Indeed. And people need to be realistic. Like take tanks. When you look up the ranking on raiderio it is a long list of only prot paladins. They do +19-20 keys. I agree it is currently the best tank this season. Now lets look further into this; brewmaster is considered the worst tank. Brew are doing freaking +18 keys!
Is a brewmaster really not good enough for anyones +10 key?
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Again, I couldn’t agree more.
The reason behind things are insanely important and I just get frustrated when I see it exactly incorrectly used/applied, which causes a negative experience for so many dps that just dont get to do content because of it
There is one aspect of metas that is barely discussed, but which is what makes them appear so much better than non-metas:
Players who are interested in minmaxing their reward per time spent ratio will gravitate towards the tools that allow them to minmax it. One of these tools is switching to a specialization that is the minmaxxed solution. This in turn means that if you see a player playing a meta class, it has a higher-than-average chance of being played by someone who want to be efficient. This in turn skews the metrics in favor of meta specializations at a larger degree than the absolute truth.
And the exact opposite is also true. If you see a player playing a non-meta class (and especially what appear to be at the bottom of the effectiveness scale), there is an average-than-higher chance that this player does not optimize their playstyle; they may not use optimal abilities or talent trees, they may not have optimal reactions to stuff going on-screen etc.
This is the reason why the playerbase that treats the game like a job will screen players as if they’re the head of HR department.
Ehh, you sure about that? Isn’t it a derivative from “metagaming” and not an acronym for anything?
Nope, it’s the other way: Metagaming means “Most Efficient Tactic Available (in) Gaming” 
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English isn’t my first language so I’m not that confident with how it all came to be, but I was certain it was borrowed from the Greek word and was slightly misused.
Wiki says it’s a ‘backronym’, so, I guess, both interpretations are good.
This is fine imo, because this is a limited amount of the playerbase that more then likely will actually have a job either as a streamer or a part of a pro team which is totally cool.
And to an extent I totally understand adhering to the meta when neccesary like in higher keys, but my issue arrises when those that simply want to emulate it attempt to do the same, effectively bleeding the meta into areas where it isnt important. That’s my actual issue with it, fake pros trying to be what they arent, instead of getting an actual team together, cause when its a premade group you cguys can do whatever you want, cause you all want to, big difference.
People are just playing their spec they enjoy. Probably doing better than meta FOTM rerollers because they actually do know their spec.
And you are correct. The term metagaming means both “knowledge of the game beyond the game” and “most efficient tactic (applicable in) gaming”.
I found the following quote in DuckDuckGo AI Assistant:
Metagaming refers to using knowledge that a player has outside of the game to influence their character’s actions within the game, often considered a form of cheating. It can also describe strategies and approaches that go beyond the game’s rules, impacting how players interact with the game and each other.
We do that a lot in WoW.
It’s always a chance thing. Some players indeed think that switching to the FOTM will make them also effective at it (and, boy, are they the worst when it comes to receiving constructive criticism!). And of those, some actually do succeed at it while others fail.
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The chance a non-meta reroller knows their spec is way higher.
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WoW has a meta, but it really doesn’t matter for most people.
Unless you are playing your spec so well you can’t squeeze another DPS / HPS / TPS out of it, and you are using every utility perfectly, improving a class you already good at will result in better performance than rolling to a new class (Which you’ll need to learn to reach that level of performance, and that may never happen).
If you are in a position that you are performing that well, chances are you don’t need to worry about META classes anyway, because you’re already in a premade.
If you aren’t in a position to be performing that well, improve at the class you chose and like, rather than rerolling and risking performing worse.
We always had this behaviour to some extent. In Vanilla Shaman were Healers, that’s it. Warriors were Tanks and that was it. Paladins were lucky to get in a raid at all but if they did it was to heal.
By Wrath Meta (although I don’t remember the term being used at the time) was did you have correct Talent Build, did you have good gear with all the correct Enchantments, did you use Potions, Flasks and Food buff.
Today’s Meta is somewhat more extreme than those goode olde days.
Though, I dislike this expression but realise language changes and I won’t be Cnut on the beach holding backthe tide of linguistic evolution.
This is quite a modern (and somewhat forced) Acronym for the term Meta. It comes from Meat-Game thinking. Where you work the rules to your favour and Game the System.
We had the term in pen & paper D&D 30 years ago. Players would take a level of Warrior for the higher Hit Points (maybe up to level 3 for 2 attack per turn) and then swap to Mage for the whizz-bang Fireballs etc. This wasn’t done for Lore, Character Development nor World Building reasons. It was done because it made a more plowerful character.
Today I learned what META stands for.
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Meta this meta that, have you ever meta girl before?
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People still need to learn to play their spec, meta or not! Sometimes you see a lot of meta people who have nooo idea what they are doing and why their spec IS meta ! 
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Exactly this. This meta stuff is mostly for this 1% of the player base who have time to do keys higher than average,
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If a leader does this, quit, seriously. It might send a message that it’s not alright. Maybe you can also say something first, of course. Because otherwise you’re just sending the message you’re OK with what they’re doing.
but you can also say something positive about people you see are nice, because this encourages THEM to keep at it. In that way you’d be working towards a healthier community one case at a time. You can also make friends out of this.
If they’re a weak class and pushing high keys I’d trust them with my life. Well, that is if I paid attention to class balance. 
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Well…
Those who enforce it complain about being non-meta in their eyes, and their targets complain about being complained, and wish that options are not decoration but viable and acceptable.
For example, the talent tree can be a puzzle. One solution, you just have to solve it.
In a sense it is, but it doesn’t just depend on the content but the player, too. I will never press more than 10 buttons, so my meta is passives. I will be worse using meta talents.
I made the moderate mistake of playing this Classic iteration as resto druid and prot warrior, because dungeons. Probably the last opportunity ever.
Now, in dungeons, it’s mostly amazing. I’m a control freak so never happy, but none of my dungeons have gone wrong. Instead: wow, so much tanking, wow, you seem never out of mana, wow, I felt safe, wow you saved my hide so many times, and so on. I notice how people are super scared as damage dealers and then get bold as the run goes on.
Of course, there are downsides. For one, solo questing is slow as hell. Another, my revenue is poop. Third, I spend more time waiting than playing (about 60-40%) and that’s with near-instant “queues”.
So I let off some steam, and what do people say? Oh, playing as healer or tank is idiocy. You should tank as Arms. You should heal as Balance. You should buy gold. And so and so. Basically what they are saying, playing a tank / healer spec is not meta and it’s stupid to play one. But it’s … not binary. If I’m zen and don’t care about being poor (no mount, no AH, BoE), it’s a blast.
What is the meta again?
An academic way to say that the other made the wrong choice. Either to help them or to nag them.