Some people in my guild have been kicking around ideas on how to increase overall dps for our raids (primarily 40 mans). This is both for content on farm (clearing Molten Bore just that much quicker), and for new content (ie: sartura, nef, fankriss, etc.) The idea of a special build for a select few people(say 1 per class). For example:

- Shadow Priest (shadow weaving for locks)
- Hemo Rogue (increase melee dps)
- MoonKin Druid (increase ranged crit)
- Feral Druid (increase melee crit)
- TrueShot Aura Hunter (increase melee/hunter dps)

the big question is should these individuals go full shadow/feral build (for example) or more go for a support caster roll. As a priest, and one with significant shadow priest experience, ill use that as an example. Here are 2 builds:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxMhsZfztcMZxMxd0x
Details: 20 points into shadow tree to get the goods (5/5 shadow weaving) and then dump the rest into disc/holy to try and salvage healing abilities.
advantages: should still be a quality healer for end game content. can just spam rank 1 SW:P to keep the weaving up.
disadvantages: healing abilities (longetivity) is reduced. no vamp embrace, and no real capabilities to dps itself. the idea of 4 locks + shadow priest group would not be effective without the steam of life from vamp embrace into the life tapping warlocks (or would it?)


http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMusmZZVMLpMxRt
Details: 31 points into shadow tree (balls to the walls raid dps). max vamp embrace (30%). rest is in disc for as much longetivity as possible from offensive spells.
advantages: can keep 4 people very well tapped off from vamp ticks (SW:P, mind flays, mind blasts). decent dps depending on gear and fight.
disadvantages: pretty obvious, healing is very sub par. longetivity a joke (would need alot of pots/runes). People generally hate shadow priests.



how much dps will the shadow weaving add to the locks (assume 4-6 locks in the raid)? Like wise question regarding a druid stuck in cat forum to help out all the melee dps, and another druid in moonkin helping out the ranged dps. Would the raid dps increase warrant the upset to standard jobs? Druids in feral/balance spec, and priests in shadow spec cant heal as well as their holy/restro counter parts. But will the improved dps make up for it?


thanks

It should be noted that out of your above builds, TSA Hunters (5/31/15) have a higher potential DPS than Survival Hunters. Then again, regardless of what spec a Hunter is, they'll still do roughly the same damage. Hemo Rogues are viable dps by themselves but it requires them to be somewhat geared out and to have specific weapons in the main hand. I've also heard of Shadow Priests being good DPS in raids (I guess that would only work in a Priest heavy guild) but it requires a significant amount of +damage gear, open-mindedness, and whatnot. I think there's one of those DPSing Shadow Priests lurking around the forums somewhere around here.

As for Druids... well, they're pretty lackluster in their off-specs.

I think the druid would add around 97% of a rogue's damage, assuming LOTP on 4 people really is a 12% total DPS increase (I'm not a math person so I couldn't back it up with anything) and the druid is geared to the teeth as is the rogue (Druid DPS used 720 and Rogue used 840, not exact but pretty good ballparks.)

Couldn't tell you a thing about shadow priests.

And there's only two fights in aq40 in which you can go with a 5-man dps group. I'm not sure about the 97% numbers, my really rough numbers based on old patch parses looks closer to 75% dps of a rog even with lotp.

People have run the warlock numbers while doing patchwerk calculations -- shadpriest doesn't add dps.

If these builds actually increased raid dps, then they wouldn't be "uncommon".

TSA uncommon? A 20/31 or 5/31/15 build are much better for raiding than any other hunter build, not only because of better damage but also because of extra raid utility coming from TSA. Really should be taken off that list, IMO =/

It is a very sad day for hunters when people consider TSA a raiding off-spec.

The druid patch change should have increased our DPS by a considerable amount with Rip scaling with AP. Not sure on the order of how much though, I'm not feral anymore. 80 was a rough estimation based on 2.6k or so AP (pretty common when we're at this/that calibre of gear). If it's less, then meh. It gets worse, though I could see a druid actually doing DPS now since we aren't limited nearly as much by threat.

In my guild, we've got all sorts of off-spec raiders. I'm a heavily geared shadow priest, there's a Hemo/Mace rogue that raids with us, a cat and one good bear tank, as well as one or two TSA hunters. Hell we've even got a retnoob with a Sulfuras. We tend to be druid/priest heavy, so losing me, or another druid to an off-spec isn't a big deal. I don't know that it helps or hinders us one way or another. I would say that it's a waste to only go 20 points into shadow, or partially into the feral tree. If you're gonna off-spec, go all the way, and gear for it.

I'd say that having a bear tank around is never a bad thing; but cats and moonkin are less useful, regardless of their auras. I'd rather have another mage or rogue. A hemo rogue is a marginal increase in melee DPS, but as Eej said, it's pretty specific in it's gearing, and it'll underperform compared to the rest of your rogues if you're not geared to the teeth. A TSA Hunter and a Survival Hunter are the same for all I care. As a Shadow Priest, I think I'm very useful; I can heal even in shadowform, and still keep up with the mages.

It mostly depends on your raid makeup; if you've got 8 priests, yeah, losing a healer to a shadow-spec will be good. You'll have one less bored healer, happy locks, and some extra DPS to boot. If you've only got 3 priests, probably not a great idea.

some flaws are that you are now kind of gearing up 1 person in every class, if that person doesnt show up for a raid that gear is "wasted" and your down that offspec for the raid. some classes will have "drama" over who gets to spec (priests, druids). you should of course always allow gear to go to healers if its going to get sharded, but if your first few nelth tears, staff of shadow flames, etc drop its better off in the hands of a mage/lock rather than shadow/oomkin.

with that said, content on farm has little relevence to spec anyways. you can do mc/bwl and even aq40 in any class combo and spec you want. bosses in naxx as well, but it gets much much tougher. you also are heavily dependent on the offspecs doing the right thing and bringing lots of consumables to make up for DPS loss, and sadly many times they are unable/unwilling to do so.

your not going to put 4 warlocks and a shadowpriest in a group since you'll want imps spread out. similar organizational issues with creating a lotp+4 melee DPS group.

Burning Crusade may (and probably will) change all this. But for now, in an ideal world, you will get through content faster without shadow priests, non-resto druids, elemental shamans, etc. WoW is not an ideal world though and you must deal with class balance, people unhappy about playing certain specs, inconsistent raid attendence, etc. There are plenty of guilds in naxx with plenty of shadow priests, oomkins, retadins, etc.

More important is the skill behind your players and raid composition. If your getting people to spec shadow because you're taking 9 priests every raid the problem isnt spec - too many priests. 14-17 healers is plenty for 40 mans with strong healing leaders.

If you are running with 4-6 warlocks I can think of one quick and easy way to increase your raid dps, and that's to replace half of them with mages, rogues or fury warriors :)

In the case of hemo rogue and the off spec druids, unfortunately the loss of a true dps class in order to gain these buffs is a net loss in pretty much every situation.

TSA hunters however are useful and do help raid dps, especially since they don't have to severely gimp their own dps to pick it up. Also since their sustained dps is lackluster anyway.

That last line made me go, wtf?

As a hunter myself I was able to beat the rogues on dps throughout MC and BWL. AQ40 it became less of a question since most of the fights are fairly oddballish in that hunters are going to end up using weird things/doing weird things during the encounter. (Using aspect of the wild, being a soaker for Huhu, being unable to use certain shots, having assignments that include most CC etc.) But while I think hunter dps should be better than it is, I wouldn't call it lackluster at all. If a hunter works at it, they could do better than excellent, but that's the badside. They have to work pretty hard to be able to be competitive in any sense of the word.

And why do people keep saying TSA is an off-spec? Marksman was *the* raid spec since the beginning of MC; only when LR came out did people even deviate from that vein and then they too got hip to the fact that marksman still output more damage. LR won't do that much less than marksman, but if you're really truly interested in an absolute, progression helping raid spec, you'll spec marksman since it's better for YOUR damage and better for the raid damage.

Anyways just felt like adding that. Some people seem to have some really interesting hunter misconceptions.

Just to reinforce what has already been said, I definitely would not consider TSA hunters to be off-spec or uncommon. It's been well established that heavy MM hunters outperform heavy Survival hunters in terms of dps in raid situations. As a hunter, if you want to do the best dps possible, you spec MM, simple as that.

-edit- Beaten because nature called :(

:?:


Really, it's been done a few times before... They're gimping their DPS by _not_ going TSA. There's no 6-point in Beast or 16-point in Survival that will boost your DPS as much as TSA, and if you're not getting Marks tree, then you're not raiding.

Well actually, it's more ranged weapon specialization and barrage that add all the dps, since TSA is static, but once you go all the way down you may as well grab TSA. :P

Omg I am such a nitpicker.

Carry on ^_^

There's a few hunters in my guild who strongly disagree with me when I mention that they might pick up dps gains by speccing TSA. This is the root of my misconception, maybe I should send them this way. Either way, on-topic, spreading them with the rogues/warriors will give a "support" dps increase :P

Well if you're not grouped with a Hunter that has TSA, you're actually getting +100 AP for yourself, and +100 AP for your pet. If you're 20/31, that's effectively +105 AP for yourself and +120 AP for your pet! (Well, if you consider 5% more damage and 20% more damage and just multiply your AP by that)

But yes, Barrage + RWS scales so much better than LR. LR only scales with agi, but RWS scales with everything, including weapon upgrades, better ammo, flat buffs (Furious Howl, Hemorrhage, Gift of Arthas) and +AP.

Anyways, carry on. ^____________________________________^