Yeah this is strange, as I said earlier, in our guild there's two fire mages in top5 and maybe some other mage in top10. Other than that, it's mostly hunters and rogues. I hear the same thing as you describe is happening in other horde guilds as well, and I really can't see why.
Either your, and other horde guilds, mages are really skilled at squeezing out every single bit of damage out of their chars or our mages just plain suck in general.

Shouldn't hunters and rogues naturally be the best damage dealers on the horde side seeing as they have complete aggro wipes AND great totem buffs? (grace of air, windfury). Whereas alliance suits warlocks and mages.

Our mages are VERY good. Our rogues are vastly superior in regards to DPS and the few warlocks we do have in the top ten including myself arent slouches by any margin. Our DM last night had 2 mages beating me, and our hunters walked all over locks last night (Damn Nature vulnerable everything ><). Arch makes a good point in how our Shaman buffs effect our DPS whereas how you Paladin buffs are more geared towards casters. Now if only Shaman can get like a +50 spell damage totem >.>

The lack of JoW hurts hunters far more than it does mages on the Horde side. JoW & BoW more than doubles the length of maximum output DPS from a hunter, whilst for a mage it only extends it by approx 40% or so, when the maths was last done.

That's why hunters on the horde side generally don't compete on damage meters as much.

If I had JoW and BoW, I could easily see myself hitting number 1 DPS often from 5-8 (Behind rogues and the odd fury warrior). I have a hard time understanding how that big a leap in damage output is in any way balanced for one side or the other. On alliance I can see how hunters would be overpowered in PVE, and on horde I think they are just right.

JoW is too broken to be balanced. Do any maths you like, and it works out as just too strong an ability to be purely for one side. They just need to remove it from the game - sorry Alliance guys, but when you look at the effect it has on certain classes (mostly hunters, to a lesser extent mages & warlocks), it's simply makes classes impossible to balance.

Jow may well be too strong, but it is usefull on perhaps 2 named in bwl and maybe another 2 in aq. I have not been in nax on test but I assume the majority of the encounters are too mobile and quick to use it the way you seem to dream about.

It's okay. For a certain gear range, Windfury is why DPS warriors on alliance don't compete. No, BoK/BoM don't make up for Windfury for a warrior; it's about breakeven for a rogue, maybe slightly in WF's favor. (Yes, accounting for lost poisons). GoA ain't bad either.

I dont think you are looking at the limitations of jow. Its only used on stable tank/heal/dps fights. That means on a mobile fight like sartura or gimmicy fights like the emps it does very little.

Well, It is less useable on those fights and nearly useless on emps (unless you tank with a lock), but still very useful, and lightyears beyond haveing to stock up on lesser mana oils.

Completly useless on Emps, the one hunters attack is immune to JoW, Don't forget Horde hunters get Grace of Air totem for an extra 150AP, and over 1% crit, while alliance hunters have no AP buffs besides their own.

Horde hunters rarely get shamans ( at least in my guild) unless we have a dirge of them.

I dont know about other horde guilds, but most of our warriors would rather have tranq totem than windfury.

I have considered bringing it up with my guild, but I haven't met any guilds on deathwing that prioritize shamans for hunters.

Better to give your class that needs to move the least the stationary buffs. Hunters take less healing, and can dump aggro more effectively; giving them the increased dps is basically for free with regards to aggro caps. Horde hunters benefit decently from mana spring, and will love it even more come 1.11.

Hunters are the best dps in that fight.. give them some luuv. Though I must admit that most paladins in our guild "forgets" to judge JoW most of the time ><

For such an overpowered skill I can count the number of fights we use it on one hand.

Ebonroc, chromaggus, nefarion in BWL.
Phase two C'thun when weakened.

That's it. I kept it up once during an entire duration of Ouro, there was no difference that I could see. Same amount of damage done in the up/down phases.

The only fight that I can say our judgements make an actual effect on is Firemaw. Judgement of light is very effective in that fight. Of course that fight is trivial anyways.

It is very difficult to judge if it is worth having a paladin melee to give judgements. It isn't possible to keep the judgements up consistently and still be able to heal decently. I just can't justify using a paladin in that manner in most fights. And those that I can, they are either trivial, or they can melee and do their jobs at the same time (chrommagus and dispelling)

I disagree strongly. With the lasting judgement talent, JoL/JoW last 40 seconds. So every 40 seconds, those two paladins (or one, depending) have to stop healing for 10 seconds to run up, hit the boss or cast a judgement, and run back to position. Depending how healer heavy your raid is and how good each of your healers are, it's quite possible to keep a judgement up on every boss in BWL and still be top 5 for effective heals.

Same. We always have one of those groups and another group with our high DPS rogues and Fury warriors. WTB +spell damage totem from Shaman

I have always said that JoW is the best debuff there is, too bad most paladins don't realize that. If I was a paladin I would run around and judge almost every target.
If used on trashmobs and such it decreases downtime between the pulls. And at bosses there is no reason at all to not use it, the more mana every mana user has the faster the boss goes down usually.

Mage dps should be a significant step above where it used to be. Obviously the new aggro reduction will result in fewer situations where mages have to hold back on damage, which is a boost in and of itself. The introduction of Winter's Chill, the buffs to Improved Scorch, and the new talent Elemental Precision will also help out tremendously. I myself have always been a frost mage, but when I copied my character onto the test servers, I specced 31 points into fire for Combustion. I was easily outdamaging similarly-geared frost mages in Naxxramas.



One important thing about fire builds that Thrillho brought up in another thread is the issue of mana conservation. Sure, against trash, fire mages can afford to go all out because the pulls are short. However, against a considerable amount of the bosses in Nax, I presume fire mages will have to use cast orders that focus more around conserving mana than they do around dealing damage. It wouldn't surprise me to see frost mages overtaking fire mages in these encounters.