The Enigma Order

So recently I started having some serious doubts as to which spec would be ideal on which encounter and such. I decided to make a thourough analysis of WoL rankings to try and confirm my hipothesis. Below I'm sharing my findings. For each interesting fight (most of them) I've listed the dps done by the highest ranked player (first figure) and of the lowest ranked player, so world 200th best result (second figure). Eg. world best BM hunter did 35.3k dps on Morchok heroic, while the last ranked one (no. 200 world wide) did 25.9k.

Some caveats apply. Clearly, some of the top rankings on WoL have been doctored for the purpose of being ranked. I tried to apply some common sense - if there was a few thousand dps difference between no. 1 and 2, I disregarded the first result and went down the list until I found what seamed to be the first legit log.

Below the data a few thoughts of mine.

Morchok heroic:
BM: 35.3/25.9
MM: 35.8/29.3
SV: 39.8/32.0

Zon'ozz heroic:
BM: 57.0/22.7 (small sample)
MM: 57.9/43.9
SV: 68.3/44.5

Zon'ozz normal:
BM: 61.2/46.3
MM: 67.5/52.1
SV: 64/3/52.8

Yor'sahj heroic:
BM: 59.4/33.6 (small sample)
MM: 55.0/26.7 (limited sample, plus the few top results are far above the average)
SV: 71.6/49.3

Yor'sahj normal:
BM: 49.9/32.4
MM: 50.1/32.7
SV: 67.0/43.4

Hagara heroic:
BM: 34.6/29.3 (small sample)
MM: 35.4/28.1
SV: 41.8/30.0 (disregarded the highest ranked player, since the difference comparing to next person is a little too juicy to be legit)

Hagara normal:
BM: 40.5/25.6
MM: 45.0/26.7 (disregarded the highest ranked player, since the difference comparing to next person is a little too juicy to be legit)
SV: ??/31.8 (the dozen of highest results looks very weird, I can't intrpret it properly)

Ultraxion heroic
BM: 38.4/31.4 (extremely small sample)
MM: 39.5/31.7 (small sample)
SV: 41.7/29.0 (EL's Strobo holding the world highest score as of the time of writing this)

Ultraxion normal:
BM: 41.2/31.8
MM: 43.2/36.5
SV: 44.5/38.2

Warmaster Blackhorn heroic
BM: 31.9/21.9
MM: 33.3/23.9
SV: 34.6/26/3

Warmaster Blackhorn normal:
BM: 33.8/23.8
MM: 36.7/25.6
SV: 39.0/28.8

Madness of Deathwing normal:
BM: 61.3/43.0
MM: 70.9/52.0
SV: 78.0/56.5


Now, for heroic modes only (excluding both parts of Deathwing encounter), let's assume that if a given spec scored the highest dps, we will give it 2 points, if it was the middle one 1 point and if it was the lowest, no points. So for Morchok heroic: SV-2, MM-1, BM-0.

BM: 1
MM: 5
SV: 12

Which transaltes into:
- SV is ranked the highest on every single heroic encounter. On single target encounters the gap is at the level of 1-2k dps, on aoe encounters it inscreases dramatically.
- MM is in general better than BM, but just barely, the difference is almost always at the level of sub 1k dps, increases when aoe is involved.
- as for heroics, there's in general not a very big number of logs - there's often less than 200 players ranked, which means that each kill grants a position in the ranking.
- there is the least of logs involving BM hunters. I'd go as far as to say that BM is ranked lower than MM overall not only because the spec is less good, but because few good hunters play it, instead choosing MM/SV
- we shouldn't forget that the ranked players more often than not have the 4xt13 bonus, which has a paramount impact on just about everything. Personally, I think this bonus is the hardest to incorporate into SV playstyle - on one hand you want to use Arcane Shot a lot, to make the bonus proc, on the other you want to avoid it, not to consume LnL charges. Let alone the focus starvation that's no stranger to SV (though the 2xt13 bonus might make this less bad).