Breakfast Topic: Back to where you once belonged
by Matthew Rossi 
Oct 14th 2009 at 8:00AM
I was a tank all through Burning Crusade. A proper tank, no less, none of that arms specced but tanking anyway nonsense you could get away with in the original raid game. I was prot spec and I liked it! Sure, our AoE threat was ludicrously bad. Sure, I had to spam Devastate and HS so much that I grew a nasty cyst on my wrist. Sure, I kept having to deal with DPS players who had never tanked a day in their lives giving me tanking advice in the middle of a fight. To say I got stressed out would be an understatement. To say I ran screaming to a guild I'd been in back in the old days of WoW to take up a DPS spec and get as far away from tanking as I could would be accurate.
Flash forward almost a year from November of 2008, when Wrath of the Lich King came out. I've been DPS from the dizzying highs of Titan's Grip fury in Naxxramas to the horrifying lows of post-damage tax gimped TG, the only 51 point talent that is simultaneously mandatory for a spec to do competitive damage and yet the reason it can't do competitive damage. I've tried Arms, and liked it, but found it dropping behind as gear improves. In the end, DPS warriors are the only hybrid class which is actually, significantly behind the pure DPS classes. Meanwhile, in my prot offspec my threat just keeps getting better as I get more and more offspec gear. I've had my year vacation from tanking and I've endured the ups and the downs of DPS. Plus I went and tanked on a completely different class and that helped me realize how much I missed the incredibly active warrior style of tanking.
Recently my guild leader took me aside and offered me a shot at tanking again. It's not main tanking, thankfully... I don't think I could handle that level of stress in my life right now and my wrist wouldn't thank me for it either. But I'll get to be Prot spec in raids, I'll get to tank bosses in 25 mans again (tonight was TotC and TotGC 25... Northrend beasts is an annoying fight) and that's pretty much all I wanted. I'm a tank again. My flirtation with Titan's Grip has run its course, and I'm home.
How about you, gentle readers? We're coming up on the one year anniversary of Wrath... are you where you thought you would be? Same spec as BC? Entirely new class, new role? What are you doing with yourself as we approach the Frozen Throne for the final stretch of WotLK?
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast Topics, Expansions, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Zaringu Oct 14th 2009 8:08AM
Been elemental through all of BC and it's still getting viable *hint hint blizz*
breaklance Oct 14th 2009 8:57AM
ya I couldn't help but pull this comment
"DPS warriors are the only hybrid class which is actually, significantly behind the pure DPS classes"
How bout that shaman damage, Ele broken for naxx, enh bottom of meters....Ele great for General Vezax, Enh good for XT and Kolo both bad for anything else, and oh look ToC usually occupying 2 of the bottom 3. The fury warriors in my guild are top 5 often, kinda swings wildly. Sometimes the rogues have good nights, sometimes the locks do, but usually the DK is top because of stupid aoe and dot-cleave.
EJ has the top enh shaman dps possibly listed at 9600, which I see 11k routinely from the DK who has maybe 2 hard mode peices.
Deathgodryuk Oct 14th 2009 10:48AM
I found that comment a bit odd too. DPS warriors do fine if they know what they're doing, and from what warriors tell me it's one of the easiest classes for DPS as well. Perhaps you're not rolling your face across the keyboard properly, Matt?
talkingmike Oct 14th 2009 10:55AM
C'mon Rossi... you know better than to make sweeping statements that involve words like "only" paired with "significantly behind." Surely you knew you'd get comments like "But what about ret shamans and frost druids and unholy paladins???? I'm *always* on the bottom of the meeeeters!"
Matthew Rossi Oct 14th 2009 11:03AM
Elemental Shamans in our raids have put out up to 8.5k DPS on some fights. (I freely admit I do not play elemental well, I never have, my shaman is either enhance or resto) I've seen ret pallies match or exceed that number, same for ferals (often the ferals are just under the rogues) and the DK's don't have much trouble staying up there either. On the warrior I'm lucky if I can hit 7.5k, a number my DK can come close to despite his being easily a tier of raiding behind. I have a 255 DPS mainhand and my DPS gear varies between ilevel 245 and 258.
Am I the best DPS warrior in the universe? No. But I know my rotations and I'm almost always #1 DPS on any five man I go on, and I'm not seeing the other two DPS warriors in my raid put out numbers in excess of mine. Perhaps we all suck, but considering how well informed and good at adapting to strategies they seem to my eyes, I don't think we do.
I was unfair to shadow priests though.
Wowinsider Oct 14th 2009 11:12AM
Yeah, DPS warriors are so far behind:
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/classrank/dps/8/0/3/320
It's hard being #1 on regular Anub and #2 on hard.
Condor Oct 14th 2009 12:29PM
I feel like most dps classes are pretty close-- DKs and mages a little higher. At least mages are squishy. One of the best dps:gear ratios in our guild is a warrior. My enh shaman has the best gear in the guild and I often QQed about our low dps.
Then I learned how to play. Last night in onyxia10 (a movement heavy fight) I was top dps consistently. I remember a bluepost once where I believe they said a highly skilled dps of any class can do competitive damage and that pure dps at high skill levels can juust edge out as top dps.
Sorry, Rossi-- skill > gear
Bikhai Oct 14th 2009 2:17PM
@Condor
You're obviously not familiar with the warrior class and the fact that it is by far *the* most gear dependent class in the came. Bad gear = god awful dps. Decent gear = subpar dps. ToC25 gear = about average compared to most classes. Concerning warriors, gear is at least as important as skill.
I think things are finally getting to the point that's been prophesied over the past 12 months: Gear levels are finally resulting in warriors catching up to other classes in dps. I won't say our obvious troll, "Wowinsider," is correct though. Listing dps on 1 fight does not prove a point (or else I could list warriors as dead last on Faction Champs on the exact same link he posted), but as gear gets better, warriors are unfortunately scaling better than most other classes. A good excuse for them being lackluster dps for most of Wrath up to now amirite?
"You suck now, but just wait! In 7 or 8 months, you be unbelievably average."
Cabbageloins Oct 14th 2009 2:29PM
I'm a blood DK, and I beat our locks, mages, and rogues regularly, with a few exceptions depending on fights. The only member of my guild that can consistently hang with me is our fury warrior. I'm much more geared than he is, and he'll still beat me on many fights, even fights where my cleave earns cries of "Nerf it again!" from the guild. I find none of the aforementioned problems with DPS warriors.
Worcester Oct 14th 2009 2:25PM
Why are so many players surprised that their hybrid classes do less DPS than pure DPS classes?
Zach Oct 14th 2009 3:47PM
While I can't comment on most classes, I can back up Mr. Rossi on one thing he said: Elemental Shaman are fine. We do competitive DPS (at least in current content) and bring delicious utility to raids. Make ToW equal to Demonic Pact and I will be fully satisfied with the spec.
tim Oct 14th 2009 3:48PM
"In the end, DPS warriors are the only hybrid class which is actually, significantly behind the pure DPS classes"
tim Oct 14th 2009 3:55PM
Wow, that was bizarre. The comment system cut out most of my post.
I was going to add that as someone who's played a warrior for so long, Matthew should be used to the old Rock, Paper, Scissors... warriors are rock, until they get end-game gear and become THE ROCK. Looking at top-end DPS in Crusader and Ulduar, it is by no means clear that warriors are sub-par to, say, warlocks, who are a "pure" DPS class.
Wowinsider Oct 14th 2009 5:25PM
@Bikhai
Right, because Faction Champs is a good fight to standardize DPS performance to. Wait... no, it's not. Look at the rest of the fights. Warriors are not slouches, regularly beating warlocks. Meanwhile, the trend that shamans and priests are doing substandard damage is completely backed up with data.
The fact is that Matt's assertion isn't correct when you examine the data across a significant sample. His subjective examples don't jive with statistically substantive data. In fact, WMO data is basically saying that he's just not a very good (and nor are the other DPS warriors in his guild).
As for me being a troll, I adopted this moniker when Wow Insider's fail comment system filled it in for me instead of the name I chose. Disagreeing with one of the author's here doesn't make me a troll. It just makes me not a sheep.
Gideon Oct 14th 2009 8:11AM
I started playing wow in vanilla as a rogue. In tbc I played Paladin after it became available horde side and ended up going back to rogue at the end of tbc. Then in wotlk I rolled DK to get a breath of the freshness that is an OP hero class and guess what... I'm back on my rogue. Seems to be the class I was made to play.
Citra Oct 14th 2009 8:11AM
Same character, Tauren Druid, was a dedicated bear tank in TBC, now dedicated resto, with a kitty offspec. Wasn't a fan of the bear changes, but liked the cat changes then my guild needed a healer so i spent lots of gold on the AH to gear up a little. My tanking experience from TBC actually made me a better healer because i knew how i liked to be healed through spike damage and AoEs.
nfl_allstar_58 Oct 14th 2009 8:15AM
I am the complete opposite lol I was fury all through BC up to KJ
Went prot for Wrath and stayed that way until 2 weeks ago now I'm fury again and I love it =]
Durable Oct 14th 2009 10:14AM
Well i started out on a Deathknight and got utterly bored by it. I started playing my level 60 raiding toon and got it to 80 and warrior tanked. Leveled my alliance warrior and started arms dps.... and now with the toon that i grew to hate in TBC im playing my once Resto Shaman as Enhance.... altoholism ftl
Pfooti Oct 14th 2009 8:17AM
I keep coming back to my warlock as DPS. During the latter half of BC, I leveled up a priest, druid, rogue, and raided a bit with them, even started LK by taking a DK to 80. But lately, I've been raiding on my original character, the one that started as a bank alt to some long-forgotten priest but turned out to be way more fun than a priest, and was therefore my first level 60 character. I still think of myself as a warlock player, as much as I like some other classes. Plus, ranged DPS is easy. :P
Cronum Oct 14th 2009 8:21AM
Beatles ftw ^^