wow Shadowlands Pre-patch Week 2 DPS Raid Rankings and Analysis

[Starym 3,800]

 

Update: We've taken a look and talk about the relevance and accuracy of logs in general, so definitely make sure to check that out here.

Here we are at the start of week 3 of the Shadowlands pre-patch and we're taking another look at how the DPS specs are shaking out in Mythic Ny'alotha in this not-quite-BfA-or-Shadowlands period, with quite a few specs getting nerfs and hotfixes in the past week. Shadow and Affliction keep the top spots, as Arcane suffers some nerfs but sticks in there, and Fire Mages are coming back up as Frost also suffered some nerfs. As usual, we'll be taking a look at a few specs each week with our guide writers to see why they are where they are on the WarcraftLogs charts.

We're starting with the 95th percentile, as that's our main focus for the analysis:

And on to the 50th, just to get a better view of the playerbase:

The most important part of this look at the logs is our guide writers taking a look at the charts and giving us some insight into what's really happening, so let's start with Warlocks, who saw Demonology improve a lot over the past week and Affliction stay at the top.

Affliction and Demonology Warlock by Motoko:

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Affliction remains a top spec across all encounters in 8.3, highlighting its versatility and the newly found multitarget capabilities. However, it does not appear to be that big of an outlier to warrant a nerf similarly to what happened previous week with Shadow, especially considering how its single target performance, while being relatively high, is not overwhelming.

Going into the 2nd week, Destruction shows its limits in single target performance, being relegated to an extremely powerful AoE spec, with 2 targets cleave potential.

Demonology's rise from second to last spec to middle of the pack should not surprise anyone - the spec itself, while being ill-equipped for multitarget outside of stacked AoE, performs average in single target situations and the only change was the marginal increase of recorded logs from the previous week, which is starting to portray the spec more accurately for its strenghts and (glaring) weaknesses. It's worth reminding that the public Demonology logs are 50 times smaller than Affliction ones as the time of writing, for Mythic Nya.

Mages got hit with some changes last week and it has affected how the specs rank.

All Mage specs by Dutchmagoz:

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Since our last DPS update, the Mage specs have moved around a bit. Arcane remains the best performing spec in Ny'alotha, largely due to some new found improvements to the Arcane Missiles rotation that offset the nerfs Arcane received. This, combined with more people being made aware of the Arcane Missiles rotation keeps Arcane at pretty much identical levels to before the nerf.

Frost was hit relatively hard by the Vision of Perfection nerf, which reduced its performance by a fair bit, causing it to fall definitively under Arcane when it comes to performance.

Fire has moved up a bit over the last week, although there have been no buffs to the spec. This could be caused by high end Mages who played Frost purely for performance reasons or just to try it out in pre-patch, going back to Fire due for comfort or enjoyment, pushing the numbers up a bit. Additionally, with Fire being so reliant on cooldowns, and the new Ignite spreading mechanics, people might also just be getting better at finding the correct timings to spread Ignite on the fights.

Elemental Shamans have been steady near the top since the pre-patch launched, so let's take a look at why.

Elemental Shaman by Stormy:

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Elemental is holding steady in a fairly good place for a few reasons. Unlike some other specs, the core of Elemental, as well as the stats/essences/traits you want to use have remained mostly the same, so nobody had to scramble to relearn how to play. Moreover, several prepatch additions have made Elemental stronger on several fights, most notably Spiritwalker's Grace, which is extremely welcome for prolonged movement. The new talent Echoing Shock has also immediately become a staple of Elemental, and is the default pick in every encounter in Ny'alotha, bringing very powerful burst while still being ahead of the pack for sustained DPS.

That's it for this week, although we will be taking a bit of a deeper look at Feral Druids soon, as they've been near or at the bottom since the pre-patch arrived. For more information on each spec you can check out our pre-patch class guides as well.

[nintura 0]

how does echoing shock bring powerful burst?  It only duplicates one spell and it's not like our spells hit very hard...

[Meghstanas 0]

1 hour ago, nintura said:

how does echoing shock bring powerful burst?  It only duplicates one spell and it's not like our spells hit very hard...

You know it copys also your buffs right? For example if you copy a lightning bolt from the stormkeeper it also copys the extra dmg lighting bolt gets from the stormkeeper

[Kethcup 8]

15 hours ago, nintura said:

how does echoing shock bring powerful burst?

Earth Shock? Duplicated Earthquake in AOE? 

[silverfox 0]

 why monk windwalker is very weak ?