkins than most other classes.
And, finally, given that we’re currently unrealistically buffed by an overpowered set bonus and an addon that exploits a game mechanic that the designers did not intend to be there, we are naturally going to see a DPS decrease in 3.3, which will put us further behind other classes.
Xiera, i am going to say the same to you as i did to Eilt – i made a blog post less than a day ago regarding the “Hybrids vs pure” argument
Since we generally agree (to a point where i won’t argue it), i would like to comment on the Simcraft. It does put our 4pt9 fairly close to 2pt8, so i am not too fussed about an overpowered set bonus. I also have high hopes for our 4pt10 bonus, because – with the added crit we get, crits should be fairly frequent on wrath and constant on starfires. So while the initial numbers seem a bit bleak, I will still hold out for it.
The reason why i allow myself to trust Simcraft, is because it supports the observations i have made myself. As someone said earlier in this discussion, even a slight “loss” in skill can make up for the 5% we are behind theoretically. I agree, however, that some classes have it easier than others. I use the Icehowl example for this: An arcane mage can quickly pick up his rotation after a charge, where we have to beg for an eclipse proc. Put in a bloodlust on the first crash, and there is no way that we can compare the numbers, as opposed to if we use bloodlust at another place in the fight.
There are no pure, straight fights – the closest we get to that is Deconstructor. So when comparing TOTC fights, we simply have to take everything into account – some classes have splash damage, some classes can’t be targeted by snobolds, some classes can manage to do more optimal DPS on crashes. On Jaraxxus we would exclude mages completely, and compare against hunters and mages instead (in my world hunters are casters
). It is not from the single fights that we get an idea of how we compare, it is across several fights over several raid days, and we can only get an estimate.
Most of the time, when i hear another druid complain about their damage, i look at the logs, and i can usually point my fingers to an issue or two that would affect DPS sufficiantly, be it gear, the layout of the fight or something else.
We will see a decrease in 3.3 when we go into Icecrown, but i pray to the pasta in the sky that Blizzard will get around to fix NG before that. If not, then we have to hope that our sets will make up for it.
Q… I’m gonna do what you told people NOT to do.
Im gonna ignore 90% of the post and only focus on one area, cause it COMPLETELY INVALIDATES THE REST OF THE POST.
Just for argument, here is the first occurance of a moonkin on the “top” NrB25H list http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/dps/?page=6 . He is #234. Not in the top 5, top 10, top 50 or even top 200…
Now, I know you are thinking… “Well I said that those lists are biased” but heres the sad truth… if you are going to say
“The result is that the top DPS’ers of all time (OF ALL TIME, Kanye!) are prodigies with a bit of luck, and comparing any DPS to them is a mistake. And you cannot be sure that they are teaming with any kind of decent moonkin.”
aka, Those top numbers (233 players) are prodigies with a bit of luck, the reason their personal meters don’t have a moonkin (why you are checking their personal meters, I have no clue…) at the top is because they arent “teaming with any kind of decent moonkin”
But then you go on to say
“If we really have to look at other peoples logs, I would much rather find logs from the highest moonkins on a specific fight, and then compare them to their group at that very moment.”
aka “Here is a log of the best moonkin, click each instance, and notice how they are beating the hunters/mages/pures in their guild.” which is almost like a direct contradiction to saying that the pures only won because of “luck and skillless moonking” (I am being dramatic to prove a point). How do you know the pures in the guilds that the moonkin topped are up to par? Lets go with another statement you posted;
“But you will ensure that these are the very best moonkins out there, and that you can compare them to their peers…
…Looking through these logs, I notice that the top 200 moonkins are smack even with their peers.”
First off
Peer: one that is of equal standing with another
So…
Top Moonkin
http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/Balance_Druid/
Pures
Top Marksmans
http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/Marksmanship_Hunter/
Top Arcane Mages
http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/Arcane_Mage/
Top Combat Rogues
http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/Combat_Rogue/
Top Destro Locks
http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/Destruction_Warlock/
Other Hybrids
Top Feral Druid
http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/Feral-Cat_Druid/
Top Unholy DKs
http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Crusaders‘_Coliseum/Northrend_Beasts/25H/Unholy_Death_Knight/
In all these lists, their Top 40 beat all but our to 10, and on some of the pure lists, their top 40 beat all of us… How is that smack even?
“So thats it – you dont think that a few hundred DPS of difference is competative? You are complaining, making all this fuss, for a few percentages of difference?” – Qieth
That is not what I said at all. We ARE competitive with the core of DPS, we are not competing on a regular basis for the TOP spot in DPS. My point has been that we are competitive for decent DPS in that we can maintain upper middle of the pack status. But, no matter how well I perform there are pures (and DKs) well above me in that 1-3 spot and that goes for most of the regular parses you look at. For instance we cleaned up Ulduar last night and on XT we killed him normal mode, at the end of the fight I had pulled a nice 10.3k DPS and that earned me spot #6 on the log. Is 10k+ good DPS? Hell yea, but it still isn’t enough to TOP the charts.
All that said I am okay with not being on top of the meter for every fight, I understand that as a hybrid we won’t have that benefit against pures with equal gear and skill, as long as we remain COMPETITIVE (and I feel we are) I am okay with it.
How much is “well above” in your book?
I say that we are competative to DPS in general, and that we can – and will, if played and geared correctly – take top spots.
Last week I actually had my personal best on NrB and ended with a 7.1k DPS. Top DPS on the fight was at 8.3k. Second highest DPS was 7.6k. This is including damage done, so these people were not just DPSing in short bursts, we are talking 90+% active time.
So I am still 500 DPS behind the second top DPS and a resounding 1.2k behind our top DPS on the fight. (Hunter #1, Lock #2)
Looking to a more average fight of mine on NrB I have me at 6.8k DPS for the fight. Number one on the fight was at 7.7k DPS, number 2 was at 7.3k DPS.
Again, 500 DPS behind number 2 and 900 DPS behind #1. (DK #1, Lock #2)
I don’t consider that wide of a margin competing for the TOP spot. Although I am always upper middle of the pack, I think we are very competitive in that regard, but the top DPS is just not really feasible when you have pures (and DKs) pulling those numbers on a REGULAR basis.
“I say that we are competative to DPS in general, and that we can – and will, if played and geared correctly – take top spots.”
*everything I say below assumes equal geared raiders, in an optimal raid environment*
Yeah, we can top meters – but if we do, it’s because Mages/DKs/etc are making mistakes.
This is the problem with this entire argument, Qieth considers us competitive because he can get into the top three of his damage meters – as can thousands of other druids.
The other side of the argument, is that our class mechanics do not allow us to do more damage than the aforementioned ‘pures’ and for us to perform better than them, they are required to make mistakes – not play with optimal efficiency.
These class mechanics are simulated rather accurately by simcraft – but as we all (should) know, simcraft assumes a lengthy patchwerk. As a moonkin, we suffer more from movement due to the nature of our eclipse rotation – and as Qieth himself has stated previously, an arcane mage for the sake of argument can ‘spin up’ and perform in a much, much shorter timeframe than a moonkin – and this only goes to enhance the gap between us and ‘the top’ when it comes to real raiding environments.
Now I’m not saying Qieths entire guild sucks, that’s unfair – and I personally top the meters of pretty much every raid I attend and I’ve got no complaints with our progress, but I’m still under no illusion that when my partner (Destro Warlock and rival to me on the meters) plays with her head screwed on – I cannot touch her*
*but letting her win benefits me in the long run…
Hello, id like to start off by saying i agree with you that we are not that far behind of where we should be and im fairly happy with how we are doing right now. However the only fight i feel i can really compete on is jaraxus, a few weeks ago i got my best parse on him to date and it was a fairly good 8027dps which placed me 17th on the meter only beating one person(our demo lock). The highest person(excluding mages) was a fury warrior at 10001dps. The highest caster(non-mage) was a warlock at 8600. Unless as you said your counting hunters as casters in which case the hunter was at 9100.
All other ToC fights i seem to fall fairly far behind though, But since jaraxus is the patchwerk of ToC your theories seem to hold up for stand and nuke fights.
That same night on northern beasts i only made it up to 6800 dps, where as the hunter still sat at 8900. We do in fact lust on the first stun because that when the whole raid will get more use out of it not just the moonkin. So my issue isn’t so much about our tank n spank dps as it is with any fight that requires any amount of moving. Outside of dots we have no instant casts(which apparently many think we will be getting in cataclysm). Movement fights hurt us too much in my opinion and since essentially every fight has movement outside of a few thats why many people think our dps is too low. Of course my gear comes into question here as well i am in mostly heroic 10 man stuff(nothing from 25 heroic has dropped yet QQ), so that maybe significantly impacting my ability to keep up on fights where i have to move a lot.
Mainly i wrote this because id like to hear your thoughts on our dps in a heavy movement fight(or even a medium movement fight like algalon, i consider him a medium movement only because you’re not going to get a cosmic smash every time). I’m not sure what you would consider a heavy movement fight to judge with though(not counting twins or yogg). Do you think a instant cast nuke would help us? would changing moonfire to do full damage and the dot still ticking like it does glyphed help? I know that would be op in pvp but i am just throwing some idea out there because this seem like a good place to discus it or perhaps you could make a new entry about possible cataclysm tweaks to help our movement disadvantage.
Thanks for taking the time to read my mindless rambling its late and i am going to sleep will check back tomorrow.
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Sorry, i have to close comments on this one. Spambot attack -_-