As of the second week of Sepulcher, windwalker is toward the top of the charts on WarcraftLogs. This should be a surprise to no one, as Windwalker is one of the strongest specs in situations where there are multiple targets to hit. This early in the tier, with extra targets living longer than they will in a few weeks, this allows Windwalker to get through the small ramp time it has before it can blast the AOE damage.
When looking at specific fights, you can easily get a sense of where Windwalker shines, and where it doesn't. On
Vigilant Guardian, Windwalker is currently toward the middle of the pack. This is because while there are multiple targets, they are rarely stacked up and tend to trickle in to the group for AOE. Windwalker loses almost no damage when switching targets, allowing it to maintain where other specs have to start over.
Dausegne is almost entirely a single target fight, which explains why Windwalker is currently 2nd to last, bolstered slightly by some frequent
Touch of Death usage on the extra adds.
Artificer Xy'mox has two sets of very predictable adds that need to be grouped up and blasted, which plays perfectly into Windwalker's strength, placing it currently 3rd among specs.
Prototype Pantheon is another fight with at least two stacked targets, sometimes three, four during the last phase, and even more if raid members get speared. Windwalkers can almost constantly AOE during this fight, and the equally spread AOE is essential, which Windwalker is full of.
Skolex is another fight that is pure single target, and as such, Windwalker is currently in last place.
Of the tier bosses, Windwalker is not very strong on
Halondrus due to it being a single target fight. Windwalker's exceptional mobility helps it stay on target where other specs cannot, which is why it isn't quite in last place like the other single target fights, although every other class has at least one spec that currently performs better on this fight.
Lihuvim is primarily a single target fight, but with a predictable chunk of stacked AOE, pushing Windwalker into the current top 5.
Anduin Wrynn has intermissions with an insane amount of adds, and the Kingsmourne which is ideally handled with stacked cleave. Windwalker is currently 2nd on
Anduin Wrynn, behind the 4 Affliction Warlocks that managed to kill it.
Lords of Dread is another fight with two targets stacked up, and they take increased AOE damage during their
Unto Darkness casts, something that Windwalker has plenty of. There's also sporadic other adds to squeeze in some more targets to hit and regularly use of
Touch of Death.
Rygelon is mostly single target, so it is a weak fight for Windwalker, even with the additional adds to hit with
Touch of Death. Lastly
The Jailer doesn't have much data, but being that is another fight that's primarily single target, expect Winwdalkers to be one of the weaker specs, which is already shown when looking at data from Normal.
Looking at all the data, predictably Windwalker is one of the best specs at fights with multiple targets, and one of the worst at single target. As more specs get their 4pc bonuses and we start to get double legendaries, expect Windwalker to lose some ground in AOE, but remain incredibly strong, and fall even further behind in single target. I'd also expect Windwalker to fall in the "Overall" charts as more of the data shifts into fights like
Rygelon and
The Jailer. You can, roughly, look at the Normal charts for an idea of how Windwalker fares in a full raid worth of data. However, Normal is not always a perfect indicator of Heroic performance, and Heroic performance is not always a great indicator of Mythic performance, so don't expect it to be a 1:1:1 representation.
Windwalkers should have no problem participating in progression this tier, even with extremely poor single target. If you're playing a Windwalker expecting strong single target damage then I'm not sure what to tell you.
The Frost Death Knight performs well in Sepulcher of the First Ones mainly due to its great ability to deal cleave damage.
Breath of Sindragosa,
Remorseless Winter,
Rime and
Frostwyrm's Fury are all abilities that are capable of dealing big bursty AoE damage as well as great prolonged cleave. Furthermore, they all do this without sacrificing any single target, enabling the Frost DK to have great priority throughput without padding!
The reason this becomes especially good in the current tier is due to the large amount of bosses which have cleave built into them. Lihuvim with the intermission burst cleave, Prototype Pantheon with the constant 2 or 4 target cleave, Anduin with the huge AoE in the intermission phases and Lord of Dread with the persistent 2-target cleave (with added phases where all of the Frost DKs cleave abilities deal 100% more damage!). This all stacks up to put the Frost Death Knight high on the overall statistics.
Interestingly enough, the Frost Death Knight will become even more powerful in this niche as the tier progresses. Not a lot of players have the 4-set yet, which is a huge cleave Upgrade for the Frost DK! It will also enable new builds that will compete with
Breath of Sindragosa in cleave scenarios, possibly surpassing it.
Obliteration Night Fae does extremely well on 2-target cleave! It's too early to tell which build will end up dominating in the end but I'm excited for the future!
With the second week of the raid, Sepulcher of the First Ones, behind us Demonology continues to fare well primarily due to the overall strength of our single target damage. As more people start getting the four piece set bonus and transitioning to having double legendaries we should expect to still see Demonology near the top. If your guild was wondering who to funnel tier pieces to, Demonology should be a strong candidate for pushing at least two piece onto as it enables stronger passive AoE which is relevant on a good handful of encounters.
Once we gain access to double legendaries nothing much should change as the impact of using
Decaying Soul Satchel in combination with
Wilfred's Sigil of Superior Summoning is not massive but there are a handful of encounters where you will see some additional benefit.
Overall our tier bonuses did not give us a massive gain like some other classes (we get ~20% increase from having four piece bonus) but that in combination of just having high single target damage to begin with makes Demonology very desirable, especially if you are a target for one of your Priests
Power Infusion. Gaining the four piece bonus and being able to transition away from
Summon Vilefiend and over to
The Houndmaster's Stratagem will also help with the slower ramp time of Demonology since you eliminate one aspect of the setup for
Summon Demonic Tyrant and just tack on a flat damage gain for it instead, which with 3 Dreadstalkers from
Call Dreadstalkers (from the two piece bonus
Ripped From the Portal) and
Carnivorous Stalkers you see a significant increase in uptime from the bonus Shadowflame damage.
Due to the nature of how Demonology plays and where it's strengths are you often will see them focus entirely on the boss or high priority kill targets and much less on AoE and this is played out across basically every encounter in Sepulcher, with the exception of some of the more obvious AoE centric fights like
Prototype Pantheon,
Lihuvim,
Anduin Wrynn (on Heroic and while it is priority to kill
Fiendish Soul, a lot of this will be considered "pad" damage by most) and
Lords of Dread (a lot of sustained two target cleave).
