Okay guys, these are the DPS rankings. Of course, let me give you a disclaimer that the meta isn’t settled, and I am going to explain to you a couple of the weird things that are going on here before you start making conclusions because this graph does not tell you the whole story. I can illustrate it with one of the classes right here, the Feral Druid.
DPS Rankings Overview
Why is the Feral Druid, a class that was predicted to do so well, a class that was predicted to pump, why are they so low there? Okay, I’m going to tell you why. Manual Crowd Pummeler, the MCP, the automatic crowd pummeler, 50% attack speed, it is going to be a complete game changer for both the bear and the cat, and nobody has it yet.
So, I predict, I expect completely that, as soon as people get a little bit more gear, you know, as that happens, they’re going to slowly be climbing up the ranks, and they’ll be driving up the averages. What you’re going to see about the Feral Druid is that the statistics are going to show it about in the middle, but if you go to the rankings of the top 100 people in the game, there is going to be a lot of Feral Druid.
The Elephant in the Room: Melee Hunter
Meanwhile, the elephant in the room, alright, let’s talk about it. Melee Hunter, what is this thing? The hunter is the most broken class in the game, just like when phase one came out and Hunters were the most broken class in the game. Hunters are now again the most broken class in the game. Look at all, look at this, the top people, there’s a bit of a spoiler there, of the best classes.
Of course, when the raid comes out, the logs do not quite tell the whole story either because, as you guys know, there is a huge differential between the people that know the mechanics early and the people that don’t. You know, every little cheese that you can do, my favorite example is like when people were doing Lady Vashj. You saw that for a while, warriors were on top in the meters, and then all of a sudden, you saw a lot of Warriors climb up in the meters.
Why did that happen? Because they figured out that you can cleave all the elementals for a lot of damage, instead of you’re not supposed to do it, but they did it. Okay, those kinds of cheeses are going to be discovered, and at the same time, that also tells you that if somebody finds out a cheese before everybody else, even if they play a bad spec or even if they are not the greatest at the game, they are probably going to get a rank 100 because they are cheesing it.
Community Reactions and Predictions
But okay, this one is the one that I’m going to get so much crap for. Guan wants to be on the Discord, let’s try it, what is going on, alright. Those melee Hunters, what is happening? Let’s go to the rank one guy in the world, he’s pulling 367 DPS, that is not even that crazy.
Melee Hunter Analysis
I was expecting a lot more, but let’s look at his setup here. So, he’s going full survival, committing to melee. I can believe that people are not going for Beast Mastery. Yeah, so he’s going petless for Lone Wolf, 30% increase in damage. He’s going for Flanking Strike, even without Animal Companion, apparently, it’s the best thing you can do. It makes sense; there’s nothing else here. He’s just spamming Carve and Flanking Strike for AoE. That’s it, and he’s going dual wield. That’s ludicrous, like because it reduces the cooldown of Raptor Strike.
Wow, I completely didn’t expect this. I’ve seen this rune, this Rune here, it was already shown. We didn’t see Gap wasn’t shown before it came out, but this one, we got to see before. I would have never expected the Melee Hunter to perform this well. I always thought, okay, people are probably going to take it to melee weave, but we are not going to see full melee people like this. They are probably going to go Beast Mastery. I was very wrong.
Look at the differential; you see the lines in the middle, that’s the average, right? So, the average Melee Hunter is doing better than the highest DPS priest. That’s insane, and for warlocks too. What is happening?
Class Balance and Surprises
Okay, let’s do something like this. If you cut it up like this, right, if you see it this way, it is more or less balanced. You know, the upper classes are almost doing the same damage. Let’s get this out of the way because I know I’m going to get a bunch of crap for this. This one, the priest, is the second-best class in the game.
I was like this, the runes they are getting are trash, they are never going to do well. Okay, what happened here? Why are the priests doing so well all of a sudden? Let’s take a look at the runes. Like the Rune they were getting was this one, Mind Spike, was the rune that they announced before, and as you can read right here, it does 100% damage. Yeah, it’s pretty worthless. Okay, like I saw this Rune, and I thought they are going to suck, this thing sucks.
But then we see this thing here. Okay, so they got all their Mana problems fixed. People were saying that the priest is going to be broken at 40 because of the talents. Yeah, in PvP, in PvE, they never traditionally do this well. There you go, Shadow Weaving. They got the completely stacked Shadow Weaving talent, so even if they were to suck, they would have still been good on utility because they give shadow damage and stuff.
Initial Impressions on Class Performance
I got completely owned on this one. We are going to see what happens when people get gear. Okay, I completely expect the Warlock, which is in third place, to completely destroy everybody else once they get gear. The Boomkin is pumping; they got like 30% crit for free. But honestly, I was so down on the Boomkin, I didn’t even think they were going to do this good. They are doing pretty good.
Get fire, mages, bro. Yeah, the Fire Mage is broken. Like, it’s so good; Living Bomb is such a good spell. That’s the problem. It does everything for you. You can dot clip, you can multi-dot and clip with it, you can AoE with it, you can single target with it. Living Bomb is insane, and I am not surprised at all that the Fire Mages are pumping. Remember, these logs are all like the first two resets, so people here had no gear.
Class Analysis: Warriors and Warlocks
Yeah, but if you look at the Warrior, right, like you see how wide it is and how the median is below the average. That’s gear. Just wait until they get their weapons and stuff. Okay, like the people over here, the Warrior is the hardest scaling class in the game, and that didn’t change. Also, I think people are playing bad builds, but I’ve been wrong before. So, let’s take a look at the losers here, though. Yes, yes, let’s do a loser chart. Frost Mages, down bad, Shamans at the end of their rope. Where is Beast Mastery? Well, it’s not even in the chat anymore, apparently. Nobody plays it.
Specific Class Performances
Let’s look at the data here. Melee Hunter, 356 DPS here. The next guy is the Warlock with 308. Dude, the Enhancement Shaman is down bad. That’s sad, and you know what’s the weird part about the Enhancement Shaman? It doesn’t really scale very well either. They should have everything they need to do decently already, and they are not. They are probably going to need some sort of tune-up. That’s really sad. The Frost Mage, screw them, who cares, nobody likes them.
Closing Thoughts and Predictions
Okay, so closing thoughts. I completely got the Shadow Priest wrong. The Shadow Priest is pumping, good for you guys. And before you guys say that you want to play a Melee Hunter and you’re not playing a Hunter now, remember all the people that got shafted by the Scorpion Nerf. Okay, they are going to nerf this to the ground. They’re not going to nerf it soon because Aran said on Twitter that he’s going to nerf things after a week because he wants to see the meta settle. Honestly, I agree with that decision because he overreacts to a lot of balance problems.
So, let’s see what happens when people get gear. But yeah, probably, I know it’s tempting to play a Melee Hunter. Don’t do it for the flavor of the month because this thing is going to get nerfed to the ground sooner or later. Okay, you’re just going to waste your time. If you are a Hunter now, however, congratulations. I hope you didn’t like your pet too much.
I am curious to see if they nerf the Lone Wolf Rune, and if they do that, like are people going to go Beast Mastery and just Flanking Strike melee instead because I think that is a viable build altogether. Like going full pet damage and just melee weaving and stuff with melee runes. Who knows, we are going to see soon. We are going to have to revisit this later. I don’t want to make a tier list yet because, honestly, we got no idea about the balancing yet. This is too soon, but get ready for that.
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