wow Castle Nathria 9.0.5 DPS Log Rankings and Analysis, Week 13: Arcane Mages Dominate, Frost Rises as Well

[Starym 3,800]

 

It's been a big week in Nathria as we have a brand new No.1 after a long time of the same 3-4 specs swapping out at the top (basically since the start of the patch and beyond), as we see two mage specs rise significantly this week! Our guide writers also take a look at Arcane since it surprised us with it's placement this week, but more importantly also take a more in-depth look at Enhancement, which has been steadily rising ever since it's big bug fix a quite few weeks ago.

Mythic Rankings

Arcane has finally managed to push its way into the very top spot, helped in part by a pretty small number of logs - under 1,000 (which makes the RNG aspect week-to-week more significant). However this is the biggest change in the No.1 spot since before 9.0.5 launched, as it's been a steady stream of Balance, Affliction, Shadow for a long time now. The rest of the top 5 just shuffled around a little as a result, but Frost is the other big story of the week, as it leaps 4 spots into 8th, along with Demonology's really big fall this week, as it went down 7 places into 14th.

95th percentile Mythic data by Warcraft Logs.

Arcane rose even more in the all percentiles bracket, but didn't go quite as high, as it moved into 4th after it's pretty terrible 13th spot last week. Demo followed suit from the top percentiles but only dropped 4 in the wider population.

All percentiles Mythic data by Warcraft Logs.

Spec Analysis

We're going to be having our guide writers take a look at Arcane this week, obviously, and we also have a more in-depth look at Enhancement, which may have dropped a little this week in the higher percentiles only, but has been rising pretty steadily since it's most recent bug fix.

Arcane Mage by Dutchmagoz

Arcane is currently the highest parsing spec in Castle Nathria. Although it has been hovering top half for a while, being at the top is a new spot for Arcane. There are a couple of reasons for this, but a very important thing to note, is that there are less than 1000 Arcane logs in total (with Denathrius for example having < 50) in the top 5 percentile, whereas most other specs have over 10,000. Due to this, the statistics for Arcane can easily be caused by a couple of outliers. Having said that, Arcane has jumped up partially due to the Denathrius nerf, which helps with Arcane's cooldown timings in phase 3, causing Arcane to push itself ahead more on this fight. Additionally, after the news that we will not need Soul Ash to upgrade Legendaries to rank 5 and up in 9.1, more people are willing to craft Legendaries for different specs, and Arcane needs multiple Legendaries to perform properly. Because of this, more people are able to play the spec optimally on various fights, instead of having to pick and choose what fight they can play it on. Lastly, and probably most importantly, people are starting to play a new build, the Kyrian Arcane Harmony build. This one is fairly new, and currently unproven in a progress setting, but on farm it is pulling very good numbers, as it can do both good AoE and single target damage, with the same talents and Legendaries.

Enhancement Shaman by Wordup

Enhancement has seen an obvious upsurge in performance in Nathria since the Maelstrom Weapon auto attack reset bugfix happened on the 19th of May, and it's really clear when looking at graphs starting with the weekly reset after it that average performance took a big jump. Compounded by the fact that now, deep into farm many people are experimenting with more tailored builds for bosses that were even more impacted, it's no surprise that this fix has brought us up in the rankings, but sadly it's not the end of bugs that remain for the spec. The 9.1 PTR has already addressed one of the worst (that being one of the many Windfury Totem issues), and hopefully before it launches the rest will be as well. Looking forward to Sanctum of Domination, the variance in encounter type and timings seem to be relatively favorable to us at a glance. There's a lot of strictly single-target fights that either allow for a Witch Doctor's Wolf Bones style sustained build or want extra burst that Doom Winds brings, and many of the cleave encounters operate on a good 1-minute cycle that lets Doom Winds shine there. Most of the fights aren't aggressively anti-melee either (and due to our uptime requirements that usually punishes us harshly), however looking at what are likely the most important encounters in Kel'Thuzad and Sylvanas, there's nothing that really sells the role either, considering our lack of special tools. As it stands right now, it's likely all going to come down to the dice roll of number tuning, and if we bring enough damage to justify a melee DPS flex spot.

Heroic Rankings, Overall Damage

The big news in Heroic is that Marksmanship made a giant leap up, climbing 10 spots into 7th, as the top 3 also had a bit of a change, but it just saw Affliction, Balance and Shadow re-arrange themselves at the very top.

All percentiles Heroic data by Warcraft Logs.

As always, if you want even more info on a spec, you can check out our class guides here, or for even more data, head on over to Warcraft Logs.