WotLK DPS Caster Analysis so Far with PvE & PvP

[jappaex]

So far, in my opinion, it's looking very exciting for all the casters, some sweet spells and abilities all around. Most noteworthy it seems is:

• 1. Shadow Priests new abilities have a much needed PvP revamp giving them decent viability once more.
• 2. Balance Druids new abilities finally give them a PvE viability on par with Shadow priests/Elemental Shaman, Mages & Locks where previously they were the least desired or exciting caster of the bunch.
• Mage, Warlock never had much pvp or pve viability issues and continue to grow stronger with exciting new talents, only thing is Fire continues to lag behind Frost for Arena, but continues to have a high damage output. Arcane is shaping up as very decent alternative and balance against Frost or Fire.
• PvE - Contribution to Raids/Groups in WotLK
• There are several factors to consider when sussing for viability in PvE. Main Role of DPS is the first, it must be high enough. Group Buffs: buffs to the raid or party that help. Utility Spells: Additional spells that contribute to your role. AoE - continuous AoE is the most valuable type for group situations, Control: CC abilities of any form.
• Frost Mage:
• * Main Role: High Dps
• * AoE: Blizzard, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion, Flamestrike
• * Control: Polymorph, Frost nova, Frost spell slows, Frostbite, Deep Freeze stun
• * Utility Buffs: Brain Freeze (-15% chance to hit on frozen targets) ,Spellsteal, CounterSpell, Invisibility, Iceblock, Amplify/Dampen Magic, Arcane Intellect, Food/water, Evocate, Mana Shield, Shatter Shield, Mage Armor/Frost Armor, Frost Ward/Fire Ward, Mana gems
• * Alternate Role: Crowd Control King, AoE master
• * Damage inc: 5% damage to Frostbolt/Icelance, Instant Frostfire bolt
• * WotlK: Frost mage damage is already quite high, pvE fully viable, pvp the most effective mage build, Blizzard added more control to Frost Mages, Deep Freeze gives mages a stun, coupled with recent improvements to blink, the new Shatter Shield that freezes all targets after it's damage is absrobed, adding a mage stun is a great pvp addition. The PvE imbact to date is small, however Frostfire bolt is an incredible dps boost being instant cast even with a 9 sec cooldown, and off course a 5% boost to frostbolt/ice lance

Fire Mage:

• Main Role: High Dps
• Group Buffs: 15% more fire damage to raid
• AoE: Flamestrike, Blast Wave, Dragon Breath, Living Bomb, Blizzard, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion,
• Control: Polymorph, Frost nova, Frost spell slows, Dragon Breath daze
• Utility Buffs. Spellsteal, CounterSpell, Invisibility, Iceblock, Amplify/Dampen Magic, Arcane Intellect, Food/water, Evocate, Mana Shield, Shatter Shield, Molten & Mage Armor, Frost Ward/Fire Ward, Mana gems
• Alternate Role: AoE King, Crowd Control

• Damage: 25% fire spell crit damage bonus, 15% increase damage, to Fire AoE spells, 100% crit hit after 3 successive hits (use with combustion), Frostfire spell

• WotLK: Not much survivability or control is added to fire mages who should accept by now they pure damage machines, afterall only the Frost and Arcane mages in the game have more control than a fire mage. The trend of Highest Dps class in the game looks set to continue in the Firebuild. Arena as fire build is for pure damage not control sorry to disappoint, however as Scattershield is a new build i expect it's impact in the arena is still relatively a big unkown, should still be pretty nasty in battlegrounds though, and off course continues to be fully raid viable in PvE. Yet another AoE in the living bomb, not like the build needed more, but burst damage off course goes off the roof, a welcome addition however seeing that fire and not arcane damage is your Forte here.

Arcane Mage

• Main Role: High Dps
• AoE: Flamestrike, Blizzard, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion,
• Control: Polymorph, Slow, Frost nova, Frost spell slows
• Utility Buffs. Spellsteal, CounterSpell, Invisibility, Iceblock, Amplify/Dampen Magic, Arcane Intellect, Food/water, Evocate, Mana Shield, Shatter Shield, Mage/Frost/Molten Armor, Frost Ward/Fire Ward, Mana gems
• Alternate Role: Crowd Control master, AoE master

• Damage: 15% of Spirit as spell crit, 15% of damage absorbed as spell damage, instant cast spell after crit, Frostfire and Arcane barrage instant cast spells.

• WotLK, sees an amazing improvement to Arcane, Mages specialising in Arcane know the value of spirit and are awarded wtih 10% more spirit which in turn boost spell cirt thanks to Potent Spirit talent. Arcane Mages have the strongest shields in Mana Shield and Scattershield addition will give damage boosts in PvP when struck, whiles Netherwind prescence gives you a high chance for instant cast spell, but clever blizz omitted the possibility of that applying to Pyroblast. PvP wise, the boosted spell damage from damage absorption is nice, Arcane Barrage being an instant cast spell is very sweet and a welcome addition to the spell cycle even with it's cooldown. No special boosts to control or AoE here, but then again, this mage build doesn't need it, instead a nice new arcane build only spell to boost that rather meagre arcane spell arsenal, and some much appreciated boosted Spell crit and spell damage. the More mana regen you have the more damage you do, seriously if geared correctly, you should single target out damage a fire mage, however if there is lots of AoE to do, you won't be able to match a fire mage.

Arcane is a more subtle mage tree, not quite the control of frost, or visible power of fire, but in myopinion it is the best build for mages in PvE as it has great control, can achieve the highest single target dps, with phenomenal mana regen and utility to groups.

Affliction Warlock

• Main Role: High Sustained DPS.
• AoE: Rain of Fire, Hell Fire, Seed of Corruption, Atrocity, Shadowflame
• Control: Fear/Curse of Recklessness, AoE Fear, Seduce, Banish (Demon & Elemental), Enslave (demon), Curse of Exhaustion slow
• Utility Buffs: Soulstone, Health Stone, Bloodpact, Summoning Ritual, Curse of Weakness/Tongues/Elements. Detect invisibility, Unending Breath, Soul Shatter, Shadow Ward, Demon Armor, Drain life, Drain Mana, Life Tap, Drain Soul, Pet counterspell/Devour magic, Eye of Killrogg, Nightfall, Shadow Embrace

• Damage: New AoE Shadowflame, new spell Haunt, Increase: 20% bonus spell damage to Corrup/SL/SoC [these are ur most often used spells)Death's Embrace gives 15% damage icncrease to Shadowbolt & Haunt wen target is below 20% health, Eradication's 15% chance of Corruption/SL/CoA spells to increase your spell haste rating for 8sec

• WotLK: Warlocks continue to have the highest spell array of tools and abilities. AoE on par with the mage, more control spells than any other class, devastating curses and weaknesses. Affliction benefits the most from Haunt, Haunt + Atrocity makes affliction warlocks terrifying in PvP and PvE, and off course AoE reach continues to improve. PvP sees nice buffs, and nice damage increases all round here. Depletion will drain mana/energy/rage which is WOW pvp wise, it looks like blizzard are compensating for the resilience nerf that happened to Dots in arena

Demonology Warlock

• Main Role: High Sustained DPS.
• Group Buffs: Demonic Pact 3% increased health & damage to group, Curse of Elements 6% Arcane & Shadow damage boost
• AoE: Rain of Fire, Hell Fire, Seed of Corruption, Shadowflame
• Control: Fear/Curse of Recklessness, AoE Fear, Seduce, Banish (Demon & Elemental), Enslave (demon), Curse of Exhaustion slow
• Utility Buffs: Soulstone, Health Stone, Bloodpact, Summoning Ritual, Curse of Weakness/Tongues/Elements. Detect invisibility, Unending Breath, Soul Shatter, Shadow Ward, Demon/Fel Armor, Drain life, Drain Mana, Life Tap, Drain Soul, Pet counterspell/Devour magic, Eye of Killrogg,

• Damage: New AoE Shadowflame, new spell Haunt, Empowered Imp = 15% more imp damage and 60% chnace you get 100% spell crit for up to 8secs. After you or pet taking a critical hit, your pet or you get 30% casting/attack speed. inc Metamorphosis makes you a demon for 45secs, in line with most Warlocks in TBC you saw able to change to demons altho for them this happened when they were below a certain amount of health, players can change at will, but have a 5 min cooldown and can only stay in the form for 45secs, the details of the form are yet to be revealed so this build's PvE viability is still not determinable.

• WotLK: Demonology Warlocks have always been PvE viable, certainly when compared to the likes of balance druids for e.g., the only problem with this build was that Destruction and Affliction provided better options, so, many new spells added to help fix that including the demon form. A lot of boosted damage, pet damaging increases your crit, damage and spell haste now, and your pet has greater survivability for PvP from talents like Fel Synergy Succubus gains a new useful ability in an attempt to boost this pets usefulness, love struck can now heal you or the succubus, in my opinion making the succubus less vulnerable when seducing would have been better, but skill warlocks and tanks have no problem with using seduce in groups or in pvp.

Destruction Warlocks

• Main Role: High Burst DPS.
• Group Buffs:Curse of Elements 6% Arcane & Shadow damage boost
• AoE: Rain of Fire, Hell Fire, Seed of Corruption, Shadowflame, Shadowfury.
• Control: Fear/Curse of Recklessness, AoE Fear, Seduce, Banish (Demon & Elemental), Enslave (demon), Curse of Exhaustion slow
• Utility Buffs: Soulstone, Health Stone, Bloodpact, Summoning Ritual, Curse of Weakness/Tongues/Elements. Detect invisibility, Unending Breath, Soul Shatter, Shadow Ward, Demon/Fel Armor, Drain life, Drain Mana, Life Tap, Drain Soul, Pet counterspell/Devour magic, Eye of Killrogg, Nether Protection

• Damage: Decimate ignores all resistnaces/resiliences etc and is new school of magic Chaos, Eternal flames gives 10% critical strike bonus damage to all destruction spells and allows Searing pain/Incinerate to refressh your Immolate on target. Conflagarate/Immolate & Shadowflame get 10% crit chance increase & finally crit sriking with Shadow spells allows ur next Searing pain or Immolate spell to be instant cast but only once every 20secs.

• WotLK: Destro warlocks are fully raid viable, no help to aggro here, but truck loads more damage, instant searing pain & immoltae spells cooupled with increase crit rates to you cycle spells sees more of a damage increase to locks than mages seem to bet, albeit haunt is more use to affliction than either demonology or destruction, nonetheless more and more damage. no extra control abilities, but it's not like they're needed.

Shadow Priests

• Main Role: High Damage
• Group Buffs: Gp Mana Regen; Gp Health Regen; 15% Shadow damage to raid, 5% spell damage to raid
• AoE: Mind Sear & Holy Nova (if specced)
• Control: Mind Control, Psychic Scream, Shackle (undead only)
• Utility Spells/Buffs: PwF Stamina buff, PwS protection, Fade, Dispersion (threat & damage control), Shadow Resistance buff,
• Alternate Function: Occasional healing assistance (best of the hybrids), AoE and situational Control
• Damage increase: 30% of your spirit increase to Shadow Damage. New spell Mind Sear AoE, 20% of your +healing converts to +spell damage
• WotLK - brought an AoE effect, but largely PvP improvements through Dispersion, Imp Shadow Form, Psychic Horror: Shadowform having a Threat reduction of 30% added to it, is a HUGE dps boost to shadow priests who are always holding back to avoid aggro, and finally now with BoS and windfall T should be able to nuke out to their hearts content.

Comment: Shadow Priest damage is still quite high though the need to mana battery groups normally yields spell cycles in raids that seldom reflect the potential damage output the class is capable off. The trick in PvE is to be able to output as much damage as possible while keeping your group batteried up and not over-aggroing. Dispersion is a nice additional panic button spell in case you do just that whiles the modified version of shadowform incorporating 30% threat redction gives you alot more leeway, also if you need mana regen.
Conclusion: Shadow Priests did not really need any PvE viability boosts, however had taken a bit of a dip in PvP, which is now addressed.

__Balance Druid__

• Main Role: High Dps
• Group Buffs: 5% spell crit Grp, douple spell haste inc after crit Grp, 6% arcane/nature damage inc to raid, 3% melee/spell hit to raid, enemy has 2% less chance to hit
• AoE: Hurricane (now continuous), Starfall (cooldown), Typhoon
• Control: Roots, Cyclone & hibernate (beast/dragonkin)
• Utility Buffs: GotW druid buff, Thorns buff, Combat Rez, Innervate
• Alternate Function: off-heal (next best after shadow priest), control & AoE

• Damage: 20% +healing converts to +damage, Typhoon & Starfall AoEs, occasional 10% wrath damage or 10% starfire crit, Spell haste buff on crit strike
• WotLK brought balance druids much needed PvE viability, previously, though useable in raids, 1 for 1 were the least desirable of dps casters bringing only 5% crit, combat rez and innervate of any note to a raid. WotLK sees Thorns get a significant damage boost scaling where it didn't in TBC and making it a decent buff to have on a tank, Hurricane sees a removal of that silly cooldown making it like Blizzard and Rain of Fire and finally with Starfall & Typhoon balance druids would be good alternative AoE tanks if a paladin or Death Knight isn't present. Finally it appears Roots may be useable indoors, there are now 7 ranks of Entangling roots in the datamined WotLK that do not have the indoor restriction, altho roots is a limited CC, effective really only against melee mobs it will help balance druid viability in groups somewhat, however it is still no polymorph or freezing trap. Added is 3% spell hit to Imp FF and a raid inc to arcane & nature damage caused

Balance was fairly decent for PvP, however like enh/ele shaman not a particular hot item tbh, for PvP, Brambles talent having a daze effect after taking treant damage or thorns damage is a nice touch, and Typhoons knockback after a second hit should help as well as Owlkin frenzy. The availability of new heal spell Nourish would be welcome, but my conclusion is that Balance druids are now on par with mages/locks/shadow priests and elemental shaman (as they are now without newly revealed abilities) in terms of PvE where they weren't previously, however pvp wise is still no shadow priest or frost mage.

Elemental Shaman

• Main Role: High DPS
• Group Buffs: 101 (lvl 70) Spell damage, 3% hit/crit, mana regen, health regen (to group), Blood Lust 20sec spell haste.
• AoE: Magma Totem, Fire Nova Totem, Chain Lightning, Fire Elemental,
• Control: Grounding totem slow & Frost Shock slow
• Alternative Role: HEaling (no need to change form)

No new info for Wrath of Lich king available for Elemental Shaman, but you can tell that Elemental Shaman, need 1 non-totem based AoE, and 1 crowd control ability. No new pvE group buffs are needed at all, as they remain in my eyes the best class to have along to buff your spell casters pre-WotLK, new balance druid additions for WotlK put them on par with TBC shaman and Shadow Priests, so i expect blizzard will buff PvP viability for Elemental shaman, crowd control and an AoE, but unlike any new group/raid buffs, however that remains to be seen.

CONCLUSION
Well, looking at the plethora abilities of Mages and Warlocks, players using Shadow Priests, Balance Druids and Elemental Shaman may grow envious of the Mage/Lock abilities but they should not. Mages and Locks aren't made better because they are supposedly pure casters whiles shadow priests/balance druids and elemental shaman are supposedly second afterthoughts. No, blizzard cintinues to improve the classes and after finally bringing the balance druid on par, they maintain the difference of the two groups in the Wrath of the Lich King.
Mages and Warlocks have a lot more spell utility than the hybrid casters, however the hybrid casteres do bring vital buffs without which your raid will struggle. In fact, from the WotLK i would say every 25man raid needs at least 1 shadow priest, 1 balance druid and 1 elemental shaman, they won't really need more, and will choose to go fro 2-3 mage and 2-3 locks, however shaman/druids and preists should realise that those classes will have other representation in different roles, there will also be only 1 feral druid likely and or 1 resto druid, and possibly 2 holy priests, and off course 1 resto shaman, and 1 enhancement shaman, bring the druid population in raid to 2-3 druids, 2-3 priests and 2-3 shaman same as mages or locks.
The pure casters wen in groups with shadow priests/balance druids and elemental shaman will out dps the hybrid caster, that is the design, but they do so because of the buffs to damage and mana regen etc to raid that hybrid casters brings, if they were coming one v one in pvp for e.g., you would probably find the damage equal, because 1 v1 the hybrid has all his buffs to himself, whiles the pure caster would lack this, allowing the hybrid to match the pure casters dps or maybe even surpass it, however you may complain that pure casters still have many more spell casting utilities, but also remember that hybrid casters have off-healing to make up for that.
So all in all, everyone is on par, though in raids a pure dps of equal gear and skill would out dps a hybrid dps, remember that is only done because of the group buffs the hybrid dps brings without which it won't be possible. To make the most effective raids you must use all the available hybrids and pures, and fine tune your group, their talents and their gear to fully maximise the output of the raid. A long cry from classic wow, where maximimising dps excluded every hybrid dps build. An improvement appreciated by all for sure.


NOTE: I DID NOT WRITE THIS, I HAVE THE AUTHORS PERMISSION TO POST IT HERE.

[[Shon3m]]

WAHHHHH WHERES FORST.....LOL OPS CAPS :d

[edet123]

WAHHHHH WHERES FORST.....LOL OPS CAPS :d

=S? ,

[Smeems]

Shadow Priests are already very valuable in PvE, so I don't understand the need for:

"from the WotLK i would say every 25man raid needs at least 1 shadow priest"

I would say everyone needs one now.
Stick it in the group with your resto shammy and Helloooo chain heal.

[Rainz]

thx for the information

[christo22tat]

Great post...tell your friend thanks as well...

[nitrous]

Shadow priest is must-have for endgame content. Decent geared priest with 1000 spell damage could restore up to 300mp5 to whole group only by doing around 800-900 dps. Best geared priest, around 1400-1500 spell damage raid buffed (or probably more), combined with a shaman (Wrath of Air) will restore up to 400-500 mp5 on full dps cycle (using MB and SWD whenever they're off cooldown). Sort 2 or 3 shadow priests, each in casters group and you will solve a lot problems on longer/mana intensive boss fights. Also don't forget Misery (+5% spell damage) and Shadow Weaving x5 (+10% shadow damage), which will give much better dps for casters.