Manaforge Omega Statistics Page
Manaforge Omega Raid Tier Lists
Looking for more insight into the raid balance? Check out our Tier Lists, which include more information besides pure throughput for Manaforge Omega.
DPS Tier List Healer Tier List Tank Tier List
The War Within Season 3 DPS Rankings
To start our look back into Season 3, we will be looking at Devastation, Beast Mastery, and Elemental.
Beast Mastery started Manaforge Omega in a dire situation, looming at the bottom for the first few weeks. However, tuning changes swapped the landscape quickly, with BM leaping to the top 7 in the week after the tuning changes, all the way from the last spot in the week prior. Ever since then, Beast Mastery has stayed in the top 5, displaying remarkable results.
In contrast, Devastation had a strong start in Manaforge, occupying the top 4 spot in week 1. However, this was short-lived, with Devastation immediately starting to lose spots the following weeks. Throughout the tier, lizards have floated around the middle of the pack, between 15th and 20th place in the rankings, a large change from Liberation of Undermine, when Devastation had amazing results.
Similar to BM, Elemental Shaman had a really good tier. Elemental hasn't dropped from the top 7 the whole tier and has been leading the race ever since Turbo Boost about two months ago.
We've invited our writers for the three specs to contextualize their journeys better, and you can read them below, after the rankings.
For Rankings, without any new tuning or changes, all changes below are just noise changes, with specs that are close enough balance-wise, just swapping positions.
95th Percentile Statistics
Overall Damage
Damage to Bosses
Overall Statistics
Overall Damage
Damage to Bosses
PositionSpec and ClassPopulation SizeChange from
Last Week
1Elemental Shaman175600
2Marksmanship Hunter3349↑1
3Arcane Mage20189↓1
4Assassination Rogue69960
5Beast Mastery Hunter356250
6Destruction Warlock256380
7Frost Death Knight28649↑1
8Fury Warrior19207↑1
9Fire Mage1910↓2
10Augmentation Evoker33570
11Balance Druid12350↑2
12Unholy Death Knight2780↑2
13Windwalker Monk5394↓1
14Subtlety Rogue3408↓3
15Shadow Priest92610
16Devastation Evoker73840
17Demonology Warlock3044↑5
18Havoc Demon Hunter198880
19Feral Druid28930
20Retribution Paladin218120
21Affliction Warlock1061↓4
22Survival Hunter833↓1
23Enhancement Shaman15390
24Arms Warrior9090
25Frost Mage5044↑1
26Outlaw Rogue937↓1
Class Writer Commentary
To help us better understand the charts above, we invited our Class Writers for Devastation Evoker, Beast Mastery Hunter, and Elemental Shaman to provide insights about the journey their specs had in Manaforge Omega.
Devastation Evoker
Preheat
Warcraft Logs tracks overall raid statistics for damage dealers, based on the highest performing logs in Manaforge Omega. Position in this chart is based on average spec performance for each encounter with a large enough sample size. How each spec is graded depends on the specifics of what Warcraft Logs determines is eligible damage. Based on these statistics Devastation's performance through this tier was solidly average. Despite this, there has been a bit of downward movement as the weeks have gone on. Let's take a moment to discuss some of the reasons why:
Throughout every tier, tuning will occur. Specs that are overperforming will be nerfed and underperformers will get buffs. Specs in the middle don't typically get a lot of attention, but the ripples of the other spec changes can still be felt. In addition to this, there are bug fixes to consider. Scalecommander received some hefty buffs in the form of bug fixes, but the end result was not enough to really push the spec ahead of its peers.
When a spec has very little movement, its rank becomes more about what is moving around it. Devastation has felt a little downward pressure from Augmentation, which received enough changes (and farm optimizations) and to push it above Devastation as the higher performer. Changes to what Warcraft Logs considers acceptable damage have also not helped. Devastation is a spec with a lot of incidental cleave, meaning that its rank is lowered overall when what counts for ranking is strict.
Overall, Devastation has been consistently average throughout this tier. In a world where people focus on statistics and what is "Meta" or "Best" this can be seen as a negative. The real performance and value of Devastation (and Evoker utility) in actual content is hard to miss, even if it can't be qualified.
Beast Mastery Hunter
Tarlo
Beast Mastery Hunters journey through Manaforge Omega has been an explosive one. It started off the the tier lacking the proper tools to really do much. It lacked burst, had lost its only execute, lacked cleave and didn't really have a strong enough raidbuff to keep it in on bosses. It didn't really excel at anything and was often passed over.
But everything changed when the Dark Ranger nation attacked. On September 9th, the Dark Ranger hero spec was given massive buffs (and a few Simc fixes were found around the same time). Suddenly, the spec had a significant amount of burst, which now meshed well with the burst windows found on Nexus-King Salhadaar and Dimensius, as well as the Unyielding Netherprism trinket. The burst was crucially also on a 1 minute cooldown, which made it very flexible for these encounters and worked well with Power Infusion. This was exactly what the spec needed to succeed. Initially the tuning was a bit high, so it's been tuned down gradually over time, leaving the spec in a very strong but not overwhelmingly strong position.
As of writing, the spec is mostly held back from the very top of the overall rankings by Forgeweaver Araz (where Withering Fire arrows can hit immune pillars and be wasted) and The Soul Hunters (which is just a poor damage profile for the spec in general). It also doesn't like that a lot of the earlier bosses have become very quick kills for a lot of guilds, so Blighted Quiver and Unyielding Netherprism doesn't have as great an opportunity to stack very high. Beast Mastery generally does not have that strong burst at the start of the pull, since neither the Blighted Quiver nor Unyielding Netherprism have any stacks. Shorter fights mean this initial burst window is more relevant. On the last two bosses, however, the spec remains extremely strong, having cooldowns for every relevant burst moment regardless of how quickly you push due to its flexible 1-minute cooldown. The burst windows with Bloodlust and damage amps are later into the fights, so Blighted Quiver and Unyielding Netherprism both have time to ramp up.
Elemental Shaman
HawkCorrigan
It's been a tier, and what a tier it's been for Elemental Shaman. For what felt like the first time in forever, Elemental got played for the World First Kill of a Mythic end boss. And not just one. Three Elementals were in for the fight for both the first and second-place teams. Even for the rest of the playerbase, the spec's performance didn't notably drop. Throughout the tier, Elemental kept itself steadily in the Top 3 of overall DPS on Warcraft Logs. Good place to start, but what exactly did that mean for per-boss performance, and how did our performance change throughout the tier?
Elemental has well-defined strengths, which just so coincide with the requirements of this tier's raid. Right now, Elemental brings excellent single-target damage, good burst AoE, and strong cooldowns, all of which work well with the various wave-based add spawns and vulnerability mechanics in Manaforge Omega. This led to very inflated DPS numbers in week 1, when most players were still stuck on the first few bosses, overemphasizing Loomithar and Soulbinder in the averages, and Elemental topping the statistics for about a week.
In the next few weeks, Elemental dropped to somewhere around 4th-5th place. The fights still suited the spec well, so numbers were still good, and the spec was incredibly powerful on some fights like Dimensius, but overall, it wasn't particularly overtuned. When 11.2.5 was released, Blizzard agreed with that evaluation. Every spec ahead of Elemental got hit with the nerf-bat, and Elemental went into the patch completely unscathed.
Ever since, Elemental is one of the three top specs in overall DPS on the statistics and brings strong damage patterns to fights where it deals damage in a way that other specs struggle with, and is also versatile enough to work in all different types of encounters. It is one of the top specs for Fractillus, Loomithar, and Plexus Sentinel, thanks to its good Single-Target, but also very good for AoE bosses like Soulbinder and Forgeweaver. Dimensius just combines the damage patterns on fight timers that work well for the spec. The only fights where it continues to struggle are Soulhunters and Nexus-King Salhadaar, where it still sits comfortably in the middle of the pack.
Disclaimers and Source
The data for this article was taken from the Raid Statistics Page on Warcraft Logs for Mythic difficulty during the week of December 2nd. Overall, the numbers shown above represent data for the 95th percentile. For charts, we also included data for all percentiles and boss damage to better represent the current state of balance.
The data presented, however, isn't free of bias, as it is representative of the current meta of the game, which, in itself, is biased by community perception of specs.
This bias comes from players generally flocking to specs perceived as "better", be it either easier to play or dealing more damage, or a combination of both.
The other side of the coin is specs that are too hard to play or too weak will be underrepresented and appear lower than they actually are.
Competitive players will generally prefer specs perceived to do more damage, making the best specs appear higher than they actually are.
While not as prevalent in modern days, strategy differences and parse-funneling may impact rankings. Specs that excel in AoE, spread cleave, or burst windows will appear higher in the total charts.
