I want to dps. I've either healed or tanked in my entire mmo career. Never a dps. So, I have 4 characters I can decide to level and play seriously, now that I'm playing WoW again.

70 Horde Lock
73 Alliance Hunter
35 mage
36 rogue

The rogue and mage are linked through RAF, so I could get them levelled fairly quickly. Anyways, I'm working on the hunter at the moment but wanted to know your thoughts on the relative power and longevity on each class. Hunter seems the easiest to level, but I worry it'll be boring. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd probably pick mage, but the downtime while levelling really sucks. Does that get better as they level?

Here are my criteria:

- Value to a raid (based on server population, contribution, etc.)
- Challenging to play
- Longevity - how interesting is it when farming content, does it get boring and old really fast, etc
- Relative DPS power compared to other dps specs

It's all the same shit, minus DKs only because there are so many of them, but I'm having trouble recalling a caster unfriendly fight. To make a fight caster unfriendly makes it healer unfriendly.

None of what you listed is hard to play, and not saying that because it's the general consensus. Each class you listed there can easily top the charts, or bring up the rear.

You're just going to have to pick a flavor.

- Most DPS specs are within 100-200 of each other
- The player is the value to a raid, not the class
- Rogue would play about the same as a tank, just different positioning
- The rest are close with maybe the exception of a demo lock, because there's more to keep track of.

- Locks are a lot of fun

Warlocks are the top of the heap right now, if only marginally. Affliction supposedly has a pretty intense rotation to keep up for max dps though. I don't play one, but this would be my choice if I was starting over.

Mages do get less downtime. I have one at 73 or 74 and have zero downtime on him when I play, specced either arcane or frost.

Rogues are mostly fun for ganking people. Playing a melee dps is sort of handicapping yourself right now for PVE unless you're a DK.

Unfortunately true.

Unless you're in Vita, in which case all of your Caster DPS does piss-poor 90% of the time and the melee DPS looks awesome. Seriously, our Rogues do the most damage on virtually every single boss encounter we have and even come up 1st in overall damage when doing Naxx. Fan of Knives is good, but it ain't THAT good.

I do top or 2nd in damage in almost every raid I'm in as a rogue, with only a hunter that beats me sometimes. Every class has their time at the top though, I'd say pick whichever of the 4 you enjoy the mechanic of, as that is the least likely thing to change.

Uh, I do 5 - 6k+ as a mutilate rogue, so IDK what the hell you're talking about, although both warlocks are always either beating me or right under me.

As for 3.1 rogues are kings again

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

I went Combat after scoring Calamity's Grasp. I might just go back to Mut. Dunno. With the changes to HfB it might not make my fingers fall off.

Ya, I am gonna spec Combat (15/51/5) and Mutilate as my 2 specs and see which works best.

Is THIS the new Mutilate spec of choice?

http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/classrank/6

Rogues are consistently in the bottom half of the dps ranks. The only melee dps that are in the top half regularly are DK and Fury warrior, both of whom are getting some nerfs. Ulduar supposedly has an abundance of short range ae for melee to dodge, making the situation worse. Movement in general favors ranged dps. Now, as patches come and go I expect the melee to come into dominance like they did in TBC as gear outpaces character progression, but I think we're still in the ranged portion of the expansion.

Right now, I can only think of 2 reasons rogues would be topping charts. Either you outgear your casters or your casters are bad.

You were in Vita and I just came back like 2 months ago. What do you think the reason is?

Heh, while I wasn't really referring to you specifically, I would guess the second option! As much as I miss Vita, we always sort of had a history of those-who-min/max carrying those who don't. I suspect it hasn't entirely changed.

At this point, I wish to officially retract my melee dps comments. Heh. 3 bosses in to Ulduar and our casters are getting absolutely destroyed by melee damage. It's not the same game as Naxx, obviously.

Thanks for the info. I stuck to the hunter since he was the furthest along. Got to 79 last night, one more day should do it. The mechanics of the class are less monotonous than I thought they'd be. I leveled as BM but about to switch to SV, I think, and dual spec with an MM build whenever I start raiding.

I've read conflicting reports about the best pet. Cat and Raptor seem to be up there, but I've read new info about Wolves and their buff being better over the long run. I think I'll run with that, since I happened to pick a wolf to level with.

Question: Starting out raiding and doing heroics, should I just stick with BM until I get better gear? What's the better early raiding / heroic grinding spec?

I leveled my hunter alt as BM (mostly solo) but as soon as I hit 80 I changed to SV. I haven't played my hunter since 3.1 so all this goes with a grain of salt.

I found running SV with badge/heroic/10man gear that I was constantly among the top in DPS/total damage. I used a wolf pet (you can get a great lvl 79 or 80 wolf from Icecrown - no pet leveling!!!) because so many people brought a cat it was silly. I also found that my wolf was better able to hold aggro, as compared to my cat when I was soloing/doing dailies.

Hunters are so stupid. Gogo ExOPlosive Shot.

black arrow is pretty awesome too

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On our first successful XT-002 Deconstructor kill (last night), the top 5 damage-dealers were Mutilate Rogue/Combat Rogue/Enhancement Shammy/Feral Druid/Unholy DK (our top DPS Rogue died and still finished 8th).

Well, some of that is probably because the melees are getting their absurd damage bonus on the heart while the casters are off dealing with the little Gluth-bots. Even my druid - bear tank spec - got a high place on the damage meters on XT-002.

Got the UK heroic crossbow on my first try last night.

Black Arrow is too good... 6% more damage to the mob, over 4k in damage over 15 sec... for 120 mana? heh. Every run I've gone on, even the first heroic I did last night, I always out dps the other dps classes, including a mage last night that had mostly purple PVP gear, compared to my non-hitcapped, barely out of greens hunter. Not only that, but the mechanic behind Aspect of the Viper is interesting.. I was able to regen to almost full after each pull, burning down to half mana. I think I averaged around 2k dps on the run with my terrible gear. I have no idea if that's good or not.

Between some of the talents and mechanics of the new abilities, it's a lot less mindless than I thought it would be. The SV (I think) buff that adds damage if you sit still for 6 seconds is interesting... I'm going to have fun with this class, I think. I just need to get my shit together on itemization priorities.

Word.

Top 7 for Razorscale was Rogue/DK/Shammy/Hunter/Rogue/Rogue.

Top 3 for Flame Leviathan was Jeep/Jeep/Truck.

Heh, Leviathan is the free loot truck!

Since the patch I've been #1 dps by a wide margin on every single raid I've been in. The patch was very good to rogues, probably too good.

Wait 'til Rupture crits! :p

That will be a long wait for me, we can only run 10 mans and I have to pug 25 mans. I don't see a high chance of me getting a piece set bonus anytime soon

Nah, their main goal was giving us DPS without making us OP in PVP. It worked.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

I got a dps boost past our ret paladin, and now I'm in the top 3 on any fight that's remotely melee friendly.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]