wow Castle Nathria 9.0.5 DPS Log Rankings and Analysis: Week 3 - Class Tuning Aftermath, Demonology Rising

[Starym 3,800]

 

Here we are in week 3 of 9.0.5 in Castle Nathria, but more importantly, it's a week after the class tuning that saw buffs to Windwalker, Marksmanship and Demonology, and two of those three are improving. We'll be taking a look at MM (and Hunters in general) and Demo, as our guide writers examine what's going on there.

In the 95th percentile, Demo specifically is skyrocketing this week, jumping a crazy 12 spots from the bottom of the list into 7th place, just above Windwalker which also massively bounced back after being down in the dumps since the bug fixes. Marksmanship hasn't recovered, however, despite the recent buffs, as it's still in the lower ends, only two spots above Survival. In other news, Arcane is still sticking to the top and is still outperforming Fire, although there's not that many playing it, with the ratio of Fire to Arcane being about 40:1. Frost DKs are also keeping their high placement this week, but drop a couple spots to make room for WW and Demo.

95th percentile Mythic data by Warcraft Logs.

As usual the all percentiles chart moves slower, but Demo is still up by a lot, having been even lower here last week. Arcane has dropped down quite a bit, as it was right behind Fire, and Assassination is the highest Rogue spec and doing a lot better in the more general list.

All percentiles Mythic data by Warcraft Logs.

If you're looking for some Windwalker insight on this week's changes, you can check out our Mythic+ article where Babylonius goes over them here.

Demonology Warlock by Motoko

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This week's demonology jump is not the result of the class tuning 3% or some other hidden buff or a newly found strategy, but rather a consequence of a shift in community perception. While it is true that updates in SimulationCraft are helping people find concrete numbers, ultimately it is a combination of content being on farm and people willing to experiment outside of their default Affliction spec.

The stigma of Demonology being unviable is slowly being lifted up, albeit the view is fogged by the ever-present external buff funneling, especially true with Demonology being able to make use of DEFENSIVE cooldowns and passives to increase Summon Demonic Tyrant/Demonic Consumption output, unlike any other spec.

Is Demonology the new hot spec to play? Most likely not, as shown by the fact that Affliction at the top end is still reigning supreme while retaining no weakness in its toolkit. Is Demonology a bad spec and not worth bringing in raid? Absolutely not, and individual player performance can justify picking Demo over Affliction (except for Sire). It's worth thinking about how Demonology, even with external funneling and the ability to scale off stamina, is only able to sort of get close to top 5 in a VERY favourable raid. If anything, it just shows how, at the end of the day, Affliction is not just a Jack but a Master of all Trades.

Marksmanship Hunter by Azortharion

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Marksmanship Hunter's recent tuning changes have hit its niche the hardest, with the Serpentstalker's Trickery + Wild Spirits (Night Fae Covenant Ability) synergy "fix" effectively being a 25-30% nerf to Wild Spirits' overall damage. This has hit the spec especially hard on fights that benefit disproportionately from MM's burst damage, such as Stone Legion Generals and Sire Denathrius. Blizzard then "compensated" this fix by buffing Aimed Shot and Trick Shots damage a bit, but that is only a band-aid and does not bring Marksmanship back to its status before Patch 9.0.5.

It is not a good time to be a Hunter right now. Unfortunately the Wild Spirits fix hit us in the worst possible way by significantly nerfing our most valuable niche. The compensatory buffs did nothing to enhance that niche, but instead result in more of a generic overall damage buff. Not only that, but the fix is also dangerously close to changing the Covenant meta for Marksmanship completely from Night Fae to Kyrian. This will please some, but one has to wonder if a random bug fix globally changing the meta Covenant for a class where the vast majority of players committed to Night Fae early is a good thing. Wild Spirits is a shadow of its former self but I hope that further damage buffs can at least make Kyrian's Covenant Ability worth considering for Raiding situations. There is a lot of utility in a 1-minute burst cooldown, but the overall damage has to be there too.

And then there's our look at Heroic, where Assassination is still the breakthrough star compared to Mythic, and Marksmanship is holding on to an upper half placement.

As always, if you want even more info on a spec, you can check out our class guides here.