Dragonflight META: Popularity of Specs before Mythic+ & Raid

Welcome everyone good morning, good evening and good afternoon.

Today is Tuesday and it is also the 125th anniversary of the creation of the taximeter Cabriolet, which you might also know as the taxi cab.

125 years ago, there was an upgrade, an evolution from the Hackney Carriage being pulled by a horse into an actual car.

Now talking about the first time and anniversaries, we have something to talk about for today.

For the first time in this expansion, which is the meta of dragonflight, we can expect the popular and strong specs of dragonflight to be at the top, being a potential candidate for flavor of the month.

I went by myself and I took, I stole some data and numbers.

What I did very simply was to check how many players, depending on the specs they are playing, are above 365 item level.

After all, have you ever seen the meta spec at the release of an expansion being very, very underplayed?

If you don't know which tank is going to be popular, and if you still don't have a very clear tier list or ranking, but then you are told that for every five protection paladins, there are 200 protection Warriors.

Then you're like, "Well, a protection Warrior is much stronger, I guess."

Players believe that protection Warrior will be the pick to play, so let's start our popularity contest with the tanks.

Since we gave the example, which was made up, about Warrior, let's take a look at how things have been going for tanks and how popular tanks are right now at the release of dragonflight.

So talking about tanks, our expected list, if we were to look at the general predicted tier list and meta for tanks, we could say that the first one we expected to have is a Demon Hunter, the second one we expect to be prot Warrior, the third one we expected to be Guardian Druid, very close to blood death knight.

Then protection Paladin and brew master monk should be at the bottom.

Those are the predictions.

So, as far as list plate tank, we have the Mastermind, and the second least plate tank we have protection Paladin.

So up to this point, we are set.

We are following the predictions.

Predictions break down a little bit because the fourth most played tank spec at the moment is Guardian Druid, quite a bit more than the next most played tank spec.

There is quite a significant jump, almost 50% jump, from the popularity of prot Paladin.

So it is a significant gap.

However, they are still behind the top three, and perhaps what is the most surprising one is that in the top three, protection Warrior is losing out just a bit, by 5%, losing out to blood death knight, 19.5% and 19.9% popularity for these two tanks.

That is perhaps what is shaking up this list, the fact that blood death knight is perhaps a bit more popular than what we saw in the beta.

Then of course, what is less surprising is that at first place, if you have kept count of the percentages, there is quite a bit left, and that is 24.2% of the percentage goes to Demon Hunter.

So, as I said, we actually still don't know exactly and precisely how much power goes onto tanks, how powerful they are.

We don't have a very clear tier list right now, etc. etc.

But when you're told that there are only 8% brewmaster monks gearing up their characters to pretty high levels compared to 24% Vengeance demon hunters, then it's almost three times as much.

That gives you a pretty good idea that the general idea from the player base is that the expansion is going to be a strong tank, and brewmaster not as much.

This is the intent of making up these percentages for these classes and specs.

Moving on from tanks into healers, because healers also have some expectations about them.

Looking at our prediction of tier lists and rankings for power at the beginning of the season, towards the top we had a mixture of preservation evoker, restoration Druid, holy Paladin, and discipline priest.

In particular, the last two for the raid. And then at the bottom in the bottom half we had holy priest, mist Monk, and restoration Shaman.

So, we start.

Okay, we start okay because at the bottom you have Resto Shaman followed by Mist.

These were quite expected, perhaps Shaman being that low feels a little bit bad, but it's expected overall.

Where we get the first surprise is that third and fourth place perhaps are swapping each other because holy Paladin is played less than holy priest.

Now, holy priest to be fair is a very popular spec all together, many, many players.

Even more laid back and casual players are more into holy.

Plus, Mythic zeros at the start of this expansion were perhaps easier to play as a holy priest than they were as a discipline priest.

You know this is the first class we are seeing priest that can play two different healers, so there might be a little bit more wiggle room in what the players have chosen in this first week to play.

That might not be the same once the season begins beyond that.

Then we have, of course, discipline, which is our third most played healer at 15.2%.

This is where we get our jump, our gap, compared to all of the other healers, because 20.2% of all of the healers with more than 365 item level are resto druid, and 23.2% are preservation evokers.

So, the top three and the bottom two were respecting our predictions of power for the specs.

There has been a little bit of a mix-up result in them though, because holy Paladin is perhaps not nearly as popular as we expected.

Now we jump however into the melee DPS.

Again, if we had to talk about meta ranking and tier lists, which ones you would have thought were considered very powerful and which ones you would expect being very played by the community, I would say that many players would have considered specs like Havoc, wind walker, Outlaw, and even enhancement Fury Warrior to be quite popular.

Perhaps specs like survival, arms Warrior, feral Druid, ret Paladin, and Frost death knight are less popular.

So, starting this list on our left side, on our weak side, we have survival Hunter.

What a surprise!

Numbers in here of course will be smaller because now we are looking at 13 specs, we are no longer looking at six or seven.

Zero-point five percent of all of the melee DPS players above 365 item level are survival Hunters.

That is a very small number, indeed.

Continuing on the next two Rogue specs, because we have both subtlety and assassination at very low percentages around the two percent mark.

Now we have seen actually both of these specs have some good expectations in the race of the season, but for now it looks like the majority of Rogue specs are defaulting to Outlaw.

It might switch later as we get into the season.

After the Rogue specs, we have some more divisive 50-50 picks because we have Warrior and Death Knight.

The Warrior that ends up on the left side of the ranking and on the bottom side of the ranking is arms, and the Death Knight that ends up on the bottom side of the ranking is Frost.

Both of them are slightly above three percent in terms of popularity for the validity.

Above them, the visual spec, which is perhaps a little bit surprising depending on how you see it, is feral, with 4.3 percent of popularity.

For me, this is surprising because I thought there was quite a bit of buzz around farewell and quite a bit of optimism around feral doing better than expected or being in a pretty good state in this expansion.

However, it does not seem to have changed too much in terms of their play rate compared to their usual state, which is generally at the bottom because not many players generally play feral.

Even in this expansion, where it looks like things are getting much better, it still seems like it's going to be perhaps a very niche spec, even if it is doing well.

What is perhaps the opposite of this is ret Paladin, which is at 5.8 percent.

It is a pretty significant gap together with the bottom specs.

Again, ret Paladin, much like prot Paladin, and much like holy priest, are some general player base very popular specs for whatever reason.

It's actually not that surprising to see ret Paladin higher up than the other least-played specs at the moment.

Now we enter our top six, so far, all our predicted top picks are still in here to be mentioned.

So we start with Unholy Death Knight and Enhancement Shaman, with 6.4 and 7 percent of many players playing these two specs.

So, pretty healthy, pretty good as well for enhancement.

Enhancement was perhaps not quite feral level of unplayed, but definitely has not been a super popular spec.

So, right now they're actually doing quite well.

We mentioned them both at the same time because the fourth one has a significant gap from these two because it's Outlaw and it's sitting at 13.5 percent.

Significant jump in popularity compared to enhancement. Of course, with the other two Rock specs being so low, it was inevitable that Outlaw was getting this much of a player base at a very high item level compared to the other melee specs.

However, what about this one?

What about this class that only had this pick to choose as ADBS, unlike Rogue with three different options?

Because Wind Walker Monk is at 13.8 percent in our top three of most popular Melee DPS.

Again, Wind Walker was very popular from supporter and generally the second half of Shadowlands.

It was doing very well in the beta, so it got quite some positive remarks said about the spec in the upcoming release of the expansion.

So, it looks like many players have followed this hype around Wind Walker and started playing it as well in this expansion.

Same can be said, although I want to say this number is perhaps a bit surprising even though we knew they were doing well.

Definitely not top three level well, but Fury Warrior is at 17.4 percent of all players.

Obviously, when you have arms Warrior refugees who escape the spec to go and play Fury, it is still quite surprising to be this high.

I was expecting both Wind Walker and Outlaw to beat Fury at the moment, but it looks like Fury is solidly holding the second spot of most popular melee pick because there is a quietly significant gap from Wind Walker in terms of player base.

Now, however, much like Fury Warrior has a solid gap from Wind Walker, we also have a solid gap above Fury because Havoc Demon Hunter is setting at 20.7 percent.

So, one in five of every single high item level geared melee DPS you see around the world or animatic zero and whatnot is a Havoc Demon Hunter at the moment.

This was, however, expected. It was just about as expected as seeing the 0.5 percent of a survival Hunter popularity.

Havoc was bound and was predicted to be this popular because it was also predicted to be very, very powerful as well from the beta assumptions of a meta for dragonflight.

So, not too surprising, although still quite sad to see Havoc once again for one more tier to be this popular.

Now for last, we do have the range DPS which have quite some surprises.

It's definitely that the wackiest and wonkiest of the popularity is when it comes to the possible prediction of the meta based on what players are playing at high item level right now.

So at the bottom, I don't even go for the predictions because at the bottom we would have the prediction all broken because we have as the least played spec at the moment, fire Mage, at 1.3 percent of all range DPS bothering right now to play fire Mage.

Followed up by two other specs, not too surprising either, because one is Affliction and the other is destruction.

Given the predictions we had a mage with frost Mage being predicted to be very powerful, so it's not that surprising, although it's very weird to see fire Mage solo.

We also had the predictions of demonology being a top DPS in the beta, being very popular.

So, of course, destruction and affliction don't see much play.

So far, it's not that unlikely to see these specs right here.

It's just weird because of course destruction and even fire Mage have been quite powerful and quite popular for a long time, especially fire Mage.

So, seeing them low is a sight for once.

What is also a bit surprising, but not as much if you checked on the bettor on the beta news.

Now, and again, is Marksmanship at 3.2 percent being quite low because it is in a very, very bad state, as you saw from a couple of days ago when they had their damage buffed by 10%.

This is the current result of Marksmanship not doing that well, so not very popular.

Although, of course, it can switch in the blink of an eye if it starts becoming better than this.

Mastery, very likely, all of the Beast Mastery players can just move over to Marksmanship.

So, for now, Marksmanship is in the dog house.

After this first bottom pack, which is bottomed by a lot, we have a slight jump, and by slight, I mean double more than double the popularity for these next specs.

One is Elemental, and the other is Arcane, both hugging each other at about seven percent of all range DPS players.

So, this legitimizes the peak of enhancement even more.

So, enhancement is quite popular.

You might have thought that's because all of the elemental players right now are just playing enhancement because Elementary is terrible.

However, there is actually a significant portion of players still going Elemental as well.

So, it's a relevant number.

So is Arcane, Arcane finding themselves five times more popular than fire Mage is a sight to see.

But we know, we knew from the battle that Arcane was doing quite well, although not perhaps the best of the picks for ranged, definitely in a healthy state.

What is also quite good, but perhaps a little bit surprising, is Frost Mage, which comes right after Arcane Mage at 8.3 percent.

So, Frost Mage was touted to be the strongest of the range DPS specs, together with a couple more. The fact that they are this low can be perhaps attributed to the fact that Arcane Mage is also "jobbing" so to speak, stealing a part of their players.

As we go and see the next three specs, for example, will come from a single option range DPS spec, so they don't have an alternative if they want to play DPS.

They have to play that one.

But for Mage, perhaps Frost is less popular than expected simply because there are also quite a few players choosing Arcane after Frost.

We have these three aforementioned one big DPS spec in their class.

One is Shadow priest, one is balanced Druid, and one is Devastation evoker.

So, Shadow at 9.6, balance at 11.1, and then Devastation evoker at 13.1 are the next three specs.

Shadow surprisingly popular.

Shadow is always quite weird to predict because many people hate Shadow.

Many people think Shadow is a meme or is frustrating to play, but then every expansion still does have quite the solid player base of hope hume abusers believing that this expansion will be the right one for shadow.

And also the fact that right now, Shadow is scouted to do quite well, especially in Mythic plus, especially in AOE at the very least when it comes to damage.

So, not nearly as niche of a pick as a few other specs.

Then you have balance, which of course, after getting nerfed and made much worse and much more clunky to play after the nerves from the beta, is still a very popular spec.

We have seen it from shadowlands, even when balance wasn't at the top of the meters and at the very top of the meta, how heavily popular it remained.

So, no surprise that even now it continues to be quite popular.

And then Devastation, you know, is a new class, it's a new spec.

It also does decent damage, not at the top, not expected to be the meta pick, neither in Mythic Plus or in the raid.

But still being new and all, it's kind of expected to see them popular at the very least for now.

Our top two at this point is coming quite as self-explanatory.

In second place, we have demo lock at 14.5 percent. And in first place with a massive gap and the massive rest of all gaps compared to their classes and roles is Beast Mastery Hunter with 21.8 percent.

This shouldn't come with too much of a surprise because Hunter has been traditionally the most popular class when it comes to DPS.

And the fact that survival is dead, unlike season 3 and season 4 of shadowlands where you could have hunters taken away to go and play Survival and marksmanship is also dead, then the entirety of the player base of Hunter is just flooding into Beast Mastery.

So that is why the mega gap compared to all of the other specs.

Beast mastery is not expected to be absolute meta and much stronger than demo, for example, or much stronger than even Shadow priest or frost mage.

But it's also part of the popularity in this case.

For example, unlike Havoc where we see Havoc at the top of popularity and we can expect it also to be at the top of power.

In this case, we should see it more as this is what is going to be popular for hunters.

Just like we can look at Mages and say, "Oh, looks like the majority of mages are choosing to play frost or Arcane."

That's how we can look at these numbers.

Let's add this as an actual tier list and more like what are the choices of the players right now, depending on the different options they have in their class.

We know that players right now for warlock are unanimously choosing to play demo.

We know that players for rogue are unanimously choosing to play Outlaw.

We know that the players for Death Knight have chosen on their 50-50 split.

They are going for Unholy and not for Frost.

The Warriors have chosen their split.

They are going for Fury instead of Arms.

This is thought quite interesting to see right as we get about seven days, basically from the rest of the season, to check how many players are playing which specs as an indication of what is going to be played and therefore what meta we will see at the beginning of the season with the popularity of the specs being played at a decent to high level at the moment because getting to 365, 370 plus item level takes some time commitment.

So we can expect these picks to be played in the beginning of the season in just a week.

This was the point of today's video, trying to check and do an update right before the season releases to see how the specs and classes are being played right now.

So, with this out of the way on the eve of the next reset of dragonflight, we can leave each other.

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