Hiya. I reckoned this would be the best place for this topic, if not I do apologize.
I’ve been playing WoW on and off over this expansion, mostly off, and when I’ve been playing it’s mainly been as a tank or healer. Therefore my insight into the DPS role is limited at best.
I’ve been trying a couple DPS classes lately (mainly demo/destro warlock, all mage specs, WW monk and shadow priest) and I get the impression that they’re all built around having very weak “regular” abilities that deal next to no damage, whose only purpose is to build up to a limited burst window that deals actual damage, before returning to abilities that might as well deal zero damage for all the good their numbers do. I get the feeling that if not for the resource building they do, the abilities wouldn’t have a purpose in the game at all, and that thought really turns me away from playing the DPS specs I’ve tried out.
Part of the issue is also, of course, that I’m pretty bad at timing and coordinating stuff, and the feeling of missing a DPS window or having it interrupted is just the worst. Especially as a Demo lock, I felt that I would be timing a bunch of summons, trying to line up vilefiend, Grimoire: felguard, felstalkers, make sure to have a bunch of imps active, then summon the tyrant, then popping the trinket, all of that had to be perfectly set up for a satisfying payoff, and if anything went wrong, maybe me using an ability in the incorrect order or something, I’d suddenly say bye bye to 5 of my imps and the tyrant’s damage would go down the drain, along with maybe losing my felstalkers before he showed up.
My question is: Is there a class/spec that doesn’t act in this manner? I’m not necessarily talking about a class that does high damage all the time or anything, but a class that can actually keep a bit of damage up outside of that tiny little window where they just utterly obliterate anything in front of them would feel so nice to play. If my character is launching a big bolt of energy towards an enemy I’d like it to have some impact, y’know?
I may be fundamentally misunderstanding the class, but as I understand it, it’s based around wet-noodling to build up insanity, then cycling between the void form’s burst window and noodle mode again, kinda like arcane mages cycle through a burn phase and conserve phase?
Spriest is probably a lot closer to what I’m looking for than other specs I’ve tried though, aside from the void form I don’t think it’s reliant on stacking a monstrous amount of cooldowns at once or anything, though admittedly my stay with shadow priest was brief, and a while ago.
Thanks for the input, I’ll look a bit more into how spriests do their thing in detail.
From what I’ve read about them, they’re highly reliant on popping cooldowns to empower their poisons for “dot burst” windows or the likes. Thanks for the suggestion though!
Frost mages usually rely very little on cooldowns. At least the noIL (no ice lance) build does. Then again, the playstyle is very monotonous so I’m not sure if you’d like it either… Usually cooldowns have a big impact because that’s what they are: cooldowns. That being said, for most specs you’ll be fine even outside of cd’s.
Shadow is what are you looking for but it need top tier gear to be enjoyable. Its flat damage spec with no burst cd. Its overall ok, but people dont like it. Its hard to find a m+ group. Shadow atm is very good at everything. Its ok in BG, 2v2 arena, raids, and m+. While its performerance is OK in this patch, it may become not this good without proper corruption setup, so only god knows if it will be good in shadowlands.
Frost mage.
You dps cooldown is terrible but in return you have steady damage output. Also simple rotation is a plus - you can concetrate more on your shimmer game and mechanics.