Shadowlands DPS Rankings in Season 3 Week 5 - Sepulcher of the First Ones

Live Posted 2022/04/07 at 4:06 AM by Anshlun

Warcraft Logs Heroic Sepulcher of the First Ones statisticsDisclaimers and SourceSepulcher of the First Ones Statistics Page on Warcraft Logsincomplete picture of season 3 balance, as tier set acquisition will drastically change these numbers week by week

Specs that are considered underpowered are generally played less and tend to appear weaker than they actually are.

This happens as many performance-oriented players will tend to play the strongest spec or class, increasing even further the gap between top and bottom specs.

Position of specs for the 95th percentile might be skewed by alternative strategies and parse funneling. For that, we're including the chart showing the result for all percentiles to paint a better picture for all specs.

DPS Rankings in Season 3 - Heroic Sepulcher of the First Ones Week of March 29th

Position

Spec and Class

Population Size

Change from
Last Week

Demonology Warlock

101479

Frost Death Knight

36639

Enhancement Shaman

63302

Survival Hunter

28472

↑1

Balance Druid

93906

↓1

Shadow Priest

42241

↑4

Marksmanship Hunter

70178

↑1

Elemental Shaman

25265

↑5

Frost Mage

91983

Subtlety Rogue

61447

↓3

Destruction Warlock

20706

↑13

Havoc Demon Hunter

98032

↓6

Unholy Death Knight

24294

↑5

Feral Druid

13173

↑5

Fury Warrior

101032

↓4

Assassination Rogue

12317

Retribution Paladin

33612

↓5

Arms Warrior

26091

↓3

Arcane Mage

11733

↓2

Windwalker Monk

26784

↓6

Outlaw Rogue

5009

Affliction Warlock

3967

↓2

Beast Mastery Hunter

90077

↓1

Fire Mage

24737

↓1

Class Writer CommentaryFrost Mage
Before we begin, in Sepulcher of the First Ones Mages have a lot of choices when it comes to which spec to play. I recommend as a Mage to be ready to play all three specs, as opposed to sticking with one. That being said, for folks starting the raid Frost Mage is a solid option.

There are three main reasons for Frost's current success: First, Frost Storm and Frost Storm tier bonuses are strong. Most of the damage comes from the 2p, so it is easy to access. Second, Memory of Unity provides a notable gain for those playing Necrolord, more-so than other mage specs. Death's Fathom is very strong, especially when paired with Slick Ice in cleave. Frost was already is a decent position before these unlocks, which means that the percentage gained goes even further.

The last reason Frost is having a decent showing now is because it performs well in cleave and single target without downtime. Because of this, Frost performs very well on most of the earlier bosses in Sepulcher of the First Ones (similar to Sanctum of Domination). Forced downtime or other factors that make Frost underperform are only really a problem on a couple Heroic fights, most notably on Halondrus and Anduin Wrynn. This means that Frost performs the best of the Mage specs on a majority of fights, although this does not account for encounter difficulty (which is probably the better thing to look to when determining which spec to play). Thankfully, we are no longer locked to one covenant which means you can swap as you see fit!

Unholy Death Knight
The Unholy Death Knight currently sits in the middle of the pack in terms of overall rankings. Let's take a closer look at why Unholy does relatively well in Sepulcher of the First Ones, and why it has risen in ranks recently!

First of all, Unholy received a 5% damage buff two weeks ago. This buffed all of Unholy's damage, including pets. 5% might not sound like much, but it does have a significant impact overall. Specs are packed together tightly in the statistics, especially close to the middle, enabling a relatively small change like this to have a significant impact on the overall rankings.

Unholy does well in Sepulcher due to multiple reasons. First of all, the 4-set bonus Harvest Time can be leveraged to great success on multiple bosses. Whenever there are adds, we can use Soul Reaper to proc our 4-set and gain a huge boost to our DPS! The adds that spawn on Dausegne fit very well with our opening burst. We have all our cooldowns running when we use Soul Reaper and gain a 50% damage boost to our pet damage! Anduin intermission phase provides both excellent add targets (the small ones that jump around) coupled with a huge damage boost gives us insane burst. Bloodlust + Army of the Dead in the first intermission phase is just so much priority damage. Finally, Lords of Dread have an add that we can grip in and use Soul Reaper on. This generally aligns very well with the swarm phase, enabling huge amounts of funnel as the bosses take increased damage! The 4-set also does well on bosses with execute burns. Halondus and The Jailer are both great Unholy fights where a late Bloodlust in conjunction with Army of the Dead and Harvest Time sends Unholy towards the top of the meters!

Furthermore, Gavel of the First Arbiter is a pretty insane weapon for Unholy. Once used, an add is spawned that needs to be killed. This provides an excellent opportunity to leverage the 4-set by killing the add with Soul Reaper, proccing Harvest Time! The weapon itself is already really good with the buff it provides. Add on top of that a 50% pet-damage boost in our opener and you have an awesome combination! I believe this is another reason why Unholy has jumped up a bit in rankings. Killing the Jailer on Heroic isn't all that common but people are now starting to pick up the weapon!

Another point worth to mention is the large amount of damage that Abomination Limb can put out. The covenant spell was buffed significantly in 9.2, both directly through a damage buff, but also indirectly through Abomination's Frenzy and Brutal Grasp buffs. It enables the Unholy death knight to both bring great utility, gripping in targets on bosses like Anduin and Artificer, as well as providing a huge amount of AoE burst every 2 minutes. This can be leveraged especially well on Artificer, Anduin and Lords of Dread!

Unholy is overall a good spec in Sepulcher, having received recent buffs and scaling well with items in the raid. I expect it to hold strong and potentially see more play as the diversity of the guilds progressing more difficult bosses increases. As a notable example, Tegu was topping the meters on a recent Jailer Mythic kill, having the ability to leverage the unusually long execute phase to their advantage!

Fury Warrior
Fury Warriors have had a tumultuous time so far in Sepulcher of the First Ones, although anticipated to be a dominant force with the hugely hyped Necrolord build, last minute nerfs completely undermined that possibility, resulting in a severe decline in the single target damage profiles which have largely dominated this tier. While Warriors started off strong and saw a lot of use in the Race to World First, the majority of that was before acquiring double legendaries and represented a much different state of the game than we are seeing now. Fury's tier set is very good however, and much stronger than a tier set really should be, though the same can be said for many other specializations, and Fury's second legendary doesn't add nearly as much as some of the other classes which have skyrocketed over the last few weeks. Warriors also tend to be prioritized more at the beginning of a tier, where AoE and Execute phases last the longest and survivability checks require as many cooldowns as possible to safely survive.

Saying Warriors are not overly impressive right now may be somewhat contradictory though, as although statistics all indicate that Warriors are only middle of the pack - if that - in terms of damage in Sepulcher of the First Ones, Fury is still one of the highest represented specializations this tier. Part of that may be due to the original anticipation or simply because Fury has been a particularly well received spec since it was redesigned in Legion & Battle for Azeroth, but it's also true that DPS Warriors have always been very popular, and bring useful utility in the form of Battle Shout and Rallying Cry, so there will almost always be a place for them in raid groups even if they still aren't the star of this particular show.

As it now stands, Fury's biggest strength in AoE has already been well established in Mythic+; anytime they can burst down a set of adds with Signet of Tormented Kings and Bladestorm, particularly when there are several sets recurring throughout the encounter - such as Xy'mox, Anduin, and Vigilant Guardian, although even in those fights, their faltering single target results keeps them from the top of the charts, particularly in lower difficulties where these phases are either getting skipped or the adds are dying so quickly that Warriors don't have 15-25 seconds to pull off their full rotation. In single target though, Fury is very middling, only barely breaking into the middle of the pack outside of a few encounters - Mythic Halondrus being the notable exception, due to the encounter's length and near constant uptime on the boss.

Another issue is covenants, as Warriors are encouraged to change covenants on almost every single encounter if they truly want to optimize, but because of the annoyances in doing so, many simply don't bother - therefore, we see a lot of Kyrian and Night Fae parses, even on single target encounters where Necrolord or Venthyr would be slightly better - simply because the gain is now so small (in the range of 2-3%) that it's hardly worth the effort. This even trickles down into conduits, as Korayn's First Strike is an excellent soulbind ability which pairs well with Merciless Bonegrinder on fights like Anduin, but the same soulbind is ideally used with different conduits on Rygelon. These are mostly just annoyances though; the true heart of the matter is that both Arms and Fury are in strong need of a moderate single target buff either baseline or bringing one of their "single target" covenants back to the point of usefulness, else their current standings are unlikely to improve.
Class Guides for Sepulcher of the First OnesFor more information on specs in Season, check out our Sepulcher of the First Ones Class Guides!

Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK

Havoc DHVengeance DH

Balance DruidFeral DruidGuardian DruidRestoration Druid

Beast Mastery HunterMarksmanship HunterSurvival Hunter

Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage

Brewmaster MonkMistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk

Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin

Discipline PriestHoly PriestShadow Priest

Assassination RogueOutlaw RogueSubtlety Rogue

Elemental ShamanEnhancement ShamanRestoration Shaman

Affliction WarlockDemonology WarlockDestruction Warlock

Arms WarriorFury WarriorProtection Warrior

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Comment by corvettesloverFeral moving on up!Comment by ginkeltjesClearly visible that most people have no clue how to play BM hunter even if its so easy.Comment by nastywafflesxxx1,106,476 between them all. if anyone was wondering like i was.Comment by J00tiiClearly visible that most people have no clue how to play BM hunter even if its so easy.Comment by 2067952Can you do the same for tanks pls?Comment by VSozonovCan you do the same for tanks pls?Comment by PanthraxThose buffs to Windwalker really helped...Comment by LedarenClearly visible that most people have no clue how to play BM hunter even if its so easy.Comment by xILLUThose buffs to Windwalker really helped...Comment by nimaRoyalFire mage stand in last place ? I can't believe thatComment by Greensmower1Anyone who puts any real validity to these numbers is living a lie. Almost all the data if from the first 8 bosses, very few guilds have progressed past Anduin. Next even the guilds that have made it past, are looking at the first 4 on mythic at least and skipping the Jailer altogether. No one wants to prog a boss in a raid tier where tier gear is so important that doesn’t even drop tier. These numbers will probably flip flop nearly 50% after next week when the catalyst is available and players start finishing 4 sets. Also any rankings that are showing one class moving up or down more than 5 slots in a week are probably not the most accurate and might also need a larger sample size. Granted some of the weekly buffs and nerfs that Blizz implements are also a key factor, but usually not enough to flip the historic rankings 100% upside down… fire mages dead last and Survival hunters and demo locks near the top? Only in the twilight zone will that last more than a few more weeks.Comment by SelendeesNow do yourself a favor enter the button provided to enter wowlogs site with those information and click "damage" button to expand it and select dmg done to bosses. Because other dmg is just pad in sepulcher and don't really matter. Now see who is where.Comment by 2067952Can you do the same for tanks pls?Comment by VSozonovCan you do the same for tanks pls?Comment by samukarbshadow was on botton at first week! it gets better week after week and no buffs.
its about tier.
the worst part for me is I dont get invited to Mythic Plus with 2pc only (LFR and normal) cus i dont raid.
TIER SHOULD BE RELEASE EARLY!Comment by tydarAnyone who puts any real validity to these numbers is living a lie. Almost all the data if from the first 8 bosses, very few guilds have progressed past Anduin. Next even the guilds that have made it past, are looking at the first 4 on mythic at least and skipping the Jailer altogether. No one wants to prog a boss in a raid tier where tier gear is so important that doesn’t even drop tier. These numbers will probably flip flop nearly 50% after next week when the catalyst is available and players start finishing 4 sets. Also any rankings that are showing one class moving up or down more than 5 slots in a week are probably not the most accurate and might also need a larger sample size. Granted some of the weekly buffs and nerfs that Blizz implements are also a key factor, but usually not enough to flip the historic rankings 100% upside down… fire mages dead last and Survival hunters and demo locks near the top? Only in the twilight zone will that last more than a few more weeks.Comment by LedarenAnyone who puts any real validity to these numbers is living a lie. Almost all the data if from the first 8 bosses, very few guilds have progressed past Anduin. Next even the guilds that have made it past, are looking at the first 4 on mythic at least and skipping the Jailer altogether. No one wants to prog a boss in a raid tier where tier gear is so important that doesn’t even drop tier. These numbers will probably flip flop nearly 50% after next week when the catalyst is available and players start finishing 4 sets. Also any rankings that are showing one class moving up or down more than 5 slots in a week are probably not the most accurate and might also need a larger sample size. Granted some of the weekly buffs and nerfs that Blizz implements are also a key factor, but usually not enough to flip the historic rankings 100% upside down… fire mages dead last and Survival hunters and demo locks near the top? Only in the twilight zone will that last more than a few more weeks.Comment by jcorle01No matter how many times they add the caveats about these "ranking" people still don't read the details. When you have the best players all gravitating toward certain specs they're going to score higher because they have the skill and typically the gear to make sure they do well. It's more casual players that stick with whatever they want to play which typically brings down the performance.Comment by readiitThis is a perfect example of 'lies, dang lies, and statistics'.

Every one of those demo locks holding up that chart got PI'ed till they couldn't see straight.

Still people will come in here and be like "hurr durr nice gaem bozzard"

-____-Comment by 2067952Can you do the same for tanks pls?

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