World of Warcraft’s Subtlety Rogue Keeps Its Mythic DPS Lead After Nerf

Subtlety Rogue remains the top overall damage specialization in World of Warcraft’s Mythic Venomous Abyss after its nerf, although its lead has narrowed considerably. In the Warcraft Logs 95th-percentile rankings for patch 12.1.5’s third week, Devastation and Augmentation Evoker sit close together behind it.

Those overall rankings use normalized scores rather than raw damage per second. Normalization accounts for encounters where a specialization can produce unusually high damage because of the fight’s design. The results also include logs from Nymrissa Wavecaller, the Tidebound Grotto Lair boss, alongside The Venomous Abyss encounters.

Fire and Marksmanship climb in Mythic

At the 95th percentile, Subtlety’s advantage is less than half of what it was before the tuning pass. Devastation moved ahead of Augmentation into second place, followed by Affliction Warlock and Shadow Priest.

Fire Mage made one of the largest moves, climbing 15 places to sixth after a 5% buff. Its Mythic sample remains small, with 520 parses in the displayed log data. Marksmanship Hunter rose six places to ninth, while Demonology Warlock fell seven places and out of the top 10.

Across all percentiles, Subtlety also leads, but the order behind it changes. Affliction is second and Augmentation is third, while Fire holds fifth and Marksmanship rose 16 places to sixth. Subtlety is also first in the separate damage-to-bosses ranking, ahead of Assassination Rogue.

Demonology led Mythic damage across all percentiles in the raid’s third week in September. That is an earlier period than patch 12.1.5’s third week and a different measure from the 75th-percentile comparison below.

Affliction gains ground in a 75th-percentile comparison

A community comparison of Warcraft Logs data for the week ending November 3 also puts Subtlety first, with Affliction second, at the 75th percentile. It plots normalized Mythic damage scores alongside each specialization’s share of 276,341 parses. A parse is a logged performance, not a unique player.

Week 11: Mythic Raid – Spec Popularity vs Average DPS
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In the comparison’s weekly change chart, Subtlety shows a relative decline of roughly 7%, while Affliction gains about 5%, the largest damage gain in that view.

Arcane Mage accounts for approximately 12.4% of the comparison’s parses, the largest share, despite sitting below its damage reference line. Arms Warrior and Demonology follow at roughly 8.5% and 8.1%, while second-place Affliction represents about 1.8%.

Affliction and Fire both gained relative representation over the previous seven days. Fire’s increase was particularly large, though it still accounts for a small share of parses and only recently moved out of last place.

Raid-wide rankings don’t tell every boss story

Individual encounters can favor different specializations. On Mythic Kith’ix, Subtlety leads and Devourer Demon Hunter has climbed to second. Outlaw Rogue moved from near the bottom to first on The Coiled Altar, although its overall Mythic sample is small.

For Mythic Ula’tek, Assassination leads Windwalker Monk and Subtlety. The encounter was also the subject of an October 6 tuning plan that targeted several Heroic and Mythic mechanics.

Heroic logs grow

Heroic log activity grew by an estimated 15% to 20% on average compared with two weeks earlier. In the Heroic specialization data, Retribution Paladin, Arcane Mage and Beast Mastery Hunter have the most parses. Beast Mastery moved ahead of Arms Warrior into third, while Subtlety climbed five places to sixth.

On Heroic Ula’tek, Havoc Demon Hunter leads the damage rankings, with Marksmanship up eight places to second.

Which specialization’s performance has stood out to you in The Venomous Abyss? For more on raid rankings and class tuning, follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, Telegram.