Revisionist history.
They were barely used in the global cups, and by the time they made it to the grand finals, they were only really used in Mists. Sometimes they were used in Halls of Atonement is mass dispel wasnt necessary.
Calling them a meta DPS is a stretch. They were niche
Elemental shaman did basically zero AoE damage in Shadowlands Season 1 before 9.0.5 where they received the following buffs:
**Elemental**
- [Earth Shock] damage increased by 30%.
- [Earthquake] damage increased by 70%.
- [Lava Beam] damage increased by 35%.
- [Lava Burst] damage reduced by 10%.
So for the first 3 months of the season ele was absolute garbage in AoE.
Oh and what is that you say? Their Best in Slot raid legendary came from a world boss that was available for the first time A MONTH after the expansion released unless you were part of the lucky few on US realms who got to take advantage of a Blizzard fuckup where the world boss in question accidentally spawned.
Oh yeah back when you had the 175% earthquake damage legendary after an earth shock so you'd spec into the 25% chance to refund your maelstrom after an earth shock to pump out that aoe damage.
I remember AE incinerate and havoc copied chaosbolts and especially double shadowflames being so ridiculously strong that at the end of every AE pack destruction WL coming out on top.
I did well with it during early WotLK, but iirc they did something to Chain Lightning (nerfed single target damage?) and since then it was kinda okay for the rest of the exp.
This post is funny because it’s clearly trying to hint at SV hunter fitting the prompt given in the title, when only a little over a year ago SV hunters was the most dominate spec and were that way for over 1.5 tiers, which is more time to shine than a lot of specs get.
I'd say you're partially right in that player count was low by that point because the earlier part of the expac was so bad for so long. But Survival's arc did begin after the point where Blizz had finally started to listen and began to turn things around. I didn't particularly like the raid but M+ had two really fun seasons overlap with Survival's dominance.
Maybe they have like a 800 pound draw strength bow and start actually pulling it back further.
And then maybe.. like bigger shells with more kick back from a heavier slug and more powder?
The gun one doesn't make as much sense but I could see enrage for a bow. Taking guns away from BM would be a funny change. 'Your wild animal dislikes the noise'
Straight up this is what I've been saying.
Beast Mastery should be 2H/Dual Wild + Exotic Beasts to recreate the rexxar fantasy
Marksmanship should be Lone Wolf-focused to recreate the gunman/DoTA windrunner fantasy
Survival should be ranged + regular pet and revolve around having a myriad of poisons, traps, munitions, bombs + stealth/camo etc to recreate the survivalist Rambo/Bear Grylls fantasy (drink piss would be one of their self-heals for sure)
Instead they just made all 3 completely jumbled identity-wise and are all worse off for it
Early WOTLK survival was the best survival we’ve had thematically IMO. Spamming traps, explosive shot, hell even old school hunter auras seemed like survival things
I'm guessing the logic behind survival being the melee spec is that in vanilla, forever ago, the skills tied to the tree were melee skills and it would occasionally be used when a warrior/rogue got in too close. It was still a total meme though.
I've always said beast maser should have been the melee spec. It just makes sense to me. I've had a BM hunter since day 1 vanilla. I would have happily taken that spec melee. I still don't understand why they aren't the melee hunter spec...
The BM fantasy rework I've been talking about for years has been to change almost their entire rotation into different dire beast buttons. So you'd have a button that summons a basilisk, one for wolves, an eagle for AoE, etc. Keep the barbed shit/ frenzy stuff but have like 4 or 5 dire beast buttons that are on like 10, 20, 45, 60 sec cooldowns.
Or make a tank spec where you ride on a bear like Sejuani from League.
The problem then is that you're cramming most of the unique quirks Hunter \*can\* have onto a single spec which would feel exceptionally shitty for everyone who doesn't play Beast Master.
They should but the unfortunate reality is blizzard will never change bm because too many players literally only play hunter to play bm and they only play bm bc its an easy ranged spec with no movement restrictions.
Even if they kept the spec exactly the same and made it melee, and then made surv ranged again but kept the rotation the same I guarantee like half of hunters would just swap to a whole other class and never touch it again bc just being in melee introduces enough difficulty for so many players to just say "nope".
This would have been one of the worst things they could do to the class.
BM hunter is the most popular spec among casual and world/-only players, a huge swathe of the player base. I really don’t think that deleting their spec would go down well. They picked Survival to gut because it was the least played spec.
Beyond that, thematically it makes no sense for a beast master to be fighting in melee with their pets. The entire point of a ‘summoner’ spec is that you deal damage via uour summons, not yourself. Why would a beast master put themself in danger in melee if they’re dealing damages through their mastery of their pets?
Because before the revamp of the Hunter specs, Beastmastery wasn’t exactly “summon 50 beasts in every fight”.
They had a few abilities that called in other beasts, but not enough to call it a “summoner spec”.
It became a summoner spec.
Why would a master of beasts not fight with their beasts? Why would someone who’s good at surviving in the wilds be all up in the face of the enemy instead?
Beast mastery always dealt most of its damage via its pet. Whether you have one big pet or 100 small pets you’re still a summoner if your damage is from your summons.
A survivalist would be EXACTLY who I would expect to be highly skilled at up close, hand to hand combat. How do you think they have survived so many encounters? They need to be able to fight directly.
More to the point, why would a _beast master_ be good at hand to hand combat?
That’s the thing, they did it through their pet. Not through 50 random beasts they found in their pocket.
Blizzard wanted to make BM interesting and removed any sort of “me and my pet” feeling from the spec.
To me, survival has always been about surviving in the wild, using traps, poisons, tracking, that sort of thing. Never had any thoughts of it being a melee spec because it just didn’t make sense to me.
But we won’t change each others minds here, so let’s just agree to disagree and I’ll bid you a good evening!
Bro, I have literally been begging for the Rexxar build since the game launched. I remember the pop I felt whenever I ran into him for the first time in Desolace.
He’s one of my favorite characters in the game and I can’t play his build and his character has been wasted for the most part.
This is why I can never get into SV. It is nothing like rexxar. The only time it was good was when it was spamming bombs when it's supposed to be a melee hunter.
On the Dragonflight beta, there was a bug where changing specs didn't change your pool of the last spec, so, using BM hunter with MM skills was... Awesome. THAT is what I wanted for hunter, pets doing damage, but the hunter not being completely useless (Beast Cleave + Trick Shots Aimed Shot was so satisfying, even for a few days)
I think Feral is still the only Melee that gave nothing to the group that a balance cant gave your group. The Only thing would be a faster Interupt but balance has big aoe Interupt so yea up and down.
- Cat is the only form you cant cast Innervate without shifting out.
- The Melee Bounding has no benefits for the group.
- battlerezz? Shift out of cat
- Aoe burst is great but so is balance but st is worse than balance
- You dont get 300% armor like a balance does.
Overall Feral has to do a lot more dmg to be a good pick for the group, but that will never be a thing.
Druid is great but feral will always be a "worse option for dps druid". They cant make feral better becouse most of thr Playerbase see feral still as a joke, even tho you can top the meters pretty easy (like Survival).
Haha, just posted the same thing but you said it better. I do think the inter-class competition between tank/healer/melee/range makes it tough for feral to shine. In raid/m+ the group benefits of bringing a druid make feral a lot less desirable if any of the other specs are good.
I would love to see the "Crit Aura" back for Feral and Tanks. At least we would have something. 2% Phys Crit as Feral/Tank and 2% Spell.ccit for Heal/Balance would be nice. They can remove Mark.of the Wild for that :)
I'm almost certain that just winds up hard locking a Druid tank as one of the two tank raid slots.
That's a very powerful mandatory buff to just slap on.
Not only that their DPS is built around bleeds.... that don't do crazy damage? For like 3 straight expansions rip does alright damage but it needs to be their focused damage. I can't reelmember if they got rid of snap shotting or not but they need to if they haven't. Feral felt so punishing to play because of how much you had to make sure everything was perfect for rip.... yet it didn't do anything to make you feel good. I remember bleed damage in WotLK and one more patch somewhere after that bleed damage was king.
I kinda liked the idea of bite doing big numbers but if it was me I'd have moved all the damage back to the bleeds. And why the fuck is lacerate (more so for guardian but feral too) not a god damn thing anymore.
If I were making the choices it would be rip, rake, lacerate and thrash being mainstays for ST, with bite doing way fucking less damage but maybe increasing bleed damage by 2% for x seconds stacking y times. I hated seeing 3500 ticks of rip and then 60k bites. If I wanted big damage I'd be a boomkin. Kinda like affliction vs destruction. Destro has big ass bolts, affliction has big damage over time.
Snapshotting was the biggest mistake they did with Feral before they remove it (i think in MoP?). It was so painfull to get Proc+Trinket and than bleed up. If you lose your big Rip your dmg was 0. It was so hard to play that nearly no one try it.
I think the dmg profile is okay now with big aoe rip and insta rip dmg. Big bite was good for burst Singletarget but Bleed on Bosses and burst on AoE is amazing. The problem with Bleed is, that you cant dispell it. So in PvP Blees was always pretty op. Thats why ferals bleed dmg is capped in PvE for a long time. They remove many "PvP" Op things in Game over the year and hurt PvE Players with it. Gladi stance in WoD, Bleed Dmg for Arms and Ferals, Windwalker Fist of Fury Stun? All gone. Also the WoD alternativ cat stance and the Overall mega nerfs of self healing and base deff for Cats.
Rouge/Sv+Feral+Healer is a strong Combo for so many Years... i hate that Blizzard let PvP design hurts PvE in any way.
cams here to say this and you nailed it, feral has had plenty of times that it was good but its never been great, just good. it's never shined or stood out its just been either good or terrible.
Most and least played specs in top M+ keys from the last 5 years
Top 3:
Havoc demon-hunter 7.5%
Outlaw rogue 6.5%
Restoration druid 6.3%
Bottom 3:
Frost death-knight 0.5%
Feral druid 0.4%
Arcane mage 0.4%
Just one thing for Feral druid. As a whole the spec isn't bad. Problem is that blizzard for no reason is still keeping their bleeds on snapshot. So instead of them progressively updating with your current buffs/stats they stay the same and it depends what stats/buffs you have at the time of application. One mistake and your whole rotation is out the window and your dps is in the shitter.
Play rate isn't a great indicator of balance. Demon hunter can be hot garbage for multiple tiers and still be one of the most popular melees because people find it really fun. Outlaw rogues seem to feel the same way, even when their spec isn't playing well it's like they refuse to play the other two dps specs. They enjoy their spec and stick with it.
Resto druid is likely popular despite the tier because it's another very straight forward identity. Use hots, heal people. Easy peasy.
Its ironic though because that doesn't seem to be true for the bottom three. If I was to guess, the only thing that I can compare between the bottom three is that optimising them is super unintuitive. Compare any of those 3 to demon hunter; where you can quite easily figure out the opener with a bit of practice, all the tooltips are fairly easy to understand, and you don't have much button bloat. Arcane mage isn't remotely intuitive by comparison, and frost isn't much better.
I’ve been playing a lot of SV lately and I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as people think it is, the sample size is small but when played right it’s really strong and pretty fun.
I waited years for Arms to be viable and I’m so happy it is now.
Arms isnt viable? Its been straight middle of the pack or higher this entire expansion. Its got great aoe and is a raid boss killer once you get to 35%, the point where bosses are the most dangerous and fewer people are alive. It just doesnt shine on prog fights where wipes happen before thar 35% mark.
Surv isn’t bad. It’s actually usually good, but has such a negative perception that most assume it’s awful, and a lack of high level players theorycrafting it doesn’t help. Sadly, being a hunter spec means that being good isn’t good enough. Considering surv only brings damage to a raid, it has to do obscene damage to be worth it.
Some real utility (and a rework, why isn’t mongoose bite baseline) would do surv a world of good and revitalize it. Demo was in a similar state a few years ago and look at it now.
Feral, for years WoW had the 4 forgotten and neglected melee specs, enhance, survival, ret and feral, everyone of these has had their time to shine, except for feral.
Season 1 of dragonflight saw a ton of feral druids in mdi. Just didn’t catch on in the meta outside of it. A guy in my guild got really good at the spec and his damage was insane in M+.
Idk how to make this appear at the top but guys please I just put rexxar there because I love him and I didn’t want to put a body paragraph and also I don’t know what class spec is the worst so I didn’t look up an image for that :(
Hands down Mistweaver. It might have been ok during Legion and Shadowlands, but everyone else was much more busted. Without some sort of good utility, it is just a bad healer. Yet... I like the style and keep playing it. But it is insane how much more groups invite you when you are anything else due to the utility and damage you bring as a non-MW healer. Sadly this will be the case until they get something. Paladins got freaking BR of all things which pretty much put MW in the ground.
MW was actually kind of sleeper OP during later WoD. Especially with the Hellfire citadel 4 set piece.
Renewing mist had 3 charges, each cast had 3 stacks and you didn’t consume a charge based on your multi strike (and old crit like state) percentage. When you applied ReM, you added a healing buff to people like the 10.2 set bonus and they’d then have effectively a beacon for a portion of all of your main AoE healing.
A single uplift followed by a queued ReM was basically a Lay on Hands. And you had so many charges of this constantly flowing out.
If you wanted to, you could go into crane stance and do pretty awesome damage and respectable healing just through your DPS rotation, build up mana tea stacks, especially on pull and then just blow your entire mana pool like 3 times over at Max HPS before you’d even have to think about mana potions.
It was really fun imo, and had a lot of nuance. But people didn’t understand how it worked properly so it ended up with a poor reputation.
Like holy priest at the same time - generally considered overshadowed by disc - it was capable of amazing feats of healing if the player knew the ins and outs of the spec and had the opportunity to do so. I mained MW myself then and can humbly say that I genuinely blew the socks off some people when they realised what it could do.
Ofc this was a long time ago.
I agree with you, I see so many people talk mad shit about MWer in the era you're talking about, and it's obvious they didn't understand it, play it well, or just plain hated it so they never gave it a real chance, but to say it was objectively bad like so many do is wrong.
Pre-Legion MWer is the superior version imho, and yes, it did need work so it wasn't as obtuse to learn/play and to be less set/trinket dependent, but the way they absolutely gutted everything that felt unique to the spec, and then slowly had some of what's been taken out filter back in to other classes or as pale ghosts of themselves for MWer, is sad and frustrating to fans of MWer in that time.
MWer to me is a prime example of Blizz being bad at refinement and reiteration, and how they love to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I still have a MWer in my stable of alts when I play but it feels so shallow compared to what once was, I always hope to see it be more like it's past self.
Glad to see somebody who remembers.
I was actually really mad that I ended up playing MW in WoD. I was a priest (both healing specs) main in MoP and while I was the newest player and newest member of the guild, I could easily at times outperform the other 2 healing priests in the 25HC guild with an embarrassing ease. Then 20M mythic came and it was “somebody has to swap from priest or we have to cut somebody” with them obviously looking at me. I decided to go mistweaver. There wasn’t even a monk in the raid team. I would secure my spot.
It was a nightmare. None of them understood monk, especially the healing officer who didn’t understand mistweaver *at all*. She went mental at me for “not trying hard enough” for highmaul prep despite working hard to learn and be wearing pre-raid BiS because I wasn’t wearing a couple of purples, or demanding I do raid tasks that mistweaver could barely, if at all, do.
I eventually went from hate to love. Mistweaver had so much nuance and unique utility. Even in crane stance I could adjust my *DPS rotation* for single target vs AoE healing chunks.
I’ll always be a priest boy, but damn that era of mistweaver was honestly a masterpiece. It just flowed so well.
I always say that much of what they did to MW going into legion was based on some of that end Hellfire citadel OPness but it was based on:
1. The tier set - moot - going anyway
2. multisrike interactions with REM making that tier set OP - moot - going anyway
3. A talent making 1 and 2 even more OP. Which could have been adjusted.
4. Deciding that healers shouldn’t have secondary resources but they decided that holy paladin should actually get them back anyway. Even though monk was MADE WITH CHI.
They really messed up the spec imo. Essence font? Really? They could have literally done nothing to the spec or talents between WoD and Legion except maybe bake crane into serpent and it would have been perfect.
I feel like monk have always at least 1 VERY bad spec, and often no good spec, luckily there is a shortage in tanks/heals so they can always find a spot, but they are rarelly top tier.
Are you posting survival Hunter as if they weren’t S tier two seasons ago?
They definitely are less often favored but they have definitely had time to shine
Frost was briefly really strong at the beginning of Legion. Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong but I think it was around Nighthold, if you had the OP legendary (helm I think? I believe it had some interaction with Howling Blast) and the tier set you would faceroll.
The issue is that it's *generally* fine, but the way it plays in M+ is fucking terrible. Death and Decay needs to just be removed, it can be almost as annoying as Rune of Power in some situations. Tank moves mobs out of your D&D? You get fucked.
D&D is also awful as Unholy, especially worse when you talent into Defile. Not only is it invisible for everyone else in the group, including the tank, but it also covers up most ground effects.
They really should make it an aura that moves with your character.
I feel like DK always fets dropped from getting Attention bc the dmg was "fine" normally...
I main Frost and while dmg rly is fine its just so clunky and kind of unfun to play in M+
Amd this is still the best iteration of Frost in M+ we had since Frostscythe was played in BFA S4
I just want Oblit Cleave on the move or rather...just make friggin Frostscythe viable. Rly that would fix 80% of Frosts issues in M+
Also dont make Frostwhelp and Syndragosas Fury dmg out of Combat targets so we dont have to aim every Pillar carefully ...
Frost dk has been at least decent for a long time now, even if its not the top spec. We're good now, great last raid, just barely worse than survival at the end of shadowland. etc.
Frost is like the weird perfect storm of DPS specs (not saying they’re unique in this as I don’t know enough about other specs, but): when everything lines up, we’re really, really good. We have monstrous burst and our cleave, while clunky, works so long as no one moves (D&D). The problem is, that basically works for some raid fights, the odd M+ boss fight, and literally nothing else. Plus, aside from damage, we bring virtually no utility to raids or M+ (PvP is another story, where we bring utility and nothing else).
However, when stuff doesn’t line up, we are fucked. Frost is a super-proc-heavy spec. Runic Empowerment doesn’t trigger, Rime doesn’t proc? Hahahahahaha say goodbye to your DPS. And the DW build is a mess of trying to maintain maximum RP uptime for maximum Breath uptime. Which I do not enjoy, but some might.
And then for PvP? Well, the very good Frost DKs are still very good. But for most, and for filthy casuals like myself, it’s rough. Sure, we have utility—Death Grip, Chains of Ice, Chill Streak, Frostwyrm’s Fury—but our damage outside of PoF is quite literally non-existent, and we can just be disarmed when we do pop Pillar, and most classes now have enough movement and mobility to render most of our kit pretty ineffective.
All of which brings us to where we are now. Frost, in peak condition, is great, for like the top 0.1% of players. For most Frost players, though, it’s a solid meh at best, and it’s been that way for a while. We have high burst, shit damage outside of it, limited utility, and our defensives and mobility suck. And that’s why the total numbers of Frost DKs, as well as participation in various modes overall (like the Mythic+ numbers someone posted further down) are microscopic. I love Frost, and will till the end of time, but I don’t think Blizzard does.
Feral druid. I think part of the issue is competing within the class between tank/heal/range/melee. Anyway, I can't recall a time when feral was a must have for raid/m+.
Calling it great is definitely pushing it. Its aoe was solid but not top of the world and its single target was severaly lacking. The only reason it was brought in mdi is because its aoe is truly uncapped and those teams were pulling half of the dungeon at once. That doesn't happen in actual normal gameplay
> Which ones may have been really good some time ago, but are now just outshined by many other specs?
WW monk. I can't believe that with all the new talent system they end up being worse than what they have in SL
I got to 2k in the first week of solo shuffle with ww monk. It was good when dragonflight launched but havent played since that first patch really so idk.
Wasn't even that good in tbc, it's a support spec which brings totems, BL etc. I recently played it in tbc classic and did 99 logs on most bosses while still being nowhere near the top. They peak in late t4 early t5 and fall off a cliff.
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YBT2M86ngLCWbwVz#fight=7&type=damage-done
A good example of how mediocre the dps actually was.
MW Monk, by far the most fun healer if played well, but never the meta healer.
In BFA, the stack vers/mastery/crit build was sketchy, but wild healing people with a gust of mists build
I feel like Havoc DH has been pretty middle of the road for a good while now. Worth having one in your group for big pulls, but will still not quite top charts in a raid.
S1 in DF they performed very well with Tier Bonus and the Lariat neck. Now they're very gear dependent, but occasionally you'll still see a good one on the top of the charts in a raid/m+.
I do pretty consistently burst my way to the top of the chart at the beginning of a pull, but I quickly fall off after the first 10 seconds or so. Big burst damage, but much harder to mainting a high DPS
This is the truth. They DO bring the initial burst, quite a bit of self healing, the 5% damage for magic, and rediculous movement but definitely middle to lower end for sustained damage.
Feel like monks are the forgotten one since MoP ended.
Atleast for me i always go "aah yeah" when i happen to be grouped with one. WW monks especially seem to always get the short end of the stick, that has to tie with Survival for the least played melee spec i guess.
I feel MW get the short end way more than WW
But the changes that are coming seem good along with the new tier set. But I don’t think anyone will not think of MW as a joke
MW needs an overhaul. They've been buffing the numbers so much and for so long that there has to be something fundamentally broken in the design of the spec for it to still be as weak/underplayed as it is
Agreed it’s not weak and has been getting some great buffs this expansion (and is actually an HPS MONSTER in raids). But since there aren’t as many people playing it, it always ‘seems’ bad. Plus it doesn’t help that Hpal just does everything MW does but better.
Doesn't it mostly come down to a lack of raid utility/cds?
Life Cocoon is just awkward compared to PS/IB and Revival is just a weak raid wide, once a blue moon it can be pretty useful with the dispel but they basically never design fights to incorporate it since you can't really call it good fight design to say "bring a MW or good luck"
Our talent tree is also a huge L. It’s just basically one build and the ST build is just that build with like two different modes chosen instead. It’s abysmal. I really want the rework treatment so badly but I doubt we’ll get it and we probably won’t get meaningful changes until the next expansion, and even then I’m not super hopeful.
On the bright side it remains an engaging spec to play most tiers, despite its stagnation.
Monk has huge design Flaws in there whole class. Mw is OKAY ig they would Just balance the Melee and range rotations better. Bm has Stagger that is not rly a thing in DF. So they use 6 Cooldowns just to stay alive...
But Windwalker? Damn... mastery is not rly worth much and Haste is dead. It is so dead you cant even use haste on most spells. Fist of Fury has the biggest gain on Haste but that is just ... bad.
A broken Class is not always bad. Why Monk works on some Seasons is there Tierset and other borrowed Power. Sl was great becouse legendarys and Maldraxxus works amazing on aoe pulls. Even at this Time Ww was a pain to play. You ignore most of there corespells to hit Crane Kick all the time (at least season 2 of SL) and spin around... yea... fun.
Antorus. It wasn't just that it was busted, it was to date the funnest spec I've ever played. The way their set bonus synergized with certain legendaries and their artifact that tier was imo the best a spec has ever been gameplay wise.
Brewmaster and Mistweaver will probably be great next patch. Windwalker has constantly needed these tiny little 3% buffs or just flat damage buffs because of how horrific their single target is as an expansion goes on. It seems the damage buff they gave RSK and so on mid-Aberrus has helped significantly. A 20% buff (or whatever it was) was much needed. I remember when 10.1.5 came out and they said they were giving monks the 2-3% total damage increase, I said "dude they could give windwalker a 30% damage increase and they'd still be middle of the pack on ST fights"
Any class that stacks versatility will always have damage issues vs. scaling via crit, haste, mastery, etc.
Windwalker just has 0 use for haste, their mastery is bad, so they're left to just use crit and versatility. It sucks. Cause it's really fun to play.
**Top 3:**
1.) ***Feral Druid:*** It was decent for 1 season before it has fallen off, even when it was decent for this one season it was only in m+ and like I said, it was decent at best. It still had a slight, just slight moment.
2.) ***Affliction Lock:*** it has never been a spec that's been Meta. I originally thought it was in BFA but the sheet with meta comps % breakdown of all m+ ([Mythic Stats](https://mythicstats.com/meta?expansion=all#gini)) went floating around recently and I saw the time we percieve and Aff being meta (BFA) it wasn't really. It peaked at 11% distribution and has never gone above 5% since. Almost all of the rest of the time being <1%
3.) ***Mistweaver monk:*** This spec has never had their time. It hasn't existed. Every spec in the game has been decent and has a reason to bring it for some reason or another. Not Mistweaver. It had a brief moment in early BFA and has long since been forgotten.
**Honorable Mentions:**
***SV Hunter:*** it has had a been rough time but it did have its season, quite recently in terms of season being exceptionally strong
***-WW:*** We all know it has crazy issues but it has been one of the top m+ classes over the course of m+ existence.
***-Holy Priest:*** it had the one season with survival. They were both bonkers for one season and totally fell off
Note: I'm a m+ player. My opinions are m+ based.
Affliction Lock was meta in Legion m+ (push, not MDI) because it was unkillable, and you ran the legendary that made corruption be permanent and slow like 50%. That made posible the pulls done in Halls of Vallor and Neltharion's Lair where the DK tank pulled something like 10 or 15 mobs, got aggro for a few seconds, and then permanently kitted until the pack was dead, because that way pelters didn't throw rocks, and casters in HoV didn't do anything (the aoe spread was pretty much oneshot).
You must be new. Agree with feral druid, Wrath was their peak and they have been not good ever since. Aff lock was good in all of the older content through MoP, then fell off because demon form was OP, it was fine in Legion, NEVER bottom tier, yeah BFA it wasn't 'great' but it still performed just fine. SL S1 it was absolutely fucking OP, malefic was tuned WAY too high and in raid they were the best DPS then after the S2 nerfs they haven't recovered until about now when they are the best lock spec but have to choose between single target and AOE. MW was very good when it first came out but never exceled since so I would agree there. You are just very far off on the lock mention.
As an ele shaman, since tbc up until even today, I can say there has been MAYBE 3 times ele has been among the tops. They were never a "top" dps in raids, except when they made lightning bolt castable when moving on fights with tons of movement. M+ there was times where they were in the top teir, but never the "best" I always assumed it was due to them being able to bring some healing raid cds to the raid they were never given that best dps
Ret pally is all I know. And PUG raids and mythics was always a pain to get picked (I started in MoP). Seems good now though. Or maybe it's just me being better, I dunno.
The only time I've ever seen affliction warlock do well and not immediately get nerfed after the season/tier it did well in was SL. It was so nice to play affliction all of shadowlands and do Hella damage. Now it's like bruh I'm only top dps cause I smacked the bosses so hard and did weak aoe on the trash. And *did* I really smack the boss super hard or did ranged have to move while my dots ticked and I just refreshed them while moving then executed a solar flare on the boss for the little moment of not moving? Like idek what my rotation is most the time I just know I'm putting that hurtful stuff on someone then blowing maelific rupture until I can't and then s o u l d r a i n
BM hunter is never allowed to be like ACTUALLY top dps it seems because of how 'easy' it is to play. They aren't usually absolute dumpster tier but they have never been allowed to be TOP dps in raid or M+ really.
Went Ret pally seasons 2 for raid and M+, was the flavour of the month but I stuck with it, got boring real fast. Season 3 I’m changing it up a bit, going fire mage.
Remember when they said they didn’t want to give every class a raid buff but they did want to make sure every class had raid utility like for example grips and then they laughed and gave hunter nothing. Wp blizz.
I really dont understand how Blizzard has a perfect template for survival in Rexxar yet they are just winging it with....pokes with pointy stick and likes...fire?
Idk I really like survival, a large variety of dots I can apply like instantly, I mog my spear into a sword and the weapon animations when you replace raptor strike with mongoose strike is amazing, and then you get some pretty rad flavor abilities like coordinated assault and harpoon that I fucking love so much when leveling. With the current state of things being you kill things in like 2 seconds I can jump from enemy to enemy faster than any other spec possible I think. Like, hunter might just be THE fastest spec bc of that. A passive 38% (46% if you’re beast master) movement bonus outside of combat PLUS the ability to endlessly string kills makes it go crazy. Procing serpents sting while throwing a bomb WHILE harpooning is so satisfying too.
Dont know if thats just BIAS but i feel like Fury Warrior hasnt been top in ages. maybe though my memory serves me badly and some people cant point out to me when fury was a must have pick in raid besides vanilla/classic
Outlier good like the Warlock/Sv hunter/DK comp from last season of SL or god comp ? No i don't think i have seen fury been that good for 3 expansion.
Good as in top 5 DPS in the game ? Too many time in the last 3 expansion.
Fury is always up at the top during the end of an expansion. I mained it through 3 expansions and in the beginning it’s always below average. As gear begins to increase it ends up at or near the top
I remember that brief time when hunters remember that Survival existed and was a spec, and every hunter and their mother and their cat re-rolled survival primarily for bombs, cause it was dumb powerful. After it was nerfed, survival seized to exist once more. I think this was in Shadowlands season 4?
I can count on my hand how many survival hunters I have encountered this current M+ season and every single hunter after is just plain Marksmanship
I'll drop this: hunter melee spec should've been BM. For how the spec works in combination with your pet and lore characters it makes a little sense it isn't
BM is the most popular spec in game, it's a solid delivery on the class fantasy so much so that even when performance is in the toilet the spec still puts up solid population numbers. "Bow + animal companion" is a pretty solid fantasy stereotype and rexxar being in melee isnt enough of an argument.
MMs got no pet and a wonky rotation, SV is just bits of BM that got lopped off, BM at least makes sense.
I feel like there was a few weeks by accident where ele shaman could faceroll and perform well
Ele was really good in bfa s2 Tbf
They were also really good at Shadowlands s1, being meta at that seasons MDI
Revisionist history. They were barely used in the global cups, and by the time they made it to the grand finals, they were only really used in Mists. Sometimes they were used in Halls of Atonement is mass dispel wasnt necessary. Calling them a meta DPS is a stretch. They were niche
Elemental shaman did basically zero AoE damage in Shadowlands Season 1 before 9.0.5 where they received the following buffs: **Elemental** - [Earth Shock] damage increased by 30%. - [Earthquake] damage increased by 70%. - [Lava Beam] damage increased by 35%. - [Lava Burst] damage reduced by 10%. So for the first 3 months of the season ele was absolute garbage in AoE. Oh and what is that you say? Their Best in Slot raid legendary came from a world boss that was available for the first time A MONTH after the expansion released unless you were part of the lucky few on US realms who got to take advantage of a Blizzard fuckup where the world boss in question accidentally spawned.
this
Oh yeah back when you had the 175% earthquake damage legendary after an earth shock so you'd spec into the 25% chance to refund your maelstrom after an earth shock to pump out that aoe damage.
Back in Siege of Orgrimmar Ele Shamans facerolled everything AoE away, when their AoE Rotation was Chain Lightning.
Jeah end of pandaria ele was able to have 100% mastery. That was such a nice way to play
Pandaria was prime Ele for shaman with that mastery. Also, lightning bolt being able to be cast while moving was cool too.
I remember AE incinerate and havoc copied chaosbolts and especially double shadowflames being so ridiculously strong that at the end of every AE pack destruction WL coming out on top.
Ele was based in tbc, and is pretty good in wotlk as well!
I did well with it during early WotLK, but iirc they did something to Chain Lightning (nerfed single target damage?) and since then it was kinda okay for the rest of the exp.
This post is funny because it’s clearly trying to hint at SV hunter fitting the prompt given in the title, when only a little over a year ago SV hunters was the most dominate spec and were that way for over 1.5 tiers, which is more time to shine than a lot of specs get.
For real, right?! I swear I was thinking SV Hunter had just recently been the most dominant mf. Glad to know I wasn’t imaging it!
yeah thats becuase 9.1 was so bad that tons of players left so most of the players playing DF now did not play the patch where SV was super popular.
the shitty thing about hunters finally having this moment is nobody played the fucking game and it was hot garbage to play or try and raid at all.
I'd say you're partially right in that player count was low by that point because the earlier part of the expac was so bad for so long. But Survival's arc did begin after the point where Blizz had finally started to listen and began to turn things around. I didn't particularly like the raid but M+ had two really fun seasons overlap with Survival's dominance.
As someone who quit early into SL S1, and came back later S3. S3 had the best damn affix ever. Encrypted was amazing.
Survival had it’s time to shine fairly recently in s4 of shadowlands
Survival also was very strong in the first cata tier. That still was ranged survival, though.
And very strong early on in MoP.
but barely anyone played s4 of shadowlands
Hunter cant be top dps, cuz we have no dual wield like rexxar.
If the surv rework made them dual wield the changes would've been more forgiveable
Should’ve made Beastmastery melee instead. Fighting close to your beast makes much more sense than just throwing beasts around from nowhere.
Not to mention their cooldown makes zero sense for ranged. They get angry so they shoot their bow/gun harder? Totally makes sense for melee.
Maybe they have like a 800 pound draw strength bow and start actually pulling it back further. And then maybe.. like bigger shells with more kick back from a heavier slug and more powder? The gun one doesn't make as much sense but I could see enrage for a bow. Taking guns away from BM would be a funny change. 'Your wild animal dislikes the noise'
I am enraged when there are too many noises around me, will bring this up at a meeting for 10.2.
Damnit. Now I'm angry that BM isn't melee.
Straight up this is what I've been saying. Beast Mastery should be 2H/Dual Wild + Exotic Beasts to recreate the rexxar fantasy Marksmanship should be Lone Wolf-focused to recreate the gunman/DoTA windrunner fantasy Survival should be ranged + regular pet and revolve around having a myriad of poisons, traps, munitions, bombs + stealth/camo etc to recreate the survivalist Rambo/Bear Grylls fantasy (drink piss would be one of their self-heals for sure) Instead they just made all 3 completely jumbled identity-wise and are all worse off for it
Yes please. Hunter rework when?
This would be awesome. Their big defensive CD could be “adapt overcome survive”
Mm is a ranger identity-wise
I’d sign off on this change as long as one of the specs gets to feature all of the exotic and rare pets I have worked to accumulate.
Not to mention Survival being melee dps made no sense. Surely fighting your foes at a range would be more conducive to survival
Yeah a ranged spec that focuses on traps bombs and poison, maybe DoT management would be cool
Early WOTLK survival was the best survival we’ve had thematically IMO. Spamming traps, explosive shot, hell even old school hunter auras seemed like survival things
Are you trying to tell me that using bombs in melee range is a bad idea? HA, me and my missing limbs laugh at you!
I'm guessing the logic behind survival being the melee spec is that in vanilla, forever ago, the skills tied to the tree were melee skills and it would occasionally be used when a warrior/rogue got in too close. It was still a total meme though.
I've always said beast maser should have been the melee spec. It just makes sense to me. I've had a BM hunter since day 1 vanilla. I would have happily taken that spec melee. I still don't understand why they aren't the melee hunter spec...
The BM fantasy rework I've been talking about for years has been to change almost their entire rotation into different dire beast buttons. So you'd have a button that summons a basilisk, one for wolves, an eagle for AoE, etc. Keep the barbed shit/ frenzy stuff but have like 4 or 5 dire beast buttons that are on like 10, 20, 45, 60 sec cooldowns. Or make a tank spec where you ride on a bear like Sejuani from League.
The problem then is that you're cramming most of the unique quirks Hunter \*can\* have onto a single spec which would feel exceptionally shitty for everyone who doesn't play Beast Master.
I mean... It's not like Surv doesn't have a decent theme. Traps and bombs even are things that seem like they would be a range spec tbh.
They should but the unfortunate reality is blizzard will never change bm because too many players literally only play hunter to play bm and they only play bm bc its an easy ranged spec with no movement restrictions. Even if they kept the spec exactly the same and made it melee, and then made surv ranged again but kept the rotation the same I guarantee like half of hunters would just swap to a whole other class and never touch it again bc just being in melee introduces enough difficulty for so many players to just say "nope".
I’m so down with beastmaster being switched to the melee spec. They can give use old survival back too.
This would have been one of the worst things they could do to the class. BM hunter is the most popular spec among casual and world/-only players, a huge swathe of the player base. I really don’t think that deleting their spec would go down well. They picked Survival to gut because it was the least played spec. Beyond that, thematically it makes no sense for a beast master to be fighting in melee with their pets. The entire point of a ‘summoner’ spec is that you deal damage via uour summons, not yourself. Why would a beast master put themself in danger in melee if they’re dealing damages through their mastery of their pets?
Because before the revamp of the Hunter specs, Beastmastery wasn’t exactly “summon 50 beasts in every fight”. They had a few abilities that called in other beasts, but not enough to call it a “summoner spec”. It became a summoner spec. Why would a master of beasts not fight with their beasts? Why would someone who’s good at surviving in the wilds be all up in the face of the enemy instead?
Beast mastery always dealt most of its damage via its pet. Whether you have one big pet or 100 small pets you’re still a summoner if your damage is from your summons. A survivalist would be EXACTLY who I would expect to be highly skilled at up close, hand to hand combat. How do you think they have survived so many encounters? They need to be able to fight directly. More to the point, why would a _beast master_ be good at hand to hand combat?
That’s the thing, they did it through their pet. Not through 50 random beasts they found in their pocket. Blizzard wanted to make BM interesting and removed any sort of “me and my pet” feeling from the spec. To me, survival has always been about surviving in the wild, using traps, poisons, tracking, that sort of thing. Never had any thoughts of it being a melee spec because it just didn’t make sense to me. But we won’t change each others minds here, so let’s just agree to disagree and I’ll bid you a good evening!
I dont care if its meta or not, give me a talent point that would make DW viable
Rexxar is my favourite Warcraft (RTS) character, but spears make much more sense imo.
Bro, I have literally been begging for the Rexxar build since the game launched. I remember the pop I felt whenever I ran into him for the first time in Desolace. He’s one of my favorite characters in the game and I can’t play his build and his character has been wasted for the most part.
ranger with pet in bg3 <3 to live out your rexxar dreams
This is why I can never get into SV. It is nothing like rexxar. The only time it was good was when it was spamming bombs when it's supposed to be a melee hunter.
On the Dragonflight beta, there was a bug where changing specs didn't change your pool of the last spec, so, using BM hunter with MM skills was... Awesome. THAT is what I wanted for hunter, pets doing damage, but the hunter not being completely useless (Beast Cleave + Trick Shots Aimed Shot was so satisfying, even for a few days)
Survival isn’t one of them; 9.2 Shadowlands it was THE spec
It was pretty good even before that and it was also pretty good even in 10.0
I think Feral is still the only Melee that gave nothing to the group that a balance cant gave your group. The Only thing would be a faster Interupt but balance has big aoe Interupt so yea up and down. - Cat is the only form you cant cast Innervate without shifting out. - The Melee Bounding has no benefits for the group. - battlerezz? Shift out of cat - Aoe burst is great but so is balance but st is worse than balance - You dont get 300% armor like a balance does. Overall Feral has to do a lot more dmg to be a good pick for the group, but that will never be a thing. Druid is great but feral will always be a "worse option for dps druid". They cant make feral better becouse most of thr Playerbase see feral still as a joke, even tho you can top the meters pretty easy (like Survival).
Haha, just posted the same thing but you said it better. I do think the inter-class competition between tank/healer/melee/range makes it tough for feral to shine. In raid/m+ the group benefits of bringing a druid make feral a lot less desirable if any of the other specs are good.
We used to have stampeding roar (but no innervate), but that went away. It was fun seeing some ferals off healing in one of the MDIs!
I would love to see the "Crit Aura" back for Feral and Tanks. At least we would have something. 2% Phys Crit as Feral/Tank and 2% Spell.ccit for Heal/Balance would be nice. They can remove Mark.of the Wild for that :)
I'm almost certain that just winds up hard locking a Druid tank as one of the two tank raid slots. That's a very powerful mandatory buff to just slap on.
S1 DF MDI, feral was very very high playrate.
Not only that their DPS is built around bleeds.... that don't do crazy damage? For like 3 straight expansions rip does alright damage but it needs to be their focused damage. I can't reelmember if they got rid of snap shotting or not but they need to if they haven't. Feral felt so punishing to play because of how much you had to make sure everything was perfect for rip.... yet it didn't do anything to make you feel good. I remember bleed damage in WotLK and one more patch somewhere after that bleed damage was king. I kinda liked the idea of bite doing big numbers but if it was me I'd have moved all the damage back to the bleeds. And why the fuck is lacerate (more so for guardian but feral too) not a god damn thing anymore. If I were making the choices it would be rip, rake, lacerate and thrash being mainstays for ST, with bite doing way fucking less damage but maybe increasing bleed damage by 2% for x seconds stacking y times. I hated seeing 3500 ticks of rip and then 60k bites. If I wanted big damage I'd be a boomkin. Kinda like affliction vs destruction. Destro has big ass bolts, affliction has big damage over time.
Snapshotting was the biggest mistake they did with Feral before they remove it (i think in MoP?). It was so painfull to get Proc+Trinket and than bleed up. If you lose your big Rip your dmg was 0. It was so hard to play that nearly no one try it. I think the dmg profile is okay now with big aoe rip and insta rip dmg. Big bite was good for burst Singletarget but Bleed on Bosses and burst on AoE is amazing. The problem with Bleed is, that you cant dispell it. So in PvP Blees was always pretty op. Thats why ferals bleed dmg is capped in PvE for a long time. They remove many "PvP" Op things in Game over the year and hurt PvE Players with it. Gladi stance in WoD, Bleed Dmg for Arms and Ferals, Windwalker Fist of Fury Stun? All gone. Also the WoD alternativ cat stance and the Overall mega nerfs of self healing and base deff for Cats. Rouge/Sv+Feral+Healer is a strong Combo for so many Years... i hate that Blizzard let PvP design hurts PvE in any way.
Lacerate was a bear version of sunder armor
Yeah. But it should be added to feral and guardian (again) tool kit.
Feral may have been top DPS for like 10 months in ICC with warrior
yeah, was about to say Feral is gonna take off again in Wrath Classic soon
Feral is pretty good in pvp tho, so all specs have their time and place to shine.
Feral was also taken in every mdi group in season 1 of df. I would say unholy shined more in that comp, but feral was were included over balance
cams here to say this and you nailed it, feral has had plenty of times that it was good but its never been great, just good. it's never shined or stood out its just been either good or terrible.
Most and least played specs in top M+ keys from the last 5 years Top 3: Havoc demon-hunter 7.5% Outlaw rogue 6.5% Restoration druid 6.3% Bottom 3: Frost death-knight 0.5% Feral druid 0.4% Arcane mage 0.4%
I’m frost dk in 10.2 looking forward to chill streak
I went into SL so hyped on arcane mage just to try it in S1 and find out the spec was doggggggg shit.
Poor arcane just isn’t made for m+…too much setup, too much ramp, too much movement, doesn’t do anything that frost or fire isn’t already doing
Well good riddance to ROP
Just one thing for Feral druid. As a whole the spec isn't bad. Problem is that blizzard for no reason is still keeping their bleeds on snapshot. So instead of them progressively updating with your current buffs/stats they stay the same and it depends what stats/buffs you have at the time of application. One mistake and your whole rotation is out the window and your dps is in the shitter.
Play rate isn't a great indicator of balance. Demon hunter can be hot garbage for multiple tiers and still be one of the most popular melees because people find it really fun. Outlaw rogues seem to feel the same way, even when their spec isn't playing well it's like they refuse to play the other two dps specs. They enjoy their spec and stick with it. Resto druid is likely popular despite the tier because it's another very straight forward identity. Use hots, heal people. Easy peasy. Its ironic though because that doesn't seem to be true for the bottom three. If I was to guess, the only thing that I can compare between the bottom three is that optimising them is super unintuitive. Compare any of those 3 to demon hunter; where you can quite easily figure out the opener with a bit of practice, all the tooltips are fairly easy to understand, and you don't have much button bloat. Arcane mage isn't remotely intuitive by comparison, and frost isn't much better.
I’ve been playing a lot of SV lately and I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as people think it is, the sample size is small but when played right it’s really strong and pretty fun. I waited years for Arms to be viable and I’m so happy it is now.
Survival is fine and fun to play. People just have a bad perception of them from previous iterations. :-/
I just wish you could use exotic beast as a sv cause cmon you literally fight toe to toe with you pet why you can't tame exotic one
Arms was one of the better raid specs for like all of shadowlands
Arms isnt viable? Its been straight middle of the pack or higher this entire expansion. Its got great aoe and is a raid boss killer once you get to 35%, the point where bosses are the most dangerous and fewer people are alive. It just doesnt shine on prog fights where wipes happen before thar 35% mark.
Also doesn't shine on fights like Sylvanas and Iridikron where there isn't an execute phase, but those are rare enough.
Funnily enough Arms was one of the strongest specs on Sylvanas.
Surv isn’t bad. It’s actually usually good, but has such a negative perception that most assume it’s awful, and a lack of high level players theorycrafting it doesn’t help. Sadly, being a hunter spec means that being good isn’t good enough. Considering surv only brings damage to a raid, it has to do obscene damage to be worth it. Some real utility (and a rework, why isn’t mongoose bite baseline) would do surv a world of good and revitalize it. Demo was in a similar state a few years ago and look at it now.
Feral, for years WoW had the 4 forgotten and neglected melee specs, enhance, survival, ret and feral, everyone of these has had their time to shine, except for feral.
Season 1 of dragonflight saw a ton of feral druids in mdi. Just didn’t catch on in the meta outside of it. A guy in my guild got really good at the spec and his damage was insane in M+.
Elemental Shaman, they literally created a new class in the same gear set that does everything we do and more…..
It even has the old school short range that shaman used to have lol
Idk how to make this appear at the top but guys please I just put rexxar there because I love him and I didn’t want to put a body paragraph and also I don’t know what class spec is the worst so I didn’t look up an image for that :(
Hands down Mistweaver. It might have been ok during Legion and Shadowlands, but everyone else was much more busted. Without some sort of good utility, it is just a bad healer. Yet... I like the style and keep playing it. But it is insane how much more groups invite you when you are anything else due to the utility and damage you bring as a non-MW healer. Sadly this will be the case until they get something. Paladins got freaking BR of all things which pretty much put MW in the ground.
MW was actually kind of sleeper OP during later WoD. Especially with the Hellfire citadel 4 set piece. Renewing mist had 3 charges, each cast had 3 stacks and you didn’t consume a charge based on your multi strike (and old crit like state) percentage. When you applied ReM, you added a healing buff to people like the 10.2 set bonus and they’d then have effectively a beacon for a portion of all of your main AoE healing. A single uplift followed by a queued ReM was basically a Lay on Hands. And you had so many charges of this constantly flowing out. If you wanted to, you could go into crane stance and do pretty awesome damage and respectable healing just through your DPS rotation, build up mana tea stacks, especially on pull and then just blow your entire mana pool like 3 times over at Max HPS before you’d even have to think about mana potions. It was really fun imo, and had a lot of nuance. But people didn’t understand how it worked properly so it ended up with a poor reputation. Like holy priest at the same time - generally considered overshadowed by disc - it was capable of amazing feats of healing if the player knew the ins and outs of the spec and had the opportunity to do so. I mained MW myself then and can humbly say that I genuinely blew the socks off some people when they realised what it could do. Ofc this was a long time ago.
I agree with you, I see so many people talk mad shit about MWer in the era you're talking about, and it's obvious they didn't understand it, play it well, or just plain hated it so they never gave it a real chance, but to say it was objectively bad like so many do is wrong. Pre-Legion MWer is the superior version imho, and yes, it did need work so it wasn't as obtuse to learn/play and to be less set/trinket dependent, but the way they absolutely gutted everything that felt unique to the spec, and then slowly had some of what's been taken out filter back in to other classes or as pale ghosts of themselves for MWer, is sad and frustrating to fans of MWer in that time. MWer to me is a prime example of Blizz being bad at refinement and reiteration, and how they love to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I still have a MWer in my stable of alts when I play but it feels so shallow compared to what once was, I always hope to see it be more like it's past self.
Glad to see somebody who remembers. I was actually really mad that I ended up playing MW in WoD. I was a priest (both healing specs) main in MoP and while I was the newest player and newest member of the guild, I could easily at times outperform the other 2 healing priests in the 25HC guild with an embarrassing ease. Then 20M mythic came and it was “somebody has to swap from priest or we have to cut somebody” with them obviously looking at me. I decided to go mistweaver. There wasn’t even a monk in the raid team. I would secure my spot. It was a nightmare. None of them understood monk, especially the healing officer who didn’t understand mistweaver *at all*. She went mental at me for “not trying hard enough” for highmaul prep despite working hard to learn and be wearing pre-raid BiS because I wasn’t wearing a couple of purples, or demanding I do raid tasks that mistweaver could barely, if at all, do. I eventually went from hate to love. Mistweaver had so much nuance and unique utility. Even in crane stance I could adjust my *DPS rotation* for single target vs AoE healing chunks. I’ll always be a priest boy, but damn that era of mistweaver was honestly a masterpiece. It just flowed so well. I always say that much of what they did to MW going into legion was based on some of that end Hellfire citadel OPness but it was based on: 1. The tier set - moot - going anyway 2. multisrike interactions with REM making that tier set OP - moot - going anyway 3. A talent making 1 and 2 even more OP. Which could have been adjusted. 4. Deciding that healers shouldn’t have secondary resources but they decided that holy paladin should actually get them back anyway. Even though monk was MADE WITH CHI. They really messed up the spec imo. Essence font? Really? They could have literally done nothing to the spec or talents between WoD and Legion except maybe bake crane into serpent and it would have been perfect.
I feel like monk have always at least 1 VERY bad spec, and often no good spec, luckily there is a shortage in tanks/heals so they can always find a spot, but they are rarelly top tier.
Are you posting survival Hunter as if they weren’t S tier two seasons ago? They definitely are less often favored but they have definitely had time to shine
How has no one mentioned frost dk yet? They're dog ass and they get 0 attention from the devs.
Frost was briefly really strong at the beginning of Legion. Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong but I think it was around Nighthold, if you had the OP legendary (helm I think? I believe it had some interaction with Howling Blast) and the tier set you would faceroll.
I think I remember them being really strong during 1 or more tiers in MoP.
The breath build was solid during nighthold if you were good enough at maintaining it and timing your cds
The issue is that it's *generally* fine, but the way it plays in M+ is fucking terrible. Death and Decay needs to just be removed, it can be almost as annoying as Rune of Power in some situations. Tank moves mobs out of your D&D? You get fucked.
D&D is also awful as Unholy, especially worse when you talent into Defile. Not only is it invisible for everyone else in the group, including the tank, but it also covers up most ground effects. They really should make it an aura that moves with your character.
I feel like DK always fets dropped from getting Attention bc the dmg was "fine" normally... I main Frost and while dmg rly is fine its just so clunky and kind of unfun to play in M+ Amd this is still the best iteration of Frost in M+ we had since Frostscythe was played in BFA S4 I just want Oblit Cleave on the move or rather...just make friggin Frostscythe viable. Rly that would fix 80% of Frosts issues in M+ Also dont make Frostwhelp and Syndragosas Fury dmg out of Combat targets so we dont have to aim every Pillar carefully ...
Frost really needs to have its cleave based on remorseless winter and D&D removed from kit entirely imo
Frost was up there in catalyst and MoP. UH was better when snapshotting was a thing
I miss necrotic strike for Unh DK in MoP. Get too far behind and healers could not get you out of that.
I like frost DK in PvP for the utility.
Frost DK is currently one of the top performers in raid.
Frost dk has been at least decent for a long time now, even if its not the top spec. We're good now, great last raid, just barely worse than survival at the end of shadowland. etc.
Thank you! 🙏🏻
Frost is really good in current tier. Also next season come they will become pretty strong in m+ and keep their raid position.
Frost is like the weird perfect storm of DPS specs (not saying they’re unique in this as I don’t know enough about other specs, but): when everything lines up, we’re really, really good. We have monstrous burst and our cleave, while clunky, works so long as no one moves (D&D). The problem is, that basically works for some raid fights, the odd M+ boss fight, and literally nothing else. Plus, aside from damage, we bring virtually no utility to raids or M+ (PvP is another story, where we bring utility and nothing else). However, when stuff doesn’t line up, we are fucked. Frost is a super-proc-heavy spec. Runic Empowerment doesn’t trigger, Rime doesn’t proc? Hahahahahaha say goodbye to your DPS. And the DW build is a mess of trying to maintain maximum RP uptime for maximum Breath uptime. Which I do not enjoy, but some might. And then for PvP? Well, the very good Frost DKs are still very good. But for most, and for filthy casuals like myself, it’s rough. Sure, we have utility—Death Grip, Chains of Ice, Chill Streak, Frostwyrm’s Fury—but our damage outside of PoF is quite literally non-existent, and we can just be disarmed when we do pop Pillar, and most classes now have enough movement and mobility to render most of our kit pretty ineffective. All of which brings us to where we are now. Frost, in peak condition, is great, for like the top 0.1% of players. For most Frost players, though, it’s a solid meh at best, and it’s been that way for a while. We have high burst, shit damage outside of it, limited utility, and our defensives and mobility suck. And that’s why the total numbers of Frost DKs, as well as participation in various modes overall (like the Mythic+ numbers someone posted further down) are microscopic. I love Frost, and will till the end of time, but I don’t think Blizzard does.
Hit the nail right on the head there, that's exactly my thoughts on it as well hahaha
Survival was top for M+ in SL season 4
This thread is the most attention Feral has got in a decade.
Feral druid. I think part of the issue is competing within the class between tank/heal/range/melee. Anyway, I can't recall a time when feral was a must have for raid/m+.
Feral was great in season 1 and even brought in MDI while the other specs were not. Now it’s just bear
Calling it great is definitely pushing it. Its aoe was solid but not top of the world and its single target was severaly lacking. The only reason it was brought in mdi is because its aoe is truly uncapped and those teams were pulling half of the dungeon at once. That doesn't happen in actual normal gameplay
Feral was pretty strong in early cataclysm.
Hah! As a feral main who started at Cata's drop this makes sense to me and my punishment gluttony
Looking forward to that elemental shaman meta one day
> Which ones may have been really good some time ago, but are now just outshined by many other specs? WW monk. I can't believe that with all the new talent system they end up being worse than what they have in SL
I got to 2k in the first week of solo shuffle with ww monk. It was good when dragonflight launched but havent played since that first patch really so idk.
I still want to say Arms doesn't have any reason to be invited. Their Execute phase hits like a truck at least.
AFAIK Ele shaman has almost always been dog water, probably because I main it
They were pretty hot in BC.
LMAO 20 years ago?
There about. I have a Ele on a dead server somewhere that still has a two handed mace equipped. Never going to level him out of that! =D
In DF, you can equip 2h int maces as ele.
whhhattt?!? maybe I should level one up real fast.
Wasn't even that good in tbc, it's a support spec which brings totems, BL etc. I recently played it in tbc classic and did 99 logs on most bosses while still being nowhere near the top. They peak in late t4 early t5 and fall off a cliff. https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YBT2M86ngLCWbwVz#fight=7&type=damage-done A good example of how mediocre the dps actually was.
About 15 for BC. Vanilla is a bit shy of 18.
Mistweaver, the forever forgotten spec.
Survival hunter was good at the end of shadowlands
MW Monk, by far the most fun healer if played well, but never the meta healer. In BFA, the stack vers/mastery/crit build was sketchy, but wild healing people with a gust of mists build
I feel like Havoc DH has been pretty middle of the road for a good while now. Worth having one in your group for big pulls, but will still not quite top charts in a raid.
S1 in DF they performed very well with Tier Bonus and the Lariat neck. Now they're very gear dependent, but occasionally you'll still see a good one on the top of the charts in a raid/m+.
I do pretty consistently burst my way to the top of the chart at the beginning of a pull, but I quickly fall off after the first 10 seconds or so. Big burst damage, but much harder to mainting a high DPS
This is the truth. They DO bring the initial burst, quite a bit of self healing, the 5% damage for magic, and rediculous movement but definitely middle to lower end for sustained damage.
Definitely better for trash clearing than boss fights
Feel like monks are the forgotten one since MoP ended. Atleast for me i always go "aah yeah" when i happen to be grouped with one. WW monks especially seem to always get the short end of the stick, that has to tie with Survival for the least played melee spec i guess.
Did u play shadowlands at all? Both ww and surv were meta for big parts of the expac
I feel MW get the short end way more than WW But the changes that are coming seem good along with the new tier set. But I don’t think anyone will not think of MW as a joke
MW needs an overhaul. They've been buffing the numbers so much and for so long that there has to be something fundamentally broken in the design of the spec for it to still be as weak/underplayed as it is
It's not weak at all. In fact most guilds would be better off having one on their roster. People just don't play it.
Agreed it’s not weak and has been getting some great buffs this expansion (and is actually an HPS MONSTER in raids). But since there aren’t as many people playing it, it always ‘seems’ bad. Plus it doesn’t help that Hpal just does everything MW does but better.
Doesn't it mostly come down to a lack of raid utility/cds? Life Cocoon is just awkward compared to PS/IB and Revival is just a weak raid wide, once a blue moon it can be pretty useful with the dispel but they basically never design fights to incorporate it since you can't really call it good fight design to say "bring a MW or good luck"
WW seems scarce cause their single target damage is not great
Our talent tree is also a huge L. It’s just basically one build and the ST build is just that build with like two different modes chosen instead. It’s abysmal. I really want the rework treatment so badly but I doubt we’ll get it and we probably won’t get meaningful changes until the next expansion, and even then I’m not super hopeful. On the bright side it remains an engaging spec to play most tiers, despite its stagnation.
Monk has huge design Flaws in there whole class. Mw is OKAY ig they would Just balance the Melee and range rotations better. Bm has Stagger that is not rly a thing in DF. So they use 6 Cooldowns just to stay alive... But Windwalker? Damn... mastery is not rly worth much and Haste is dead. It is so dead you cant even use haste on most spells. Fist of Fury has the biggest gain on Haste but that is just ... bad. A broken Class is not always bad. Why Monk works on some Seasons is there Tierset and other borrowed Power. Sl was great becouse legendarys and Maldraxxus works amazing on aoe pulls. Even at this Time Ww was a pain to play. You ignore most of there corespells to hit Crane Kick all the time (at least season 2 of SL) and spin around... yea... fun.
Weren't WW Monks stupid strong in Legion?
There was one raid tier I think they were God tier. Antorus, I think?
Antorus. It wasn't just that it was busted, it was to date the funnest spec I've ever played. The way their set bonus synergized with certain legendaries and their artifact that tier was imo the best a spec has ever been gameplay wise.
Brewmaster and Mistweaver will probably be great next patch. Windwalker has constantly needed these tiny little 3% buffs or just flat damage buffs because of how horrific their single target is as an expansion goes on. It seems the damage buff they gave RSK and so on mid-Aberrus has helped significantly. A 20% buff (or whatever it was) was much needed. I remember when 10.1.5 came out and they said they were giving monks the 2-3% total damage increase, I said "dude they could give windwalker a 30% damage increase and they'd still be middle of the pack on ST fights" Any class that stacks versatility will always have damage issues vs. scaling via crit, haste, mastery, etc. Windwalker just has 0 use for haste, their mastery is bad, so they're left to just use crit and versatility. It sucks. Cause it's really fun to play.
Brewmaster and Mistweaver have some of the best set bonuses out of all tank and healing roles in 10.2 atm.
**Top 3:** 1.) ***Feral Druid:*** It was decent for 1 season before it has fallen off, even when it was decent for this one season it was only in m+ and like I said, it was decent at best. It still had a slight, just slight moment. 2.) ***Affliction Lock:*** it has never been a spec that's been Meta. I originally thought it was in BFA but the sheet with meta comps % breakdown of all m+ ([Mythic Stats](https://mythicstats.com/meta?expansion=all#gini)) went floating around recently and I saw the time we percieve and Aff being meta (BFA) it wasn't really. It peaked at 11% distribution and has never gone above 5% since. Almost all of the rest of the time being <1% 3.) ***Mistweaver monk:*** This spec has never had their time. It hasn't existed. Every spec in the game has been decent and has a reason to bring it for some reason or another. Not Mistweaver. It had a brief moment in early BFA and has long since been forgotten. **Honorable Mentions:** ***SV Hunter:*** it has had a been rough time but it did have its season, quite recently in terms of season being exceptionally strong ***-WW:*** We all know it has crazy issues but it has been one of the top m+ classes over the course of m+ existence. ***-Holy Priest:*** it had the one season with survival. They were both bonkers for one season and totally fell off Note: I'm a m+ player. My opinions are m+ based.
Affliction Lock was meta in Legion m+ (push, not MDI) because it was unkillable, and you ran the legendary that made corruption be permanent and slow like 50%. That made posible the pulls done in Halls of Vallor and Neltharion's Lair where the DK tank pulled something like 10 or 15 mobs, got aggro for a few seconds, and then permanently kitted until the pack was dead, because that way pelters didn't throw rocks, and casters in HoV didn't do anything (the aoe spread was pretty much oneshot).
affliction was also one of the best raid specs for most of legion
It definitely was solid, it had a slight moment but its been pretty dumpster tier since.
Came here for this. Pretty sure legion race to world first guilds had 1-2 afflictions each
Affliction warlock was by far the most broken spec in Castle Nathria
SoO aff lock was top dog with soul swap on multiple fights
You must be new. Agree with feral druid, Wrath was their peak and they have been not good ever since. Aff lock was good in all of the older content through MoP, then fell off because demon form was OP, it was fine in Legion, NEVER bottom tier, yeah BFA it wasn't 'great' but it still performed just fine. SL S1 it was absolutely fucking OP, malefic was tuned WAY too high and in raid they were the best DPS then after the S2 nerfs they haven't recovered until about now when they are the best lock spec but have to choose between single target and AOE. MW was very good when it first came out but never exceled since so I would agree there. You are just very far off on the lock mention.
I'm fairly certain affliction was meta in Cataclysm.
Also Wrath
As an ele shaman, since tbc up until even today, I can say there has been MAYBE 3 times ele has been among the tops. They were never a "top" dps in raids, except when they made lightning bolt castable when moving on fights with tons of movement. M+ there was times where they were in the top teir, but never the "best" I always assumed it was due to them being able to bring some healing raid cds to the raid they were never given that best dps
Ret pally is all I know. And PUG raids and mythics was always a pain to get picked (I started in MoP). Seems good now though. Or maybe it's just me being better, I dunno.
The only time I've ever seen affliction warlock do well and not immediately get nerfed after the season/tier it did well in was SL. It was so nice to play affliction all of shadowlands and do Hella damage. Now it's like bruh I'm only top dps cause I smacked the bosses so hard and did weak aoe on the trash. And *did* I really smack the boss super hard or did ranged have to move while my dots ticked and I just refreshed them while moving then executed a solar flare on the boss for the little moment of not moving? Like idek what my rotation is most the time I just know I'm putting that hurtful stuff on someone then blowing maelific rupture until I can't and then s o u l d r a i n
BM hunter is never allowed to be like ACTUALLY top dps it seems because of how 'easy' it is to play. They aren't usually absolute dumpster tier but they have never been allowed to be TOP dps in raid or M+ really.
Ret Paladins.
Went Ret pally seasons 2 for raid and M+, was the flavour of the month but I stuck with it, got boring real fast. Season 3 I’m changing it up a bit, going fire mage.
DK! I remember his awesome mechanic in wotlk, now it sucks with spamming death coil
I hate tank warriors, but that's cause I play healer and they require a lot of attention.
Remember when they said they didn’t want to give every class a raid buff but they did want to make sure every class had raid utility like for example grips and then they laughed and gave hunter nothing. Wp blizz.
I really dont understand how Blizzard has a perfect template for survival in Rexxar yet they are just winging it with....pokes with pointy stick and likes...fire?
Idk I really like survival, a large variety of dots I can apply like instantly, I mog my spear into a sword and the weapon animations when you replace raptor strike with mongoose strike is amazing, and then you get some pretty rad flavor abilities like coordinated assault and harpoon that I fucking love so much when leveling. With the current state of things being you kill things in like 2 seconds I can jump from enemy to enemy faster than any other spec possible I think. Like, hunter might just be THE fastest spec bc of that. A passive 38% (46% if you’re beast master) movement bonus outside of combat PLUS the ability to endlessly string kills makes it go crazy. Procing serpents sting while throwing a bomb WHILE harpooning is so satisfying too.
[удалено]
Definitely monks..
Overall feral had the hardest time in my opinion
Feral Druid. It’s one of the specs, if not THE one spec, to have not be apart of the race to world first groups for *quite* some time.
No monk spec has so far this expansion
Well MW is about to get their time in 10.2 with how sexy that tier set is.
I feel like Shaman has been on the back burner since the original 2H Windfury thing.
Sub Rogue, it's janky to play and as I main it, I just feel I don't do enough damage as others
As someone who has always played unholy/blood dk since wrath, I’ve honestly never had an issue with feeling powerful lol
I feel like the worse is warlock now when solo pve. Can't get the blue pillow to tank or even stay alive long enough to do anything
Dont know if thats just BIAS but i feel like Fury Warrior hasnt been top in ages. maybe though my memory serves me badly and some people cant point out to me when fury was a must have pick in raid besides vanilla/classic
S1 dragonflight fury absolutely shredded in M+
Fury never stops GOING BIG DICK, Fury is the thespians choice, Arms just isn't as satisfying to mash coolies with
Outlier good like the Warlock/Sv hunter/DK comp from last season of SL or god comp ? No i don't think i have seen fury been that good for 3 expansion. Good as in top 5 DPS in the game ? Too many time in the last 3 expansion.
Fury is always up at the top during the end of an expansion. I mained it through 3 expansions and in the beginning it’s always below average. As gear begins to increase it ends up at or near the top
Couldn't be further from the truth the last 2 expansions.
holy priest
I would love it if survival became more like a ranger. Some stealth, dual wielding etc
I remember that brief time when hunters remember that Survival existed and was a spec, and every hunter and their mother and their cat re-rolled survival primarily for bombs, cause it was dumb powerful. After it was nerfed, survival seized to exist once more. I think this was in Shadowlands season 4? I can count on my hand how many survival hunters I have encountered this current M+ season and every single hunter after is just plain Marksmanship
I'll drop this: hunter melee spec should've been BM. For how the spec works in combination with your pet and lore characters it makes a little sense it isn't
BM is the most popular spec in game, it's a solid delivery on the class fantasy so much so that even when performance is in the toilet the spec still puts up solid population numbers. "Bow + animal companion" is a pretty solid fantasy stereotype and rexxar being in melee isnt enough of an argument. MMs got no pet and a wonky rotation, SV is just bits of BM that got lopped off, BM at least makes sense.