THE VERDICT! Dragonflight Tier List: Ranged DPS Talents

It's that time again it's friday baby and that means a new show of saint hundreds tearless friday's babies and this is dragonflight special edition as we did last week with the melee tier talents, now we're going into the range talents baby! oh this is uh well we're both melee fanboys but range have gotten some interesting and obviously in the range we'll have the new class today mean it's still in the world a lot of these specs are still in the works and granted most of these had had updates before like the first iteration and right now most of them are doing really good i'm really scared to not have all of these in s and eight years but we’ll see how that goes!

Yeah it's a beautiful because we tested this thing out on the alpha first and then the beta and man did i wait for the beta because got them add-ons man got them add-ons it's listen they did a whole uh revamp of the ui and i love it right the customizability it's really good, one thing they didn't really address and I was hoping for it is the nameplates on the characters you know it's still kind of the same old thing yeah minimal information and stuff but luckily since the beta got out threatplates is working and we had a much better time identifying the debuffs, the combo points, the resources everything you need to see on your targets man and uh we love it and this is the thing some of these add-ons do not work properly right so let's kick it off!

First off as always which has received some updates like if we would have done this like a week or two ago well actually affliction is in a really good state um i have checked warlock recently because uh reasons videos on our channel and affliction is the one that i started with because it had received the most amount of updates since the initial video and if you haven’t seen that we have it on our channel and we're going to make an update in a couple days however affliction actually is looking really good right way polish.

You can actually you can actually see what the builds are going to go into, you can actually plan proper builds you don't have to play Douglas because i know a lot of people don’t like dark glare for some freaky reason you have dark glare, you have soul rot, you have you know the inevitable demise playstyles with a drain lifestyle watch out flame that the neverland devices is the warlock man and it's it’s actually looking pretty pretty cool, still want to play a lot more of it but i think affliction right now with a couple of changes it could be very high, it’s i would put it into A tier. regarding yes.

This is this is one that's with a little pinch of salt because this is on the in the process of being changed this and probably soon after with the druids are under the scope right now and will probably go undergo certain iterations however the changes that they they’ve announced uh they're looking good so far we'll see how they actually plan out.

We're gonna start to test do we judge it by the changes they announced or what we tested on the alpha well we have to kind of judge it by the by the potential so far but since it's not fully updated uh i would put a balance into a a promising beat here yeah for now because this is the thing where we cannot really have a clear judgment based on what they said that's gonna happen uh we have to test it out first so we're kind of like just yeah it's 50-50 based on what we had it was it was okay but it wasn't like that the best possible iteration it could have with other changes would have put into like c maybe, yeah it wasn’t it wasn't that bad but yeah still there was a lot to be held over there but i think for for what they’ve announced its bit possibly after we tested definitely a strong eight yeah.

Now for one of the specs that i was makegiga surprised and i love the rework, arcade mage and this is this is the thing arcade mage from what we saw the last updates because there was the first iteration which was mega bad and the update kind of enabled arcane to be possibly one of the best mage specs was so much better man yeah.

I would arguably say that it's it's on par with maybe evoker and an elemental shaman in terms of like the logic and the pathways, sure there's still a couple of things that may are maybe iffy but for the most part you can enable different playstyles no problem or you can go for the giga orbs uh built that is supercool um i believe like on the middle side you still have like as similar to the other major specs like the core, right yeah it's i mean our game power has changed into uh would say a much more interesting spec than just spell power damage or anything like that and i feel like arcane mage has either been extremely complicated or extremely simple in the last couple of expansions and whenever arcane is doing the best and people love it the more uh is when it's actually a bit more complicated and that was the issue with the initial tree where you didn’t know where to go but now you can look at it’s like oh i want to go lift i want to go right i want to mix in between and it’s good i think it's just a notch below affliction it's a really really solid spec really well designed yeah makes sense could almost be done it’s uh yeah almost complete I would have probably but since i haven’t tested too much i might could not but my gut would be for an s tier but since you tested i'm gonna make on i'm gonna make the call on your decision here all right next up!

One of the most fun specs you’ve played right? um it was alpha it was actually interesting i kind of like what they’re doing with beast mastery I’m not a fan of most of the hunter things that are happening in dragonflight right now, but beast mastery is looking for kind of cool and it's a i think out of all of the hunter specs is the one that i like the most in terms of their design.

I see what they’re going for, there's still a couple of issues that i had with the talents that i haven't seen any update on in a while and i hope they will address this soon obviously they're taking you know a couple of classes at a time when they’re updating so we don't know when they're gonna get to hunter.

However beast mastery right now is pretty decent though top of the beats here i would say they're better than boomkin i think it would need a couple of more changes to be on par with affliction and arcane um i like it that they’re keeping it simple for people who want to keep it simple and they’re adding a couple of core let's say under the hood mechanics, if you want to you know dive a little bit deeper and have a little bit more depth to the spec yeah mean this is the thing right we consider a win in terms of like how these talents are being wrecked when the talent can give you a game play where you can either go for a more a more simpler approach or you can even go for a more let’s say in-depth approach and that on top of having a clear and logic way to either have some sort of like aoe-ish build or single target build or a mix of both that can actually work so take that uh as we go forward with the rankings.

And speaking of good rankings looking very very good man i mean don’t know how they could possibly go wrong with demonology seeing like how the spec gradually increased in in performance and fun and this is weird to say about the shadowlands demonology was fun and it still is edit performs pretty well as as well so well performance is like subject to change because they're going to go tuning all that yeah um, however.

Okay so demonology is actually getting a lot of a lot of changes to another portal which obviously i'm a hundred and ten percent biased about because another portal was an ability that they’ve added i remember it's this day a pre-patch bfa if i recall don't know if it was in legion but it did come into uh last the last couple of weeks of legion and it was never really good and they’re constantly iterating on it and it’s looking better and better um every time they’re doing it i think the latest changes that i was that were able to see where that uh the pit lord which is you know the big the big thing with uh with demonology right now is actually scaling based on the number of demons.

Let me tell you something, i will put demo in s tier just because of that pit lord, do you understand this is this that's it for me it's not good it’s good it's it’s going more and more into the demon legion commander theme which is like hey mannoroth they come here boy yeah it's exactly yeah i would put it let's say bottom of the s tier because i still think that's there for sure it needs it needs a little bit more polish but it's looking like really good really ambitious projects with demonology yeah i mean all of the specs will need a little bit more iteration but what you're going to see in s tier is probably close to completion with some couple of tweaks that be maybe needed here we're not talking about damage necessarily because we're still like away off until the tuning phases.

Next up uh destruction warlock which i liked a lot uh because uh finally i saw the enabling of either rain of fire super aoe builds uh all of that you also have like the super single target on the left side as well with the infernal all that but uh from what i know like there’s two choices on the infernal where you can go for aoe as well over there yeah also single target which I really that's it awesome man because you know you're in that finals like oh I really need just massive single target here or i just need some cleave and you can definitely do that with destruction.

I think they even got like some really cool updates to havoc which has been a core aspect of this upon its release destruction was clearly the best design spec out of all of the world aspects and um affliction is kind of taking a little bit of leave a little bit of like aground on it but i still feel destruction is above demonology even as a main fan of demonology yeah destruction was the spec that i liked least in warlock and i think it’s probably the best in terms of design.

Obviously a little bit more polish goes a long way but right now it's looking like it's giving you the tools that you need for the situations that you're in, oh yeah plus the fact that they returned a lot of like the old abilities like that of shadow burn and soul i mean that was before but i mean it was never it’s kind of it's it feels like it’s new right yeah exactly you never used it but now it’s part of it it's on the tree over there and it makes much more sense again all things are subject to tuning over here but still it's part of the tree and again it's an example where you can make a clear and logical build without having to sacrifice too much it's a beautiful thing and i think they kind of hit the nail on the head with uh destruction and demon for sure.

Now uh another spec that i am a big fan of and uh possibly even bigger after seeing the changes for dragonflight man fire mage is so good so much better man they enabled.

So my own problem with fire mage so i played on and off fire mage i think since cataclysm and it was different in all of the expansions that like they always change combustion it's all right but i kind of like where they went starting from like the middle of legion moving to bfa when you're like you’re like the super pumpy uh uh ranged wizard during combustion you deliver high amounts of damage burst area or birth single target no problemo and you’re that high octane fast-paced play style.

The only thing that i didn't like too much especially in shadowlands likesome sort of like gimping like not always having the fluidity you would need or being or having the either the spec being too much accelerated or if you’re if you're like too much punished if you're missing a step now I see with the talent build that they kind of address in this in some way, especially with that new talent that has ignite has a chance to decrease the cooldown of fire blast, that's so good that's just that fluid that's what was missing you know the that's the problems that i had with fire major basically rectified because i was never a fan of like being really good in just your cooldown right because we're thinking about stuff like red like fire mage and like the old days you had your cool down much faster due to killing and all that at first and that’s something that's happening right now.

When they're taking that concept of playing sun king right now in shadowlands and actually making it into a build and you can actually get pyroclasm with it as well and that's like that's cool change because they used to have that uh spread that out you had sucking on on the side and pyroclasm on the other side yeah it's good, make sense and now obviously now if you're playing with the shifting power unless that changes in future builds you can actually have very high up time on combustion with smaller combustion windows in between which is great and you can actually control them they’re not like vision of perfection products you can actually set them up slightly and you can also have some pyroclasm procs here and there where even if you’re outside of combustion it's not like you're just oh i'm just fishing for procs, you can fire a big fat pyroblast here and there and if you don't like this you can play a much simpler or like fire fringe or what is it called a fiery rush where you just get like random procs of like six seconds of back-to-back instant pyroblast it's all so cool.

I would write this like in front of the warlocks for me personally uh would you agree on i would uh i would have put it behind demo but i can give you let’s put it down definitely better than the demonology of my warlock bias aside i think destruction maybe does it slightly but in terms of design and options but fire mage fire mage has the option if they change and not to mention the fact that fire blast cooldown right now is what for me puts it into s here because it's all good I mean we can talk a lot about fire mage but it's time for frost mage.

Man this is going to be we're going to be like broken records here but again the updates for frost mage but the ones they did were actually good and i would rank this high enough just for the big ass glacial spike glacial oh my god that’s so good i mean it's good they're taken in the right direction and frost mage probably had maybe the most amount of issues in the town although arcane felt the weirdest uh frost mage was like it felt like you were trying to run a race with no legs and one finger in one arm and that was really weird and now they’re actually doing like they've uh what was it i think they've reduced all of the three-point notes oh yeah which one i don't think fantastic yeah i don’t think there's any three-point notes no not at all with any of the major specs but it definitely felt the best with frost yeah.

And it's also like they put in like the proper legendaries like as capstones right yeah you got the freezing winds over there if you want to go that route so what made what made in my opinion frost mage pretty fun was the actual legendaries in shadowlands and there are capstones over there as well not to mention that like if you want to go for that that big ass single target route you have like the ray of frost bet over there to like the glacial spike and all of that that just makes so much sense but you also ont hat capstone you have like the freezing wind stuff so you can make a decent mix of both worlds which is really good but again for me seeing those big ass like glacial kids and i saw it in your footage when we did the first video it’s dude it's insane it's so cool to like lose aggro for a second when the glitch just like it's this is this is one of the most satisfying spells in the game in in in my opinion.

Usually like when you see that you know build it up in that whole big coat of ice on top of it just like throw it and it shatters it i like big damage yeah amazing so i like what they’re doing with frost where they're adding play styles for frost bolts focus, for ice lance focus. freezing rain and um and glacial spike as well.

I feel like it needs a little bit more polish beyond par with fire and arcane but i feel like it’s maybe top bottom of eight here it’s there the thing is there but i feel like it's it's here for sure yeah but i mean there's not much to it yet there's still probably a couple of issues here and there uh definitely feels a lot better to play a fire mage for example than a frost just because of the fluidity oh yeah um but we’ll see further iterations we’ll check this on a later date, next up marksmanship.

Not a fan plan so the thing is marksmanship needs a little bit more a few more iterations let's say I think beast mastery for me it does does a little bit better marksmanship i see where they're going for it and i kind of like it but it feels it’s it's in a weird spot because marksmanship cannot really play without stuff like uh rapid fire and trick shots and multi shot and aim shot which are the core mechanics but they're spread out a little bit too much for my personal comfort in the talent and i get it because i've preached this before right the talents are supposed to unlock the class but these are core mechanics and last i checked trick shot was pretty far down uh the left hand side of the talent tree and that was very weird because that's that it shouldn't be that way because you don't have any other option however they're at they’re definitely adding more options of cleaving without having to hit three targets which is actually really cool.

I still don't understand why a serpent stalker trickery a thing while you can also talent into serpents thing this is my my forever conundrum with with hunter because it doesn't make sense i don’t feel good about talenting into or not talenting into surprises so there's no right now for me it doesn't it doesn’t give me a good answer for anything and I feel like marksmanship they're they’re making it to be like this huge ass big sniper and that's amazing and or like this machine gun turret they would heavy bombardment what is it that they’re adding those cool shells where you can trick shots hit fewer targets but harder or more targets but less damage and that's really cool but i feel like that's it, we'll put it behind beast mastery still since it would need a few a few more changes, it's a little slightly better than boomkin but we'll see boomkin can probably go into a tier depending on how their employee changes all right next up uh devastation evoker.

The poster child of this expansion the brand-new stuff that's coming into play and we had like a video on this uh from that date up until this one uh there has been some tuning going on over there a couple of nerfs and stuff but this doesn’t change the fact that the talents for the devastation uh evoker are still like super super nice made and logical as as we said.

You can have a clear red build, red build is more aoe and the middle with all of the cooldowns it’s one of these space that you know we don't have experience on we just tested it on the beta we cannot really compare as we did with other specs here yeah this happened tobe everything it’s only this one here and there’s probably a lot of iterations still to go for it but so far this was a pretty engaging i would say uh new talent build because they hadn't have anything to work off with these specs right this was like literally from the ground up as opposed to at the other space that they had history and old spells and artifacts and traits and all of that so i would still rank it pretty high because there's not much negatives to to be well considering that when it came out it was clear that it was made with the talent system in mind.

However i still feel like it lacks the depth of other specs have however the playstyle is very fun it's really new and uh i still want to play with all the new chains i haven't played with all the new changes yet and when i did I liked it i feel like it's middle A tier.

I think we have uh two clear winners here in my book i mean we’re just going to say there’s elemental and shadow priest left here and i have to say um looking at elemental shaman this is probably up there with i mean it’s the shaman talent tree everybody gives really well designed it's likei don't know how much negatives you can have right now about elemental can probably go i mean i've seen the numbers first of all which they don't count but I’ve seen itas opposed to other big ass numbers okay let’s put it like this so i've seen some big ass numbers from evokers from prot warriors uh uh this when i saw elemental and the the possibilities you have the clear and fast way to pat all over the place the logical points and talents placed over there plus the action dude it's insane and I cannot argue how much fun it is uh starting from how you play elemental and how you choose to build it uh and ending up with how it looks how it sounds how it feels.

This is one of these spec that I think is a clear winner for dragonflight if they don't always fuck it up somewhere it's one of the best design specs, there are a lot of things that we already are familiar with when it comes to the elemental talent tree but the ease of access in the design is really good for me it's a very solid a tier, i don't know if i should put it in front or behind, for me it didn't blow my mind like it like uh let’s say the mages and the warlock specs did but it's really solid it's hard to criticize that's what i mean right mean it's probably one of those specs that i don't see a lot of changes going into it because it's so good man uh yeah it doesn't have the wall factor necessarily as the other specs uh have with their talents but still really good i mean uh we Gott understand the last time we had a detailing situation this is all the ranger looking fantastic for the most part.

Now shadow priest, last but not least shadow priests in wow man this has received back-to-back changes in the last week and um i've seen the latest post it doesn't seem like they've added shadow orbs at all anymore however they have added um i forgot what the mechanic is contemptuous shadows or something like that i don't remember exactly what it is but it's looking really good.

For me shadow priest once they once they tune those capstones out and everything that they’ve done it's a clear edge here now I think it's in front i think i'll put it in front of the sdr because um I looked at the last changes uh for it and i know i know some people will complain about this because not everybody’s happy with everything they’ve done with it but shadow orbs uh was initially placed over there but I think it has been replaced in the meanwhile with coalescing shadows which again kind of iterates on the fact that shadow priests now can either like go for this route where you are like super dotting everything around which alot of people prefer uh or you can go for the the new talent uh what was it called the one that consumes the things and just has like a super big burst on it well uh mind spike basically.

If you take mind spike and then you don’t take search of darkness essentially mind spike uh will promote you into going into a heavy instant damage spells like uh mind blast shadow or death um you can also take search of darkness to not lose the dots or you can play the coalescing shadows mechanic where you have a chance to proc this buff and consuming this uh buff will give you instant damage a lot of instant damage on mind blast and stuff like that and that will also uh increase your dot damage uh for 15 seconds.

I think it is it’ll it will it can still be subject to change that on top of all the old gods themes like you know i love yashiraj of yogg-saron or Cthulhu or everything like that that adds some really cool flavor to the insanity the the shadow yeah well that was that was the point i was making right because you can go for that fantasy of you know just rotting everything out or you can go for you know the mind decay stuff where you you consume a lot of that and have like instant damage all the time build up and consume it for instant damage like super busty.

I would say i love this and it makes sense and it's not too sacrificing in in a lot of the ways you can still mix them up really good i feel they did a tremendous jump with it um I’m still I’m still a bit sad you know about the shadow orbs i know a lot of people didn’t like it's always going to be weird because it was a resource mechanic and before we had insanity and it would be weird to have two resource mechanics however i feel like shadow priest is the best example of the devs listening to the feedback to the good feedback of course where they've removed Sierra nightmare because a lot of people complained they've made that void eruption aka void form optional because a lot of people complained and they’ve brought back some dot power because a lot of people complained that we've been losing the power as shadow priest now to the degree that these changes will be impactful will be down to tuning.

However the thing that the point that we’re going into the right direction right now and the communication channels are open and shadow priest is an example of like look you can get the spec that you want is amazing yeah that's it's a hundred percent what we like to see and this is pretty much the final image right soi t's uh there's no c or d tier so far there's still upcoming changes you know at least to boomkin we're still waiting for a couple of tweaks for bm uh marksman and stuff like that we can probably see closer completion specs like frost, arcane, fire destro um shadow demo um still tuning going around for a evoker, elemental is looking in a solid state aswell um so it's a pretty good picture I would say given the state that's so hard to choose the main man.